Poll for return of Town Guard

[raystuttgart]

Theoretically it could be relatively easy to code this way:
If a Native Brave kills a European Blade (only) Unit it gets Promotion "Stolen European Blades" which you can see in Mouse Over of course.
But this would then not be a new Unit of course and on Screen it would look exactly the same.

It simply works completely different when Native Braves steal Guns or Horses:
The Native Braves really change their Profession and get new Graphics.
Thus the solution above would be a little "inconsistent" to the current feature.

But for me that difference is no big deal.
I just wonders if any of the players would really care about such a "mini change" that has almost no gameplay effect and no visual effect.

 

[lyciummusic]

I like the promotion idea, though it rules out selling blades to natives.

I always do that with firearms to undermine rivals. Hefty profit too.

 

[raystuttgart]

But I think that Natives currently don't buy Blades anyways.
If they could use them for a new "Native Blades" Military Profession then we could change that of course so they would.

But again, the problem is the amount of graphics that would need to be created so it looks reasonably good.
And currently it seems as if there is no graphical modder available to take care of this ...

 

[Commander Bello]

You guys should keep in mind that in RaR (at least up to 2.4 which seems the last version I was playing) the AI misused the Town Guard as scout quite heavily. In regards of the AI, town guards were flawed or to put it in a maybe better way, the AI didn't really know how to handle them.
So, reimplementing them might require some chances in AI logic as well.

Nevertheless, I have to admit that for the human player, blades are a rather cheap and quick means to provide basic protection for cities as they can be produced in the blacksmith shop line of buildings and don't need the addtional magazine line of buildings.

 

[Commander Bello]

Was the created with blades.

Also, early on it is annoying to have 100 Blades that you can't use without horses. So, you have weapons that can be used by Cavalry and on ships, but no one can use them on land even in defense? The lack of a unit on land that uses Blades leaves a noticable hole in the game.

Line Infantry needs guns and blades both.

Taken these comments in consideration I wonder why "blades" aren't replaced just by "tools". That way the unit and profession "bladesmith" could be spared.
It might happen though that what now is blades would be consumed by a finished construction. On the other hand it seems to be more likely to have 50 tools in your town than to have 50 blades there, which helps in cases of suddenly needing addtional defenders.

To avoid confusion the civilopedia entry could contain a line like "Tools are an abstraction of anything made from metal, in particular knife, swords, blades and other melee weapons".
So people would get the Town Guard, but the game would have to browse through less yields, units and professions.

Of course that still leaves the aforementioned problems of the AI handling the Town Guard correctly.

 

[raystuttgart]

Sorry to ask again:

Why was Town Guard (Professions and Specialists) removed from RaR?
I do not remember any public discussion about it.

Was the only reason that "AI would not use it appropriately"?
(Because that could most likely be fixed.)

If that was the only reason for their removal, then I believe we should put it back.
(Currently about 80% of community and I believe all team members want it like that.)

Which I could do in the next feature release. (Not in the upcoming Bugfixing and Stability focussed release.)
Nightinggale needs to finish his "Savegame Compatibility" first so new Units, Professions, ... will not break existing savegames anymore.

If there was any other reason, please tell us.
If we do not know, we cannot fix or at least discuss.

 

[Commander Bello]

Why was Town Guard (Professions and Specialists) removed from RaR?

As far as I see it, the whole concept is flawed.

While it is nice (and helpful to get over the 4 inhabitants limit) to have a cheap defense unit blades aren't making much sense. They are literally just another kind of tools. Produced from the same raw material in the same building with the same working rate, being available at the exact same point of time. They are just a "military tool". Unfortunately, when it comes to guns and cannons that concept is broken as those are made from.... right, tools.
The next thing is the specialist. I always wondered about the unit as it seems to hard to find any even remote equivalent in the real world.

So, I think a profession "Town Guard" might be helpful to overcome the arbitrary "4 people rule". The yield blades and the unit "Town Guard" however are very questionable.

Edit: and this then continues with the profession "Bladesmith" and its equivalent unit, both of which are only justified in the game to have blades. See above.

My advice: If you want to have a cheap defender, make the profession "Town Guard" require like 10 or maybe even 25 tools. You then can have it at the same point of time as now, needing the same access to the same raw materials as right now. No new yield required, no addtional two units required, no additional second profession needed.End of story.

 

[raystuttgart]

As far as I see it, the whole concept is flawed.

Well, that is your opinion and of course you have all rights to state it.
And I agree that currently "Blade Weapons" in general is not fleshed out - because only a small part of my old ideas and the current WTP ideas are implemented yet.

But:
1) We are currently discussing to have a rebuild of the Military System where Blades will have a justification / much more purpose.
2) We are currently heavily discussing (internally) to implement a Tech-like system (and most team members approve it) where Blades / Blade Units will also make much sense.
3) devolution is giving AI a big overhaul currently. Thus AI should use them appropriately.
4) Most Players (and as it seems all team members) do want them back.
5) They add some flavour and are definitely realistic for that time period.

So unless we get any other reason that convinces us (like a bug which we cannot fix or majority of community disagreeing) we will most likely bring them back in WTP 2.8 (the next big feature release).
But before 2.8 we will first bring out WTP 2.7.3 (which will be focussed on AI, general quality improvements, bug fixing, exploit fixing, ... only).

So ok, let us wait and see what the rest if the community has to say about it.
We are still waiting for other feedback.

Summary:
1. Nobody in the current WTP team knows why they were removed.
2. We cannot find any public or internal discussion that explains the removal (before it had happened).
3. Community is confused and majority wants it back.
4. The curent WTP team thinks it makes sense in the bigger concept.
5. Effort was put into creating the graphics and XML for the Units and Specialsits - and it is all still available to put it back into WTP.

 

[Commander Bello]

1) We are currently discussing to have a rebuild of the Military System where Blades while have a justification / much more purpose.
2) We are currently heavily discussing (internally) to implement a Tech-like system (and most team members approve it) where Blades / Blade Units will also make much sense.

Well, seems to me that almost puts and end to the discussion
As long as the military system has not been updated and then is working correctly in combination with the tech tree blades seem to be pretty pointless.

The quick solution to avoid further trouble with the current imcomplete implementation is to take blades and bladesmiths out, including all the respective yields, professions and units.

Now, how to reimplement the Town Guard as it is much wanted? Again, it seems to be pretty obvious that now as we agree on getting rid of blades for the moment, it should need tools (as they are available earlier than guns). Not much effort to do that in XML.

Glad we could figure this out.

 

[raystuttgart]

Again, it seems to be pretty obvious that now as we agree on getting rid of blades for the moment, ...

That is definitely nothing we agree on and is not even considered by the team at the moment .
What we do agree on - if you do as well - is that we should flesh it out in future releases by new game concepts and maybe an overhaul.

Spoiler :

Seriously C.B., there is no point in trying to force your personal taste against the opinion of the majority of community and the current WTP team. (Please check the poll again.)
You are welcome to state your opinion in a friendly way, but continuous repetition, making demands like if you would pay us, trying to give commands instead of asking kindly and sarcasm will not bring you anywhere.

And sorry for my open words. But this is not the first discussion that was going down like this.
You are of course still welcome to discuss with us but please try to consider what I am trying to tell you.

But of course you are also absolutely free to to create a modmod of WTP, implement all your personal wishes and publish it to the community if you give appropriate credits.
It would be nice to see other people modding as well in this small modding community and of course it is also nice if players do have alternatives to choose mods that suit their taste.

Edit:
We are also still waiting for feedback of other members of the community.

 

[Commander Bello]

1) We are currently discussing to have a rebuild of the Military System where Blades will have a justification / much more purpose.
2) We are currently heavily discussing (internally) to implement a Tech-like system (and most team members approve it) where Blades / Blade Units will also make much sense.

Well, I will be quoting you once again (higlighting with color done by me):
Your own words are that you have to rebuild the military system to justify having blades. Which in turn means, they currently are not justified.
Furthermore, you are planning to introduce a tech system where blades shall make sense. Do you have it in the current version of the game? Obviously not. Is it going to come anytime soon? Seems to me that isn't the case either.

So, in short you have a barely working and poorly implemented element in the game and what you try to implement to make it maybe fit is postponed to the future.
And if you yourself would have had a look at the poll, you would have noticed that it is about Town Guards, not blades. It isn't my fault that Town Guards at the current moment aren't working for the AI either.
(As a sidenote: it is remarkable to say the least that you didn't comment on that at all. Just to help you: the fact that the AI cannot really deal with TG's is not based on this very unit, but has some other reasons. It would be very worth the effort to adress those, but obviously that either has escaped your attention so far or you seemingly aren't interested in that particular problem.)

All I did was to point out which way would be the easiest one to reintroduce the Town Guard without having the need to rely on a poorly implemented game element. It would even have the advantage of getting rid of other elements like the unit and profession of bladesmith which literally don't do more than the blacksmith.

And the rest of your accusations I just leave uncommentad as they are way too childish to put any effort in that.

 

[raystuttgart]

Ok, peace.

Both of us stated their opinion and further discussing like that - between the two of us - will not help anybody.
Obviously the two of us don't agree on this and can not find a consense.

Let us just wait and see what the rest of the team and community want.

 

[devolution]

I's a bit puzzling to me why the AI would have problems with this unit. It seems straightforward to make it work. We'd have to do some adjustments though to allow the AI to understand that it's a valid defender.

 

[raystuttgart]

@lyciummusic and community:
This request can be considered accepted.
(Poll and team feedback are overwhelmingly posititve.)

It will most likely become part of our Release 2.8.
(We will publish a small improvement / fix release first though.)

 

[raystuttgart]

This is done, see here.

 

[lethiel]

I don't oppose the town guard strongly at all. The only reason I vote no is that I didn't like to have both setler militia and town guards in the game at the same time. IMO settler militia should really be the unit to go.
Blades have a big and important strategical impact on game already. The player has to plan ahead. Will I need 100 tools to convert to guns or will I need 100 blades? when war is declared it's too late to change. If you remove blades, the game becomes easier and hence less entertaining.

 

[raystuttgart]

@lethiel

Blade Professions are generally relatively week. For late game they are not that great compared to other Military Professions.
Thus I do not see a strategical issue in having both Professions "Militia" (Strength 7) and "Townguards" (Strength 3).

Also, we are still planning to one day overhaul the Military System, so Units that can be equiped purely with Blades will make even more sense.

If you remove blades, the game becomes easier and hence less entertaining.

Nobody ever wanted to remove blades and I have not done that.

 

[lethiel]

@lethiel

Blade Professions are generally relatively week. For late game they are not that great compared to other Military Professions.
Thus I do not see a strategical issue in having both Professions "Militia" (Strength 7) and "Townguards" (Strength 3).

Also, we are still planning to one day overhaul the Military System, so Units that can be equiped purely with Blades will make even more sense.

Oh yeah now i remember they were really, really weak that's why I didn't like them. They gave you are false sense of safety in your cities but they got crushed by the natives all the time. But I trust you guys will make something nice

Nobody ever wanted to remove blades and I have not done that.

I know blades are staying Commander Bello seemed to oppose the blades earlier in the thread. Was just giving my support for keeping them.