Prestige promotions and other suggestions

[hadrian11]

Along with Air units, you'll also need to come up with new ground units (or add abilities to exisiting units) to counter the effects of the air units. Possibilties include adding intercept abilities to some of the archery line units (like SAM units in vanilla) with additional promotions that increase their likelihood of intercepting (i.e. air defense promotion adds +25% chance to intercept air units). Buildings could also be added to cities that would defend against air units (i.e. Air ballista building has 50% chance to shoot down enemy air units which enter the city's fat cross zone).

Another addition to the air line of units could be a promotion called "awe" which would have the effect of possibly causing "root" to ground units for a turn (like they're sitting there watching the sky, unable to muster the will power necessary to move).

 

[Yorgos]

I like the ideas about air units, they would make the gameplay more interesting. But in my opinion, FFH should avoid using the vanilla system. I'd give emphasis to what you call fighters. They should be controlled and battle like ground units, but allowed to go through any kind of terrain (including sea) and having various advantages. That's similar to what happened with air units in civ2, which I've missed in the latter versions.

 

[Hypnotoad]

Yeah, there is no reason why Griffin riders couldn't land on the ground and then take off again. Similarly, Air Galleys could be a way of dropping warriors into the middle of battle rather than primarily a bombarding tool.

 

[Kael]

7. Flying Units

First I would like to suggest a tweak. In FfH the combat system is like the vanilla when it was released, as the unit receives damage its power is decreased. Later this system was changed in vanilla, and the power wasn't affected anymore by the damage, but FfH kept the old system. I suggest a new promotion, that only some units START with, the Elite promotion. Elite units would work like the present vanilla units, it's power would not be reduced by damage. Only epic units would heve this promotion, like most heroes, some lv4 units like the Vampire Lord, the Immortal and the Archmage, and powerful monsters like Balrogs, Chaos Marauders and Hydras.

I like the idea that certain units wouldnt be effected by damage. It sounds like a good mechanic for beings that are immune to pain (undead, elementals, golems, demons). And maybe even a prestiege promotion ('Pain Tolerance' or some such) that allows living creatures to gain the same.

But I am kinda confused as to why FfH wouldn't be using the current vanilla system since we were built entirely on the 1.61 codebase. I will look into it.

Now the flying mechanic. There is two main roles to air units: bombing and air superiority. We can aldo divide bombing in strategic bombing, destroying enemy facilities and other strategic target, like roads, and tatical bombing, which aims to desorganize and demoralize the enemy troops. Air superiority is the role of keep the skies under your control, so it is only relevant if bombing is relevant.

Keeping in mind this concepts which flavor of units would do each job. The bombing job would be done by flying machines like Zeppelins and Baloons and the air superiority job would be done by flying creatures, like pegasi and gryphons. The problem is that the job of the second group is pretty dull, but here the flavor comes in our help, as the gryphons, drakes and pegasi can enter in melee with ground and sea units. So the now the roles of the two groups of flying units are:

1) Bombers
Flavor: Air Galley, Sky Manta, Cloud Fortess, War Baloon, etc.
Traits:
Flying: Can go through impassable terrain and ground enemy troops.
Crew configuration: Like the ships in FfH 2 0.16
Tatical Bombing: Inflicts a small collateral damage to enemy units in the same square he is, and gives them the Desorganized promotion (-20% combat, there is a Disorganized II, when a second tatical bombardment happens in the same turn, wich gives -15%, to a total of -35%, but then subsequent bombing causes only damage) until the beggining of your next turn. Elite troops doesn't get this promotion, but are damaged.
Strategic Bombing: Only Lv4 bombers have acess. Can destroy improvments and buildings in the square. The chance can be modified by promotions.
Supply dependent: Bombers works like in the vanilla, rise from a base, a city or a fortess, hit the target and then return to base. The fighters don't have this limit. It's course cannot go through any square that have a Air Superiority unit, and if there is one in the target the Bomber nust fight it before the bombing.

2) Fighters
Flavor: Pegasi Knight, Tamed Gryphon, Drake Rider, Gyrocopter
Traits:
Flying: Can go through impassable terrain and ground enemy troops. Have a big chance of fleeing when the combat goes bad.
Skirmish: Can melee attack ground troops in the square it is. This attack ignores any improvment or building defense bonus, except when these structures say that it affect Skirmishers.
Air Superiority: When any enemy flying unit enters the same square it automatically fights it, and +40% against Flying units.
High Mobility: Only units with the High Mobility promotion can escape from combat with a High Mobilty unit.

How we build them? The living creatures need a stable and a Eyrie resource. The mechanichal ones need Siege Workshop.

Each civilization should have acess only to a couple of flying units. Some more concrete unit sugestions:

1) Bombers:
Sky Manta - Nest Elite lv4 Bomber Beast - Living Bomber not dependent of bases - Must have a Song button, like the lanun hero, that starts a Whale Song.
Cloud Fortress - Relic Elite lv 4 Bomber - See Flying Fortress above.
War Ballon - Bomber lv3- Can do Tatical Bombing.
Air Galley - Bomber lv4 - Can do Strategic and Tatical Bombing.

2) Fighters:
Pegasi Knight - Good lv 3 Fighter - Has acess to Air Slayer promotion.
Tamed Gryphon - Beast lv 3 Fighter - Fastest Fighter.
Drake Rider - Evil lv 3 Fighter - Has a bonus when skirmishing.

What are your opinions about these suggestions?

Flying is something we want to eventually add, but its a huge hassle. It should be as you describe but the programming that has to go on under the covers to make that happen is considerable. Mostly on the AI side. Allowing enemy units to share a tile, allowing the ai to recognize when it shouldnt bother chasing an enemy unit because it cant attack it anyway.

Basically civ is a 2d game, with some tricks to make it look like air units are operating in a 3rd dimension. To truely add flying we would need to add a 3rd dimension to the map.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

First I would like to suggest a tweak. In FfH the combat system is like the vanilla when it was released, as the unit receives damage its power is decreased. Later this system was changed in vanilla, and the power wasn't affected anymore by the damage, but FfH kept the old system

iirc, it was changed from damage=current str, to damage = ave of current and max or something. I'm pretty sure it didn't go all the way to damage = max str, but was buffed from the released version.