Promotions: easy-to-read or hidden

[Jules.lt]

Hi, just a little feature suggestion on my part.

Right now you need good eyes and good knowledge of promotion icons to understand what you're up against, because of the many available promotions. It could be nice to find a way to make the details of other players' unit promotions more easily readable.
It would be even better, IMHO, to just hide them.
Save a select few that should be obvious to units on the field like racial promotions, fear, etc, there's no sense in the ennemy knowing which unit can do what. How do they know what spells your mages know??

So what do you think?

 

[SwordofStriker]

Hi, just a little feature suggestion on my part.

Right now you need good eyes and good knowledge of promotion icons to understand what you're up against, because of the many available promotions. It could be nice to find a way to make the details of other players' unit promotions more easily readable.
It would be even better, IMHO, to just hide them.
Save a select few that should be obvious to units on the field like racial promotions, fear, etc, there's no sense in the ennemy knowing which unit can do what. How do they know what spells your mages know??

So what do you think?

I agree that you should not be able to see a foreign unit's promotions beyond the very obvious ones. How would I know a unit is specially trained against archers for example? It's nonsensical. However, you have to understand that because the way the game works that may or may not even be possible to do. Only the modders here could tell you that. Also, this is still a work in progress after all, so keep that in mind.

I would add it to my wish list though, along with a special graphic for hidden nationality units so I could not immediately identify what civ they belonged to.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Agreed with both things Swordofstriker pointed out. although, those are probably both quite a headache to add. :\

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

I would be quite a feature if the Sindars had their promotions hidden for the enemy eyes. Maybe even hide the win ratio against their units. Fighting a war against them would be very risky. [of course only hide it from human eyes, not from AI]

 

[Chip56]

And then get 1000s of bug reports:
The combat is flawed: I just loost 15 units with strength 5 against a unpromoted strength 4 unit!

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

Yes :]

Eventually make the promotions visible after combat [and they vanish next turn again! *puf*]

 

[xienwolf]

I agree that you should not be able to see a foreign unit's promotions beyond the very obvious ones. How would I know a unit is specially trained against archers for example? It's nonsensical. However, you have to understand that because the way the game works that may or may not even be possible to do. Only the modders here could tell you that. Also, this is still a work in progress after all, so keep that in mind.

I would add it to my wish list though, along with a special graphic for hidden nationality units so I could not immediately identify what civ they belonged to.

It is actually pretty easy to hide the promotion icons from other players. Anyone wnting to do it just needs the DLL code I wrote for <bEffectProm> andit is done (Python portion of the code blocks the promotion from the owner, DLL side from eveyone else).

You can also modify the display of information on mouseover to still show relevant combat odds changes, depending on how fancy you get this part could be tricky)

 

[kdodge]

And then get 1000s of bug reports:
The combat is flawed: I just loost 15 units with strength 5 against a unpromoted strength 4 unit!

Easy enough conceptually.. just replace the promotions and/or combat odds with "hidden"

 

[El_Duderino]

i think it would be awsome to have promos hidden but i also think that it would be smart to have it as an option in custom games to avoid all the bugs thread posts as pointed out by Chip56

 

[Monkeyfinger]

The AI takes the promos of your unit into account when deciding its attacks. Something tells me that this behavior couldn't be gotten rid of - which kills this invisible promos idea as far as I'm concerned, since it adds another arbitrary AI cheat. They can see your promos, but you can't see theirs.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

well I'm pretty sure there's a way of telling the AI to not take into account promotions it's not supposed to see..

 

[Chip56]

And make it even stupider? Nah, I don't think promotions should be hidden. Neiter for the AI nor for the player.

 

[Darksaber1]

I don't think promotions should be hidden. After all, identifying enemy units (brigades, battalions, squads) in the area is one of the first aspects of scouting and intelligence.

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

After all, identifying enemy units (brigades, battalions, squads) in the area is one of the first aspects of scouting and intelligence.

Exactly, now there is no scouting at all :>

Hmm, I was writing only about hiding it from the display, not from the AI calculations. There is a strong lobby on this forum that think the AI needs any help it can get.

Another idea is to make a promotion [available to recon line and birds {scouts could start with it}] that would show all promotions. The AI would have to be tough to bring a scout along with his army and to calculate his odds on probability that there could be some powerful promotions our there that it does not see. [make the AI less eager to attack for start without a big advantage] This would be a coding challenge thou.

Again, to make Sindar special give them a promotion that would override the scouting promotion making them always hidden for the enemy.

 

[Darksaber1]

Another idea is to make a promotion [available to recon line and birds {scouts could start with it}] that would show all promotions. The AI would have to be tough to bring a scout along with his army and to calculate his odds on probability that there could be some powerful promotions our there that it does not see. [make the AI less eager to attack for start without a big advantage] This would be a coding challenge thou.

Again, to make Sindar special give them a promotion that would override the scouting promotion making them always hidden for the enemy.

That Idea sounds good. (Promotions are hidden)

 

[Willgar]

interesting idea but would add another layer of complexity for both player and AI and not sure if it would make the game any more enjoyable to play