[Suggestion] Morale boosts for conquering armies

[Blasphemous]

My suggestions as posted yesterday in the big ol' thread:

Conquering enemy cities should give a morale boost to the conquerors! How about the following, rather simple model:
When civ X conquers a city size 1 to 10, any unit belonging to civ X within one plot of the city receives 5 HP (with a cap of 100 of course).
When civ X conquers a city size 11 or more, units within one tile of it receive 10 HP, and units only within two tiles of it receive 5 HP.
When civ X conquers a city size 20 or more, every unit within one tile of the city has a 50% chance to receive 1 XP.
This should be enough to give a significant boost to an army immediately when it's sucessful.

 

[Gunner]

This is an interesting idea. Sounds like the good old Civ2 days when the unit who took a city would be healed

I would be wary of giving health bonuses to conquerers though, because I think it would give them too much of an advantage, and it could possibly mess up the flow of a war.

What I do like, however, is the idea to give all the surrounding units a 1 XP bonus. That just seems like a cool idea to me. Maybe that bonus should be reserved for cities size 6 and over? Keep in mind that we'd like this mechanic to work in the ancient and middle ages too, not just the modern age where the cities get very large.

 

[Blasphemous]

How about drop the health stuff and simplify: each unit in or adjacent to a city its civ just conquered, has a 3S% chance of receiving 1XP, where S is the size of the city in pop. Size 1 cities give each unit a 3% chance, size 25 cities give each unit a 75% chance. Sounds very fair to me.

 

[Gunner]

I like that second idea a lot Blas. Now we just need to see what Rhye thinks of it

 

[DSChapin]

Civ IV already encourages SoD tactics too much, IMHO. I don't see why there needs to be an added reward for keeping all of your units together, when there are already so many.

 

[Blasphemous]

Civ IV already encourages SoD tactics too much, IMHO. I don't see why there needs to be an added reward for keeping all of your units together, when there are already so many.

It's not a matter of keeping them together, it's a matter of giving an army a little boost as it whooshes through the enemy's land conquering cities as it goes.
But perhaps there should also be a chance for other units, not within a tile of the city but still near the conquered civ's cities, to also receive some boost. Perhaps just 2S% for any unit within one tile of that civ's cities but not the one conquered? (Where S is still the pop size of the conquered city.)

 

[DSChapin]

It's not a matter of keeping them together, it's a matter of giving an army a little boost as it whooshes through the enemy's land conquering cities as it goes.

Yeah, but the practical effect will be to reward you for concentrating your troops. Which Civ already does - if anything, I'd like to devise some kind of bonus that encourages waging a campaign with multiple separate armies, which for many periods would be more historical.

 

[Blasphemous]

Okay, that makes sense. Let's do this: the chance of bonus is doubled for each consecutive city that turn, and the chance grown by 1S% for each city conquered the previous turn. You won't get much out of these things if you conquer your cities one at a time, but if you get a few in one turn you're gonna really see it in your troops' progression.

 

[DSChapin]

Maybe just take your original idea and apply it to all of your units in that enemy's territory (whether next to the target city or not)? While the "bonus for multiple conquests in one turn" thing is neat, it's the sort of skill the AI is never going to learn, and might get too gamey.

 

[Blasphemous]

Well, if it's for everyone in their territory, the chance for each unit has to be smaller. But I guess I agree. Just 2%*S for each unit sounds right.

 

[dh_epic]

War is already profitable enough. If you were to add a morale boost for a successful attack, you'd have to counterbalance that somehow (e.g.: a morale penalty to an attacker for extended wars with no end in sight, or a morale boost to a defender after a galvanizing attack).

 

[DSChapin]

or a morale boost to a defender after a galvanizing attack).

You could apply the same bonus to your own territory whenever you retake one of your own cities...

 

[Blasphemous]

War is already profitable enough. If you were to add a morale boost for a successful attack, you'd have to counterbalance that somehow (e.g.: a morale penalty to an attacker for extended wars with no end in sight, or a morale boost to a defender after a galvanizing attack).

Well said, but I still think army morale should somehow be added in as a factor.

You could apply the same bonus to your own territory whenever you retake one of your own cities...

Definately have to add that. I can't believe it didn't occur to me.
Other possible balancing factors:

• Quicker war unhappiness for the side that declared war
• Slightly higher thresholds for XP levelups
• 1% chance for each unit to receive 1 XP every time an attacker falls trying to take a city (much lower chance than for attackers because this will happen far far more often) - can be made to only apply when the city is at least 80% of your nationality so defending new conquests doesn't count
• Tile Z is a tile in enemy territory. When a unit in tile Z dies, have a small chance for each other unit in tile Z to defect to the enemy and appear in the nearest enemy city. Make that chance say 5%, and reduce it by the level of the unit in percent, so a unit level 5 and up never defects, and a unit level 1 has only 4% chance to defect

 

[Elhoim]

Perhaps it would be nice that capturing a city reduces war weariness by a little amount, and losing one increases it. I think people accept wars more when they are winning, and when they are losing they want it to end quickly.

 

[Blasphemous]

Perhaps it would be nice that capturing a city reduces war weariness by a little amount, and losing one increases it. I think people accept wars more when they are winning, and when they are losing they want it to end quickly.

I thought it was already the way. Or hoped so, at least. I think even in Civ 3, war weariness depended greatly on how well you're doing.

 

[dh_epic]

The exact thing that we want to avoid is a snowball effect. If the more you win, the easier it is to win, you eventually hit a point where there's NO challenge to the game, and you're just going through the motions.

As it stands now, defensive wars suffer very little in the way of war weariness. Attackers are more vulnerable to WW. If a morale system were added, it would need to work in many of the same ways. Way more morale on the defence, with small boosts to morale for the attacker, and just as many penalties to morale.

 

[Blasphemous]

I have an idea for moral penalties on invaders. It would be pretty invisible and require no interaction. Simply give any unit defending a city some collateral damage when defending, based on city defense bonus. That way attacking a city hurts everyone in the stack attacking, as it's very fatiguing to lay siege to a city. This would balance with a system for morale boosts, because when you successfully conquer the city, surviving units will level up some of the time which helps them heal faster. It may even make sense to give HP bonuses directly after all, as HP reflects morale far better than XP does.

 

[Poppa Candy]

Blasphemous's suggestion is a good one. Why it has not been implemented? The AI is generally too incompetent at conquering cities. A morale boost would make AI's invading armies somewhat more effective.