Suggestion to Captive Workers.

[raxo2222]

We have two Captive units, that can create builds.

Spoiler :

Can they be changed, so they act as "Hurry Build" version of "Hurry Building"?
1. All their build actions would kill them (one use units).
2. They would have all Land build actions - that is ones for Earth, they wouldn't be able to build routes though.
3. They would have work rate of 10 000, meaning they always could build improvement in one turn.
4. They could be upgraded to Worker.

 

[Thunderbrd]

This is a spillover of discussions on Discord about captives and we are curious as to what most people use them for and if their ability to build improvements is something players value.

Generally, they can be used now to:
1) Invoke slavery, create slave buildings and use them as settled slave specialists
2) Rush production (they can be hoarded effectively for 1 round wonder builds, for example) or under the sacrificial worldview being sacrificed for some kind of benefit there - I never used it because it was either broken or not good enough to do it.
3) Joining a city (adding an amount of food to represent their population) or under cannibalism actually being consumed for even more food but at a cost of disease and other such things
3) Upgrade to an XP-less military unit (we HAVE discussed having them remember what they used to be and remembering their XP if they are upgraded to the old unit type)
4) Upgrade to a worker
5) Work land as a captive with all of their build actions being sacrificial - they die afterward - though they usually are a bit faster at getting the job done.

We're considering the removal of #5 or adjusting it so that they can either:
* Build routes without sacrifice
* Have their work rate turned up significantly and still sacrifice for all builds they can do but be able to do them all in one round so its a bit like rush working in a city, only on the plot


We're also considering the AI for them and at the moment, my argument is that slavery is basically the most powerful use for them by far so if it has to default to one, it's those uses. However, we should in the long term be considering that different AI leader personalities should favor different choices as well imo. At the moment, it's been discovered that their AI is pretty horrible and is defaulting to some very weak uses, helping to explain why AI players fall behind so quickly when you can start gathering a lot of these. So some discussion about the strategies y'all are using them for in your own games would be interesting.

But the item of most focus at the moment is - does anyone use them for improving plots right now and under what circumstances?

 

[Toffer90]

I'd rather remove captives ability to build improvements.
Upgrade them to a worker unit if you want something to build improvements with.

 

[cobbaut]

About captives...
1) Never
2) Often
3) Only in the first half of prehistory
4) Rarely, but it has happened
5) Never

About 1) I used slavery a lot in vanilla BTS, not so much in C2C many years ago and probably should explore it again.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'd rather remove captives ability to build improvements.
Upgrade them to a worker unit if you want something to build improvements with.

There's a LOT of XML setup for them to be able to do these missions that could be thinned - MAYBE it would have an impact on how smooth the game flows? That might be a factor to consider.

 

[Toffer90]

There's a LOT of XML setup for them to be able to do these missions that could be thinned - MAYBE it would have an impact on how smooth the game flows? That might be a factor to consider.

Yeah, and them being able to build improvements doesn't really add much to gameplay.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I don't quite agree with this sentiment @Toffer90 . There are times when a captive can be very useful at force building. I never use Slavery in this mod or BtS. But I have used captives during a war to build a needed tile improvement to get that benefit immediately because I may not have workers floating around the battlefield area.

Or, for example, I may be using Bandit footpads or Bandit riders and the captive can build a quick piece of road that will get my bandit out of harms way.

There's a LOT of XML setup for them to be able to do these missions that could be thinned - MAYBE it would have an impact on how smooth the game flows? That might be a factor to consider.

How often do you think this is called in a game? Not that often is more the norm. And Game flow is not impacted for game that do Not use Slavery.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I don't quite agree with this sentiment @Toffer90 . There are times when a captive can be very useful at force building. I never use Slavery in this mod or BtS. But I have used captives during a war to build a needed tile improvement to get that benefit immediately because I may not have workers floating around the battlefield area.

Or, for example, I may be using Bandit footpads or Bandit riders and the captive can build a quick piece of road that will get my bandit out of harms way.

How often do you think this is called in a game? Not that often is more the norm. And Game flow is not impacted for game that do Not use Slavery.

It might be a noticeable slowdown for the AI depending - but see this is why I ask, so that players can voice whether they use this feature or not and comment on the other questions posed.

 

[Toffer90]

I don't quite agree with this sentiment @Toffer90 . There are times when a captive can be very useful at force building. I never use Slavery in this mod or BtS. But I have used captives during a war to build a needed tile improvement to get that benefit immediately because I may not have workers floating around the battlefield area.

Or, for example, I may be using Bandit footpads or Bandit riders and the captive can build a quick piece of road that will get my bandit out of harms way.

Captives should be able to upgrade to worker outside your territory.
Having a bunch of captives shouldn't make escape easier, feels somewhat like a cheat feature as the AI don't use em that way, and teaching them to use it is close to impossible without making the AI worse from it.
Captives should perhaps be able to upgrade for free to a siege unit as well, making them helpful to get in enemy territory when sieging a city.

 

[sunrisereader]

Slavery is the main way i use captured units followed by building buildings if removing the option to build improvements speeds up the game by 1% i would prefer that to keep the ability for them to build improvements i don't use it a lot and you can always promote them to workers if you really need an improvement build.

 

[arihant]

1 as setled slaves and specialists
2 to hurry production wonders
3 never use them to build improvements, at the time when I get them all improvements are built or I have enough workers to do so.

 

[Thunderbrd]

So it looks like due to some discovered conflicts in the AI that is causing these builds to interrupt the potential use of the usual builds for units like workers - it's hard to explain but a very legitimate and real bug - for now we don't have much choice but to get rid of these options. We may be able to bring them back later but for now, they are causing a very problematic AI conflict.

 

[garfunkel]

I use them first as slaves and then once Emancipation hits, I use Military Captives to rush buildings in newly built cities and Civilian Captives to bolster the population of same.

I have never used them for Cannibalism, Sacrifice or for tile improvements - I have enough workers.

 

[Snofru1]

The same as garfunkel...

 

[JosEPh_II]

Captives should be able to upgrade to worker outside your territory.

They do and not arguing that point. But there are time that a force build is useful and using up the Captive is Also useful, because of Maint. Costs. which you implemented into the units as a whole.

Having a bunch of captives shouldn't make escape easier, feels somewhat like a cheat feature as the AI don't use em that way, and teaching them to use it is close to impossible without making the AI worse from it.

Have no idea if the AI uses captive to build a piece of "road" But I bet they can and i bet they do.

Captives should perhaps be able to upgrade for free to a siege unit as well, making them helpful to get in enemy territory when sieging a city.

This would be useful.

I also see from the Git ems that there is a big discussion about gatherers and regular workers.
Here is my 2 , gatherers should Not die after a build, period. never ever liked this idea and usage.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Here is my 2 , gatherers should Not die after a build, period. never ever liked this idea and usage.

The alternative is to make them very slow in comparison to workers so that there's still some cause to see them upgrade into workers - either that or make it so that most of the improvements beyond prehistoric are impossible for gatherers to build and the difference is primarily what they CAN do. I suppose I've never questioned their original implementation as a possibly negative thing given that it made them so perfectly uncomfortable to use in this era.

 

[JosEPh_II]

The alternative is to make them very slow in comparison to workers so that there's still some cause to see them upgrade into workers - either that or make it so that most of the improvements beyond prehistoric are impossible for gatherers to build and the difference is primarily what they CAN do. I suppose I've never questioned their original implementation as a possibly negative thing given that it made them so perfectly uncomfortable to use in this era.

They are already slow enough. And once you hit Ancient any Gatherers you have left you Upgrade to worker. So there is not a real over lap. Because who would still use a die when done gatherer in Ancient when you can upgrade to a continuing worker? That would be plain stupid or ignorant not to upgrade.

And Gatherers if used in Ancient are slower and die And cannot do everything a stock worker can do.

As it is now you have to upgrade your workers every time a New form of worker comes available to do more advanced builds like going from mud paths to roads, etc.

Gatherers are and have been basically Preh Era only units. I just think they should Not die after anybuild in the Preh Era. Once this Kill function is removed from the gatherer then some of the arguments I've seen in the Git EMs would be solved.

 

[Thunderbrd]

They are already slow enough. And once you hit Ancient any Gatherers you have left you Upgrade to worker. So there is not a real over lap. Because who would still use a die when done gatherer in Ancient when you can upgrade to a continuing worker? That would be plain stupid or ignorant not to upgrade.

I'm saying if you take away their death on building, they're just a worker, actually a faster worker than a worker is. I'm talking about what we'd need to do to make them not as good as Workers are if you take away the death factor.

It's an interesting idea to take away their kill factor - should we consider that with fishing boats as well?

 

[irishhombre]

The same as garfunkel...

I also use the same strategy.

 

[CainStar]

Used to go to war just to "generate" slaves, but then at some point slavery prevented building factory buildings so I stopped using them for anything else except to speed up building wonders. I would really like to see an option where you could have active slavery, AND to be able to build factories etc. After playing the game "your way", as in being German Jewish Communistic Empire, which is super religious and practices active cannabilism, is "FUN".