The Doviello Unique Mechanic

[Imuratep]

Ok with this flavor the great general idea really makes sense. The question is: How many defeated unit do you want to enable the War Machine? Because the problem is: If it comes to early noone can beat it. 19 strength 3 movement is nothing you should get as early. Even if it's 100-150 units I wouldn't have a problem to get it very very fast before anyone has the chance to defend against it. We all know how many useless units the AI builds...

 

[Jules.lt]

Doesn't the Great General counter go up with xp rather than # of units?
In that case the hordes of useless units would be less helpgul, but even better: make the counter go up by (xp - 1) every combat, so easy fights give nothing. That would encourage riskier fighting for the Doviello, which might be flavorful.

Or the counter could go up faster with the number of mechanical units you fight, so you have to wait for your opponents to be more advanced: 1 point for normal units (because there's still some scrap to be found on them, and you don't want to penalize too much the Doviello who doesn't find a suitable opponent), 2 for golems, 3 for chariots, maybe zero for animals...
That would still leave you open to overpoweredness from AI unit spamming, so I prefer the first solution.

 

[Imuratep]

That would be indeed better. I don't know how many scouts I have killed during my wars. Even if that single xp is calculated into the counter that's too much.

 

[Tasunke]

Heres an alternative idea for building the War Machine. Move it to Engineering and give it a very low hammer cost but a few extra requirements before you can build it.

Take the XP gained from combat used to generate Great Generals in BTS and split it into 3 categories with their own meters: wheelz, *POW* and Spiky Bits. wheelz xp comes from defeating chariots, catapults, golems, anything a little bit mechanical. *POW* is just a generic term for anything explosive or magical - so gunpowder units, Arcane units Disciple units, Heroes and similar. Spiky Bits would probably be larger than the other two meters and would come from everything else.

Filling the meters enables the War Machine to be built.

This ... I like it

Now if only we could split the GG into 3 different meters ...

 

[Tasunke]

for promos from animal I suggest Strong from bear, courage from lion, cannibalize from tiger, stoneskin from elephant, mobility 1 from wolf, sentry from griffon, poison blade from spider, and withdraw I from gorilla (since gorillas are isolationist and rare, I suppose)

 

[Worm4life]

They always struck me as a rush civ that was nowhere near as good at it as the Clan of Embers.

 

[heisenberg]

One unit. Beastmen. 25% city attack.

 

[Breez]

I have to admit, I've always found the Bounty Hunter promotion quite lackluster. Basically, you're making a trade of a 20% combat bonus for 2 gold each time you kill something. To put this in perspective, a unit engages the enemy every three or four turns you're at war-- call it maybe 1/2 a gold per turn, on average, gained from Bounty Hunter while at war (likely less than that, due to time spent healing between combats).

I found my expercinces to not mirror yours. I have times where fortified in a city on a hill my unit kills 10-15 attackers per turn. If you have 3-4 of these guys they can kill 100 units a turn between them for 2-3 turns straight (granted THAT doesn't happen that often) but killing 3-4 units per turn isn't all that uncommon for me. ESPECIALLY on units with Blitz so I can even do it on attack.

Does EVERY unit do that? no but a few special units can easy. I have gained gold over 100 turn war with 4-5 units that have just the bounty hunter promo while my civ was running a -20/turn deficit

 

[Tasunke]

yes, on harder difficulty levels, bounty hunter can be a make or break for your economy, or maybe inflation targets me personally, like blight does XD

 

[Valkrionn]

Simply the ability to scavenge metal promotions from fallen enemies would be a nice improvement. Perhaps the enemy has iron weapons before you have smelting? But your bronze armed sons of Asena are nicely promoted, their iron champions are fresh. All your weapons are belong to us.

It should not be only 4 national units (whom you will likely never see in action anyway) who get weapon upgrades on the field. (I might refer to the berserker uu flavor.)

I actually did that in my mod... ALL Doviello units can steal metal weapons, and Enchanted Blade.

I also did something like Scavenger (Same name even... ), but rather than extra gold from combat, I removed unit maintenance, and added a slight healing bonus. Lets you have a massive horde, living off the land, so long as you stay in combat.... Only lasts 5 turns.

I also had duels between two units (loser dies, winner gets half his xp, outcome uses actual combat odds), changed leader traits, added a few units (Bear Rider as a Horse Archer UU with no ranged, higher attack), Experience Sharing (Have a bunch of high xp units, no weak ones? New replacements will start with a good amount of xp), and of course, Animals. They're at peace with animals, and can spawn animals after building special wonders... Each wonder gives units built in the city bonuses as well, so you can ignore animals completely if you want.

It's in FFPlus (Patch is coming in a few days, tops...), and the full changelog is here.

 

[travathian]

I also did something like Scavenger (Same name even... ), but rather than extra gold from combat, I removed unit maintenance, and added a slight healing bonus. Lets you have a massive horde, living off the land, so long as you stay in combat.... Only lasts 5 turns.

I like this idea, and the 5 turns seems plenty fitting. Do they get the promotion after any combat or only if they attack?

 

[Valkrionn]

Any successful combat with a living unit... Catapults, Ships, Undead, Demons, Angels don't count.