The Next Big Thing(tm): Experience Changes

[Vehem]

We're currently working on a set of fairly substantial changes to the way experience works in Fall Further. The following describes the effects of those changes.

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Decimal Experience
Units will now be able to gain fractions of an XP (upto 2 decimal places).

Passive Training
No longer will the warmongers get all the glory - builder civs may construct buildings that allow their units to gain experience slowly over time. Some buildings will increase the rate experience is gained, others will raise the maximum experience that can be reached.

Using the current formula and the basic "10 XP Cap" building with no speed increase, you'll be looking at around 30 turns to gain 5 experience, and 110 turns to gain 10 experience (levels 3 and 4 respectively). Combat is still by far the best way to level troops in a hurry, but the passive civ which builds a couple of archers at the start of the game will find that they have a few promotions by the time Daracaat comes knocking.

For reference, passive leveling to level 5 would take 306 turns and to level 6 would take 702 turns - and each would require several additional buildings to raise the cap that high. It is not a system designed to produce high level units, just give peaceful civs a few levels to help hold off the hordes.

Barbarian/Animal Limit
Barbarians and Animals will lose the 100XP cap. The main reason this is needed is that the XP gained from combat is rounded up to the next whole XP, which means you'll always gain at least 1XP per combat. With decimal experience, high level units will find that fighting >99% battles against simple barbarians may earn them less than 1XP. After a certain point, it naturally becomes "not worth their time" rather than there being an arbitrary hard-limit. After all - what sort of Hero spends their whole life killing goblins when there are Dragons to slay?

Workers/Casters
Workers and casters will be switched over to a similar system to the passive training, with fixed gains per turn rather than the current random gains. This allows for better planning of strategy, as you know that your adept will be due to upgrade to a mage in X turns time...

Hero Promotion
It will now be possible to have "lesser heroes" - some units that have not qualified for a full hero promotion in the past may be able to gain 0.25 XP per turn rather than the more impressive 1XP that a standard hero might. Likewise, some of the less heroic-hero's may find themselves demoted to a "Champion" level unit. Equally - it's possible that certain super-beings (Hyborem, Basium) may be capable of gaining 1.5 or more XP per turn...

Game Speed Scaling
All of these changes will scale according to game speed, including Hero XP which didn't previously. A quick Hero may find they gain 1.33 XP per turn, whilst a Marathon Hero may only be gaining fractions of an experience point each turn.

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We're looking for feedback on any of the above. Passive Experience gain is something that I suspect there will be some fairly strong opinions about, but efforts have been made to ensure that it does not outshine combat for creating strong units - just provides some security for those who prefer to build peacefully, without the normal need for very large stacks of maintenance hungry level 1 troops.

 

[Valkrionn]

We're currently working on a set of fairly substantial changes to the way experience works in Fall Further. The following describes the effects of those changes.

=====

Decimal Experience
Units will now be able to gain fractions of an XP (upto 2 decimal places).

Passive Training
No longer will the warmongers get all the glory - builder civs may construct buildings that allow their units to gain experience slowly over time. Some buildings will increase the rate experience is gained, others will raise the maximum experience that can be reached.

Using the current formula and the basic "10 XP Cap" building with no speed increase, you'll be looking at around 30 turns to gain 5 experience, and 110 turns to gain 10 experience (levels 3 and 4 respectively). Combat is still by far the best way to level troops in a hurry, but the passive civ which builds a couple of archers at the start of the game will find that they have a few promotions by the time Daracaat comes knocking.

For reference, passive leveling to level 5 would take 306 turns and to level 6 would take 702 turns - and each would require several additional buildings to raise the cap that high. It is not a system designed to produce high level units, just give peaceful civs a few levels to help hold off the hordes.

I love you. As much as I try to be warlike from time to time, I always end up building a massive empire instead.... Having defenders gain a few promotions overtime is awesome.

Barbarian/Animal Limit
Barbarians and Animals will lose the 100XP cap. The main reason this is needed is that the XP gained from combat is rounded up to the next whole XP, which means you'll always gain at least 1XP per combat. With decimal experience, high level units will find that fighting >99% battles against simple barbarians may earn them less than 1XP. After a certain point, it naturally becomes "not worth their time" rather than there being an arbitrary hard-limit. After all - what sort of Hero spends their whole life killing goblins when there are Dragons to slay?

Workers/Casters
Workers and casters will be switched over to a similar system to the passive training, with fixed gains per turn rather than the current random gains. This allows for better planning of strategy, as you know that your adept will be due to upgrade to a mage in X turns time...

Again, amazing. Lets you plan much more definitively, whether a plan of attack with your mage stack of doom or if you'll have time to grab that defense promo for your worker before the barb unit gets to it.

Hero Promotion
It will now be possible to have "lesser heroes" - some units that have not qualified for a full hero promotion in the past may be able to gain 0.25 XP per turn rather than the more impressive 1XP that a standard hero might. Likewise, some of the less heroic-hero's may find themselves demoted to a "Champion" level unit. Equally - it's possible that certain super-beings (Hyborem, Basium) may be capable of gaining 1.5 or more XP per turn...

I'm thinking Lucian would be perfect for that...

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The Passive Experience gain sounds like something I tried in my original modmod (or maybe just after the version I actually released), but eventually cut since I figured the python I was using was a bit awkward and probably slowing the game down with so many random number generations, and because I wasn't sure if it was actually working.


I like decimal experience in snarko's options mod, although not enough to try to copy it in mine. I like that it has been added though.

I always eliminate/greatly raise the barb/animal cap, so I agree with that too.


I'm not sure I like the change in worker/caster xp. Some randomness is good. I think I'd rather leave it as is, but also make certain buildings (The Towers of Divination/Alteration/Elements/Necromancy/Mastery, Cave of the Ancestors, etc.) give xp the new way.


I'm not quite sure what you are saying about the Hero Promotion. Do you mean that promotions can now have a decimal amount of xp instead of always giving 1 like the current hero promotion does?

 

[Vehem]

I'm not quite sure what you are saying about the Hero Promotion. Do you mean that promotions can now have a decimal amount of xp instead of always giving 1 like the current hero promotion does?

That's the plan. Also allows for the Hero promotion to be scaled by gamespeed.

 

[odalrick]

Are there any plans for an option to disable worker experience?

If I want a faster worker, I'll group two or more together. If I want a defending worker, I'll group them with a combat unit.

I don't need regular interruptions of my build orders.

 

[Valkrionn]

Are there any plans for an option to disable worker experience?

If I want a faster worker, I'll group two or more together. If I want a defending worker, I'll group them with a combat unit.

I don't need regular interruptions of my build orders.

Was already announced in another thread...

Also added documentation of the 2 new game options, Civ Selector (not really a gameoption technically), and an option to disable automatic gain of Worker XP (they still have a unitcombat and can gain promotions, but it is nearly impossible for that to happen, would need spirit guide to hit a worker, or to choose to give a worker some equipment and go hunting with it)

 

[Vehem]

Are there any plans for an option to disable worker experience?

If I want a faster worker, I'll group two or more together. If I want a defending worker, I'll group them with a combat unit.

I don't need regular interruptions of my build orders.

Was already announced in another thread...

Thanks - I've added it to the change log now too - forgot to do so earlier.

 

[Valkrionn]

Had to hunt for the quote, actually... Knew I had seen it, couldn't remember where.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Does passive experience apply to all units, or can you set it up the rates and caps idependantly for different unitcombats? It seems to me like archers should benefit from archery ranges while swordsmen don't. Some buildings might apply to multiple unitcombats, possibly at different rates.

 

[Valkrionn]

Does passive experience apply to all units, or can you set it up the rates and caps idependantly for different unitcombats? It seems to me like archers should benefit from archery ranges while swordsmen don't. Some buildings might apply to multiple unitcombats, possibly at different rates.

I hope so... Would allow you to specialize your army, and would require more effort to grant xp to all units.

 

[Vehem]

Does passive experience apply to all units, or can you set it up the rates and caps idependantly for different unitcombats? It seems to me like archers should benefit from archery ranges while swordsmen don't. Some buildings might apply to multiple unitcombats, possibly at different rates.

I hope so... Would allow you to specialize your army, and would require more effort to grant xp to all units.

By UnitCombat, with as many UnitCombats defined per building as you like, and XP Cap/GainRate modifiers defined per UnitCombat.

 

[Vehem]

Does passive experience apply to all units, or can you set it up the rates and caps idependantly for different unitcombats? It seems to me like archers should benefit from archery ranges while swordsmen don't. Some buildings might apply to multiple unitcombats, possibly at different rates.

I hope so... Would allow you to specialize your army, and would require more effort to grant xp to all units.

By UnitCombat, with as many UnitCombats defined per building as you like, and XP Cap/GainRate modifiers defined per UnitCombat.

Archery Ranges, Training Yards and Hunting Lodges are considered the "basic training structures" with an XP cap of 10 for their respective UnitCombat. This means that troops will be able to gain some experience in the cities that can produce them (Warriors/Scouts will be out-dated when their training structure arrives) - but you won't benefit by just sending the troops off from the capital to defend some front line outpost unless the frontline city is also developed enough to have a training yard etc.

Frontline cities tend to see enough combat with barbarians to negate the need for passive XP in the early game anyway.

 

[Valkrionn]

Awesome... Any plans to include a building that increases xp gain rate for workers? Say.... something like Core of the Subtle?

 

[Vehem]

Awesome... Any plans to include a building that increases xp gain rate for workers? Say.... something like Core of the Subtle?

There wasn't, but I do have a soft spot for the "removed content"

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

nice ideas! any plan to include snarko's better AI diplomacy? (i.e. AIs making demands etc. from all civs instead than just the human player )

 

[MagisterCultuum]

By UnitCombat, with as many UnitCombats defined per building as you like, and XP Cap/GainRate modifiers defined per UnitCombat.

Archery Ranges, Training Yards and Hunting Lodges are considered the "basic training structures" with an XP cap of 10 for their respective UnitCombat. This means that troops will be able to gain some experience in the cities that can produce them (Warriors/Scouts will be out-dated when their training structure arrives) - but you won't benefit by just sending the troops off from the capital to defend some front line outpost unless the frontline city is also developed enough to have a training yard etc.

Frontline cities tend to see enough combat with barbarians to negate the need for passive XP in the early game anyway.

Nice, just what I wanted.


Hmm...would it be too much to allow specific units of different unitcombats to get the bonuses too? Logically it seems like Horsearchers should be able to train in archery ranges too.




I was thinking it would make sense for the Guild of Hammers (Or Endeavors as I prefer to call it) to increase worker xp gain, but I wouldn't mind the Core of the Subtle have the effect too.






I never really noticed a difference with Snarko's AI diplomacy changes, but I would really like you to allow larger permanent alliances like he did.

 

[Tarquelne]

Looks good - I was a little uneasy about some of the changes but was reassured by the qualifiers. Sounds like it'll make xp gain considerably more interesting and flexible without leading to exultant new "pawnage in 100 turns" threads in the strategy forum.

Passive xp gain, by effectively raising the unit level floor, should soften the effect of FFH2's double-potency promotions - I like that.

I also look forward to the xp building buildings. Might be some very interesting decisions/trade offs there, assuming the buildings are pricey enough that an active warmonger will often chose to build more units instead.

 

[Breez]

Perosnally I love all the ideas. The diminishing returns, but SOME returns off Barbs is something I have wished for, for a while now.

Passive exp over time and partial points all look great.

 

[Mailbox]

For the most part, I love the changes. However, I'm not so hot for the fixed gains for casters and workers. I liked the random aspect as it allowed the system to give different units different aspects and qualities. That mage that upgrades every turn represents a mage with true talent and the blood of great casters running through his veins and the adept who is stuck at 5 xp for 50 turns is just not talented in the least. The same applies to the workers. Having a predictable caster upgrade time seems very artificial and plays heavily to a rigid and stiff playstyle.

Other than that, I like the rewards for builders and the decimal XP. The cap being removed would concern me but since a unit would only get .2-.5 xp a battle it isn't so bad.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

sounds like an excelent mechanic! cant wait to try it out