tleilaxu mechanics

[davidlallen]

In this post and the surrounding thread we had brief discussions about new mechanics for different civs. This thread will focus on tleilaxu mechanics.

The key concepts are clones and bioweapons. For clones, one option is cloning armies of warriors or farmers; this has been done a lot. In the books it seems that making one clone is an expensive and uncertain proposition, so making an army does not seem to fit the theme. For bioweapons, there are many possibilities, but one good one is tailored plagues.

Cloning

My concept is a unit you can build which is a clone, of *any existing GP* you have encountered. Similar idea, I suppose, to the shades in FFH. A Tleilaxu city would have a lot of clone GP's. Each GP you get, including type and name, goes into a global list which is maintained for your civ. If your spies are in a city with another player's GP, their type and name goes onto the list. This represents stealing a small sample of genetic material. Ideally this should be a superspy mission, but that sdk change is relatively hard.

There would be a UB for the cloning tank, requiring a mid-game tech. Any city with the UB can build a Clone unit in their regular production queue. The AI can be forced to spend some percentage of its production on clones using python. When the unit enters the construction queue, you get a popup which lists the available GP's for which you have genetic material, and you can choose one. When the unit is done in the production queue, you have that GP available.

I am not sure I can implement a popup when the unit enters the queue. An alternate approach is to give the Clone unit an action button; when the unit is created and you push the action button, then the popup appears and the unit gets replaced with your selection. This does not exactly match the concept of growing a specific clone, but it may be close enough.

One other interesting possibility is cloning of other units besides GP. Some units, such as a tank squadron, are not really clone-able. Other units may represent a single highly skilled person; for example there is a Ginaz Swordmaster unit, and maybe some others. These units could go onto the genetic material list as well. However, it may require very careful design and implementation to get this right. Suppose a unit has certain promotions when it is "scanned" and later gets additional promotions. Which ones, if any of these promotions should appear on the cloned copy? This would need some more thought.

Plagues

Gods of Old has one kind of plague, which spreads from city to city and causes disruption of trade routes and other effects. My thought was more personal: a targeted plague which only affects units of certain civilizations. There may be many possible ways to design this; but suppose you have a UB which is a bioweapons lab. A city with this UB can produce a unit called a Plague Vector. This unit has a certain lifespan, say 10 turns, and you can associate a list of civilizations with it. This is a little undefined. For now, think of it as, "all the civs I am currently at war with". But I can see you may want to affect civilizations you aren't at war with ... yet. The limited lifespan represents the ability of other civs to come up with an antidote.

When the PV unit exists, any Tleilaxu spy will "infect" any unit of the targeted civs that it is stacked with. Probably this will happen in an enemy city. This is represented as a promotion with a lifespan and a significant negative effect, such as "-50% strength" or "-1 movement" or "cannot fortify". Any unit in contact with an infected unit also becomes infected. When the timespan of the PV unit runs out, all the promotions are removed, or have a 50% chance per turn to be removed.

Comments? Other biologically inspired havoc?

 

[Ahriman]

Buildable GPs could get problematic; I can see you building them and settling them all in one mega-city with terrible balance consequences.

One idea; how about the Balseraph mimic from FFH? The Mimic gains a promotion at random from any unit it kills in combat. Maybe the Facedancer could have this property? Seems in theme, though there are fewer interesting promotions to steal in this mod.

 

[davidlallen]

Buildable GPs could get problematic; I can see you building them and settling them all in one mega-city with terrible balance consequences.

I have not played the Sidar in FFH, but whatever is done to maintain play balance with their Shades may be appropriate here.

 

[Ahriman]

Shades aren't really buildable with Hammers.

Sidar have two mechanics related to GPs;
1) Their place gives a straight +1 bonus to specialists and settled great people, so they are more inclined to run a specialist economy and generate great people.
2) When a unit reaches level 6, it can cast the fade spell and become a shade, which can then settle in a city as a great person specialist. Note also that with 20% strength bonus from combat and 40% strength bonus from shock/cover etc., a level 6 unit is a very powerful one worth preserving as a combat unit, so you lose a lot by sacrificing it.

There are also a lot of early barbarians in FFH that you can use to level up warriors and such and then fade them into specialists.

I don't think that either 1) or 2) make much sense for the BeneTs.

 

[davidlallen]

My point was that Sidar do not appear to unbalance the game by creating too many GP; so if we make the clone unit mid-game and expensive, it should not immediately unbalance the game.

 

[Ahriman]

My point is that there is a big difference between extra GP that are limited by a hard-to-satisfy mechanic and those that are spammable with enough hammers.

Plus, the number of +% bonuses you can get in any one city in FFH is fairly low, whereas I think the total +% bonuses you can get here are rather higher.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but that it is hard to balance; if the cost is low enough that its worth building one, then its probably worth spamming them and building 10.

If you did adopt it, I'd do it like shades, where you build a unit that can settle as a GP, but can't do any of the other benfits (bulbing techs, golden ages, academy/wonder boost/culture bomb/shrine foundation/etc.).

 

[Deliverator]

One other interesting possibility is cloning of other units besides GP. Some units, such as a tank squadron, are not really clone-able. Other units may represent a single highly skilled person; for example there is a Ginaz Swordmaster unit, and maybe some others. These units could go onto the genetic material list as well. However, it may require very careful design and implementation to get this right. Suppose a unit has certain promotions when it is "scanned" and later gets additional promotions. Which ones, if any of these promotions should appear on the cloned copy? This would need some more thought.

I like this more than the GP cloning. Sounds more fun to me. Especially, if we get a decent implementation of Heroes and Leader units. Ghola is probably a more appropriate Duniverse term for this - but using clone to discuss the mechanics is probably easier. The clones should probably get a fixed number of turns to live and after that a chance of discovery that ramps up to certainty. Discovery means the cloned unit is destroyed.

there are fewer interesting promotions to steal in this mod

This is a good point and something we should perhaps look to address. The question is what makes the FFH2 promotions interesting and can we think of good Dune equivalents. I've tried to start thinking of some Dune unit promotions here, but these are only very early rough ideas.

 

[The_J]

I've turned this slaver promotion into a DNa extracting promotion.
It doesn't maybe fit for Dune .


Bioweapons: There was a modder, who changed the nuke into a bioweapon, which creates gases and poisoned sea. Maybe an idea.

 

[davidlallen]

I've turned this slaver promotion into a DNa extracting promotion.
It doesn't maybe fit for Dune .

Thanks for the pointer. I used that concept (not so much the actual code) as the slaver combat result for Harkonnen. For taking genetic material, I think it is more of a spy action than a combat victory action. Still, something to keep in mind.

 

[davidlallen]

OK, as of 1.4.2 five of the nine civs have unique abilities. Time to come back to this thread.

My original proposal for plagues was too complicated. I propose a UU spy, Face Dancer. When it is in a city, owned by a player who is at war with Tleilaxu, it automatically starts a tailored plague. This has a 50% chance to infect any unit owned by that player. Infected units get a "Tleilaxu Plague" promotion, which is -25% strength. Infected units can transmit the plague to other units in the same plot, owned by players at war with Tleilaxu. Perhaps the plague could also cause unhealthiness in cities and even losing a population point. Once you are no longer at war with Tleilaxu then your units/cities recover very quickly.

Regarding cloning, I liked the idea of cloning GP's but clearly others did not. What can we do with cloning, making the assumption that it is expensive so only individuals can be cloned (no armies)? In Children of Dune, they make a big point that most gholas do not have the memory of their "parent", only the appearance. That is why it is a big deal that the Duncan ghola does recall his memories. So stealing promotions and giving memory-based abilities is probably not appropriate. Anybody?

 

[keldath]

Bioweapons: There was a modder, who changed the nuke into a bioweapon, which creates gases and poisoned sea. Maybe an idea.

its in thomas war, maybe you refer to the planet buster...its too lethal...i think....



i think the tleilax needs to have some cloning abilites, they are experts in it, so i think i will serve right,

how about my idea? a certain % of units (infatry) that gets killed in battle - are cloned in the nearest city as i said, like they cloned the dead idaho.

 

[davidlallen]

how about my idea? a certain % of units (infatry) that gets killed in battle - are cloned in the nearest city as i said, like they cloned the dead idaho.

They cloned *one person* and it was very costly. If we can find something interesting that does not imply cheap cloning of a whole army, I would prefer that.

 

[keldath]

mm, we dont have to make it cheap....

it can be an event triggered by the death of a unit - and it askes you if you wanna do cloning - for a certain price.

i know the pleuge event - its really cool, and can be nice for the tleilax.

 

[davidlallen]

Here's one possible UB for Tleilaxu, a Great Person amplifier. The game effect is just + some big percentage on GP points. But it has one special effect, which goes to the name of the GP when the city generates it. Instead of picking a new random name, it looks at all the GP of that type for all the civs in the game, picks one of those names, and puts a number after it, like "Leonardo DaVinci II". Some small amount of tracking these names is needed. It's small, but it gives that feeling of cloning.

Here's another possible UB. My problem with cloning tanks is it makes no sense to build say an artillery or carryall unit in a cloning tank. Suppose the tank just adds promotions to a unit built normally in that city. The special effect is that it may copy a set of promotions from any of your current units of that type. So if you have a level 6 promoted artillery out there somewhere, and you build a new artillery in the city with this building, it comes out of the assembly line with all the same promotions as the level 6 unit. This represents cloning the expertise of the human commander of the unit, while still paying the normal hammer cost for the equipment.

This is obviously more powerful. If the idea is interesting we could put more into it. For example, as you make more copies of the unit, more and more promotions may be missing from it, representing a decrease in quality. It might remember all of your units, not just your live ones, so you could get a clone of a *dead* level 6 artillery unit. It could capture information about promotions from units you have defeated, so if you kill somebody else's level 6 artillery, then you could build clones of that. (Need to be careful about UU and civ-specific promotions.) In case there are several different promotion sets for one unit type, it may be worthwhile to put up a picklist with several choices. That adds a lot of GUI complexity.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

Axotltanks in the books where used to "clone" people, but only in the later books they retained their skills of the donor. before that the ghola's had to learn those skills a new.
Maybey a special unit that can steal (defeat in combat) the genes of UU and turn into them, like facedancers? In the books facedancers could steal the memories and skill of their victims.
Or in the late game a "imortal unit" as an UU. Since their leaders where basically the same since the invention of genetic memory.
Axotltanks where also used for production of spice and other drugs. not sure if we can use that for something.

 

[Ahriman]

I still think that the FFH mimic promotion (steal a promotion from a unit you defeat in combat) could work well here.

As an alternative; an axolotl tank building could basically be a city building that does nothing except provide great people points. If the point of the gholas is to keep making copies of great leaders, scientists, mentats, warriors etc, that sounds to me like faster GPP production. Maybe +2 great infiltrator points and +1 trader +1 mentat +1noble (=currently ghola) +1 engineer.

 

[davidlallen]

I still think that the FFH mimic promotion (steal a promotion from a unit you defeat in combat) could work well here.

That may work well as a Face Dancer ability. But if you take one promotion from one person, and then later you take one promotion from another person, does that mean you lose the first one? If you are mimicking one person, you are no longer mimicking the other.

As an alternative; an axolotl tank building could basically be a city building that does nothing except provide great people points. If the point of the gholas is to keep making copies of great leaders, scientists, mentats, warriors etc, that sounds to me like faster GPP production. Maybe +2 great infiltrator points and +1 trader +1 mentat +1noble (=currently ghola) +1 engineer.

I'd like to give the feeling of "duplicating" things. But I don't suppose there is any way to add more GPP without affecting the existing ratio. That is why I had been thinking about a UB that would directly produce copies of your existing GP.

 

[Ahriman]

But if you take one promotion from one person, and then later you take one promotion from another person, does that mean you lose the first one? If you are mimicking one person, you are no longer mimicking the other.

The intention would be not to lose the promotion. The idea would be basically that as you find and kill new people, you are adding their personas to your "repertoire" so to speak. So an experienced facedancer who has encoutered and killed many people is much more powerful because it can always pick an optimal person to mimic at any given point in time.

I'd like to give the feeling of "duplicating" things.

I'm not sure I see the need of requiring the people to duplicate to actually be part of the mechanic.
I think it is easier to imagine that they are duplicating people without needing those specific people to be present as Great People in the civ engine.

As another alternative; is it possible to have something give "neutral" Great people points?
I think I remember seeing this in some mod (don't remember where).
The idea of neutral GPPs is that they speed up the time it takes to get to the next great leader without influencing the mix of what that leader is.
That would be ideal here: have a building that gave +5 neutral GPPs.
As another alternative; you could get basically the same effect by just boosting the GPP output %. So axolotl tanks just give +50% GPPs in the city they're built in, so that city will produce more/faster of whatever great people it is producing.

Yet another alternative: if you really did want it to be duplicating great people, then you could make it literally do that; if a great person is spawned in a city with axolotl tanks, then you get 2 instead of 1.
Or alternatively you could create a Ghola version of each great person type who can only be settled in a city as a specialist (can't be used for academies, golden age, wonder rush, culture bomb). So when you make a great trader, you can use that great person for anything, and also get a free great trader ghola who can be settled as a great trader.

The Sidar Fade thing was basically a ghola like this; it could settle into a city as any type of great person specialist, but couldn't use any of the great person specials (culture bomb etc.).

 

[davidlallen]

As another alternative; you could get basically the same effect by just boosting the GPP output %. So axolotl tanks just give +50% GPPs in the city they're built in, so that city will produce more/faster of whatever great people it is producing.

That seems like the right solution.

Yet another alternative: if you really did want it to be duplicating great people, then you could make it literally do that; if a great person is spawned in a city with axolotl tanks, then you get 2 instead of 1.

There is an idea here somewhere, but I'd like to find a way where the copy can show up later instead of showing up at the same time. If producing two at the same time seems OK from the play balance standpoint, would it be OK if the copy shows up some random number of turns later?

 

[Ahriman]

If producing two at the same time seems OK from the play balance standpoint, would it be OK if the copy shows up some random number of turns later?

Balancewise it would have to be from an expensive building, but yeah I'd be ok with that, as long as all you could do was settle it. Doing this AND giving +50% GPP might be too much though.
As for showing up random number of turns later; I don't like that. It breaks the immediacy of the cause/effect chain. It could feel weird for this great person ghola to just pop up one turn, you might not realize what caused it, particularly for new players. The benefits of an action (getting a GP) should always be apparent, not hidden in something that randomly happens down the line, or it can mess up players' strategic calculus.

You could also use events to create the ghola; when you pop a great person in a city with axolotl tanks, it procs an event with dialogue boxes that either makes you buy the ghola for X gold, or lets you sell the ghola for y gold (so you either get the great person, or gold).