Vokarya's Workshop: Units

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Vokarya, I was wondering, isn't Aircraft Carrier a bit too big? It looks bigger than most ships, even bigger than Supercarrier. Can we reduce a bit its scale?

 

[Vokarya]

Vokarya, I was wondering, isn't Aircraft Carrier a bit too big? It looks bigger than most ships, even bigger than Supercarrier. Can we reduce a bit its scale?

Probably. We should also enlarge Fast Battleship a bit.

 

[Nimek]

Also Nanite Cloud is too big. Now it takes nine plots so it is almost impossible to use units from nanite cloud neighborhood.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Ok, I've enlarged fast battleship and resized a bit some other carrier models and nanite cloud. I'll upload the changes probably tomorrow with my other fixes (I've tweaked a bit Revolutions scaling some factors for gamespeed and I've fixed the CTD bug with xUPT limit and some other minor fixes).

By the way, hasn't anyone noticed that AI mostly use mobilization as it gets available? Is it maybe too strong? And while we're on the subject, in latest revision I haven't seen anyone using MAD and no nukes being built. Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[Rezca]

I've seen some warmonger AIs switch into Mobilization frequently - not always, but frequently - but it seems to be the one-and-only Civic for wartime.

MAD I have yet to see anyone use, but I've only had one game that reached that point since the changes to nukes and only three leaders - myself included - ever actually got Advanced Rocketry in that one.

More tests would be needed, and with how broken Industrial/Modern Start games are and how unwilling I am to play Blitz or Quick games... That will take a while!

 

[Vokarya]

Mobilization is supposed to be a "total war" civic, where you sacrifice just about everything else to get units onto the battlefield. I wanted it to allow a few military and production facilities, but it should be very difficult to build anything else. Maybe we should increase the penalties more?

I was speculating a bit last night, and I thought up adding this to Mobilization:

• Additional -10% culture
• -10% science
• -10% Great Person Production
• Increase the base hammer penalty to -75% and the base production bonuses to +250%; the bonus part has to be high because the penalty is applied first, then the bonus after the penalty is applied, so you need a bonus of at least twice the penalty just to get back to neutral. -75% base hammer production might be too much though.

 

[Rezca]

I can build the 125+ str Siege Droids without the 90'ish str Walkers ever becoming available, and neither seem to require a Mech Assembly Plant to build but the relatively weaker units do.

Is that intentional?

 

[<Nexus>]

Two little suggestions:

Although Hwacha has no starting promotions, its +1 speed over catapult would make it reasonable to give it a longer lifespan, as it was discussed earlier. I guess Vokarya had just forget it. But if it is intentional than it is okay.

Shaolin monks upgrade to musketman (I guess) but it would make more sense to put it into the scout line since it is not an offensive unit but for support purpose.

 

[os79]

Two little suggestions:

Although Hwacha has no starting promotions, its +1 speed over catapult would make it reasonable to give it a longer lifespan, as it was discussed earlier. I guess Vokarya had just forget it. But if it is intentional than it is okay.

Shaolin monks upgrade to musketman (I guess) but it would make more sense to put it into the scout line since it is not an offensive unit but for support purpose.

Shaolin monks upgrades to Rifleman.

 

[Vokarya]

I can build the 125+ str Siege Droids without the 90'ish str Walkers ever becoming available, and neither seem to require a Mech Assembly Plant to build but the relatively weaker units do.

Is that intentional?

It's not intentional, but it will require some reworking of the tech tree to avoid having Powered Exoskeleton stuck on a ton of units to avoid the hidden prerequisite for the Plant. I think what will have to be done is make Powered Exoskeleton a requirement for Military Robotics and Military Robotics a requirement for Advanced Computers. Advanced Computers is definitely the bottleneck technology for the early Transhuman Era. If we change that, then we should be able to put Mech Assembly Plant as a requirement for all Mecha units without any other issues. I didn't see any other units that should have it.

 

[Vokarya]

Two little suggestions:

Although Hwacha has no starting promotions, its +1 speed over catapult would make it reasonable to give it a longer lifespan, as it was discussed earlier. I guess Vokarya had just forget it. But if it is intentional than it is okay.

I can let this be buildable until Bombard. That won't hurt anything.

Shaolin monks upgrade to musketman (I guess) but it would make more sense to put it into the scout line since it is not an offensive unit but for support purpose.

The upgrade path is intended. Shaolin Monk is meant to be a defender first, support second. It's the strongest defender available when it shows up and I think should be comparable to Longbow/Crossbow for defense purposes.

 

[Vokarya]

Do you think Medic III needs any additional restrictions? I noticed in playing recently that it was very easy under the right conditions to jump from Medic I to Medic III, which might be too strong. This can apply to any Aggressive or Protective leader capable of generating 10 XP (8 if Charismatic, but not unthinkable generally), or any Humanitarian leader with 5 XP for Recon units, or Shaolin Monks with 5 XP, or any unit produced alongside the Colosseum with 10 XP. In regular BTS, Medic III requires Led by Warlord, so you're not getting that without a Great General. I'm thinking Medic III might need to be restricted to Antibiotics. What do you think?

 

[Rezca]

Do you think Medic III needs any additional restrictions? I noticed in playing recently that it was very easy under the right conditions to jump from Medic I to Medic III, which might be too strong. This can apply to any Aggressive or Protective leader capable of generating 10 XP (8 if Charismatic, but not unthinkable generally), or any Humanitarian leader with 5 XP for Recon units, or Shaolin Monks with 5 XP, or any unit produced alongside the Colosseum with 10 XP. In regular BTS, Medic III requires Led by Warlord, so you're not getting that without a Great General. I'm thinking Medic III might need to be restricted to Antibiotics. What do you think?

Antibiotics seems good, unless we're going to put Medic III back onto Warlord-only status.

 

[jackelgull]

What is the point of recon units past the adventurer? They just seem unnecessary.

 

[Vokarya]

What is the point of recon units past the adventurer? They just seem unnecessary.

I use recon units in just about every attacking stack for the free Sentry promotions to give the stack +1 visibility range and if you give the recon units Medic promotions, they are very unlikely to be attacked as the strongest unit is the one that gets attacked first. Also, after the Adventurer, recon units can actually attack, so you can get some use out of them for cleanup duty. I don't like to use lots of cavalry, since I think stacks absolutely need to have siege weapons to reduce enemy defenses and the stack travels at the speed of the slowest unit, but I do use light cavalry to attack the last enemy unit in a stack or city and then retreat back to the rest of the stack. The later recon units can do the same thing.

 

[Noyyau]

I'm ok with unlocking Medic III with a later tech, but please do not make it Warlord-exclusive.

 

[Vokarya]

I'm ok with unlocking Medic III with a later tech, but please do not make it Warlord-exclusive.

I don't mind Medic III being open to everybody after a certain point; I just don't like jumping directly from Medic I to Medic III. We have enough other Led by Warlord promotions (especially Heroic, Leadership, and the religious promotions) that we don't need any more.

 

[Vokarya]

Mobilization is supposed to be a "total war" civic, where you sacrifice just about everything else to get units onto the battlefield. I wanted it to allow a few military and production facilities, but it should be very difficult to build anything else. Maybe we should increase the penalties more?

I was speculating a bit last night, and I thought up adding this to Mobilization:

• Additional -10% culture
• -10% science
• -10% Great Person Production
• Increase the base hammer penalty to -75% and the base production bonuses to +250%; the bonus part has to be high because the penalty is applied first, then the bonus after the penalty is applied, so you need a bonus of at least twice the penalty just to get back to neutral. -75% base hammer production might be too much though.

Did anyone have any thoughts about this? I'm going to be releasing a build sometime soon and I would like to add this to the changes, but if it isn't liked, I won't.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Did anyone have any thoughts about this? I'm going to be releasing a build sometime soon and I would like to add this to the changes, but if it isn't liked, I won't.

I'm not sure it's the correct solution but having no other suggestion, go for it. Worst case we'll look for another solution.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, if you think that -75% is too much, why not try -65% and reduce the bonus to +230%, which gives a slightly smaller hammer penalty, but still has a net 100% production bonus.