Whole new unit line idea: Sapper line

[N.Core]

As we know that this proposal gets passed.
While it's weird to make Siege Tower a non-obsolete unit, there's also the fact that a human player can abuse this unit by simply not disbanding it.

Rather than making a unit stay forever in a game, why not make a whole new unit line for it?

My idea is to make a new unit line designed explicitly as a Sapper unit.
The whole line goes like this:
Battering Ram (Classical-Medieval) -> Siege Tower (Medieval-Renaissance) -> ???? (Renaissance-Industrial) -> Dirigible (Industrial-Modern) -> Zeppelin (Modern-Atomic) ->
UAV (Atomic-Information).

Siege Tower can be replaced with something else for Assyria UU.

All units except one already have a model and can be easily implemented into the game. The last three Airships are already used in pdan's Tweak mod as a unit line that can only attack cities. So just make them a passive unit for this purpose (they don't even have any attack animation because of the game's limitation).

 

[Stalker0]

So the most important thing when considering a new line is.... what niche does this line provide that is NOT covered (even partly) by other roles?

So what does this sapper unit provide that is not provided by existing siege units or other units? That's the first and most important hurdle to overcome.

 

[Tekamthi]

So the most important thing when considering a new line is.... what niche does this line provide that is NOT covered (even partly) by other roles?

So what does this sapper unit provide that is not provided by existing siege units or other units? That's the first and most important hurdle to overcome.

I think that's obvious, no? Afaik, the 'sapper' ability (this is the field name in the xml/sql table) is used only by the seige tower, ie the ability to buff nearby unit CS when the sapper unit is adjacent to enemy city. I understand the OP suggestion to mean that we'd build an entire unit line around this under-used feature. Generally speaking, I like the idea, and have suggested similar in other discussions; historically, assyria wasn't the only civ to use these siege towers, and from a gameplay perspective, sieges can vary wildly, from some cities that are easy to steam roll over, and some that are nigh impossible, no matter the army composition. VP's typical response to this concern has been to buff or nerf city CS and HP, though invariably these tweaks have just shifted the problem: buffing city CS makes the previously-steam-rolled cities a little more defensible, but increases the quasi-impossible, long, boring sieges; conversely, nerfing cities reduces the long boring sieges, but makes weaker cities too easily plucked away. Having a sapper unit that can soften up the difficult sieges, available dynamically to the player rather than statically as a game rule, seems an obvious remedy to this long-standing concern.

That said, I'm not in love with the OP's proposed unit line. Its too thematically jarring for battering rams and seige towers to eventually upgrade to flying units. What i'd propose instead is that the 'sapper' unit line be essentially a melee seige line, and jsut have it fold into the existing seige line after the first 3 units. As I've conceived of this, we'd go battering ram -> seige tower -> sapper -> fieldgun/artillery... etc. (depending how these units are assigned within the tech tree). PDan's flying units could very well take over this sapper role later on, though I wouldn't have them all as a continuous upgrade path.

This could all be accomplished rather trivially via modmod. I wouldn't mind throwing something together for testing, if there's some interest. In this regard, what is the best alternative UU for assyria?

 

[pineappledan]

Blowing up the Assyrian UU into an entire unit line for every civ solves no problem and creates multiple issues in multiple other places.

Siege Tower can be replaced with something else for Assyria UU.

So you have no plan, but It’s going to be better than what we already have because… don’t worry about it?

There are numerous niche, AI and balance issues with the airship line in my tweaks mod. It is jank AF, and it serves no purpose. I’m the guy who spent weeks trying to get it to work and I cannot advocate for its integration in good conscience.

 

[hokath]

The obvious, simplest solution is to remove the siege tower. I personally do not find it particularly interesting.

???? (Renaissance-Industrial)

https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Petard_(Age_of_Empires_II)

 

[Tekamthi]

Blowing up the Assyrian UU into an entire unit line for every civ solves no problem and creates multiple issues in multiple other places.

So you have no plan, but It’s going to be better than what we already have because… don’t worry about it?

What are the other issues it creates? AI unit prioritization seems an obvious one, but any others? If AI can handle seige towers as assyria, why not generally?

The obvious, simplest solution is to remove the siege tower. I personally do not find it particularly interesting.


https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Petard_(Age_of_Empires_II)

There aren't an unlimited number of art models for civ 5, would be a shame to delete an existing one. I like the old civ 4 grenadier as a possible renaissance sapper unit https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/civ5-grenadier.22983/

 

[pineappledan]

The sapper ability is hardcoded onto the Assyrian siege tower. You can't just turn it into a line without re-coding that ability, or some similar effect. You're not just adding new unit models; you're starting from scratch.

The airship line I created has a large degree of overlap with the recon line. They are combat units while the Assyrian siege engine is a civilian unit, like a Great General. to say they will upgrade into each other glosses over how these units have nothing to do with each other, don't behave similarly, or work at all in the same way. It's using the fact that the art assets have been added into the game to cover that none of the coding or AI work to support these units in a coherent progression exists.

 

[Tekamthi]

The sapper ability is hardcoded onto the Assyrian siege tower. You can't just turn it into a line without re-coding that ability, or some similar effect. You're not just adding new unit models; you're starting from scratch.

Are you sure about this? Can you explain further? There is a <Sapper>true</Sapper> in the UnitPromotions tables, enabled as 'true' for only one promotion, and that promotion is only granted to the siege tower. Similarly, there is a UNITAI_CITY_SPECIAL that is assigned only to the siege tower, and no other unit. Seems to me we just assign both of these to whatever new units are created, and make sure their abilities are more or less similar to existing siege tower. Am I overlooking something?

Personally I'm happy to leave the airship line aside from this effort.

 

[pineappledan]

Are you sure about this? Can you explain further? There is a <Sapper>true</Sapper> in the UnitPromotions tables, enabled as 'true' for only one promotion, and that promotion is only granted to the siege tower. Similarly, there is a UNITAI_CITY_SPECIAL that is assigned only to the siege tower, and no other unit. Seems to me we just assign both of these to whatever new units are created, and make sure their abilities are more or less similar to existing siege tower. Am I overlooking something?

Try assigning sapper = true to another promotion, or giving sapper to another unit besides the siege tower and see what happens (hint: nothing. Nothing happens.)

The airship line happens to have the abilities etc that it currently has in my tweaks mod mostly because it was a combination of bonuses that were codable. They cannot do what the siege tower does; I tried.

 

[Stalker0]

So there are currently 3 components to the Assyrian UU that we can look at here.

1) Shares space with other units: This is probably the most interesting. If a unit doesn't have to fight for space on the battle field in the 1 UPT system, it doesn't directly compete with existing units in the normal way.

2) Medic 2: The main advantage of this is getting access to medic 2 early in the game. I personally don't think that should be a "unique power" of this line, you could remove medic as a promotion and require that to be the sapper line but that creates other problems. So I don't think "wandering medic" is really a niche for this unit.

3) Bonus to siege damage. Ultimately this is a specialized Great General Bonus, all units in the area gain a specific attack bonus against cities. Is that "worth" a new unit line?


An alternate idea based on the Guided Missile, what if the Sapper line was the "one and done" line, aka you do a big explosion but the unit is gone? So the unit moves in, "blows up", does big damage to a city, but then is removed from the game. Now historically this has been a terrible model for human players, it turns into a waste of hammers, but the AI can use it well, and its certainly more unique.

A secondary idea: Instead of providing the bonus, the sapper unit has a "pilum" effect but only against cities. So perhaps it does 10 or 20 damage every turn its next to the city, just continuously. so it would have reasonable consistent damage, and have the ability of being invincible to counterattack as long as a unit is protecting it, but it wouldn't have the burst damage of siege units. Its primary use would be when terrain blocks siege units from working, you can move into wooded cities protected by melee units, and still do "some damage" to a city, though not as fast as a regular siege line would do.

 

[Tekamthi]

Try assigning sapper = true to another promotion, or giving sapper to another unit besides the siege tower and see what happens (hint: nothing. Nothing happens.)

The airship line happens to have the abilities etc that it currently has in my tweaks mod mostly because it was a combination of bonuses that were codable. They cannot do what the siege tower does; I tried.

this is enlightening -- I've long seen those table entries and just assumed they could be reassigned, but never got around to experimenting. Too bad. Did you make any github requests for this functionality to be tied to the table entries? was this explored?

 

[pineappledan]

this is enlightening -- I've long seen those table entries and just assumed they could be reassigned. Too bad. Did you make any github requests for this functionality to be tied to the table entries? was this a no go?

I never saw the point, because I hadn't set out to make the Assyrian UU an entire unit line.

 

[Tekamthi]

I never saw the point, because I hadn't set out to make the Assyrian UU an entire unit line.

would be a nice feature to have for modding, imo. especially if we could tune the strength of the sapper effect -- assyria could then have stronger siege towers than everyone else, in this theory-crafted mod I am imagining

 

[pineappledan]

honestly, it's such a specific bundle of effects all tied to a single boolean value I don't see much value in that. It's like the Nau's exotic cargo mission in that respect.

 

[Tekamthi]

honestly, it's such a specific bundle of effects all tied to a single boolean value I don't see much value in that. It's like the Nau's exotic cargo mission in that respect.

tbh the exotic cargo is another one i'd like to be able to manipulate via modmod. I did request modding access to it many years ago on git, but that was rejected for reasons i no longer recall. oh well.

edit: seems it was decided it already worked the way I was requesting, even though it doesn't lol https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/5918