Worker Promotions

[Silver14]

I was wondering if it were possible, or even worth while, to implement a system of promotions for workers.

Obviously it would have to be completely different then the existing promotion tree as they are non combatant.

I was thinking of having promotions such as: Work 25% faster then 50% faster, build roads faster -1 turn, build cottages faster, mines faster, windmills faster and so forth with -1 turn. +1 movement, withdrawal chance if attacked, things like those.

But again as they are non combatant a different method of earning xp would be needed. I was thinking that each time they build an improvement that there would be a % chance that they get 1xp point with the % chance decreasing as they go up in experience. Also they wouldn't get xp from barracks or theocracy but perhaps from the university building and serfdom civic.

That way over time your older workers would be more efficient and they could become specialists at building certain improvements. Also it may make things more interesting when improving your empire instead of automating them and for people who like to focus on building up their empire more then going to war.

I was just thinking about this at work today and thought I would plop it down. I really have no idea how to mod anything much less this but would like some feedback/ideas. I don't know if anyone has brought this up before but I didn't find a related topic when I did a search.

[reznod]

Sounds like a good idea, if you can go for it.

[Adagio]

I thought of something like that too

My idea:
Each time a worker builds an improvement, it gets x% chance to level up. Leveling up is different from normal units, since you don't get to choose how it levels up. The promotion it gets depends on what it's working on (building farms will only give it farm promotions, etc)
Each time it levels up, it gets a promotion

The % chance of leveling up depends on several things: The size of the map (the larger the map, the lower the chance), what level the worker is on (it's easier to get the first promotion than the second), the kind of improvement getting built and maybe also difficulty level (on the harder levels, the AI has a better chance at getting a promotion, compared to the player)
I guess the chance of getting the first farm promotion on a standard sized map on Noble should be like 5% ? Since roads/railroads are built more often, the chance should be much lower (like 1% ?)

Promotions:

For each level of a specific promotion, it takes 1 turn less to build the specific improvement (e.g. having a level 2 'farm promotion' will cut off two turns when building it)

For cottage improvements, the second or third level could be a little different than the normal promotions, as they could enable the worker to build villages instead of cottages*


*A cottage is the first one getting built, right? And then it upgrades to villages?

[Optimizer]

In the original rules, worker speed is increased by 50% when you discover Steam Power.

You can use the same tag for speeding up Workers with more techs.

I am also experimenting with giving the Great Engineer worker abilities and a very high work speed.

[ghen]

If this mod were implemented I'd like to see the steam power bonus gone as worker promotions would seem to come too quick anyway.

I wouldn't want the promotion system to make workers idle more than normal.. Heck, maybe even make all improvements a little longer to build as well, where one promotion would even out the build time.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Optimizer
In the original rules, worker speed is increased by 50% when you discover Steam Power.

You can use the same tag for speeding up Workers with more techs.

That's a bugger, because I was going to make the increase in engineering improvements more gradual. For example:

Construction: -1 turn
Engineering: -1 turn
Gunpowder: -1 turn
Steam power: -1 turn
Electricity: -1 turn

Unfortunately this won't be easy to implement