Learn while doing?

[Tattila the Hun]

I had this thought pop up from the fuzzynes of my mind...

Could it be possible, and how hard it would be to mod, to have a unit, attacking or defending, and winning that particular fight, to have a small chance to learn an appropriate "counter" promotion from it? Say, an axeman takes out and archer, random number is rolled, and he learns Cover. Or should the archer prevail, he would have a chance of learning, um, Shock, I believe. Against melee units.

And, should it be somewhat easy to mod... Is this even a good idea, in your opinion?

[zeace]

Adding randomness to the game is usually frowned upon by the hardcore players here... This would add some significant randomness to wars, meaning a well thought-out war would have to bring more troops to deal with potentially unlucky numbers. It would also mean that some units could get significantly more upgrades than they would otherwise.

Consider an Combat I axe who gets really lucky two turns in a row and learns cover and shock. He also gains enough experience to get upgraded to Combat II. A couple more fights and he could be a city raider, or anything else.

Consider the opposite. The opponent gets lucky, wins a fight and gets shock. Then next turn he uses his new ability to kill another troop and gets lucky again and gets combat I.

The swing between these two scenarios is huge, and would make planning invasions much harder.

[Dis]

I think it's a good idea (if you take out regular promotions). But then it would give the human player less decision making in their promotions which would be a negative. Or maybe both models could be implemented but just require double the experience necessary for a regular promotion.

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by zeace
Adding randomness to the game is usually frowned upon by the hardcore players here... This would add some significant randomness to wars, meaning a well thought-out war would have to bring more troops to deal with potentially unlucky numbers. It would also mean that some units could get significantly more upgrades than they would otherwise.

Consider an Combat I axe who gets really lucky two turns in a row and learns cover and shock. He also gains enough experience to get upgraded to Combat II. A couple more fights and he could be a city raider, or anything else.

Consider the opposite. The opponent gets lucky, wins a fight and gets shock. Then next turn he uses his new ability to kill another troop and gets lucky again and gets combat I.

The swing between these two scenarios is huge, and would make planning invasions much harder.

Eh, pland are just that, plans. A tenacious defence by the spartans, and a plan is useless, reguiring modifications, or a new plan. Realistic, if anything.


"No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy." -Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke-

And your examples are very, very lucky, comparable to 99% lose. Rarely is any unit in such a shape, that one would risk attacking with it the next turn, shock or no shock.

It would be very rare, in my thinking. Sure, such things could happen as you describe, in about once per thousand battles.

Winning a fight, getting a promotion, then winning another, and getting another promotion... Chances are astronomical. Indeed, the unit would become powerfull, but these are elite troops we are talking about, they should be more powerfull than your average grunt. And they still die, should the tables be turned against them. That's war.

[eris]

I voted against it on the principle of avoiding complexity for complexity's sake, which I feel eventually bogged down the play factor of Civ3, even though I loved that game. In the development of Civ4, what Firaxis brilliantly did was simplify the Civ modelling and allow nuances to shape outcomes. Although it is comlex in its component interactions, the number of components is finite. This works very well and gives the Civ experience a much deeper "feel". (A subjective term, I know) There are parts I would want polished, but random events, whether it be earthquakes or promotions, take some of the value out for me. Getting something for free instead of due to my planning lessens the success value I feel because of my planning's success. (or frustration, as the case may be) The only exception to all this is the villager huts, which randomize the start conditions a little just to keep things from getting stale or to cause a civ to, because of the balanced nuance, follow a different path than it would have otherwise. Getting Pottery early may cause the civ to be a little more comerce and research oriented. Getting an early Bronze Working might make a civ more militaristic.

The changes you propose don't seem to fall along those lines. That is why I voted "no", although the banana option is always tempting.

[Jaybe]

Earning the "appropriate" promotion from a combat is something that I try to apply as a house rule, something I have to do manually.

A melee unit surviving combat with an archer could get Cover, but not a Shock promotion. Combat, Medic, etc. would also be options, of course. Barracks-based promotions are, of course, without restrictions.

As far as a mod is concerned, though I did vote for it, I think it would be impractical and unpopular.

[rah]

Normally I think we could have some fun with this and only allow it to happen when the victor ends in that last sliver of red so he almost got destroyed. This might encourage human players to attack more in that 45-55% range. But since that probably wouldn't be a big enough incentive for the Human, the AI would probably by the main reciepient of the rewards.

[Saurus]

I feel there is some potential here.
At least this "learning by doing" concept could be applied to some aspects of the game.

For instance, if a player has a horrible start (starts in a middle of the tundra for instance) then the player may over time (by working tundra) learn how to make more out of it. (so that a player beeing forced to adapt to tundra early on, would learn to get it to produce more food)

A "soft" player used to get food more easily on floodplains would lack this skill and the like...

Or a player, isolated on a small island beeing forced out in the oceans early to explore, could learn some extra movement bonuses etc.. (maybe also their harbors could produce +1 /trade for any ocean square since the people are forced to concentrate more on oceans due to very limited space on land)

Or civilizations who have been heavily plagued by barbarians early on might eventually learn an extra +10% city defense...

The list could go on endlessly..
Civlizations could thus be specialized to a limited degree depenting on their starting conditions.

Would be cool

[Diadem]

Well, it has always been a bit silly that you can take a unit - an axeman for example - and use it to kill other axeman and spearman, and then promote it with cover. Where did it learn the cover skill?

It could be an idea to make which promotions you can get dependent on what units you did. So when you level up, you can only do promotions in catagories that you used. So city raider if you attacked cities, cover if you attacked archery units, etc.

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by eris


The changes you propose don't seem to fall along those lines. That is why I voted "no", although the banana option is always tempting.

Multiple poll options! You could have voted both.

I'd personally would love to have the random events from Civ back. It would force me to adapt, to learn. Not just pwn peeps with Praetorians... Pompeii, my best production city just got burned to crisp by a volcano!

Originally posted by Diadem
Well, it has always been a bit silly that you can take a unit - an axeman for example - and use it to kill other axeman and spearman, and then promote it with cover. Where did it learn the cover skill?

It could be an idea to make which promotions you can get dependent on what units you did. So when you level up, you can only do promotions in catagories that you used. So city raider if you attacked cities, cover if you attacked archery units, etc.

Not too different from the current, might not meet such opposition.