DESIGN: Unit Values

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by LemurMadness

How about a blue Musketeer? would look different enough from the InfantryMan.

I'll give it a go. I think its a fairly quick process.

It might look something like this when done (but hopefully different enough):

http://apolyton.net/dir/index.php?sid=439372666&id=4512&t=reviews&toprate=5.0000&tophits=6105&cat=61

Oh, didn't knew about this, would be nice if the game would prompt to choose an upgrade.

Hopefully E will be listening then

Yup, that was what I was thinking about, every age with their own type of units. I guess Plasmatica would fit that gap. (It was my fave unit from CtP1, nice sprite). Thought Plasma Weaponry comes avaliable later in the game... Unless the HoverInfantry goes to defense and Plasmatica to attack.

I would say better not to change them around. I have to rush off now, but ill look at it later.

[LemurMadness]

http://apolyton.net/dir/index.php?sid=661040074&id=1163&t=reviews&toprate=5.0000&tophits=6105&cat=61

Here's the green, blue and red musketeers.

I only wish I could find a better sprite for a new 1,800-1,900 offensive unit... the Word War II units are nice, but they're without animations...

[Ekmek]

Oh, didn't knew about this, would be nice if the game would prompt to choose an upgrade.

Hopefully E will be listening then

trust me, i'd love to know how to make message windows with option buttons but the citycapture options is the best i have figured out and I'm not sure i can populate the buttons with unit labels. But martin might!

on another topic I was thinking about balancing in ctp. Civ games have the usual granery, market, library, etc you build and grow etc.

I was wondering how receptive people are to the idea that maybe more advanced buildings, say universities and other science stuff start incurring food penalties so you get to the point where you decide is this going to be a massive agrarian populous place (india etc) or an advanced service economy with a shrinking, aging population (like parts of Europe) or a productive, industrial sweatshop city (china etc)

This would go to the AE mod of course, but just thinking that instead of trying to crap out as many buildings in a city that you can instead you decide should this be an agrarian, commercial, or industrial city. The AI may be able to handle depending on their strategies but I thought this would add more to the game. it is a decision and strategy game so the more tough decisions we make the more attached to our civ we become and I think the more we enjoy the game.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by E

on another topic I was thinking about balancing in ctp. Civ games have the usual granery, market, library, etc you build and grow etc.

I was wondering how receptive people are to the idea that maybe more advanced buildings, say universities and other science stuff start incurring food penalties so you get to the point where you decide is this going to be a massive agrarian populous place (india etc) or an advanced service economy with a shrinking, aging population (like parts of Europe) or a productive, industrial sweatshop city (china etc)

This would go to the AE mod of course, but just thinking that instead of trying to crap out as many buildings in a city that you can instead you decide should this be an agrarian, commercial, or industrial city. The AI may be able to handle depending on their strategies but I thought this would add more to the game. it is a decision and strategy game so the more tough decisions we make the more attached to our civ we become and I think the more we enjoy the game.

Interesting idea E, and I'm all for making cities more specialized. At the moment all cities are pretty much the same inside, they build the same things, and build all the buildings eventually, like you say crapping out buildings

The "every city building the same building" is just a problem with game difficulty IMO. You have too much time to build everything, so you do build everything. In Ages of Man I find myself choosing specific buildings and specializing more often, because i have to devote so much production to units, and even more importantly, constant public works input to repair my units.

I'd like to see a better balance between food and production too, involving using specialists earlier. For example a high grassland city using labourers (labourers would need to be enabled earlier like Slave Labour), or a mountain city using farmers, but most importantly both cities would be exactly equal in resources, after the same amount of specialists used.

If this worked then the grassland city would have equal opportunity to produce settlers at the same speed in the beginning, and the mountain city would grow at the same speed as the grassland city. So everyone has equal opportunity, but only if you manage your city specialists well. Of course dedicating to specialists would remove commerce collected from the city though, so its a trade-off for more growth/production to prepare your city. But as long as growth/production can be made exactly equal with specialists, there's always a choice.

The idea of agrarian, commercial, or industrial city is a good one too. I see the agrarian city in grassland/farms using specialists and building granary/aqueduct/food silos, industrial city by mountains/mines focussing on mills/factories/units, and the commercial city on the coast/ports building academies/universities/bazaars/banks.

Of course there could be mixed or different cities, such as industrial-commercial building naval units, or a commercial city in desert along a river with many trading posts (this reminds me we should make rivers give much more food in deserts).

We're going kind of off topic though, perhaps we can move it into a more appropriate thread.

[HuangShang]

wow sounds incredibly better. then there will be many more reasons to aim for a certain city or city location, which right now is only for defense, goods, and canals

[Ekmek]

What about the Catamaran?

I find the move of 2 and carrying only 1 way too limiting. Sea travel should be faster than land in the early days and you should atleast be able to send a defender with your settler.

I think civ games have "traditionally" used a move of 3 and carry 2. Anyone else think it should be changed to that?

[Maquiladora]

It might help the AI more to have an "all-in-one" early settler-transport unit. To transport two units, so it could defend it right off the boat.

The Coracle move speed of 3 would be fine if the ground units were generally slower (I'm mainly talking about Knights moving 2 instead of 4, Mounted Archer moving 2 too etc).

I don't understand why ground units are so fast actually. They weren't that fast in civ games, and even more confusing they weren't that fast in CtP1 IIRC.

Maybe it's to do with the AI changing it's goals for units. If a unit reaches it's goal quicker, there's less turns for it to change it's mind and make sure it does something decisive. I really don't know how that works.

All I do know is that these really high movement units are unbalancing combat.

[Ekmek]

I actually think the high moves hurts the Ai because the AI has to do a lot more calculations and we know that humans are better with small teams pouncing on AI armies.

I'm all for tweaking move numbers


bytheway, i have updated the units.txt (you can get it through the anonymous repository). I fixed the tank to be medium and the helicopter to carry small. I also added initial goldhunger values. They will only be used in a game if you pick the rules to have gold support for units, otherwise its not used.

[Maquiladora]

Yeah, if there is an imbalance there, the human will always find and use it better, so we need to minimize those.

Also in most cases it's even worse increasing move costs for units too much, because roads > rail > maglevs/underwater tunnels increase this anyway as the game goes on. So you have no problem with the extra movement required in increased empire sizes.

It's just a case of some units being too fast.

[Maquiladora]

Anyway, just wanted to see what we've decided so far and also some other suggestions to keep things moving:

(scout?) Scout? > Explorer?

(multipurpose) Warrior

(attack) Legion > Samurai > Musketeer/Skirmisher > Marine > HoverInfantry

(defense) Hoplite > Pikemen > InfantryMan > MachineGunner > Plasmatica

(flank) ? > Knight > Cavalry > Tank > FusionTank

(ranged) Archer > Longbowman > ?

(siege/artillery) Catapult > Cannon > Artillery > MobileSAM > WarWalker

	att	def	ran	arm	dam	mov	vis	cost	require

legion	20	10	0	1	1	1	1	225	Iron Wo
musket.	30	15	10	1	2	1	2	800	Gunpowd
infant.	25	35	10	1	3	1	2	1000	Rifling?

This leaves the following ground units without an upgrade path:

M. Archer
Fascist
Paratrooper
Leviathan

And the following era/s without a type of unit or 5 in each type for completeness:

Ancient: Flanker - Mounted Archer as a flanker? War Elephant?

The "ranged" line of units is a special line for Archers, so obviously shouldn't need 5. Should the Longbowman upgrade to Musketeer/Infantryman or something though?

In the AI's unit build lists theres a specific "scout" list, I don't know how effectively it uses it, but it seems only natural we have a specific unit for this role if the AI can use it. Although there's the opposing arguement it may waste resources if the scout isn't strong enough, against barbs for example. It should be noted that at the moment the AI builds a Warrior then a Mounted Archer for scouting.

[LemurMadness]

There seems to be a slight problem, concerning the MobileSAM: It doesn't haves a Siege attack. Because upgrading the Artillery to MobileSAM removes it with this characteristic that's unique from it's upgrade line, should we change the MobileSAM to a TEL System? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpo...ector_launcher , see Russian SA-4 TEL, it's almost the same as the MobileSAM's sprite). Quotting Wikipedia, "Such vehicles exist for both surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-surface missiles." Althought the idea of guided missiles is adopted by the Cruise Missile, a TEL could handle multiple payloads and types of missiles, meaning that it would have a So what do you guys think about it?

"A Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) is a vehicle with an integrated prime mover that can carry, elevate to firing position and launch one or more missiles. Such vehicles exist for both surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-surface missiles. Early such missiles were launched from fixed sites and had to be loaded onto trucks for transport, making them more vulnerable to attack since once they were spotted by the enemy they couldn't easily be relocated, and if they were it often took hours or even days to prepare them for launch once they reached their new site.

The SA-4 TEL (Industrial Index designation 2P24) consists of a tracked armored chassis on top of which is mounted a hydraulically operated turntable carrying two missiles. The launcher can be traversed by 360º with the missiles being elevated up to an angle of 45º on their launcher arms for launching. The vehicle's engine is to the right of the driver with the remainder of the space in the vehicle taken up by the crew and electronics. Hatches for the other crew members are on either side of the missile turntable. The torsion bar suspension consists of seven dual rubber-tired road wheels with the drive sprocket at the front and the idler at the rear, and four track return rollers. The vehicle has an air filtration and overpressure NBC system and an Infrared night vision system for the commander and driver but no amphibious capability."

Taken from Wikipedia, with some small edits

[Maquiladora]

The unit definitely needs to stay in the seige upgrade chain to keep the AI using it, and changing it to a ground missile launcher aswell as SAM will do that, but the name Mobile/TEL isn't very catchy.

How about Mobile Missiles? or Missiles?

[Ekmek]

Rocket Artillery?

[Maquiladora]

Technically I don't know if SAM are still rockets as they're guided, certainly not artillery, and the sprite isn't like rocket artillery at all. It's a shame really as the name is much cooler.

[HuangShang]

TEL is cool to me...


well this is what i think about movespeed:

2	warrior, explorer
1	march infantry
2	mechanized infantry
1	range up to artillery
2	range from TEL
2	mounted
3	tanks

The warrior is more or less meant to be a scout unit already. Since he is the weakest unit in the game lets give him 2 movement points, on the basis that a single person is better at moving around than a group.

Most infantry move 1, and that is set as the measurement for all the other move speeds (so it is our meter). The warrior/scout and then marine/plasmatica/hover (because they are assumed to be mechanized infantry) can move 2.

In the same vane ranged move 1 until the TEL, which because is on a mobile platform instead of pulled by horse and rail, can be 2

Then Mounted units are given 2, which make sense because the horses still need to rest and eat everyday, and in the end wouldn't be any faster than mechanized infantry. We have the elephants that flank and the m.archers that are ranged. Then its the Knight that is ranged and the cavalry that is both.

Totally mechanized units move 3. This is just the tank and its upgrade.

Ship movement is kind of weird. Ironclads have steam engines but they are not as fast as ship of the line? Lets have coracle move 3 and every upgrade add a move and a cargo spot, so troopship is still 6 move and carries 5. Then the same age navy generally moves one less as in the table below.

Cargo heli should move 6 because it already has the advantage of all tile movement. I think planes don't need change.

2	trireme
3	ship of the line (well 4 is ok i guess)
4	ironclad
5	battleship, subs
6	PT, destroyer