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Ulfilas

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Everything posted by Ulfilas

  1. Archer and ranged Unit Balancing idea: When a unit is adjacent to an intact tree, increase its armor rating versus ranged damage. In this way, a band of archers could be attacked from a forest
  2. One thing you could do, which could apply to combat for all units, is to make a new control for units, such that they have a 'preferred target type'. So select a unit. Click a little icon, similar to the coins for the trade icon. A dialog pops up, with 5 radio buttons: ()swordsman ()spearmen ()archers ()cavalry ()siege If more than one unit is in attack range of the unit, then the closest unit of the preferred type is attacked. So for example, you could set your spearmen to preferentially attack cavalry in range, etc
  3. The number one impediment to harassing an opponent in early game is that the opponent can just throw 20 units into the town center, and have a virtually indestructible (at that time) shelter, which in turn fires out arrows killing off the enemy. The real reason the fighting takes place after the first five minutes is because without enough resources, a town center is practically invulnerable. In my opinion, the town center should hold no more than ten units.
  4. So, perhaps you have seen the show 'The Vikings', where Floki through great effort created the siege towers that the Vikings used to attack Paris. Now these great wooden contraptions, naturally, the Parisians threw all manner of things at, and of course they were hideously damaged. Now, when moving the pristine and freshly built siege towers, they were moved efficiently; but when the mechanisms are damaged, axles broken, wheels chipped, etc etc, they do not move and work as efficiently, hence the slower speed. Obviously, then, it makes sense to have a damaged siege engine move slower. Now, suppose we consider the living being. Sure, a highly injured person moves slower. However, a person with a simple wound would probably not move slower, especially not in the short term. Get cut on the arm, you are still under an adrenal rush and running full speed. With a slight wound, one might even move faster (e.g. a Berserker). The concept of slowing someone down as a linear function of their hitpoints does not then make sense. However, slowing someone down, perhaps as a function of their hitpoints if they go under some small fraction of their hitpoints, could make sense, and in fact would go along with the idea of the tactic of wounding someone to slow down a larger force. I think for playability, if a living unit goes under 1/4 of its hitpoints, its speed should be 2/3 of normal. A non-living siege unit should have its speed be (current hp / max hp)*max speed
  5. Here is an idea to help balance the Siege Engines: If any non-living siege engine gets down to 50% of its hitpoints or less, its speed halves, or, even better, its speed becomes multiplied times the fraction of its current hitpoints divided by its maximum hitpoints. Siege engines in perfect shape go at regular speed; any injury and they get out of step
  6. That was why I suggested the already existing Caravan unit. Since the caravan unit is slow and vulnerable it makes a good symbolic supply source and is already in the game. Perhaps the caravan itself could have a very large food capacity, which itself is drained as a marching army feeds off of it, which would add some realism, and perhaps it could be captured by an opposing side if so;
  7. In terms of playability of the game, in addition to the realism- here are the matters it addresses: 1) The ability to make an army of 200-300 soldiers and wipe it from corner to corner of the map. Let it sit in the middle of the map for an hour. In real life there would be an immense cost to such an army, and there should be in the game as well, even if it is 'annoying' 2) If you have such an immense army, the requirement to have food gives an additional level of strategy that a clever opponent could exploit. For example, your enemy spams up a 300 unit army with their fast click fingers, then go out and attack you; you send a small force around the back, find their undefended supply train and attack it, and their giant army begins to starve as they surround your city center. Cleverness over click fingers. I like it. Obviously people who's play strategy is spam up a 300 unit army before the enemy does would find it 'annoying'
  8. Any major army had to worry about supply lines. If you have an army of 1,000 people and you pass through a village with 30 people, chances are they do not have enough food to feed you, even if they stuck around and let you torture them into telling you where their food stores are Here is a quick web search on the matter: http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/novdec08/spplyline_war.html
  9. That's true, when the living's food bar drops to 0, if they are carrying food units, then deplete a unit of food from their inventory each second (game clock) in lieu of starvation/hitpoint drop; with that in mind, you could prepare to make a raid by putting food in your citizen's inventory, then sending them out on the raid;
  10. Sorry, I had posted this topic in the wrong forum and just realized it. Moderator edit: Merged the two topics, made sure was in the correct sub-forum, and removed duplicate post.
  11. Suppose each living unit had a 'food bar'. Suppose that food bar, when full, was at '24' (or '48' for mounted units). Imagine that each moment that the citizen is within the effective radius of a friendly 1) home, 2) drop-point or 3) caravan, that food bar would be maintained or raised (coming). Imagine that as that citizen leaves such a radius earlier mentioned, for each second the citizen is away from the food radius, the 'food' level drops by 1 point. Imagine further, than once the food level drops to 0 points, the unit 'starves'. For each second starving, the unit loses 1 hitpoint. Imagine that when the unit reaches 1 hitpoint, and is starving, the unit either reverts to Gaia or dies. Why is this significant? One of the main challenges in historic battles was feeding an army on the go. Battles could be won by attacking a supply chain. A castle could be defended largely by outlasting the stomachs of the attackers. I think it would bring a valuable and interesting twist to the game.
  12. -- for balance : 1) Citizen soldiers can should either be in economic mode or weaponized mode. In economic mode they can gather or build, but if immediately are forced into combat they are limited to melee nd slightly better than a Spartan woman at fighting. To change to weaponized mode, where they have their full combat strength, they must first vist a house or city center and drop anything they are carrying (wood, food etc). This simulates them 'arming up', or if they carry nothing then they can simply visit a house to 'arm up'. 2) Citizen soldiers in economic mode should move 10% faster than their weaponized counterpart 3) In weaponized mode, citizen soldiers have a 'food bar' which slowly decreases when away from the aura of house, civ center, barracks. When the food bar drops to zero the citizen soldier reverts to economic mode and must visit a house / civ center to reenter weaponized mode. Being within the aura of a friendly caravan shiould also reset the food bar. 4) City centers should no longer fire arrows. Instead, the city center should provide an armor bonus to all freindly units in its aura. In this way the village level can also see invasion (currently it is insane to attack a civ center at the village phase, which is highly unihistoric)
  13. In response to Angel above, there are a few things that can move the game away from just resource spamming. 1) the computer can store a rich number for each unit in terms of combat effectiveness, not just basic / skilled / elite. If it can store an 8 bit number, the higher the 8 bit number, the better fighter the unit is. The level (basic/skilled/elite) should only be a summary to help the human get a rough idea of the skill of the warrior. Then an army can have a true diversity of many skilled warriors. 2) In order for units to switch to combat (weaponized) mode from worker mode, must be within a certain radius of a house or city center. If gathering wood miles from a city center it should not be possible to switch to weaponized mode. 3) when not in weaponized mode the combat ability of a citizen soldier should be slightly greater than a Spartan woman and strictly melee based 4) town halls provide an unrealistically high level of protection. Rather than allowing units to go into a town hall, when in the aura of a town hall allow friendlier units to simply have a higher armor rating as if that town hall were helping to protect them. Do not have town halls automatically fire arrows. In this way an attacking army at least has the basic ability to defeat an early enemy and the town hall does not become a pointless target at the village stage 5) Another related idea -- when citizen soldiers are initially weaponized, at a house / civ center, they get a full 'food counter'. That food counter slowly drops. If it drops to 0, the soldier reverts to an un-weaponized soldier (as described above). The food counter can be refilled by simply being in the aura of a friendly/allied house/civ center/ trade caravan/ trireme... In that fashion it becomes expensive to conduct an extensive invasion, as reflects reality 6) Finally, an 'unweaponized' citizen soldier should move slightly fastert than their weaponized counterpart, to simulate the effect of 'they dropped their arms and ran'
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