Capturing

[bohhy]

I have just one little idea i want to share with you boys.

What if player could somehow capture oponents ( AI ) soldiers and use them as slaves or workers or soldiers etc.

[Mythos_Ruler]

You'll be able to capture female citizens.

[Undo]

Hey nice feature there.

[Justinian]

so the men die and the women are slaves... REALISM !YAY!

[Tycan]

You'll be able to capture female citizens.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Infantry kill female citizens, however Cavalry capture them.

[FirePowa8]

This is going to be awesome.

Infantry kill female citizens

[MrBlack103]

Realistically, shouldn't they rape them first?

Just kidding, that shouldn't be in a game. The kids might learn bad manners...

[Mythos_Ruler]

Mildly amusing, I must admit, but be nice.

[Aurium]

Hi folks,

I'm new here and i don't know if i really can do this, but i want to implement this feature (ticket 997). I was oriented by Leper to start by enabling to capture animals from other players, but we may talk how to do this and what more we can capture in the future.

First step: animal capturing

Any human unity (man, woman, horseman,...) can capture other player animals.

The interface

A button, like the garrison button, called "capture" will appear on all user human units. When clicked, that will work like the "garrison pointer" lighting when over a capturable unity.

Ongoings

The capturer will walk to the animal and pitch a rope. The capturer will fight with the animal by some seconds and then it is owned.

Future: What and how to capture other units

• Buildings
  
  • What exactly: not walls, or towers, or special structures? (see #996) I believe anything can be captured and converted, the problem is only with the "loyalty points" key idea
    
  • Who: Any military unity can capture buildings.
    
  • How: When the building has less then 50% of its hit points, the attacker may switch the attack action to capture, then the loyalty points will be displayed and consumed. The animation is the same as attacking, but the distance must be the same as the sword attack for any capturer -- that means: the capturers can be attacked while they are trying to capture the building. When that achieve 0% of the loyalty points, the ownership is changed to the attacker. When changed, the loyalty points start in 10%. The loyalty points grows up 1 point each second (that may be a lot of time to 100%), only with a garrisoned unity and the build hit points upper 50%.
    
  • Question: How to capture a garrisoned building? While we attack a a building we are attacking the garrisoned units too. They may be killed by some way. Can't be? How difficult that must to be?
    

  [*]Female workers

  • Who: Any military unity. (why not a group of other female workers too?)
    
  • How: The interface is the same as the animal capturing. The animation is the same as attacking, but the distance must be the same as the sword attack for any capturer. The rope do not works here, so the woman can run while her loyalty points are dropping. The loyalty points will grow up 1 point by second, only when she is inside the owner territory.
    

  [*]Male workers

  • Who: Any military unity.
    
  • How: By the same way, described to female workers, but... if this unity is a potential soldier, that can be commanded to fight against the capturer and that will lost the capturing possibility... so a fight will start.
    

  [*]Boats (and ships, that is all the same)

  • Who: Any unity that cam be near enough. On the beach that means any human, on the deep water, any boat.
    
  • How: The logic is the same as capturing a building, but boats may run out or attack. The capture work will not stop even if the boat attacks back.
    

The capturer is unprotected wile trying to capture. That is not bad enough? Did we need a "capturer cooldown" before another capturing?

[Aurium]

Now i remember, we have a special category for animal: dogs. Dogs must have a greeeeeat loyalty points, while others has no loyalty.

Dogs can be converted? We may consider that dogs will fight until dead like soldiers, so that is uncapturable.

[Pedro Falcão]

I think animals should be captured instantly, like AoK's sheeps. As long as no enemy unit comes in range while the animal is alone, the animal will still be yours. And about the dogs, since they're war hounds, they shouldn't be capturable.

[Aurium]

I like that Pedro Falcão! Enemy's animals like sheeps can be captured instantly, if that is out of the range of a human from the owner side.

[kosmo]

I think the capture-button and the rope may be suitable for capturing e.g. elephants, that , while in the corral (?) decrease the cost of further war-elephants. Same with camels and horses.

[quantumstate]

I agree with Pedro's idea for animals. I'm not sure about vision range, that might be too large a distance, but that is a minor detail.

• Buildings
  
  • What exactly: not walls, or towers, or special structures? (see #996) I believe anything can be captured and converted, the problem is only with the "loyalty points" key idea
    
  • Who: Any military unity can capture buildings.
    
  • How: When the building has less then 50% of its hit points, the attacker may switch the attack action to capture, then the loyalty points will be displayed and consumed. The animation is the same as attacking, but the distance must be the same as the sword attack for any capturer -- that means: the capturers can be attacked while they are trying to capture the building. When that achieve 0% of the loyalty points, the ownership is changed to the attacker. When changed, the loyalty points start in 10%. The loyalty points grows up 1 point each second (that may be a lot of time to 100%), only with a garrisoned unity and the build hit points upper 50%.
    
  • Question: How to capture a garrisoned building? While we attack a a building we are attacking the garrisoned units too. They may be killed by some way. Can't be? How difficult that must to be?
    

The original idea is to have capturing as the primary way of non siege units dealing with buildings. This means that capturing should happen with any amount of health.

Loyalty needs to interact with territories, the current damage for out of territory structures should be changed to a loss of loyalty, this is basically capture by the gaia player. Neutral structures within a territory would be gradually captured.

I think a player should be able to prevent loss of loyalty using garrisoning, so you could capture an enemy building and then keep it, even though it is in their territory. I am starting to think that ths is essential because otherwise you have a silly situation where a structure is captured but then you are unable to prevent loss of ownership until you lose control of the structure and then use nearby units to recapture it restarting the whole cycle. Should nearby non-garrisoned units prevent loyalty loss?

One idea I had for capturing is that buildings must switch to a gaia state while being captured. So a structure would be owned by player 1 and have 100% loyalty. Then player 2 comes along with an army and starts the capture process. Loyalty decreases down to 0% at which point the structure becomes neutral, owned by gaia. Now it starts gaining loyalty for player 2 but is still owned by gaia. Until it reaches 100% loyalty when it now belongs to player 2. This would prevent rapid ownership changes between two factions fighting over a structure.

The effect of garrisoning is interesting. One option would be to have garrisoned troops make capturing slower, and have the garrison kicked out when the structure reaches something like 10% loyalty (this happens with health currently). This is the simplest approach.

Otherwise there could be an idea of storming a structure. Units could have a certain storming ability, so there could be specialist units useful for defending or attacking garrisoned structures. The defenders would have some sort of bonus, this could depend on the type of structure as well and even structure health (e.g. use a battering ram to "knock the doors down" and then it becomes easier to capture). This adds quite a lot more complexity to the game play though.

• Female workers
  
  • Who: Any military unity. (why not a group of other female workers too?)
    
  • How: The interface is the same as the animal capturing. The animation is the same as attacking, but the distance must be the same as the sword attack for any capturer. The rope do not works here, so the woman can run while her loyalty points are dropping. The loyalty points will grow up 1 point by second, only when she is inside the owner territory.
    

There will need to be some difference in animation so that ranged units can capture, firing arrows to capture is silly. One question is how to deal with differences in unit speed, should a woman in the process of being captured be slowed down or stopped? Otherwise infantry will have difficulty capturing, though perhaps this is desirable behaviour.

• Male workers
  
  • Who: Any military unity.
    
  • How: By the same way, described to female workers, but... if this unity is a potential soldier, that can be commanded to fight against the capturer and that will lost the capturing possibility... so a fight will start.
    

  [*]Boats (and ships, that is all the same)

  • Who: Any unity that cam be near enough. On the beach that means any human, on the deep water, any boat.
    
  • How: The logic is the same as capturing a building, but boats may run out or attack. The capture work will not stop even if the boat attacks back.
    

The capturer is unprotected wile trying to capture. That is not bad enough? Did we need a "capturer cooldown" before another capturing?

As long as capturing is slow enough I don't think a cooldown would be needed. With the short range of capture an army of sufficient strength should kill attackers trying to capture it. Capturing should only be viable when there is a large difference in strength.

[Aurium]

I think the capture-button and the rope may be suitable for capturing e.g. elephants, that , while in the corral (?) decrease the cost of further war-elephants. Same with camels and horses.

Kosmo, you mean gaia animals? Training this animals is a nice idea, but we must split this to another track ticket and another forum topic.

Anyway... I believe some gaia animals must be capturable, but they must have "wild points" to be dropped. What you think?

[kosmo]

I refered to http://trac.wildfire...A_Carthaginians

• Name: Roundup
  
• History: Not unlike the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa was known as ‘horse country’, capable of producing up to 100,000 new mounts each year. It was also the home of the North African Forest Elephant.
  
• Effect: Horses or elephants can be captured in the wild and placed in the Corral. Unlike normal corralled animals that generate food, the corralled Horse and Elephant functions similarly to a relic as in AoK. As long as it/they remain(s) in the Corral, the resource cost of training horse-mounted units (cavalry) or War Elephant Super Units is reduced by a fixed amount of –5% per animal corralled appropriate to kind
  

and for the persians

• Name: Ability to Corral Camels and Horses.
  
• History: Horses were of great importance to the Achaemenids, especially in the eastern provinces. Camels, as beasts of burden, were also prized.
  
• Effect: Camels and horses can be captured in the wild and placed in the Corral. Unlike normal corralled animals, which generate food, the Corralled Camel/Horse? functions similarly to a relic. As long as it remains in the Corral, the resource cost of training camel-mounted units (the Trader, specifically) or horse-mounted units (as appropriate) is reduced by a fixed amount.
  

Don't know if this is outdated, though^^

Edited December 24, 2012 by kosmo

[Pedro Falcão]

According to Michael, only cavalry should capture women, while infantry would just kill them.

Yes, elephants, camels and horses may be leashed to a stable, but citizens should be able to kill elephants for food, too.

I'd suggest a cap for this training cost reductions, it makes no sense to train horsemen for free, they need the armor, weapons, riders and the food, too, not just the mounts.

About buildings, i think it doesn't make sense to to have houses being captured the conventional way. I mean, it would be extremely messy to have a bunch of houses being captured around, not to say annoying for the owner to have the population limit varying so often, it would be more acceptable if they could only be captured by other buildings in range.

[Aurium]

I agree with Pedro's idea for animals. I'm not sure about vision range, that might be too large a distance, but that is a minor detail.

Perhaps we must set an animal attention radius where no enemy can capture while it has a owner inside. We may understand this like an area where the animal can accept commands that will protect it from a capturer.

(...)

The original idea is to have capturing as the primary way of non siege units dealing with buildings. This means that capturing should happen with any amount of health.

That is ok to me!

Loyalty needs to interact with territories, the current damage for out of territory structures should be changed to a loss of loyalty, this is basically capture by the gaia player. Neutral structures within a territory would be gradually captured.

Great!

I think a player should be able to prevent loss of loyalty using garrisoning, so you could capture an enemy building and then keep it, even though it is in their territory. I am starting to think that ths is essential because otherwise you have a silly situation where a structure is captured but then you are unable to prevent loss of ownership until you lose control of the structure and then use nearby units to recapture it restarting the whole cycle.

Ok...

Should nearby non-garrisoned units prevent loyalty loss?

Please, can you clarify this question?

One idea I had for capturing is that buildings must switch to a gaia state while being captured. So a structure would be owned by player 1 and have 100% loyalty. Then player 2 comes along with an army and starts the capture process. Loyalty decreases down to 0% at which point the structure becomes neutral, owned by gaia. Now it starts gaining loyalty for player 2 but is still owned by gaia. Until it reaches 100% loyalty when it now belongs to player 2. This would prevent rapid ownership changes between two factions fighting over a structure.

I don't like that. That does not represent a common real capturing. That is done by violence, with no neutral stage. The building is owned by player 1, the player 2 start the capturing process, than that becomes owned by player 2 when that loses the resistance forces. Garrisoning and protecting captured is the way to prevent rapid ownership changes.

The effect of garrisoning is interesting. One option would be to have garrisoned troops make capturing slower, and have the garrison kicked out when the structure reaches something like 10% loyalty (this happens with health currently). This is the simplest approach.

Nice approach! I believe the kick must happens only when the loyalty becomes 0. Why kick if there still loyal?

Otherwise there could be an idea of storming a structure. Units could have a certain storming ability, so there could be specialist units useful for defending or attacking garrisoned structures. The defenders would have some sort of bonus, this could depend on the type of structure as well and even structure health (e.g. use a battering ram to "knock the doors down" and then it becomes easier to capture). This adds quite a lot more complexity to the game play though.

Cool!

(...)

There will need to be some difference in animation so that ranged units can capture, firing arrows to capture is silly.

Yeah... How about hands trying to catch the female?

One question is how to deal with differences in unit speed, should a woman in the process of being captured be slowed down or stopped? Otherwise infantry will have difficulty capturing, though perhaps this is desirable behaviour.

Looks like a desirable behaviour.

(...)

As long as capturing is slow enough I don't think a cooldown would be needed. With the short range of capture an army of sufficient strength should kill attackers trying to capture it. Capturing should only be viable when there is a large difference in strength.

Yes!

[kosmo]

Yes, elephants, camels and horses may be leashed to a stable, but citizens should be able to kill elephants for food, too.

Yes, so I think it would be a possibility to make a special capture-button, since there won't be that many animals that get captured, i guess.

I'd suggest a cap for this training cost reductions, it makes no sense to train horsemen for free, they need the armor, weapons, riders and the food, too, not just the mounts.

I think I've read somewhere something like 25% bonus cap^^

[quantumstate]

Perhaps we must set an animal attention radius where no enemy can capture while it has a owner inside. We may understand this like an area where the animal can accept commands that will protect it from a capturer.

Yes, that is what I was thinking.

Please, can you clarify this question?

This is linked with capturing structures within enemy territory. Since structures will by default lose loyalty when not in the owners territory, captured enemy structures would by default lose loyalty as soon as they are captured. This is undesirable for the reasons given above, since the player has the units who can capture the building those units must logically be able to prevent the captured building from reverting to the former owner. I think garrisoning should definitely do this but am unsure if non garrisoned units should also have this effect as long as they are within a certain radius.

I don't like that. That does not represent a common real capturing. That is done by violence, with no neutral stage. The building is owned by player 1, the player 2 start the capturing process, than that becomes owned by player 2 when that loses the resistance forces. Garrisoning and protecting captured is the way to prevent rapid ownership changes.

This is a fair point, I am still not completely convinced though. There are quite a few details to work out in this section. What loyalty should a newly captured building have? What happens if multiple players are contesting a structure?

My proposal is how Company of Heroes works, immediately flipping is how C&C Generals does it. The gaia ownership signifies contested ownership where neither player has control over the structure because they are fighting for it. I think how you say matches more closely with the original design for this though.

Nice approach! I believe the kick must happens only when the loyalty becomes 0. Why kick if there still loyal?

The kick point is fairly arbitrary, I guess 0% makes sense. I was just copying the health one which kicks earlier so that the building doesn't fall down on top of the units, but for loyalty that doesn't apply.

I think I've read somewhere something like 25% bonus cap^^

I like systems of diminishing returns. e.g. 5 captured camels give a 10% reduction, 10 give a 15% reduction, 15 give a 17.5% reduction etc. This gives a bonus cap of 20% (or whatever we choose) but additional captures always mean something.

[Pureon]

My proposal is how Company of Heroes works, immediately flipping is how C&C Generals does it. The gaia ownership signifies contested ownership where neither player has control over the structure because they are fighting for it.

I really like the way capturing works in Company of Heroes, and I wouldn't mind seeing that neutral phase added into our capturing either. When loyalty reaches 100% the gaia unit converts to the player.

And as in Company of Heroes, we could even have capturable siege weapons that turn gaia when almost destroyed.

[Pedro Falcão]

The "neutral" state of which Jonathan speaks about was already proposed before (in fact i myself proposed it once). Let's call it "contested", instead of 'neutral' and Ta-Da: it makes much more sense! Ha ha!

[k776]

I wrote a long reply but my browser went backward and erased it :-@ So I'll be quicker this time.

Sheep and goats auto converted. Vision range based on the sheeps, not the capturing unit. And when multiple players are withing range of the sheep, capturing takes into account total unit power/strength, and when that is equal, total unit count, and when that is equal, the first player to get to the sheep.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Originally, the idea was that only cavalry would be able to capture female citizens, but that doesn't mean for the sake of simplicity that this needs to remain so. For simplicity's sake, we could just make any military unit be able to capture female citizens. I have no problem with that.

With all the capture ideas, I think the simplest ways are most attractive. I proposed that soldiers should capture buildings by their default behavior because to me it seems the simplest way for the player. Using a separate Loyalty stat instead of using Health for capturing separates the two behaviors (capturing vs. attack) and makes most intuitive sense to the player.

Animals, like sheep, goats, cattle, etc., would have very little Loyalty, to the point that capturing is nearly instantaneous and not really necessary to even display the Loyalty bar in their UI. Buildings (and perhaps female citizens, elephants, etc.) would have considerably more and would need to display the Loyalty bar in their UI panels. This is fine, since we already have space for it.