Capturing

[oshron]

you Dont Forget about Temples and Big Structures can be defending like a Fort.

in 70 year AD Romans Fighting into the Sacred Temple with Rebels.

http://www.preterist...e_military.html

http://www.preteristarchive.com/Books/pdf/Josephus/2002_spilsbury_josephus-temple.pdf

while that's true, i don't think there are many other cases, and typical temples and other such buildings wouldn't be put in strategic places or fortified against attacks

I disagree, oshron. I think the forts, civ centers, towers, etc. are the ones that MUST be capturable, for they are fortified, thus are immune to most of normal attacks, and yet they can kill. So instead of damaging the buildings, the soldiers are capturing it. Of course it will take a very long time for the building to be completely captured (you start capturing, when loyalty reaches zero, it turns neutral, stops all actions, expels everyone inside and start channeling back the loyalty, but to the side of the one who's capturing) and maybe some penalty should be added for the captured buildings even when they're totally captured.

Minor buildings like houses, mills, farms, docks and corrals, though, could be destroyed by normal soldiers, for they had a large percentage of their structure made of wood, and fire could burn the wood and weaken the other parts of the structure. If the player doesn't want them to be destroyed, then capture the civic center for it has the ability of capturing the minor buildings. This of course, is my idea of the capturing feature, i have no idea of how the team is planning it to be.

i guess my point was more that it would be less-productive to try and capture a fortress or tower thats shooting arrows or pouring boiling oil down on you when there are other, much more tempting objectives that arent trying to kill you. basically, have your siege knock down the gate from afar, have your army swarm in to engage the enemy's forces while your siege continue to attack fortifications, and once their defenses are gone and the army routed, your free to capture the important buildings and construct your own fortifications. again, the reasoning is basically that the defensive structures are manned from within and thus its less-likely for a group of soldiers to have as easy a time capturing a civilian structure like a house or a temple (which would be occupied by common citizens, not soldiers, and an unarmed priesthood, respectively) or even a civic center--which for gameplay purposes wuold likely be firing arrows at you like in AOK--the benefits of capturing it as opposed to destroying it would outweigh the risks of losing a few soldiers while youre capturing it. keep in mind that, when i say a tower or fortress would be manned, i don't mean that you have to garrison some of your soldiers in it, but that the people manning the defenses would (symbolically) come with the tower

The lower the hp of the building the faster it loses loyalty.

Wonders should be incapturable, as well as some special buildings.

agreed. realistically, it would arguably be better for your peoples' morale to destroy a Wonder as opposed to capturing it (except for story purposes; ive mentioned in the thread about Wonders and which ones could be included that i think there should be special editor-only versions of every Wonder that have unique powers, and these ones would be the ones that can be captured)

When you capture an enemy barracks, can you make their units or your own in that barracks?

Since you only capture the building and the tools, but the materials and men are still your own, it wouldn't make sense to be able to train foreign units there...

also agreed.

[Lion.Kanzen]

but the Temples its a place to safe and local Morale(thiers goods) its important for Civic Pride same Wonders.

Barrack must be gain some for Capturing.. Metal?

, and must be Special Building that be Capturable, building other structure in one space, of that building

http://youtu.be/6F9teVRmE_M

Many of you speak about Space for Civic Centre like AOM wheere put your Town Center over settlement.

that are called or we called that way : "Capture Gaia Buildig".

In AOE III and Warcraft III if you defeat Guardian can hold a Building, if can stay close.

Edited January 12, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[Grim_Fendango]

IMO I generally found the unit conversion in AOK to be a bit of a waste of time(unless of course you really wanted to annoy someone). Having units turn to your alegiance on the field adds a whole new aspect to the micro management side of combat, because part of the spoils( the new slaves) are killable and to reap the real benifts they need to be brought into safety. Such tasks I found often to distract me from the battle tactics at play and thus lessoning my enjoyment of the battle.

Taking a note from the Total War series, slaves were meerly an after thought(it was a choice at the end given). I'm not suggesting that a choice is required but rather, make slaves feel like a reward and less like a choor when you get them. I would prefer that the slaves be sent back to the capital, where they can be put to work. In The Way of Kings a book by Brandon Sanderson, slaves that came from war were loaded up into carivans(more like wagons with a big people cage on it) and sent to where they would be used(i.e the capital). I'm not a hystery guru, but can you see what I'm getting at here? Certain civs were more favourable of slavery than others, so this benefit of war could vary between civs, rather than just simply being a stock standard feature to fascilitate more balancing.

To make slaves more autimated to me makes sence also on a psychological level also because, in slavery being removed from your homeland in a sense is like having a great part of your identity removed. To players it would really only be a subconciouse thing but would give the game a more consistent and realistic tone. On that note having a converted slave individually controllable would be inconsistent with the whole identity having been removed thing. Perhaps employing a slave driver unit that controlls a groupe of slaves would be a better approach. So a unit from your civ - that you created could exhibit dominance and controll over a captured unit. In that context a slave would not fit into the citisen catagory and as such would not contribute to the pop count. However, I do suggest that some sort of slave population management system would need to be instigated where slave capacity is dictated by the number of slavedriver units you have.

Lastly you guys have mentioned, what would happen if a slave did turn on you. I'd like to think that this would usually happen in the event that a slave groupes slave driver was killed, and as a result the group would then revolt. Though Im not suggesting that they return to their long lost home land, but rather they become wild hostile like in behaviour and simply attack anything they can see until they die. No one ever said slavery would be always fine and dandy. Perhaps the effect of such an event could be lessoned with tech upgrades. But could you imagine say if you had all your slave drivers working a forrest, and then an enemy cavalry archer killed one slave driver, it could cause a dominoe effect resulting in a multitude of slaves resulting and killing anything they can see. If the numbers were right you could just about whipe your self out. This could give slave keeping a bit more of a risk reward sort of feel . I mean if you could garuntee the safety of your slaves(e.g., with walls) then perhaps you would feel confident on having a 40: 60 slave to citisen ratio.

I think slavery is a verry interesting concept that I have not really seen in a lot of games. But you should be thinking of ways to use its premise to explore new and interesting gameplay concepts, that give a more unique feel to the game experience. I mean slavery not only would increase the management tactics, but enemies could verry much incorporate this into their attack stratagies.

Yep, those are just some of my thoughts. I'm just starting my second year of my bachelores of Software Engineering at uni, so I really don't have a lot of time for games anymore. But AoK was a classic. Anyway this would require a substantial overhaul to the game mechanics, but I think it would be totally worth it.

PS: Building capturing doesn't really flow well with the whole territories thing. Just sayin'.

PPS: These are just ideas, not gospel, feel free to fill in the blanks.

PPPS: Sorry this is poor form. But yes the slave driver I was thinking of was the guy wearing the mask with the big whip.

Edited January 14, 2013 by Grim_Fendango

[sanderd17]

i think i mentioned it before, but defensive structures should be exempt from capture on the reasoning that, unlike a civilian structure such as a house, a market, or even a barracks, the defensive structures would have soldiers actively stationed in them who are defending it from within. while, realistically, a group of invading soldiers would probably do everything they could to break down the door and capture a fort or a tower for their own use, that's pretty complicated in-game, so its just easier to require the player to topple defensive structures (towers, fortresses, gates), capture the rest of the town around them, and then build their own fortifications. as for barracks being "non-military" buildings even though they produce military units, you could reason that all of the soldiers stationed in there (symbolically) are out in the field fighting rather than manning any defenses and anyone who IS in the barracks is an old, retired officer who just has a desk job. y'know, a paper pusher. after all, the real-world Secretary of Defense may have been a soldier, but he doesn't actively go out into the field to fight when a war arises, and in the context of gameplay, such a thing would be unnecessary; 0AD is a military RTS focusing on macromanagement, so forcing the player to have to think exceptionally hard about such things would just be cruel. actions like that would be relegated to in-game cinematics and the plot of campaign missions rather than regular gameplay, and thats all we're currently talking about, really

I agree with this. In any way, when a fortress or other defensive building will be captured by the enemy, I would just destroy it myself, right before it's captured. Better nobody have it than the enemy.

I thought this also happened in real life, and it would be easy to do in the game too.

If the problem is that destroying a building without siege engines is too hard, maybe it should be easier to create siege engines (like in town phase, you can create simple siege engines). Now it indeed asks a lot to create a siege engine. You need to advance to city stage and build a fortress (=10 buildings + 3000 extra resources) just to start creating a siege engine.

[historic_bruno]

I agree with this. In any way, when a fortress or other defensive building will be captured by the enemy, I would just destroy it myself, right before it's captured. Better nobody have it than the enemy.

Destroying your buildings is a drastic measure and not usually desirable since you'll also lose big chunks of territory, better to fight to the end. To solve the "exploit"/flaw you mention, what if we made it so that a player can't destroy their own buildings if loyalty is changing, or recently changed? It makes some kind of logical sense, if you're not fully in control of the building, how could you manage to destroy it?

[idanwin]

unless you had some c4 ... or barrels of gun powder ...

destroying a building should take time. And 'deconstructing' would be a better verb. And maybe we could add something which makes the deconstruction rate slow down when loyalty is changing so that the enemy can take over the building before it gets deconstructed entirely.

Imagine a case where you want to remove a badly placed building, but an enemy unit comes into its vicinity. In this case you don't want to not be able to destroy the building, it would just slow down a bit.

[oshron]

Destroying your buildings is a drastic measure and not usually desirable since you'll also lose big chunks of territory, better to fight to the end. To solve the "exploit"/flaw you mention, what if we made it so that a player can't destroy their own buildings if loyalty is changing, or recently changed? It makes some kind of logical sense, if you're not fully in control of the building, how could you manage to destroy it?

that makes quite alot of sense; i say go for it

unless you had some c4 ... or barrels of gun powder ...

destroying a building should take time. And 'deconstructing' would be a better verb. And maybe we could add something which makes the deconstruction rate slow down when loyalty is changing so that the enemy can take over the building before it gets deconstructed entirely.

Imagine a case where you want to remove a badly placed building, but an enemy unit comes into its vicinity. In this case you don't want to not be able to destroy the building, it would just slow down a bit.

what's meant is the ability, as in most other RTSs, to simply click "delete" and instantly destroy your own building or unit

[Lion.Kanzen]

in my last game session uses, Wololo cheat for, use an ally units[Note: i set that ally without an AI ] was very interesting Fuse Persian and Roman in a unique force.

if you dont set AI a ally the units can be, capturings instantly to yours own faction if you send a unit to capturing with unit´s LOS.

[Lion.Kanzen]

We need this one for A17? I hope the answer is yes. This brings a lot of gameplay.

[sanderd17]

Some thoughts about capturing

Units should be able to actively capture enemy buildings. Instead of the attack they now do.

I propose the following game mechanics, these should work for games with or without teams, and even with asymmetric alliances.

Capturable component

Capturable buildings have a capturable component, similar to health. By default, all buildings start with a number of capture points, assigned to the owner. For example, a fortress belonging to player 1, starts with 5000 capture points for player 1, and none for the other players (in the example there are 3 players)

Cp: [5000, 0, 0]

When player 2 wants to capture the building, he tasks units to capture it (equal to the attack command, as buildings shouldn't be attackable by units). Bit per bit, the capture points are shifted towards the second player

Cp: [5000, 0, 0] > [4000, 1000, 0] > [3000, 2000, 0] > [2000, 3000, 0] > ...

Now say player 1 stops player 2 from completing the capture (f.e. by killing all units that are capturing) before the capture is completed, then the capture points distribution stops changing. There are some different scenarios that can happen now.

If player 3 comes along, and also tries to capture the building. Say player 2 and 3 aren't allies, then player 3 takes capture points proportionally to the existing distribution.

Cp: [2000, 3000, 0] > [1600, 2400, 1000] > [1200, 1800, 2000] > [800, 1200, 3000] > [400, 600, 4000] > [0, 0, 5000]

When all capture of the owner reach 0, player 3 owns the building.

On the other hand, if player 2 and 3 were allied, then player 3 would only take capture points from player 1 like this

Cp: [2000, 3000, 0] > [1000, 3000, 1000] > [0, 3000, 2000]

At that point, the owner has no capture points left, and thus loses the building. The owner should lose the building to who did most work to capture it, in this case, the building gets owned by player 2. Selecting on who did the latest capture operation isn't opportune, as captures can happen simultaneously, so the exact switch point can be rather arbitrary.

The owner could also chose to re-win capture points even if the building wasn't completely captured. This is done in the same way as just capturing other buildings.

Cp: [2000, 3000, 0] > [3000, 2000, 0] > [4000, 1000, 0] > [5000, 0, 0]

Note: I didn't consider Gaia in this context, Gaia buildings are possible, and players should be able to capture from Gaia, so Gaia should simply be player 0 here

Statistics

Some sort of armour (like in the attack) isn't needed. There's only one way to capture a building, so there's no need to balance the difference with different armour stats. On the other hand, the units will need a separate capture attack, with all details a normal attack has (repeat time, amount of capture points, ...).

Effect of garrisoning on capturing

Garrisoning should probably help defending the building. I think each garrisoned unit should act like it's constantly re-winning capture points for that building.

Keeping siege engines useful

Of course, capturing is all neat, but there must be a way to keep siege engines useful. Here I see two possible possibilities. But are based on the principle that siege engines harm the building in a way that makes it easier to capture.

For the first possibility, siege engines attack like normal, reducing the health of the building. But the health of the building also relates to how vulnerable it is for captures. F.e. if the building is only at half the health, it becomes double as easy to capture the building. This takes the "harming makes it easier to capture" thing pretty much literally. However, it might make the UI more difficult (having health and capture points for buildings), and it might also make it more difficult to understand and balance. A different result would be that players can capture each others buildings more frequently. If one player damages the building to capture it, it will stay damaged for until the reparation, making it easier for a different player to capture it again. Thus this could result in a more vivid gameplay.

For the second possibility, siege engines don't attack to demolish, but instead have very strong capture stats. This could fully eliminate the need of a health component for buildings. It could make the UI cleaner and easier to understand, which also means easier to balance. It could also make translations easier (translating health is really hard when it counts for buildings too IMO). The drawback is that it would probably break the AI harder than the other possibility. As the AI wouldn't be able to check health of buildings anymore. However, such a major gameplay change is expected to need AI modifications anyway.

With the second choice however, when re-winning capture points of your own buildings, it would look silly to use siege engines for that (like you're demolishing your own building). So it should be possible to limit siege engines from capturing on buildings you own, and there should probably also be possible to give a bonus to other units, so the lack of siege usage can be compensated.

Keeping captured buildings useful

Captured buildings should stay useful to some degree, however, they shouldn't allow you to virtually switch civilisations (like getting the sudden ability to reconstruct the entire enemy civ from one captured building). So I propose the following:

• Buildings should still be able to produce all units they can produce. This reflects that different civilisations often used concurred civilisations in their own army, and of course, concurred people would work for the concurror. A possible exception to this are the heroes. Heroes should probably stick with the right civ. Although there are also stories of heroes who changed alliances.
• Units should only be able to build buildings from their own civilisation. So if you create a soldier from a captured CC, you won't be able to use that soldier to build a fortress of the enemy.
• Technologies on captured buildings should be completely disabled. First of all this avoids technical problems where different techs are used for the same purpose (f.e. the Athenian civ has a special town phase tech, and you shouldn't be able to research the town phase twice). But it also reflects the history that many civs stopped developing new technologies when they were concurred. The drawback is that this makes the blacksmith useless as captured building, but that's only a very small issue IMO.
• All the other things (attack, population bonus, the ability to drop resources, ...) should transfer directly to the new owners.

Destroying buildings

Destroying buildings should still be possible (f.e. you reached the tower limit, and you want to build more towers towards the enemy). However, it shouldn't be possible to destroy a building right before it's captured. So I propose only if the owner of the building also holds the majority of capture points, he would be able to destroy the building

GUI

For the GUI, I see it similar to the health bar, but instead of using a green-red bar, the bar should be divided in a number of parts, showing the playercolour partitions instead.

As the numbers are also important, they should be showed too in some way, however, I'm not sure if all numbers are needed. It might be enough to show the capture points you have on the building, and which player has the most capture points on the building (so which player will be the next owner if the owner is defeated). That makes it easier than showing an array that can possibly be 9 numbers long, while it still gives you enough information to play the game I think.

So, tell me what you think of it, I'm wondering if you consider this a good concept or not.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Ok this fine but what about capture units?

[sanderd17]

I thought an agreement was reached on the difference between capturing (active) and converting (passive).

Units are too cheap and too easy to create to capture with a command. So this is only about capturing buildings.

[Wijitmaker]

This discussion jogs my memory from over 10 years ago. Here is what was originally specified. This concept was largely taken from Westwood studio's model of how entities transfer ownership (Command and Conquer - I can't see this video from work, but I think it will show it:

)

I'm not sure if all can see these links so I'll cut and paste the contents:

http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=699

CAPTURING FEMALE CITIZENS

1. INITIATING CAPTURE

To initiate the capture sequence, click a Cavalry Citizen Soldier, then activate his Capture action (the same command used to capture buildings), and right-click the intended female unit target.

2. FEMALE REACTION

The female unit has a relatively long LOS, so she is generally aware of her surroundings, and has a "flight response" wherein she will attempt to garrison in the nearest available building if a unit attempts to capture or harm her.

3. HOLD PERIOD

If the capturing cavalry manages to place himself adjacent to her, she will be held in place for a period of 5 seconds (which simulates getting her onto his mount to be carried off).

During this period she cannot perform any action, nor can the capturing unit defend himself, and if attacked must "release her" (cancel the Capture command by giving him another action) in order to defend himself.

Once the hold period has elapsed, the player acquires full control of the Female Citizen.

4. CANCELLING CAPTURE

If the Capture command is cancelled, the enemy will regain control of the Female Citizen, and she may flee and thus he will lose his quarry.

5. CAPTURING BENEFITS

1. A free econ worker, capable of farming, husbandry, and enhancing the productivity of male econ workers.
2. Captured Female Citizens are not affected by the player's population cap. Therefore, through capturing Female Citizens, the player's Population Limit can exceed its maximum.

http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=742

CAPTURING ENEMY BUILDINGS

Capturing an enemy building replaces the building with the equivalent class for the player's civilisation. It does not allow the player to research another civilisation's technologies or train units that are unavailable to the player's civilisation.

Special Buildings, that are unique to a civilisation, cannot be captured. Some buildings, such as walls and towers, do not allow a player to build other buildings near to them. Such buildings also cannot be captured but must be destroyed. Allied buildings cannot be captured.

a] A building cannot be captured or destroyed if it contains garrisoned units, since garrisoned units will suffer all damage before the building itself can be harmed. All garrisoned units must therefore first be killed before the building can be captured.

b] The capture sequence is initiated by giving the Capture command to a group of Citizen Soldier units (Infantry or Cavalry).

c] The necessary number of units will then move adjacent to the building and stand immobilised for a period of time until the capture is complete. Conversion time = Building Footprint Width x 10. i.e.
House (2x2): 2 units for 20 seconds.
Fortress (5x5): 5 units for 50 seconds.

d] As capturing units are immobilised for the specified period, it may behoove the player to have other units in the immediate area to protect them during the process of capture. If a group has been issued the command to Capture, the appropriate number of units will "detach" themselves for that purpose while the rest of the group stands by in the immediate area on Defend stance.

e] Once the Capture sequence has completed the Building conversion, the capturing units revert to their former condition and the building is now replaced with the player's equivalent. The building may now be repaired to bring it up to full functionality if it has suffered damage during the attack.

Also an interesting discussion that we used to have as part of the design FAQ (Ken Wood was one of the original game designer):

*How can you have capturing females in the game? That's so sexist!*

Quoted from Ken (with substantial summarisation):
First, I take full personal responsibility for having come up with the idea as one of my very first for the game a couple years ago. I will say that in more than six decades I have loved, admired, and respected women, so my intent was never to demean them... rather to do something with the 'female character' that has never been done before in an RTS game to my knowledge.

The concept can easily be misconstrued as politically incorrect, a slur against womanhood. However, the reason she can be captured is because the Female Citizen (notably, she has full citizenship rights) is a VALUABLE asset in the game.

Recalling that she lived some 2,000 years ago and is in part based upon my experience in real life as it continues even today, these are some of her attributes, she is as are all women a complex 'personality':

"Women's work is never done" (back then, women did a full day's work on the farm like the men, but also without complaint had to feed the family, look after the children, etc). She 'works harder' at economic tasks she can be assigned to than her male counterparts, the Citizen Soldiers (who are a combination of economic and military units).

In performing them, she accomplishes more than the men do. Put her to farming and she brings in more crop. Put her to animal husbandry chores and she brings in more milk. She can also build and repair the Farm Centre, Housing, and Civ Centres as might be required (doesn't perform better, but carries her weight).

2. Represents the sense of 'family' in the game (so the game is not dominated by male units). She is attractive (as much as that's possible in an itty-bitty sprite) but in no way prurient, as it's a fact that the majority of game players are male.

3. Male units will try to 'impress' her when she is around. When she is within LOS of one (or more) male units performing an economic task, they will work as hard as she does, and are more productive than they otherwise would be.

Not only is it historical, but human nature at work. She doesn't even have to work at the task herself; she only has to stand nearby male units cutting wood, or mining, and they will speed up their work.

4. She is valuable, and therefore desireable. She cannot attack, and so you'll need to protect your womenfolk from other civs trying to capitalise on her value. It isn't easy, but she can be captured by another civ and 'assimilated' into the population (probably getting married, raising kids, like women did and do). She becomes a fully-fledged citizen of that civilisation (certainly not a slave).

5. Captured Female Citizens don't count towards your population limit. They don't count towards your population limit (taking up positions that could be used by your own units), and so it's totally to your advantage to capture them.
I hope that this puts to rest any reservations you might have about how we have designed a useful and valuable unit into the game in the form of a female character, with no intention to discriminate.

[Enrique]

I like your proposal a lot Sanderd. My vote is to make buildings easier to capture when damaged. This method could lead to new techs for faster repairing as an example.

Units capturing buildings I guess aren't able to fight back while capturing?

Capturing a garrisoned building that fires arrows would require a bigger number of units to capture based on this, so Im ok with that. Also enemy garrisoned units will be forced out when ownership drops below 50%? Or garrisoned units will be converted if they aren't ungarrisoned before full conversion?

Last question, health decay based on unconnected territory will still be valid for captured buildings? Or at least will be allowed to repair them?

[sanderd17]

@Enrique:

I think 50% is a bit early. But apart from that, killing, expelling or converting garrisoned units on capture is all possible. It's just a small difference in code, so this can be decided after playtesting.

Since capturing is an attack on its own, the unit wouldn't be able to perform other attacks meanwhile, so it can't defend against incoming attacks.

Health decay should indeed stay active when captured. It will be hard to keep track of which buildings were captured or what, so players might have difficulties understanding why some buildings don't decay and others do.

@Wijtmaker:

I'm not sure about the female capturing stuff. It seems too much trouble for the cheap units we have.

About replacing a building with the equivalent for that civ, that's often not very simple. Like Carthagians have two docks, so nobody can capture Carthagian docks and they can't capture others? Similar to some civs that have their heroes coming from other buildings (fortress, CC, special building, ...), or what about the population difference per house?

The only really generic buildings seem to be blacksmiths (though without technologies, not worth a lot), dropsites and outposts.

[Wijitmaker]

I'm not sure about the female capturing stuff. It seems too much trouble for the cheap units we have.

Yeah, that is kind of the point though. Female citizens weren't simply intended to be a cheaper citizen soldier that didn't fight. They brought equal or greater value to the game (vs a basic male citizen soldier) by offering higher economic capability, but at the trade off - being the risk of easily loosing that asset's allegiance. If an enemy scout comes into your village and sees 20 unprotected female citizens it would be a goal to capture a handful of them before they ran into a garrison. I could explain in more detail if you are interested in hearing more, or try to find the old discussions.

About replacing a building with the equivalent for that civ, that's often not very simple.

I think this was back in the day when all the civs had the same buildings, none were given special buildings that were civ specific. So, that probably wouldn't work today. I think the intention was that if a celt unit captured a roman barracks, it didn't make much sense historically that the barracks would continue to spit out roman soldiers - but instead it would be used to make more celt soldiers. But, I personally don't think that is a big deal. In the C&C games, it was like you described. If you were the Allies and you captured a Chinese tank factory, you as the allies could start making Chinese tanks.

[sanderd17]

Reaction from leper:

The health decay should be replaced with a capture points decay instead. This would indeed make more sense IMO

[niektb]

I'm in favor of the 1st option regarding to siege engines, siege engines shouldn't become capture engines.

I think that the attacking player should still be able to destroy the building (which should also go faster than capturing it, otherwise destroying a building would be completely useless)

Also damaging a building shouldn't affect the capture-rate of that building so much (given your example of a building at half health makes the capturing go twice as fast as a full health building) (since you would damage the building first and quickly capture it afterwards) Some influence would be logic and realistic though IMHO.

[Enrique]

Reaction from leper:

The health decay should be replaced with a capture points decay instead. This would indeed make more sense IMO

Great solution. +1

[sanderd17]

I'm in favor of the 1st option regarding to siege engines, siege engines shouldn't become capture engines.

I think that the attacking player should still be able to destroy the building (which should also go faster than capturing it, otherwise destroying a building would be completely useless)

Ok, then I'll go with that scenario

Also damaging a building shouldn't affect the capture-rate of that building so much (given your example of a building at half health makes the capturing go twice as fast as a full health building) (since you would damage the building first and quickly capture it afterwards) Some influence would be logic and realistic though IMHO.

If you have a proposal for an influence (preferably expresses as mathematical formula), that's welcome. But I think that inverse proportional isn't too bad. 50% damage will make it a lot faster to capture, but the damage gets transferred to the new owner. And as repairing takes a long time, the players who first damage their buildings a lot before capturing will also be more vulnerable for a counter-capture. So instead of two choices: capture or destroy, you'll have a complete spectrum of choices.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Great solution. +1

If player building go Gaia, "capturing" could be instant or very fast.

I have not read all comment, but generally the building capture mechanicx should be as simple as possible and easy to understand what it happening. I think keep that in mind. Unit should play capture animation so all playeer can instantly see what is going on. Maybe player color parts can flash between the owner and capturing player colors. Also, I think only one player should be able to capture a building at 1 time. And yeah, capture mechanic very separate issue from conversion mechanic. I don't think units should stand next to a female or sheep and do the capture dance that they would do around a building. Unit conversion should be just like AOK's sheeps, instantley for doemestic animal, but maybe take some time for female (and she run away as if she being attack).

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I don't think units should stand next to a female or sheep and do the capture dance that they would do around a building. Unit conversion should be just like AOK's sheeps, instantley for doemestic animal, but maybe take some time for female (and she run away as if she being attack).

Something like that would work. Instant ownership change like sheep would be easiest. Would be really interesting for traders; you'd have to have units patroling to keep ownership.

The drawback is that this makes the blacksmith useless as captured building, but that's only a very small issue IMO.

I don't see that as an issue for blacksmiths. Just allow research of all the techs that your civ has (the blacksmith ones are surprisingly universal among our civs). Or we could just make them turn into your civ's version of that structure but just keep the original civ's graphics. Special buildings probably would have no real purpose to your civ though though.

I think siege weapons should just damage buildings though. As mentioned, a damaged structure could be made easier to capture.

Edited March 28, 2015 by WhiteTreePaladin

[rmhibbs]

Some thoughts -

On capturing buildings:

Presently, I can use my building for production, even if it is damaged. I built it. I know it. I can still use it even if damaged. However, if I capture a building, it is a strange building and it will take time to figure out how to use, especially if damaged. Even if I could capture it undamaged, it will still take some time to get working.

Therefore, I should not be able to use a captured building until I have fully repaired it. If I don't have the capability to repair it, I should not have the capability to make it be productive.

On capturing or converting military units:

Taking prisoners drags down an army. It is more effective to kill all enemies than to take them prisoners. Even if you take them prisoners, you cannot realisticly convert them quickly to your side - especially if they are of a different civ with different language, culture, etc. It would take a long time to covert them and be able to trust them. Even transporting prisoners back to your terr will be slow and vulnerable.

I can't even manage battle formations let alone think about tryiing to manage military units guarding and transporting captured units at the same time you still have to continue your initial battle. I have no idea how you would micro manage all that.

The most advantageous time to capture units is when they are raiding your territory. Then you have an opportunity to outnumber some of them, capture them, and convert them.

I'm not sure how it would be effective to raid an enemy for purposes of capturing units. I think I'd rather just kill my enemy units and train my own. Less complications and very likely less cost.

Bob

[Lion.Kanzen]

(For capture anumation) we can use an old animation like "experience level Animation " is some similar to EE 2 capture animations.

buildings surrounded by enemy territory influence ( must be total) wuold be capture by the territory influence itself. Except by CC , Fortreess and military buildigs.

[historic_bruno]

Some thoughts about capturing

I'm not sure if your proposal includes this or not, but I think loyalty (capture points) should also be rebuilt after a capture, so there is a while where a building will have low loyalty after "ownership" changes. I like how capturing cities worked in RoN and while I haven't looked at the mechanics in detail, I recall that recently captured cities are difficult to hold. Then after some time passes, they become more firmly under your control. IMO it makes sense from both gameplay and historical/realism perspectives.

It may be time to consider fixing territories to work better with diplomacy, unless we really want allies to be able to capture each other's buildings even by accident, by surrounding their territory, and not allowing allies to build in each other's territory.

Destroying buildings should still be possible (f.e. you reached the tower limit, and you want to build more towers towards the enemy). However, it shouldn't be possible to destroy a building right before it's captured. So I propose only if the owner of the building also holds the majority of capture points, he would be able to destroy the building

I agree, and it should work the other way, too, you can't just destroy a recently captured building if you haven't built up enough loyalty.

For the GUI, I see it similar to the health bar, but instead of using a green-red bar, the bar should be divided in a number of parts, showing the playercolour partitions instead.

That could be simplified with a single color to show "loyalty" (this is perhaps a better term than capture points), maybe purple. There are a few concerns with using player color, the color won't necessarily be visible or look good there, and it might get confused with other bars. E.g. what if the opposing players are red and green, is that properly distinguished from the health bar. For showing which players are involved, what about using territory borders or selection rings?

In RoN, I remember floating text that gave hints of what was going on, but it was ugly.

Reaction from leper:

The health decay should be replaced with a capture points decay instead. This would indeed make more sense IMO

I agree and that was always the plan, health decay only exists to make territories relevant until we have capturing.