Should Women be convertable ?

[Stan`]

Currently the soldier units will chase women (Who run, is this a new behaviour?) I wondered what you guys thought of making them convertable.

[Itms]

You should pay attention to using the good terms for converting/capturing: the former is for units, the latter for buildings. This should hopefully be enough to avoid confusion in the discussions!

Only capturing is implemented, not converting, so your request doesn't (yet) make sense.

(And sorry for nitpicking )

[Stan`]

Ah yeah of course...

Thought it was implemented as a whole...

[Stan`]

Also forgot about it but it seems we have a conversion code working in aristeia.https://github.com/0ADMods/aristeia/tree/conversion

[niektb]

Almost working. Some files need to be updated.

Also, that's AoK style converting. I believe the team is looking for a more automated version (American Conquest?)

Edited May 10, 2015 by niektb

[auron2401]

Gameplay reasons aside....

Do you think women are that Simple?
From personal experience, i haven't met a SINGLE lady who i can convert to my way of thinking UNLESS SHE IS ALREADY WILLING.

So my answer is no.. BUT, how about capturable slaves? ? Too Mean?

[Stan`]

So basically, not convertable, but turnable into slaves ? We have a unit for that and that could work. Harder to free them though.

[sanderd17]

For current balancing, our units seem to be too cheap to capture, or actively convert. While automatic converting is a bit strange.

Are you really going to invest time of an expensive unit (a priest or champion) to capture a unit that only costs 10 food and trains in a few seconds?

Before making conversion possible, we should have more expensive untis, or some other way to make units scarce (and important to convert).

Just making them more expensive on resources is probably not viable. But I have been thinking lately. We could disable training of women from all buildings, but every house could give a few women for free on completion. That way, women are scarce as you can't produce any more of them. When they are dead, or converted to the enemy, they are gone.

In any case, the gameplay dynamics of conversion aren't known yet, and should be discussed within the complete picture.

[Stan`]

I like the way you proposed it. What would be nice too is that if there are women left, their number regrow over time.

Also capturing would be nice in a Regicide type game.

[auron2401]

A regicide style game where you.. capture a leader, and force him to work for you? :3.

[Stan`]

If the leader provides great buffs to the army that could be worth it, especially if you have different ways to win.

[auron2401]

I was thinking more along the line of a Player vassalization.

If you capture their leader, they are forced to 'ally' with you, and give you tribute.

[Stan`]

I like that too =)

[Lion.Kanzen]

Yes but the males too

[Karamel]

Capturing buildings changes a lot the gameplay. It's not just about destroying your ennemies but conquering places.

Not only for raiding isolated units, converting units will change how battles are engaged. Actually if you know you will loose a battle, you still know you can put enough damage for maybe something later. But what if a part of your citizen get captured or surrender?

Like Lion I think all units should be convertable, but the way to do it is not defined. I'm not good at history, but if I remember correctly most slaves came from conquered people.

[DarcReaver]

As a side note for this matter: Act of War (a modern warfare RTS released back in 2005) introduced a unique feature: Prisoners of War. When you fought enemy infantry/vehciels and you destroyed them, there was a chance that the drivers/soldiers survive and can be captured by the winning side for additional money (only resource in the game). They were also imprisoned when you build a medical station, generating cash for your side. This made fights pretty intense, because the winning side got additional funds for killing stuff.

There could be something like a "enslave" mechanic for your armies. Either enslave wounded soldiers, or kill them for additional experience on your army or something (like for civs like Sparta, Mace and Celts for example). So you either make your army to elite or you improve your economy. Enslaving could be displayed with a resource multiplier. Like 10 slaves give additional +5% gathering rate on your resources (just an example).

And factions that in reality relied on slave armies/soldners could get better training times/lower resource costs for their infantry units instead. Or factions/units that can pillage from the weapons of their enemies. The possibilities are pretty much endless I guess

I'm just throwing in this concept as it came into my head.

Edited May 29, 2015 by DarcReaver

[Prodigal Son]

Capturing individual units, especially small/numerous ones sounds like too much micro. Reminds me of a less crazy (but still complicated) version of the disastrous feature in Ancient Wars: Sparta and other games of that franchise, where you could pick individual weapons from the battlefield to sell them or equip soldiers with them reducing their costs and creating new unit classes that could be unavailable to your civ. Not every cool sounding concept translates well to gameplay. A percentage of kills as captured slaves granting some bonuses is a nice idea though to reward combat and add another layer of realism. Some Civs could be bonused in capture percentage or exploitation of prisoners.

[DarcReaver]

Capturing individual units, especially small/numerous ones sounds like too much micro. Reminds me of a less crazy (but still complicated) version of the disastrous feature in Ancient Wars: Sparta and other games of that franchise, where you could pick individual weapons from the battlefield to sell them or equip soldiers with them reducing their costs and creating new unit classes that could be unavailable to your civ. Not every cool sounding concept translates well to gameplay. A percentage of kills as captured slaves granting some bonuses is a nice idea though to reward combat and add another layer of realism. Some Civs could be bonused in capture percentage or exploitation of prisoners.

It depends on the implementation of combat. If units die in the blink of an eye, and huge amounts of slaves occur on top of being able to only capture one at a time I agree that's way too micro intensive.

However, you can automate this process. After fights units can capture enemy wounded automatically (just like regular units auto attack and follow enemy units), or you create area abilities that make them collect slaves in the target area (although I'd prefer automating the whole process).

The counter would be that your enemy could also "capture" his own wounded soldiers to receive resources back. And while combat is going on, slaves cannot be captured.

Edited May 29, 2015 by DarcReaver

[Zhyyra]

For current balancing, our units seem to be too cheap to capture, or actively convert. While automatic converting is a bit strange.

Are you really going to invest time of an expensive unit (a priest or champion) to capture a unit that only costs 10 food and trains in a few seconds?

Before making conversion possible, we should have more expensive untis, or some other way to make units scarce (and important to convert).

Just making them more expensive on resources is probably not viable. But I have been thinking lately. We could disable training of women from all buildings, but every house could give a few women for free on completion. That way, women are scarce as you can't produce any more of them. When they are dead, or converted to the enemy, they are gone.

In any case, the gameplay dynamics of conversion aren't known yet, and should be discussed within the complete picture.

Appreciated, however, what you have said brings to mind the "Smush" in AoE, (the Saracen monk rush). You could do a monk rush with other civs too but, Saracens had a trade for gold advantage at the market. If you could get to your opponents villies quickly enough you could stifle his economy early on in the game and win.

I'd also like to say that having a few alternate ways to win a game instead of only the carnage of war would be nice. Of course I'm not even insinuating that we should curb our exitement and do away with warfare as the prominent route to take to victory but some alternatives are sometimes appealing.

Just a thought for the future bearing in mind that as you say, the dynamics of conversion aren't known yet.

Zy

[Chakakhan]

I remember the Saracen Monk rush, very fun strategy.

[Prodigal Son]

It depends on the implementation of combat. If units die in the blink of an eye, and huge amounts of slaves occur on top of being able to only capture one at a time I agree that's way too micro intensive.

However, you can automate this process. After fights units can capture enemy wounded automatically (just like regular units auto attack and follow enemy units), or you create area abilities that make them collect slaves in the target area (although I'd prefer automating the whole process).

The counter would be that your enemy could also "capture" his own wounded soldiers to receive resources back. And while combat is going on, slaves cannot be captured.

It could work easier than that I believe. Capturing percentage modifiers could be adjusted accordingly to the game/combat pace. Stopping to gather the wounded from "corpses" would partly defeat the purpose of winning a local battle to gain the chance to advance on your opponent.

[DarcReaver]

It could work easier than that I believe. Capturing percentage modifiers could be adjusted accordingly to the game/combat pace. Stopping to gather the wounded from "corpses" would partly defeat the purpose of winning a local battle to gain the chance to advance on your opponent.

Depending on how fast the capturing is done, you could simply leave a few men behind to take the slaves and move your main army to your enemy. Not much efford imo.

[Prodigal Son]

Indeed not that hard, but imo a little micro here and there in things that could be handled with stats make the game more about repetition and speed than real strategy.

[DarcReaver]

speed belongs to a RTS. Repetition is relative - as long as the result of the process outweights the amount of micro needed to perform it it's fine. I personally would like to automatize this process as much as possible. Means that as long as there are no fighting is going on anymore, soldiers should take the slaves automatically. Maybe, with a stance system, or connecting it with the unit states. E.g. aggressive: kills the soldiers to experience. Defensive: capture them as slaves. Or something like that.

Edited June 1, 2015 by DarcReaver

[Prodigal Son]

Ofc speed belongs to a RTS, I didn't claim the opposite. But the more you make the game about speedy micro, the more you dumb down strategy, as there is less time left to think of plans. That said most successful competitive RTS game go that way, but it's not something I really like and I think it partly happens to appeal to players more familiar with faster paced, action-packed game genres.

Repetition is inevitable as well, but mechanics such as manual or semi-manual looting seem tedious and over-repetitive to me. Handling it automatically depending on unit stance does sound better though.