Specialized worker units?

[faction02]

Just throwing an idea...

Gameplay issue: Early/Mid-game aggression not favored by the concept of citizen-soldiers.

Citizen-soldiers being about as good at collecting resources as women, the difference between booming and building army is significative only during the period in which fields are settled and the wood produced is allocated to fields construction rather than soldiers production. As a consequence, once a player has settled his food production, there is no real trade-off between booming and building an army since both strategy are about the same.

Among the main suggestions that have been suggested:

- Offer different set of strategies favored by tech: defensive, economic, aggressive

- Adjust gathering stat/loot to change incentives

- Differentiate more workers from soldiers 

 

Idea:

Combine some of the ideas suggested and add specialized economic units (on top of the existing set of units) : "farmer, woodcutter or miner". A specialized economic unit is a unit with:

1. low military capacity (similar to a women);
2. high cost (similar to a swordman in terms of resources cost and training time);
3. high productivity in his speciality (similar to a women with p3 upgrades in his specialty domain, similar to a woman with no upgrade in other domain);
4. high loot (similar to a swordman) ;
5. do not benefit from economic upgrades. 

The aim of the specialized worker units would be to give to a player the opportunity to actually choose between booming or building an army in early/mid game, without affecting the overall economic balance with other units in late game.

With respect to a women boom, the specialized economic unit boom is more risky since:

 - they cost more to produce and replace;

 - the opportunity cost of denying them access to their workplace is higher;

 - they will be tracked more carefully by the enemy since loosing a soldier to kill a specialized unit is not a bad tradeoff;

They should be useful to take mid game economic advantage (if not punished) or develop more specific strategies by developing one sector of the economy extensively. They might also favor CS all-in on players using mixed of economic specialized units and CS in mid-game and therefore reward more scouting at the same time.

 

Related discussions:

 - booming = turtling

 - Strategies choice 

 - Balancing Gatherers

 - Interaction and early gameplay

[Freagarach]

 

[artoo]

Related, specialized unit in here ... the princess, kind of special worker, introduced as diplomat unit, that can only be built one at a time until upgraded to a building.

 

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

15 minutes ago, Freagarach said:

 

YAAASSSS

[LetswaveaBook]

I had the idea of a butcher unit for a while. So essentially that would be a unit that is good at collecting food from livestock bred at the corral. Maybe an architect for faster construction, cattle breeder to garrison in corrals for better production or an drill master to garrison in barracks for faster training could also be nice.

 

The biggest issue would be that there would be extra art needed.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Just now, LetswaveaBook said:

I had the idea of a butcher unit for a while. So essentially that would be a unit that is good at collecting food from livestock bred at the corral. Maybe an architect for faster construction, cattle breeder to garrison in corrals for better production or an drill master to garrison in barracks for faster training could also be nice.

 

The biggest issue would be that there would be extra art needed.

Assassin bonus vs Heroes.

Engineer Can build engines and siege equipment. (Capturable)

Arsonist : Burn all flammable things.

Slave: gathering Bonus.

Diplomatic: It can spy and convert.

High priest can convert.

Druid: can fight and heal.

Banner men: Bonus Aura for Defense and attack.

[maroder]

Introducing more specific units types may solve the problem, but it also introduces a lot more micro. That why I'm not a fan of this idea.

I would like the tech approach more. Something like: Each armor/attack upgrade makes your cs better at fighting, but worse at gathering resources.

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 minute ago, maroder said:

introduces a lot more micro

Not all units.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone

What units other than slaves do you have in Delenda Est?

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Assassin bonus vs Heroes.

Engineer Can build engines and siege equipment. (Capturable)

Arsonist : Burn all flammable things.

Slave: gathering Bonus.

Diplomatic: It can spy and convert.

High priest can convert.

Druid: can fight and heal.

Banner men: Bonus Aura for Defense and attack.

Some of these, like high priest and slave, would actually be great additions. 

 

Also, want to add that instead of making these eco units better at gathering, we could alternatively make them cheaper

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

3 hours ago, maroder said:

Introducing more specific units types may solve the problem, but it also introduces a lot more micro. That why I'm not a fan of this idea.

I would like the tech approach more. Something like: Each armor/attack upgrade makes your cs better at fighting, but worse at gathering resources.

I at first liked this idea, but the problem is that you can't go back. This is why I was in favor of adding the option to train rank 2 or 3 at a higher cost.

3 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I had the idea of a butcher unit for a while. So essentially that would be a unit that is good at collecting food from livestock bred at the corral. Maybe an architect for faster construction, cattle breeder to garrison in corrals for better production or an drill master to garrison in barracks for faster training could also be nice.

 

The biggest issue would be that there would be extra art needed.

If we were to make units such as these, I would be concerned with having 1-use units. A main problem could be the situation where it is efficient to make one unit for a specific purpose and then delete it right after.

I like the idea of workers, I feel they should have increased gather rates for stone metal and wood, but be slower than CS for food gathering.

I think a good cost for that unit would be 75 food, 25 wood, 1 pop.

@faction02 I am intrigued by your idea for the specializations, but I have some questions. What is the reasoning behind making the units specialized by resource type? I feel it could be a good thing to make it harder to switch eco plans so quickly. Would the unit have a lower gather rate for non-specialty resources? Also, would these units come from cc or perhaps train them (fertility festival style) from farmsteads/storehouses? Another question I have is would the "metal miner" have a slower metal gathering rate than a CS when fully upgraded?

If people tend toward slaves, I feel they should be for mining mostly (metal and stone), with same mining rate as CS, but cost a bit more food than women (60).

[chrstgtr]

35 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

If people tend toward slaves, I feel they should be for mining mostly (metal and stone), with same mining rate as CS, but cost a bit more food than women (60).

I'd rather slaves be specialized for wood. Mines aren't that important to eco. While wood is very important. Make it a tradeoff decision like how fields are mostly women. That way wood could be raided after minute 6. 

[faction02]

2 hours ago, maroder said:

Introducing more specific units types may solve the problem, but it also introduces a lot more micro. That why I'm not a fan of this idea.

I would like the tech approach more. Something like: Each armor/attack upgrade makes your cs better at fighting, but worse at gathering resources.

I am not sure what you mean by that it would introduce a "lot more micro". From what I have in mind, you could simply set the rally point of the production building to the woodline and click on woodcutters to have specialized units on wood rather than women. From that point of view, there is no difference in micro with the current game. More micro would come however as a side effect since scouting and rushing might be more rewarding.

 

Behind the concept of specialized economic unit, I was searching for a way to allow for more diversified early game that could still allow to play late game (without touching the concept of citizen soldiers). To be suited for the early game, ideally, that change should have only small effects that could be however meaningful.

From a gameplay perspective, applying a tech at the unit level sounds like a good "trick" to allow for more diversified gameplay in the early game. Because it affects only one unit at the time and it is only temporary (the difference between specialized economic units and women disappear when economic upgrades are researched), the differences between the two types of units is designed to slowly disappear.

 

The specificity that I dislike about techs for the goal that I had in mind is that they are "global", that specificity make them quite unlikely to be able to be have only small effects, i.e. allow to play the late game too. In the simple example that you mention, the logical follow up seems to be go for an all-in to end the game since you will have a worst eco forever. The fertility festival seems another example of a tech that can allow to differentiate between booming and building an army. However, to be balanced and because it is a global tech, it has to be designed in such a way such that it impacts mostly the late game. If the economic advantage given was visible too early, the player researching the tech would definitively has the advantage later in the game. Global techs do seem to be good tool to differentiate the early game.

 

 

 

[faction02]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I at first liked this idea, but the problem is that you can't go back. This is why I was in favor of adding the option to train rank 2 or 3 at a higher cost.

I kind of agree with that idea, but it would fit more a post about military units. 

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

If we were to make units such as these, I would be concerned with having 1-use units. A main problem could be the situation where it is efficient to make one unit for a specific purpose and then delete it right after.

To be compatible with citizen soldiers and global technology, I think the idea would be to have specialized units available in early game. A drill master would be fast to produce and interesting if you only use one barrack for example, but researching conscription technology would be better in the late game when you have many barracks. The idea might be the same as the one you had in mind with training rank2 or rank3 at higher cost, they should be interesting if you want to train a small number of them but in late game, if you want a larger number, normal units + military upgrades would provide a better return on the resources spent.

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think a good cost for that unit would be 75 food, 25 wood, 1 pop.

@faction02 I am intrigued by your idea for the specializations, but I have some questions. What is the reasoning behind making the units specialized by resource type? I feel it could be a good thing to make it harder to switch eco plans so quickly. Would the unit have a lower gather rate for non-specialty resources? Also, would these units come from cc or perhaps train them (fertility festival style) from farmsteads/storehouses? Another question I have is would the "metal miner" have a slower metal gathering rate than a CS when fully upgraded?

If people tend toward slaves, I feel they should be for mining mostly (metal and stone), with same mining rate as CS, but cost a bit more food than women (60).

Not sure about the exact cost that specialized economic units should have, I thought making them comparable to a swordman would make it easier to think about. The small metal cost would prevent early spam and potentially delay the normal economic upgrade. But I didn't spend to much time thinking about it since in any case, the exact number chosen depends on other potential balance changes.

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

What is the reasoning behind making the units specialized by resource type? I feel it could be a good thing to make it harder to switch eco plans so quickly. Would the unit have a lower gather rate for non-specialty resources?

I had in mind that observing the economic specialization of your enemy might give you information about the strategy that your enemy might play. Not sure that's very relevant right now but I am taking a long term perspective here. For example, you might not invest in woodcutters if you plan to go for a mercenary/champions based strategy in P2. If they weren't specialized, you might mass them on wood before moving them to metal later on.

Also, if you can harass the economic units out of their main function, you are countering the economic advantage that can be gained through their use. If you see the enemy running around your wood lines, you would have an incentive to keep your woodcutters there rather than giving them another safer task, encouraging risk taking therefore.

Giving them 0 resources gathering in non-specialty resources sounds like going too far. For example, if a mine runs out, the miners should not have no utility. Setting their non-specialty gathering rate in line with other unit sounds fair from that perspective.

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Also, would these units come from cc or perhaps train them (fertility festival style) from farmsteads/storehouses? 

I haven't thought too much about that part, it might depends on the name given to these units. Ideally, they should be substitute to the production of soldiers so civic center might make sense. From a logical perspective storehouse/farmstead might however make sense since their are "upgraded" units. If you call them slave, you might think about other buildings.

2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Another question I have is would the "metal miner" have a slower metal gathering rate than a CS when fully upgraded?

I wanted to use them as a way to make the early/mid game more interesting but not change too much the late game. In early game the metal miner should be better but in the late game, he should be as good as the citizen soldiers equivalent (so same gathering rate as men, not women here). If the metal miner is better, you should start producing them as soon as you mine. Making the citizen-soldier fully upgraded better might work but it would raise the question about whether you want to get metal miner in early/mid-game unnecessarily complicated.

[alre]

all this sounds too complicate. I'll play the part of @Player of 0AD this time: don't change anything (except for slaves, slaves mining makes sense).

in 0 AD is quite difficult to raid wood, and I guess it's ok, you have the rest of the economy to raid. If you destroy all your enemy's woodcutters, that's a major battle. In 0 AD forests have a strategic importance as places where armies are stationed chopping trees.

[Reyhan]

Hi, I like the suggestion of units specialised to specific tasks. Here is my idea:

Each citizen unit is specialised to one type of job, albeit mining or logging or farming. Perhaps they are allowed to perform other tasks but at a lower efficiency. When the situation requires, you can set them to fight and they will take on a role as a soldier type. For example, you can train a slinger-miner or a spearman-farmer. This allows you to train units according to your needs.

To prevent overcrowded panels, we can have more cheaper barracks: melee barrack, ranged barrack, champions barrack.

I know this is a huge change to base game so it is probably very difficult to implement. 

[Gurken Khan]

5 hours ago, faction02 said:

From what I have in mind, you could simply set the rally point of the production building to the woodline and click on woodcutters to have specialized units on wood

And what if I don't set a rally point on a resource? How will I be able to tell which units have what gathering rates? As it stands I'm totally not convinced it would add anything desirable but just more micro. If you want to disrupt wood gathering or mining just attack the gatherers and if you can't do it successfully well you just can't.

[Philip the Swaggerless]

New Hero: Paul Bunyan

Base Woodcutting rate 8.00

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

New Hero: Paul Bunyan

Base Woodcutting rate 8.00

Can train Babe the Blue Ox, lol

[Player of 0AD]

Don't change the gameplay please. We really need loading of multiplayer matches and better performance instead.

[maroder]

1 hour ago, Player of 0AD said:

We really need loading of multiplayer matches and better performance instead.

on this I agree

[faction02]

7 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

And what if I don't set a rally point on a resource? How will I be able to tell which units have what gathering rates? As it stands I'm totally not convinced it would add anything desirable but just more micro. If you want to disrupt wood gathering or mining just attack the gatherers and if you can't do it successfully well you just can't.

More units diversity will indeed make the game more complex and adjusting the art work to make all units easy to differentiate for all civilizations might be indeed a challenge. I am not saying that this is the best way to achieve it, but breaking the "turtling=booming" link in midgame seems important. Currently I would summarize midgame strategy as choosing between either being aggressive, either being passive. What I would find desirable is to have the choice between more than two styles of play.

 

For example to be able to play aggressive, defensive or to be booming. Aggressive should beat booming, defensive should beat aggressive (in the sense that the defensive player has a better eco after the aggression) and booming should beat defensive

If you try to balance a system with only two options (active vs passive), you will create a gameplay where either midgame is irrelevant because none of the strategies is better than the other, either players rely on micro to make one of the two strategy better than the other.

In a system with three options, you can have a rock-paper-scissor system, and strategy become more relevant than micro to determine what happens in midgame. 

 

[maroder]

14 hours ago, faction02 said:

I am not sure what you mean by that it would introduce a "lot more micro"

Maybe its a misunderstanding about "a lot", but I would still say it it means more micro. Since you want to make sure that the specialized units only gathers the resources it it supposed to (best at), you have to manage more different units on different resources instead of just sending your soliders from e.g. wood to stone whenever you are missing on or the other. Or maybe I'm not 100% getting the concept.

But yes, you got a point with the global effect of techs.

[faction02]

3 minutes ago, maroder said:

Maybe its a misunderstanding about "a lot", but I would still say it it means more micro. Since you want to make sure that the specialized units only gathers the resources it it supposed to (best at), you have to manage more different units on different resources instead of just sending your soliders from e.g. wood to stone whenever you are missing on or the other. Or maybe I'm not 100% getting the concept.

But yes, you got a point with the global effect of techs.

Yes, I agree that the complexity of the micro (rather than the quantity) might be an issue, I didn't think about that part.

[alre]

I think this 'aggressive vs defensive strats' balance works mostly fine, it's not very even, but it's a good recipe all in all.

also, the game already offers other long term booming strategies, as with corrals and trading. these are both kind of a in a weird place now, but they do what booming does, which is temporarily hamper your chances of standing a fight, in exchange for a better economical position later. training soldiers in barracks is another investment in future.

it seems to me that it's quite difficult anyway to balance these different strategies, because even if attacking and defending are balanced, which is still not the case, booming if unopposed could turn to be a permanent advantage too difficult to take away.

[chrstgtr]

21 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Can train Babe the Blue Ox, lol

You and @Philip the Swaggerlessappear to be the only other Americans in this thread.