Differentiating Civilizations: Sparta

[real_tabasco_sauce]

14 hours ago, borg- said:

- Spartiates are trained in phase 1. The suggestion of being free but very slow to train or a limit max of units is interesting

- Spartiates has upgraded to royal guard, costing a lot of metal/food, but gaining a good amount of health and attack. Max of 10 / 20 units

- Sissítia phase 1

what about just giving sparta an additional, more costly house available in p1 or 2, providing 20 pop, and also allowing 1 spartiate to be trained? Perhaps it could be 2 or 3.

The point is, tying early production to the special houses (someone said estates) makes it kind of a "soft" limit. I would argue that champion spearmen should still be trained by the current training building in p3 without a limit.

Balance wise, the biggest challenge for sparta is mobility, so some movement speed upgrade for melee units, or some movement speed hero would be perfect for the civ.

Edited June 30, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

14 hours ago, borg- said:

royal guard

also, what to call this unit? There seem to be a lot of "royal guards" it is rather generic IMO.

spartiate champion maybe is another idea.

Edited June 30, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[borg-]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

what about just giving sparta an additional, more costly house available in p1 or 2, providing 20 pop, and also allowing 1 spartiate to be trained? Perhaps it could be 2 or 3.

The point is, tying early production to the special houses (someone said estates) makes it kind of a "soft" limit. I would argue that champion spearmen should still be trained by the current training building in p3 without a limit.

Balance wise, the biggest challenge for sparta is mobility, so some movement speed upgrade for melee units, or some movement speed hero would be perfect for the civ.

If we keep him as he is now and just move to p1, then his own cost is a natural limiting factor, nothing needs to change in my opinion. You have the cost of syssitia + unit, is quite expensive for a phase 1.

Yes, I think mobility technology will be very welcome.

Edited June 30, 2022 by borg-

[borg-]

12 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Not a fan of deviating from standard stats for common units. It makes the game more difficult to learn and harder to balance.

If so desired, I would introduce differences in the form of techs like "grain gather +20%; attack -10%"

I agree with you here, I think technology can make this clear for the player.

[borg-]

12 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

My suggestion is that we create an alternate way to make spartiates. All history texts tell us that Spartan citizens used to train all the time to becomes spartiates. Why don't we create a male citizen that does nothing but can train himself into a spartiate. This way the male citizen just takes up space and resources (I would set cost to 50 food) while being vulnerable to attack. This would provide a new, unique, and cheap way to get champs. But this also avoids the "too easy to mass" problem because they will be super vulnerable while "training" out in the open and the loss would costly.

Really very good idea, he could be trained at 100 food in Sissitia. Sissitia may have an xp aura (garrison) for that unit, when it reaches the required xp then upgrade to champion.

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, borg- said:

Really very good idea, he could be trained at 100 food in Sissitia. Sissitia may have an xp aura (garrison) for that unit, when it reaches the required xp then upgrade to champion.

Maybe instead of garrison it is an aura outside like a temple so that the unit is vulnerable. Could also have a garrison option that is safer, but slower. 
 

We probably also have them train with one another (like with healers) so that they don’t need to be right next to a building. (This probably lends itself to some cool wresting art animations) 

[Outis]

5 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

also, what to call this unit? There seem to be a lot of "royal guards" it is rather generic IMO.

spartiate champion maybe is another idea.

Why don't we call them hippeis? It fits their royal guard status perfectly:

https://books.google.com/books/about/Sparta_and_War.html?id=QF9PDgAAQBAJ#v=onepage&q=spartan hippeis&f=false

[Genava55]

On 25/06/2022 at 9:22 PM, Genava55 said:

"always flanked by" I am not sure of. But yeah athletes were considered for the royal guard.

  Hide contents

 

at the first page

[Outis]

3 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Maybe instead of garrison it is an aura outside like a temple so that the unit is vulnerable. Could also have a garrison option that is safer, but slower. 
 

We probably also have them train with one another (like with healers) so that they don’t need to be right next to a building. (This probably lends itself to some cool wresting art animations) 

This sounds like an interesting mechanic. I propose that they are not completely defenseless, but start like citizen hoplites. The differences to perioikoi will be: 1) the ability to gain experience from syssitia (training) 2) the ability to reach champion status 3) no gathering or building

[chrstgtr]

19 minutes ago, Outis said:

This sounds like an interesting mechanic. I propose that they are not completely defenseless, but start like citizen hoplites. The differences to perioikoi will be: 1) the ability to gain experience from syssitia (training) 2) the ability to reach champion status 3) no gathering or building

We basically already have that with garrisoning CS hoplites to rank up. If a unit is garrisoning or whatever to rank up then nothing else matters. No one does it. There's also basically no downside of doing that because it is the same cost as CS with all the upside. Defenseless sounds much more interesting to me

[Outis]

13 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

We basically already have that with garrisoning CS hoplites to rank up. If a unit is garrisoning or whatever to rank up then nothing else matters. No one does it. There's also basically no downside of doing that because it is the same cost as CS with all the upside. Defenseless sounds much more interesting to me

What didn't resonate with me about defenseless was: 1) even measly helots can fight immediately after they are trained, why are spartiatai completely defenseless? 2) training is a gradual process, from complete defenseless to champions doesn't feel organic.

I agree it shouldn't be identical to garrisoning a barracks. Increase in experience can be faster, and rather than garrisoning, they can train within an aura, so they are still vulnerable.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Outis

[chrstgtr]

4 minutes ago, Outis said:

What didn't resonate with me about defenseless was: 1) even measly helots can fight immediately after they are trained, why are spartiates completely defenseless? 2) training is a gradual process, from complete defenseless to champions doesn't feel organic.

I agree it shouldn't be identical to garrisoning a barracks. Increase in experience can be faster, and rather than garrisoning, they can train within an aura, so they are still vulnerable.

My point is that if you want something unique then it should be unique and not a copy of what already exists. What you're proposing is derivative of what already exists--it's basically the same thing but easier and for a bigger benefit. Make it unique. 

[Outis]

12 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

My point is that if you want something unique then it should be unique and not a copy of what already exists. What you're proposing is derivative of what already exists--it's basically the same thing but easier and for a bigger benefit. Make it unique. 

I agree unique is better. One can argue starting completely defenseless, but garrisonable, and gaining experience over time, is also a derivation of a very long creation time. Ultimately, all units are similar in the way they are created. Nuances are subtle, but they make the difference. If we can find a completely unique idea, I'm all for it .

In the meantime, i will try to make my idea more interesting with the hope of winning you . The spartiatai can "train" by using the attack animation on some wooden dummies around the syssitia, so no need for a new wrestling animation. The number of wooden dummies available may be a limiting factor for the number of spartiatai which can train simultaneously. An interesting mechanic could be: if spartiatai do not train or engage in combat for x seconds, they start to lose rank. Spartiatai were better because they trained whenever they were outside combat. We can make them lose their status if they are idle.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Outis

[borg-]

With gerusia capable of being built, heroes should be trained in it right?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

9 hours ago, borg- said:

Really very good idea, he could be trained at 100 food in Sissitia. Sissitia may have an xp aura (garrison) for that unit, when it reaches the required xp then upgrade to champion.

but how is this different from training spartiates for 100 food with 2 mins train time?

why not "cut out the middle man" so to speak (the male citizen).

Edited July 1, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[chrstgtr]

20 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

but how is this different from training spartiates for 100 food with 2 mins train time?

why not "cut out the middle man" so to speak (the male citizen).

It makes them vulnerable. If you lose the building while units are being trained then you just lost the building (and whatever time) and the res for the citizens is refunded. If you lose the men then you lose the resources too.

The point is to create a cheap, but risky, alternative way to make champs. 

Edited July 1, 2022 by chrstgtr

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

If you lose the men then you lose the resources too.

but wouldn't they too be safely garrisoned? Even if the building goes down, you could move them. It seems strange to have a whole separate unit involved in the training process when the end result is pretty similar.

[chrstgtr]

3 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

but wouldn't they too be safely garrisoned? Even if the building goes down, you could move them. It seems strange to have a whole separate unit involved in the training process when the end result is pretty similar.

Those buildings can be lost which would expose them. But yes, that is why I originally envisioned it all occurring outside of structures. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

7 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Those buildings can be lost which would expose them. But yes, that is why I originally envisioned it all occurring outside of structures. 

IDK it just seems like a lot of unnecessary tedium.

Edited July 1, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[borg-]

What if we could train young Spartan champions, level 1, a little weaker than the common spearman, a little faster, cheaper, but without gathering and building ability. Added a global xp trickle aura for them. Over time they become champions as we know level 2, and then to level 3 (royal). However, this aura must be ranged, so the player is forced to make them more vulnerable. The weak point is that if you need level 2 champions quickly it's impossible.

Edited July 1, 2022 by borg-

[borg-]

Estou terminando o patch de esparta e estou com um problema. Como posso ter dois heróis simultâneos?

Edited July 3, 2022 by borg-

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Perhaps a "Krypteia" aura for Spartiates, which boosts the gathering of nearby Helots.

[borg-]

One more question, I add a two build limit to Syssiton but it doesn't work.

 

[borg-]

15 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Perhaps a "Krypteia" aura for Spartiates, which boosts the gathering of nearby Helots.

I thought of krypteia as a technology where young Spartans gain experience faster to actually become champions as we know in the current alpha but helots take longer to train. But I don't know how this works with hoplite tradition, it can be op. Instead of experience can gain attack. We can also remove hoplite tradition to affect champions.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

15 minutes ago, borg- said:

One more question, I add a two build limit to Syssiton but it doesn't work.

 

You have to add lines to the syssition's template. <BuildLimit>