feature suggestion morphing weaker units into stronger ones

[andy5995]

0ad already has the ability to morph units (sentry tower->defense tower, packed/unpacked catapult).

 

Any reason not to implement the ability for infantry swordsman to morph to champs? Or cav->champ cav?

 

It would be nice if women could morph into a different unit (better than deleting them).

[borg-]

It's an idea that was raised a while ago, but we don't have all the models available, for example, rome cavalry champion swordman doesn't have its citizen model. I also don't know how correct that would be in the historical sense, although it sounds like a fun idea. Could be added after elite level.

Edited July 13, 2022 by borg-

[borg-]

1 minuto atrás, borg- disse:

edit.

 

Edited July 13, 2022 by borg-

[Darkcity]

Why not just add 1 more promotion layer? on top of rank 3? So, champs will be offcially rank 4 unit. This can be done as following.

1. Boost the stats of the units same as champ, when reach rank 4 (No need to change their unit type as champ (Citizen to champ), just give them costume of champs)
   or
2. Convert them to champions (Which is not suppoted I guess according to @borg-, but solution can be looked into by dev team)

I think first one should be widely acceptable. Since, these units will earn the position of the champ and can't be converetd to champs by just spending some resources. I personally don't link the idea of converting normal units to champs just by spending res becasue of 2 reasons.

1. It promotes passive gameplays, where player will just gather res untill he can upgrade his units
2. Not making existing champs at all. Why spend resouce in making champs (that doesn't do eco), when you can train eco doing un@#$% which can be made champs.

There are other reasons but I don't want to create a long list but you get the idea.

Experiece based promotion should be supported. This will making gameplay intereting in many ways and its a fair gameplay.

1. People will focus on promoting their units, so they will take fair fight rather then go and suicide.
2. Units fighting for so long with so much exp won't be slaughtered by few champs.
3. People will use healing better, since you don't want 1 Hp champ. 
4. Its just better gameplay, if you are microing your units till rank 4, you should be rewarded.

Thoughts @borg-, @andy5995, @Grapjas, @Boudica, @ValihrAnt, ?

[Stan`]

3 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

• Boost the stats of the units same as champ, when reach rank 4 (No need to change their unit type as champ (Citizen to champ), just give them costume of champs)
  or
• Convert them to champions (Which is not suppoted I guess according to @borg-, but solution can be looked into by dev team)

An entity can promote into anything. So you can promote into champs.

4 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

 

Experiece based promotion should be supported. This will making gameplay intereting in many ways and its a fair gameplay.

It's been in the game for like... 10 years?

 

[Darkcity]

1 minute ago, Stan` said:

It's been in the game for like... 10 years?

Yes, but we need to add one more rank in promotion, that is Rank4/Champ (till now only rank 3 exists). Any units to achieve that will convert into champ or champ like stats. It is not there currently but can be added. Should be easy to implement, right? @Stan`. 

 

3 minutes ago, Stan` said:

An entity can promote into anything. So you can promote into champs.

Then should be great. Any unit to reach rank 4 will convert into champs. 

[Grapjas]

Adding a 4th rank for some units (if a champion of that unit type exists in the civ roster) is what i did with Grapejuice. For example Athenian hoplite into City Guards. Imo it makes the most sense that they get experience out in the field to earn a champion status. If this would be the goal of a player you would need to play with a different mindset. 

The upside is, you get champions for free,

The downside is, it's not so easy. 

But i guess that's balance. 

I agree that history should be supported for promoting them into champions and possibly even dress up specific unit models for it but that's certainly not the hard part to do. 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Grapjas

[alre]

48 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

Why not just add 1 more promotion layer? on top of rank 3? So, champs will be offcially rank 4 unit. This can be done as following.

1. Boost the stats of the units same as champ, when reach rank 4 (No need to change their unit type as champ (Citizen to champ), just give them costume of champs)
   or
2. Convert them to champions (Which is not suppoted I guess according to @borg-, but solution can be looked into by dev team)

I think first one should be widely acceptable. Since, these units will earn the position of the champ and can't be converetd to champs by just spending some resources. I personally don't link the idea of converting normal units to champs just by spending res becasue of 2 reasons.

1. It promotes passive gameplays, where player will just gather res untill he can upgrade his units
2. Not making existing champs at all. Why spend resouce in making champs (that doesn't do eco), when you can train eco doing un@#$% which can be made champs.

There are other reasons but I don't want to create a long list but you get the idea.

Experiece based promotion should be supported. This will making gameplay intereting in many ways and its a fair gameplay.

1. People will focus on promoting their units, so they will take fair fight rather then go and suicide.
2. Units fighting for so long with so much exp won't be slaughtered by few champs.
3. People will use healing better, since you don't want 1 Hp champ. 
4. Its just better gameplay, if you are microing your units till rank 4, you should be rewarded.

Thoughts @borg-, @andy5995, @Grapjas, @Boudica, @ValihrAnt, ?

taking good fights and avoiding losses is already rewarded, you don't need to over-reward, that's called snowballing. you'd better just give the victory to whoever takes the edge first at that point.

besides, you didn't answer to borg concern at all.

Edited July 13, 2022 by alre

[Darkcity]

3 minutes ago, alre said:

besides, you didn't answer to borg concern at all.

 I understood his concern that champ units for any civilization need to have worker model, for example rome should have sword cav that can be promoted to champ sowrd cav. But I answered to thread instead @alre that how to make units basic units more powerful.

6 minutes ago, alre said:

, you don't need to over-reward,

This is not overrewairding. You can test your hypothesis for that. Just to give you example of rank 3. In a fight of 100 v 100 head to head fight hardly 10 units promotes to rank 3 mostly dies. On top of that we can manage the how much exp should a unit need to reach rank 4. This can be done through test runs. Besides we are rewarind the unit not more than a champ unit. Its exp vs res. 

I hope that clears your questions @alre

@Grapjas My only concern here is people garriosioing units in barack or stables to get exp. They can keep units garriosned unitl they become champs. So, we might need to fix this as well. I propose following solution.

1. In phase 1 garriosn can't rank you up.
2. In phase 2, you can rank up till 2 while garriosning.
3. In phase 3, you can rank up till 3 but not more than that.

In order to reach champ/rank you need fight.

[alre]

12 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

I hope that clears your questions @alre

they weren't questions. anyway, in certain real play situations, experienced armies are already very strong as is.

[Grapjas]

19 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

My only concern here is people garriosioing units in barack or stables to get exp.

Good point, i actually haven't thought about that. Could maybe implement that soldiers can only get to 1st rank from barracks. Units above rank 1 won't get trickle.

[Darkcity]

33 minutes ago, alre said:

they weren't questions. anyway, in certain real play situations, experienced armies are already very strong as is.

We can always decide on numbers that how much exp should it take to reach next rank. Most large fights breaks out after p3 hence required exp will be available then only; and in P3 player can spam champs if they want so it should be fine. Besides exp based stats increase is part of the gameplay, and I think this can be addition on top on what exists already. We can always test it out @alre. @Grapjas can we test your mode and see what changes can we make it look better and balanced? Also can you please share me link to your mod so i can test it.

[Grapjas]

18 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

can we test your mode and see what changes can we make it look better and balanced? Also can you please share me link to your mod so i can test it.

Gonna be hard to properly test it with my mod because you can't isolate that change only. Better to make a seperate mod. It can be a good first mod for you to make  

[Stan`]

@Freagarach can we restrict the trickle aura to only affect basic then advanced units ?

[hyperion]

A good game has simple rules which are reasonably easy to discover, this proposal has the taste of high complexity and a read the code feature. At least the implementation is the easy part here.

We want some level of snowballing but not much, the current promotions are probably already boarder line. So I agree with @alre that this needs a lot of consideration. Most like this proposal will be OP or useless, close to impossible to find a sweet spot.

Further this proposal builds on very shaky foundations. A prerequisite for this proposal is to fix the imbalance of for ex. ranged cav vs melee inf wrt. promotions.

[Freagarach]

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

@Freagarach can we restrict the trickle aura to only affect basic then advanced units ?

Yes.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I wish the team would look into Promotion Techs. Constantly training Level 0 n00b units, even in late-game, only for them to die before they reach cool-looking elite status is kind of meh. We have these awesome actors and units and 90% of soldiers never get there.

[Stan`]

Wonder when they were removed. A16?

[Grapjas]

24 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I wish the team would look into Promotion Techs. Constantly training Level 0 n00b units, even in late-game, only for them to die before they reach cool-looking elite status is kind of meh. We have these awesome actors and units and 90% of soldiers never get there.

Actually units getting to elite level happens quite often, at least in teamgames around 1500 rating i've experienced. The weird 3s(?) invincibility when getting promoted certainly helps it. Especially when players spam healers too.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Grapjas

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 minutes ago, Grapjas said:

Actually units getting to elite level happens quite often, at least in teamgames around 1500 i've experienced. The weird 3s(?) invincibility when getting promoted certainly helps it.

I don't think that happens in A26, the 3 second invulnerability.

But my point is at some point I hate training level 1 nub units after 20+ mins of play.

Edited July 15, 2022 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Grapjas]

I'd be ok with promotion techs at the barracks. Still personally prefer them to actually earn it out in the field though.

5 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I don't think that happens in A26, the 3 second invulnerability.

Good.

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 15/07/2022 at 9:47 AM, Stan` said:

Wonder when they were removed. A16?

exactly when Michael D Hafer left...

[Lion.Kanzen]

In the third phase they could all be advanced.

so it would be cool for the player.