MACEDONIANS (Maybe Romans): Training Mercs from captured CC's.

[Stan`]

2 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

That just a fancy way of saying that he didn't delegate the power to someone so he still holds it :P.

Maybe someone will step up and be worthy of commit access. Until then it's my responsibility not my power

[Darkcity]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

• "A civ can only train their own units, duh."
• "When a civ gets access to new units, they can train them themselves."

There are two options. Allow capturer to train captured civic units or not allow that. We can look at from multiple perspective.

• Gameplay persepective
  • Not allow case: In this case gameplay will be as usual nothing impacted. People will know what to expect and what are the benefits of caturig the building.
  • Allow: New gameplay kicks in, people can train any units of any civilization as long as they capture the buildings. Maybe interetsing gameplay, but few limitions are there.
    • User will see so many units types, He will have so many questions.
    • He opts for a civic that has some units. Now he sees so many units from so many buidlings, which one to train?
    • Therotically speaking a game with ffa of 8 players, a player can have 8 different variation of each units like skirmish cav, will he even going to use that?
    • People play a civic becasue they know the civic, sure some variation in units are preferred but with too many options player might get confuse. 
      There can be other cases as well.

We should test out this in mode if possible.

• Logical persecptive:
  • A civilization that especialize in certain units types should have suprior units compared to a capturur that doesn't especialize in it. If Romans captures Sele elephant stables and train eles then they should be inferior in stats.
    If we are willing to do that then I think it should be fine logically.
  • Certain units types are specific to a civilization that defines their indentity, should fire cav be trained other than by Iberians? It can be questioned.
• Product perspective
  • A single player can have so many types of units trainable under him, depends on types  of buildings captured. It will add to some level of more complexity.
  • UI handling will be difficult. Suppose you are brits, you have ptole backs and roman barcks and mauryans barcks captured, and so on. In certain cases, no of differnet units will exceed the supported number on screen. For example on slecting barack we can show 10 differnet types of units. But now we have 20 types of units, the UI will break.
  • The units trained under capturur shouldn;t be able to build captured civilization building. This needs to be disbaled else it will be hugh mess. For example if a roman civic captured mauryans & brits baracks and trained archer and sling. These units should not build those civic specific building. UI will break. To handle this we will need hard checks, another level of complexity.

===================================================================================================

My point is allowing going with option 2 is more complex and less logical than we think. We can make some expercation for certain units and among certain civiclizations, but fully allowing I'm not in favour of.

We can either go with option 1 or have some exceptions (something in middle) but not option 2.

[Dizaka]

15 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

There are two options. Allow capturer to train captured civic units or not allow that. We can look at from multiple perspective.

• Gameplay persepective
  • Not allow case: In this case gameplay will be as usual nothing impacted. People will know what to expect and what are the benefits of caturig the building.
  • Allow: New gameplay kicks in, people can train any units of any civilization as long as they capture the buildings. Maybe interetsing gameplay, but few limitions are there.
    • User will see so many units types, He will have so many questions.
    • He opts for a civic that has some units. Now he sees so many units from so many buidlings, which one to train?
    • Therotically speaking a game with ffa of 8 players, a player can have 8 different variation of each units like skirmish cav, will he even going to use that?
    • People play a civic becasue they know the civic, sure some variation in units are preferred but with too many options player might get confuse. 
      There can be other cases as well.

We should test out this in mode if possible.

• Logical persecptive:
  • A civilization that especialize in certain units types should have suprior units compared to a capturur that doesn't especialize in it. If Romans captures Sele elephant stables and train eles then they should be inferior in stats.
    If we are willing to do that then I think it should be fine logically.
  • Certain units types are specific to a civilization that defines their indentity, should fire cav be trained other than by Iberians? It can be questioned.
• Product perspective
  • A single player can have so many types of units trainable under him, depends on types  of buildings captured. It will add to some level of more complexity.
  • UI handling will be difficult. Suppose you are brits, you have ptole backs and roman barcks and mauryans barcks captured, and so on. In certain cases, no of differnet units will exceed the supported number on screen. For example on slecting barack we can show 10 differnet types of units. But now we have 20 types of units, the UI will break.
  • The units trained under capturur shouldn;t be able to build captured civilization building. This needs to be disbaled else it will be hugh mess. For example if a roman civic captured mauryans & brits baracks and trained archer and sling. These units should not build those civic specific building. UI will break. To handle this we will need hard checks, another level of complexity.

===================================================================================================

My point is allowing going with option 2 is more complex and less logical than we think. We can make some expercation for certain units and among certain civiclizations, but fully allowing I'm not in favour of.

We can either go with option 1 or have some exceptions (something in middle) but not option 2.

I think there are 3/4 options that differentiate make merc and/or champion units transferable for captured buildings.

[Gurken Khan]

Nobody proposed that "assimilated" units should be able to build structures from their "ancient" culture.

I don't think champs from former owner (builder) civ should be available for production.

The UI could be a problem as @Darkcity stated, maybe so much so that we have to scrap the whole idea or severely limit it.

[Darkcity]

6 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

Nobody proposed that "assimilated" units should be able to build structures from their "ancient" culture.

@Gurken Khan Lets take an example of Sele capturing Brits Baracks. WIth 2nd case, Sele can train Slingers. Now the problem is Sele civic doesn't have slingers, so how do we support it? 2 ways.

1. Make a model of slings under Sele. If we do this we have to support all types of units present in the game under each civilization - Not ideal & very big task, and prone to many bugs.
2. Use sling model of brits. In that case sling can still make brits buildings. Not ideal, UI will break. 

This is just 1 use case i explained. There are so many use cases and edge cases where we have to figure out how to handle. Besides logically we have modify slings stats here but again effort required is high. 

We can have something in between. For example.

If mace capturing Mauryas cc. Since maryans has skirmish cav, Mece can also train skirmish cav, and since mece doesn't have normal skirmish they get Merce Skirmish. So, if the types of unit is supported by catuptured civic then capturer should be able to train that unit, but the unit will be of capturer and not captured civic, which is the present logic and I think it is fine.

[Freagarach]

19 hours ago, Darkcity said:

What's the expected behaviour here?

Non-gameplay expert here. To me it seams that the expected behaviour is that entities specific to the civilisation (civic soldiers, champions) are only to be trained by that civ. Mercenaries however can be bought (not trained) by whoever controls the structure.

9 hours ago, Dizaka said:

That just a fancy way of saying that he didn't delegate the power to someone so he still holds it :P.

We can give it (back) to @wowgetoffyourcellphone?

[alre]

.

Edited July 20, 2022 by alre

[alre]

11 hours ago, Dizaka said:

That just a fancy way of saying that he didn't delegate the power to someone so he still holds it :P.

that's just a fancy way of saying he doesn't want to handle it, and he's not.

11 hours ago, Darkcity said:

There are two options. Allow capturer to train captured civic units or not allow that. We can look at from multiple perspective.

• Gameplay persepective
  • Not allow case: In this case gameplay will be as usual nothing impacted. People will know what to expect and what are the benefits of caturig the building.
  • Allow: New gameplay kicks in, people can train any units of any civilization as long as they capture the buildings. Maybe interetsing gameplay, but few limitions are there.
    • User will see so many units types, He will have so many questions.
    • He opts for a civic that has some units. Now he sees so many units from so many buidlings, which one to train?
    • Therotically speaking a game with ffa of 8 players, a player can have 8 different variation of each units like skirmish cav, will he even going to use that?
    • People play a civic becasue they know the civic, sure some variation in units are preferred but with too many options player might get confuse. 
      There can be other cases as well.

We should test out this in mode if possible.

• Logical persecptive:
  • A civilization that especialize in certain units types should have suprior units compared to a capturur that doesn't especialize in it. If Romans captures Sele elephant stables and train eles then they should be inferior in stats.
    If we are willing to do that then I think it should be fine logically.
  • Certain units types are specific to a civilization that defines their indentity, should fire cav be trained other than by Iberians? It can be questioned.
• Product perspective
  • A single player can have so many types of units trainable under him, depends on types  of buildings captured. It will add to some level of more complexity.
  • UI handling will be difficult. Suppose you are brits, you have ptole backs and roman barcks and mauryans barcks captured, and so on. In certain cases, no of differnet units will exceed the supported number on screen. For example on slecting barack we can show 10 differnet types of units. But now we have 20 types of units, the UI will break.
  • The units trained under capturur shouldn;t be able to build captured civilization building. This needs to be disbaled else it will be hugh mess. For example if a roman civic captured mauryans & brits baracks and trained archer and sling. These units should not build those civic specific building. UI will break. To handle this we will need hard checks, another level of complexity.

===================================================================================================

My point is allowing going with option 2 is more complex and less logical than we think. We can make some expercation for certain units and among certain civiclizations, but fully allowing I'm not in favour of.

We can either go with option 1 or have some exceptions (something in middle) but not option 2.

you are so overcomplicating this! 

- when you conquer a new building you didn't have access before, you can train new units you didn't have access to before. immediately self explanatory. 

- units trained from captured buildings are the same as if you controlled those buildings as their own civ. no need to change anything, not the appearance, not the stats. 

- you don't have to train units you don't want to anyway, if you conquered an enemy building you are probably winning regardless.

- if new units changed the set of structures you can build, that would be actually confusing. luckily, noone asked for that.

- there are no edge cases at all, all building produce exactly the same units regardless of the owner civ, period. can't be simpler than that.

- the ui can possibly get messy, but that can already happen if you select a ridiculous amount of different buildings of the same civ. just don't select a ridiculous amount of different buildings and you'll be ok. the ui can handle up to 4 rows full of trainable units icons.

we get that you dislike the proposal, but you are speaking out of turn. it's ok if you personally prefer the current status, but don't twist a new proposal to create strawman arguments and drown us in words, rather ask if you don't understand something.

14 hours ago, thephilosopher said:

Does this work with Iberian opponents and fire cav? Could create some nice 'LOL' moments when you capture Iberian buildings and then use fire cav against them.

in a25, carth merc cav was arguably the unit that was most characteristic of that civ playstyle, and other players could and can train it if they manage to conquer the building that trains it. you guessed it: it really created some LOL moments to me. by the way, I don't think there are any gameplay downsides to this feature, and I don't see any problem for extending it to all kinds of units.

[Yekaterina]

@Dizaka @Darkcity the issue is in the code:

Civic centres use 

<ProductionQueue>

units/{Civ}/cavalry_javelineer_b

 

THis will only allow the cavalry javelineer of your own Civ to be trained here, be it a Merc or a CS. İf your Civ doesn't have a cavalry javelineer of any kind then you won't be able to train anything.

on the other hand, the Carthaginian's embassy use this

units/Carthage/cavalry_swordsman_merc_a

This specifies that the Carthaginian cavalry will be trained by pointing to a specific template file in the Carthaginian folder. This means the building will be able to train that particular cavalry unit no matter who owns it, as the trainee is Civ independent.

[gameboy]

@Stan`

[thephilosopher]

4 hours ago, alre said:

in a25, carth merc cav was arguably the unit that was most characteristic of that civ playstyle, and other players could and can train it if they manage to conquer the building that trains it. you guessed it: it really created some LOL moments to me. by the way, I don't think there are any gameplay downsides to this feature, and I don't see any problem for extending it to all kinds of units.

I agree. If anything, it adds some new strategic depth and options to the game without going down some roads lots of people don't want to go down (e.g., adding lots of additional unique features to specific civs).

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I think the Carth embassies can be a distinct outlier, but in general I vote to have captured buildings only build the new owner's units. To do otherwise will take a lot more discussion and design work and balancing. 

[alre]

tu quoque @wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

44 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I think the Carth embassies can be a distinct outlier, but in general I vote to have captured buildings only build the new owner's units. To do otherwise will take a lot more discussion and design work and balancing. 

Weren't you the one to suggest having techs researchable in other civ's buildings ? ^^

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

12 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Weren't you the one to suggest having techs researchable in other civ's buildings ? ^^

 

I don't remember, but lately I am erring toward simplicity when it comes to the base game. The constant back and forth over the Han has basically sapped all energy I had for advocacy. It could also be my current flu.

 

 

14 minutes ago, alre said:

tu quoque @wowgetoffyourcellphone

I'll leave y'all to it then.

Edited July 20, 2022 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Darkcity]

7 hours ago, alre said:

- when you conquer a new building you didn't have access before, you can train new units you didn't have access to before. immediately self explanatory. 

- units trained from captured buildings are the same as if you controlled those buildings as their own civ. no need to change anything, not the appearance, not the stats. 

- you don't have to train units you don't want to anyway, if you conquered an enemy building you are probably winning regardless.

- if new units changed the set of structures you can build, that would be actually confusing. luckily, noone asked for that.

- there are no edge cases at all, all building produce exactly the same units regardless of the owner civ, period. can't be simpler than that.

Neither denaying this nor I mentioned that it is not case. 

 

7 hours ago, alre said:

just don't select a ridiculous amount of different buildings and you'll be ok

We can't ask user/player to no do certain events when it is possible in game, right? These cases needs to be handled accordingly. 

 

7 hours ago, alre said:

but don't twist a new proposal to create strawman arguments and drown us in words

No proposal has been put in front. Thats why I always put my point of view in buckets.

1. Gameplay disucssion was purely from the point of view of player. I plays game quite frequently with both pros as well as new players, so my comments were based on that.
2. Logical persecptive was to answer @Gurken Khancomment that if romans has access to eles in past then they should have used it. It was my logical answer to that
3. Product perspective was my understanding of how UI will be complicated. Attaching a screenshot of the same. If you have 2 different types of units under a player and you select them then what will you see. You can so the buildings they can build, the panel is full. Don't we need this special handling if any units can be trained by any civilization? Cosider a case where 3 or more civilization units are there.

 

4. I replied to @Gurken Khan how can be handle this case.

5. This was my proposal and final comment @alre. I wasn't completly opposite to idea. I totally onboard to have somethig in between, but based on observations I don't see option 2 as good idea.

19 hours ago, Darkcity said:

We can either go with option 1 or have some exceptions (something in middle) but not option 2.

And, not sure where did I make false claim though. Let me now if I have missed something. 

I can understand if we not used to look at any disccusion in parts but thats alright. 

Thanks @Sevda for the code piece you shared.

[Gurken Khan]

53 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

Product perspective was my understanding of how UI will be complicated. Attaching a screenshot of the same. If you have 2 different types of units under a player and you select them then what will you see. You can so the buildings they can build, the panel is full.

I thought before that if we allow this we should drop duplicates with same stats. No use for two buildings or units that only differ in name.

[Darkcity]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

I thought before that if we allow this we should drop duplicates with same stats. No use for two buildings or units that only differ in name.

We also need to disable buiilding captured civic specific builidings, no?. So even if a Iberian trains ptol slings, that sling shoundn't build ptol buildings like ptol wonder, colony, light house. 

[alre]

1 hour ago, Darkcity said:

We can't ask user/player to no do certain events when it is possible in game, right? These cases needs to be handled accordingly. 

not really, if you can get a messy UI by having a messy selection, that's fine. users understand. as long as it doesn't crash, it's ok.

1 hour ago, Darkcity said:

1. Attaching a screenshot of the same. If you have 2 different types of units under a player and you select them then what will you see. You can so the buildings they can build, the panel is full. Don't we need this special handling if any units can be trained by any civilization? Cosider a case where 3 or more civilization units are there.

this is a good point. I didn't expect that what units buildings can train depends on the civ, but what buildings units can build does not. that wasn't how it worked in my mind, I thought available buildings depended on the civ.

[Gurken Khan]

24 minutes ago, alre said:

I thought available buildings depended on the civ.

Doesn't it? You are aware that he has selected units from two civs?

[Darkcity]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

Doesn't it? You are aware that he has selected units from two civs?

@Gurken Khan, @alre, for option 2, let's take an example of, If roman train ptol sling then sling has to belong to romans to make sure we don't get extra buildings, right?. But romans doesn't have slings be defualt, that mean they need to either support slings in units types so they doen't make ptol buildings or any unit trained under roman will not make their own civic specific building and only roman buildings. I don't know if it handled at present, but it needs to be handled. Hope i'm able to clarify my point. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

28 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

@Gurken Khan, @alre, for option 2, let's take an example of, If roman train ptol sling then sling has to belong to romans to make sure we don't get extra buildings, right?. But romans doesn't have slings be defualt, that mean they need to either support slings in units types so they doen't make ptol buildings or any unit trained under roman will not make their own civic specific building and only roman buildings. I don't know if it handled at present, but it needs to be handled. Hope i'm able to clarify my point. 

It is possible to deal with it without needing any new code. DE does it.

[Gurken Khan]

I always assumed if Rome trained "ptol" sling they'd be Roman for all intents and purposes, so this building stuff never seemed an issue for me.

[chrstgtr]

20 hours ago, Freagarach said:

Non-gameplay expert here. To me it seams that the expected behaviour is that entities specific to the civilisation (civic soldiers, champions) are only to be trained by that civ. Mercenaries however can be bought (not trained) by whoever controls the structure.

It would be nice if there was generic merc units for all CS unit types that could be trained by captured barracks. It would give a nice twist on capturing barracks. 

I don't think there would be any balancing. A lot (maybe all?) of the unit types already have merc art. 

Edited July 21, 2022 by chrstgtr

[Gurken Khan]

18 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

A lot (maybe all?) of the unit types already have merc art. 

I don't know if it would be a problem if "same-y" units had different names and art (e.g. Thracian Peltasts and Noba Skirmishers).