ADVICE: limit the level of a unit to just 4

My khan advices to limit the unitlevels to a 3-4 levels max like

inferior
ordinairy
superior

or

civilian
militia
veteran
elite

or whatever. and dont show this level to the enemy.

although ur not allowed to buy inferior knights ofcourse.

just 4 levels will suffice. it would limit the clicking when buying the units. and ur smart enuf to see more advantages.

0-9 honourlevels we have knownjust doesnt add really something to the game

I'd say htis was a good idea, seeing as how it's rare so far as I can tell to come across more than honour 4 or 5 units in MP. I'd want to see the ability to buy units at their lowest level and build up though, it's infuriating in lowv koku games not to be able toget the extra unit because you have to buy at honour two

I don't see this as an issue. There are 9 honour levels. The way it's currently handled, I don't see what problem it is causing. Can you make a case for this? Status quo takes precedence over whim.

Matt

Can I assume that all of this advice pertains only to MP?

MP and SP games are totally different regarding unit aquisition.

This has a good and bad side - good side is that the difference in levels will be more defined - which is needed. Bad side - you vastly increase the jump each upgrade via structure gives. In the case of 4 levels - the jump you get from a "legendary" building or its TW:M equivilent is 2 levels - moving your units to level 3. Thats too much. The fix - and again this has good and bad points - allow an upgraded building to produce troops of varying quality - veteran troops would cost more to make at the same dojo, as compared to regular troops produced there. This way, any group you create costs an amount based on its skill, ability and type, not just its type. One could even take it farther with increased training time for more skilled units - although this will open the door to mass rushes of unskilled troops.
Points to consider.
Qapla!

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BSM_Skkzarg
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."

I think that this could work with a little bit of adjustment.

For my four levels I'm going to assume: green, regular, veteran and elite. My focus is on troop type rather than infrastructure capabilities.

All peasant levy type troops would be considered green regardless of the level of "Dojo". Using Shogun as an example, all Ashi units would be green to represent their nature. These types of units would not graduate to "regular" until they had seen battle, and then it would be based on similar stats to what is used to determine Honor increases now. The survivability of these units can be increased by producing them in territories with Armor/Weapon shops, but a peasant who's never seen battle before is still a peasant even if he's in full plate mail and no amount of training will prepare him for the horrors of the battlefield. In any case, these units would never go higher than Veteran in level.

Regular troops would consist of the standing army (Samurai). Their cost would be significantly higher, but so would their performance over Green troops. There would be a possibility of these units becoming Elite, but it would be rare.

Veteran troops cannot be created, but could only happen through combat. Veteran level troops would be able to deal more damage, be more resistant to routing, and quicker to rally if they do. These units could of course progress to Elite status with sufficient experience and "Honor" increases.

Elite troops can be either created or raised to this status from Veteran. These units would consist of the highest end of the Tech-tree (Heavy Cav and Monks in Shogun). These units should be the strongest overall and prohibitively costly, but VERY cost effective. Imagine if Monks and HC cost 1000 or even 1500 koku in old STW but started out at H3 or H4. There would certainly be fewer of these units, but their effectiveness would be high.

I think that a system like this could work, but Khan's got a point... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The way honor is handled now does work even if we have different ideas on how it could be implemented.

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Obake

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.

it might help a little with online cheating (no more "koku cheats" with opponents showing up with all honor 9 monks) since the difference in unit honor/quality might not be so great. but then again, someone will always find a way.....

i don't care for this idea simply because it's too restrictive in concept. as a player, i should be able to go as high as i like without artifical boundaries.

And a model like that which Obake is describing is something that would require many more variables, like instead of the current 1, maybe 3 or 4. To try and implement something along the lines he is talking about with only the current 1 variable would be a total disaster.

Frankly I think the current model works very well. If it were ever to be updated, it would NOT be the impetus, it would simply benefit from a wider update effort, to keep pace with other improvements.

Matt

I would like to see honor upgrades affect only morale level. The weapon and armor upgrades affecting attack/defend/armor values are already limited to 3 levels, and that helps keep each unit within its defined role. You could still have 0 - 9 on the honor scale, but have each level only add +1 to morale. That would allow you to have many factors in the game contribute to morale without saturating the system.

I personnaly don't see a problem with the the 1-9 honour system. . . . it gives more range and choice and also i don't think that the mouseclicking is such a prob in multiplaying.

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Sarcasm . . . . . Never!


WarlordWarrior

this is a tricky one. i like the simplicity of a smaller scale, but i hate it when my units can only get to 'elite' and no higher.

i agree with yuuki about honor, for the most part, but it gets tricky separating out the various attributes, since many of them are so tightly linked. for instance, if a soldier's skill goes up he's more confident and thus his morale also tends to raise.

i also agree that you cannot train a unit to 'veteran' level. this is something you have to earn in battle. but, you can TRAIN a person to be more skillful without ever seeing battle. there's a difference. being a veteran implies battle-tested, whereas training all by itself doesnt. i think you have to make a distinction here in the stats.
you can also have men that are 'battle weary'. they might be VERY skillful in battle and able to survive just about anything, but their morale can be crap. they're just plain tired of fighting all the time. they havent seen their families, had a decent meal or bathed in a long while and are just tired of all the slaughter.

i also agree that units shldnt automatically get a +1 or whatever from a 'dojo'. conscripted units were often just handed a weapon and stood in the front ranks as fodder. so when buying peasant units i dont see giving them an automatic increase in anything. in fact, they might shld be given a minus.

morale, skill, weariness, loyalty, incentive, and just good old plain survivability are all things that tend to intertwine. stw did a fair job of modeling and conceptualizing this, but there were flaws.

also, there is no distinction as to what the armor stat means or what the armor bonus means. if you raise the armor stat in the stats file from, say 2 to 3, does that mean that you went from leather to studded leather or did you just improve the leather you were wearing? the same is true of the bonus armor stat. if you had chain mail to start with and gave yourself a +3 bonus, is it now plate mail or just better chain mail? this may sound like nit picking, but when you start talking about medieval european warfare, i think it makes a difference. the same is also true of weaponry. if a 0 bonus weapon is upgraded to a +1 weapon, does that mean you just sharpened your current short sword or are you now using a longsword? or does it really matter at all? i can easily see the difficulties in actual coding. you'd be changing sprites and so on all over the place, so maybe it is better to just generalize and conceptualize most of this and let the player input his own realities for himself within his own mind.

remember too that some of these campaigns these armies went on took years. time affects morale also. an army on a long campaign would suffer desertions, illness, hunger, skirmishes, natural disasters, and so on. the effects could mount up to inflict a very strong morale hit on an army, especially if a given campaign was only supposed to take 6 months and ended up taking a couple years. so, expectation and predictability has an effect on morale also.

it's never easy modeling a human, especially when you start trying to model his considerations, emotions and other mental and spiritual aspects. tricky business at best.

K.


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I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

As it is, a veteran honor increase relies on heads taken in battle. This is good. An advanced dojo grants the same honor increase as X number of kills. This is TOO good.

What if an advanced training buildings granted a certain number of kills to a new unit but LESS than the threshold needed for an honor increase? This would simulate some battle experience without confering more honor. The training would then accelerate the path to veteran status while still necessiting some combat. The maximum building allowance could grant one (or almost one) extra honor. This would be easy to implement too.