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Thread: New military industrial complex - buildings and units balance proposition

  1. #1
    Hanti's Avatar Semisalis
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    Default New military industrial complex - buildings and units balance proposition

    As I said earlier, I have some thoughts about current version of CATW 1.1.5 and I'd like to share with them:
    So this topic is about military buildings and units recruitment balance (MIC in short for military industrial complex).

    I would prefer some logic in building up MIC, so I can propose such patterns to use with all factions.

    First - I classify units by their position as militia, regulars, armoured regulars, heavy armoured regulars and elite (5 levels corresponding 5 levels of barracks).

    Second - barracks should correspond with appropriate level of blacksmith buildings to obtain weapons/armors for units.

    Here are barracks levels:
    Militia Barracks (1st level) - build-able from start
    Standard Barracks (2nd level) - needs 1st level barracks
    Armoured units Barracks (3rd level) - needs 2nd level barracks AND 1st level blacksmith
    Heavy armoured units Barracks (4th level) - needs 3rd level barracks AND 2nd level blacksmith
    Elite Barracks (5th level) - needs 4th level barracks AND 3rd level blacksmith

    Here are units recruitment abilities:
    Militia Barracks - can recruit at least 1 militia type unit (0 turn recruitment)
    Standard Barracks - can recruit at least 1 militia type unit (0 turn recruitment) AND 1 regular unit (1 turn recruitment)
    Armoured units Barracks - can recruit at least 1 militia type unit (0 turn recruitment), 1 regular unit (1 turn recruitment) AND 1 armoured unit (2 turns recruitment)
    Heavy armoured units Barracks - can recruit at least 1 militia type unit (0 turn recruitment), 1 regular unit (1 turn recruitment), 1 armoured unit (2 turns recruitment) AND 1 heavy armoured or elite unit (2 or 3 turns recruitment)
    Elite Barracks - can recruit at least 1 militia type unit (0 turn recruitment), 1 regular unit (1 turn recruitment), 1 armoured unit (2 turns recruitment) AND 1 heavy armoured or elite unit (2 or 3 turns recruitment) PLUS unique elite units (eg Roman 1st Cohort).

    Here are unit recruitment times:
    militia - 0 turns
    regulars - 1 turn
    armoured - 2 turns
    heavy - 2 or 3 turns
    elite - 2 or 3-4 turns

    Reasons why I suggest more than 1 turn unit recruitment is that in CATW units are cheap to recruit and cheap to upkeep. While I like cheap upkeep feature - it makes situation when AI players have more and more armies and game can start to become tedious. So it seems sensible to me to steer flow of units by making some of them time-consuming when recruited and by making their infrastructure harder to obtain (blacksmiths).

    Here are blacksmiths levels:
    Current blacksmiths requires trade/market structures to be built and I would keep it this way.
    Blacksmith (1st level) - requires 1st level trader AND 3rd level CITY
    Armourer (2nd level) - requires 2nd level trader AND 4th level CITY
    Forge (3rd level) - requires 3rd level trader AND 5the level CITY

    Here are blacksmith bonuses:
    The simplest system for blacksmith is as follows:

    Blacksmith (1st level) - gives +1 heavy/light weapons +1 armour
    Armourer (2nd level) - gives +2 heavy/light weapons +2 armour
    Forge (3rd level) - gives +3 heavy/light weapons +3 armour

    This way golden armour/weapons will be available ONLY in level 5th cities. I would also recommend removing weapons/armour upgrades from other buildings (temples) and put missile upgrades into siege/archery buildings.
    Temples can have +morale buildings and +experience bonuses if needed.

    Here are experience bonuses:
    About +experience feature in barracks. I suggest this pattern (spearmen unit is example only):

    Militia Barracks (1st level) allows
    Militia Spearmen (0 experience) - 0 turn

    Standard Barracks (2nd level) allows
    Militia Spearmen (0 experience) - 0 turn
    Standard Spearmen (1 experience ) - 1 turn

    Armoured units Barracks (3rd level) allows
    Militia Spearmen (0 experience) - 0 turn
    Standard Spearmen (1 experience ) - 1 turn
    Armoured Spearmen (2 experience) - 2 turns

    Heavy armoured units Barracks
    (4th level) allows
    Militia Spearmen (0 experience) - 0 turn
    Standard Spearmen (1 experience ) - 1 turn
    Armoured Spearmen (2 experience) - 2 turns
    Heavy Armoured Spearmen (3 experience) - 3 turns

    Elite Barracks (5th level) allows
    Militia Spearmen (0 experience) - 0 turn
    Standard Spearmen (1 experience ) - 1 turn
    Armoured Spearmen (2 experience) - 2 turns
    Heavy Armoured Spearmen (3 experience) - 3 turns
    Elite Spearmen (4 experience) - 3 turns

    There is also possibility that it will work poorly because of difference in stats of units and no one will be producing lower level units. So it may go this way:

    Alternative system:

    Militia Barracks (1st level) builds
    Militia Spearmen (0 experience) - 0 turn

    Standard Barracks (2nd level) builds
    Militia Spearmen (1 experience) - 0 turn
    Standard Spearmen (1 experience ) - 1 turn

    Armoured units Barracks (3rd level) builds
    Militia Spearmen (2 experience) - 0 turn
    Standard Spearmen (2 experience ) - 1 turn
    Armoured Spearmen (2 experience) - 2 turns

    Heavy armoured units Barracks (4th level) builds
    Militia Spearmen (3 experience) - 0 turn
    Standard Spearmen (3 experience ) - 1 turn
    Armoured Spearmen (3 experience) - 2 turns
    Heavy Armoured Spearmen (3 experience) - 3 turns

    Elite Barracks
    (5th level) builds
    Militia Spearmen (4 experience) - 0 turn
    Standard Spearmen (4 experience ) - 1 turn
    Armoured Spearmen (4 experience) - 2 turns
    Heavy Armoured Spearmen (4 experience) - 3 turns
    Elite Spearmen (4 experience) - 3-4 turns

    You may choose whatever you like. But please make it more logical than current system (1.1.5) I sometimes cannot produce unit in 1st level barracks and last level is full of troops, which is not what it should be.

    Seleucid example:
    As of 1.1.5 this goes like:
    Barracks allows Pandotapoi (1 unit)
    Militia Barracks allows Pandotapoi (1 unit)
    City Barracks allows Pandotapoi and Pezhetairoi (2 units)
    Army Barracks allows Pandotapoi, Pezhetairoi and Doryphoroi, Argyraspidai, Iphhikrates (5 units)
    Royal Barracks allows Pandotapoi, Pezhetairoi, Doryphoroi, Argyraspidai, Iphhikrates AND additional 5 units (10 units all).

    In my pattern it will be something like this:

    Militia Barracks (1st level) - Pandotapoi (1 unit)
    Standard Barracks (2nd level) - Pandotapoi, Pezhetairoi, Doryphoroi (3 units)
    Armoured units Barracks (3rd level) - Pandotapoi, Pezhetairoi, Doryphoroi, Argyraspidai, Iphhikrates (5 units)
    Heavy armoured units Barracks (4th level) - all of above plus 2 more (7 units)
    Elite Barracks (5th level) - 10 units

    So effectively medium level units are moved one level down (from 4th level to 3rd) - but their time of recruitment is doubled (as I propose 2 turns for these units).

    Cheers.
    Last edited by Hanti; March 11, 2013 at 07:02 AM.

  2. #2
    z3n's Avatar State of Mind
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    Default Re: New military industrial complex - buildings and units balance proposition

    Will take this into account, especially the barracks idea of limiting it by making a pre req to build black smith.

    Also, Mark Centurion and I have experimented with recruitment times before and found it can have drastic effects on the number of units the AI will recruit of each type. Therefore we avoided anything above 2 turns for recruitment.

    As for the rest, you should be satisfied with what I'm going to do
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