how about making armies more flexible?

i would like to propose the following:

the abiliy to purchase different types of troops. for example, one could buy reconnaissance troops that would be able to move quickly but not be able to inflict or withstand heavy damage. other types could be artillery, armored, paratrooper, seige and demolition, and a special 'cheney' unit that would go around spreading lies and confusion while wasting billions of geos on graft and corruption. one could also upgrade and reconfigure armies for a set price.

armies that survive engagements should receive receive veteran points that increase their relative strength.

armies should have the ability to attack moving armies. it would be cool to see an incoming army and send a defensive unit to intercept it before it reaches its target city.

armies should be able to form defensive and offensive lines. this would allow alliances to better defend their borders instead of just concentrating on specific cities. eventually, armies should incur penalties depending on the type of terrain that is being covered. for example, crossing mountains on foot should not take as long as walking across nebraska. both of these features would make g-earth a more integral part of the game as geography would become a strategic and tactical consideration.

I'd eluded to this sort of minor upgrades in types of armies in an earlier post. It's just an attempt to bring it closer and closer to the Civilization series.


BTW: Perhaps the Cheney unit could spread justice, and even peace after a few hours.

OMD, wow.. what a great band - thanks for the flashback ;)

I like the ideas, I'll get Luke to read the thread when he gets up!

T.

I'd eluded to this sort of minor upgrades in types of armies in an earlier post. It's just an attempt to bring it closer and closer to the Civilization series.


Civilization rocks, what's your point?
GEwar should be like civ, except games are forever, instead of 5-6 hours (too long to play in one sitting, too short to leave and do other things)

I'd eluded to this sort of minor upgrades in types of armies in an earlier post. It's just an attempt to bring it closer and closer to the Civilization series.


BTW: Perhaps the Cheney unit could spread justice, and even peace after a few hours.

i have not played civilization, so you got me on that. i was really thinking of making it more like the real world.

i agree with the cheney suggestion. the odds of this happening should be set at a realistic level, let's say to .ooo49% of the time. ;)

armies that survive engagements should receive receive veteran points that increase their relative strength.

I like this idea.

I like this idea.

The problem with that idea is that you could "cheat" by having an ally attack one of your huge armies with a tiny army, thus making your remaining 20,000-something troops all veterans for the price of 100 troops.

In Civ the units battle one on one, The only way this could work is if armies were all set to a limited number of troops, and you could go back to cities only to refill the army, but not add as many troops you wanted. But then that would take away the aspect of not knowing how many troops your enemy has.

The problem with that idea is that you could "cheat" by having an ally attack one of your huge armies with a tiny army, thus making your remaining 20,000-something troops all veterans for the price of 100 troops.


yes, i agree. every battle engagement should be judged according to various variables so that this does not happen. for example, if a large army prevails over a tiny one, the veteran points accrued should be proportionally small. i leave that to the wisdom of the designers.

The problem with that idea is that you could "cheat" by having an ally attack one of your huge armies with a tiny army, thus making your remaining 20,000-something troops all veterans for the price of 100 troops.


yes, i agree. every battle engagement should be judged according to various variables so that this does not happen. for example, if a large army prevails over a tiny one, the veteran points accrued should be proportionally small. i leave the final formula to the wisdom of the designers.

The problem with that idea is that you could "cheat" by having an ally attack one of your huge armies with a tiny army, thus making your remaining 20,000-something troops all veterans for the price of 100 troops.

In Civ the units battle one on one, The only way this could work is if armies were all set to a limited number of troops, and you could go back to cities only to refill the army, but not add as many troops you wanted. But then that would take away the aspect of not knowing how many troops your enemy has....well we can factor the experience gained in relation to the size of both armies involved. if a small army defeats a big one, it gets a big experience factor (but they are few troops themselves) and when a big army defeats a small one, they get a small experience factor (but more units enjoy it). The attacking power is proportional to the number of armies multiplied by the experience factor.

anyway, the point is that we can do such calculations with the big troop numbers without having to do single unit combat simulation ;)

it is not just "novice" and "veteran" but rather an experience factor an army has which increases from combat to combat (and only the owner can see) until all troops die.

adding fresh new troops to an army would lower the experience factor as well.

and finally the experience lowers when you don't use your armies (or you don't give them food, hehe).

just my -50 cent ;)

Additionally what happens when you have an experienced army and then add more troops to it? Do the new troops benefit from the experience gained by the others or do individual troops carry their own experience?

I would think that even if the experience gained was proportional to the army faced, there would still be ways to cheat. IE. I'm sure that friends would be willing to sacrifice their huge armies to power up their allies, and if done consistently(as it no doubt would be), the result would be an unstopable super army.

PS. Just thinking, wouldn't it be cool if real world weather data affected how fast troops moved, or how easily a city was defended(way off in the future here). Or traffic data, no that would be funny, being stuck in virtual traffic jams.

This idea wouldn't work.

The thing is, this veteran thing only works in games where your units have health. Health of an army in GEwar is basically measured by number of troops. But there's no limit to that, so it wouldn't he fair to make entire armies veterans. The only other option would be to make troops themselves veterans, but troops don't have health. They either die or they live. If they live, and become veterans, then you'd have the problem of large armies becoming veterans off small battles. Whereas if they die... they become veterans, but the kind that have their names engraved on large stone monuments.

The only way I see this working is if calculated experience was given to surviving troops, and only those troops would retain the xp (new troops added start at 0 xp), and the xp would be factored into the battle. But that's WAY to many variables to deal with.

which of the issues is post #10 not addressing? I thought it can work that way... :confused:

Sorry maybe I didn't read properly.

Are you saying that the army itself gets experience. Then that XP is divided equally amongst the troops, so if you have more troops each gets less each, whereas if you have less, each gets more?
And then if you add more troops to the army, the xp divides further?

why bother with experience? "experienced" troops, just get 20% more troops.

or do more damage in total, you just count the amount of experienced troops in an army, divide that by 10 and add that to the damage numbers or something.

but with this being really hard to code, im all for just giving "experienced" armies more troops. or not have experienced soldiers at all, at least not before we get some other tactics in the game.

you just count the amount of experienced troops in an army, divide that by 10 and add that to the damage numbers or something.

We've already outlined why that's impossible.

1) Troops here don't "survive" battle. They either die, or don't fight at all.

2) If basically the troops that didn't die became experienced troops, you would have people making large armies, and letting allies attack it with a tiny army so they could get a huge amount of experienced troops.

No Timme's idea was from the old site that had discussed this issue intensely and never got the feature implemented. Here's some thoughts

http://www.googleearthhacks.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2513

Which is where the "virtual troops" idea was first floated.

http://www.googleearthhacks.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4059

The idea of just adding virtual troops for the attack is the easiest way of implementing the army XP.

For example a well bonused up army might have a bonus of 100% at a battle of 10,000 troops vs 10,000 troops with 0% experience bonus.

The battle would be virtual 20,000 vs 10,000

Assuming even win loss, does the attacking army has 10,000 left after the battle?
No. The multiplier is reversed and the army has received even more experience and is at 5,000 troops.

They attack another army and get a bonus of 120%, 5,000 + 120% = virtual 11,000 troops. If they attack a 15,000 troop army, they lose and they are gone, XP and all. Simple. No Uber-armies.

City defenders could also easily receive a 50% bonus by default or an extra 50% above their current experience bonus.

numbers a good, mmkay.

Blitzkrieg - I could get REALLY indepth if Bueth, shadowdani or Luke want my full opinion......

So basically... it would be impossible to add more troops to those armies?

That might not be a good idea if you're left with only one army gaurding a city that's far from your homebase.

Hmm, very true.. there are so many little problems with this system.. Ways to cheat so on so forth, experience would have to be bought, and thats not very realistic, is it? :cool:

T.

I lLike the idea of different types of units.

I'm so-so on the exprience points bit (too hard to code and too easily manipulated imo)


Do defenders get any bonuses atm? I seem to recall reading the idea had been floated some time ago....

You can add more troops but this will dilute the XP bonus and overall percentage bonus.

Ok, stay tuned for a Blitzkrieg thesis and internal bugtest on this feature. I WILL write it up fully in the next day or so.....

Ok, stay tuned for a Blitzkrieg thesis and internal bugtest on this feature. I WILL write it up fully in the next day or so.....

Oh no, more time spent on reading and less on coding...

:D :D