Some of you in the beta are probably starting to recognize the influence you now have and why we had the beta be so primitive – so that your ideas can really REALLY go into the game.
So let’s talk about how units should be designed in the game.
Here’s how it works:
Players design their own units. It’s not like Civilization and such where you have knights or warriors. You start out with a person.
The key traits of that person involve their attack (how many HP damage in an attack they can potentially do), defense (how much of an attack they can potentially deflect), their health (how much HP they have), and their speed (how many attacks they get in a round).
These traits come from giving the unit weapons, armor and equipment.
It’s in what you equip your unit with that things get..interesting.
Let’s look at a late game unit that a player might potentially design (and none of this is set in stone as beta testers will have a lot of say on this):
I have created a unit called “Dread Knight”.
Equipment:
Weapon:
Armor:
Now this may even be a simplified unit design depending on where the beta takes us. The point being, the creation of this unit may hinge on several different resources being under the player’s control.
Now, in say Civilization IV, if the player didn’t have oil, they couldn’t build tanks. A unit would have a single resource requirement total.
But here, because players are designing their units, there may be several resource requirements. Which begs the question, what happens if you lose control of one of them? How should the game handle it?
I can think of a few different options:
I’m a little biased for option C because I’d like to see the resources treated as bonuses rather than as pre-requisites. We keep the armor and weapons as straight forward as possible and have the “power” be in a large number of optional equipment the player can add on.
I definitely prefer option C, but I also like the idea of a short lag between when you loose a resource and when you can no longer produce units using that resource. I also think that any unit that started production should be able to finish it (even if it's past that lag time mentioned above) - since the way I see it, the time building a unit involves training it and building its equipement but all the needed resource have already been brought in.
^ The above idea means that I would run in and steal a rare resource for as little time as possible and then queue up as many units using that as I could before retreating. Seems less strategic and more gamey to me.
I'm thinking we need warehouse buildings to stockpile resources and such. It is this value that will be used when constructing units instead of a requiring to have access of the resource at that time.
I for one am going to be a deviant and say that I am in favor of Option D. What is option D? Every resource has a cost in gold. If you don't have the resource available to you, you simply pay the cost for it instead. This would represent scavenging stuff from the environment/buying it from trades and/or third parties.
I am really in favor of this. It would mean the economic model would have to switch over to a more quantitative model - which I am also hugely in favor of. So if you have five mithril mines for 40 turns and your warehouse has 200 mithril stored up then you should use it from stockpiles if you lose the mines. You could also trade for quantities of different resources, and if SD wanted to really go crazy there could even be some fluctuations in price based on supply and demand. It would really open up possibilites such as cornering a market, making money by playing those fluctuations... (but that would entail making the AI know how to do the same..) I really prefer the quantitative model for resources though.
"C" seems like the most sensible solution.
I'd like to chime in with Scoutdog for option A with a strong tie-in to the economics and diplomacy model. Option A opens up so many interesting economic, strategic and espionage options.
If you don't have the resource, you can't build the unit. "But, but, but I really want my gray dragonscale mail-wearing rangers sneaking around in their extra-comfy frogskin moccasins!" Fine, here are the ways you can get it:
A simpler alternative would be option A with a automatic trading system. If you don't have what you need for your unit, a dialog pops up telling you what you're lacking and how much it will cost you to procure it. Players would need a resource page where they could flag what they need and which items they're willing to sell. I'm sure this would be a bit of an AI challenge for single-player games to have the AI trade intelligently.
Although I think the number of different resources should be large, I think the actual quantities of most of those resources should be rare. I'd like to play in a world where scarcity forces us to be creative with unit design so everyone's units end up different every game.
A, B & C are all un-cool. In my own programming projects (you get one guess which language) choices like that mean it is time to re-visit the things I thought I had decided.
For starters, separate the potions, magic leaves, etc, from the design process and let any unit or hero who carries them get the benifit (surely you weren't going to have potions for ordinary units and not for heroes, were you?). Having fewer required ingredients means that the A/B/C choice won't happen quite so often.
Then as Elkoba said, "Option C, but keep the "bonus equipment" as part of the unit, just greyed out on the units profile. If/when your empire re-aquires the resource, you can move your unit back to a city, and hit "re-supply" or something to bring that unit up to standard", seems like a good starting point, although, as others have said, the lack should be indicated clearly. It might be nice not to have to move the unit to a city to add the missing items, but I'm so used to that from other games that it wouldn't really bother me.
Or maybe we could have some sort of blacksmith capability (has to be separately researched) to permit units to upgrade in the field?
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Regarding the units stats: I hope attack / defence / speed & hit-points wasn't intended to be a complete list. Ideally there would also be magic-resistance, endurance, & mobility. "Attack" could include chance-to-hit and damage-if-it-hits. Defence could be separated into armor (protects against everything non-magic), shield (protects only in front) and defence-skill (effective in melee, but won't stop arrows). Pardon me if my Total-War & MOM are showing
Regarding special abilities like "first strike", those could come automagicially from special weapons. Axe & halberd get armor-piercing, cav with long lances get first-strike, inf with long pikes get negate-first-strike, etc. I'd really like to see these in the game.
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Meanwhile, I like the idea of lots of extra metals like mithril, adamantium, etc, but I worry about possibly making them un-usable if the resources are hard to find AND we need some special skill that takes a long time to research, or a special smithy that takes a long time to build. Maybe mithril should be medium-easy to research one you have the pre-requisites, like iron/steel skill and some mithril in hand to experiment with.
Well... While I am an idiot and apparently missed this thing going into beta so I don't know completely what you are talking about... here is my take.
If you don't have the supplies... the unit should not get built.
Reasons why other methods have flaws.
1.) Anything else trivializes the resource to some degree.... if various kinds of resources are availible like mithril and adamantium for instance you will have to make a choice... guard the best? guard the easiest to defend due to proximity? guard them both but with less forces than guarding 1 to make it harder for your enemies to get good gear?
2.) If it's time/money to compensate... odds are someone will figure out how to reduce the time or make gigantic amounts of money in an easier to defend style.
3.) If you can stock pile resources in warehouses if the resource keeps swapping hands you won't be able to tell 1 team from the other team... everyone will have the good stuff.
4.) If you allow the unit to be built but with lower quality weapons etc... it's NOT that unit... so what is it? If you have for instance a Paladin and you have him equipped with a horse, plate mail, and some sort of healing item.. and you lose the healing item... he is not a paladin... he is a knight. But knights don't exist... so you have this paladin that is named paladin but IS NOT A PALADIN. How do you plan on tracking 3-4 varients of the same unit? I tell you how... you flat out don't let it happen. This makes life easier for not only the game engine... but for the players as well.
Other side note :
Masters of Magic only let you equip heros.... you have less heros therefore it's easier to keep track. Not every game needs to get more complex with the next generation... the simplicity of chess, tetris, and other suck games is sometimes the beauty of it. In masters of magic if I wanted a ranged troop I picked archer or magician... and it was basically pre-built... the beauty of the game wasn't in the units... it was in the stacks of units you put together.
Here is a thought... go back to pre-made "classes" of units... add heros to the game if they aren't there now and limit the number of them you can have... let them use equipment. If you really want to make the units special by themselves add a new "class" called "caravan" or something like that. The caravan can go to the mithril mine... and grab x amounts of units... if that caravan meets up with your group of "dreadknights" they get a "magical enhancement" that is "mithril armor +5 defense" or something like that... and it's inventory is reduced.
Caravan Rules :1.) Can not be protected in a city2.) Can not be "stacked" with other caravans (to avoid "uber caravans" that are so well protected they are immune to attack and have the ability to basically haul half the planet with them per trip)3.) If a caravan is destroyed the amount of that resource is left laying in that location... IF another caravan comes upon it... they can pick it up.4.) If a caravan holds a resource for too long... it vanishes with a message of "caravan sold it's goods on the black market and retired"5.) You should be able to assign a caravan a route, how often it repeats it, and how it reacts to enemy units as they get close (run back to city, run back to closest city or resource, hold it's ground using stacked units, run away randomly, destroy goods) this is when they get within visible range. Obviously destroying the goods holds a lock on the resource but can seriously cripple your own stock pile as well since an attack is not needed to force the destruction... merely the threat of possible attack.
This gives you a minor stockpile... makes you manage "trade routes" basically to the resource and back.. and makes it difficult to protect. Realistically when I was playing Civ 4 and I had oil in like Africa... and I started making tanks in America a second latter... that's kind of silly... the best place for me to logically make tanks if I needed oil was in Africa... but since the product was assumed safe during transport it didn't make me protect anything but the oil... if the game was realistic I should have had refineries, facories, etc... all over that general area in africa where the mine was... and THAT is where all my tanks should have been made to avoid my enemy stealing my oil while in transit. This would have had me protecting a much larger area in Africa and ramping up my assets in that area.
The Caravan unit and transporting of resources perhaps needs a little tweaking because I came up with it in say 10 mins of thought... but you can see what I am going for... a more realistic management of resources... a slight delay on impact from losing the resource... and owning just the resource points doesn't mean you have a 100% monopoly on that resource if they are killing your caravans and stealing your supplies.
I know it's a bit late for radical changes... so this is probably falling on deaf ears or being filed under "for the sequel" but in my defense... no one asked my opinion prior
"Here is a thought... go back to pre-made "classes" of units"
I wish they would, but I think the devs have gone so far in the other direction it's a lost cause. Probably they are shaped by their Galactic Civilizations heritage. Space games often have unit(ship) design features, and probably need them. MOM, Elemental, etc, don't because they have enough going on with spells, heroes, etc.
I like that but have it so that players have their stockpiles for sale on an open market and that's the only way it happens, unless the real bandits are selling e.g. bandits raid my Iron caravan, and sell my iron to you. Or I've got my excess iron on the market and if I'm not at war with you or trade embargoing you, you can buy at the price I've set. Computer players buy and sell as it suits them.
Given that - each person in Elemental is an individual, I’m more for a skill based unit design, you should be able to recruit a peasant, a raw recruit, and train that person to a role. Warrior – Scout – Caster – Healer etc. and have a grade 1 recruit.
The roles should have different levels of training and as they advance cost more to train and have greater ability to use equipment at higher levels. Warrior becomes a Guard – Guard becomes a Knight - or whatever labels you want to use.
You recruit a Warrior and have a choice – use him as a grade one combat type or send him back to the barracks and train him into a Guard (grade two combat type.)
A Warrior might be able to use leather armour while a Guard might be able to use leather armour and chain armour – while a Knight would be able to use Leather, chain and Plate.
But you could not train a Guard until you had the technological advance Veteran Units – or a Knight – until you had the Expert Units advance.
A Guard would have a higher attack, defence, and health than a Warrior. A grade 2 Mage would have would also have higher casting skill or magical power than a grade 1 Caster. A grade 2 Ranger would have greater stalk and hide and wider perception than a mere Scout. Etc.
Units should be able to gain experience and progress up higher levels by being played and surviving combat in the case of warrior or maybe time spent undetected in enemy territory for a scout.
When it comes to equipment, everything you make or harvest should be stored. You could trade the Mithril ore or send it to a blacksmith to make armour and weapons. You could then trade the armour and weapons or use them to equip Units.
Creating units should depend on what you have in stock - if you train a Knight and then make a Mithril Helmet, a Mithril Plate Mail, a Leather Boots and a Mithril sword then you equip them on the Knight and call him/her and Dread Knight. That then becomes a template. But you can’t create more of the template unless you have the equipment in stock and an available recruit of the proper type and level. If you don’t then you can’t make the unit. So Choice A. But -
When it comes to micro management getting boring I’d suggest that “simple equipment” and “simple recruits” always be deemed to be available – you always have - As examples - Iron, Leather and wood and grade 1 recruits. Etc…
You can always make Leather - Iron and wooden armour and weapons – so that this simple equipment can always be equipped in any unit template without having to have it in stock.
I’d suggest that “Iron”, “Leather” and “wood” be deemed to be the standard and receive +/- 0. Which means all players can design units with standard gear and no bonuses without the need of extra resources or micro management.
But advanced resources – Mithril – adamantine - dragon Hide - Yew Wood - whatever – have bonuses. Mithril armour deflects more than Iron and a Adamantine sword does more damage than Iron. So the players who want to micro manage and train higher level units or create higher level equipment can.
This also creates a more gentle learning curve for the game. A novice player might play with all Iron equipment but then slowly learn more and more about crafting and training and create more advanced units. The AI on computer opponents could be set so on Normal they use standard training and equipment but on hard the AI opponents start to take advantage of training and on very hard the AI uses special training and crafting or something.
I prefer option A.
If you don't have mithril mines, you damn well better not be building units equipped with mithril weapons. Unless the resource system is more complex and 'units' of mithril ore have to be harvested and can be stockpiled, in which case, you can only build the units so long as you have units of mithril ore.
This way i won't feel so horribly 'cheated' when i brilliantly destroy the opponents mithril mines only to see hordes of dread knights continue to be churned out simply because the opponents have such high industrial capacity that it doesn't actuallly need the bonus from the mines to produce mithril equipped troops.
Secondly, this avoids the problem of having hordes of dread knights but each with some missing individual components. Unless there is some really brilliant UI to display the units equipment, digging through you stacks of units trying to make sure that all of them are fully equipped before taking them to battle is a lot more annoying then just having some backup designs that you could fall back to when some resource is lost.There should then be an option to just upgrade this lower tier units to the higher tier units once you secure the missing resources again.
Managing designs rather than individual unit equipment is far more easier IMHO. Having an intelligent 'family' or 'class' based design system is a better solution. You should be able to design 'families' of units. It should then be a simple matter to upgrade units in a particular family to their higher tier variants in the same family when the resources become available. Simple design controls such as 'add this equipment to all designs of the same family' will allow you to be able to quickly upgrade all your related designs to the latest tech rather slogging through each individual unit design.
Option C, but with an AI backup. You know you can .
The player is informed of the discrepency, but there is a background manager that replaces key equipment with a comprable item that provides at least a percentage of same benifits of the now missing item. The discrepency should also be highlighted on the 'build' menu in case the player forgets exactly what 'part' the message had announcd now unavailable. Raplacement remains untill either the player saves the new build as final or resource resurfaces.
On a side note regarding the system of equipping items, i'm not sure if more neccessarily means more fun. For instance, would i find it fun to to have to individually specify helmet, body armour and boots? Unless each item has a lot a variety to it, it may be meaningless as you would most often just equip the highest tier helmet, body armour and boots anyway. Example, would there be any instance where i would NOT want to equip mithril helmet together with mithril armour?
And as with some comments, skills should also be able to be 'added' to a unit at higher training cost and time. I don't see how else you would be able to create say scout units with wide area of spotting. I can't imagine any equipment that could impart scout skills, unless maybe with magical ranger's cap or something funny like that.
Yeah, I think I like this idea. If resources are produceably in quantities and storeable, then it will give some very meaningful dynamics to your trade arrangements with other players. You could create arrangements with other players that would flow to the effect of "give me 200 of resource X every turn and I will give you 100 of resource Y every turn," with numerous resources at the table for negotiations. Imagine, for a moment, an empire bestowing a close ally with 10 fully refined, hero grade Runed, Fire-Mithril Long Swords as a sign of their eternal friendship.
Or, for instance, you could make an arrangement such as, "I will give you 100 units of Feather Iron for every turn you spend at war with Empire X and/or for every unit-of-successful-warfare you have inflicted upon Empire X. Some interesting diplomacy could emerge from such a system. As I believe Den mentioned in an earlier post, though, a system where specific resources could make for differing attack/defense values in otherwise identical units (in the event that you lose the resource) could make things very confusing.
I imagine it couldn't be too terrible, though, if you simply had "Death Knights" with, say, slightly larger or smaller sword icons over their batallions to represent their differing attack powers.
My greatest concern in reading about this system is the possibility that rather than fostering "interesting decisions" it will rather promote "no-brainer decisions."
One avenue of thought related to this is the potential universal utility of the bonus equipments. I begin by assuming that there will be an upgrade system (that is, if you discover magic honey somewhere you can upgrade your existing guys to use it) of some sort since that type of thing is generally logical and fun for players to use. A good upgrade system should be consistent in form of payment between what adding something initially vs later as an upgrade. For example, if the only thing adding magic honey to the initial design of a unit does is add one turn to its build time, then upgrading an existing and otherwise the same unit should similarly take additional time in a city.
The way the current system looks to be developing, it appears that adding equipment will possibly add no or virtually no additional cost to the building of a unit. This means in practice that a dread knight without potions of valor will take the same amount of time to build as one with them. And that's a rather reasonable view also with nothing inherently wrong with it. If the potions are sitting there already made, why should it take longer or cost more to hand them to the guys as they leave the barracks?
The problem subsequently created though is that the bonus equipment then firmly enters the realm of "no-brainer" decision making rather than "interesting" decision making, at least related to the unit design and upgrade process. If there is a ready and sufficient supply of valor potions, shouldn't they be handed out to everyone that can use them? After all, the cost associated with using items like that is in their initial manufacture, not the act of handing them to guys in the field. In game terms, if the cost to upgrade to use a certain piece of bonus equipment is negligible, then of course I should upgrade every unit I have to take advantage of such a bonus.
One solution to this could be to model the restricted availability of specific potions or flavors of honey on one or both of the raw material and manufacturing levels, meaning that only so many of your troops could get each thing. This strikes me as a micromanagement nightmare of the highest order.
Another solution that appeals to me on a gameplay level would be to one automate and mandate that indeed all of your units receive the best and most potions that they can. However, your nation would only have a limited amount of bonus material to distribute and that level of availability compared to the number of troops you have would determine the magnitude of the item's bonus that applies to each of your units.
In essence, most bonus items would be reimagined as variable level consumables rather than one time attribute modifiers. This would nicely solve the problem of what happens when you are cut off from a resource node. Just lost half of your available magic honey? Then your units only get half of the magic honey bonus they used to get. They're the same units and no micromanagement is introduced at all on a unit level. The idea could also be further expanded to incorporate a type of supply system where units that are somehow determined to "be out of supply" would no longer get their consumable equipment bonuses.
Anyway, this post got rather long, so I should probably stop. Thanks for sticking around if you got this far. Hope some of the ideas are marginally useful.
These are the solutions I'd want.
Being good at storing vital resources should be a part of the strategy in the game.
When you capture a caravan or a city, the resources you undertake will be sent back to your nearest city by a caravan. You may choose to escort it......
Stockpiling (saving for a rainy day) resources are great fun, and cities with huge stockpiles will be vital strategic depots in war.
Ergo: Make it a system that requires certain resources to build certain equipment, but make it possible to invest in huge storing capacities, and let all cities have a minor standard income of all the most vital resources each turn. To store this income they need at least one warehouse.
Yes, NuclearEngine's idea would be great: Decoupling the unittraining from the weapon/armor forging.
Building a unit process:
1) separately design your unit equipment sets, forge and store them.
2) train a peasant as an normal/experienced/elite mililtary unit (you also should have some options here ... e.x. a cavalary, ranged, melee, scout, etc... unit )
3) select a stored equipment set for trained unit (of course this step could be automated)
4) if a resource isn't available you won't be able to forge the set and get a notification
5) if a set is not available you get a notification and could choose an alternative
Of course you could even forge and store weapons and armor separately (not as sets) but this would be to much micro management (for my taste)
Greetings
While option D does sound ok, I think I should propose option E:
Option E: Unit designs are only a shortcut, unit designs are simplified, and basic resources are stored. When you want to build units, it shows you what metals/wood/stuff are available in this city, what can be imported from inside your empire and what can be imported from further away.
When you decide to build units, you just pick one option for each of the five slots: left hand, right hand, armour, mount, training and special. E.g. Steel pike, nothing, bronze banded mail, nothing, normal, healing herbs. The pike would give the unit 'negate first strike', but is two handed, materials give bonuses/penalties to attack/defence, and it would use the herbs to heal faster. The time it takes to build is the maximum of crafting + import time and training time.
If you pick a design, it auto-fills the slots that it can, auto fills the name field, and shows the amount of time required. Then you just adjust it to fit, if necessary.
If you lose a resource while the unit is being made, it can be assumed that the resource is already at the city, for simplicity's sake. Units further on in the queue will be cancelled, and the player is notified.
This way, you could build wood club peasants if you need them, without having to have a design for them, but you still get the advantage of having designed units.
I like the possibility of stockpiling resources in some sort of the warehouse. Each mine produces some amount of the ore (or something). The production may be a fraction per round. The more mines you have, the faster you may build your advanced units (perhaps some upgrades may speed the mining too). If you start the production of a unit, the amount 1 is subtracted from your warehouses. If you don't have enough in stores, you can not start the unit production, but your already assigned production would continue. This opens a question how to handle warehouses: I suggest this behavior:- there should be several basic warehouse buildings - stables (any mounts may be stored there), armories (any produced weapon may be there - only if weapons are a comodity too) and general warehouses (bonus materials like the twilight honey are stored there)- each warehouse can store up to xx units of the ware type (the number may be increased by some technologies). For instance the stable may accomodate up to 3 horses, or 3 horses and 3 bears, but not 4 horses (so you don't need to micromanage what is stored where). - if you lose a warehouse, you lose fraction of your resources (1/number of warehouses in your empire). The one that got to your warehouse gets it.
Not going to add to the other (very good) ideas in this thread ; i'd go with option C, but this is not what worries me the most in all this discussion.
Please, no matter which option you choose, do NOT force the player to customize his units again and again. In Gal Civ2, when technology began to progress faster and faster, every 5 turns you had to modify your current design, to fit it with the most modern weapons, and i really hated that. I ended up opening the ship design tab, and putting all i could on the basic structure, it took some time and the result was not pleasant.
For Elemental i feel you (we) need to find a way to automatically adapt the units to the context (whereas it is technology progression OR a lack of resource), without forced player interaction with the unit editor. And this should not involve premade patterns "a la Galciv", which nobody used (except, maybe, for the good old "defender").
Option C I guess, but to avoid constant messages about substitutions being made, I'd rather have the ability to allow the computer to just auto-equip troops of your design with the closest weapon/armor if the gear you chose is unavailable. Ditch rings, healing items, any other accessories if not available.
Here's what I'd like to see using Draginol's unit example. Materials like mithril, iron, leather, wood, etc. would have stockpiles in every city with access to them. Either direct access as they have a lumber mill or mine or tannery in town, or indirect as they have a road connection to one of your cities producing them. Or even trade agreements with other nations for an influx of those goods. Rather than pester me frequently that the unit designed cannot be equipped as I chose, you'd get general warnings, or better yet just an inventory screen, of when they were dropping to critical levels.
Cities could then have optional buildings like the warehouses mentioned to extend the amount you could store for emergencies. If you ignored the dwindlng levels of supplies of mithril for instance, and then ordered vast numbers of those Dread Knights, rather than make popups all the time, the computer would just replace the good with the next closest thing. So you'd end up with Dread Knights wielding Iron Long Swords and donning Iron Helmets and Plate Mail.
What's critical I think with whatever route or mix of techniques you employ however is that units designed the same, but outfitted differently because of shortages must be able to enter a city and have a very simple way to order them to upgrade to their desired specifications. It can take gold and turns for sure, but it must not be a command for each individual in undesirable gear. Something as easy as an upgrade button, or even more wonderful would be units stationed in cities equipping new gear automatically as part of just garrisoning the city. As imagined, your knights would be wearing all iron gear with a few lucky ones in mithril pieces. Perhaps coming back from a border skirmish, the soldiers would rest and guard the town. During their stay, mithril extraction is renewed and with a non-negative economy, the units turn in their old pieces for some fraction of its value, maybe 50% of its gold value, and gold is then subtracted for the cost of bright new shiny mithril armors. The game would be smart about this and not try to equip a legion of troops over the course of one turn, but would exchange equipment if possible at some ratio between the cost of doing so and the city's current income. A rich town would go ahead and splurge, while a poorer village would see a new piece of armor going to a trooper every several turns or more.
I don't think it is the same case. You still have the old blueprints. I don't think the redesign of the units is a problem. However micromanagement of the city production in such case is. So let the current production continue. After that no ore = no iron = no swords.
The idea of units without a bonus item (replenish it later) may solve this problem, but imagine the level of micromanagement! If you lose the resources, the mentioned above dread knight may have no horse (you lost horse resources), has no weapon (but some of them do, because you first have lost horses, while ore mine few turns later). So units with the same name vary from the bare handed man in underwear to the heavily armored knight with a war horse.
I though I favoured B before reading this, it makes sense a player could recycle old iron for example of they had lost their iron mine, but it would take longer.
However the point about finding a balance point where possesing the resouce is still relavent but it doesn't take so long producing a unit isn't worth it is a very good point. So over all I'd go with C.
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