The main idea:
When designing units, be able to adjust the unit's individual stats up or down. This way you can have a unit with above average health, or above average strength without necessarily having to equip an item that augments their stats. Also with the tabs that read armor, equipment, and weapons add one more slot called skills. Have a list of skills you have researched that you can then train your units in. In depth, how it would work:Have every unit you create start at the same stat level, research and buildings could ultimatley effect what these stats are. So every unit you would create would have the same starting health, same starting movement, same strength, etc. As you spend points to increase the different stats it would not require more materials but rather more food, money, and time to train that unit. So players could have potentially powerful armies by investing time into training rather than materials into magical equipment. Likewise if you lowered the starting stats, it would make the unit take less time, money, and food to produce; but you would have an inferior unit.
The cost of a trained unit could be based on not the number of a specific stat, but the total number of points invested in all the stats. So a unit with +1 in three different areas would cost as much and take as long as a unit trained +3 in one specific area. Also you could have the cost increase exponentially, so it would be hard to create super units outside of heroes.
Ontop of stats units could also be trained in skills, these would be special abilities or special bonuses. The more skills you train a unit in, again the longer and more money it would take to train. These available skills to teach a unit could also be expanded by research, thus adding even more strategy to the game.
having individual levels of experience for each soldier in a unit is an interesting concept. However, there are two simpler ways of doing this. One way (similar to total war) is to have an experience pool that is divided among the soldiers of a unit, so in general the more battles won (and losses taken) the larger the experience gain/ level of the unit. Once a unit replenishes numbers the avg level of the unit goes down ... however the "survivors" tend to be the same people, so fight a 60 man team to 15 men twice, winning good battles, the first time 15 men have level 8 ... then replenish and the unit is level 2, then fight again ... and the 15 men (mostly the same ones) are now level 12. Replenish again, and the unit as a whole would be level 3.
An alternative would be to only have the "captain" of a unit, a symbolic leader, to keep the levels of the whole unit, and if the unit survives with even 1 person its assumed that the captain has survived, and you can replenish to Have full level. In this way 60 men fight down to 15 and acheive level 3 ... captain replenishes troops and fights again ... captain levels up to level 5.
The second would be a more slow level progression, as the idea is to keep small(ish) units that survive battles, as opposed to pumping more men into the unit ... has trade-offs that they fight better, but will also get killed off more quickly.
Another way of implementing the captain idea is to have the green troops slowly reach the captain's level ... say starting off at 25% captain level, and increasing another 25% (or 10%) for each successful battle. Close Fights however, say if the unit ends up killing hundreds of the enemy, the green troops could gain 50% or 75% (to max of captain level)
However ... the average troop level is probably the simplest idea, and while individual soldier level might be the most complicated (although in certain situations a sophisticated Captain-based system might be too complicated), the individual soldier level is also more "interesting" although the average level system is probably best for the computer, while at the same time tru to situationalized strengths.
Of course If I had to choose one or the other, I would rather have a sophisticated unit-based battle system (with many soldiers in each unit) than a sophisticated individual soldier system. (of course at the beginning when units are very small, it would give the illusion of an individual soldier system)
I think you are on to something with this. I think unit design needs more than it currently has (and probably will when it's fully implemented). My main concerns with the current system were special abilities and your idea lets you add things like pathfinding, mountaineering, shield wall, skirmishing or whatever. I like it.
I also like the idea of being able to modify your units stats but I would add I would like to see some limits set based on faction. So your units could range from lets say 5 to 15 base attack value with the default being 10 for an average nation. I really wouldn't want to give someone the option of creating a swarm of units with stats of 1 or to make a super unit that takes 100 turns to make unless it fit the fiction for that nation. A faction could be made up of extra large guys (7-8 feet tall) so they might have a higher health and the range might be 10-20 with 15 being default. You could also do something a little different and say that a race has a lot of untapped potential and they could have a base of 8 but the range would be 5-20 or something. For custom races/factions this would be something you could spend points on. This would just be the base value of course and armor, weapons and items would still be added to modify this further.
Yea ... I think alot of the health of a unit and amount of attack vs amount of defense depends on how long you "train" the unit (not counting equipment making time) and in what types of combat you train, and for how long of each school of combat ... for instance, a 3 days of defensive combat, and a week of offensive training, perhaps an extra week of honing rage and charge/bezerker training ... gives minimal defense while greatly increased health, and increased attack, as well as a Rage or Bezerk ability for the unit.
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