Troop Statistics and Abilities in the 1.1 environment

This is a good idea.

Seconded.

3rd! great idea

Thank you.

In general, I'd like to see unit statistics play a much larger role with standard troops (as opposed to merely heroes or sovereigns), because these statistics will also be used in other forms of interaction, such as resistance to magic or other certain effects (suggestion: agility to resist things like spider webs or traps).

One could also imagine improved versions of certain abilities, such as Riposte in my quick example above. I mean this: Units may be trained with additional Abilities (for a price, particularly in troop training time -- I see this as the most important resource), but only if those units meet the statistics requirement (whereby we can imagine that for many mundane Abilities, this requirement is a default 10). But some Abilities improve if the troops in question have improved Statistics (be this temporary, due to a spell or other circumstance, or permanent, due to training).

Example 2: Shield Wall. Prerequisites: Unit must have a Shield equipped; Unit must have 9 Dexterity and 9 Strength. When this Ability is activated, the Unit gains -5 to its attacks and +7 to both dodge and defense. For each point of Dexterity above 10, the unit gains an additional point of defense.

Note that a unit which was Weakened (I envision a spell or effect of similar name) would not be able to activate its shield wall if its Strength fell below 9. An elite unit which has mastered this ability and has also a high Dexterity will benefit even more so, as it would from being near a caster who can cast inexpensive Dexterity buff spells.

Example 3: Embolden. Prerequisites: Unit must have a Banner equipped; Unit must have a Charisma of 11 or higher. When this ability is active, all units on the tactical battlefield in a radius of 1 tile around this unit have their accuracy rating increased by 2 and an additional 3% chance to resist all hostile Enchantment spells for each point of Charisma above 10; for each 2 points of Charisma above 11, the radius of the Embolden effect is increased by 1 and all units affected by it receive an additional 1 point of defense and 1 point of attack.

Note that training this ability might be excellent for both heroes or sovereigns as well as particular specialized task-forces or support units such as a Paladin (or whatever). A Banner is an equippable and relatively inexpensive single-handed item (which looks like a flag with your nation's symbol on a pole); another option would be making increasingly expensive Banners which give boni to this and/or other Abilities, special ones giving boni to the bearer's Charisma as well. Downside: one hand slot is filled. Note that Charisma buffs would be very effective for a unit using this Ability. If this Ability were good enough, it would give an incentive for training at least some troops who will be also trained to use it with increased Charisma. Note also that if this ability were strong enough, it might also make researching and casting Charisma-debuffs a feasible option in late game. (Just an idea to get some of the less ostentatious Statistics get some raison d'etre.)

I have buckets of examples such as these in stock.

I like this more and more. This could even lead to being able to make low level casters that can be trained from the design screen. Giving them some fireball abilities that depend on their inteligence and cost money and mana to train, not to mention a per turn mana cost. This training could be added from the arcane tech tree and even constitute a special training building you would have to build in a city to train such units.

A very high mana yield would be necessary to afford upkeep, but then again, you could have and entire company of casters at your command.

I was browsing the .xml of some unit's I had designed earlier today, and there is already a leveling stat boost mechanic in the stats.  Mostly for things like accuracy and hit points, though.  So it shouldn't be too hard to raise other stats in the background, if it's deemed a good idea.

Looks like some good ideas, guys!

Some good ideas here. Being able to give your troops abilities, regular or magical, could add a lot of fun. The magical abilities should be very expensive however, and maybe have some building requirements. You could for instance have a building that can only be build in cities with a shard in it. This building would consume some or all of the mana the shard generates, but in return allow units to be built there that can have abilities associated with the shards element. I'm thinking of abilities like 'Burning Touch' for fire, 'Protection from arrows' for air, 'Lay on hands' for life (essentially allowing Paladin-like units). I know Life and Death magic don't have shards, but there's no reason why those types of magic have to be exactly the same as elemental magic. Maybe they could require some sort of expensive ritual to be performed in the city, just to name something.

Or a quest that works like the manhatten project in RL! Once you open up some magical barrier placed by the titans, everyone has access to new magic techs that allow such buildings to be built.

That got me thinking.

But

adding magical abilities to mundane troops is something I would be very wary of. I'd much rather have magical abilities cost mana and only be usable by casters, but have a large variety of mundane abilities that are nevertheless fun to use, be this stealth or be it sniping.

I think the basic idea could be extended to include synergetic choices with city building. By this I mean that I could imagine some types of abilities and statistical boni can only be trained if a particular building is present in a city. This would be a further incentive for city specialization. Imagine:

- prerequisite for the ability to train troops to come out of the barracks with +1 base dexterity (e.g. default 11) for an additional price and training time is the presence of a building, call it Athletics Hall. A city would require 2 Athletic Halls to be able to train troops with a base dexterity of 12. You won't be able to do everything in this city, so you will need to plan accordingly. Upgrading the city level and buildings level should allow you to train those troops to obtain their dexterity boni in less time (instead of base 10 additional turns per bonus dexterity point, say only 7).

Thus having flexibility in troop statistics and troop abilities would not only mean a lot more fun on the battlefield, it would make city management a little bit more full of those types of challenges that require us to think and choose in mid- and late-game -- choices I think this game needs more of.

But could the AI use such a complicated system?

Upgrading troops 'in the field' is already a mechanic that Stardock is familiar with.  In GalCiv II, you click on the ship in question, select upgrade, choose what you'd like to upgrade it to, and pay some money for the upgrade.  The upgrades generally take 1 to 4 turns, depending on how far from home your unit is and how extensive the upgrade is.

A similar mechanic in Elemental would be fine.  I have no problem with 'upgrading/training troops in the field' as long as it takes longer to do so, as you'd need to ship the new armor, etc. to them.  Quick easy painless, and it doesn't really need to be any more complicated than that.  We have more important things to worry about in Elemental.

Remember that units in the midst of upgrading won't be able to move or attack, but may be able to defend themselves, probably at their current value, not the upgraded one.

Sean is right, I believe. From what I've seen of FB's coding journals, each spell (and thus each special ability) has a dedicated piece of AI code associated with it. There are no general tags that modders can access, so I'd be very surprised if the AI could make effective use of new special abilities until we get access to the AI xml files.

Having said that, I'd be thrilled if someone proved me wrong on this.

tjashen when you were looking at the levelling up xml, was it for the regular units or the ones you designed ? i thought units only got more hp when they levelled up, did that change or is that something under the hood that wasn't very noticeable ?

Why would this be more complicated than figuring out which tech to research in order to get which building to build so that you can train units with such-and-such armor, as is the case now? This is not a rhetorical question, I am really confused as to the difference. Thank you.