A new mod enters the ring - Introducing "Close to Home"

[Cyneheard]

Another thing that I'm thinking about for AGG is to give AGG a promotion for siege units, so either one of these:

Barrage I
City Raider I
Drill I

To have an impact it would have to be either City Raider or Barrage.

Barrage is probably better since it's got more utility on defense as well as offense? Not strongly convinced of which promo is better, though.

That might be a safer space to play in than stacking up more promos on melee/gunpowder/etc.

[NobleHelium]

I was chatting with Scooter and had the idea to give AGG a discount on upgrading units.  How much?  I don't know.

Wanted to bump this. I thought this was pretty interesting if we're still entertaining possible buffs for Agg that are good thematically. To me, one of the problems Aggressive has is that it gets this killer army of really strong well-promoted units... and then it just obsoletes. Upgrading units is really expensive in this game, and it takes special circumstances for it to be worth it. Aggressive might be a candidate for getting a discount on upgrades, as it allows the Aggressive player to carry forward parts of their army if they're willing to invest their gold into it.


Now, how much of a discount - that's way harder to say. I feel like barring any other changes it would need to be something drastic (approaching 50% maybe), but it's really hard to guesstimate what kind of impact that would have. Would be really easy for it to either be utterly broken or nearly useless.

I could see that possibly working, but it's also such a weird use case. I think you're right, that it is something that is either broken or useless. Take a 30% discount - that might make it better for a few emergency upgrades, but probably doesn't open up a mass-upgrading strategy.

A different idea that could open up some tactical options: Start with March as well as Combat I. I'm not sure it really changes the equation much. I'm afraid of giving a second "real" promotion like Combat II or City Raider I (and Drill encroaches on Protective).

Crazy idea, but what if the upgrade cost reduces with every promotion by a little bit?

Since there will be a new version of the mod very soon, I wanted to discuss more on this.  The cost of upgrading units is 20g + 3 * hammer difference between the units.

Let's compare to the main other way to convert gold to hammers - Universal Suffrage.  US rush cost is also 1h = 3g (before taking into account penalties like wonders).  Kremlin reduces this to 1h = 2g.  So perhaps the AGG discount should be 33%, akin to the Kremlin.

[Commodore]

Is Charriu still the worst thing to happen to the Inca since Francisco Pizarro, or did the Terrace get reverted?

[Charriu]

Is Charriu still the worst thing to happen to the Inca since Francisco Pizarro, or did the Terrace get reverted?

Wow that's hard.  

So far my plans are to keep them as is with the irrigation bonus, but reduce the cost of the Terrace. Where before the Terrace was often described as a half-Creative or full Creative, with the reduced cost it becomes a half-Expansive with something on top. I did a few games with this and found it very interesting. Things that I noticed and liked about it:

• Irrigating agriculture resources that could only be irrigated with Civil Service or even Biology.
  
• Cities far away from any rivers or lakes can stock up on food via farms. For example I had pink dotted an AI, but the city only had a cow on grassland. Being able to throw down some farms early there allowed the city to grow bigger long before Civil Service.
  
• Even cities on rivers had some use. For example I mainly put cottages down on river tiles and if I needed more food I threw down some farms on the non-river tiles
  
• Of course there was also the reduces cost that helped a lot (I played with cost of 45)
  

I would like to give those Inca a try in a PB.


Regarding the upgrade cost. The points NobleHelium brought up are interesting. The problem I see with that implementation is that it's a bit harder to explain to the player compared to something straight forward like 50% reduced upgrade cost. I do want to see what my data in PB54 brings up regarding the current unit maintenance bonus for AGG before I make any big decisions. The main problem that I see with an upgrade reduction is, where should the gold for this come from? Would players really upgrade there units more often? And how many units across one game will be upgraded? And isn't that gold still better used to tech up?

[NobleHelium]

I don't see what's less straightforward about a 33% discount compared to a 50% discount. If a player is confused by this then he's not going to wonder about the specifics and logic of the size of the reduction anyway.

[Charriu]

I don't see what's less straightforward about a 33% discount compared to a 50% discount.  If a player is confused by this then he's not going to wonder about the specifics and logic of the size of the reduction anyway.

Because it's not always 33%. Let's compare this:

Upgrade a warrior (15 h) to an axeman (35 h):

This gives an upgrade cost of 80 gold under the BtS system and 60 gold under your proposed system. This is 25% cheaper.

Now compare this to this upgrade

Upgrade a warrior (15 H) to a pikeman (60 h):

This gives an upgrade cost of 155 gold under the BtS system and 110 gold under your proposed system. This is ~29% cheaper.

The differences are due to the 20 + 3 * hammer difference formula.

But I admit that this confusing part isn't the most important part with your proposed system. More important are the following questions:

1. The main problem that I see with an upgrade reduction is, where should the gold for this come from?
   
2. Would players really upgrade there units more often?
   
3. And how many units across one game will be upgraded?
   
4. And isn't that gold still better used to tech up?
   

They way I see it is that for the most part people only rarely or never upgrade their units due to the high costs, right? Going back to the provided numbers above and the upgrade from Warrior to Pikeman. Yes, I am saving 45 gold on that upgrade, but I still need to bring up the rest of 110 gold. To get some use of this new bonus I would need to upgrade some units accross the whole game, but then I would maybe upgrade more units then I would normally upgrade and maybe loose more money in the process.

[NobleHelium]

I'm saying it could be a straight up 33% reduction including the 20g flat fee. That keeps it simple and it is still mostly analogous to the Kremlin bonus.

You ask good questions about the usefulness of such a bonus. I don't have good answers for those questions right now.

[Charriu]

I'm saying it could be a straight up 33% reduction including the 20g flat fee.  That keeps it simple and it is still mostly analogous to the Kremlin bonus.

You ask good questions about the usefulness of such a bonus.  I don't have good answers for those questions right now.

You know what. Let's do the following:

• Right now PB54 is already collecting data for the unit maintenance bonus
  
• I look into how easy it is to implement your change
  
• I also look into how easy it is to track those upgrade cost reductions.
  
• If those two can be achieved I will integrate the bonus into a version and we see how things are going with it.
  

Of course I can't guarantee that this can be implemented for the upcoming PB as it looks like that one will be filled up rather quickly. But this looks to me the best way to go forward with the upgrade bonus.

[Mjmd]

I like the barrage on siege idea for aggressive in addition to what it currently has. Again it plays more into what the trait wants to do and its simpler to understand. If you don't think the barracks happy overlaps too much with charismatic you could add that back in as well. Give aggressive all the things that might add up to a playable trait (or at least the appearance of a playable trait)

[civac2]

I'd prefer a simple but strong bonus on Aggressive.

-50% unit maintenance

-50% unit maintenance
-100% unit supply

-100% unit maintenance

-C1 on all units

-C1 on all units except mounted

Some of these may be actually too strong, or maybe not.