Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Spies, Diplomats veterans etc.

[Greg Wooledge <wooledge@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rizos Sakellariou (rizos@xxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:

> Although the idea of reducing hp's seems good,

Yes, indeed!  I really like that.

> A \ D    Dipl.  VD/Spy Vet.Spy
> ===============================
> Dipl.    0.50   0.186  0.064
> V.D./Spy 0.814  0.50   0.263
> Vet.Spy  0.935  0.737  0.50
> 
> (it is assumed that both units start with 10 hp)

This may seem drastic, but bear in mind that this is generally consistent
with the military units.  Veteran military units are 50% more powerful,
and more advanced military units are many times as powerful as their
less advanced counterparts.  (Consider for example the Catapult and
the Cannon.  The Cannon attacks at effectively 2.67 times the power of
the Catapult, and defends at 2x.  And the Cannon is only the *first*
upgrade to the Catapult.)

I haven't tried the patch yet, though I have looked through it briefly.
I'd be inclined to let it stand until/unless playtesting reveals a
balance problem.

If anything is to be changed, I'd be inclined to give more of an advantage
to the "attacking" units in the equal-power case, for three reasons:

  1) In Civ2, defending Spies/Diplomats are pretty unreliable.  The
     attacker almost always wins -- way more than 50% of the time.

  2) The defender can stockpile as many defending Spies/Diplomats as
     (s)he likes.  They have no upkeep.  Since the attacker must defeat
     every opponent, (s)he starts at a disadvantage.

  3) The attacking Spy/Diplomat's real test is getting *to* the city,
     since it cannot possibly win in combat against any other unit
     (although it might bribe them under some conditions).  This puts
     the attacker at still another disadvantage.

-- 
Greg Wooledge                    | Distributed.NET http://www.distributed.net/
wooledge@xxxxxxxxxxx             | because a CPU is a terrible thing to waste.
http://www.kellnet.com/wooledge/ |