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Rapporter et oversættelsesproblem
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I haven't played a game with this just yet, but one thing I see that may be a problem is your low priority on AI attacking support units. To me, that seems to be a rather large incentive to use and abuse the stronger support units in the game (Drakken heroes, eyless ones, Dust guardian)... or, at least it would if the drakken and guardians had already been balanced for your mod.
Also, looking at the new support targeting priority, what about cultist preacher units? Their main use is in casting their buff on the hero in the early game. Wouldn't having support always be rigged to attack cause problems for the cultists? And then there's those cases where you have a support unit equipped with high damage to be both a ranged unit and a healer... I dunno, it's just that support is a tricky little beast where, in some cases, they are glorified ranged units and in others they are pure support units and in others they truely are this middle of the road sort of thing....
I'll play a game with the intention of trying to abuse support units to see if it gives me an edge in combat. (Specifically to see if anything can beat 3 eyless one high damage healers all healing a circle strike back tank that's blocking/defending a bottleneck while 2 other eyeless ones de-buff and kill everything else)
If this is the case, one possible solution to this would be to re-balance your modified combat system to, instead of being a rock, paper, scissors system, being a rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock system (ala "The Big Bang Theory" as explained by Sheldon)
This would involve employing a support slayer skill within the mix of things, re-adjusting combat priorities, and giving a more complicated targeting priority to support units to account for instances when it's best to buff an ally rather than attack.
First, the AI (and game design) is not programmed in an easily controllable way that allows a lot of super smart behavior; the base game is really too complicated for an AI to handle. That means that the game design already creates a lot of constraints on what can be done with the game.
Second, damage is very high in this mod, while health tends to be a lot lower (and doesn't scale well). This devalues things like healing, because units often die in the same round they get injured (or often in a single good hit).
Third, Support units are very bad at doing damage. They have high speed and reasonable damage, but very low attack scores and low defense. Support units are great for buffing/debuffing, but they miss...a lot. And when they're directly attacked, they get hit by criticals fairly often.
Additionally, the game has been redesigned with the Slayer bonuses in mind. Any Strategic weapon (except Support weapons) or Dust Tier 1 has the Rank 4 Slayer bonuses. This is double damage against the correct unit Support units are going to be stripped of all Slayer bonuses (so no more claws on certain units), which means that they simply can't compete with other units for actually killing anything, which is the design.
With all of that said, before the changes it usually was not very helpful to have a support unit in your armies. You'd be better off with a high damage ranged unit, for example. They would just get targetted right off the bat and be eliminated on round 1-2 of any battle.
Now, they are the last units to be killed (all things considered) and they have time to spread their unique effects (buffs/debuffs) around the battlefield. If they are targetted, they can generally survive 2 or maybe 3 hits before they're killed. I think it opens up a lot of gameplay and makes things a bit more fun.
I did my best to eliminate the support behaviors, but they are still there. I can't seem to get them to stop completely. The idea is that in a fight, they should be auto-attacking (because they contribute some damage and more importantly, spread debuffs), and then if you need one of their buffs, you can manually target that. Too often, support units would just buff themselves (or maybe a hero) again and again and again while you sit and beat them down; worse yet, they might run up into the middle of a fight to buff a unit on the other side of the enemies. Support unit behavior is pretty stupid in the base game, so this is the best compromise that I can find.
Thanks for the feedback, Happy. I hope you're doing well. <3
They did have a Support Slayer in the early game files, but they just collapsed it into Ranged Slayer in their final game.
I did a playthrough as the cultists and, for the most part, everything you did winds up making a lot of sense.
I still have preachers auto buffing the same unit over and over again, so maybe look into it a bit (only preachers as far as I've noticed. they seem to only want to buff, never attack and I still saw supports occasionally using their buffs, which is nice.)
That said, there was a certain level of truth to my worry, though not as simple or big as I had thought. I found that if I took a cultist hero with high health/defence and a free counter, shoved him in a spot where he could only be attacked on 2-3 sides, and then brought in an army made up of a wide variety of only support units to buff him in nearly every way possible (including heals), There was little that could stop me.
Granted, this strategy depended a LOT on the battlefield itself and requires a LOT of preparation to get the right team composition, but it's worth mentioning.
(Had 2 classes of healers, one with high initiative to heal before the hero attacked/was attacked, and one with low initiative to heal just after he attacks. The rest of the supports were from village defaults or assimilated high initiative units)
Any little slip up would result in the hero dying and that would result in the entire army getting obliterated within 1 to 2 turns after that, so it all looks like my fears were a little unfounded, but it did seem weird that, when things were working, the enemy never attacked the supports that were clearly keeping the hero alive.
That said, a large roving army made up of only ranged units proved to be an effective counter to this strategy, and everything you explained in your post winds up holding true most cases, so this is probably not worth re-working anything over.
After playing through a game, I gotta say though, good job! This mod here is really impressive in its scope and depth.
One thing I gotta ask, though, when you are playing the game, what do you usually have your map look like? I found that a lot of the difficulty around roving armies could be adjusted by increasing the amount of water and islands on the map. Roving armies wont leave their island unless they are chasing someone... which lead me to exploit by baiting massive 16 armies into enemy territory.
Anyway, i found it to be such a game changer that it may be worthwhile to post on the mod description a reccomended world build.
Another thing, roving armies wont attack converted villages. Dunno if this is intentional or not, but I fealt as though it gave the cult a bit too much advantage since they were free to expand across the map without fear of their roving army bodyguards if they got in and out fast enough. Still, they probably would be incapable of holding territory otherwise... unless villages could somehow have a small fortification bonus in addition to the buffs that are already present when units are on there.
Also, is it possible to have multiple free counters? I noticed the cultist hero has a free counter at the top of its faction tree, but there's also a counter at the bottom of the infantry tree soo... ya. I never got a chance to test that combination, but ya.
You also may wanna do a double check on science stockpiles to make sure they are working. I wasn't sure if they were doing anything when I used them, especially when I set a bunch off all on the same turn.
Ok, im done with my wall of text. Great job, really. Love your work, can't wait to see what it will look like in future updates.
Ranged units (including other Support units) definitely will attack whatever is closest, and they have no problem hitting support units.
You can think of the whole situation as infantry and cavalary units can sort of taunt and are there to protect your ranged/support units. It keeps people from just using the ranged units.
On villages, I don't think the code has any way for minor faction villages to be attacked. I don't think it happens in the vanilla game (via minor factions, do correct me if I'm wrong). I would love to change this behavior because I think it would make the Cultists more fun/vulnerable.
I usually play a Pangaea with 80% (or as much as possible) land, no cliffs, few or no islands, on a normal or larger map. I also don't think this mod would complement Fasr speed very well.
Eventually, when more of the mod is done, there are also going to be random quests, where different enemies attack your cities (earlier and later in the game). So you might have quest Drakken assaulting your cities for some reason or another, or maybe a hero you've hired turns out to be an important runaway son/daughter of a rival dynasty, etc.
There are still lots of features being planned (but work will be slow as I have a lot of different things on my plate atm), so some of the things you see are out of context. I still appreciate the energy you put into your feedback a ton! <3
One thing you may want to look into if you're looking at having the minor factions attack villages, is it possible for converted villages to be pillaged? If so, you have your answer right there. I noticed they never tried to pillage my villages, despite harrassing other factions.
Also, I don't know just how evil you are feeling, but seeing to it that all roving armies are equipped with camoflage items would add an interesting element to the game. (May want to have some mercy and remove that tech from the game, giving it to everyone from the start so they can equip the sight items on their units if you do that)
Would giving the minors access to those options when it comes to interacting with converted villages work?
Or, you could try to go around that. The AI might interact with everything by running into things, which ususally brings up an options menu. If, however, you park your army next to an interactable thing, ususally the options for what you can do pop up in the command ui.... I've never seen the ai order an army to enter a rest phase or split an army, so maybe giving the ai the abilitty to interact with those options could allow minors to attack converted villages?