Age of Strategy Forums

I am bringing the topic of the upgrades to make some sort of rules, as it is often unclear which units get them.
What I am writing about are all techs, which gives bonuses.

I would like to make precise trnValidTargets for it.
What I wonder about is what exact exclusions to make.

Archery and Archer Armor would affect categories:
[Archers],
[Throwing], except [Melee]
Sword Mastery:
[Melee][Flesh and Blood]
Infantry Armor:
[Melee][Foot]
Cavalry Armor:
[Melee][Mounted]

So my questions:
1. Should we unify blacksmith benefits and i what exact way:
a) All units that fit basic categories get them, we'll deal with balance later.
Attention - that would be great buff for midle and late game roman units (and few others, e.g. hoplite)
b) Make unified rules, that representatives of categories get bonuses, but there are category exclusions, e.g. romans and primitives don't get upgrades, celts only 2nd one.
c) Make special caregories for exlusions, that are visible on unit propsheet, e.g . [No upgrade], [No weapon upgrade], [Only lvl2 armor upgrade]

i only ask what would be best for clarity and flavour of blacksmith techs.
Specific balance talk is for separate topics.

The current setup for blacksmith techs are pretty nice itself. So in my opinion , this is equally distributed among the troops which actually need the stat upgrades. No upgrade applied on hoplite like troops which dont need them. So my vote goes to C

C for me, with [Full Trained] category or something.

C.

For me most suitable will be either option a (but requres lots of rebalancing work, bad for Endru) or option c (less work but requires stratego who is already too busy thus not sire when we can see this).

None of the options require any coding.
Stratego already made property trnValidTargets capable of exclusions - I only have to add a category.

First option still requires more work thus i think c option is better.

Ill go for b and c

Hey what if a more diverse set of armor and weapon upgrades(not just called sword)
Maybe have different armor techs but give off the same effect and maybe some unit exclusive techs like lets say a unit without a helmet can get helmet tech that gives 1 p.armor or something like instead of armor upgrades 1 and 2 make it iron and steel specific so only those units wearing armor like that benefits from this and others like archers need gambeson tech and maybe even the tight leather tech of the peasant for all leather worn units and maybe for more easier and diverse use, make smith techs have values of .5 cause I was thinking of more techs for different unit types like lets say Im gonna use shielders Ill invest in maxing shields tech at smiths but because ive teched up shields itll be hard for me to use non shield units cause ive invested my time on a shields and not something like swords. And other diversity like sharper spear head for spears , lances, and javelins. Here's a better example i teched up shields and sharper spears to increase the strength of my skirmishers but because of that my archers werent teched up cause they dont use shields and spears giving a more specific unit upgrade not the generic all ranged will become better cause for me its unbalanced and it makes the player to have ease in transitioning to a different unit compositon like changing from skirmishers to archers or other stuff like light cavalry or heavy cavalry should also have diff techs like leather horsearmor and chain horse armor for light cavalry and plated horsearmor and chain plated horsearnor for heavy

So people wont have this ultra flexibility that aslong as theyve got all smith techs they can use every army composition thats all

Oops, seems I strayed very close to the double poster's naughty step here thanks for providing the link in the other topic Endru.

Seems pretty unanimous so far but my choice would also go to option C