Age of Strategy Forums

Since the terrain related effects have been added, I was thinking about adding them to game and changing a the terrain speed modifiers (how fast units move on particular terrain).
Currently, human units suffer -1 speed penalty on woods, snow and desert, and mostly can't walk mountains. However they get special terrain infantry (see: units -> human -> planetary). Reptilans suffer no penalties on desert and forest, but get -2 speed on snow and mostly can walk mountains. Insectoids are the same but can't walk mountains if I remember correctly. The reason for that is to add more flavour to races, showing their physical capabilities and the environment they are used to. However, reducing speed this much made the game slower, and also made the game unfair on some maps (especially for reptilans on snowy maps vs humans). Luckily using the terrain effects I hope to solve this issue and also make terrain have more strategic importance (assuming I will even figure out how to make those effects work lol, well that's on me).
I will summarise the goals of adding them in:
- speeding the game up, thanks to reducing the amount of terrain speed penalties
- reducing the balance issues created by terrain modifiers
- keeping and increasing the flavour, thanks to different effects on terrain for different races, and also giving terrain more strategic importance

Keeping that in mind, how about:
On woods, for all races, affects living units and also all vehicles besides the large ones (like reptilan walkers):
+20% dodge ranged and melee
I wouldn't change any speed modifiers on this terrain.
Also partisants would gain dodge counters as well as some more attack.
On deserts and snow, for all living units:
Units with -1 speed on these terrains: - 3 attack, full speed (desert and winter infantry doesn't suffer that penalty)
Units with -2 speed on these terrain: - 3 attack, still - 1 speed (however there needs to be a way for such units to gain full speed thru research or something alike)
On moutains for living units that can walk them:
+ 2/2 armor
For mountaineers additional +1/1
I think these way allows a good mix of balance, game speed, and flavour. Of course, it's still gonna be a bit unfair for reptilans to fight humans on super snowy maps, same as for humans to fight reptilans on super deserty maps, but it shouldn't be a game breaker. Also lack of speed minuses will make the game faster.

Also we should probably avoid maps that use a lot of any of terrains besides plains in the future I think.
Oh, one more thing - do you want me to make units faster on roads like in some other variants?

Its interesting...

During the WW2 era, I was surprised at the new ability of builders to remove scaffolding. I think could you add different types of units that could not only change the landscape? For example, terraformer units, or unique for each race, for example, the lizards could have some slimy swamp monsters that would turn the landscape into a swamp that would be beneficial for the lizards.

Possibly in the future - once I wrap my head around how to do that stuff.

I've decided there is no need for the mountaineers to get more bonuses on mountains cause just the fact they can move thru them and get access to the default buff on them is worth a turn.
Another thing is that I thought winter and desert could suffer a -1 speed penalty on desert and snow respectively since they arent used to those kinds of terrain.
Also the reptilian amphibious troops - crocodilemen, big crock and crockobrute get additional -1 speed on land (so -2 on snow) and and no mountainwalk, in exchange for full speed om water. I'm thinking if maybe they should get and -1 on deep water or something, as it seems a bit insane for them to just cruise thru the seas. Maybe crocodilemen and crockobrute should recive some attack penalties arlternatively, since there isnt really a way for them to shoot their guns while swimming. Idk, we will figure out what's needed while testing I guess.

I hope to finish the terrain effect soon, so look foward to an update.

(almost done)



As for roads, I think vehicles other than hover ones should move on them with 1.2 speed modifier, so 2 speed vehicles gains 0 speed, 3-7 speed - gain 1 more speed, 8-12 speed - gain 2 speed. I dont want it to be too high since speeds in game tend to be high anyway. Im dont know how they work in other variants tbh.