I propose that monks be able to convert rams and trebs and any other types of close range only conversion types (buildings excluded) at a normal distance or at least at half range of the usual maximum.
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Reason: units like rams and trebs have the ability to move around and once the monk moves to follow it resets their conversion timer each time. Increasing the range to normal or half of normal will help to fix this.
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Updated Reason:
It is much harder to keep monks alive in any meaningful way trying to chase down trebs/rams or for that matter catch rams when they’re loaded or if the enemy just happens to be mongol ram happy. Allowing some distance in these conversions will help to alleviate this dilemma.
Viets have this as Imperial UT (but no Illumination or Blockprinting) in Realms Mod and Saracens as Wonder Bonus in Portuguese civ mod (both at full range)
For the base game.
No - would be broken at full range. Tho i could see this becoming a Tech that lets convert siege at 3-4 range - or like in Realms as civ UT without Block printing and illumination.
For the programming stuff, this is already coded by giving monks the ability to convert siege from range (but currently coded for max range) by setting the resource 28 (Enable Building Conversion) to 2 (Redemption sets it to 1)
Maybe if there was an icon added to show which units are currently being converted, but units have more of a progress thing to being converted, and if the conversion stops for whatever reason, when a monk resumes, the amount of time they need is reduced by the amount of time already spent. This would make converting easier, so the first change is needed to balance it, because it gives people a chance to convert their units to prevent the conversion. That’s my idea.
I think this would be far too strong against rams. Even converting from a range of 2 would make defending walls ridiculously easy. Rams would become useless instantly.
Every balance suggestion that you come up with is endless drivel, clearly someone who only plays campaigns.
Civs like Japanese, Koreans, Turks, Bohemians are annoying enough to play against already as the only way to push them is with trebs or a thousand rams, let’s get rid of that too?
The reason rams work like that is because rams can be walled out, on arena what, I make 2 monks and I counter literally everything that he could use to push me in age 3 and age 4?
And the reason trebs work the way they work is because they are supposed to be the unit that basically says “I’m attacking you. You have to do something about it.”
I just checked in the scenario editor, monks do not reset their conversion timer until they are retasked or lose sight of the target simply moving out of range of the monk does not reset the timer, so they can convert these units just fine, so there is no issue with how this works currently
So basically they reset if you manually select the monk to move away slightly but won’t reset as long as their only task is to convert a specific unit(in this case a ram) and won’t reset so long as its only task is to follow and convert that unit but will reset if the unit goes out of range(line of sight) or if the monk is manually selected to move in one direction or another regardless of if the unit being converted is in range or not.
The reason monks work like this is not because they are supposed to convert rams and trebs this way, but because they aren’t supposed to convert them at all- unless for some reason your opponent left them unprotected, like a building that can be converted with redemption.
So yeah. I have thought about it as an UT, because the current ones aren’t great, but at the same time it’s going to be OP against Bulgarians for example, who don’t have a ranged counter to monks, or to BBC, or to SO, and the only way for them to safely push is with trebs.
With trebs it won’t change much, but with rams the entire difference is whether you can do it from behind a wall or not.
Don’t get me wrong, I love monks, I want to see them in imp- that’s why I play bohemians- but the reason they are used shouldn’t be for conversions mainly, because that’s too micro intensive except vs SO/BBC.
I’d like to see UTs akin to “converting a unit also gives you its resource value” or “monks can heal siege units and buildings” or “fully healed units have +3 damage” or “conversions don’t have a cooldown” or “monks passively heal all nearby units 0.5hp/sec” or “monks holding a relic give +2/+2 armor to units in a 20 tile radius”.
