Most people think that there is a problem with monks currently. They are far too effective at countering expensive units and essentially stop elephant play in castle age. I think that this is straight up bad game design, but that’s besides the point. I propose a simple and element solution here to counter your opponent’s wololo. That is, your wololo.
The tech is as follows: Preaching/Counter-conversion: Monastery Tech, Available in castle age, 400 gold.
If an opponent tries to convert one of your units while one of your monks is in range of that unit, your monk will start wololoing and will prevent the opponent’s monk’s conversion bar from filling up. Specifically, the bar will decay at a rate of 1.51 times the rate it fills up. This does not affect siege units, with or without redemption. Additionally, the unit that is being converted is not visible, your monk will just start wololing in place, unless the unit moves and your monk is forced to follow.
Available to: All elephant civs, and cavalry civs without hussars which also have no conversion resistance bonus
This has a few advantages.
It will (hopefully) not piss off arena clowns. The tech is too pricey to afford in early castle age, when you are sending out monks to fetch relics, with light cav/pike support.
It does not nullify monk play. Even with this tech, 2 of your monks can barely hold off 3 monks from the opponent. Meaning, if your opponent adds more monks, you need to reciprocate.
It rewards skill, and provides a clear goal. If your conversion is being blocked, you will know exactly why. This isn’t like Heresy which will just end the play. You will then have a goal, to kill, or push away those monks, so that your target is vulnerable to conversion.
It will be really funny to see like 4 monks from each side, with atonement, trying to convert/stop each other in a circle.
Any input/feedback is welcome. A better name would be great, as I am terrible at naming things.
You propose that my monk automatically start counterwololowing a unit and this in some way gives resistance to convertion as if the unit would be teutonic?
It doesn’t convince me. If I’m right, It can be exploited. I asume you know how conversion works and the ways how wololo charging with building is used for instaconversions.
With your idea you make this explotation even easier. At least with in the buildings case your monk have to stay next the building.
It’s the opposite. I have said it in the post, what happens is that your will never charge up if your opponent monk is preaching. If you charge at a rate of 10 units/second, you will lose 15 units per second. The way I propose it, this just won’t be possible.
Sorry I insist. Do you understand how conversion works? I don’t know what you mean with «units/second». Wololos are like shots with x% of success. They doesn’t deplete any «faith» bar on units.
What I don’t understand is how «preaching» affects to the actual conversion’s mechanism?
It extend the range of CIs? Or it reduce the x% of each CI?
If I remember right aoe classic had a tech which does something similar.You can start the conversation and delete your monk and the enemy unit gets converted.
This would’ve been good, except it has a couple of problems.
Expensive units like elephants usually come out in team games, but in those, gold is plentiful to begin with. Meaning, you can still spam monks and hard counter elephants.
In these games, momentum is far more important, and you usually fight over capturing small areas of the map. You can see this in rage forest games that viper usually play these days.
Also, I think that telegraphing is important. You should be able to click a unit and see what upgrades it has. That is already being weakned.
Mind you, I’m not against the idea. It would be cool to have it in the game. I don’t think it is enough is all.
Not on units, but there is one on the monk. There is a minimum and maximum time. IIRC, it’s 4 and 10 seconds. In each tick between 4 and 10 seconds, there is a chance that conversation happens. There is a charge on the monk, which is what allows the building charge exploit. After the maximum time, you are guaranteed a conversation.
What I am saying is that the tech will reduce the time. So, you’ll never get to 4 seconds as long as opponent’s monk is preaching. Since you’ll never get to 4 seconds, you can’t charge your conversion. This isn’t like faith which will change that min and Max time to 6 and 12 seconds.
Yes, I understand how works. So while my monk is preaching the targeted unit is inmune to conversion, except the opponent have more monks than me targeting the same unit?
What if I target a group of monks, yours start preaching and I switch to multiple targets? How would your monks react?
Yes. In this proposal, the ratio is 2:3. Meaning, you can counter 3 of their monks with 2 of yours, 6 of theirs with 4 of yours and so on.
The monks will automatically select the best units to protect, as long that unit is in range. The way it is defined requires it to be an AoE effect than a unit-based effect. You are correct on that. So, if you have 6 monks convert 6 different units of mine, and I have 4 monks, those 4 should guard the 6 different units through an area of effect ability. Honestly, my mind could be changed on this, if someone gives me a good argument.
Leaving the specifics for a moment, do you have a disagreement on the general idea? Like, do you think that monks shouldn’t be able to counter conversion, for example.
Oh no, I like the concept of counter-conversion, just don’t completly understood what were you proposing. Now that I fulled understand I can say that no, I don’t like it. I feel it could be a little mess, and I 'm against of add automatic features in military units (I’m ok with some auto-eco features).
Said that, I have some ideas to achieve the counter-convertion thing:
A simple pasive aura around monks (i.e 2 tiles range around monk) that increase the convertion resistanse. Something like 5-11 CI for units inside the area. Non stackable with other monks.
1.1) Same mechanic, but instead of increase the CIs, It reduces the chance of conversion between 4th and 9th CI from 28% to 15%. Conversion arfter the 10th CI is still guaranteed
“Blessing” is an active ability that after 2 or 4 wololos gives conversion resistance to an individual unit. Player have to manually bless each unit it want to protect (still you can queue multiple units with shift). Unit blessed have to stay stand while monk is blessing it. If unit moves the blessing is stopped.
This is more a preventive tech. You have to bless your unit before they go to battle.
If a blessed unit is converted, then it loses the convertion resistance.
This doesn’t work on two levels. First, something like this would make Spears the must choice on early arena relic grabs. That makes things ptedictable, and boring. Arena clowns aren’t going to like that. Second, this is useless for helping elephants, which is what I want.
This is better, and maybe even slightly more useful.
But think about what this means in an actual game. You need to shift queue a monk to each unit at fixed intervals, after setting a default gather point. This isn’t micro, it is tedium. It is manual labour. I don’t consider it interesting.
I think most people will react to it sort of like they do with deer pushing. An annoying task you have to do. That’s not good for a game.
For one, I don’t understand what this means. Military units do a lot of things automatically. Monks will heal units around them, archers will fire arrows, etc, etc. In my proposal, you still need heavy micro with the monks, as they are weak and need positioning. Also, they can’t move while preaching.
Two, Heresy and Faith are automatic. Once Heresy is researched, conversion is automatically changed to kill. There is no micro or strategy here. Once they get heresy, you can’t really do anything about it.
If you don’t like it personally, that’s cool. People have different tastes. However, I think that your reasoning here is pretty weak.