Units types, subclasses and stats
In BoC there are 3 types of units, that can be: Soldiers, Workers, or a mix between it, while soldiers only fight in combat, workers can do more things like hunt, build, harvest, or repair, mixed units like Hunters can hunt and combat and making them very helpful in the early and mid-game.
Aside from units types, there are also subclasses, reflecting the variety of different progression paths over history, each unit can allow up to 2 subclasses.
subclasses
The subclass bring more variety introducing a special behavior for each kind of unit, for example, nomads hunters are spearmen and tribal.
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Currently planned subclasses list:
- Tribal: 20% to reload movement points after the first movement of each turn.
- Spearmen: +25% defese bonus when unit is on defensive position.
- chivalry: +50% attack bonus versus melee units.
- Tank: 35% to block 25% of total upcoming damage.
- Guerrilla: Just on hist first movement, this unit have +350% movement point bonus (just occurs one time), this unit avoids his destruction and restores 40% of the total unit (just occurs one time).
- Legion: 40% to avoid demoralizing effects.
- Juggernauts: 60% to desmoralizing near units.
All of those subclasses can be improved with upgrades when players progress through new trait nodes, for example, Tank is designed to scale up to 65% to block 50% damage.
Stats
Each unit has its stats and those are: damage, defense, resistance, moral and movement points. Also, each unit have combat experience (recruit range for fresh recruits for example), and also combat formation, that can be: Disorderly or organized
- Disorderly formation: just can stack up to 3 units on a tile (can be improved up to 4 units on a tile).
- Organized formation: Can stack up to 5 units on a tile (can be improved up to 7 units on a tile).
N.B.: you can't stack or mix units with different combat formations.Usually, disorderly formations would be present in early and midgame, while organized formations require unlocking a lot of nodes from the progression system to allow it to be enabled.
Weapons and armor sets: looking at medium terms
Units on BoC can have weapons and armor, all units having their own default set. For example, Mesopotamian spearmen .. will have .. spear as a weapon (what a surprise xD), weapons and armors from units bring additional behavior to the unit, for example, the long spear will add +50 attack bonus versus mounted units, or light leather armor will add 10% to avoid an incoming attack (means that unit have more agility, others like heavy armors allow a percentage of damage reduction).
All of these bonuses are calculated unit-by-unit in combat. For example, if one unit has 25 soldiers, these modifiers will be calculated for each of them while in combat.
Allowed configuration:
- Left hand
- Right hand
- Set
For EA release, it will be on the game because all units will have their default sets, but at the medium range, we want to introduce armories where the player can set his own equipment for each unit.
Stacking and reinforcement mechanics
Feel an army not just board pieces! Units in BoC can be stacked on a tile with others, you can mix different types of units to reach better combat on face different enemies, the unique limitation here is that you cant mix disorderly formation units with organized formation units, also, stacking your units will increase their possibilities to survive from incoming attacks, in BoC when combat is calculated there is an attribute called 'numerical superiority', that basically gives a resistance bonus when the unit has 50% more soldiers than his enemy.
Reinforcement area
Units have a reinforcement area, where if they attack or are being attacked, all friendly units inside the reinforcement area will join to fight (usually 1x1 area but it can be larger)
Supplies
Work in progress, will not be on EA release.
Units & Demograhic in BoC
The main feature in BoC is clear, you have a vast world, really a vast world! So, you will need a lot of units to conquer and defend your empire.. your kingdom... your little kingdom?.. maybe just your single city-state?.. okay probably just your little tribe? (being honest, that road will be really hard, don't expect to develop an empire without 1000h of previous experience, no, is not a joke).
In BoC you have population stats, so attending to demographics will be crucial to develop your army and civilization, because it will not be as easy as ordering a new swordsman unit in one of your cities and waiting for a few turns to have it, so on BoC you have the manpower stat that is a reference about how many people disposition you have to recruit new units, also your demographics are based on your food disponibility index and urbanization index (simplifying a bit: how much more food and urbanization districts do you will bring, more people do you will have).
So, as your farms are based on your local's climate attributes, your army could be easily decimated by famines based on how fast climate change is in your local region* for example, take care about that when you will settle! this is just a good reference about how demographics and climate simulation are on all sides of BoC.
*Some regions would be more exposed than others to fast climate transitions, just consider that 6000 years ago Mesopotamia region was most humid than today, but this still requires balanced after EA release and hear tons of feedback about.
But if we consider manpower stat, maybe it is still not enough, because unlike modern times all people (even child's) was supposed to be occupied on any task right? well, that is the reason behind manpower stat is a little deeper than a just measure of "people free to call to arms"
Manpower stat
In ancient times all people (even children) are occupied doing his task to survive one day more, so this stat means the people that you could recruit, BUT however much manpower you take away from the workforce and give to the army, less production do you will have, as a percentage and this percentage is global about your cities, so in summary: you could take 100% of available manpower but your production will low to 0! (work that you need to end building, units .. etc)
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