A great idea for how to implement "illusion" units

[Jetrel]

Illusory units are a staple of many strategy games, although the implementation usually varies, the idea is to make *very* cheap things that look like more expensive troops, in order to draw fire away from your real units. Often, magic, or advanced technology is the handwaved explanation. Usually these units can't deal damage, but I was thinking about how that'd be implemented in a wesnoth-like game. Would they appear to deal damage, and then the damage gets healed back? (insert a bunch of other complicated schemes)

Then the good idea occurred: They always miss. Always.

It requires very few changes to the game mechanics, and would legitimately fool many players, but would also be something a savvy player could notice, if they kept their eyes peeled (like units that deal no damage in e.g. starcraft).


Note: This is not an immediate suggestion to add something to mainline. This is something to get chalked up on the "good ideas to remember later" list, in case anyone wants to do illusory units in UMC or something.


Historical interest: In real life, this actually has been used on numerous occasions. In world war 2, the english sent out land invasions contemporaneously with the invasion of france that consisted of mostly fake, inflatable tanks. The mongols also were noted for erecting tens of thousands of soldier-looking scarecrows during sieges to intimidate defenders into surrendering the city.

[zookeeper]

Then the good idea occurred: They always miss. Always.

Good idea.

[artisticdude]

This is a great idea! If not necessarily for mainline, but it sounds like a lot of fun.

[Hulavuta]

Wait, so the illusion misses all it's attacks and a person attacking the illusion misses too? Or do the illusions take damage?

[Alink]

Yes, very good KISS idea

Some details to tweak:
- If really cheap, can be abused to spam front or villages. Possible solutions: make them not much cheaper than real scouts, only "copy" slow units or level 2+ ones (higher upkeep). Or even blocking village's capture if possible.
- Even if cheap to recruit, high level fake units must also have high upkeep to prevent guessing their presence by checking Status table's upkeep info.
- Could be useful to find a way to allow the owner to see which ones are fake, even if he could use his memory or team label.
- Check the other implications of cheap fake-spam: ZoC, support abilities, fog exploration etc...
- Highly defensive fake units will make cheap meat wall.
- Note that units attacking your fake units will gain XP without risks. Be sure that your opponent doesn't just pretend to be fooled.
- Could be very useful with fog or ambush-like ability: once a fake become suspicious, just go hide to switch with real units. Smart players can still memorize traits or HP/ XP status, though.
- fake vs fake fight will be ridiculous to watch. And don't give them berserk
- All of this also apply to their advancement path (which they need to be a good fake), because they may level up.

And some implementation details. I think that using WML trick already fix this, but I am no WML expert
- Check if it fools the AI too (AI read unit stats to decide what to do).
- Check that the attack dialog don't show 0% CtH
- Use hide_help stuff to hide fake unit type info in help. Prevent doubled pages and cheat like using 'unit description' hotkey pointing to different pages.
- I think that the damage type tooltip will show 2 entries with same name if fake and real units are visible. That was an old cheat to detect if someone had recruited an invisible unit. I will fix this because units having same name and same resistance don't need to show up twice. [edit: now fixed]

[Sapient]

You should make it so the dummy always misses and any normal unit that attacks the dummy always hits.

As an added benefit, then people will think the RNG is fair and stop complaining in the User's Forum.

[fog_of_gold]

There's already such a unit in the archaic era. Yes, it's not exactly the same (e.g. this unit may damage, it'll die after one hit of the enemy or some rounds, ...) but you can look at his (dofus') ideas. About the fake scout, the archaic era solved it by killing it after some rounds. In my opinion, it's still to less, but this would be an idea how to avoid using them to spam villages. To solve the problem with the fake skills, just disallow these units changing the gameplay too much. E.g., disallow healers but don't disallow trolls (since they would have any uses from this).

[zookeeper]

This mostly CABD. Using the FORCE_CHANCE_TO_HIT macro would take care of most things; basically all you need to do in addition to that is flag the illusionary units with some variable.

And some implementation details. I think that using WML trick already fix this, but I am no WML expert
- Check if it fools the AI too (AI read unit stats to decide what to do).

Yes, it would fool the AI.

- Check that the attack dialog don't show 0% CtH

It wouldn't. However, I'm not sure if it'd fool the damage statistics; I'm suspecting it wouldn't, but I've never checked. So in order to discover illusions, a clever player could just check the stats and see whether all those misses affected the EV damage or not.

- Use hide_help stuff to hide fake unit type info in help. Prevent doubled pages and cheat like using 'unit description' hotkey pointing to different pages.
- I think that the damage type tooltip will show 2 entries with same name if fake and real units are visible. That was an old cheat to detect if someone had recruited an invisible unit. I will fix this because units having same name and same resistance don't need to show up twice.

If you used a method which doesn't involve a custom unit type, then I think it CABD. For example, you could have a right-click option for turning a newly recruited unit into an illusion and get a partial refund (but then you couldn't recruit the cheaper illusionary unit unless you could also .

So, basically, it definitely CABD in single-player, especially if use of the feature would be in the player's hands (instead of the AI's). In multiplayer a rather solid proof-of-concept (which would be fine for everything but competitive play) CABD, but probably a few exploits (such as checking EV stats) allowing a player to identify the illusions in some situations would remain.

[Dixie]

There's also a similar kind of unit in Zero's Steelhive faction. I don't remember the exact name of the unit, but if I remember correctly, it's a cheap lv1 with low attacks, but can take the appearance of any other unit in the faction. I think it is revealed when attack, because it uses the attack stats and anim of the original uinit, not the illusory one.

On a side notee, I find it rather suspicious when people just recruit a bunch of lv3 units Better play smart with this feature if you wanna be credible

[Blutkoete]

Wouldn't that also mean to allow "hidden" traits (traits only visible to the owner of the unit, like "illusion")?

I mean, I would like the idea of hidden traits, it gives some nice opportunities.

On a side notee, I find it rather suspicious when people just recruit a bunch of lv3 units Better play smart with this feature if you wanna be credible

Staying sensible when recruiting illusions would be a great tactical dimension when using them.

[Taimat]

No idea if certain bits can be done, but I have an idea.

Always misses, always dodges. Dies the turn after it's attacked (So their turn they send two units to attack, both miss every attack, when your turn comes around it goes kaput)

Select illusion to use via a right click menu that brings up your unit list - This would prevent the recruit list from getting huge, but doesn't work without fog/shroud. Can't think up a better idea.

gives double xp - copying a level one unit gives attackers 2xp each attack. Level 3, 6 xp. Can't be killed, so kill xp would be unaffected. This'd stop people making temporary walls with them, since giving away a ton of xp is never good. Would be something of a giveaway if the other guy pays attention, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Very cheap. Like 4-5 gold cheap.

[Araja]

I disagree...

It would prevent more problems if the illusions only missed their own attacks instead of dodging every hostile blow as well. You can bring in any number of balancing ploys but invincible units only cause problems. Just as a blocker unit it would ruin gameplay every time it was included.

[HomerJ]

Dies the turn after it's attacked (So their turn they send two units to attack, both miss every attack, when your turn comes around it goes kaput)

Araja, maybe you missed the above.

Edit: Ah, sorry, maybe I was missing the fact that the illusion can be replaced that turn it dies, so it would be a permanent blocker...


Greetz
HomerJ