[Wesnoth-dev] Changing 'Loyal'

[David White]

Personally I don't like the way 'loyal' currently works. I think it 
forces players to take note of traits far more than was originally 
intended. Traits are meant to provide some variety to units, and make 
some tactical and strategic difference, they are not meant to be so 
dominating that players start developing strategies to only level up 
units that have a certain trait. Loyal is also almost useless in 
multiplayer games, and is just an annoyance there.

I propose that we change it so that loyal units cost 0 upkeep, 
regardless of level. Then we remove loyal as a trait that units can be 
assigned randomly: it can only be assigned explicitly to a unit created 
by a scenario designer. Then all units that automatically join the 
player in various scenarios be made loyal.

Another way of looking at this change is that it's basically removing 
loyal from the game, but making units that voluntarily join the player 
marked as 'loyal'.

I think that the trait is one that was contrived just because people 
like adding traits, and it doesn't work well. There have been many trait 
suggestions which I haven't been overly keen on, but which I believe 
would be less detrimental to the game than loyal is. Also none of the 
suggestions to change loyal have really impressed me very much.

Any thoughts on this?

David