RoN has a lot of undocumented gameplay elements where it’s ambiguous whether the in-game effect is a bug or not. Using all available context, we can try to make subjective judgement calls about which of these are probably bugs and which of these are probably intentional (just with missing tooltip info).
Some examples of this:
- Many UUs have +5% damage, such as Greek HC and Russian LC.
- Probably not a bug – probably just a way to marginally increase the power of some UUs that felt like they needed “a little bit extra” as +/-5% is the sort of value you use when fine-tuning balance, not when doing preliminary balance experimentation.
- The Greek HC UU specifically in Age II doesn’t get +5% damage, and if we accept that other Greek UU’s +5% damage is intentional, then it’s not obvious at a glance if having Companions (II) miss out on it is intended or not. It’s possible that it was intentional balance decision where it was tested and the bonus removed for that specific unit, or it may be that the Age II unit was added after the rest of the lineup already got their damage bonuses, and somebody forgot to apply it to the then-new Companion unit (the latter seems more likely to me).
- Romans can build Forts and Towers without having the normal tech prerequisites, and their (documented) discount on Fort costs applies to Towers as well (undocumented).
- If this was a T&P-specific change (like their free Mil1, which wasn’t present in vanilla RoN) then it would be easier to call it a tooltip bug, but it’s been there since 2003 and I haven’t seen much evidence for or against its intentionality. Unlike some other undocumented nation powers (e.g., Russians being able to build Refineries earlier than normal), I haven’t seen it referenced in any of BHG/MS’s internal documentation either.
- The Forbidden City increases the gather rate of Citizens, Scholars, and Caravans at the Forbidden City by 25%. Was this some experimental thing that was being tested and was intended to be removed, or was it really intended to be included and they just forgot to update the tooltip?
- The value is implemented in rules.xml instead of being hardcoded, which implies it’s less likely to have been a leftover dev experiment (because why would you go to the trouble of implementing the value in XML and then programmatically reading that instead of just hardcoding it if you were just quickly testing it?) and more likely to have been something that they forgot to put in the tooltip. It’s also supported by The CEO having a similar (but strangely also undocumented) bonus, which I consider to be weakly supporting the Forbidden City’s bonus being intentional.
- The ramping cost of Scholars increases by 2 for every Scholar (pretty normal), but then an additional 1 for every 7 Scholars, a type of ramping pattern followed by — off the top of my head — no other unit in the game.
- Although not mentioned in the in-game help text as far as I can see, this one has pretty good evidence that it’s intentional as it’s explicitly mentioned in the out-of-game documentation of the game’s official strategy guide (which was written with input from the original devs).
In a similar vein to the examples above, red Patriots have an undocumented bonus where they gain +1000 craft per level of Supply (Forage) tech, culminating in red Patriots having 4000 total craft with all three techs compared to the comparatively paltry 1000 that both Generals and green Patriots max out with. It’s a bit of an odd bonus to have silently slapped on, particularly given that the T&P-only unique CtW Generals with similar bonuses (such as Alexander) generally make it a point to note their high craft alongside other perks in their tooltips.
I’m now of the opinion that this is one of the cases where — mostly likely — it’s the gameplay effect which is the bug, not the missing tooltip information.
It’s my understanding that back before the current supply system was implemented (where being in range of Supply Wagon simply prevents attrition / supplies siege and nothing else by default), there were other things that Supply Wagons did, relating to refitting / healing units.1 For that purpose, Supply Wagons had a finite, consumable2 supply capacity that (probably) used their craft, presumably similarly to how planes use craft as their fuel. It might’ve been a simple effect like the French / Versailles healing.3
During development the healing effect from Supply Wagons was removed4 and we ultimately ended up with the system we have now.
Most likely as a holdover of the the legacy system, Supply Wagons actually come with 500 mana (craft), a stat which they still maintain in the release versions of the game. The mana (craft) can’t actually be used to do anything, and the stat itself is hidden from display on the unit, but it does still exist. Each Supply (Forage) tech also increases this not-visible stat by 1000, the same as what red Patriots get. You can verify this in-game by giving Supply Wagons a craft-reliant ability such as Bribe. Without any upgrades they can’t use the ability because it costs 1000 craft, but they’re able with the upgrade.
Since red Patriots pseudo-graft onto Supply Wagons, they seem to have inherited this otherwise unused legacy system — and although it’s not impossible that this was intentional, I think it’s more likely that it was an accident. After all, in the vanilla 2003 release, there’s no actual function to giving Supply Wagons craft which made it easy to fly under the radar (it would never show up in any in-game QA testing, for example) allowing it to remain enabled but dormant. Once it was forgotten that craft-on-Supply-Wagons was still in the game (just not visible to the player), instead of being removed like most other unused mechanics, it seems rather unlikely that it was intentionally tapped for an odd buff to specifically red Patriots a year later with T&P’s release. There’s a slightly higher chance that it was actually noticed in T&P’s testing or development and intentionally left in despite not being intentionally added, but it’s one of those things that we might never know for sure.
- RoN’s internal design doc describes the Supply Wagon thusly: “Small weak unit that carries “hit points” with it for other units to heal from/absorb.”
- Though whether it could be replenished I don’t know.
- Or the notorious unused supply wagon healing setting in rules.xml, which novice modders seem to find irresistible. Really, that setting is probably leftover from the old supply-wagon-healing system.
- An internal changelog from before the game’s final release includes this change: “Supply units no longer “deplete”” and “Supply Wagons no longer heal your units (they just protect from attrition and make arty fire faster). Only way to heal right now is garrison.”