TrippedOnACloud
Warlord
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2012
- Messages
- 294
Per http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=565281, I figured I'd open up a new thread to discuss some stuff relating to Cultures. Bear in mind, I prefer to play with Unlimited Wonders without the various Combat Mod options. Unlimited Wonders in particular makes a huge difference.
First off, there's three three main benefits to the assorted Culture wonders, so let's take each of those individually:
1. Culture Units - I don't see these as being an issue, as things currently stand. Possibly Combat Mod options might drastically change these, but in general the limit of 15 and fairly modest bonuses compared to contemporary units makes them limited in their effect. Possible exception for a few of the very early 7-strength units, but even those are generally manageable.
2. Wonder Construction Speed- Negligible effect in most situations, I believe. Maybe some shifting around between the first set and the more recent additions, to account for successor cultures or grouped cultures, but not a big deal either way.
3. Heroes - This is, in my opinion, the biggest issue.
Most cultures having a Hero unit is fine, and interesting. The problem arises when each one can be settled as a Great Military Instructor, which is a very strong permanent bonus to a military city. I find it's not unusual for me to be able to plant dozens of them, at least, in my primary unit production city. My current capital has something like 150 GMIs at this point, in early Industrial. My troops are basically unstoppable gods of war.
A pass definitely needs to be made limiting or adjusting what each Hero can settle as, or possibly some mechanism for decreasing returns on stacking GMIs or some other form of attached penalty. Not sure what can and can't be done within the engine, though. For example, is -% Military Unit Production per GMI doable? Something like -2% per GMI seems like it'd work out reasonably.
Also, with the addition of so many new cultures, I think it's feasible to bring back the more complex requirements for the culture wonders. Currently, I believe all cultures have a requirement of a culture group, a single resource, and sometimes a terrain requirement. I'd say that given the much larger number of available cultures, two-resource or two-terrain cultures are once again feasible.
Contributing to culture overload is how the Native Cultures work. Taking and holding a single city of another culture group is enough to open up that group for all cities you own. I've often found myself buying a single just-settled marginal city from a distant AI for the sole purpose of culture group access. Possibly change them to function per-continent instead of globally? That is, change Native Culture (European) to give a Culture (European) to all cities on the same continent, instead of all cities globally, for example.
The other major item I wanted to bring up:
The current Cultures for the Chinese historical periods are a bit of a mess. "Three Kingdoms" as a single culture is absurd, and the current "Chinese" is far too general and should probably be removed. The same thing probably applies to some of the other current cultures, but being Chinese myself it stands out more. I'd recommend the following, trying to minimize work needed but still be somewhat accurate:
Xia - Unchanged
Qin - Early Zhuge Nu - Shang Yang (name changed on unit, current Zhuge No)
Han - (some unit, roughly late Classical to early Medieval)* - Liu Bang*
(Three Kingdoms - split into Wu, Shu, Wei)
Wu - Doujian - Guan Yu (unit from current Three Kingdoms)
Shu - Zhuge Nu - Zhuge Liang (name changed on unit, current Cho Ko Nu)
Wei - (some unit, roughly mid Medieval)* - Cao Cao
Tang - Unchanged
Ming - Treasure Ship - Zheng He, Wanli (Zheng He from current Chinese)
Qing - Unchanged
People's Republic of China - Red Guard (Infantry)* - Mao Zedong*
I'm not sure what graphical assets are available or how much work would be required on that end, though. * would be new units. As a stopgap, the National Units can just use the same graphics as their generic Chinese equivalents, Liu Bang can be a renamed Abaoji, and Mao can reuse Yamamoto's graphic I suppose.
So... thoughts? Discussions?
First off, there's three three main benefits to the assorted Culture wonders, so let's take each of those individually:
1. Culture Units - I don't see these as being an issue, as things currently stand. Possibly Combat Mod options might drastically change these, but in general the limit of 15 and fairly modest bonuses compared to contemporary units makes them limited in their effect. Possible exception for a few of the very early 7-strength units, but even those are generally manageable.
2. Wonder Construction Speed- Negligible effect in most situations, I believe. Maybe some shifting around between the first set and the more recent additions, to account for successor cultures or grouped cultures, but not a big deal either way.
3. Heroes - This is, in my opinion, the biggest issue.
Most cultures having a Hero unit is fine, and interesting. The problem arises when each one can be settled as a Great Military Instructor, which is a very strong permanent bonus to a military city. I find it's not unusual for me to be able to plant dozens of them, at least, in my primary unit production city. My current capital has something like 150 GMIs at this point, in early Industrial. My troops are basically unstoppable gods of war.
A pass definitely needs to be made limiting or adjusting what each Hero can settle as, or possibly some mechanism for decreasing returns on stacking GMIs or some other form of attached penalty. Not sure what can and can't be done within the engine, though. For example, is -% Military Unit Production per GMI doable? Something like -2% per GMI seems like it'd work out reasonably.
Also, with the addition of so many new cultures, I think it's feasible to bring back the more complex requirements for the culture wonders. Currently, I believe all cultures have a requirement of a culture group, a single resource, and sometimes a terrain requirement. I'd say that given the much larger number of available cultures, two-resource or two-terrain cultures are once again feasible.
Contributing to culture overload is how the Native Cultures work. Taking and holding a single city of another culture group is enough to open up that group for all cities you own. I've often found myself buying a single just-settled marginal city from a distant AI for the sole purpose of culture group access. Possibly change them to function per-continent instead of globally? That is, change Native Culture (European) to give a Culture (European) to all cities on the same continent, instead of all cities globally, for example.
The other major item I wanted to bring up:
The current Cultures for the Chinese historical periods are a bit of a mess. "Three Kingdoms" as a single culture is absurd, and the current "Chinese" is far too general and should probably be removed. The same thing probably applies to some of the other current cultures, but being Chinese myself it stands out more. I'd recommend the following, trying to minimize work needed but still be somewhat accurate:
Xia - Unchanged
Qin - Early Zhuge Nu - Shang Yang (name changed on unit, current Zhuge No)
Han - (some unit, roughly late Classical to early Medieval)* - Liu Bang*
(Three Kingdoms - split into Wu, Shu, Wei)
Wu - Doujian - Guan Yu (unit from current Three Kingdoms)
Shu - Zhuge Nu - Zhuge Liang (name changed on unit, current Cho Ko Nu)
Wei - (some unit, roughly mid Medieval)* - Cao Cao
Tang - Unchanged
Ming - Treasure Ship - Zheng He, Wanli (Zheng He from current Chinese)
Qing - Unchanged
People's Republic of China - Red Guard (Infantry)* - Mao Zedong*
I'm not sure what graphical assets are available or how much work would be required on that end, though. * would be new units. As a stopgap, the National Units can just use the same graphics as their generic Chinese equivalents, Liu Bang can be a renamed Abaoji, and Mao can reuse Yamamoto's graphic I suppose.
So... thoughts? Discussions?