Just a quick note to say I'm leaving town early tomorrow morning and won't be back til Sunday night. There's some chance I could post tonight, but it's also possible I won't be able to post until Sunday eve, or Monday at the latest.
It would be many pop over the course of the game though - any successes (the ones that become Sisters) are a permanent loss of that population. And if the city can send multiple, then it would drain Caemlyn of population much faster.
k, I'm not sure why, but I've been thinking that the pop was returned to the city when the office got fired or became a sister. I don't think we decided to do that, though. with that in mind, yes i agree with what you're saying.
Interesting, this makes a lot of sense. So at the moment the primary Tall/Wide balancing mechanisms are yield output from separate cities (favors Wide) and yield output from LPs (favors Tall).
For the Tower, we have a selection of Quests that provide influence, which don't seem to inherently favor Tall or Wide overall. Proximity to the Tower is certainly helpful, which is a minor point in Wide's favor, but not a big one.
Sisters are allocated based on a bunch of factors, which we're not 100% on yet, so we don't know if they're Wide or Tall favoring.
If Spark is tied to population, then that will favor Tall (unless it's CiV-numerical Pop numbers - the ones above the cities - rather than civilization population, in which case I'm not sure which way it swings. I think still in Tall's favor.). It might be a good idea to counteract that by making Tower Influence favor Wide, which would suggest the one-Novice-per-city approach. (So Tall civs can field more non-Sister channelers more easily, Wide civs can field more Sisters more easily.)
hmmm... I recall Sister Quota was going to be based on both pop and number of cities, among other things. How we weigh each of those will let us choose if its T or W, obviously. But yeah, I suspect Spark will favor Tall if raw population favors tall (does it, even if you have tons of cities?)?
I was thinking that the civ couldn't send another Novice from the same city until the current one either became an Aes Sedai or failed. So while they're Accepted they're still occupying that city's contribution. Otherwise you could pipeline Novices so that you always have a Novice from city X, which gives us less room to have mechanics that care about where Novices were sent from. (Not just an Andoran unique, and not even just uniques, but even any normal buildings that are channeler/Tower related could use this functionality.)
What do you think?
OK, I think that sounds good. can send another when they advance to Sister or fail. ne per city. Diplo summary probably due for an update.
This is the top Ajah(s) in the Tower, not the top Ajahs Andor has influence with. The top Ajah in the Tower is the Ajah with the most total influence, regardless of the breakdown of influence among players between all of the Ajahs. So Andor having the most influence in Blue (say 80/100) and Green (say 75/100) doesn't make those Ajahs the one that must be selected from - if Red has 140 total influence (even if Andor is 0 of that) then Red is the top Ajah. That's what players are targeting when they want to influence the Edict output of the Tower. That's what I'm suggesting be the mechanism for choosing which Ajahs' Edicts Andor can choose from.
If it's only the top (top 2 is an alternative) then Red being dominant will mean Andor must choose a Red Edict, they just get to pick the one that is favorable for them. Given that the Red Edicts should have common mechanical themes that help the non-Andor player that got them all that influence (in the scenario we're discussing), chances are it will still help them. (And that would have been left up to the internal decisions of the Tower previously, so it's not like the non-Andor player is missing out on a choice.)
OK, got it. Should note here that there are a number of edicts that are generic and available to all ajahs, as I recall, which makes this actually not that big of a limitation, though.
The other thing is that, as I recall, the most powerful ajah isn't *guaranteed* to go to the most powerful ajah. I recall (summary doesn't state) that its just weighted randomness. I propose that this "dice roll" be made before andor selects, and they simply choose which edict that Ajah will propose - this will likely be the most powerful ajah, but not always. This strikes a good balance, I think.
Also, the list of generic and ajah/based edicts is rather huge. I imagine only a (random) subset of these will be available each time?
I like this ability mechanically more with these changes, though it is still preposterous, flavor-wise.
I've been thinking it would stack, which would mean it's unaffected by this UA. I think the main point of the UA is more about getting utility from all CSes, rather than being just about generating yields. Other players may have a CS locked down, but Andor can still get way more value out of that CS than other civs could in a similar position. Plus they don't need to spread themselves as thin to have all of those bonuses, which lets them direct their money elsewhere quite often.
In general, I think we want to encourage Andor to trade with CSes that it isn't allies with, because that's not usually something that civs want to do, so it will give them some unique influence on the trading strategies in the game. But we don't want it to be the case that becoming allies with a CS reduces its utility to Andor.
Though arguably maybe they should just reassign the trade route to a different CS if they become allies? What about having the bonus with only non-allied CSes?
I like it stacking. I'm not sure about urging them to reassign when they create an alliance by making the bonus cease. It seems kind of like a pain and not always intuitive (exactly what I'm getting from each CS isn't always clear). Is there another way to encourage that, like provide some extra boost for non-alliances( movement in territory, etc.) or provide a smaller yield when it stacks with an alliance?
I'm not really a big fan of GA points as a reward for stuff - it doesn't feel like that's a strong enough bonus compared to what the other kinds of yields do. It's also wasted if you are already in a Golden Age. With full length Golden Ages attached to LPs already, it feels like a UA that only offers points would have to offer tons and tons of them to compete. And even then, short Golden Ages are more immediately impactful for the player.
I understand the logic here. I don't totally agree, though, as we could make it be tons of points, which does feel impactful. The useless-while-in-GA thing is peculiar, and cripples some of the BNW uniques (brazilian UU or something)... i do suppose there would potentially be away around that, though, right?
I also don't feel all that strongly about this.
Yeah, I like the UB version. I think we'd want to make it so that it has the same change as with the UA - so it only eliminates the Unhappiness per city, rather than all of it.
yeh, sounds good.
It doesn't seem un-CiV-like to me. The gateway units aren't wiped out though, they don't even take any damage. They just can't attack for 1 turn. And they can still use that turn to position in other nearby cities to be useful next turn. Given that the defending player can see siege weapons approaching, this doesn't seem too difficult to avoid or overly punishing.
I think we may end up changing it either way, but I'd prefer to err on the side of impactful and strong and pare back after if it's too strong.
eh, I suppose we have to agree to disagree, here. I put "wiped out" in quotes because obviously they aren't actually wiped out, they're just functionally useless. What's un-civlike is all-or-nothing stuff, where one unit can disallow an entire ability on many units. CiV tends to work with percentages and stuff, with fixed ranges of effect, etc. Can you point to another example of something like this? Maybe the impenetrability of the Firewall Wonder or something, but that's also a Wonder, not a UU that you can build 10 of.
Stuff like this, it seems to me, just encourages cheese tactics. It encourages Andor player behavior that, really, adopts a "get one hit and then who cares?" kind of approach. The survival of the dragon - or even the damage it does - is often negligible, as long as you get in one single hit. That's not compelling strategy to me. Compelling strategy would be to have the retaliation-elimination be an aspect of the dragon's usefulness, but the dragon still needs to be used smartly. True, you could still swarm them to neutralize a huge fleet, but that's very, very different than single-unit suicide runs (recall that Siege5 has range of 3 and attack-without-setup, so getting in range isn't very difficult, even in a single turn, depending on the civ borders) that protect the entire rest of your land forces from a huge air defense. yes, just one turn. But with Two dragons, that's likely 2 turns, or more.
Interesting, I've been subconsciously adding a letter, thinking of his username as "kids' show business".
am i counters point?
Yeah, I'd be fine with sticking to Drill and Cover and the like to start with. I like the possibility of this encouraging different promotion strategies (encourage players to go with one of each, which they don't usually do). We'll see if it annoys players that they're missing out by beelining for March (which is probably still a good call).
yeah, on the other hand, if you do beeline for March, if you can just grab a couple more promotions, you can end up with, say, two level 2 promotions for "free."
Oh, right! You can only have one Governor of this type. I was thinking, as you said at the end here, that only the Tower D-H was restricted to 1. Your clarification makes a lot more sense.
For the upgrade 2 ability, is there anything that helps the Daughter-Heir become a Sister? I don't think we want to make the usefulness of that ability hinge on random chance, because it makes the unique too weak in some situations and the player has no way of influencing that outcome.
hmmmm... since there's only one, should this just be auto-success? Or perhaps not auto-success, but "cannot fail" (meaning, can be delayed, but can't be ousted from the tower? Then the variable is simply how long it takes.
For the new Novice being sent immediately - isn't that the default behavior?
well, yeah, sending a novice, yes, but designating one a DH, not necessarily (since there is no default for that).
That said, this needs to be tweaked given our whole "one-novice-or-accepted" at a time
And when Accepted become Aes Sedai, they don't become Sister units. I think allowing a new Daughter-Heir to be made either when the current one becomes an Aes Sedai or some time (actual count of years) afterwards would be good. (The nation will have new heirs as the game goes on, flavor wise.)
It makes sense, flavor-wise, and it would certainly be lame to make somebody wait tons of turns for a second go of it, especially if they can fail. However, I really don't think I love the idea of Andor having two of these AS units at a time hanging around, given the high EXP and (probably most importantly) quota-less-ness. It seems like this would be the kind of thing that encourages strategies you to take a "Safe" ajah (yield-generating, not-in-combat-one) and use its EXP to boost gov yields, and then make like four of them and watch things roll in. Kind of weird, and most importantly, hard to balance.
If we allow, upon advancement of the DH to sisterhood, a new novice to be immediately designated the DH, could we make it so that, even if that new novice advances to sisterhood, a *unit* doesn't spawn until the other is killed?
ok, i tried it out below - very complicated!
I think letting it auto-choose is more consistent with the behavior of Puppets, and lets us set up that selection AI to avoid situations like this. The players are used to ceding agency for Puppeted cities, so I think we can stick with that in general.
right, but that assumes we want to allow govs in puppets at all - do we?
But if we do, then yes, we should probably never lead the AI to choose the Tactician or other "useless" ones (or, let them choose a UG and then *not* choose the unique Tier 2 ability, etc.)
Also, I'm realizing now, the *player* decides which governor it is, based on the LP they put there. If somebody's dumb enough to build a Tactician in a puppet by sending a GC there...
I like the way the flavor combines with this, but I think it's a bit difficult to set up. I'd be inclined to remove the requirement for having a gateway unit on the same tile and just boost the unit's range to match a gateway unit in general.
For the +X% combat strength against gateway units, this comes into play when an enemy uses a gateway unit to attack the Gateway Dragon, right? Since gateway units themselves (since they function like aircraft) can't be attacked directly.
I've also suggested another possible use of this flavor below.
Hmmm... I suppose I'm ok with the removal of the same tile requirement. We just might get in a situation where people can carpet their borderlands with TG improvements and have massive range.
Right, when they are attacked, though I think, couldn't they be attacked while on a TG improvement? If a gateway is stationed on the improvement (not a city), we've established that it is captured or destroyed when somebody goes there. But couldn't that tile be targetted via range too, like a civilian? What would that do?
These are solid choices, though I'm not the biggest fan of GA points as rewards as mentioned above. Still, on units it does feel like it's a more appropriate power level.
yeah, and I think maybe the GA point thing shouldn't be the only dimension of the unit.
I had forgotten that Aludra called cannonballs Dragon Eggs, and thought we'd gone all ASoIaF for a moment!
I like it!
Would you rather them be called Aludra's Balls?
Yeah, my brain is all mush now that I've read the entire asoiaf books, included the extra stuff, and watched the show, since last reading WoT. I catch myself getting all sorts of great UU ideas and such that really have no place in our game...
I think to compete with the Road, and particularly with a higher maintenance cost, this would need to have a fairly beefy effect and I don't think internal trade routes are used often enough to do that. I've suggested a modification below that uses the Railroad bonus as inspiration.
With the modification, Andor would still use normal roads if they were short on money or for any cities that aren't connected to the capital by land.
"trade connections" refers to the "city is now connected to the capital" state, which normally has some Gold output.
I'm also marginally unsure about the technical possibility of adding a new improvement that visually connects and looks like roads.
ok, wel, this one might not survive, but we'll see!
The flavor of the Gateway Dragon (gateway) is that by firing through the gateways, they don't present themselves as targets for interception in combat on the other side. The city bonus is because they're actual siege weapons, rather than the normal gateway units, which are people.
Yeah, I think this is decent use of flavor, for sure, and a cool unit. I do think it's a little weird to have a generic Dragon unit be a siege weapon and the UU of that dragon unit being "aircraft." That said, it's not a deal breaker - the whole gateway unit thing is automatically weird. This actually might be one of the rare opportunities to have a UU gateway - the Raken is just way too head-scratching to work.
Recap!
Andor (Era 5-9, Wide, Diplo/Dom)
UAs:
- Trained at the Tower, as long as a citizen from Andor's capital is a Novice in the Tower, Andor can choose which Edicts are issued by the Tower, selecting from the options available to the Ajah that is declaring the Edict. As long as she is an Accepted, Andor can cast X% of the Tower's votes in the Compact, as though those votes were their own.
- Queen's Writ (CS), city-states that Andor has any trade routes with provide Andor their ally bonus, if they are not allies, and +X influence per turn, if they are allies.
- Queen's Succession, every X turns (low, like 10), a Y turn Golden Age (low, like 2) begins.
- We Love the Queen, "We Love the King Day" is renamed "We Love the Queen Day" and cities currently observing it do not contribute Unhappiness per city.
- Encouraged to Train, every X unused Spark results in +Y Sister quota.
- Queen's Writ (policy), every time Andor adopts a new Policy, an X turn Golden Age begins.
- The Queen's Bounty, whenever a Legendary Person is born, each Andoran city or Puppet receives a boost of Y% production. If that unit or building is produced on that turn, each remaining hammer generates Z Gold.
- Lineage of the White Lion, Andor receives a free Governor of the type of their choice in the city when they capture an original capital.
UUs:
- Dragon (city), replaces Siege5. Cities this unit is stationed in can attack twice each turn. Cities attacked by this unit, and one gateway unit in that city, cannot attack on their next turn.
- Dragon (unit), replaces Siege5. Has +X% ranged combat strength against units and deals Y% of the damage dealt to its primary target as splash damage to adjacent hexes. Enemy units adjacent to a dragon when the dragon attacks cannot attack on their next turn.
- Queen's Guard (defense), replaces Era 6/7/8 unit. Has higher combat strength. Andoran civilian units within X hexes of this unit must be fought and down to 0 HP before being captured by enemy melee units.
- Queen's Guard (LP), replaces Polearm 5-6, +X% combat bonus when fighting within two tiles of a Great Person or a governor. +Y% combat bonus when adjacent to another Queen's Guard. (kidshowbusiness).
- First Prince of the Sword or Captain-General or Master of the Sword (unit), replaces the Great Captain, fights as a combat unit equivalent in strength to contemporary Melee units. Instead of the typical combat bonus, any units within X hexes of this unit fight as if each of their leveled promotions are of one higher level.
- Gateway Dragon Green (siege), replaces Siege 5, when stationed in a city or Traveling Grounds, the Dragon's attack range is increased by 6. +X% combat strength against Gateway units.
- Queen's Guard (GA), replaces Era 6/7/8 unit, has higher combat strength. Surviving an attack generates X Golden Age Points, based on the strength of the attack. This amount is doubled in Andor's territory.
- First Prince of the Sword of Captain-General or Master of the Sword (GA), replaces the Great Captain, fights as a combat unit equivalent in strength to contemporary Melee units. In addition to the typical combat bonus, any units within X hexes of this unit produce Y Golden Age points when surviving an attack, proportional to the strength of the attack.
- Gateway Dragon (gateway), replaces Gateway2. +X% combat strength against cities and cannot be intercepted.
UBs:
- Bellfoundry, replaces Sulfur Production (Recycling Center), every X turns this city creates one free non-Wonder, non-Project production item (building, unit) of Andor's choice. Does not provide Sulfur.
- Inner City Walls, replaces Defense 2, in addition to its defensive bonus, grants +1 Culture and +1 Happiness (kidshowbusiness).
- Inner City Gate, replaces Defense 2, if this city has population X or lower, generates +Y food. If the city has population greater than X, provides +Z happiness.
- Queen's Inn, replaces Happiness 2, produces +1 food. When this city enters into "We Love the Queen Day," it doesn't contribute to empire-wide Unhappiness per city[/COLOR].
- Dragon Egg Storehouse, replaces Defense3, Siege units created within this city receive the Range promotion free.
UIs:
- Smelter, can be built on Gold, Silver, Gems, or Alum. Provides access to the resource, +X Gold and +Y Production. Mines on adjacent hexes provide an additional copy of the resource.
- Queen's Road, cities connected to the capital by Queen's Roads produce +X% Culture and +Y% Gold from trade connections. Units move Z% faster on Queen's Roads than normal Roads. More expensive to maintain than a normal road.
UGs:
- First Clerk, spawned by Merchant Lord or Ambassador, Yields are gold and food (with food being the higher of the two). Unique Tier 2 ability is "Andor receives an additional Eye-and-Ear." Relevant LP for upgrade 3 ability is the Merchant Lord.
- Daughter-Heir, spawned by any Legendary Person, Yield is Tower Influence. Andor may only have one Daughter-Heir at a given time. Unique Tier 2 ability is "One Novice sent from this city can be designated the Daughter-Heir, and cannot be put out of the tower. When she becomes an Aes Sedai, Andor gains an Aes Sedai unit (regardless of quota) of the Ajah of their choice, who spawns with X EXP (very high). After she becomes an Aes Sedai, the next Novice sent to the Tower from that city can be designated the Daughter-Heir, though that Daughter-Heir will not spawn an Aes Sedai unit until the previous Daughter-Heir unit is killed or disbanded, regardless of how far she advances in the Tower." Relevant LP for upgrade 3 ability is the Ambassador.
- First Prince of the Sword or Captain-General (governor), spawned from the Great Captain. Produces no yield, but generates a free random unit every X turns. Unique Tier 2 ability is "Any enemy units killed within this city's territory generate +X Gold, +Y Production, +Z Culture, +W Science, or +V Faith, randomly determined." Relevant LP for upgrade 3 ability is the Great Captain.
OK, I don't think I really have any more ideas, at least not right now.
Renamed Succession Wars because I want the WL flavor and the fact that you go to war whenever a queen dies isn't something to be proud of...
Locks? I'm not sure Andor has much in the way of locks. I think we *could* say the following:
UU: Queen's Guard
Something that connects to the Tower
The latter of those is negotiable, though, and, I suppose the QG is as well, though it's sort of a no-brainer when a civ has an honest-to-goodness, proper-named UU option, that we should take it.
I wouldn't say Dragons are a lock. I think an argument could be made that we should not use them as a unique. But if we say "no" to that argument, then they probably are a lock.
OK, so making sense of this huge list, I see the following aspects:
UAs:
Trained at the Tower (Tower, Novices, Edicts, Compact)
Queen's Writ (CS) (CSs, Yields)
Queen's Succession (Golden Age)
We Love the Queen (Happiness, WltQ Day)
Encouraged to Train (Tower, Sister Quota)
Queen's Writ (Policy) (Golden Age)
Queen's Bounty (Production, Gold)
Lineage of the White Lion (Governor, Conquest)
UUs:
Dragon (city) (Dragon, City, anti-Gateway)
Dragon (unit) (Dragon, anti-unit)
Queen's Guard (defense) (civilian)
Queen's Guard (LP) (civilian)
FPotS (unit) (promotions)
Gateway Dragon (siege) (range, anti-gateway)
Queen's Guard (GA) (Golden Age)
FPotS (GA) (Golden Age)
Gateway Dragon (gateway) (Dragon, siege, anti-gateway)
UBs:
Bellfoundry (production)
Inner City Walls (Culture, Happiness)
Inner City Gate (Food, Happiness)
Queen's Inn (Happiness)
Dragon Egg Storehouse (Dragon, Promotion)
UIs
Smelter (luxuries, Gold, Production)
Queen's Road (Culture, Gold, Movement)
UGs
First Clerk (Gold, Food, EaE)
Daughter-Heir (Tower, Tower Influence, Novice, Aes Sedai)
FPotS (governor) (free unit, various yields)
OK, so, honestly, that didn't help too much. we have a LOT of directions we could move in, wich each subcategory tending towards certain things - the UAs in particular are all over the map! How to proceed?
