S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

counterpoint · May 26, 2016

S3rgeus said:
I'm going to be away this weekend, back on Sunday evening, so my next post will probably be on Monday!

and thus ends the long streak of fast replies

have a good trip!

S3rgeus said:
I think the flavor of the Seanchan "stealing" uniques from other civs is grounded well in the books. They use the local folk in their armies after they've established a foothold in the Westlands, so I think this nods to that.

However, regarding this specific UA, I prefer your UB approach to capturing this flavor, so I'm going to mark it red.

Yeah, I think flavor-wise I'm fine with it. Agreed on nuking it, though I think this one was interesting.

S3rgeus said:
Agreed, this one has the potential to be stronger than Cultural Appropriation, though since they're spawned we can control it, as you say. I think that makes it much less interesting though. Like Cultural Appropriation, I prefer the UB approach, so I'll red this one.

While I understand that puppets aren't as exciting, on the other hand, it's not the worst thing to have a rather "passive" UA for the 'chan, considering how busy their other uniques may end up.

I'm for keeping this one around. I too prefer the UB version of it, but I think there's a chance we won't go with one of those, so it's best to leave one of these around just in case.

S3rgeus said:
I totally agree that this is an unbiased LB ability - even Neutral is an option, as you've said. But I do think it gives them a huge advantage during the LB, because they'll never be on the "wrong" side. I'd say quite a few games will end up with imbalanced sides and that's likely to tip the chances of victory strongly in the favor of the more numerous players, so the Seanchan will just pick whichever side works better for them.

You're right that it doesn't give them actual bonuses during the LB, but I think the positioning itself is a huge LB bonus. I do agree that it should be part of a larger UA though, if we do it.

Mmm, that would be a tasty wonder. Yes, I'd say let's keep that in mind. In fact, I'm sort of tempted to say I prefer the wonder idea to making it a Seanchan unique. But it is something the Seanchan very obviously did in the books, so let's keep it running here.

can't disagree with any of this.

S3rgeus said:
Yep, we could do that weighting based on Governor type. I've made a quick edit to this one to "parameterize" the schedule that the bonus changes.

sounds good.

S3rgeus said:
I think it's worth fleshing it out a bit more, like we did with the Wise Ones. We have an idea about how it could work, but it will help to find the tweak points, where we have options to adjust them for balance later.

So, as a first pass at this, I've taken a look back through the topic a bit about where we discussed damane before. (Pro-tip, we say the word damane a lot.)

Yeah. I should say that this is a bit too deep for this step in the process, I think. In principle, at least. Obviously, the sul'dam is a "lock" so it makes sense, but in general, I think this is far too much of a mechanical rabbit hole for us to be going down at this stage in the game. What we decide here won't affect whether we select the UU or not, I think - consequently, we probably shouldn't get so detailed with it.

That said, you did it, so...

S3rgeus said:
I think a good way to do this would be something like:

Sul'dam replaces the Wilder and upgrades like other channelers. Seanchan can't build the Kinswoman, but the Sul'dam gets stronger on the tech that unlocks Kin (High Chant) in addition to the other channeler upgrade points (so they won't be significantly worse off than we intend them to be, power-wise, when everyone else gets better channelers).

Sul'dam are melee attackers with low combat strength (compared to the units of the current era, as they upgrade). They have an X% (quite large) combat strength bonus against female channelers.

This is all fine. I don't think they *have* to have a low native combat strength, but it's certainly an option.

S3rgeus said:
Female channelers killed by Sul'dam (have a Y% chance?) of becoming a damane linked to that Sul'dam.

Damane cannot attack (and take Z damage per turn? or instead?) when more than W hexes away from their linked Sul'dam.

I don't know if disabling the attack is the way to go. Maybe a major penalty is more appropriate. Also, will this be clear visually when this is the case?

Also, what happens if the sul'dam is killed?

Also, are we sure we need the sul'dam to be linked? Couldn't it just be *any* sul'dam?

S3rgeus said:
Damane are a ranged female channeling units (upgrade with all the others) that have high ranged combat strength and low melee combat strength.

yeah, good. Definitely also possible that they can't heal and do some other stuff channelers can (t'ar, etc.)

S3rgeus said:
And if we're looking for a quick byline that describes the Sul'dam functionality to players, then something like: "Is a melee unit, unlike the Wilder it replaces, and captures enemy female channelers it kills as damane." (I mainly mention this because the above is a decent chunk of text that may at first glance make them seem overcomplicated, but the crux of it that we need to communicate to players is quite simple.)

yeah, sounds good to me.

S3rgeus said:
A couple of other addendums:

We suggested a different system for moving sul'dam and damane to force them to always be close to each other before, but decided that would be too much pain both for us to implement and the player to use. So we generally preferred the idea of disadvantaging damane that were "out of range" of their sul'dam.

agreed.

S3rgeus said:
I feel like turning any Aes Sedai into a damane (no matter who controls the Aes Sedai unit) should come with a Tower influence penalty. I think if someone wants to play a Tower-friendly Seanchan (which should totally be possible), they shouldn't be able to run around capturing Aes Sedai left and right at the same time.

absolutely.

also, can damane be freed?

S3rgeus said:
I don't think we particularly want to go for sul'dam capturing male channelers as damane, since there was only one Domination Band in the books, and no one was ever made into a permanent slave with it.

agreed.

S3rgeus said:
There are several areas where this can be tweaked for balance, which is quite nice. (Combat strength of both units. How that combat strength changes at the channeler upgrade techs. Range of sul'dam to damane link. Chance of capturing a killed female channeler. Extent, if any, of Tower influence bonus when capturing Aes Sedai. Extent of sul'dam combat bonus against female channelers.)

for sure. Many places we can tweak it.

OK, the other thing I thought of - and, probably, the only other way to do sul'dam: fuse the sul'dam and damane into a single unit. The damane is a fighting unit who attacks and captures a channeler. That enemy channeler is technically destroyed, and the sul'dam becomes a damane unit (or a single unit that represents a sul'dam and a damane). It doesn't appear that we were going to have the damane unit itself be different based on the unit that was captured, so there's likely no need to have the functionality to turn back into a sul'dam (if there was variety in damane strength based on the captured unit, we could add this functionality so the sul'dam could come back to capture a stronger unit).

So, first impressions are that it's lame, right? Well, here are some of the benefits:

1) It's far simpler - none of the movement mumbo-jumbo and such
2) It doesn't feel like we're "cheating" by having 2 UU for the price of one
3) In the books, it doesn't seem like the sul'dam do any fighting when they're leading their damane - they pretty much just strap on and lead the damane
4) It doesn't feel like a duplication of the Aes Sedai/Warder mechanic

What do you think? I hate to throw a wrench in established traditions, but as I'm writing this I'm starting to like this method much more... The negative to me, is just the fact that it might come off as a little "weird" - people might expect two separate units. But taking the typical civ conception of what a "unit" is, it's sort of bizarre to have a whole separate sul'dame and damane unit.

Maybe there are other problems with this - let me know what you think.

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, I didn't go straight to red because I like the general idea of it, but I don't see us being able to do it well within the structure of the non-unique units. I think having the raken at the beginning or end of the Gateway unit upgrade path would be just as weird.

At the beginning, you've got all this cool Seanchan flavor that then totally goes away in the endgame. At the end, it's completely bizarre that raken are an upgrade on Gateways, since Gateways would be faster and more strategically powerful. In the middle, I agree that it just looks like we kind of missed something.

The beginning is probably the least flavor weirdness, but none of them strike me as desirable.

For that reason, I've marked it red.

yeah, nuke it. I've thrown in one last possible use for the Raken below.

S3rgeus said:
I think building it instantly when the city is puppeted will be too powerful. One of the main reasons to annex cities if you're a warmonger is to be able to build courthouses and offset the boosted unhappiness occupied folk generate, at the cost of the Policy cost increase. If the Seanchan didn't have to do that then they'd be able to manage Happiness from war way too easily.

Building instantly when the city is annexed at least forces the Seanchan to take the Policy hit to offset the Happiness. I think either being built instantly upon annexation or being produceable in a single turn is something we can tweak for balance.

We could also reduce the duration of Resistance, but that would hinge on being able to build the building very instantly (limits the amount we can make it cost actual hammers) otherwise Resistance will always end before it's built.

ok, I mostly getcha here. What do you think it should be like, then? I'm thinking this will likely not survive, but if you were to tweak it to the right place, how would you tweak it? I think you have a handle on these mechanics better than I.

S3rgeus said:
I do agree with what you're saying from a flavor perspective, Beslan is a prime example of a "puppet" ruler who doesn't actually have any power and is just forced to do what the Seanchan say, even though it looks like "he's in charge".

However, I think that mechanically a lot of the bonuses that operate on puppeted cities (like producing units over time) are quite uninteresting for the player. Venice's UA is a great puppet-related UA because it gives the player greater control over puppeted cities. Otherwise the UA is just a thing that "happens" rather than that the player "uses".

I think there are versions of uniques that work well with puppets, but I think the mechanics of this one won't. The courthouse replacement UB that can be constructed instantly achieves the same mechanical objective as this UA though, and I think does it better.

Though the risk here is that this ability is suddenly becoming scarce, since I'm suggesting we remove it from UAs and go with the UB, but I actually prefer the Tower of Blood UB, and they can't both replace the Courthouse!

I understand the mechanical lack of sexiness of working with puppeted cities. I also think that the Seanchan will be rather splashy though, so we can afford to have at least one rather passive ability - and having one that produces enemy UUs, for example, is still pretty freakin splashy, despite the lack of player agency.

Also, again, the flavor supports puppeting. So, even if we aren't going with pro-Puppet stuff, let's try not to go with pro-Annexing stuff.

I do agree to red this one (Cultural assimilation)

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, looking at this ability from the other player's perspective it would be a massive pain in the face.

Flavor wise, yeah, it came up a few times in the books that the Seanchan had sent farmers and families and such on the Corenne to colonize the new land as they captured it, to help cement their place there. I remember thinking it was a very sinister way of taking over!

ah, didn't remember that

S3rgeus said:
I don't think BNW not doing it means it's a bad idea, it's just something they chose not to do.

right. of course. but it's precedent, at least. you made it sound like the elephant-requirement was problematic, and I was simply stating that we didn't have to have such a requirement.

S3rgeus said:
I don't think the two abilities are redundant. I see two factors involved, the first is if they're going to require a specific luxury, then they need to be quite powerful since there will be very few. The boosted combat strength makes them formidable fighters. And the enemy combat penalty aura means that if you throw them into the middle of a big fight then they can give you an advantage in all of the fights nearby. This means that a small number of them can have a bigger effect than one unit usually would. It's more of a double-whammy than unnecessary overlap.

I like the idea of having a UU that's quite different in that it's very rare but immediately changes the battlefield around it.

Eh, I think we might be able to find something a little more interesting - despite the differences you point out (all valid), it still *feels* like these are similar kinds of bonuses. But for now, I don't have a problem with this.

S3rgeus said:
Googling "elephant Bolts" didn't get me anywhere. And "Bolts sports team" got me a very long list of different teams.

Nothing about elephants. Just Chargers.

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, only stealing techs is affected. Given the restriction to one city per continent, we could probably merge this one with Seekers' Stronghold's capacity to kill Diplomats, if we think that's an interesting thing to keep. (And as a palace replacement, it will always be there where the Diplomats are!)

hmmm... I could be fine with that. I'm not sure which one to keep and which one to ditch (assuming we merge that ability into the CThrone. Any preferences? I'm not particularly drawn to these abilities, honestly.

S3rgeus said:
I think I prefer the Policy one, because it gives the players something more tangible and immediate, which I think more people will take to as compensation for not having Aes Sedai.

Poland's UA provides us a good ballpark for the value of X. They get a free policy every era, so we'd want to calibrate X to be, on average, more frequent than once per era. (More frequent since this UA has a disadvantaging requirement - no Aes Sedai.)

I'd be inclined to hang onto just the policy one.

agree on all of the above.

S3rgeus said:
I think the % chance of making enemy mounted units do nothing will be weirdly random and punishing for other players. I'd be more inclined to give them a significant combat bonus against mounted units, or give them an "aura" that affects the strength of nearby mounted units.

I understand your point. I also feel like a simple combat bonus is too boring though, especially given the fact that polearms already get that. What if it cut the movement of the knights so they couldn't retreat and stuff?

in any case, we're getting to far down into the weeds on the ability.

S3rgeus said:
I think even without the Culture, as long as we keep the Courthouse's Happiness bonus, then the ability to produce other civs' UUs will make this UB quite strong and fun to play. As mentioned above, I think this is my preferred way of capturing this particular "steal others' uniques" mechanic.

My point in adding the culture is that in many cases this would otherwise be identical to a regular courthouse. You think that's fine?

I like this one too, except that it is annex-favored. So puppeted cities don't produce courthouses as a top priority?

S3rgeus said:
There needs to be some mechanic that allows them to build this, because they can't build the building in a puppeted city, which is where its effect works. (They could rely on the puppet AI choosing to build it, but that would be the most frustrating thing in the universe.) Otherwise if it affects other cities it could be some kind of national building?

I've marked it as magenta until we sort out how it's intended to work!

Yeah, I really like this ability (more than the previous one), but that is a tricky thing!

Is there a way to force it to be built first? (coding-wise, I mean). I sort of assumed that they built the courthouse immediately.

Recap!

EDIT - holy moley, the board replaced the word "fourchan" with all the smileys (i was making a dumb seanchan pun)... is that some kind of censoring or something?

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities will periodically produce units, including the Unique Units of the civilization that originally founded the city.
At the Eve of Battle - choose your side in the Last Battle after all other civs have publicly declared their allegiance
Voice of the Blood - each city with a governor will get a +X% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related building, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Y turns
Consolidation, original capitals captured before <date> produce +X extra Science per turn
Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Insights of the Blood, puppetted and annexed cities do not increase technology costs
Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives a free social policy every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.

UUs:

Deathwatch Guard, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health. The ability becomes available again once the unit has returned to full health.
Gardener, late game melee, very powerful
Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
Torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy and land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.
Morat'grolm - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, enemy mounted units consume their whole turn when attacking the morat'grolm.

UBs:

Seanchan Patrol Station, replaces the courthouse, eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +X happiness if city has a connection to the capital. Costs Y% less production and Z% less gold maintenance than the courthouse.
Seeker's tower (replaced courthouse), constructed instantly
Seekers' Stronghold, replaces Spy1, Foreign Eyes and Ears have an X% chance of being killed every Y turns instead of only when they try to steal a technology. Foreign Diplomats have an X% chance of being killed every Z Prestige they generate in this city.
Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, +X culture, enables the production of the Unique Uniques of the civilization who founded the city.
Seeker's Tower, replaces the courthouse, +X Faith, causes puppeted cities to periodically produce units, including the Unique Uniques of the civilization who first founded the city.
Raken's Roost, replaces the airport or bomb shelter, +X% defense against skimming units and +Y range of skimming units

UIs:

The Raken's roost is one final feeble way of working in the raken flavor. There isn't an AA building, so it doesn't quite work....

S3rgeus said:
I would say it's an unlock like the others. I think it would be best to keep the three in sync. The main difference I see for the Dragon and the start of the LB is that they're not attached to specific techs, but instead world eras. This is more like the WC being on Printing Press in BNW, which is listed there.

ugh... ok, I'll change the summary and re-upload the files.... oy...

EDIT: done, but oy indeed! Adding "Begin High King Event" made the tech summary go over 30000 characters.... trimming, trimming....

S3rgeus · May 30, 2016

counterpoint said:
have a good trip!

Thanks! I went to Comic-con which was really fun!

counterpoint said:
While I understand that puppets aren't as exciting, on the other hand, it's not the worst thing to have a rather "passive" UA for the 'chan, considering how busy their other uniques may end up.

I'm for keeping this one around. I too prefer the UB version of it, but I think there's a chance we won't go with one of those, so it's best to leave one of these around just in case.

Sul'dam and damane could end up being quite complex, but our suggestions for the other uniques don't seem to be so. I wouldn't be inclined to deliberately reduce complexity elsewhere on their account.

I do agree that keeping something like this around in case we don't go with the UB is a good call. This one is also circumvents some puppetting issues with the UBs, more on that below.

counterpoint said:
Yeah. I should say that this is a bit too deep for this step in the process, I think. In principle, at least. Obviously, the sul'dam is a "lock" so it makes sense, but in general, I think this is far too much of a mechanical rabbit hole for us to be going down at this stage in the game. What we decide here won't affect whether we select the UU or not, I think - consequently, we probably shouldn't get so detailed with it.

Totally agree that the sul'dam, in some form, is a lock for the Seanchan. I don't think where we are now is too deep on the sul'dam, in the same way it wasn't too deep for the Wise Ones. We're not trying to finalize all these things, just get an idea of which type of approach we like and how, as you've done with your suggestion below.

Related to locks for the Seanchan in general, I'd say the only other thing we'd definitely want to include is something that addresses the unhappiness generated by cities captured from other civs. We want the Seanchan to be quite Domination-y, and that's the main thing that restricts warmongering, so easing it off for them works towards that.

counterpoint said:
I don't know if disabling the attack is the way to go. Maybe a major penalty is more appropriate. Also, will this be clear visually when this is the case?

Also tweakable for balance. Yes, it should be clear to the player through the UI when they would have this disadvantage.

counterpoint said:
Also, what happens if the sul'dam is killed?

I think a serious negative effect on the damane would be appropriate. Ranging from ongoing damage per turn, possibly inability to be commanded by the player anymore, to straight up becoming some kind of "wild" unit that attacks anyone.

counterpoint said:
Also, are we sure we need the sul'dam to be linked? Couldn't it just be *any* sul'dam?

This is an option. I considered this last time, but it felt much less interesting. However, a'dam could be passed from one sul'dam to another right? It was just because an individual owned the damane that it was usually the same person, rather than a property of the link itself?

counterpoint said:
yeah, good. Definitely also possible that they can't heal and do some other stuff channelers can (t'ar, etc.)

Agreed, the healing aura should probably be removed from them as well. My first reaction to removing T'a'r projections was totally agreed. It occurs to me though that it would mean the Seanchan's only access to T'a'r is through Aes Sedai. (Since the sul'dam would replace both Wilder and Kinswoman.) A Seanchan player can of course be friendly to the Tower, but are we ok with that being their only access to T'a'r?

counterpoint said:
also, can damane be freed?

There's a flavor argument for "for a short time after they're captured" but I'd be inclined to go with no for simplicity.

counterpoint said:
OK, the other thing I thought of - and, probably, the only other way to do sul'dam: fuse the sul'dam and damane into a single unit. The damane is a fighting unit who attacks and captures a channeler. That enemy channeler is technically destroyed, and the sul'dam becomes a damane unit (or a single unit that represents a sul'dam and a damane). It doesn't appear that we were going to have the damane unit itself be different based on the unit that was captured, so there's likely no need to have the functionality to turn back into a sul'dam (if there was variety in damane strength based on the captured unit, we could add this functionality so the sul'dam could come back to capture a stronger unit).

So, first impressions are that it's lame, right? Well, here are some of the benefits:

1) It's far simpler - none of the movement mumbo-jumbo and such
2) It doesn't feel like we're "cheating" by having 2 UU for the price of one
3) In the books, it doesn't seem like the sul'dam do any fighting when they're leading their damane - they pretty much just strap on and lead the damane
4) It doesn't feel like a duplication of the Aes Sedai/Warder mechanic

What do you think? I hate to throw a wrench in established traditions, but as I'm writing this I'm starting to like this method much more... The negative to me, is just the fact that it might come off as a little "weird" - people might expect two separate units. But taking the typical civ conception of what a "unit" is, it's sort of bizarre to have a whole separate sul'dame and damane unit.

Maybe there are other problems with this - let me know what you think.

This is certainly another way to do it. I could see the usefulness in a single unit whose model had both sul'dam and damane, with a collar around one's neck having a chain going to the other.

However, I'm don't think I favor this approach over the other one. There are a few reasons for that. One is, as you've said, fans of the fiction may expect two distinct units. I think the CiV unit concept is flexible enough that it doesn't present a problem here - GPs, bombers, and naval units are already "single-person-units" in BNW, and we'll have others like this with our channelers (though this is flexible), LPs, Aes Sedai, Forsaken, and the Dragon.

The other thing is that this wouldn't allow a single sul'dam to capture multiple damane over its lifetime. It would just become a powerful ranged unit, which I find much less interesting. It also takes a lot of the tactics out of the unit, since the player doesn't need to trade off defending the sul'dam with getting the damane into range.

Addressing some of the things you've mentioned, #1 is definitely a factor. But we've removed the complex part of the movement mumbo-jumbo, right? The effects as we outline them above are stateful based on where the units in their turn, the player doesn't need to interact with moving them in a different way to all other units, they just need to consider their proximity.

#2 I can see, but also doesn't feel like it's really counting against us.

#3 is true, but the above system also deals with that. The sul'dam in the books do capture additional damane while fighting the Westlands channelers, which this would disallow. In the above system, the sul'dam would hang back and let the damane do the work when dealing with non-channelers (or even if dealing with multiple enemy channelers) since losing the sul'dam will lose both the sul'dam and the damane (in some capacity), and the damane is the strong part of the pairing when it comes to combat.

#4 doesn't feel like a problem at all to me. The Warder bond mechanics are different. They are both about "linking two units together", but the Warder bond doesn't impose penalties when they're not near each other. It introduces two-way penalties when either dies (whereas the sul'dam would be unaffected, presumably, if the damane died). They're also recruited from allied units. The Warder bond also interacts with the Aes Sedai "can't attack non-aggressors" stuff, which isn't present for the sul'dam.

I can see there are similarities in that the bonded unit becomes upgradeable along with the bonder. But I feel like the mechanics of how they are used will be very different for players. If anything, it makes the Warder bond less weird since we have multiple examples (sul'dam, Linking, Warders, projections) of separate units being "linked" to one another for some arbitrary effect that's unique to each one.

I also think the "first impressions are that it's lame" is a problem in itself. It makes the sul'dam capturing mechanic into something that's much more of a "this unit, but better" compared to the normal channelers. It's a lot of work for the Seanchan to do to get these units as well. If they're just going to be stronger than the existing units, then we'd almost want them to be produced directly as a single unit (which I think would be a major miss out on the flavor), because having to go and find an enemy channeler to kill to gain access to this better unit is a decent amount of work. In the above system, it's a pure addition to your forces, but this would mean the player loses access to the sul'dam when they capture a damane. Whereas above, there's always a chance to gain more damane as long as you use your sul'dam tactically.

counterpoint said:
ok, I mostly getcha here. What do you think it should be like, then? I'm thinking this will likely not survive, but if you were to tweak it to the right place, how would you tweak it? I think you have a handle on these mechanics better than I.

I'm not sure how I would tweak it without turning it into a different kind of ability. The crux of it is "super fast courthouses", which I'd be inclined to go with something like "constructed automatically when the city is annexed". But I think that's less interesting than the other annex (Tower of Blood) and puppet (Ever Victorious Army) approaches that we're considering.

counterpoint said:
I understand the mechanical lack of sexiness of working with puppeted cities. I also think that the Seanchan will be rather splashy though, so we can afford to have at least one rather passive ability - and having one that produces enemy UUs, for example, is still pretty freakin splashy, despite the lack of player agency.

Also, again, the flavor supports puppeting. So, even if we aren't going with pro-Puppet stuff, let's try not to go with pro-Annexing stuff.

I do agree to red this one (Cultural assimilation)

I wouldn't be inclined to avoid pro-annexing stuff in general because that's a very good way to enable the Domination victory, which lines up very well with the Seanchan flavor. We can hash this out a bit more on the other uniques that address the differences though.

counterpoint said:
right. of course. but it's precedent, at least. you made it sound like the elephant-requirement was problematic, and I was simply stating that we didn't have to have such a requirement.

Eh, I think we might be able to find something a little more interesting - despite the differences you point out (all valid), it still *feels* like these are similar kinds of bonuses. But for now, I don't have a problem with this.

I think the luxury requirement could be a problem, but correspondingly beefed up the bonuses that the unit received to compensate for the fact that there would probably be few of them. We could tone that down if we remove the luxury requirement, but I think it would be good to avoid a too simple "this unit, but better" UU.

counterpoint said:
Nothing about elephants. Just Chargers.

Aha, I've actually heard of them!

counterpoint said:
hmmm... I could be fine with that. I'm not sure which one to keep and which one to ditch (assuming we merge that ability into the CThrone. Any preferences? I'm not particularly drawn to these abilities, honestly.

I think the Crystal Throne one would be my preferred merger of the two, though I think that flavor possibly fits better on a wonder. As you've touched on here though, both of these feel very defensive. While different from a lot of other buildings, they're not necessarily useful. Shall we scrap both?

counterpoint said:
I understand your point. I also feel like a simple combat bonus is too boring though, especially given the fact that polearms already get that. What if it cut the movement of the knights so they couldn't retreat and stuff?

in any case, we're getting to far down into the weeds on the ability.

I like your change here, it looks good!

counterpoint said:
My point in adding the culture is that in many cases this would otherwise be identical to a regular courthouse. You think that's fine?

Yeah, I think it acting like a normal courthouse if there are no UUs to produce is fine. The UUs are potentially very strong and the courthouse is strong too, so that should be ok.

counterpoint said:
I like this one too, except that it is annex-favored. So puppeted cities don't produce courthouses as a top priority?

No, in fact they are specifically disallowed from building courthouses while puppeted. This is mainly because of the Happiness vs Culture cost I mentioned before. The civ-wide drawback to puppeted cities is that they cost extra unhappiness compared to your own or courthouse-d cities. That's CiV's feedback system to reduce the speed of warmongering and the ability for one civ to quickly conquer the world. (Getting rid of Happiness problems requires the civ to annex and build/buy courthouses everywhere.) If we allow the Seanchan to build courthouses in puppeted cities, then they'll be able to streamroll as they like, since they won't be held back by the Happiness penalty like everyone else.

That may be what we want, since it would make the Seanchan a massive domination force off the back of being able to puppet everyone. We could tone down the bonus (compared to the normal courthouse) while the city is puppeted, which would restore something of the feedback loop, but still make the Seanchan able to support many more puppeted cities than other civs. Like the one below, there would need to be some mechanism that allows the Seanchan to build it.

counterpoint said:
Yeah, I really like this ability (more than the previous one), but that is a tricky thing!

Is there a way to force it to be built first? (coding-wise, I mean). I sort of assumed that they built the courthouse immediately.

Definitely possible to make it be built first, but that's would be a strange way to accomplish this. It's not very visible to the player that that will always be the case. And depending on the situation, the player may not want that to be built first, but would have no way of controlling it. (As in, the normal puppet AI may be better in some situations, but the player can't communicate to the game when those situations are.) I think we'd be better off making it be completed automatically after Resistance ends, or something like that.

With both this one and the one above though, I think we'd be better off approaching this through a UA. The UB approach on Tower of Blood works quite well because it works with how the Courthouse works. But repurposing the courthouse to work with puppeted cities will be quite strange. What we're edging towards is a UA that's something like "Puppeted cities produce X% less extra unhappiness". Which is much easier to manage. But presented that way it feels less interesting than Ever Victorious Army, which is a way of making puppeted cities more useful. Would we want to merge a Happiness bonus (or lack-of-unhappiness-bonus) like this into that ability? That seems like a better way to make puppets better for the Seanchan than a courthouse UB.

counterpoint said:
The Raken's roost is one final feeble way of working in the raken flavor. There isn't an AA building, so it doesn't quite work....

Agreed, I don't think it quite captures the right flavor.

counterpoint said:
Recap!

EDIT - holy moley, the board replaced the word "fourchan" with all the smileys (i was making a dumb seanchan pun)... is that some kind of censoring or something?

Probably to prevent anyone linking to the fourchan-with-a-digit messageboard!

Recap!

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities produce X% less extra unhappiness and will periodically produce units, including the Unique Units of the civilization that originally founded the city.
At the Eve of Battle - choose your side in the Last Battle after all other civs have publicly declared their allegiance
Voice of the Blood - each city with a governor will get a +X% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related building, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Y turns
Consolidation, original capitals captured before <date> produce +X extra Science per turn
Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Insights of the Blood, puppetted and annexed cities do not increase technology costs
Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives a free social policy every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.

UUs:

Deathwatch Guard, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health. The ability becomes available again once the unit has returned to full health.
Gardener, late game melee, very powerful
Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
Torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy and land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.
Morat'grolm - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, enemy mounted units consume their whole turn when attacking the morat'grolm.

UBs:

Seanchan Patrol Station, replaces the courthouse, eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +X happiness if city has a connection to the capital. Costs Y% less production and Z% less gold maintenance than the courthouse.
Seeker's tower (replaced courthouse), constructed instantly
Seekers' Stronghold, replaces Spy1, Foreign Eyes and Ears have an X% chance of being killed every Y turns instead of only when they try to steal a technology. Foreign Diplomats have an X% chance of being killed every Z Prestige they generate in this city.
Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city and foreign Diplomats have a Z% chance of being killed every W turns they spent in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, +X culture, enables the production of the Unique Uniques of the civilization who founded the city.
Seeker's Tower, replaces the courthouse, +X Faith, causes puppeted cities to periodically produce units, including the Unique Uniques of the civilization who first founded the city.
Raken's Roost, replaces the airport or bomb shelter, +X% defense against skimming units and +Y range of skimming units

UIs:

I seem to have something against UBs today. :crazyeye:

I feel like at this stage, I can venture a rough idea of what I think are a good set of abilities. If I'm rushing to this too quickly, then let me know, and I'll avoid doing it this early on other civs as we go forward!

So, choosing 4 of the uniques we've got here, I'd go with:

UA: Channeling Dogma
UU: Deathwatch Guards
UU: Sul'dam/damane
UB: Tower of Blood

The hardest decision of these for me was Channeling Dogma vs Ever Victorious Army. If we do Ever Victorious Army, we probably wouldn't do Tower of Blood along with it. I don't think any of our other UB options really work with Ever Victorious Army, so that would possibly work best with a 3 UU set up (likely one of the exotics).

counterpoint said:
ugh... ok, I'll change the summary and re-upload the files.... oy...

EDIT: done, but oy indeed! Adding "Begin High King Event" made the tech summary go over 30000 characters.... trimming, trimming....

Wow, that was close to the limit! Thanks for changing them!

counterpoint · May 31, 2016

S3rgeus said:
Thanks! I went to Comic-con which was really fun!

and how were the comics?

S3rgeus said:
Totally agree that the sul'dam, in some form, is a lock for the Seanchan. I don't think where we are now is too deep on the sul'dam, in the same way it wasn't too deep for the Wise Ones. We're not trying to finalize all these things, just get an idea of which type of approach we like and how, as you've done with your suggestion below.

I suppose the top-level stuff (whether it's two units or one, etc.), is worth deciding now, as it could theoretically affect other uniques.

S3rgeus said:
Related to locks for the Seanchan in general, I'd say the only other thing we'd definitely want to include is something that addresses the unhappiness generated by cities captured from other civs. We want the Seanchan to be quite Domination-y, and that's the main thing that restricts warmongering, so easing it off for them works towards that.

I'm not sure the second one haasss to be unhappiness-related. As long as there's a unique that inspires conquest in general, that'd be fine with me.

S3rgeus said:
Also tweakable for balance. Yes, it should be clear to the player through the UI when they would have this disadvantage.

Was thinking a little more about this. Doing this is quite easy if they're not linked to a specific Sul'dam, but if they are, this becomes pretty complex from a player perspective. What if there is a huge battle with 3 sul'dam, and, say, 5 damane? It could get confusing who is exactly tied to which sul'dam.

[this applies only to if they're specifically-linked to one sul'damn] Is it maybe possible to "flag" them somehow, with a color or something, next to the civ banner? I don't know, but it seems like this could get kind of wonky if we don't make it *really clear* - also , I feel like opposing civs should be able to see who the damane belongs to, otherwise it's really easy to create a complex "web" as described above and really confuse opponents. This might be a kind of clever strategy, but it's also kind of a cheese, and also pretty flavor-nonsensical.

S3rgeus said:
I think a serious negative effect on the damane would be appropriate. Ranging from ongoing damage per turn, possibly inability to be commanded by the player anymore, to straight up becoming some kind of "wild" unit that attacks anyone.

something to decide later, then! I think those could work, though the last might be a bit too harsh.

S3rgeus said:
This is an option. I considered this last time, but it felt much less interesting. However, a'dam could be passed from one sul'dam to another right? It was just because an individual owned the damane that it was usually the same person, rather than a property of the link itself?

I definitely don't think it matters, technically, which sul'dam uses the adam. I think damane are attached to sul'dam because of who owns them - the sul'dam are simply trainers, so it makes sense you'd usually use the same. That said, if a sul'dam were fired by their employer, presumably the damane wouldn't go with her.

I feel like there are definite benefits to either of these approaches. If we make them linked to specific suldam, things feel a bit more "natural" in some way, and it makes intuitive sense. However, it also has some complexity that might be problematic, as described above.

Also, I feel like specific-linking does open us up to some cheese strategies by opponents. The Warder and AS are both quite formidable units in their own regards, so sniping one to cripple the other, while somewhat useful, is also not so easy to do. A Sul'dam is not going to be a terrific unit -otherwise it'd be kind of unfair.

But the consequence of this is that if they're specific-linked, and we have a sul'dam controlling, say, 3 damane, everybody would just concentrate-fire on the sul'dam, which would be pretty easy to kill. then the damane become much less useful or even dangerous to the Seanchan (if they go wild). this seems to be *the* strategy you'd use against them, and I don't know that it would feel very fun for the Seanchan. If we do an unspecific link, we can somewhat prevent that, by having, say, two sul'dam around a set of damane. It's still possible to snipe like this, but it feels somewhat less easy to do - you could always bring in a new sul'dam as reinforcement, for example.

related to this, should we cap the number of damane that can be linked to one sul'dam (at a given time)? It seems like we should, *especially* if they are independent of any specific dam-sul links. What, maybe 3 at a time? 2? Id say not more than that.

Also, another thing (I keep thinking of new stuff!), what can we do to prevent opposing channelers from just suiciding if they get near to death when close to a sul'dam? It seems to me that if you were surrounded by sul'dam, or something, it would be a pretty viable strategy. anything to do about that? I know that isn't really a problem with privateers, but this seems like a bigger deal, as the channeler becomes a UU and all, more powerful than the base unit (in many cases)

Lastly, what do you think about Spark? Should the Sul'dam cost spark, or should the captured damane? Sul'dam makes the most flavorful sense, though that means there'd be tons of damane on the field, assuming each sul'dam can control multiple (depending on cap above). Sparking the damane might make the most *mechanical* sense. What do you think? In any case, I think the flow should be that part of the benefit of capturing additional cities should be increased spark potential (or else an increased damane cap). I know that's already worked into the system, since population = spark, but I'll go ahead and add a UA option about it as well.

S3rgeus said:
Agreed, the healing aura should probably be removed from them as well. My first reaction to removing T'a'r projections was totally agreed. It occurs to me though that it would mean the Seanchan's only access to T'a'r is through Aes Sedai. (Since the sul'dam would replace both Wilder and Kinswoman.) A Seanchan player can of course be friendly to the Tower, but are we ok with that being their only access to T'a'r?

Yeah, this is tough. I'd say, mechanically, we probably need to offer them access to T'a'r. Though.... did any Damane use Ta'r? What is your instinct?

Fine with removing healing aura.

so, this has actually become a pretty healthy amount of detail on these mechanics - should these be listed with the civ description, or be put into the channeling summary (once it's settled)?

S3rgeus said:
There's a flavor argument for "for a short time after they're captured" but I'd be inclined to go with no for simplicity.

Yeah no way to recapture.

S3rgeus said:
This is certainly another way to do it. I could see the usefulness in a single unit whose model had both sul'dam and damane, with a collar around one's neck having a chain going to the other.

However, I'm don't think I favor this approach over the other one. There are a few reasons for that. One is, as you've said, fans of the fiction may expect two distinct units. I think the CiV unit concept is flexible enough that it doesn't present a problem here - GPs, bombers, and naval units are already "single-person-units" in BNW, and we'll have others like this with our channelers (though this is flexible), LPs, Aes Sedai, Forsaken, and the Dragon.

The other thing is that this wouldn't allow a single sul'dam to capture multiple damane over its lifetime. It would just become a powerful ranged unit, which I find much less interesting. It also takes a lot of the tactics out of the unit, since the player doesn't need to trade off defending the sul'dam with getting the damane into range.

Addressing some of the things you've mentioned, #1 is definitely a factor. But we've removed the complex part of the movement mumbo-jumbo, right? The effects as we outline them above are stateful based on where the units in their turn, the player doesn't need to interact with moving them in a different way to all other units, they just need to consider their proximity.

#2 I can see, but also doesn't feel like it's really counting against us.

#3 is true, but the above system also deals with that. The sul'dam in the books do capture additional damane while fighting the Westlands channelers, which this would disallow. In the above system, the sul'dam would hang back and let the damane do the work when dealing with non-channelers (or even if dealing with multiple enemy channelers) since losing the sul'dam will lose both the sul'dam and the damane (in some capacity), and the damane is the strong part of the pairing when it comes to combat.

#4 doesn't feel like a problem at all to me. The Warder bond mechanics are different. They are both about "linking two units together", but the Warder bond doesn't impose penalties when they're not near each other. It introduces two-way penalties when either dies (whereas the sul'dam would be unaffected, presumably, if the damane died). They're also recruited from allied units. The Warder bond also interacts with the Aes Sedai "can't attack non-aggressors" stuff, which isn't present for the sul'dam.

I can see there are similarities in that the bonded unit becomes upgradeable along with the bonder. But I feel like the mechanics of how they are used will be very different for players. If anything, it makes the Warder bond less weird since we have multiple examples (sul'dam, Linking, Warders, projections) of separate units being "linked" to one another for some arbitrary effect that's unique to each one.

I also think the "first impressions are that it's lame" is a problem in itself. It makes the sul'dam capturing mechanic into something that's much more of a "this unit, but better" compared to the normal channelers. It's a lot of work for the Seanchan to do to get these units as well. If they're just going to be stronger than the existing units, then we'd almost want them to be produced directly as a single unit (which I think would be a major miss out on the flavor), because having to go and find an enemy channeler to kill to gain access to this better unit is a decent amount of work. In the above system, it's a pure addition to your forces, but this would mean the player loses access to the sul'dam when they capture a damane. Whereas above, there's always a chance to gain more damane as long as you use your sul'dam tactically.

you have a lot here, and I don't mean to trivialize it, but I also feel it's somewhat pointless to respond to specifics. The truth is, it comes down to one key issue: I forgot about the whole bonding-multiple-damane thing.

Is that something we're dead set on? I think we probably should do it, as it feels epic (though we'll need to temper it a bit, as discussed above). But we should confirm that that is in fact a priority. I guess, simple question:

Is allowing a sul'dam to control multiple damane a higher priority than simplicity?

If the answer is that multi-damane is higher priority, then yes, let's just go with the original conception - the weird new idea is absolutely not worth considering. If simplicity is the higher priority, then I'll go back in and discuss each of your points above, since the new idea is at least worth further consideration.

[I understand that a separate, but related issue, is sul'dam being able to capture a single damane after their original damane has been killed, which would *also* be precluded from my "unit transformation" idea. However, I'm focusing on the multi-unit thing here, as it is the bigger deal].

S3rgeus said:
I'm not sure how I would tweak it without turning it into a different kind of ability. The crux of it is "super fast courthouses", which I'd be inclined to go with something like "constructed automatically when the city is annexed". But I think that's less interesting than the other annex (Tower of Blood) and puppet (Ever Victorious Army) approaches that we're considering.

right. And I agree with your redness below

S3rgeus said:
I wouldn't be inclined to avoid pro-annexing stuff in general because that's a very good way to enable the Domination victory, which lines up very well with the Seanchan flavor. We can hash this out a bit more on the other uniques that address the differences though.

Yeah, I definitely prefer pro-puppet, but it's looking like it might be hard to pull that off mechanically, so it's not essential.

S3rgeus said:
I think the luxury requirement could be a problem, but correspondingly beefed up the bonuses that the unit received to compensate for the fact that there would probably be few of them. We could tone that down if we remove the luxury requirement, but I think it would be good to avoid a too simple "this unit, but better" UU.

yeah, this is also enough detail for now, I'd say.

S3rgeus said:
I think the Crystal Throne one would be my preferred merger of the two, though I think that flavor possibly fits better on a wonder. As you've touched on here though, both of these feel very defensive. While different from a lot of other buildings, they're not necessarily useful. Shall we scrap both?

Hmmm, I think we should keep one, given what you say below about Ever Victorious Army - one of these would give us at least one UB option, should we go with that UA (since EVA nullifies the other UB options). I've magenta'd it below.

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, I think it acting like a normal courthouse if there are no UUs to produce is fine. The UUs are potentially very strong and the courthouse is strong too, so that should be ok.

all right. We can see later if it turns out the building feels lame 70% of the time.

S3rgeus said:
No, in fact they are specifically disallowed from building courthouses while puppeted. This is mainly because of the Happiness vs Culture cost I mentioned before. The civ-wide drawback to puppeted cities is that they cost extra unhappiness compared to your own or courthouse-d cities. That's CiV's feedback system to reduce the speed of warmongering and the ability for one civ to quickly conquer the world. (Getting rid of Happiness problems requires the civ to annex and build/buy courthouses everywhere.) If we allow the Seanchan to build courthouses in puppeted cities, then they'll be able to streamroll as they like, since they won't be held back by the Happiness penalty like everyone else.

That may be what we want, since it would make the Seanchan a massive domination force off the back of being able to puppet everyone. We could tone down the bonus (compared to the normal courthouse) while the city is puppeted, which would restore something of the feedback loop, but still make the Seanchan able to support many more puppeted cities than other civs. Like the one below, there would need to be some mechanism that allows the Seanchan to build it.

and

S3rgeus said:
Definitely possible to make it be built first, but that's would be a strange way to accomplish this. It's not very visible to the player that that will always be the case. And depending on the situation, the player may not want that to be built first, but would have no way of controlling it. (As in, the normal puppet AI may be better in some situations, but the player can't communicate to the game when those situations are.) I think we'd be better off making it be completed automatically after Resistance ends, or something like that.

With both this one and the one above though, I think we'd be better off approaching this through a UA. The UB approach on Tower of Blood works quite well because it works with how the Courthouse works. But repurposing the courthouse to work with puppeted cities will be quite strange. What we're edging towards is a UA that's something like "Puppeted cities produce X% less extra unhappiness". Which is much easier to manage. But presented that way it feels less interesting than Ever Victorious Army, which is a way of making puppeted cities more useful. Would we want to merge a Happiness bonus (or lack-of-unhappiness-bonus) like this into that ability? That seems like a better way to make puppets better for the Seanchan than a courthouse UB.

ok, this is huge. I wasn't really clear on puppeted cities not building courthouses (as you say, once you puppet, you tend to just ignore the city!). With that in mind, then you're absolutely correct that a Puppet-Based-UB is pretty much a non-option. too many hoops to jump through for this functionality.

I'd say, yeah, we could merge a small happiness bonus into EVA.

S3rgeus said:
I seem to have something against UBs today.

S3rgeus said:
I feel like at this stage, I can venture a rough idea of what I think are a good set of abilities. If I'm rushing to this too quickly, then let me know, and I'll avoid doing it this early on other civs as we go forward!

no problem with doing this for civs. I'd say we should propose potential "locks" and then chime in on who the front-runners are for each civ. I think this will make it easier once we're done, before we do our final pass - scan the civs and exam their front-runners, and see how it all ends up. Then we can see what the actual implied VC's are for each civ, and the "spread" of likely uniques, etc. We then can, if need be, work against some front-runners for overall balance.

S3rgeus said:
So, choosing 4 of the uniques we've got here, I'd go with:

UA: Channeling Dogma
UU: Deathwatch Guards
UU: Sul'dam/damane
UB: Tower of Blood

The hardest decision of these for me was Channeling Dogma vs Ever Victorious Army. If we do Ever Victorious Army, we probably wouldn't do Tower of Blood along with it. I don't think any of our other UB options really work with Ever Victorious Army, so that would possibly work best with a 3 UU set up (likely one of the exotics).

I think your set of four is pretty reasonable. I'm also pretty undecided about CD vs EVA. I think a set like this could work, if we wanted EVA:

UA: Ever Victorious Army
UU: Deathwatch Guards
UU: Sul'dam/damane
UB: Tower of the Blood 2 or 3 (see below), or exotic

I think one of the key things is that ChDog supports a science VC, which is nice, but EVA doesn't - so I'd say that it's probably best, were we to choose EVA, to include a UB that could either help science or Culture.

Seanchan Recap! Almost done!

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities produce X% less extra unhappiness and will periodically produce units, including the Unique Units of the civilization that originally founded the city.
At the Eve of Battle - choose your side in the Last Battle after all other civs have publicly declared their allegiance
Voice of the Blood - each city with a governor will get a +X% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related building, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Y turns
Consolidation, original capitals captured before <date> produce +X extra Science per turn
Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Insights of the Blood, puppetted and annexed cities do not increase technology costs
Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives a free social policy every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Mandatory Testing, the Spark earned from occupied cities is doubled.

UUs:

Deathwatch Guard, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health. The ability becomes available again once the unit has returned to full health.
Gardener, late game melee, very powerful
Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
Torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy and land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.
Morat'grolm - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, enemy mounted units consume their whole turn when attacking the morat'grolm.

UBs:

Seanchan Patrol Station, replaces the courthouse, eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +X happiness if city has a connection to the capital. Costs Y% less production and Z% less gold maintenance than the courthouse.
Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city and foreign Diplomats have a Z% chance of being killed every W turns they spent in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, enables the production of the Unique Uniques of the civilization who founded the city.
Tower of the Blood, replaces production 1, -X% production or gold cost to construct this building, if this city has a governor, the city receives +Y% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related builidng, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Z turns.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, the increase in technology cost created by this city's population is halved.

UIs:

Mandatory Testing is the one described above that is meant to fuel damane armies through invasion. This UA is not intended to stand alone - it should be folded into whichever "main" UA we'd select. Of course, there's a few ways to adjust this, if we'd like. Instead of straight Spark, this could be the "damane cap." The reason we might change it to this is because the objective here is to lead to more damane, not necessarily more *sul'dam* or even *Asha'man*.... thoughts? This one could also be changed so that the bonus is doubled with puppeted cities or something, if we wanted to squeak it some of that pro-puppet flavor.

The other two new TotB (sorry for the flavor redundancy, that's still the most appropriate flavor, I think...) give us an option to still work in some of the other UA ideas that might not survive - they also give us a chance to keep the science VC an option - all this conquest will likely make that tricky. You can red either of these if you want, but it might be nice to keep something like this around - even if these abilities are made smaller and fused into one of the other UBs.

the production TotB could also be adjusted to create culture instead of costing less to produce - thus supporting a culture VC if need be.

Should wrap these up soon! Then onto the next one! Shandalle!

S3rgeus · May 31, 2016

counterpoint said:
and how were the comics?

Awesome stuff, I got some great new artwork to put up!

counterpoint said:
I suppose the top-level stuff (whether it's two units or one, etc.), is worth deciding now, as it could theoretically affect other uniques.

Agreed.

counterpoint said:
I'm not sure the second one haasss to be unhappiness-related. As long as there's a unique that inspires conquest in general, that'd be fine with me.

Agreed, doesn't have to be happiness.

counterpoint said:
Was thinking a little more about this. Doing this is quite easy if they're not linked to a specific Sul'dam, but if they are, this becomes pretty complex from a player perspective. What if there is a huge battle with 3 sul'dam, and, say, 5 damane? It could get confusing who is exactly tied to which sul'dam.

[this applies only to if they're specifically-linked to one sul'damn] Is it maybe possible to "flag" them somehow, with a color or something, next to the civ banner? I don't know, but it seems like this could get kind of wonky if we don't make it *really clear* - also , I feel like opposing civs should be able to see who the damane belongs to, otherwise it's really easy to create a complex "web" as described above and really confuse opponents. This might be a kind of clever strategy, but it's also kind of a cheese, and also pretty flavor-nonsensical.

Now that you say it, this is already a decently big problem with Aes Sedai. (Knowing which Warder corresponds to each one.) I'm not sure we want to delve into the UI specifics of how we would solve this now, though? I'll just do a very quick first brainstorm here. If Aes Sedai are named units (like LPs), then a relatively easy way would be to name the unit Warder (Verin's) etc. Not sure if we'd want to get into sul'dam being named units too.

We could do a color coded icon for each sul'dam, as you suggested. Named units could also work. As could a "highlighting", when a sul'dam or damane is selected then any damane or sul'dam that they are linked to are also highlighted (in a different accent color). This might be a bit labor intensive, but is a very easy thing to trial to see how often it becomes bothersome.

I totally agree that the player shouldn't be able to hide information from their opponent by interweaving the units. I do think we'll be able to come up with some kind of system for letting the player know who is connected to who though.

counterpoint said:
I definitely don't think it matters, technically, which sul'dam uses the adam. I think damane are attached to sul'dam because of who owns them - the sul'dam are simply trainers, so it makes sense you'd usually use the same. That said, if a sul'dam were fired by their employer, presumably the damane wouldn't go with her.

I feel like there are definite benefits to either of these approaches. If we make them linked to specific suldam, things feel a bit more "natural" in some way, and it makes intuitive sense. However, it also has some complexity that might be problematic, as described above.

Agreed, I think the "any in range" approach will be the easiest to understand at a glance. But I think we have a precedent in our other mechanics of linking one unit specifically to another that reduces that. Specific-linking may also temper the risk of massive late-game armies of damane taking over everyone all the time. Each damane has an individual weakness that can be exploited (their sul'dam), rather than a carpet composed of both unit types being impossible to assail. (More details on damane caps in the non-specific-linking approach below.)

counterpoint said:
Also, I feel like specific-linking does open us up to some cheese strategies by opponents. The Warder and AS are both quite formidable units in their own regards, so sniping one to cripple the other, while somewhat useful, is also not so easy to do. A Sul'dam is not going to be a terrific unit -otherwise it'd be kind of unfair.

But the consequence of this is that if they're specific-linked, and we have a sul'dam controlling, say, 3 damane, everybody would just concentrate-fire on the sul'dam, which would be pretty easy to kill. then the damane become much less useful or even dangerous to the Seanchan (if they go wild). this seems to be *the* strategy you'd use against them, and I don't know that it would feel very fun for the Seanchan. If we do an unspecific link, we can somewhat prevent that, by having, say, two sul'dam around a set of damane. It's still possible to snipe like this, but it feels somewhat less easy to do - you could always bring in a new sul'dam as reinforcement, for example.

I don't think this is a problem. If other players are able to snipe the sul'dam then the Seanchan player isn't moving their units tactically. (This may be a problem for the AI using them, which might be what you're getting at here? We're going to need to provide the AI with logic to move these guys sensibly in either approach anyway, so it's up to us to make that sensible.) If the link has some reasonable range to allow the units to move sensibly (say 2) and damane presumably have the same range of 3 as other channeling units, then sul'dam are potentially 5 hexes away from the front line. (More if we increase the range of the link, but 2 seems a sensible minimum to consider here.) Only a mounted unit on open ground with no rivers could cross that distance in one turn, and the damane also exert zone of control (like all enemy units), slowing down potential attackers on their sul'dam. And any unit that did rush in, if it was unable to kill the sul'dam, then the damane can now blow their faces off.

I see the protection of sul'dam in this configuration to be a layer of tactical depth, rather than a risk of sudden upsets. Sudden upsets should occur as a consequence of tactical missteps here.

counterpoint said:
related to this, should we cap the number of damane that can be linked to one sul'dam (at a given time)? It seems like we should, *especially* if they are independent of any specific dam-sul links. What, maybe 3 at a time? 2? Id say not more than that.

I think if we go with non-specific linking, then we shouldn't have a limit on how many damane a single sul'dam can control (beyond that imposed by the map and 1UPT), because otherwise that becomes equally as complicated as the specific-linking, while still have non-specific's downsides. Now other players need to work out which damane are in range of which sul'dam so they can know which sul'dam to target in order for the maximum number of damane to be un-link-able based on the total number in range of each remaining sul'dam when the ones they're targeting are eliminated. We end up needing to associate them again with which damane are "supporting" each sul'dam that's in range, it's just that it would failover to the next sul'dam when one died, which requires the attacker to know the ins and outs of the link's range and how many damane are supported by each sul'dam simultaneously to understand the situation.

counterpoint said:
Also, another thing (I keep thinking of new stuff!), what can we do to prevent opposing channelers from just suiciding if they get near to death when close to a sul'dam? It seems to me that if you were surrounded by sul'dam, or something, it would be a pretty viable strategy. anything to do about that? I know that isn't really a problem with privateers, but this seems like a bigger deal, as the channeler becomes a UU and all, more powerful than the base unit (in many cases)

You mean by Disbanding the unit? I suppose players could do that to deny the Seanchan a damane. I think in all but the most extreme cases, the player will likely try to save their channeler than give in to certain death (disbanding), even if the chance they leave their opponent may make them stronger.

If you mean by attacking into the sul'dam (or another unit), then channelers are ranged units and so can't do that. If a sul'dam somehow killed a channeler defensively (we make some melee female channeler UU or something), I would think that could spawn a damane as well.

counterpoint said:
Lastly, what do you think about Spark? Should the Sul'dam cost spark, or should the captured damane? Sul'dam makes the most flavorful sense, though that means there'd be tons of damane on the field, assuming each sul'dam can control multiple (depending on cap above). Sparking the damane might make the most *mechanical* sense. What do you think? In any case, I think the flow should be that part of the benefit of capturing additional cities should be increased spark potential (or else an increased damane cap). I know that's already worked into the system, since population = spark, but I'll go ahead and add a UA option about it as well.

I think we can let just sul'dam cost Spark to start with. As you've said, that lines up with the flavor and I think it's the way players would expect it to work when seeing the system from the outside. I think the work required to create damane (finding and killing an enemy channeler unit with a sul'dam unit, who is otherwise not that helpful) will itself prevent there from being too many damane at once. I'd prefer to leave it uncapped to start with and introduce a limiting factor if we find too many damane to be a problem.

counterpoint said:
Yeah, this is tough. I'd say, mechanically, we probably need to offer them access to T'a'r. Though.... did any Damane use Ta'r? What is your instinct?

Fine with removing healing aura.

I don't recall any damane ever using T'a'r. My best hope for it was Alivia, but neither the wiki page nor Companion entry for her mentions T'a'r. It doesn't seem like giving the power to sul'dam would make much sense.

I think it may be best if we disallow it to start with, going with the flavor, and see if the access through Aes Sedai only is problematic. If it is, then we might be forced to give it to the damane. Or work it into one of their other uniques somehow.

counterpoint said:
so, this has actually become a pretty healthy amount of detail on these mechanics - should these be listed with the civ description, or be put into the channeling summary (once it's settled)?

Yeah, it's probably worth recording along with the civ in the master list to start with. I think a lot of our "deciding" here is deciding where the tweak points are, so all of the individual mechanics are up for re-discussion when we get into more detail on the second pass, even if we have an "it works this way" at this stage. The only big pieces I think we're truly settling now are the multi-unit vs transforming unit approach.

Once it's settled completely later, we'll probably have a Civilizations and Uniques Summary, where this can go.

counterpoint said:
you have a lot here, and I don't mean to trivialize it, but I also feel it's somewhat pointless to respond to specifics. The truth is, it comes down to one key issue: I forgot about the whole bonding-multiple-damane thing.

Is that something we're dead set on? I think we probably should do it, as it feels epic (though we'll need to temper it a bit, as discussed above). But we should confirm that that is in fact a priority. I guess, simple question:

Is allowing a sul'dam to control multiple damane a higher priority than simplicity?

If the answer is that multi-damane is higher priority, then yes, let's just go with the original conception - the weird new idea is absolutely not worth considering. If simplicity is the higher priority, then I'll go back in and discuss each of your points above, since the new idea is at least worth further consideration.

[I understand that a separate, but related issue, is sul'dam being able to capture a single damane after their original damane has been killed, which would *also* be precluded from my "unit transformation" idea. However, I'm focusing on the multi-unit thing here, as it is the bigger deal].

I don't know if multi-damane by itself discounts this approach. I think it's a major count against it, since as you've said, multi-damane is pretty cool. I think the other major drawback is that it makes the sul'dam/damane much more of a "direct upgrade" than a new approach to dealing with channelers. Between the two, I wouldn't be inclined to go for this.

counterpoint said:
Hmmm, I think we should keep one, given what you say below about Ever Victorious Army - one of these would give us at least one UB option, should we go with that UA (since EVA nullifies the other UB options). I've magenta'd it below.

Yeah, that does make sense. Let's keep Crystal Throne then. I've marked the other as red.

counterpoint said:
all right. We can see later if it turns out the building feels lame 70% of the time.

Agreed.

counterpoint said:
ok, this is huge. I wasn't really clear on puppeted cities not building courthouses (as you say, once you puppet, you tend to just ignore the city!). With that in mind, then you're absolutely correct that a Puppet-Based-UB is pretty much a non-option. too many hoops to jump through for this functionality.

I'd say, yeah, we could merge a small happiness bonus into EVA.

Sounds good.

I'd say a puppet based UB is possible in the general case, but it would need to be combined with something like Venice's UA that allows you to purchase stuff in puppets. (So maybe something that lets you choose their production at certain intervals or something else like that.)

counterpoint said:
no problem with doing this for civs. I'd say we should propose potential "locks" and then chime in on who the front-runners are for each civ. I think this will make it easier once we're done, before we do our final pass - scan the civs and exam their front-runners, and see how it all ends up. Then we can see what the actual implied VC's are for each civ, and the "spread" of likely uniques, etc. We then can, if need be, work against some front-runners for overall balance.

Do we want to list locks and frontrunners in the list post then, so that we don't have to scour the topic for them? Or does that mean we have to narrow it down to a list of final frontrunners, which will bog us down? We seem to agree on the locks on all of the civs so far, so that one should be easy enough.

counterpoint said:
I think your set of four is pretty reasonable. I'm also pretty undecided about CD vs EVA. I think a set like this could work, if we wanted EVA:

UA: Ever Victorious Army
UU: Deathwatch Guards
UU: Sul'dam/damane
UB: Tower of the Blood 2 or 3 (see below), or exotic

I think one of the key things is that ChDog supports a science VC, which is nice, but EVA doesn't - so I'd say that it's probably best, were we to choose EVA, to include a UB that could either help science or Culture.

This looks like a good set too. However, if we go for EVA, then I'd prefer if one of their other uniques encouraged not using Aes Sedai in some way. (Important distinction from discouraging the use of Aes Sedai - we want to give them a bonus when they don't, rather than a penalty when they do!) This goes back to what I mentioned before about this, that playing "like the Seanchan" should be rewarded by the civ's design, so recruiting a bunch of Aes Sedai to go with your sul'dam/damane shouldn't be the optimal strategy.

counterpoint said:
Mandatory Testing is the one described above that is meant to fuel damane armies through invasion. This UA is not intended to stand alone - it should be folded into whichever "main" UA we'd select. Of course, there's a few ways to adjust this, if we'd like. Instead of straight Spark, this could be the "damane cap." The reason we might change it to this is because the objective here is to lead to more damane, not necessarily more *sul'dam* or even *Asha'man*.... thoughts? This one could also be changed so that the bonus is doubled with puppeted cities or something, if we wanted to squeak it some of that pro-puppet flavor.

I could see this going well with the other UAs that we're considering, so let's keep it around.

counterpoint said:
The other two new TotB (sorry for the flavor redundancy, that's still the most appropriate flavor, I think...) give us an option to still work in some of the other UA ideas that might not survive - they also give us a chance to keep the science VC an option - all this conquest will likely make that tricky. You can red either of these if you want, but it might be nice to keep something like this around - even if these abilities are made smaller and fused into one of the other UBs.

the production TotB could also be adjusted to create culture instead of costing less to produce - thus supporting a culture VC if need be.

No worries about duplicate flavor.

Related to what I mentioned above about encouraging non-Aes-Sedai-use, I've suggested an addition to the third one that would work with that.

I think keeping both options will work for now, since they hinge on our choice of UA, and can potentially have pieces mixed and matched.

Recap!

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities produce X% less extra unhappiness and will periodically produce units, including the Unique Units of the civilization that originally founded the city.
At the Eve of Battle - choose your side in the Last Battle after all other civs have publicly declared their allegiance
Voice of the Blood - each city with a governor will get a +X% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related building, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Y turns
Consolidation, original capitals captured before <date> produce +X extra Science per turn
Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Insights of the Blood, puppetted and annexed cities do not increase technology costs
Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives a free social policy every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Mandatory Testing, the Spark earned from occupied cities is doubled.

UUs:

Deathwatch Guard, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health. The ability becomes available again once the unit has returned to full health.
Gardener, late game melee, very powerful
Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
Torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy and land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.
Morat'grolm - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, enemy mounted units consume their whole turn when attacking the morat'grolm.

UBs:

Seanchan Patrol Station, replaces the courthouse, eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +X happiness if city has a connection to the capital. Costs Y% less production and Z% less gold maintenance than the courthouse.
Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city and foreign Diplomats have a Z% chance of being killed every W turns they spent in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, enables the production of the Unique Uniques of the civilization who founded the city.
Tower of the Blood, replaces production 1, -X% production or gold cost to construct this building, if this city has a governor, the city receives +Y% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related builidng, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Z turns.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, the increase in technology cost created by this city's population is halved and generates +X Science per turn, up to a maximum of Y, for each turn since the Seanchan last controlled an Aes Sedai.

UIs:

counterpoint said:
Should wrap these up soon! Then onto the next one! Shandalle!

Soon!

counterpoint · Jun 1, 2016

S3rgeus said:
Now that you say it, this is already a decently big problem with Aes Sedai. (Knowing which Warder corresponds to each one.) I'm not sure we want to delve into the UI specifics of how we would solve this now, though? I'll just do a very quick first brainstorm here. If Aes Sedai are named units (like LPs), then a relatively easy way would be to name the unit Warder (Verin's) etc. Not sure if we'd want to get into sul'dam being named units too.

We could do a color coded icon for each sul'dam, as you suggested. Named units could also work. As could a "highlighting", when a sul'dam or damane is selected then any damane or sul'dam that they are linked to are also highlighted (in a different accent color). This might be a bit labor intensive, but is a very easy thing to trial to see how often it becomes bothersome.

I totally agree that the player shouldn't be able to hide information from their opponent by interweaving the units. I do think we'll be able to come up with some kind of system for letting the player know who is connected to who though.

I suppose any of the possible solutions proposed here could work - I'm not immediately sure which I prefer, which is fine, I think.

S3rgeus said:
Agreed, I think the "any in range" approach will be the easiest to understand at a glance. But I think we have a precedent in our other mechanics of linking one unit specifically to another that reduces that. Specific-linking may also temper the risk of massive late-game armies of damane taking over everyone all the time. Each damane has an individual weakness that can be exploited (their sul'dam), rather than a carpet composed of both unit types being impossible to assail. (More details on damane caps in the non-specific-linking approach below.)

yeah, I suppose my conception of it being "unfair" to snipe and incapacitate several damane also has a corollary - it being "unfair" to *not* be able to do that.

S3rgeus said:
I don't think this is a problem. If other players are able to snipe the sul'dam then the Seanchan player isn't moving their units tactically. (This may be a problem for the AI using them, which might be what you're getting at here? We're going to need to provide the AI with logic to move these guys sensibly in either approach anyway, so it's up to us to make that sensible.) If the link has some reasonable range to allow the units to move sensibly (say 2) and damane presumably have the same range of 3 as other channeling units, then sul'dam are potentially 5 hexes away from the front line. (More if we increase the range of the link, but 2 seems a sensible minimum to consider here.) Only a mounted unit on open ground with no rivers could cross that distance in one turn, and the damane also exert zone of control (like all enemy units), slowing down potential attackers on their sul'dam. And any unit that did rush in, if it was unable to kill the sul'dam, then the damane can now blow their faces off.

I see the protection of sul'dam in this configuration to be a layer of tactical depth, rather than a risk of sudden upsets. Sudden upsets should occur as a consequence of tactical missteps here.

ok. I don't disagree. Playtesting will yield info on how well this actually works.

S3rgeus said:
I think if we go with non-specific linking, then we shouldn't have a limit on how many damane a single sul'dam can control (beyond that imposed by the map and 1UPT), because otherwise that becomes equally as complicated as the specific-linking, while still have non-specific's downsides. Now other players need to work out which damane are in range of which sul'dam so they can know which sul'dam to target in order for the maximum number of damane to be un-link-able based on the total number in range of each remaining sul'dam when the ones they're targeting are eliminated. We end up needing to associate them again with which damane are "supporting" each sul'dam that's in range, it's just that it would failover to the next sul'dam when one died, which requires the attacker to know the ins and outs of the link's range and how many damane are supported by each sul'dam simultaneously to understand the situation.

looking at my prior post, I have no idea why I proposed that we should cap damane "*especially*" when we aren't doing specific linking. It makes zero sense why I would propose that. Did I perhaps mean the opposite (do it only in specific linking)? That's at least somewhat more reasonable.

S3rgeus said:
You mean by Disbanding the unit? I suppose players could do that to deny the Seanchan a damane. I think in all but the most extreme cases, the player will likely try to save their channeler than give in to certain death (disbanding), even if the chance they leave their opponent may make them stronger.

If you mean by attacking into the sul'dam (or another unit), then channelers are ranged units and so can't do that. If a sul'dam somehow killed a channeler defensively (we make some melee female channeler UU or something), I would think that could spawn a damane as well.

I definitely mean by disbanding the unit. suiciding via melee attacks is another matter entirely.

As far as that case, though, I don't know... if you were surrounded, or something, disbanding the unit seems like the logical path, and that seems kind of lame and unhealthy-meta. You don't think that'll happen often enough to warrant a problem?

S3rgeus said:
I think we can let just sul'dam cost Spark to start with. As you've said, that lines up with the flavor and I think it's the way players would expect it to work when seeing the system from the outside. I think the work required to create damane (finding and killing an enemy channeler unit with a sul'dam unit, who is otherwise not that helpful) will itself prevent there from being too many damane at once. I'd prefer to leave it uncapped to start with and introduce a limiting factor if we find too many damane to be a problem.

I don't disagree, here. I think the other thing that is tweakable is how much Spark sul'dam cost. I suppose it should probably mirror whatever we're doing with era-equivalent channelers.

S3rgeus said:
I don't recall any damane ever using T'a'r. My best hope for it was Alivia, but neither the wiki page nor Companion entry for her mentions T'a'r. It doesn't seem like giving the power to sul'dam would make much sense.

I think it may be best if we disallow it to start with, going with the flavor, and see if the access through Aes Sedai only is problematic. If it is, then we might be forced to give it to the damane. Or work it into one of their other uniques somehow.

I'm fine with this. The Seanchan can obviously still travel/skim, so it'll likely emerge that t'a'r will be a pretty solid defense against the Seanchan, since they'll be less equipped to easily get into T'a'r and knock out dreamspikes and stuff.

(Incidentally, in some ways this makes a Raken UU as a skimmer-replacement somewhat compelling, since, intuitively, such a unit would be able to *ignore* dreamspikes, and thus compensate for this fault - I've added a unit that does this, though I don't think we *need* it, and it's possible that such an ability will be somewhat "unfair" in that it completely eliminates a key defensive mechanic [one that takes an LP to create!])

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, it's probably worth recording along with the civ in the master list to start with. I think a lot of our "deciding" here is deciding where the tweak points are, so all of the individual mechanics are up for re-discussion when we get into more detail on the second pass, even if we have an "it works this way" at this stage. The only big pieces I think we're truly settling now are the multi-unit vs transforming unit approach.

Once it's settled completely later, we'll probably have a Civilizations and Uniques Summary, where this can go.

Yeah, I agree. It can go in the master list thing. Some of this detail is bound to be forgotten otherwise (t'ar, etc.), but it's not complete enough to put in one of the true summaries yet.

S3rgeus said:
I don't know if multi-damane by itself discounts this approach. I think it's a major count against it, since as you've said, multi-damane is pretty cool. I think the other major drawback is that it makes the sul'dam/damane much more of a "direct upgrade" than a new approach to dealing with channelers. Between the two, I wouldn't be inclined to go for this.

I'm fine scrapping this idea. I certainly *want* the original idea to work. We can always come back to this if it ultimately doesn't.

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, that does make sense. Let's keep Crystal Throne then. I've marked the other as red.

good

S3rgeus said:
Sounds good.

I'd say a puppet based UB is possible in the general case, but it would need to be combined with something like Venice's UA that allows you to purchase stuff in puppets. (So maybe something that lets you choose their production at certain intervals or something else like that.)

right, that could work, but that's too "all in" on the puppeting to be appropriate for the Seanchan.

S3rgeus said:
Do we want to list locks and frontrunners in the list post then, so that we don't have to scour the topic for them? Or does that mean we have to narrow it down to a list of final frontrunners, which will bog us down? We seem to agree on the locks on all of the civs so far, so that one should be easy enough.

I suppose we could, but I don't think it's necessary, really. With locks, they seem pretty obvious, though perhaps that's a symptom of the 3 civs we've worked on so far.

With frontrunners, that's also tricky, since we haven't necessarily come to consensus, and shouldn't at this stage. If you think you can make sense of the disparate opinions (or options, since in some cases, we *agree* that there are X number of competing "builds") in a clear way, and you think it'd be helpful, then sure (I say "you" because you are the author of the master list).

S3rgeus said:
This looks like a good set too. However, if we go for EVA, then I'd prefer if one of their other uniques encouraged not using Aes Sedai in some way. (Important distinction from discouraging the use of Aes Sedai - we want to give them a bonus when they don't, rather than a penalty when they do!) This goes back to what I mentioned before about this, that playing "like the Seanchan" should be rewarded by the civ's design, so recruiting a bunch of Aes Sedai to go with your sul'dam/damane shouldn't be the optimal strategy.

You're right. Definitely brining in no-channeling into one of the UBs is a very good idea.

There's actually another way to do this, though - through UU's, weirdly. Any of our UU's could theoretically have a bonus that is based on how long it's been since the 'chan used an Aes Sedai. This could be a combat bonus or whatever, but we even could put it in as a modifier to the % chance to capture a damane, for instance. "Morale" or "hatred" or something. Thoughts?

S3rgeus said:
No worries about duplicate flavor.

Related to what I mentioned above about encouraging non-Aes-Sedai-use, I've suggested an addition to the third one that would work with that.

I think keeping both options will work for now, since they hinge on our choice of UA, and can potentially have pieces mixed and matched.

Yeah, this one works pretty well. It's a complicated UB to understand in some ways, but as long as we make it clear how it works, it serves well to encourage conquest, no-AS, *and* Science progress, which is a nice trifecta.

Seanchan Recap!

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities produce X% less extra unhappiness and will periodically produce units, including the Unique Units of the civilization that originally founded the city.
At the Eve of Battle - choose your side in the Last Battle after all other civs have publicly declared their allegiance
Voice of the Blood - each city with a governor will get a +X% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related building, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Y turns
Consolidation, original capitals captured before <date> produce +X extra Science per turn
Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Insights of the Blood, puppetted and annexed cities do not increase technology costs
Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives a free social policy every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Mandatory Testing, the Spark earned from occupied cities is doubled.

UUs:

Deathwatch Guard/Gardener, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health. The ability becomes available again once the unit has returned to full health.
Gardener, late game melee, very powerful
Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
Morat'Torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy and land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.
Morat'grolm - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, enemy mounted units consume their whole turn when attacking the morat'grolm.
Morat'raken - replaces Gateway 1, 2 or 3, ignores dreamspikes

UBs:

Seanchan Patrol Station, replaces the courthouse, eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +X happiness if city has a connection to the capital. Costs Y% less production and Z% less gold maintenance than the courthouse.
Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city and foreign Diplomats have a Z% chance of being killed every W turns they spent in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, enables the production of the Unique Uniques of the civilization who founded the city.
Tower of the Blood, replaces production 1, -X% production or gold cost to construct this building, if this city has a governor, the city receives +Y% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related builidng, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Z turns.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, the increase in technology cost created by this city's population is halved and generates +X Science per turn, up to a maximum of Y, for each turn since the Seanchan last controlled an Aes Sedai.

UIs:

We have too many options. I definitely get why we have so many, but it's too many. I'm culling some.

At the Eve is awesome, but I think there's very, very little chance we'll use it. If you want to keep it around to remind us that it exists to inspire us later, fine. But otherwise, Axed.

VotB is also red. I think this is a neat ability, but it's not *super* Seanchan-obvious - this one could be used in other civ rather easily. Again, could keep it around to remind us that it exists.

Consolidation is a nice simple ability, but I don't think it's as dynamic or interesting as our other science options.

I want to axe one or even two of the UU's. However, I'm not sure which. It's definitely possible (though unlikely) that we'll have 3 UU's. The last UU chosen will depend, I think, on what mechanics we need, given the other choices. That makes it hard to predict which that would be.

That said, I feel pretty confident that we won't have both the DWG *and* the Gardener flavor, since they're very much intertwined. So, I've nuked that one, and added the gardener as a possible flavor variant/reminder for the DWG (since the ability seems like it could work for either).

Also, of course, you could nuke the raken, which we've already done in the past - I put the new one here as a proof of concept, of sorts.

I've magenta'd the SPS and TotB2 - not sure which to axe, but should probably axe one of them.

If we axe one of the Magenta's, as well as the ones I've recommended, plus the raken, that leaves us with 12, which is much more reasonable that the four billion it currently is.

Also, I should state that I've been throwing in the "Morat" at the front of the exotics because in my mind it helps me differentiate them from PC-Sch exotics. "S'r Ch" is an obvious exception because it has a "name"

Thats a reasonable amount of text above, but it honestly seems like this discussion is basically over (of course correct me if I'm wrong), so IMO, feel free to launch into the next civ whenever you want.

S3rgeus · Jun 1, 2016

counterpoint said:
I suppose any of the possible solutions proposed here could work - I'm not immediately sure which I prefer, which is fine, I think.

Coolio, we'll come up with a solution for this later!

counterpoint said:
yeah, I suppose my conception of it being "unfair" to snipe and incapacitate several damane also has a corollary - it being "unfair" to *not* be able to do that.

ok. I don't disagree. Playtesting will yield info on how well this actually works.

Sounds good.

counterpoint said:
looking at my prior post, I have no idea why I proposed that we should cap damane "*especially*" when we aren't doing specific linking. It makes zero sense why I would propose that. Did I perhaps mean the opposite (do it only in specific linking)? That's at least somewhat more reasonable.

Yeah, that would make more sense! I'd be inclined to go with unlimited to start with and see if it becomes an issue.

counterpoint said:
I definitely mean by disbanding the unit. suiciding via melee attacks is another matter entirely.

As far as that case, though, I don't know... if you were surrounded, or something, disbanding the unit seems like the logical path, and that seems kind of lame and unhealthy-meta. You don't think that'll happen often enough to warrant a problem?

Yeah, I don't think it will happen often enough to be a problem. Being completely surrounded is quite rare, there's usually some avenue for escape that players will run for.

counterpoint said:
I don't disagree, here. I think the other thing that is tweakable is how much Spark sul'dam cost. I suppose it should probably mirror whatever we're doing with era-equivalent channelers.

Agreed, we can tweak that as well.

counterpoint said:
I'm fine with this. The Seanchan can obviously still travel/skim, so it'll likely emerge that t'a'r will be a pretty solid defense against the Seanchan, since they'll be less equipped to easily get into T'a'r and knock out dreamspikes and stuff.

(Incidentally, in some ways this makes a Raken UU as a skimmer-replacement somewhat compelling, since, intuitively, such a unit would be able to *ignore* dreamspikes, and thus compensate for this fault - I've added a unit that does this, though I don't think we *need* it, and it's possible that such an ability will be somewhat "unfair" in that it completely eliminates a key defensive mechanic [one that takes an LP to create!])

Yeah, it's probably good that there is some available aspect of domination that the Seanchan aren't particularly apt at, so other civs can specialize into that to combat them.

counterpoint said:
Yeah, I agree. It can go in the master list thing. Some of this detail is bound to be forgotten otherwise (t'ar, etc.), but it's not complete enough to put in one of the true summaries yet.

Sounds good, I'll transplant all of that stuff when we've finished up here (likely on my next post).

counterpoint said:
I'm fine scrapping this idea. I certainly *want* the original idea to work. We can always come back to this if it ultimately doesn't.

Agreed, we've got it as something to consider if we change plans.

counterpoint said:
I suppose we could, but I don't think it's necessary, really. With locks, they seem pretty obvious, though perhaps that's a symptom of the 3 civs we've worked on so far.

With frontrunners, that's also tricky, since we haven't necessarily come to consensus, and shouldn't at this stage. If you think you can make sense of the disparate opinions (or options, since in some cases, we *agree* that there are X number of competing "builds") in a clear way, and you think it'd be helpful, then sure (I say "you" because you are the author of the master list).

I think we'll end up going back and forth too much on deciding frontrunners at this stage, when we don't really want to make that decision yet. I'll list locks though, because we've yet to have any real differences of opinion on those. I'll also highlight "sets" where they exist, so we don't forget that we'd earmarked some uniques to be complementary.

counterpoint said:
You're right. Definitely brining in no-channeling into one of the UBs is a very good idea.

There's actually another way to do this, though - through UU's, weirdly. Any of our UU's could theoretically have a bonus that is based on how long it's been since the 'chan used an Aes Sedai. This could be a combat bonus or whatever, but we even could put it in as a modifier to the % chance to capture a damane, for instance. "Morale" or "hatred" or something. Thoughts?

Yeah, those could certainly be good ways of rewarding them for not using Aes Sedai. It would only be relevant to them when they were at war though, so if they're not actively fighting someone they may end up wanting to use Aes Sedai in between for their abilities, which is a bit odd.

counterpoint said:
Yeah, this one works pretty well. It's a complicated UB to understand in some ways, but as long as we make it clear how it works, it serves well to encourage conquest, no-AS, *and* Science progress, which is a nice trifecta.

Awesome, sounds good. A simpler approach might be something like "produces +(X - number of Aes Sedai controlled) Science per turn", but the risk there is that it might be best to have a small number of Aes Sedai for specific abilities and then still get the majority of the bonus.

counterpoint said:
We have too many options. I definitely get why we have so many, but it's too many. I'm culling some.

At the Eve is awesome, but I think there's very, very little chance we'll use it. If you want to keep it around to remind us that it exists to inspire us later, fine. But otherwise, Axed.

VotB is also red. I think this is a neat ability, but it's not *super* Seanchan-obvious - this one could be used in other civ rather easily. Again, could keep it around to remind us that it exists.

Consolidation is a nice simple ability, but I don't think it's as dynamic or interesting as our other science options.

Agreed on all 3 of these.

counterpoint said:
I want to axe one or even two of the UU's. However, I'm not sure which. It's definitely possible (though unlikely) that we'll have 3 UU's. The last UU chosen will depend, I think, on what mechanics we need, given the other choices. That makes it hard to predict which that would be.

That said, I feel pretty confident that we won't have both the DWG *and* the Gardener flavor, since they're very much intertwined. So, I've nuked that one, and added the gardener as a possible flavor variant/reminder for the DWG (since the ability seems like it could work for either).

Sounds good for this one too.

counterpoint said:
Also, of course, you could nuke the raken, which we've already done in the past - I put the new one here as a proof of concept, of sorts.

I like the idea of this having a definite uniqueness to it, but I think what we discussed before about raken upgrading into Gateway units still stands. That, and as you've mentioned, giving the Seanchan a way to attack through a mechanic that would otherwise be a specialized defense against a Domination-y civ may not be good. The latter is only speculative though, so it's mainly based on the former that I've marked this red.

counterpoint said:
I've magenta'd the SPS and TotB2 - not sure which to axe, but should probably axe one of them.

I've marked the SPS as red. Between the two of them I can't decide which I prefer, but I think if we do go for a Courthouse replacement, then the Tower of Blood 1 is the best choice.

counterpoint said:
If we axe one of the Magenta's, as well as the ones I've recommended, plus the raken, that leaves us with 12, which is much more reasonable that the four billion it currently is.

And now we have a much more reasonable number of options!

counterpoint said:
Also, I should state that I've been throwing in the "Morat" at the front of the exotics because in my mind it helps me differentiate them from PC-Sch exotics. "S'r Ch" is an obvious exception because it has a "name"

Sounds good.

Recap!

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities produce X% less extra unhappiness and will periodically produce units, including the Unique Units of the civilization that originally founded the city.
Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Insights of the Blood, puppetted and annexed cities do not increase technology costs
Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives a free social policy every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Mandatory Testing, the Spark earned from occupied cities is doubled.

UUs:

Deathwatch Guard/Gardener, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health. The ability becomes available again once the unit has returned to full health.
Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
Morat'torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy and land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.
Morat'grolm - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, enemy mounted units consume their whole turn when attacking the morat'grolm.
Morat'raken - replaces Gateway 1, 2 or 3, ignores dreamspikes

UBs:

Seanchan Patrol Station, replaces the courthouse, eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +X happiness if city has a connection to the capital. Costs Y% less production and Z% less gold maintenance than the courthouse.
Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city and foreign Diplomats have a Z% chance of being killed every W turns they spent in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, enables the production of the Unique Uniques of the civilization who founded the city.
Tower of the Blood, replaces production 1, -X% production or gold cost to construct this building, if this city has a governor, the city receives +Y% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related builidng, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Z turns.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, the increase in technology cost created by this city's population is halved and generates +X Science per turn, up to a maximum of Y, for each turn since the Seanchan last controlled an Aes Sedai.

UIs:

counterpoint said:
Thats a reasonable amount of text above, but it honestly seems like this discussion is basically over (of course correct me if I'm wrong), so IMO, feel free to launch into the next civ whenever you want.

Yeah, most/all of the above should collapse down quickly now! I've just edited the Seanchan into the master list, along with a list of the Sul'dam/damane mechanics as they stand at the moment. I've also gone through and highlighted locks and sets in that post. Let me know if you think they should be listed differently or anything like that.

If you're happy with all of the above and the master list changes, then I'll pick up Shandalle from where we were a while ago in my next post!

counterpoint · Jun 1, 2016

slow day, so a quick post:

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, that would make more sense! I'd be inclined to go with unlimited to start with and see if it becomes an issue.

fine with me!

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, I don't think it will happen often enough to be a problem. Being completely surrounded is quite rare, there's usually some avenue for escape that players will run for.

fair enough!

S3rgeus said:
I think we'll end up going back and forth too much on deciding frontrunners at this stage, when we don't really want to make that decision yet. I'll list locks though, because we've yet to have any real differences of opinion on those. I'll also highlight "sets" where they exist, so we don't forget that we'd earmarked some uniques to be complementary.

that sounds like a plan. I'll examine it specifically below.

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, those could certainly be good ways of rewarding them for not using Aes Sedai. It would only be relevant to them when they were at war though, so if they're not actively fighting someone they may end up wanting to use Aes Sedai in between for their abilities, which is a bit odd.

oh, yeah, that's a good point.

S3rgeus said:
Awesome, sounds good. A simpler approach might be something like "produces +(X - number of Aes Sedai controlled) Science per turn", but the risk there is that it might be best to have a small number of Aes Sedai for specific abilities and then still get the majority of the bonus.

hmmm.... yeah, I think in general your original way is better, but I think this depends a lot on what Y (the max bonus) is. If it's too low, then it's possible to use an AS whenenver you want, and raise th ebonus back up to max effortlessly. If it's too high, then tons of "progress" must be wasted if you need an Aes Sedai to do something one time.

Is there a way to simply make it a function of both turns-since *and* number of Aes Sedai. That way, you could be rewarded slightly for always using just one or two Aes Sedai, and rewarded slightly for not currently using any, but recently having used some, and rewarded much greater for never using any (or not using any for quite a long time). Any relatively user friendly way to do this? This kind of thing makes it more reasonable and forgiving, but also makes it less susceptible to abuse that a simple X-# approach.

S3rgeus said:
I like the idea of this having a definite uniqueness to it, but I think what we discussed before about raken upgrading into Gateway units still stands. That, and as you've mentioned, giving the Seanchan a way to attack through a mechanic that would otherwise be a specialized defense against a Domination-y civ may not be good. The latter is only speculative though, so it's mainly based on the former that I've marked this red.

I accept this redness.

S3rgeus said:
I've marked the SPS as red. Between the two of them I can't decide which I prefer, but I think if we do go for a Courthouse replacement, then the Tower of Blood 1 is the best choice.

I agree.

Recap!

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities produce X% less extra unhappiness and will periodically produce units, including the Unique Units of the civilization that originally founded the city.
Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Insights of the Blood, puppetted and annexed cities do not increase technology costs
Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives a free social policy every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
Mandatory Testing, the Spark earned from occupied cities is doubled.

UUs:

Deathwatch Guard/Gardener, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health. The ability becomes available again once the unit has returned to full health.
Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
Morat'torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy and land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.
Morat'grolm - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, enemy mounted units consume their whole turn when attacking the morat'grolm.

UBs:

Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city and foreign Diplomats have a Z% chance of being killed every W turns they spent in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, enables the production of the Unique Uniques of the civilization who founded the city.
Tower of the Blood, replaces production 1, -X% production or gold cost to construct this building, if this city has a governor, the city receives +Y% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related builidng, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Z turns.
Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, the increase in technology cost created by this city's population is halved and generates +X Science per turn, up to a maximum of Y, for each turn since the Seanchan last controlled an Aes Sedai.

UIs:

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, most/all of the above should collapse down quickly now! I've just edited the Seanchan into the master list, along with a list of the Sul'dam/damane mechanics as they stand at the moment. I've also gone through and highlighted locks and sets in that post. Let me know if you think they should be listed differently or anything like that.

If you're happy with all of the above and the master list changes, then I'll pick up Shandalle from where we were a while ago in my next post!

Looked over the Civilization Designs post. Mostly looks great! Civ details look good. Locks look good, Sets MOSTLY look good. The one tweak I'd make is that Master of Puppets (Seanchan) should include Tower of Blood 3 - the one that gives science from no channeling - not 2. Also, I could set the "On the Sea" A'M set having it's UB be the Porcelain Forge and also listing an alternate - probably Porcelain Shop.

Also, because of the Tower of Blood duplication confusion, perhaps it's best for these things to have parenthetical qualifiers (e.g. "Tower of Blood (Science)") or something? This could go for the various UU options and such as well (Windfinders, Rakers), so things don't get confusing to discuss.

S3rgeus · Jun 2, 2016

counterpoint said:
hmmm.... yeah, I think in general your original way is better, but I think this depends a lot on what Y (the max bonus) is. If it's too low, then it's possible to use an AS whenenver you want, and raise th ebonus back up to max effortlessly. If it's too high, then tons of "progress" must be wasted if you need an Aes Sedai to do something one time.

Is there a way to simply make it a function of both turns-since *and* number of Aes Sedai. That way, you could be rewarded slightly for always using just one or two Aes Sedai, and rewarded slightly for not currently using any, but recently having used some, and rewarded much greater for never using any (or not using any for quite a long time). Any relatively user friendly way to do this? This kind of thing makes it more reasonable and forgiving, but also makes it less susceptible to abuse that a simple X-# approach.

I think that giving the benefit only when there are 0 Aes Sedai is a good idea. Even a small number working with them while they've been on a channeler-capturing spree runs contrary to how the Seanchan worked in the books. My main worry with this is that making Y high enough to offset this will be too good, but that will depend on what the balance of the whole thing ends up looking like.

counterpoint said:
Looked over the Civilization Designs post. Mostly looks great! Civ details look good. Locks look good, Sets MOSTLY look good. The one tweak I'd make is that Master of Puppets (Seanchan) should include Tower of Blood 3 - the one that gives science from no channeling - not 2. Also, I could set the "On the Sea" A'M set having it's UB be the Porcelain Forge and also listing an alternate - probably Porcelain Shop.

Also, because of the Tower of Blood duplication confusion, perhaps it's best for these things to have parenthetical qualifiers (e.g. "Tower of Blood (Science)") or something? This could go for the various UU options and such as well (Windfinders, Rakers), so things don't get confusing to discuss.

I thought this was the way around we were intending, and then when I wrote it into the master list I realized this didn't make much sense! The Ever Victorious Army bonus and a Courthouse replacement could never apply to the same city, which seems like a big flaw. The UA and UB are working against each other, only applying in mutually exclusive situations.

Should we port that science bonus into one of the other UBs? Or make the Tower of Blood 2's bonus a function of time-since-Aes-Sedai as well?

Change made for the Sea Folk.

Adding qualifiers sounds like a good call where we have flavor overlap. I'll go through and do that once we've sorted this Seanchan quandary!

Also, as a general ballpark, (considering the Seanchan to be completed above, though we'll still probably make some minor tweaks in the immediate term), even with some delays, we seem to be getting through about 1 civ a week. Which isn't too bad really! With 17 civs remaining, it will take about 4 months to finish this pass.

Are we happy with that timeline? I'm happy to work through these, I just figured it's worth mentioning that dropping to 14 civs now would cut this down by up to a month and a half! (Depending on how long it would take us to decide what 6 civs to drop.)

So, on to Shandalle!

As a quick reference, this is where we were the last time we saw Shandalle:

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level

Trusted Advisors, governors advance level X turns faster

Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"

Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive.

Sight of the Golden Hawk, gain vision on the capitol cities of the High King and any civs that received "Powerful" or "Significant" Provincial bonuses

Years of Silent Rage, if your city is captured, gain +X% production and +X% combat strength against the capturing civilization for X turns

UUs:

Breaching Tower (era 4 Siege) - the bonuses of defensive structures and garrisoned units is halved

Breaching Tower (era 4 Siege) - can pillage a tile that has already been pillaged (endless siege or Tar Valon)

Civil Guard (era 3-4 melee or polearm) - triple garrison bonus

Circuit Rover (era 3-4 ranged) - weaker than comparable unit, but X% change of spawning in any city that is under direct attack.

Golden Hawk Foot (era 3-4 melee) - something something

UBs:

Civil Guard House (replaces Era 3-4 XP building), lowers local unhappiness

Hall of the Magistrate (replaces Courthouse), something something...

UIs:

Siege Camp, built in opposing territory (?), provides bonuses to any unit that is "set up" on the tile.

My opinions on stuff:

I like the Trusted Advisors options, both of them. I think I prefer the first one because it gives the players something tangible more quickly.

Provincial Dominance and Insightful Rule are both awesome. I particularly like how even when Shandalle isn't the High King civ, they still exert some control over the process and get bonuses. Very appropriate flavor and cool mechanics! It's smack in the middle of the game. Even though they're only applicable for the duration of the actual High King event, they can still be strong.

I like the flavor of Sight of the Golden Hawk, but it feels too mechanically niche to be Shandalle's whole UA.

Would Years of Silent Rage's production bonus apply globally to the whole Shandalle civ? This seems super powerful, since a wide civ could intentionally (settle and) allow worthless cities to be captured to gain the bonus. If you'd intended a different area of effect here though, I do like the idea.

I'm a big fan of Breaching Tower 2, that would be really powerful but not game breaking. It makes Shandalle's siege units really long-lived, but doesn't mean they can streamroll anyone they couldn't otherwise. Breaching Tower 1 is a good bonus, but I feel like it will just act like "this siege unit, but better". Would these both be melee siege units, like Attila's Battering Ram and Ashurbanipal's Siege Tower in BNW? (Or possibly range 1?)

Civil Guard feels too narrow, in that it's defensive only and even then doesn't help in the most desperate situations. Any fair multiplier will be overcome by the AI's unit carpets if the player is on the back foot.

Circuit Rover I really like as a defensive unit's ability. I see it listed in your flavor dive on page 49, what are these guys in the canon? Even though this unit only becomes special on the defensive, it does so in a way that will actively help a human fending off an AI, since a single unit goes a long way against the tactical AI. It is notable that when on the offensive, this unit is a complete downgrade though, due to its lowered combat strength. Would we be ok with that?

Golden Hawk Foot seems like a good place to put something!

Civil Guard House is quite nice, it will make Shandalle build the military EXP buildings more often, which will end up making all of their units better as well.

Hall of the Magistrate is somewhere for something to go as well!

Siege Camp feels too niche (reducing siege weapon set up) for someone to want to construct an improvement for. I've suggested a change to it below, but I'm still unsure if it's good enough to warrant sending a worker and building it.

And then I've also got a bunch of ideas from our first pass at the first 4 civs (this is the last of those 4!) that have yet to see the light of day! Here they are, in blue:

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level
Trusted Advisors, governors advance level X turns faster
Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"
Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive.
Sight of the Golden Hawk, gain vision on the capitol cities of the High King and any civs that received "Powerful" or "Significant" Provincial bonuses
Years of Silent Rage, if your city is captured, gain +X% production and +X% combat strength against the capturing civilization for X turns
Popular Figurehead, cities do not go into Resistance when captured by Shandalle
True King, Shandalle becomes the High King after researching Mapmaking instead of Treatises (or some similarly reasonable earlier tech)
True King, High Kingship and Provincial bonuses last twice as long for Shandalle
True King, none of the automatic wars on the dissolution of the High King include Shandalle
Not So Mighty, the Tower's Compact votes only count for half when pitted against Shandalle's
Aspirational Leaders, Governors in Shandalle's cities can pick two bonuses each time they upgrade

UUs:

Breaching Tower (era 4 Siege) - the bonuses of defensive structures and garrisoned units is halved
Breaching Tower (era 4 Siege) - can pillage a tile that has already been pillaged (endless siege or Tar Valon)
Civil Guard (era 3-4 melee or polearm) - triple garrison bonus
Circuit Rover (era 3-4 ranged) - weaker than comparable unit, but X% change of spawning in any city that is under direct attack.
Golden Hawk Foot (era 3-4 melee) - something something
Descendant Warriors, replaces era 5/6 unit or Great Captain, fights much better on other continents
Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon

UBs:

Civil Guard House (replaces Era 3-4 XP building), lowers local unhappiness
Hall of the Magistrate (replaces Courthouse), something something...
Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and lose W HP per turn (small number, like 1-5)

UIs:

Siege Camp, built in opposing territory (?), provides bonuses to any unit that is "set up" on the tile., allied units standing on or adjacent to it heal at the same rate as in a friendly city hex.

UGs:

Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by any LP, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:
- Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace
- During the High King event: doubles the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus
- After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

So, for the new stuff I've added!

Popular Figurehead is too niche to standalone and would need to be part of a larger UA.

Three variants of True King! The first one is the only one that could potentially stand alone, though it may benefit from having some kind of High King related bonus as well. It would need to be calibrated (choosing which tech) so that Shandalle didn't always win, just often. Or we could give them an advantage on one of the other mechanisms of becoming the High King.

The second one is quite similar to your Provincial Dominance. The idea here was that the bonuses would persist into/after the post-High-King wars. However, doubling their value is much more easily understood and has a very similar effect, so I prefer Provincial Dominance.

The third one is way too niche. And also non-canonical. Not sure where I was going with this one.

Not So Mighty is too niche, but I do like the general idea of giving Shandalle some kind of advantage in working against the Tower, given that Hawkwing was the most successful leader at it in Westlands history. He didn't take the city, but he reduced their influence dramatically.

Aspirational Leaders could make Shandalle's Governors all quite strong. I toyed with disallowing the player picking both the Light and Shadow option on the same upgrade, but seeing as they can pick the opposing ones on different upgrade levels, I figure if they really want to play Neutral and pick both on the same upgrade level then that should be fine. I imagine most players will pick their chosen Alignment + the non-Alignment bonus on upgrades 1 and 3.

Descendant Warriors is a nod to Luthair and the Seanchan. It could be interesting.

Captors of Guaire is a pretty cool Dragonsworn-y ability that is well grounded in Shandalle flavor.

Glorious Statue is a (pompous) nod to all of those old statues of Hawkwing that seem to be cluttering up the place with their rubble in the modern Westlands. It's a primarily defensive building though, which isn't too great.

Provincial Ruler is our fun potential unique Governor type! I linked back to the LP and Governors summary from it because I had to do a lot of reading and rereading of our Governor decisions to come up with one of these that made sense. Each individual component of this is obviously customizable as well, so we don't need to take it wholesale forward even if we do like the idea in general. I made this iteration fairly centered around the High King event, since that's important to Shandalle flavorfully, but not dependent on being High King (or even any particular province). This would work well with Provincial Dominance (not getting "Nothing" means you'll never miss out on the yield bonus during the High King event) and especially Insightful Rule (pick the provincial bonus that fits your intended victory, even if you're High King, and this Governor will help even more). It might be too far on the powerful side when it can come from any LP though, since you could potentially put one in all of your cities as Shandalle. It might make sense to pare it down to just a couple of LP types (possibly Great Captain and Ambassador?). I figure the Z in the upgrade 2 ability for this Governor type would be roughly ballparked at half the value of a good international trade route.

counterpoint · Jun 3, 2016

S3rgeus said:
I think that giving the benefit only when there are 0 Aes Sedai is a good idea. Even a small number working with them while they've been on a channeler-capturing spree runs contrary to how the Seanchan worked in the books. My main worry with this is that making Y high enough to offset this will be too good, but that will depend on what the balance of the whole thing ends up looking like.

this is fine with me.

S3rgeus said:
I thought this was the way around we were intending, and then when I wrote it into the master list I realized this didn't make much sense! The Ever Victorious Army bonus and a Courthouse replacement could never apply to the same city, which seems like a big flaw. The UA and UB are working against each other, only applying in mutually exclusive situations.

Should we port that science bonus into one of the other UBs? Or make the Tower of Blood 2's bonus a function of time-since-Aes-Sedai as well?

Change made for the Sea Folk.

Adding qualifiers sounds like a good call where we have flavor overlap. I'll go through and do that once we've sorted this Seanchan quandary!

I see what you mean. The UA and UB are certainly not working against each other - they're simply not stacking or particularly cooperative. It could be argued that this gives the player options - making both annexing and puppeting useful, especially since the main bonus of EVA is useless when at war with a civ whose UUs have passed, historically.

That said, I do see how that lack of clear coordination could be better.

Hmm... I would say that TotB 2's bonus could certainly be changed to be based on turns-since-AS, but then that's turning into a rather complicated, unintuitive UB, so I'm not sure that's the best choice...

I like how TotB 3 helps with happiness problems, provides science, AND rewards lack of AS use. That's kind of a triple threat for the Seanchan... Is there any way we can preserve that aspect in a UB somehow without being misaligned with the UA (which isn't the worst thing, IMO)?

S3rgeus said:
Also, as a general ballpark, (considering the Seanchan to be completed above, though we'll still probably make some minor tweaks in the immediate term), even with some delays, we seem to be getting through about 1 civ a week. Which isn't too bad really! With 17 civs remaining, it will take about 4 months to finish this pass.

Are we happy with that timeline? I'm happy to work through these, I just figured it's worth mentioning that dropping to 14 civs now would cut this down by up to a month and a half! (Depending on how long it would take us to decide what 6 civs to drop.)

yeah, that's a long time. Kind of silly, actually. :that said, I think it's fine, considering what a big deal this particular task is.

I'd say we just reassess about 10 civs from now and see if we're still ok moving forward with the rest. I don't really feel like it'd be productive or efficient to dive back into "which civ" right now, so I'd rather keep going. It's actually quite possible that many of these other civs will go more quickly, as they'll have less flavor we'll feel compelled to draw from, more straightforward mechanics, and we'll be in a groove, so to speak.

S3rgeus said:
My opinions on stuff:

I like the Trusted Advisors options, both of them. I think I prefer the first one because it gives the players something tangible more quickly.

I'm fine with removing the second of these.

S3rgeus said:
Provincial Dominance and Insightful Rule are both awesome. I particularly like how even when Shandalle isn't the High King civ, they still exert some control over the process and get bonuses. Very appropriate flavor and cool mechanics! It's smack in the middle of the game. Even though they're only applicable for the duration of the actual High King event, they can still be strong.

yeah, I think these are both pretty cool. I'm not sure the second version is as powerful, though (especially if you are a province), so it might need an additional aspect.

S3rgeus said:
I like the flavor of Sight of the Golden Hawk, but it feels too mechanically niche to be Shandalle's whole UA.

yeah, this *could* be an added characteristic to another UA, but it's not particularly clear how this would aid in reaching a VC, so I'm fine with axing it.

S3rgeus said:
Would Years of Silent Rage's production bonus apply globally to the whole Shandalle civ? This seems super powerful, since a wide civ could intentionally (settle and) allow worthless cities to be captured to gain the bonus. If you'd intended a different area of effect here though, I do like the idea.

Well, I suppose that I intended the *bonus* to apply globally (and just be made low enough so as not to be too abusable), but I suppose it could be limited to certain cities if need be. I think the bigger issue is if the *trigger* is global - if capturing *any* Shandalle city causes this. That's where you'd see the abuse you're talking about. I can see altering this so as to either:

only include cities on your home continent (not optimum on either pangaea or archipelago maps
only include cities of population greater than X
only include your first Y cities

I think of these, I think the second could be a good middle ground - thoughts?

S3rgeus said:
I'm a big fan of Breaching Tower 2, that would be really powerful but not game breaking. It makes Shandalle's siege units really long-lived, but doesn't mean they can streamroll anyone they couldn't otherwise. Breaching Tower 1 is a good bonus, but I feel like it will just act like "this siege unit, but better".

Yeah, I'm fine with axing the first of these. I think the second is certainly the more interesting of them, though it doesn't really help you against undeveloped civs. I assume the subsequent pillages wouldn't yield as much healing?

S3rgeus said:
Would these both be melee siege units, like Attila's Battering Ram and Ashurbanipal's Siege Tower in BNW? (Or possibly range 1?)

I was actually intenting them to be true seige units, because I think Shandalle gives us a great opportunity to do that, and such will be rare (in both BNW and in our lore). My flavor is somewhat at odds with that - i was simply looking for some kind of siege engine that wasn't used by BNW or wasn't super earth-tied (there's all sorts of ones that sound super roman or whatever). I think the breaching tower flavor would be nice somewhere, but I'd prefer this be a real siege weapon, so I propose a lame alternative below....

(in general, I suspect naming siege weapons will be a challenge for us!)

S3rgeus said:
Civil Guard feels too narrow, in that it's defensive only and even then doesn't help in the most desperate situations. Any fair multiplier will be overcome by the AI's unit carpets if the player is on the back foot.

makes sense.

S3rgeus said:
Circuit Rover I really like as a defensive unit's ability. I see it listed in your flavor dive on page 49, what are these guys in the canon? Even though this unit only becomes special on the defensive, it does so in a way that will actively help a human fending off an AI, since a single unit goes a long way against the tactical AI. It is notable that when on the offensive, this unit is a complete downgrade though, due to its lowered combat strength. Would we be ok with that?

yeah these guys are canonical, but very obscure. Its not in the companion, but from the World of RJ's WoT, so says google. Apparently they're a kind of militia, one who's job is to patrol the roads and such.

In thinking about this one again, I don't feel like it's a great UU, though I do like it as an ability. as a UU. Is this even a mechanic we can add to a UU? it's a little weird to ever produce (since it's worse), unless it was way cheaper or something. I've made that alteration, and also proposed a UB version of it that might be a good alternate.

S3rgeus said:
Golden Hawk Foot seems like a good place to put something!

something something

S3rgeus said:
Civil Guard House is quite nice, it will make Shandalle build the military EXP buildings more often, which will end up making all of their units better as well.

yeah, not so fancy though

S3rgeus said:
Hall of the Magistrate is somewhere for something to go as well!

flavor!

S3rgeus said:
Siege Camp feels too niche (reducing siege weapon set up) for someone to want to construct an improvement for. I've suggested a change to it below, but I'm still unsure if it's good enough to warrant sending a worker and building it.

OK, good change. I'll keep this around for now, but I think that this won't survive for long...

S3rgeus said:
And then I've also got a bunch of ideas from our first pass at the first 4 civs (this is the last of those 4!) that have yet to see the light of day! Here they are, in blue:

S3rgeus said:

So, for the new stuff I've added!

Popular Figurehead is too niche to standalone and would need to be part of a larger UA.

Click to expand...

yeah, though this is actually quite powerful if you're going all out military..

S3rgeus said:

Three variants of True King! The first one is the only one that could potentially stand alone, though it may benefit from having some kind of High King related bonus as well. It would need to be calibrated (choosing which tech) so that Shandalle didn't always win, just often. Or we could give them an advantage on one of the other mechanisms of becoming the High King.

Click to expand...

eh... I don't love this. Actually, anything that greatly predisposes Sh to *become* the HK seems kind of cheap... I'm imagining playing on a high difficulty and it being something like 90% likely that Sh becomes the HK. Think about any high difficulty game with the Celts... they basically *will* be the first civ with a pantheon in most cases, but that's acceptable because they aren't the only one who can get it. I worry that this will make other players not even bother with trying to get it once they've discovered the Hawkman is in the game (sort of like I usually never bother with going after the G-Library on Emperor unless I have really really good production).

S3rgeus said:

The second one is quite similar to your Provincial Dominance. The idea here was that the bonuses would persist into/after the post-High-King wars. However, doubling their value is much more easily understood and has a very similar effect, so I prefer Provincial Dominance.

Click to expand...

I think this is interesting mechanically, but I also think it's kind of *weird* to have the provincial bonus continue. It just makes things kind of complicated, I suppose. I suppose one cool thing is that this could make them have an advantage in the post-HK wars, though, of course, that's really rather unflavorful (the empire was destroyed in those wars!). I'm redding it, but I could be talked off that ledge.

S3rgeus said:

The third one is way too niche. And also non-canonical. Not sure where I was going with this one.

Click to expand...

kind of cool mechanically, but yeah, non-canonical. red

S3rgeus said:

Not So Mighty is too niche, but I do like the general idea of giving Shandalle some kind of advantage in working against the Tower, given that Hawkwing was the most successful leader at it in Westlands history. He didn't take the city, but he reduced their influence dramatically.

Click to expand...

yeah, I think the idea of this kind of anti-tower diplomatic thing, but I don't think this one quite works. It doesn't *help* you, it simply causes the other civ's to get helped less. This has inspired me towards a weird new one though

S3rgeus said:

Aspirational Leaders could make Shandalle's Governors all quite strong. I toyed with disallowing the player picking both the Light and Shadow option on the same upgrade, but seeing as they can pick the opposing ones on different upgrade levels, I figure if they really want to play Neutral and pick both on the same upgrade level then that should be fine. I imagine most players will pick their chosen Alignment + the non-Alignment bonus on upgrades 1 and 3.

Click to expand...

yeah, that is pretty powerful! I think it's fine to let people waste their bonus by picking conflicting alignment....

S3rgeus said:

Descendant Warriors is a nod to Luthair and the Seanchan. It could be interesting.

Click to expand...

hmmm.... I feel like this would be a good *seanchan* ability. Here it feels weird. I know it's a nod to Luthair, but isn't Luthair already kind of a different thing? to me, the exploits of his folks are srt of separate from Shandalle, which was only occupied by the Westlands.

S3rgeus said:

Captors of Guaire is a pretty cool Dragonsworn-y ability that is well grounded in Shandalle flavor.

Click to expand...

yeah, interesting.

S3rgeus said:

Glorious Statue is a (pompous) nod to all of those old statues of Hawkwing that seem to be cluttering up the place with their rubble in the modern Westlands. It's a primarily defensive building though, which isn't too great.

Click to expand...

yeah, that flavor kind of feels like it fits better as a cultural thing, or even a diplo thing.

I'm not totally wild about the -Z combat str aspect, though it fits the flavor decently. I think the -HP thing might be more interesting, but that aspect is also very much flavorfully weird. Not sure here. Magenta

S3rgeus said:

Provincial Ruler is our fun potential unique Governor type! I linked back to the LP and Governors summary from it because I had to do a lot of reading and rereading of our Governor decisions to come up with one of these that made sense. Each individual component of this is obviously customizable as well, so we don't need to take it wholesale forward even if we do like the idea in general. I made this iteration fairly centered around the High King event, since that's important to Shandalle flavorfully, but not dependent on being High King (or even any particular province). This would work well with Provincial Dominance (not getting "Nothing" means you'll never miss out on the yield bonus during the High King event) and especially Insightful Rule (pick the provincial bonus that fits your intended victory, even if you're High King, and this Governor will help even more). It might be too far on the powerful side when it can come from any LP though, since you could potentially put one in all of your cities as Shandalle. It might make sense to pare it down to just a couple of LP types (possibly Great Captain and Ambassador?). I figure the Z in the upgrade 2 ability for this Governor type would be roughly ballparked at half the value of a good international trade route.

Click to expand...

ok, so at first I was thinking that this wasn't a UG at all, rather, it was just a UA in all but name... but then I realized that what you're suggesting IS actually inf act a separate governor type. How would you select it? Will there be a separate Custom Mission next to "become governor" that is "become Provincial Ruler" or will it be a pop-up menu? I suppose we don't need to decide that now.

In any case, this is interesting because it gives the player a choice - a player could go through the game and always find it better to build other types of govs.

anyways, as far as the specifics:

I had to remind myself what the Palace was! while above I was opposed to things that guaranteed Sh would be the HK, this isn't quite so bad - it still requires the civ to choose this gov, and to try to build the wonder.

the second yield state is a little confusing, because the Provinces aren't all yield-based. The Prov of Wealth produces Gold, but the Prov of Honor gives you bonus XP from kills... how would that apply to a particular city? I'd worry that the HK would simply choose for Shandalle whatever Province type nullifies this bonus

Otherwise, I do like this. I also like how it provides a gold option as well as a prestige option - Diplo, in particular should probably be a path for this civ!

Shandalle Recap:

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level

Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"

Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive.

Years of Silent Rage, if your city is captured, gain +X% production and +X% combat strength against the capturing civilization for X turns

Popular Figurehead, cities do not go into Resistance when captured by Shandalle

True King, Shandalle becomes the High King after researching Mapmaking instead of Treatises (or some similarly reasonable earlier tech)

True King, High Kingship and Provincial bonuses last twice as long for Shandalle

True King, none of the automatic wars on the dissolution of the High King include Shandalle

Not So Mighty, the Tower's Compact votes only count for half when pitted against Shandalle's

Aspirational Leaders, Governors in Shandalle's cities can pick two bonuses each time they upgrade

Not So Mighty, the diplomatic and economic penalty for refusing Tower edicts is halved

Unite the World (units), when a military unit is stationed next to a City State (the actual tile), influence decay is halved (reduced to zero if 1)

Unite the World (conquest), warmonger penalties are halved

UUs:

Golden Hawk Catapult (era 4 Siege) - can pillage a tile that has already been pillaged (endless siege or Tar Valon)

Circuit Rover (era 3-4 ranged) - weaker than comparable unit, but costs less production and gold, and has X% change of spawning adjacent to any city that is under direct attack.

Golden Hawk Foot (era 3-4 melee) - something something

Descendant Warriors, replaces era 5/6 unit or Great Captain, fights much better on other continents

Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon

UBs:

Civil Guard House (replaces Era 3-4 XP building), lowers local unhappiness

Hall of the Magistrate (replaces Courthouse), something something...

Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and lose W HP per turn (small number, like 1-5)

Circuit Rover's Watch Station (replaces Era 3-4 XP or Defensive building), X% chance to spawn a Circuit Rover/contemporary ranged unit adjacent to the city when this city is attacked

UIs:

Siege Camp, built in opposing territory (?), provides bonuses to any unit that is "set up" on the tile., allied units standing on or adjacent to it heal at the same rate as in a friendly city hex.

UGs:

Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by any LP, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:

Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace

During the High King event: doubles the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus

After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

the new Not So Mighty is weird. It's both flavorful and not flavorful. I think it works well in that it shows the Hawk's "not the boss of me" attitude towards them, but on the other hand, the empire was likely Authority, and this one might be best tied to a more oppositional civ (liberation or oppression, etc.) Also, mechanically, I'm not sure this is good enough to warrant its own UA - it is cool to have a UA that interfaces with the Edicts though (the most oft-forgotten of our new mechanics!)

Unite the world 1 is also weird. Thought of as a diplo option - sort of like gunboat diplomacy but less splashy. Too powerful or too easy to achieve?

the second one is even weirder. Not sure we can do this, or if it'd even be a good idea, but It's *an* idea - trying to come up with other ways of representing the huge empire.

The Circuit-Rover UB - I'm not sure which building this should be attached to. Also, should it create a Circuit Rover unit, or is that kind of cheating? Another way to do it would be to create a contemporary - or even obsolete - ranged unit.

OK, I'm out of time now, but I do think we might want to consider a few more options that help with gold or diplomacy, in case we want those to be more directly possible.

S3rgeus · Jun 3, 2016

I'm probably going to be out most of tomorrow, so I most likely won't post then. But I'll definitely be here on Sunday.

counterpoint said:
I see what you mean. The UA and UB are certainly not working against each other - they're simply not stacking or particularly cooperative. It could be argued that this gives the player options - making both annexing and puppeting useful, especially since the main bonus of EVA is useless when at war with a civ whose UUs have passed, historically.

That said, I do see how that lack of clear coordination could be better.

Hmm... I would say that TotB 2's bonus could certainly be changed to be based on turns-since-AS, but then that's turning into a rather complicated, unintuitive UB, so I'm not sure that's the best choice...

I like how TotB 3 helps with happiness problems, provides science, AND rewards lack of AS use. That's kind of a triple threat for the Seanchan... Is there any way we can preserve that aspect in a UB somehow without being misaligned with the UA (which isn't the worst thing, IMO)?

Regarding keeping all 3 approaches, we could make it replace HappinessX (maybe 3), instead of the Courthouse?

I think being misaligned with the UA is a big flaw. It really looks we like we missed that the two wouldn't work together at all. I can see what you mean about options, but I think it's really taking them away. It's forcing the player to choose which of their uniques they want to use, and choosing one precludes the other, which is not cool.

counterpoint said:
yeah, that's a long time. Kind of silly, actually. :that said, I think it's fine, considering what a big deal this particular task is.

I'd say we just reassess about 10 civs from now and see if we're still ok moving forward with the rest. I don't really feel like it'd be productive or efficient to dive back into "which civ" right now, so I'd rather keep going. It's actually quite possible that many of these other civs will go more quickly, as they'll have less flavor we'll feel compelled to draw from, more straightforward mechanics, and we'll be in a groove, so to speak.

Sounds good - we'll re-evaluate after we've reached 14.

Also, my math was wrong last time. I was thinking we had 20 civs, but actually we have 23. So reducing to 14 would take off just over two months of time, if we stay at the same pace.

Still, we'll re-evaluate later!

counterpoint said:
yeah, I think these are both pretty cool. I'm not sure the second version is as powerful, though (especially if you are a province), so it might need an additional aspect.

Because of the way the provincial bonuses are allocated, I think Insightful Rule is quite strong. (Particularly when Shandalle is High King, where they get a provincial bonus and wouldn't have done so before.) The pairings of Powerful/Significant/Meager with each available province type are done automatically (relevant summary, because I needed to read this a few times now to make sure I had it right). If the High King is choosing, in a one particular game, who to give each of the following: "Powerful Industry", "Significant Wealth", "Significant Honor", "Meager Learning", "Meager Belief" etc. for all other Provincial bonuses. So Shandalle would pick first and presumably give themselves one of the Powerful or Significant ones (the one most appropriate to their game plan, or possibly even change their game plan according to which ones are available as Powerful or Significant).

counterpoint said:
Well, I suppose that I intended the *bonus* to apply globally (and just be made low enough so as not to be too abusable), but I suppose it could be limited to certain cities if need be. I think the bigger issue is if the *trigger* is global - if capturing *any* Shandalle city causes this. That's where you'd see the abuse you're talking about. I can see altering this so as to either:

only include cities on your home continent (not optimum on either pangaea or archipelago maps
only include cities of population greater than X
only include your first Y cities

I think of these, I think the second could be a good middle ground - thoughts?

The second one sounds like a good plan to me. If X is like 8 or maybe even more, then it will only be in effect when the player meaningfully loses something.

However, for the human Shandalle player, this UA has no effect unless the player is doing really badly (losing cities to the AI). Are we ok with that? It doesn't seem like a good representation of Hawkwing.

counterpoint said:
Yeah, I'm fine with axing the first of these. I think the second is certainly the more interesting of them, though it doesn't really help you against undeveloped civs. I assume the subsequent pillages wouldn't yield as much healing?

I was actually intenting them to be true seige units, because I think Shandalle gives us a great opportunity to do that, and such will be rare (in both BNW and in our lore). My flavor is somewhat at odds with that - i was simply looking for some kind of siege engine that wasn't used by BNW or wasn't super earth-tied (there's all sorts of ones that sound super roman or whatever). I think the breaching tower flavor would be nice somewhere, but I'd prefer this be a real siege weapon, so I propose a lame alternative below....

I'd be fine with subsequent pillages providing normal healing. That's something we can tweak for balance as well. Does an improvement being pillaged multiple times eventually get actually destroyed? That might be a nice niche.

Right, so range 2 siege weapons! That's good too. I do see what you mean about siege flavor in general below!

How come you don't consider non-ranged siege units "real siege weapons"? It seems to me that a specialization at attacking cities is the defining characteristic of a siege weapon, which can be achieved by melee units, as done with the Battering Ram and Siege Tower. (Given the Siege Tower's bonuses to nearby units, it seems to be a Breaching Tower, to my understanding.) I'm not suggesting we necessarily make this one a melee siege unit, I just want to understand your stance on siege units overall.

counterpoint said:
yeah these guys are canonical, but very obscure. Its not in the companion, but from the World of RJ's WoT, so says google. Apparently they're a kind of militia, one who's job is to patrol the roads and such.

In thinking about this one again, I don't feel like it's a great UU, though I do like it as an ability. as a UU. Is this even a mechanic we can add to a UU? it's a little weird to ever produce (since it's worse), unless it was way cheaper or something. I've made that alteration, and also proposed a UB version of it that might be a good alternate.

Yeah, I think making it cheaper is a good call. It is a bit of a weird ability on a UU though, as you say. It's more like a UA. And what happens after the unit becomes obsolete (or at least not useful because it's so weak, even if it doesn't technically obsolete, if we don't make it do so).

counterpoint said:
OK, good change. I'll keep this around for now, but I think that this won't survive for long...

Agreed, do we want to just remove Siege Camp now, or are we really still considering it?

counterpoint said:
yeah, though this is actually quite powerful if you're going all out military..

If you're not conquering enemies, then it's entirely useless. But even if you are playing a warmonger, it's still not that strong. The cities you capture still have a bunch of their population lost and buildings destroyed, so they're still slow. It just saves you a few turns when you first capture them, which may speed up a sweep, but doesn't really give you many new capabilities.

I'll mark this as red.

counterpoint said:
eh... I don't love this. Actually, anything that greatly predisposes Sh to *become* the HK seems kind of cheap... I'm imagining playing on a high difficulty and it being something like 90% likely that Sh becomes the HK. Think about any high difficulty game with the Celts... they basically *will* be the first civ with a pantheon in most cases, but that's acceptable because they aren't the only one who can get it. I worry that this will make other players not even bother with trying to get it once they've discovered the Hawkman is in the game (sort of like I usually never bother with going after the G-Library on Emperor unless I have really really good production).

With this and what you've said below, I think I see where we want to strike the balance here. Given Shandalle's flavor, connecting to the High King makes a lot of sense. But we don't want to always boost Shandalle's chances of being High King, we want to make it so that the player has some additional avenue that they can take to boost those chances.

Often, those approaches will end up with the same result: Shandalle will become High King more often than other civs, particularly on higher difficulties.

I don't think that's bad, it's part of their uniques (assuming we do choose a unique that's related to the High King event, which we may not in the end). If they didn't, then they'd be Byzantium, the civ with bonuses that they have no advantage in trying to leverage. As for players not even trying, the difference between that and it being "step up your game" moment is a balance thing. (And will vary wildly from player to player.) Plus, given the High King's placement in the progression of the game, there will be a fair percentage of games that Hawkwing is in where the player doesn't meet him until (after?) the High King event.

counterpoint said:
I think this is interesting mechanically, but I also think it's kind of *weird* to have the provincial bonus continue. It just makes things kind of complicated, I suppose. I suppose one cool thing is that this could make them have an advantage in the post-HK wars, though, of course, that's really rather unflavorful (the empire was destroyed in those wars!). I'm redding it, but I could be talked off that ledge.

No, I generally agree. Off the ledge it goes!

counterpoint said:
hmmm.... I feel like this would be a good *seanchan* ability. Here it feels weird. I know it's a nod to Luthair, but isn't Luthair already kind of a different thing? to me, the exploits of his folks are srt of separate from Shandalle, which was only occupied by the Westlands.

I dunno, I feel like the fact that their descendants go on to fight well elsewhere is a property of Hawkwing's empire. The Seanchan just fight well now, which is expressed in any old combat UU. The Seanchan could have other-continent-fighting-bonuses based on the Corenne flavor, but that's not what I'm going for with this ability.

However, I don't particularly like this UU anyway, so I'm fine with removing it.

counterpoint said:
yeah, that flavor kind of feels like it fits better as a cultural thing, or even a diplo thing.

I'm not totally wild about the -Z combat str aspect, though it fits the flavor decently. I think the -HP thing might be more interesting, but that aspect is also very much flavorfully weird. Not sure here. Magenta

I think my main problem with this one is something that came up with a few Seanchan uniques as well: it's primarily defensive. Though putting a Culture bonus on it as well (or an LW slot) could make it less so.

For the -HP, what if it decreased their maximum HP while they were in range instead?

counterpoint said:
ok, so at first I was thinking that this wasn't a UG at all, rather, it was just a UA in all but name... but then I realized that what you're suggesting IS actually inf act a separate governor type. How would you select it? Will there be a separate Custom Mission next to "become governor" that is "become Provincial Ruler" or will it be a pop-up menu? I suppose we don't need to decide that now.

Agreed, we don't really need to decide now. Both options you've mentioned are good ones. I'd lean towards a pop-up because it's harder for the player to do the wrong one by accident, but an extra mission would be easier to do (one less screen).

counterpoint said:
In any case, this is interesting because it gives the player a choice - a player could go through the game and always find it better to build other types of govs.

anyways, as far as the specifics:

I had to remind myself what the Palace was! while above I was opposed to things that guaranteed Sh would be the HK, this isn't quite so bad - it still requires the civ to choose this gov, and to try to build the wonder.

I covered this a bit above, I think I see where the difference is that makes you prefer this one! I'm generally in favor of this non-mandatory approach as well.

counterpoint said:
the second yield state is a little confusing, because the Provinces aren't all yield-based. The Prov of Wealth produces Gold, but the Prov of Honor gives you bonus XP from kills... how would that apply to a particular city? I'd worry that the HK would simply choose for Shandalle whatever Province type nullifies this bonus

The Provincial Ruler would probably need to have set city-specific yields for each province type. So Honor would probably give additional EXP to units trained in the city. (Or possibly give them a promotion that makes them better against Shadowspawn and Dragonsworn.) The others all seem relatively straightforward to apply a variant of the relevant effect to the PR's city.

The High King should totally keep in mind that Shandalle would benefit from any given provincial bonus in different ways. I think that creates a nice meta there. None of the PR bonuses should be useless, so the High King shouldn't be able to deny Shandalle their unique that way. However, the High King is free to give Shandalle a provincial bonus that doesn't line up with Shandalle's (presumed) gameplan. That's a key part of allocating provincial bonuses in general, I'd say.

However, all of those concerns could be rendered unnecessary by the Insightful Rule UA, which would be an awesome combo with this Governor type.

counterpoint said:
Otherwise, I do like this. I also like how it provides a gold option as well as a prestige option - Diplo, in particular should probably be a path for this civ!

Agreed, there should be diplo options! More on them below!

Also, do you have any opinions on this Governor coming from all LPs, just Great Captains and Ambassadors, or just from a different subset?

counterpoint said:
the new Not So Mighty is weird. It's both flavorful and not flavorful. I think it works well in that it shows the Hawk's "not the boss of me" attitude towards them, but on the other hand, the empire was likely Authority, and this one might be best tied to a more oppositional civ (liberation or oppression, etc.) Also, mechanically, I'm not sure this is good enough to warrant its own UA - it is cool to have a UA that interfaces with the Edicts though (the most oft-forgotten of our new mechanics!)

Good point about Edicts being underused! This gave me a great idea for Andor, which I've squirreled away in my uniques notes for when we get to them.

I don't think I like this one for Shandalle though, because it feels a bit niche. There are a number of non-refusable Edicts, which completely defeat this UA. Although, maybe there's something more we could do here to make this more effective. I've made an addition below.

counterpoint said:
Unite the world 1 is also weird. Thought of as a diplo option - sort of like gunboat diplomacy but less splashy. Too powerful or too easy to achieve?

I think it might be a bit too strong, but also it's not very fun. Players end up having to just station units near city states and then leave them there.

counterpoint said:
the second one is even weirder. Not sure we can do this, or if it'd even be a good idea, but It's *an* idea - trying to come up with other ways of representing the huge empire.

We can do this, but I don't think we should. Warmonger penalties are a property of how the other civs view a given civ, so it doesn't seem like a UA should be able to directly change how they make those considerations. It also only applies to AI opponents, an AI Shandalle would have no way of applying this UA to a human player.

counterpoint said:
The Circuit-Rover UB - I'm not sure which building this should be attached to. Also, should it create a Circuit Rover unit, or is that kind of cheating? Another way to do it would be to create a contemporary - or even obsolete - ranged unit.

I think creating the Circuit Rover unit is fine - it's much less "cheating" than our Aiel and Seanchan uniques! It will probably need to create a better unit later though, as you've said.

Shandalle Recap:

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level
Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"
Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive.
Years of Silent Rage, if your city is captured, gain +X% production and +X% combat strength against the capturing civilization for X turns
Popular Figurehead, cities do not go into Resistance when captured by Shandalle
Aspirational Leaders, Governors in Shandalle's cities can pick two bonuses each time they upgrade
Not So Mighty, the diplomatic and economic penalty for refusing Tower edicts is halved. Shandalle can refuse normally non-refusable Tower Edicts, preventing them from applying to any civilization.
Unite the World (units), when a military unit is stationed next to a City State (the actual tile), influence decay is halved (reduced to zero if 1)
Unite the World (conquest), warmonger penalties are halved
Diplomacy by Sword, capturing city-states gives Shandalle their Compact votes

UUs:

Golden Hawk Catapult (era 4 Siege) - can pillage a tile that has already been pillaged (endless siege or Tar Valon)
Circuit Rover (era 3-4 ranged) - weaker than comparable unit, but costs less production and gold, and has X% change of spawning adjacent to any city that is under direct attack of Shandalle's cities when it is attacked.
Golden Hawk Foot (era 3-4 melee) - something something
Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon

UBs:

Civil Guard House (replaces Era 3-4 XP building), lowers local unhappiness
Hall of the Magistrate (replaces Courthouse), something something...
Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and lose W HP per turn (small number, like 1-5)
Circuit Rover's Watch Station (replaces Era 3-4 XP or Defensive building), X% chance to spawn a Circuit Rover/contemporary ranged unit adjacent to the city when this city is attacked
Imperial Governor's Mansion, replaces DefenseX/EXPX (where X is the last one), can only be built in the conquered capitals of city-states, the Governor in this city produces double yields and Shandalle gains the Compact votes that would have been available from being the former city-state's ally.

UIs:

Siege Camp, built in opposing territory, allied units standing on or adjacent to it heal at the same rate as in a friendly city hex.
Forward Encampment, built only in foreign city-state territory, this city-state cannot declare war on Shandalle, even if its ally does. Shandalle can still declare war on it. (This presumably doesn't function when pillaged, so the ally civ could pillage it to drag the CS into the war.)

UGs:

Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by any LP, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:
- Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace
- During the High King event: doubles the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus
- After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

Some new stuff!

Diplomacy by Sword seems like it would be a lot of fun. What better way to win the diplo victory than by conquering loads of people? I almost put "non-Tar-Valon city-states" instead of just "city-states", but given the flavor and how well defended the Tower should be, if Shandalle can conquer and hold it, then it can have all of its Compact votes.

It's worth noting with that one that Shandalle would still miss out on the CS ally bonus after capturing the city-state, so they wouldn't be pushed towards never friending/allying with city-states. (Since the bonus is often the lion's share of why civs keep CS allies for most of the game.)

I noticed that we have quite a lot of candidates for Shandalle's UA, but not as many for its other uniques. (Considering we can pick only 1 UA and 3 of the others.) So I added Imperial Governor's Mansion as a UB version of the Diplomacy by Sword UA. I'm not sure if it works better this way. I thought it might require a Governor, but then it felt like it was too constrained where it could be built.

Forward Encampment can provide an interesting way to maintain (and develop) diplo relationships with CSes even when attacking other civs that may ally with them quite a lot. It also lets Shandalle set them up in CSes close to their homeland to prevent other civs from sniping those CSes late game and having them declare war on Shandalle, bringing an annoying little enemy right to their doorstep.

It could also come with an influence decay rate modifier, so Shandalle has better relationship with this CS? Or it could allow Shandalle to always be able to demand tribute from the CS (as often as the general "demand tribute" cooldown allows anyway)?

counterpoint · Jun 4, 2016

S3rgeus said:
I'm probably going to be out most of tomorrow, so I most likely won't post then. But I'll definitely be here on Sunday.

cool. I'm actually away from M-F this week for work. I should have time to post pretty regularly, though it'll likely be an ipad typo-fest...

S3rgeus said:
Regarding keeping all 3 approaches, we could make it replace HappinessX (maybe 3), instead of the Courthouse?

I think being misaligned with the UA is a big flaw. It really looks we like we missed that the two wouldn't work together at all. I can see what you mean about options, but I think it's really taking them away. It's forcing the player to choose which of their uniques they want to use, and choosing one precludes the other, which is not cool.

I'd say leave the current one there, as it does, as a building, seem to be good. I would say we should create an additional option for this purpose, though. I think a Happ building could work, but Happ + 1/2 tech cost increase plus Science/turn-without-AS is probably too powerful. Should we eliminate the 1/2 science bonus? But then it doesn't help warmongering directly...

I wonder if there's a more innocuous building to use as the "base" here.... other ideas? The nice thing about the courthouse is that it made it so it wasn't one of your "home" cities, which keeps it from ending up too abusable - that 1/2 tech cost increase applied to your first cities is pretty strong.

Another solution, though I don't love this, is to make another version of EVA that works on *annexed* cities - they periodically spit out a UU (but you can't directly produce it)

S3rgeus said:
Because of the way the provincial bonuses are allocated, I think Insightful Rule is quite strong. (Particularly when Shandalle is High King, where they get a provincial bonus and wouldn't have done so before.) The pairings of Powerful/Significant/Meager with each available province type are done automatically (relevant summary, because I needed to read this a few times now to make sure I had it right). If the High King is choosing, in a one particular game, who to give each of the following: "Powerful Industry", "Significant Wealth", "Significant Honor", "Meager Learning", "Meager Belief" etc. for all other Provincial bonuses. So Shandalle would pick first and presumably give themselves one of the Powerful or Significant ones (the one most appropriate to their game plan, or possibly even change their game plan according to which ones are available as Powerful or Significant).

nice to reread this. Yeah, you have it right - this is a cool mechanic!

I do think it's quite strong when you're the, but when you aren't, it only *might* be strong - in some cases, it would make zero difference (if the HK were to choose the one you'd want anyways). I don't love that aspect of it. It doesn't reward being the HK and not being it as evenly as some of the others do.

S3rgeus said:
The second one sounds like a good plan to me. If X is like 8 or maybe even more, then it will only be in effect when the player meaningfully loses something.

However, for the human Shandalle player, this UA has no effect unless the player is doing really badly (losing cities to the AI). Are we ok with that? It doesn't seem like a good representation of Hawkwing.

yeah, that's true. I like this one in theory, but that makes this a no-go for me.

S3rgeus said:
I'd be fine with subsequent pillages providing normal healing. That's something we can tweak for balance as well. Does an improvement being pillaged multiple times eventually get actually destroyed? That might be a nice niche.

Hmmm... That could be cool, but it's also something that's a bit more complex - we'd have to track much more about these tiles than normal (and more importantly, so would the player). If it was just once that would be more intuitive, but that would also be really lame. I suppose 3X could work, if need be. I could also imagine it being unlimited (which is why I would consider it being a different amount of healing.)

Just to be clear, are you thinking to destroy it as a way of harming the defender (they lose the improvement) or a way to restrain Shandalle? I see it as kind of annoying for both...

S3rgeus said:
Right, so range 2 siege weapons! That's good too. I do see what you mean about siege flavor in general below!

How come you don't consider non-ranged siege units "real siege weapons"? It seems to me that a specialization at attacking cities is the defining characteristic of a siege weapon, which can be achieved by melee units, as done with the Battering Ram and Siege Tower. (Given the Siege Tower's bonuses to nearby units, it seems to be a Breaching Tower, to my understanding.) I'm not suggesting we necessarily make this one a melee siege unit, I just want to understand your stance on siege units overall.

I mean that they aren't real siege weapons only in the game-mechanical term, where siege weapons are, except for the rocket one, ranged units that have to set up, and get a massive bonus against cities, but are lame against other things. The melee ones aren't that... they're melee ones. Of course, thematically, those melee ones are "real," but they function mechanically quite different. As I recall, the only siege UUs in BNW are 2 "normal ones" (Rome and Korea) and 2 "weird ones" (Huns and Assyria). I feel like that's a little weird. I like the weird ones, but I feel like we should make sure to include some normal ones.

Also, specifically, I feel like the ranged variety works best here - set up camp for months and starve them out while you eat til you're fat.

Also, I should say that I'm ok with the existence of range one "real" siege weapons as well (as opposed to melee ones). The machine-gun of siege.

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, I think making it cheaper is a good call. It is a bit of a weird ability on a UU though, as you say. It's more like a UA. And what happens after the unit becomes obsolete (or at least not useful because it's so weak, even if it doesn't technically obsolete, if we don't make it do so).

interesting. If we did that, maybe we'd need a companion ability for gifting units or upgrading units to make that less stupid. I suppose, as is, though, you'd just have a nice obsolete unit.... though I could see it also going obsolete with a tech or something.

S3rgeus said:
Agreed, do we want to just remove Siege Camp now, or are we really still considering it?

axe it

S3rgeus said:
If you're not conquering enemies, then it's entirely useless. But even if you are playing a warmonger, it's still not that strong. The cities you capture still have a bunch of their population lost and buildings destroyed, so they're still slow. It just saves you a few turns when you first capture them, which may speed up a sweep, but doesn't really give you many new capabilities.

I'll mark this as red.

good points.

S3rgeus said:
With this and what you've said below, I think I see where we want to strike the balance here. Given Shandalle's flavor, connecting to the High King makes a lot of sense. But we don't want to always boost Shandalle's chances of being High King, we want to make it so that the player has some additional avenue that they can take to boost those chances.

Often, those approaches will end up with the same result: Shandalle will become High King more often than other civs, particularly on higher difficulties.

I don't think that's bad, it's part of their uniques (assuming we do choose a unique that's related to the High King event, which we may not in the end). If they didn't, then they'd be Byzantium, the civ with bonuses that they have no advantage in trying to leverage. As for players not even trying, the difference between that and it being "step up your game" moment is a balance thing. (And will vary wildly from player to player.) Plus, given the High King's placement in the progression of the game, there will be a fair percentage of games that Hawkwing is in where the player doesn't meet him until (after?) the High King event.

hmm... I'd say they *do* need to have met everybody. I think it sort of only works if that is the case, right? That also makes sense, era-wise.

Also, the conditions for becoming HK is super vague and kind of unclear in that post linked to in the summary (since its mid conversation). Should we clarify those and put the full conditions in the summary?

S3rgeus said:
I think my main problem with this one is something that came up with a few Seanchan uniques as well: it's primarily defensive. Though putting a Culture bonus on it as well (or an LW slot) could make it less so.

For the -HP, what if it decreased their maximum HP while they were in range instead?

hmmm... interesting. Is that something easy to make intuitive for the player (especially the opponent)? That definitely does feel more like Morale.

S3rgeus said:
Agreed, we don't really need to decide now. Both options you've mentioned are good ones. I'd lean towards a pop-up because it's harder for the player to do the wrong one by accident, but an extra mission would be easier to do (one less screen).

the pop up "feels" better, I think.

S3rgeus said:
The Provincial Ruler would probably need to have set city-specific yields for each province type. So Honor would probably give additional EXP to units trained in the city. (Or possibly give them a promotion that makes them better against Shadowspawn and Dragonsworn.) The others all seem relatively straightforward to apply a variant of the relevant effect to the PR's city.

The High King should totally keep in mind that Shandalle would benefit from any given provincial bonus in different ways. I think that creates a nice meta there. None of the PR bonuses should be useless, so the High King shouldn't be able to deny Shandalle their unique that way. However, the High King is free to give Shandalle a provincial bonus that doesn't line up with Shandalle's (presumed) gameplan. That's a key part of allocating provincial bonuses in general, I'd say.

However, all of those concerns could be rendered unnecessary by the Insightful Rule UA, which would be an awesome combo with this Governor type.

re: Insightful Rule... yeah, pretty awesome, though making two abilities relate to this may not be what we want to do (do far "all in" on it?).

Obviously none of the province-types should give you nothing, but I don't love how some of them are intuitive and some are not, based on how things are currently phrased. Instead of saying it pays out a relevant yield, maybe it should just be that it "upgrades" whatever the ability is? I'm not trying to really talk semantics here - it seems sort of like a potentially substantive difference, unless I am misunderstanding it the way you've phrased it. Do you want it to be a "yield" necessarily?

S3rgeus said:
Agreed, there should be diplo options! More on them below!

Also, do you have any opinions on this Governor coming from all LPs, just Great Captains and Ambassadors, or just from a different subset?

I think all LPs, though I could understand going with GCs and Ambs, since then it requries the player to be either diplo-ey or warlike. preference?

S3rgeus said:
Good point about Edicts being underused! This gave me a great idea for Andor, which I've squirreled away in my uniques notes for when we get to them.

I don't think I like this one for Shandalle though, because it feels a bit niche. There are a number of non-refusable Edicts, which completely defeat this UA. Although, maybe there's something more we could do here to make this more effective. I've made an addition below.

I've magenta'd this, because I think we probably should red it, though I'm actually a bit confused. You're saying this would totally null the edict for everyone? implications?

S3rgeus said:
I think it might be a bit too strong, but also it's not very fun. Players end up having to just station units near city states and then leave them there.

oy, yeah. totally stupid.

S3rgeus said:
We can do this, but I don't think we should. Warmonger penalties are a property of how the other civs view a given civ, so it doesn't seem like a UA should be able to directly change how they make those considerations. It also only applies to AI opponents, an AI Shandalle would have no way of applying this UA to a human player.

agreed.

S3rgeus said:
I think creating the Circuit Rover unit is fine - it's much less "cheating" than our Aiel and Seanchan uniques! It will probably need to create a better unit later though, as you've said.

ok, we can leave the specifics for later, if this unit survives.

S3rgeus said:
Some new stuff!

Diplomacy by Sword seems like it would be a lot of fun. What better way to win the diplo victory than by conquering loads of people? I almost put "non-Tar-Valon city-states" instead of just "city-states", but given the flavor and how well defended the Tower should be, if Shandalle can conquer and hold it, then it can have all of its Compact votes.

It's worth noting with that one that Shandalle would still miss out on the CS ally bonus after capturing the city-state, so they wouldn't be pushed towards never friending/allying with city-states. (Since the bonus is often the lion's share of why civs keep CS allies for most of the game.)

this is interesting and quite powerful. I assume this applies to capturing a CS that someone else is currently owning, right?

Eh, I'm fine with including the Tower, though I can also see us not including it if it turns out to be too many votes once we've actually balanced all that.

I like this ability, but is is possibly too narrow? I suppose it doesn't just help the diplo victory, though, since it can help throughout the life of the compact. It is cool, the idea of winning a diplo victory through conquest.

I do think it's possibly too powerful, though, especially towards the late game when CS votes become bigger - should it maybe only give you half their votes or something (and the rest disappears), minimum 1, perhaps with some additional bonus to offset that? I know a few votes isn't much for the diplo victory, but in the stuff leading up to that (world religion, etc.), it could be huge.

I also do like that this makes liberating these cs's everyone's business!

S3rgeus said:
I noticed that we have quite a lot of candidates for Shandalle's UA, but not as many for its other uniques. (Considering we can pick only 1 UA and 3 of the others.) So I added Imperial Governor's Mansion as a UB version of the Diplomacy by Sword UA. I'm not sure if it works better this way. I thought it might require a Governor, but then it felt like it was too constrained where it could be built.

what do you mean by the capitals of city states? You mean as opposed to some other city they've somehow (rarely) captured?

Also, I wonder if double yields is a bit too powerful... pretty good, certainly.

I'm open to something like this, though.

S3rgeus said:
Forward Encampment can provide an interesting way to maintain (and develop) diplo relationships with CSes even when attacking other civs that may ally with them quite a lot. It also lets Shandalle set them up in CSes close to their homeland to prevent other civs from sniping those CSes late game and having them declare war on Shandalle, bringing an annoying little enemy right to their doorstep.

It could also come with an influence decay rate modifier, so Shandalle has better relationship with this CS? Or it could allow Shandalle to always be able to demand tribute from the CS (as often as the general "demand tribute" cooldown allows anyway)?

This one's pretty cool! I assume pillaging the tile would constitute a DoW against Shandalle, right (like the Feitoria)? Often this is moot, since the civ might already be at war, but just in case they are trying to be sneaky...

I agree that pillaging it should end it, but I wonder if that's too easy to break it, then... I wouldn't want Shandalle to have to militarily defend all these non-ally city states just against that... Any other suggestions? If it were somehow repaired, would that end the war? That makes sense, but is also kind of weird.

An influence decay rate is interesting, but I don't know if having it be a flat -1 is right - for parts of the game, that would remove all decay, right?

I've honestly never demanded tribute (!) so it's hard for me to judge what affect that would have. Is that particuularly useful?

Recap!

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level
Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"
Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive.
Years of Silent Rage, if your city is captured, gain +X% production and +X% combat strength against the capturing civilization for X turns
Aspirational Leaders, Governors in Shandalle's cities can pick two bonuses each time they upgrade
Not So Mighty, the diplomatic and economic penalty for refusing Tower edicts is halved. Shandalle can refuse normally non-refusable Tower Edicts, preventing them from applying to any civilization.
Diplomacy by Sword, capturing city-states gives Shandalle their Compact votes

UUs:

Golden Hawk Catapult (era 4 Siege) - can pillage a tile that has already been pillaged (endless siege or Tar Valon)
Circuit Rover (era 3-4 ranged) - weaker than comparable unit, but costs less production and gold, and has X% change of spawning adjacent to any of Shandalle's cities when it is attacked.
Golden Hawk Foot (era 3-4 melee) - something something
Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon

UBs:

Civil Guard House (replaces Era 3-4 XP building), lowers local unhappiness
Hall of the Magistrate (replaces Courthouse), something something...
Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and lose W HP per turn (small number, like 1-5)
Circuit Rover's Watch Station (replaces Era 3-4 XP or Defensive building), X% chance to spawn a Circuit Rover/contemporary ranged unit adjacent to the city when this city is attacked
Imperial Governor's Mansion, replaces DefenseX/EXPX (where X is the last one), can only be built in the conquered capitals of city-states, the Governor in this city produces double yields and Shandalle gains the Compact votes that would have been available from being the former city-state's ally.

UIs:

Siege Camp, built in opposing territory, allied units standing on or adjacent to it heal at the same rate as in a friendly city hex.
Forward Encampment, built only in foreign city-state territory, this city-state cannot declare war on Shandalle, even if its ally does. Shandalle can still declare war on it. (This presumably doesn't function when pillaged, so the ally civ could pillage it to drag the CS into the war, though that constitutes a declaration of war against Shandalle.)

UGs:

Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by any LP, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:
- Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace
- During the High King event: doubles the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus
- After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

Cool! Nothing more to add tonight!

S3rgeus · Jun 5, 2016

counterpoint said:
cool. I'm actually away from M-F this week for work. I should have time to post pretty regularly, though it'll likely be an ipad typo-fest...

I'll go easy on the typo puns for this week!

counterpoint said:
I'd say leave the current one there, as it does, as a building, seem to be good. I would say we should create an additional option for this purpose, though. I think a Happ building could work, but Happ + 1/2 tech cost increase plus Science/turn-without-AS is probably too powerful. Should we eliminate the 1/2 science bonus? But then it doesn't help warmongering directly...

I wonder if there's a more innocuous building to use as the "base" here.... other ideas? The nice thing about the courthouse is that it made it so it wasn't one of your "home" cities, which keeps it from ending up too abusable - that 1/2 tech cost increase applied to your first cities is pretty strong.

Another solution, though I don't love this, is to make another version of EVA that works on *annexed* cities - they periodically spit out a UU (but you can't directly produce it)

EVA for annexed cities seems a bit weird because it attributes a non-active mechanic (the player doesn't choose, the units just pop up) to cities that specifically have more agency than puppets. I think the way it works now is a good puppet-y ability.

However, any UB that needs to be built in the actual captured cities isn't going to coordinate well with the puppet EVA UA, because the player has no way to actually tell the city to build it. We could make one of the other, non-Courthouse buildings buildable only in captured cities to temper the bonus (so replacing one of the Happiness or Science buildings), but since it replaces that building, I'm finding this often leads to penalizing the Seanchan home cities since they can't build the "normal" building nor the unique one. That doesn't seem like the right way to do it either.

The other alternative is to replace one of the national buildings and give it some kind of effect that gives the Seanchan benefits based on how many puppets they have. However, this would make the optimal Seanchan a kind of weird Tall-warlike civ (since national buildings are easier to build with fewer non-puppet cities), and Seanchan is one of the very few definitely very Wide civs in the flavor.

Another option would be to replace a national building and do the per-puppet bonus I describe above, but also not require all of the buildings it normally does in all cities in order to be built. (So, a UB replacement for the National College that you can build even with non-puppet cities that don't have a Library.) This could act as a sort of tech-and-building-gated UA-like effect, which combos better with EVA than a normal building.

Removing the 1/2 tech cost bonus could also go a ways to making it more reasonable on Seanchan home cities.

counterpoint said:
nice to reread this. Yeah, you have it right - this is a cool mechanic!

I do think it's quite strong when you're the, but when you aren't, it only *might* be strong - in some cases, it would make zero difference (if the HK were to choose the one you'd want anyways). I don't love that aspect of it. It doesn't reward being the HK and not being it as evenly as some of the others do.

But in the case where it wasn't going to make a difference, you have no way of knowing if that was the case. You don't know what the AI would have picked, because you'll just get the one you wanted, which will always be a benefit. I do agree that we could couple this with a bonus to the provincial bonus yield if we find that it's not strong enough later though.

counterpoint said:
Hmmm... That could be cool, but it's also something that's a bit more complex - we'd have to track much more about these tiles than normal (and more importantly, so would the player). If it was just once that would be more intuitive, but that would also be really lame. I suppose 3X could work, if need be. I could also imagine it being unlimited (which is why I would consider it being a different amount of healing.)

Just to be clear, are you thinking to destroy it as a way of harming the defender (they lose the improvement) or a way to restrain Shandalle? I see it as kind of annoying for both...

Good call, the extent that the improvement is "damaged" on top of the usual pillage would need to be tracked. Though to avoid that we could make it a "single instance" thing. So it only counts for a single unit on a single hex over time. You can't swap units around or anything like that. (So it's for long sieges, like Hawkwing's siege of Tar Valon!) So moving the unit would end it, then it doesn't need to be tracked over time, just as long as the unit stands there.

counterpoint said:
I mean that they aren't real siege weapons only in the game-mechanical term, where siege weapons are, except for the rocket one, ranged units that have to set up, and get a massive bonus against cities, but are lame against other things. The melee ones aren't that... they're melee ones. Of course, thematically, those melee ones are "real," but they function mechanically quite different. As I recall, the only siege UUs in BNW are 2 "normal ones" (Rome and Korea) and 2 "weird ones" (Huns and Assyria). I feel like that's a little weird. I like the weird ones, but I feel like we should make sure to include some normal ones.

Also, specifically, I feel like the ranged variety works best here - set up camp for months and starve them out while you eat til you're fat.

Also, I should say that I'm ok with the existence of range one "real" siege weapons as well (as opposed to melee ones). The machine-gun of siege.

Sounds good. It seems our main difference here is terminology, rather than the mechanics! I'd consider siege units to be a mechanic that's one step up from distinguishing the melee and ranged siege units. So anything that's specialized in attacking cities. The melee/ranged distinction affects the turn by turn tactics of how you use that individual unit (and what kinds of armies you'd send with them).

If we want to be more like BNW, we could lean far toward the ranged siege units like it does. And that would definitely be a sound approach. It's also worth considering, if we make "melee siege units" our "default" siege units, it may make sieges last longer in general, since bringing melee siege units to bear is more difficult, and not as many can engage a single city simultaneously.

Possibly something we should address later?

counterpoint said:
interesting. If we did that, maybe we'd need a companion ability for gifting units or upgrading units to make that less stupid. I suppose, as is, though, you'd just have a nice obsolete unit.... though I could see it also going obsolete with a tech or something.

Obsolete units is an existing concept in BNW (which I figured we were keeping, though that's of course up for discussion). It's what makes older units unproduceable after a specific tech (often because there are better alternatives available). It's not usual (and I don't think very sensible) to give players units that have already become obsolete. (Existing cities that are producing obsoleted units get shifted over to the next unit in their upgrade path automatically.)

This is why this feels more like a UA to me, because keeping it going throughout the game, which you'd probably want to do to keep it relevant, exists beyond the context of the single unit.

counterpoint said:
hmm... I'd say they *do* need to have met everybody. I think it sort of only works if that is the case, right? That also makes sense, era-wise.

This is quite interesting, the High King and the Compact founding (first time all players are guaranteed to have met each other) are happening around the same part of the tree. I think it's quite possible to have a High King that hasn't met all civs. (And certainly possible for there to be some civs who haven't met each other until after the High King is crowned, which the more general case that we're talking about here in relation to players knowing whether they're competing with Hawkwing.) Also notably, Treatises (High King tech) doesn't have a prereq back to The New Tongue (Compact tech). The tech that unlocks the High King's palace may end up in a similar condition.

The trade routes trigger requires that civ to have met everyone. The warmonger High King requirement very specifically doesn't require meeting all players. (Only need to meet half of them.)

In all of these cases though, the player could quite likely have invested in their approach to becoming High King already, before meeting Hawkwing (how they choose to beeline techs, distribute trade routes, etc), even if they do meet him before anyone is crowned High King.

In terms of how that would work (High King distributing bonuses and possibly not knowing some civs), I think taking the same approach as the rest of civ would be fine. "An unknown civilization has been crowned High King." Said unknown High King would have to choose which provincial bonus to give any "unknown civilizations" without knowing who they are (potentially dangerous risk the High King takes for not having explored the world). When those civs receive their provincial bonus, they get a "you have received X province bonus" notification or pop up or whatever normally happens.

Restricting the provincial bonuses to civs that have met the High King is possible, but seems like it is quite punishing to those civs in a way that's not very fair. The flavor of having "provinces" that the High King doesn't know who they are is a bit odd, but it strikes me as the kind of oddity that CiV embraces. It also makes general sense in the canon, since Shara and the nations on Seanchan were (relatively, in Shara's case) unaffected by Hawkwing during the actual "High King event" section of the books timeline. The Seanchan civs are even a good example of civs that hadn't been met at the time by the High King.

counterpoint said:
Also, the conditions for becoming HK is super vague and kind of unclear in that post linked to in the summary (since its mid conversation). Should we clarify those and put the full conditions in the summary?

Yes, this is super vague at the moment. It's my understanding (from rereading that part of the thread) that it works like so:

One civilization per game is crowned High King when they are the first to achieve any of the following conditions:
- Control numberOfPlayers/2 (rounded up) original capitals
- Construct the High King's Palace wonder
- Research the Treatises technology
- Have established a trade route with every (original? current?) capital in the game simultaneously

I suggested a possible Path-based condition before, but I think we decided against that.

We also had a DoF/Accord-based condition, that was originally our "primary" condition. However, I'm finding the above list quite compelling without it. What do you think?

I can add this to the Diplo summary when we're finished ironing it out here.

counterpoint said:
hmmm... interesting. Is that something easy to make intuitive for the player (especially the opponent)? That definitely does feel more like Morale.

For the opponent, it might be a bit weird. A loss of maximum HP would presumably reduce a full health unit's current HP to that maximum as well. That "loss of life" would persist when they left the aura? Otherwise, they would effectively be healed, even if they were damaged, by stepping outside the aura, which would be super weird.

counterpoint said:
re: Insightful Rule... yeah, pretty awesome, though making two abilities relate to this may not be what we want to do (do far "all in" on it?).

Obviously none of the province-types should give you nothing, but I don't love how some of them are intuitive and some are not, based on how things are currently phrased. Instead of saying it pays out a relevant yield, maybe it should just be that it "upgrades" whatever the ability is? I'm not trying to really talk semantics here - it seems sort of like a potentially substantive difference, unless I am misunderstanding it the way you've phrased it. Do you want it to be a "yield" necessarily?

I think that "relevant yield" text is just for us for now. For the actual player, we could put text in the list of provincial bonuses that would tell them about the specific effect on their Provincial Rulers that each province would have. No guessing or inference needed on their part, it just says what it does for each one. The Provincial Ruler's text itself could just say "produces a yield based on which provincial bonus Shandalle has when the High King is crowned" or something along those lines.

I don't think the two abilities is too all-in. The Provincial Ruler is useful in its own right, completely separately from the High King event. (Even if you disable the High King event, for example, it still produces yields.) Its behavior is just connected to that event as well, which happens to link in very well with the UA.

counterpoint said:
I think all LPs, though I could understand going with GCs and Ambs, since then it requries the player to be either diplo-ey or warlike. preference?

I'm leaning towards GCs and Ambs. Allowing all LPs will let them put one in every city, no matter which victory they try to go for, which I don't think this unique is really intended to do. It should be reward a Shandalle-like High King strategy, rather than reward you during the High King event regardless of what you do. Though a good argument could be made for it doing the latter.

counterpoint said:
I've magenta'd this, because I think we probably should red it, though I'm actually a bit confused. You're saying this would totally null the edict for everyone? implications?

Yeah, I'm saying for the Edicts that would not normally be refusable, Shandalle can incur the (reduced, for them) Edict refusal penalty in order to refuse the whole thing, and make it just not happen. So, if you look at the Edict list for examples of this, things like Bowl of Winds and Reflections in Tel'aran'rhiod are global positives that players can't "refuse" because it doesn't apply to their actual civ directly, but instead to the state of the game. However, each of those positives will reward some players more than others, so Shandalle may see advantage in refusing and stopping the Bowl of Winds project from happening.

counterpoint said:
this is interesting and quite powerful. I assume this applies to capturing a CS that someone else is currently owning, right?

Eh, I'm fine with including the Tower, though I can also see us not including it if it turns out to be too many votes once we've actually balanced all that.

I like this ability, but is is possibly too narrow? I suppose it doesn't just help the diplo victory, though, since it can help throughout the life of the compact. It is cool, the idea of winning a diplo victory through conquest.

I do think it's possibly too powerful, though, especially towards the late game when CS votes become bigger - should it maybe only give you half their votes or something (and the rest disappears), minimum 1, perhaps with some additional bonus to offset that? I know a few votes isn't much for the diplo victory, but in the stuff leading up to that (world religion, etc.), it could be huge.

I also do like that this makes liberating these cs's everyone's business!

Yeah, it would apply to any CS.

Agreed on the Tower.

I think in the late game, players should be responding to Shandalle's UA by liberating those CSes, as you've touched on here. Decreasing the number of votes they get out of it is something we can tweak for balance. I'd be inclined to go for full votes to start with and calibrate downwards if needed. All of those votes are already available, often in exchange for piles of gold, and maintaining a big army that can go and stomp on city-states around the world (and their friends who get annoyed with Shandalle for attacking the CSes) is effectively a huge gold and production cost.

Most of the discussion for this UA applies to the UB below as well, since the UB affords Shandalle basically the same ability.

counterpoint said:
what do you mean by the capitals of city states? You mean as opposed to some other city they've somehow (rarely) captured?

Yep! In fact, for completeness, it should probably be the "capitals of eliminated city-states", otherwise its votes could potentially be available twice!

counterpoint said:
Also, I wonder if double yields is a bit too powerful... pretty good, certainly.

I'm open to something like this, though.

Yeah, double yields could be too much, we can tweak it down to lower %s if it's too strong.

counterpoint said:
This one's pretty cool! I assume pillaging the tile would constitute a DoW against Shandalle, right (like the Feitoria)? Often this is moot, since the civ might already be at war, but just in case they are trying to be sneaky...

I agree that pillaging it should end it, but I wonder if that's too easy to break it, then... I wouldn't want Shandalle to have to militarily defend all these non-ally city states just against that... Any other suggestions? If it were somehow repaired, would that end the war? That makes sense, but is also kind of weird.

Yeah, DoW for pillaging makes sense.

Ending the war when it was repaired would make some sense, but is quite weird, as you've said. It also wouldn't happen all for most instances of this improvement being pillaged since Shandalle is at war with the CS then, so getting a worker there would be tough. It would likely only be worth it if the CS was a thorn-in-the-side position near Shandalle's homeland, in which case they would have it well defended anyway.

We could make the CSes themselves "defend" it quite often, since it's probably not in their interest to go to war with someone. This would be uber frustrating for a human player fighting an AI Shandalle though.

It is still pillaging an improvement in a CS, which costs influence with that CS. So that's a discouraging factor to pillaging them indiscriminately, since their presence only matters to you if you're at war with Shandalle and allied with that CS.

counterpoint said:
An influence decay rate is interesting, but I don't know if having it be a flat -1 is right - for parts of the game, that would remove all decay, right?

Yeah, it's not an essential part of the improvement, but it would mean it's worthwhile for Shandalle even in situations where they're not trying to stymie an enemy's allied CS (or steal them).

counterpoint said:
I've honestly never demanded tribute (!) so it's hard for me to judge what affect that would have. Is that particuularly useful?

It would be worth a lot of gold and workers, since they could do it quite often. The CS would hate Shandalle pretty quickly (as would any ally of that CS, if it has one). But the CS itself would be unable to DoW.

Recap!

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level
Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"
Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive.
Aspirational Leaders, Governors in Shandalle's cities can pick two bonuses each time they upgrade
Not So Mighty, the diplomatic and economic penalty for refusing Tower edicts is halved. Shandalle can refuse normally non-refusable Tower Edicts, preventing them from applying to any civilization.
Diplomacy by Sword, capturing city-states gives Shandalle their Compact votes

UUs:

Golden Hawk Catapult (era 4 Siege) - can pillage a tile that has already been pillaged (endless siege or Tar Valon)
Circuit Rover (era 3-4 ranged) - weaker than comparable unit, but costs less production and gold, and has X% change of spawning adjacent to any of Shandalle's cities when it is attacked.
Golden Hawk Foot (era 3-4 melee) - something something
Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon

UBs:

Civil Guard House (replaces Era 3-4 XP building), lowers local unhappiness
Hall of the Magistrate (replaces Courthouse), something something...
Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and lose W HP per turn (small number, like 1-5)
Circuit Rover's Watch Station (replaces Era 3-4 XP or Defensive building), X% chance to spawn a Circuit Rover/contemporary ranged unit adjacent to the city when this city is attacked
Imperial Governor's Mansion, replaces DefenseX/EXPX (where X is the last one), can only be built in the conquered capitals of city-states, the Governor in this city produces double yields and Shandalle gains the Compact votes that would have been available from being the former city-state's ally.

UIs:

Forward Encampment, built only in foreign city-state territory, this city-state cannot declare war on Shandalle, even if its ally does. Shandalle can still declare war on it. Pillaging this improvement constitutes a declaration of war against Shandalle.

UGs:

Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by any LP, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:
- Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace
- During the High King event: doubles the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus
- After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

I don't have more to add this time either, though I'm not sure if this should be the final list.

Looking at it a bit more holistically, does Shandalle have any locks? I'm not particularly aware of any flavor that we need to include, even though we have a decent amount of stuff to choose from.

If I were to pick a set now, this is what makes me think we don't really have a final list yet.

I would go for the Insightful Rule UA, the Provincial Ruler UG, and the Imperial Governor's Mansion UB, but I'm not particularly leaning towards any of the others for the final slot. Forward Encampment is cool, but we're still ironing out potential pitfalls for it above.

And I feel a Dom heavy civ should have at least one UU, but none of them are really jumping at me. I feel like Golden Hawk Catapult is probably the best fit, followed by Captors of Guaire. Maybe it's ok for the UU to not be so "out there" given how the other uniques would work though.

counterpoint · Jun 6, 2016

S3rgeus said:
I'll go easy on the typo puns for this week!

thanks!

S3rgeus said:
EVA for annexed cities seems a bit weird because it attributes a non-active mechanic (the player doesn't choose, the units just pop up) to cities that specifically have more agency than puppets. I think the way it works now is a good puppet-y ability.

However, any UB that needs to be built in the actual captured cities isn't going to coordinate well with the puppet EVA UA, because the player has no way to actually tell the city to build it. We could make one of the other, non-Courthouse buildings buildable only in captured cities to temper the bonus (so replacing one of the Happiness or Science buildings), but since it replaces that building, I'm finding this often leads to penalizing the Seanchan home cities since they can't build the "normal" building nor the unique one. That doesn't seem like the right way to do it either.

The other alternative is to replace one of the national buildings and give it some kind of effect that gives the Seanchan benefits based on how many puppets they have. However, this would make the optimal Seanchan a kind of weird Tall-warlike civ (since national buildings are easier to build with fewer non-puppet cities), and Seanchan is one of the very few definitely very Wide civs in the flavor.

Another option would be to replace a national building and do the per-puppet bonus I describe above, but also not require all of the buildings it normally does in all cities in order to be built. (So, a UB replacement for the National College that you can build even with non-puppet cities that don't have a Library.) This could act as a sort of tech-and-building-gated UA-like effect, which combos better with EVA than a normal building.

Removing the 1/2 tech cost bonus could also go a ways to making it more reasonable on Seanchan home cities.

ugh! Hate this!

I'm not sure I love any of the above options.... I think the nat wonder idea has potential, but the adjustments we would have to make to make it fit wide cigs feel sort of in harmonious with nat wonders in general...

Perhaps instead it is simply a happ or sci building that gives you bonus science based on the total number of puppeted cities. This amount of science would be chosen, and could scale, such that it functions as a sort of off set, similar in effect to the half thing we originally considered. Add to this a channeling element and we might have a complicat d little ub that fits the bill...

S3rgeus said:
But in the case where it wasn't going to make a difference, you have no way of knowing if that was the case. You don't know what the AI would have picked, because you'll just get the one you wanted, which will always be a benefit. I do agree that we could couple this with a bonus to the provincial bonus yield if we find that it's not strong enough later though.

I'd be in favor of that, even now.

S3rgeus said:
Good call, the extent that the improvement is "damaged" on top of the usual pillage would need to be tracked. Though to avoid that we could make it a "single instance" thing. So it only counts for a single unit on a single hex over time. You can't swap units around or anything like that. (So it's for long sieges, like Hawkwing's siege of Tar Valon!) So moving the unit would end it, then it doesn't need to be tracked over time, just as long as the unit stands there.

i mostly like that! Do you think it is intuitive?

S3rgeus said:
Sounds good. It seems our main difference here is terminology, rather than the mechanics! I'd consider siege units to be a mechanic that's one step up from distinguishing the melee and ranged siege units. So anything that's specialized in attacking cities. The melee/ranged distinction affects the turn by turn tactics of how you use that individual unit (and what kinds of armies you'd send with them).

If we want to be more like BNW, we could lean far toward the ranged siege units like it does. And that would definitely be a sound approach. It's also worth considering, if we make "melee siege units" our "default" siege units, it may make sieges last longer in general, since bringing melee siege units to bear is more difficult, and not as many can engage a single city simultaneously.

Possibly something we should address later?

probably can be addressed later. In general I'm fine with keeping things similar to bnw though.

I could see us starting out with one range, or even melee siege units, and then expanding as the tech tree progresses into later eras

S3rgeus said:
Obsolete units is an existing concept in BNW (which I figured we were keeping, though that's of course up for discussion). It's what makes older units unproduceable after a specific tech (often because there are better alternatives available). It's not usual (and I don't think very sensible) to give players units that have already become obsolete. (Existing cities that are producing obsoleted units get shifted over to the next unit in their upgrade path automatically.)

This is why this feels more like a UA to me, because keeping it going throughout the game, which you'd probably want to do to keep it relevant, exists beyond the context of the single unit.

definitely also figured that obsolescence would remain a thing for us.

I agree that this makes it fit better as a ua, though I do think it's not impossible to justify giving free obsolete units. They can always be upgraded, of course.whoknows, maybe part of the featur s of the unit is that it's upgrade cost decreases in later eras

S3rgeus said:
This is quite interesting, the High King and the Compact founding (first time all players are guaranteed to have met each other) are happening around the same part of the tree. I think it's quite possible to have a High King that hasn't met all civs. (And certainly possible for there to be some civs who haven't met each other until after the High King is crowned, which the more general case that we're talking about here in relation to players knowing whether they're competing with Hawkwing.) Also notably, Treatises (High King tech) doesn't have a prereq back to The New Tongue (Compact tech). The tech that unlocks the High King's palace may end up in a similar condition.

The trade routes trigger requires that civ to have met everyone. The warmonger High King requirement very specifically doesn't require meeting all players. (Only need to meet half of them.)

In all of these cases though, the player could quite likely have invested in their approach to becoming High King already, before meeting Hawkwing (how they choose to beeline techs, distribute trade routes, etc), even if they do meet him before anyone is crowned High King.

In terms of how that would work (High King distributing bonuses and possibly not knowing some civs), I think taking the same approach as the rest of civ would be fine. "An unknown civilization has been crowned High King." Said unknown High King would have to choose which provincial bonus to give any "unknown civilizations" without knowing who they are (potentially dangerous risk the High King takes for not having explored the world). When those civs receive their provincial bonus, they get a "you have received X province bonus" notification or pop up or whatever normally happens.

Restricting the provincial bonuses to civs that have met the High King is possible, but seems like it is quite punishing to those civs in a way that's not very fair. The flavor of having "provinces" that the High King doesn't know who they are is a bit odd, but it strikes me as the kind of oddity that CiV embraces. It also makes general sense in the canon, since Shara and the nations on Seanchan were (relatively, in Shara's case) unaffected by Hawkwing during the actual "High King event" section of the books timeline. The Seanchan civs are even a good example of civs that hadn't been met at the time by the High King.

Ok, if mechanically it makes sense that the hk is crowned even if all civs haven't been met, then yes, I suppose granting unknown civs prov bonuses is sensible. Wouldn't want to exclud them.

S3rgeus said:
Yes, this is super vague at the moment. It's my understanding (from rereading that part of the thread) that it works like so:

One civilization per game is crowned High King when they are the first to achieve any of the following conditions:

Control numberOfPlayers/2 (rounded up) original capitals

Construct the High King's Palace wonder

Research the Treatises technology

Have established a trade route with every (original? current?) capital in the game simultaneously

I suggested a possible Path-based condition before, but I think we decided against that.

We also had a DoF/Accord-based condition, that was originally our "primary" condition. However, I'm finding the above list quite compelling without it. What do you think?

I can add this to the Diplo summary when we're finished ironing it out here.

question. Is there an tech that must be reached before this is achievable? Duel maps and the like make the trade and Dom routes kind of nutty if there aren't.....

Sorry, it's hard toe check now. Is treatises early era five?

In general, these are fine. Regarding the dof or accords, I ink we can probably still pursue those. Would it be something like having a dof with x number of civs? Also, what were we thinkIng an accord would do?

S3rgeus said:
For the opponent, it might be a bit weird. A loss of maximum HP would presumably reduce a full health unit's current HP to that maximum as well. That "loss of life" would persist when they left the aura? Otherwise, they would effectively be healed, even if they were damaged, by stepping outside the aura, which would be super weird.

yeah, that's how it would have to work

S3rgeus said:
I think that "relevant yield" text is just for us for now. For the actual player, we could put text in the list of provincial bonuses that would tell them about the specific effect on their Provincial Rulers that each province would have. No guessing or inference needed on their part, it just says what it does for each one. The Provincial Ruler's text itself could just say "produces a yield based on which provincial bonus Shandalle has when the High King is crowned" or something along those lines.

I don't think the two abilities is too all-in. The Provincial Ruler is useful in its own right, completely separately from the High King event. (Even if you disable the High King event, for example, it still produces yields.) Its behavior is just connected to that event as well, which happens to link in very well with the UA.

Ok. Fine with all of this

S3rgeus said:
I'm leaning towards GCs and Ambs. Allowing all LPs will let them put one in every city, no matter which victory they try to go for, which I don't think this unique is really intended to do. It should be reward a Shandalle-like High King strategy, rather than reward you during the High King event regardless of what you do. Though a good argument could be made for it doing the latter.

Yeah. I could be fine with just gc and amb

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, I'm saying for the Edicts that would not normally be refusable, Shandalle can incur the (reduced, for them) Edict refusal penalty in order to refuse the whole thing, and make it just not happen. So, if you look at the Edict list for examples of this, things like Bowl of Winds and Reflections in Tel'aran'rhiod are global positives that players can't "refuse" because it doesn't apply to their actual civ directly, but instead to the state of the game. However, each of those positives will reward some players more than others, so Shandalle may see advantage in refusing and stopping the Bowl of Winds project from happening.

ah, I got it. I think we still don't think this is a great match though.

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, it would apply to any CS.

Agreed on the Tower.

I think in the late game, players should be responding to Shandalle's UA by liberating those CSes, as you've touched on here. Decreasing the number of votes they get out of it is something we can tweak for balance. I'd be inclined to go for full votes to start with and calibrate downwards if needed. All of those votes are already available, often in exchange for piles of gold, and maintaining a big army that can go and stomp on city-states around the world (and their friends who get annoyed with Shandalle for attacking the CSes) is effectively a huge gold and production cost.

Most of the discussion for this UA applies to the UB below as well, since the UB affords Shandalle basically the same ability.

sounds good. We can keep their votes full for now

S3rgeus said:
Yep! In fact, for completeness, it should probably be the "capitals of eliminated city-states", otherwise its votes could potentially be available twice!

yeah, makes sense

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, double yields could be too much, we can tweak it down to lower %s if it's too strong.

Agreed

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, DoW for pillaging makes sense.

Ending the war when it was repaired would make some sense, but is quite weird, as you've said. It also wouldn't happen all for most instances of this improvement being pillaged since Shandalle is at war with the CS then, so getting a worker there would be tough. It would likely only be worth it if the CS was a thorn-in-the-side position near Shandalle's homeland, in which case they would have it well defended anyway.

We could make the CSes themselves "defend" it quite often, since it's probably not in their interest to go to war with someone. This would be uber frustrating for a human player fighting an AI Shandalle though.

It is still pillaging an improvement in a CS, which costs influence with that CS. So that's a discouraging factor to pillaging them indiscriminately, since their presence only matters to you if you're at war with Shandalle and allied with that CS.

hmmmm... I'm thinks no any of the ways around this issue just complicate it... What do you think we should do? Just allow the war to immediately end and leave it at that?

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, it's not an essential part of the improvement, but it would mean it's worthwhile for Shandalle even in situations where they're not trying to stymie an enemy's allied CS (or steal them).

i guess I'm just concerned that it is too good, such that this non essential component becomes a focus in many cases

S3rgeus said:
It would be worth a lot of gold and workers, since they could do it quite often. The CS would hate Shandalle pretty quickly (as would any ally of that CS, if it has one). But the CS itself would be unable to DoW.

true

Recap!

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level
Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"
Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive and gain boosted yields
Aspirational Leaders, Governors in Shandalle's cities can pick two bonuses each time they upgrade
Not So Mighty, the diplomatic and economic penalty for refusing Tower edicts is halved. Shandalle can refuse normally non-refusable Tower Edicts, preventing them from applying to any civilization.
Diplomacy by Sword, capturing city-states gives Shandalle their Compact votes

UUs:

Golden Hawk Catapult (era 4 Siege) - after pillaging an unpillaged tile, can continually pillage the same tile until moving off of that tile.
Circuit Rover (era 3-4 ranged) - weaker than comparable unit, but costs less production and gold, and has X% change of spawning adjacent to any of Shandalle's cities when it is attacked.
Golden Hawk Foot (era 3-4 melee) - something something
Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon

UBs:

Civil Guard House (replaces Era 3-4 XP building), lowers local unhappiness
Hall of the Magistrate (replaces Courthouse), something something...
Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and have lower maximum HP
Circuit Rover's Watch Station (replaces Era 3-4 XP or Defensive building), X% chance to spawn a Circuit Rover/contemporary ranged unit adjacent to the city when this city is attacked
Imperial Governor's Mansion, replaces DefenseX/EXPX (where X is the last one), can only be built in the conquered capitals of city-states, the Governor in this city produces double yields and Shandalle gains the Compact votes that would have been available from being the former city-state's ally.

UIs:

Forward Encampment, built only in foreign city-state territory, this city-state cannot declare war on Shandalle, even if its ally does. Shandalle can still declare war on it. Pillaging this improvement constitutes a declaration of war against Shandalle.

UGs:

Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by any LP, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:
- Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace
- During the High King event: improves the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus
- After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

Ok, tried to do some chopping up of items that it seems we don't need or aren't that interested in. Don't think any warrant specific discussion.

S3rgeus said:
I don't have more to add this time either, though I'm not sure if this should be the final list.

Looking at it a bit more holistically, does Shandalle have any locks? I'm not particularly aware of any flavor that we need to include, even though we have a decent amount of stuff to choose from.

I agree that there are no locks, though I would say we should probably be locked into including either a governor related or a hi related ability. In other words, include at least one of our new mechanics

S3rgeus said:
If I were to pick a set now, this is what makes me think we don't really have a final list yet.

I would go for the Insightful Rule UA, the Provincial Ruler UG, and the Imperial Governor's Mansion UB, but I'm not particularly leaning towards any of the others for the final slot. Forward Encampment is cool, but we're still ironing out potential pitfalls for it above.

And I feel a Dom heavy civ should have at least one UU, but none of them are really jumping at me. I feel like Golden Hawk Catapult is probably the best fit, followed by Captors of Guaire. Maybe it's ok for the UU to not be so "out there" given how the other uniques would work though.

I understand your hesitation, how none of them jump out as obviously. However, I think that that is the true normal, and what we had with the first few civs may have set up unrealistic expectations. I'm not saying this list is done, but it might be done. Remember, we only need one set in the end!

I do also think that a uu is pretty much mandatory, or some battle related ability, who ch we haven't been considering. I do the no your proposed set is pretty good, and I think e siege uu would be the right choice as the last ability

I also like provincial dominance as a ua. Diplo by the sword could work too.

I could be ok with the statue ub,but I'd want to make sure the other abilities covered diplo or gov stuff

I don't specifically have a full alternate set though

S3rgeus · Jun 7, 2016

The forum has changed! All of the colors are different and we have a CiVI header! The times, they are a'changin'.

counterpoint said:
thanks!

It must've been tough to write so much on a tablet!

counterpoint said:
ugh! Hate this!

I'm not sure I love any of the above options.... I think the nat wonder idea has potential, but the adjustments we would have to make to make it fit wide cigs feel sort of in harmonious with nat wonders in general...

Perhaps instead it is simply a happ or sci building that gives you bonus science based on the total number of puppeted cities. This amount of science would be chosen, and could scale, such that it functions as a sort of off set, similar in effect to the half thing we originally considered. Add to this a channeling element and we might have a complicat d little ub that fits the bill...

How about this?

Marath'damane Study Facility, replaces ScienceX, this city produces +Y% Science per turn for each puppeted city controlled by Seanchan, times the number of turns since Seanchan last controlled an Aes Sedai, up to a maximum of Z%.

One drawback I see here is that a high enough puppet count counteracts the need to *never* have an Aes Sedai. If "1 < Z/(Y * puppets) < 3" or so, then occasionally grabbing an Aes Sedai doesn't cost them much. It's something we can calibrate to make it work, though it may make non-Seanchan-y Seanchan strategies quite short on Science.

counterpoint said:
I'd be in favor of that, even now.

Sounds good then!

counterpoint said:
i mostly like that! Do you think it is intuitive?

I think it will be a bit difficult to describe to players, but I think once players see it happen, then they'll understand. However, what you've written into the recap below isn't what I was proposing. I don't think we want to stop the unit from pillaging a tile because it wasn't the original unit to make it go from improved to pillaged.

I was thinking something like this:

Golden Hawk Catapult, era 4 siege unit, can pillage already pillaged tiles. After pillaging the same tile for X turns in a row, the improvement on that tile is destroyed.

However, the original intent of this ability was that the unit could sit still and siege forever. If the improvement is eventually destroyed by them, they presumably can't keep pillaging an unimproved tile? Are we ok with that?

counterpoint said:
probably can be addressed later. In general I'm fine with keeping things similar to bnw though.

I could see us starting out with one range, or even melee siege units, and then expanding as the tech tree progresses into later eras

Cool, sounds good.

counterpoint said:
definitely also figured that obsolescence would remain a thing for us.

I agree that this makes it fit better as a ua, though I do think it's not impossible to justify giving free obsolete units. They can always be upgraded, of course.whoknows, maybe part of the featur s of the unit is that it's upgrade cost decreases in later eras

Reduced (or even free) upgrade cost could make a lot of sense. It still seems like a very roundabout way of achieving this mechanic though.

counterpoint said:
Ok, if mechanically it makes sense that the hk is crowned even if all civs haven't been met, then yes, I suppose granting unknown civs prov bonuses is sensible. Wouldn't want to exclud them.

Sounds good.

counterpoint said:
question. Is there an tech that must be reached before this is achievable? Duel maps and the like make the trade and Dom routes kind of nutty if there aren't.....

Very good point about the trade one. We should probably limit that to a certain tech. Or maybe even only allow it on certain map sizes? The New Tongue (Era 4, Column 1) could be well placed for the tech restriction?

The Domination one shouldn't be possible on 2 or 3 player maps. (I've realized I said "numberOfPlayers/2 original capitals", it should be "(numberOfPlayers-1)/2 foreign original capitals" which will help us here.) In those cases, the High King condition also wins you the game on a Domination victory, so that happens first.

counterpoint said:
Sorry, it's hard toe check now. Is treatises early era five?

No worries, yes, it's Era 5 Column 1.

counterpoint said:
In general, these are fine. Regarding the dof or accords, I ink we can probably still pursue those. Would it be something like having a dof with x number of civs? Also, what were we thinkIng an accord would do?

I've added the list from my previous post to the Diplo summary. I'll continue to edit that as we make decisions here.

On Accords, we didn't go into much detail before. I followed our next few posts from earlier in the topic, and we never went into any specifics about what such an agreement would entail. A quick reference:

I still like the DoF idea as one of the conditions, mostly because it's how CiV expresses diplomatic success. We could alternatively have a totally new type of diplomatic treaty, some kind of "Accord" between major civs that is only ever signed by close allies - giving bonuses to both sides. Something that provides sight to both players from the others' cities (not units as well), so it makes it more difficult to betray them? Turning your back on an Accord means no one trusts you ever again. I'm not sure how many of these could be signed so quickly in a given game though.

However, looking back at it now, I don't see a good way of making this kind of agreement between civs actually matter in the game, given that there's so much trouble doing that for the existing agreements (DoFs and particularly Defensive Pacts) that already have well defined benefits.

In terms of a DoF condition for becoming High King - I could see something along the lines of make a DoF with half or more of the other civs in the game? Should probably be gated on The New Tongue (or some other nearby tech) for the same reason as the trade route one.

counterpoint said:
yeah, that's how it would have to work

Cool, the Glorious Statue is complete!

counterpoint said:
Yeah. I could be fine with just gc and amb

Cool, modified below.

counterpoint said:
ah, I got it. I think we still don't think this is a great match though.

Agreed, I'm fine with removing this one. It existing would affect the mechanics available to a lot of Edicts, and I didn't do a thorough search to see if making some of them cancellable by one player would break the game.

counterpoint said:
hmmmm... I'm thinks no any of the ways around this issue just complicate it... What do you think we should do? Just allow the war to immediately end and leave it at that?

counterpoint said:
i guess I'm just concerned that it is too good, such that this non essential component becomes a focus in many cases

True, the influence decay bonus would become the primary usage for the improvement in most cases.

counterpoint said:
Ok, tried to do some chopping up of items that it seems we don't need or aren't that interested in. Don't think any warrant specific discussion.

Agreed, I'm happy with all of your removals and have taken them out below.

counterpoint said:
I agree that there are no locks, though I would say we should probably be locked into including either a governor related or a hi related ability. In other words, include at least one of our new mechanics

Yes, it's better if we cover those here where there are flavor foundations for it.

counterpoint said:
I understand your hesitation, how none of them jump out as obviously. However, I think that that is the true normal, and what we had with the first few civs may have set up unrealistic expectations. I'm not saying this list is done, but it might be done. Remember, we only need one set in the end!

Agreed, I've been thinking more about this and have come to pretty much the same conclusion!

counterpoint said:
I do also think that a uu is pretty much mandatory, or some battle related ability, who ch we haven't been considering. I do the no your proposed set is pretty good, and I think e siege uu would be the right choice as the last ability

By a battle related ability, you mean a UA that contributes directly to combat proficiency? (Rather than our current ones, which more reward/incentivize conquest, rather than make it easier.) I've added two new ones below to fill this gap (a UA and a UU).

counterpoint said:
I also like provincial dominance as a ua. Diplo by the sword could work too.

I think the Diplomacy by Sword UA is largely overshadowed by the Imperial Governor's Mansion UB. As a UB, it can unlock later in the game when the votes are important, unlike the UA which doesn't apply at all for the first several eras. (These two aspects are functionally the same, but the former doesn't come across so much as "missing out" to the player.) I think set up the way they are, the mechanics of either the UA or UB approach work well, and we have good UA alternatives, whereas the non-UA uniques aren't as contested.

counterpoint said:
I could be ok with the statue ub,but I'd want to make sure the other abilities covered diplo or gov stuff

I don't specifically have a full alternate set though

Coolio.

Recap!

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level
Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"
Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive and gain boosted yields
Diplomacy by Sword, capturing city-states gives Shandalle their Compact votes
Endless Siege, siege units controlled by Shandalle have an additional +X% combat bonus against cities and take Y% less damage from cities and enemy ranged units garrisoned in cities.

UUs:

Golden Hawk Catapult (era 4 Siege) - after pillaging an unpillaged tile, can continually pillage the same tile until moving off of that tile.
Circuit Rover (era 3-4 ranged) - weaker than comparable unit, but costs less production and gold, and has X% change of spawning adjacent to any of Shandalle's cities when it is attacked.
Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon
Decorated Leader, replaces the Great Captain, melee combat unit (strength based on Shandalle's current era), enemy units within X hexes of this unit do not exert zone of control. Allied units within X hexes of this unit have +Z% combat and ranged combat strength in enemy territory (in addition to normal GC bonus).

UBs:

Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and have -W maximum HP
Circuit Rover's Watch Station (replaces Era 3-4 XP or Defensive building), X% chance to spawn a Circuit Rover/contemporary ranged unit adjacent to the city when this city is attacked
Imperial Governor's Mansion, replaces DefenseX/EXPX (where X is the last one), can only be built in the conquered capitals of eliminated city-states, the Governor in this city produces double yields and Shandalle gains the Compact votes that would have been available from being the former city-state's ally.

UIs:

Forward Encampment, built only in foreign city-state territory, this city-state cannot declare war on Shandalle, even if its ally does. Shandalle can still declare war on it. Pillaging this improvement constitutes a declaration of war against Shandalle.

UGs:

Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by Great Captains and Ambassadors, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:
- Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace
- During the High King event: improves the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus
- After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

I feel like we're most of the way there with Shandalle now!

counterpoint · Jun 7, 2016

S3rgeus said:
The forum has changed! All of the colors are different and we have a CiVI header! The times, they are

oh wow. I figured it was just iPad weirdness

S3rgeus said:
How about this?

Marath'damane Study Facility, replaces ScienceX, this city produces +Y% Science per turn for each puppeted city controlled by Seanchan, times the number of turns since Seanchan last controlled an Aes Sedai, up to a maximum of Z%.

One drawback I see here is that a high enough puppet count counteracts the need to *never* have an Aes Sedai. If "1 < Z/(Y * puppets) < 3" or so, then occasionally grabbing an Aes Sedai doesn't cost them much. It's something we can calibrate to make it work, though it may make non-Seanchan-y Seanchan strategies quite short on Science.

ilike this! I think it makes a better companion to the eva, though we will need to explain it in a manner that makes it easy to understand. I think calibration can make it work. I say add it to the set!

S3rgeus said:
I think it will be a bit difficult to describe to players, but I think once players see it happen, then they'll understand. However, what you've written into the recap below isn't what I was proposing. I don't think we want to stop the unit from pillaging a tile because it wasn't the original unit to make it go from improved to pillaged.

I was thinking something like this:

Golden Hawk Catapult, era 4 siege unit, can pillage already pillaged tiles. After pillaging the same tile for X turns in a row, the improvement on that tile is destroyed.

However, the original intent of this ability was that the unit could sit still and siege forever. If the improvement is eventually destroyed by them, they presumably can't keep pillaging an unimproved tile? Are we ok with that?

I think I would suggest we amend it by merging these two concepts. Let it go forever, but the improvement is destroyed when they leave the tile. What do you think of that?

S3rgeus said:
Reduced (or even free) upgrade cost could make a lot of sense. It still seems like a very roundabout way of achieving this mechanic though.

yeah I think we should sadly red this...

S3rgeus said:
Very good point about the trade one. We should probably limit that to a certain tech. Or maybe even only allow it on certain map sizes? The New Tongue (Era 4, Column 1) could be well placed for the tech restriction?

The Domination one shouldn't be possible on 2 or 3 player maps. (I've realized I said "numberOfPlayers/2 original capitals", it should be "(numberOfPlayers-1)/2 foreign original capitals" which will help us here.) In those cases, the High King condition also wins you the game on a Domination victory, so that happens first.

i think front gating it at the new tongue should be fine. Agreed n th Dom situation. I would also disable the trade condition on two or three player maps...

S3rgeus said:
No worries, yes, it's Era 5 Column 1.

Yeah, treatises is good then

S3rgeus said:
I've added the list from my previous post to the Diplo summary. I'll continue to edit that as we make decisions here.

On Accords, we didn't go into much detail before. I followed our next few posts from earlier in the topic, and we never went into any specifics about what such an agreement would entail. A quick reference:

However, looking back at it now, I don't see a good way of making this kind of agreement between civs actually matter in the game, given that there's so much trouble doing that for the existing agreements (DoFs and particularly Defensive Pacts) that already have well defined benefits.

In terms of a DoF condition for becoming High King - I could see something along the lines of make a DoF with half or more of the other civs in the game? Should probably be gated on The New Tongue (or some other nearby tech) for the same reason as the trade route one.

Agreed on accords, and agreed with dof. I think that would probably work fine, though it's alsolikelythat nobody will make dofs at this stage of the game if they suspect someone to be going for hk.... Is dof gated in an appropriate era? Three, right?

S3rgeus said:
Agreed, I'm fine with removing this one. It existing would affect the mechanics available to a lot of Edicts, and I didn't do a thorough search to see if making some of them cancellable by one player would break the game.

agreed

Also, did you mean to not respond the typofest quote block thT followed this one?

S3rgeus said:
By a battle related ability, you mean a UA that contributes directly to combat proficiency? (Rather than our current ones, which more reward/incentivize conquest, rather than make it easier.) I've added two new ones below to fill this gap (a UA and a UU).

yeah that's what I mean.

S3rgeus said:
I think the Diplomacy by Sword UA is largely overshadowed by the Imperial Governor's Mansion UB. As a UB, it can unlock later in the game when the votes are important, unlike the UA which doesn't apply at all for the first several eras. (These two aspects are functionally the same, but the former doesn't come across so much as "missing out" to the player.) I think set up the way they are, the mechanics of either the UA or UB approach work well, and we have good UA alternatives, whereas the non-UA uniques aren't as contested.

yeah, good point of the ua not being useful early on. I'm considering Redding diplomacy of the sword, so will magenta it now

Recap!

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level
Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"
Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive and gain boosted yields
Diplomacy by Sword, capturing city-states gives Shandalle their Compact votes
Endless Siege, siege units controlled by Shandalle take Y% less damage from cities and enemy ranged units garrisoned in cities, and receive an X% combat strength bonus (high number) on a turn they pillage

UUs:

Golden Hawk Catapult (era 4 Siege) - after pillaging an unpillaged tile, can continually pillage the same tile until moving off of that tile.
Circuit Rover (era 3-4 ranged) - weaker than comparable unit, but costs less production and gold, and has X% change of spawning adjacent to any of Shandalle's cities when it is attacked.
Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon
Decorated Leader, replaces the Great Captain, melee combat unit (strength based on Shandalle's current era), enemy units within X hexes of this unit do not exert zone of control. Allied units within X hexes of this unit have +Z% combat and ranged combat strength in enemy territory (in addition to normal GC bonus).

UBs:

Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and have -W maximum HP
Circuit Rover's Watch Station (replaces Era 3-4 XP or Defensive building), X% chance to spawn a Circuit Rover/contemporary ranged unit adjacent to the city when this city is attacked
Imperial Governor's Mansion, replaces DefenseX/EXPX (where X is the last one), can only be built in the conquered capitals of eliminated city-states, the Governor in this city produces double yields and Shandalle gains the Compact votes that would have been available from being the former city-state's ally.

UIs:

Forward Encampment, built only in foreign city-state territory, this city-state cannot declare war on Shandalle, even if its ally does. Shandalle can still declare war on it. Pillaging this improvement constitutes a declaration of war against Shandalle.

UGs:

Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by Great Captains and Ambassadors, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:
- Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace
- During the High King event: improves the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus
- After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

Mostly fine with endless siege, though it feels a bit like several uus in a ua... I wonder if we should substitute one of the bonuses for something that isn't so numerical or straightforward? I'm assuming this wouldn't be used in conjunction with the golden hawk catapult, since that would be super all in, so I have made an adjustment above

I like the new GC, buthe I'm tempted to suggest the second bonus not just be a better combat bonus... Better healing? Something like that?

I'm out of time, but does this feel like a better selection now? Are their two good sets to choose from?

S3rgeus · Jun 8, 2016

counterpoint said:
ilike this! I think it makes a better companion to the eva, though we will need to explain it in a manner that makes it easy to understand. I think calibration can make it work. I say add it to the set!

Added!

counterpoint said:
I think I would suggest we amend it by merging these two concepts. Let it go forever, but the improvement is destroyed when they leave the tile. What do you think of that?

Awesome, much better!

counterpoint said:
yeah I think we should sadly red this...

Agreed.

counterpoint said:
i think front gating it at the new tongue should be fine. Agreed n th Dom situation. I would also disable the trade condition on two or three player maps...

I've added this stuff to the summary.

counterpoint said:
Agreed on accords, and agreed with dof. I think that would probably work fine, though it's alsolikelythat nobody will make dofs at this stage of the game if they suspect someone to be going for hk.... Is dof gated in an appropriate era? Three, right?

You mean is the ability to make DoF gated or the ability to become High King through DoFs? For the latter, the same limit as the trade route one (research The New Tongue) sounds good. Though we could go with "must reach Era of Consolidation" (Era 4). For the former, there are no prereqs to making DoFs aside from having met other civs.

counterpoint said:
Also, did you mean to not respond the typofest quote block thT followed this one?

Woops! Picking that up again:

counterpoint said:
hmmmm... I'm thinks no any of the ways around this issue just complicate it... What do you think we should do? Just allow the war to immediately end and leave it at that?

I'd be tempted to leave it and make them end the war the old fashioned way (conquest or peace treaty). Otherwise you could go and build these improvements in your enemy's CSes after they declare war on you to drag those CSes out of the war, which doesn't seem like the idea behind this improvement.

counterpoint said:
yeah that's what I mean.

yeah, good point of the ua not being useful early on. I'm considering Redding diplomacy of the sword, so will magenta it now

Agreed, I think the UB is better. Red it is!

counterpoint said:
Mostly fine with endless siege, though it feels a bit like several uus in a ua... I wonder if we should substitute one of the bonuses for something that isn't so numerical or straightforward? I'm assuming this wouldn't be used in conjunction with the golden hawk catapult, since that would be super all in, so I have made an adjustment above

Sounds good!

counterpoint said:
I like the new GC, buthe I'm tempted to suggest the second bonus not just be a better combat bonus... Better healing? Something like that?

Agreed, a combat bonus isn't that enticing. I've suggested a change below (which is quite strong).

counterpoint said:
I'm out of time, but does this feel like a better selection now? Are their two good sets to choose from?

Yeah, I think so:

One set:
UA: Insightful Rule
UG: Provincial Ruler
UB: Imperial Governor's Mansion
UU: Golden Hawk Catapult

Another set:
UA: Endless Siege
UU: Decorated Leader
UI: Forward Encampment
UB: Glorious Statue

What do you think of the second set? It's not quite as synergistic as the first and definitely very Domination-y.

Recap!

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level
Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"
Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive and gain boosted yields
Diplomacy by Sword, capturing city-states gives Shandalle their Compact votes
Endless Siege, siege units controlled by Shandalle take Y% less damage from cities and enemy ranged units garrisoned in cities, and receive an X% combat strength bonus (high number) on a turn they pillage

UUs:

Golden Hawk Catapult, era 4 Siege, can pillage already pillaged tiles. If this happens more than X turns in a row, the improvement is destroyed when the Golden Hawk Catapult leaves the tile.
Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon
Decorated Leader, replaces the Great Captain, melee combat unit (strength based on Shandalle's current era), enemy units within X hexes of this unit do not exert zone of control. Allied units within X hexes of this unit have +Z% combat and ranged combat strength in enemy territory (in addition to normal GC bonus). Allied ranged units within X hexes of this unit have +1 range.

UBs:

Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and have -W maximum HP
Circuit Rover's Watch Station (replaces Era 3-4 XP or Defensive building), X% chance to spawn a contemporary ranged unit adjacent to the city when this city is attacked
Imperial Governor's Mansion, replaces DefenseX/EXPX (where X is the last one), can only be built in the conquered capitals of eliminated city-states, the Governor in this city produces double yields and Shandalle gains the Compact votes that would have been available from being the former city-state's ally.

UIs:

Forward Encampment, built only in foreign city-state territory, this city-state cannot declare war on Shandalle, even if its ally does. Shandalle can still declare war on it. Pillaging this improvement constitutes a declaration of war against Shandalle.

UGs:

Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by Great Captains and Ambassadors, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:
- Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace
- During the High King event: improves the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus
- After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

counterpoint · Jun 8, 2016

S3rgeus said:
You mean is the ability to make DoF gated or the ability to become High King through DoFs? For the latter, the same limit as the trade route one (research The New Tongue) sounds good. Though we could go with "must reach Era of Consolidation" (Era 4). For the former, there are no prereqs to making DoFs aside from having met other

the ability to win hk via dof. Making it the same as the trade one sounds good the era four thing could work, but I don't see the need it making it different

S3rgeus said:
I'd be tempted to leave it and make them end the war the old fashioned way (conquest or peace treaty). Otherwise you could go and build these improvements in your enemy's CSes after they declare war on you to drag those CSes out of the war, which doesn't seem like the idea behind this improvement.

yeah that sounds reasonable

S3rgeus said:
Agreed, a combat bonus isn't that enticing. I've suggested a change below (which is quite strong).

wow that's powerful. Probably too powerful. I think it will work for now. Can balance later.

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, I think so:

One set:
UA: Insightful Rule
UG: Provincial Ruler
UB: Imperial Governor's Mansion
UU: Golden Hawk Catapult

Another set:
UA: Endless Siege
UU: Decorated Leader
UI: Forward Encampment
UB: Glorious Statue

What do you think of the second set? It's not quite as synergistic as the first and definitely very Domination-y.

Set one is good! I think the second set likely goes too far Dom wise, though it might be worth keeping around for that exact reason. However, I mostly consider shandalle to have as its lock 'something with govs or the hk or diplomacy ' and this one doesn't meet that.
I would suggest either swapping trusted advisors for the ua or something else like that

The truth is, set one is Not one possible configuration of several similar variants. There are a few uas, for instance, that could slide in for insightful rule. This set of four is good, but not necessarily the overwhelming favorite. This is more of a model of a possible good set then a serious recommendation, I would say. That's probably fine

Recap!

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level
Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"
Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive and gain boosted yields
Endless Siege, siege units controlled by Shandalle take Y% less damage from cities and enemy ranged units garrisoned in cities, and receive an X% combat strength bonus (high number) on a turn they pillage

UUs:

Golden Hawk Catapult, era 4 Siege, can pillage already pillaged tiles. If this happens more than X times by the same stationary unit, the improvement is destroyed when the Golden Hawk Catapult leaves the tile.
Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon
Decorated Leader, replaces the Great Captain, melee combat unit (strength based on Shandalle's current era), enemy units within X hexes of this unit do not exert zone of control. Allied ranged units within X hexes of this unit have +1 range.

UBs:

Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and have -W maximum HP
Circuit Rover's Watch Station (replaces Era 3-4 XP or Defensive building), X% chance to spawn a contemporary ranged unit adjacent to the city when this city is attacked
Imperial Governor's Mansion, replaces DefenseX/EXPX (where X is the last one), can only be built in the conquered capitals of eliminated city-states, the Governor in this city produces double yields and Shandalle gains the Compact votes that would have been available from being the former city-state's ally.

UIs:

Forward Encampment, built only in foreign city-state territory, this city-state cannot declare war on Shandalle, even if its ally does. Shandalle can still declare war on it. Pillaging this improvement constitutes a declaration of war against Shandalle.

UGs:

Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by Great Captains and Ambassadors, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:
- Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace
- During the High King event: improves the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus
- After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

I have a slight adjustment to ththe catapult. I don't think the pillaging needs to be in a row. If we did it that way, then the cheap defensive strategy would be to not attack hat unit for a turn and let it get to full health, or, additionally, this would prevent the unit from defending a turn to heal or anything. Or are these unlikely situations? To me it seems like it's fine if they take turns off, as long as they don't move. Thoughts?

So that's shandalle, right? I'd say we can mov on! Apologies, but I'm not really in a technical position to do a first post on a civ, so I think you need to do this one, or else aig q few until I'm back this weekend. Shara next?

S3rgeus · Jun 9, 2016

counterpoint said:
the ability to win hk via dof. Making it the same as the trade one sounds good the era four thing could work, but I don't see the need it making it different

Done!

counterpoint said:
Set one is good! I think the second set likely goes too far Dom wise, though it might be worth keeping around for that exact reason. However, I mostly consider shandalle to have as its lock 'something with govs or the hk or diplomacy ' and this one doesn't meet that.
I would suggest either swapping trusted advisors for the ua or something else like that

Swapped Trusted advisors in!

counterpoint said:
The truth is, set one is Not one possible configuration of several similar variants. There are a few uas, for instance, that could slide in for insightful rule. This set of four is good, but not necessarily the overwhelming favorite. This is more of a model of a possible good set then a serious recommendation, I would say. That's probably fine

Agreed, we have plenty of entries for each of the 4 finished civs that aren't in any of the their suggested sets, and I'd say when we come back to make our final decisions then we'll still pull from the whole selection. The sets mainly remind us the kinds of themes we were considering when we did the original run through.

counterpoint said:
I have a slight adjustment to ththe catapult. I don't think the pillaging needs to be in a row. If we did it that way, then the cheap defensive strategy would be to not attack hat unit for a turn and let it get to full health, or, additionally, this would prevent the unit from defending a turn to heal or anything. Or are these unlikely situations? To me it seems like it's fine if they take turns off, as long as they don't move. Thoughts?

Totally agree, I like your change!

counterpoint said:
So that's shandalle, right? I'd say we can mov on! Apologies, but I'm not really in a technical position to do a first post on a civ, so I think you need to do this one, or else aig q few until I'm back this weekend. Shara next?

Yep, Shandalle is done! I've added them to the list of civilization designs.

As you've said, decided by our previous ranking order, up next is Shara! I feel like this one is quite special in that we're now past the initial 4! (To think we were going to do 4 at once! To think we even briefly entertained the concept of doing them all at once!) I'm happy to start us off on this one.

So, Shara. I haven't actually got any suggestions squirreled away for these guys like I did for the four we've done already (since I did an initial pass on all 4 when we started as well).

So, just a moment, I'll do some brainstorming...

...

...

I haven't marked everything as blue seeing as they're all new anyway and you'd just need to un-blue them!

Shara (Era 1-9, Wide, LB/Cul/Dom)

UAs:

Exotic Treasures, trade routes established by Shara produce Culture and Prestige (specifically against the civilization the trade route is with) in addition to Gold. Other players can only establish trade routes with Shara if they have adjoining borders (any two hexes where their borders meet).
Prophecies of the Wyld, all cities produce +X% (high number) more Production once the Dragon is born.
Ayyad Harem, Shara's population produces X% more Spark
Perpetual Government, instead of becoming unhappy, each net total unhappiness causes Shara to lose X Gold per turn. (Happiness remains at 0.)

UUs:

Freed, replaces the Asha'man, unlocks on an earlier tech and does not require the Black Tower (same combat strength)
Ayyad, replaces the Wilder and Kin, same strength (upgrades at the same time/amounts as them), can become Ta'veren Governors
Bao, replaces either the Forsaken or the Dragon (in unit form), determined by which side Shara picks during the LB, is a ranged male channeling unit, has an X% ranged combat boost against units fighting for the opposing Alignment. Channelers within Y hexes that share an Alignment with Bao (including himself) have their ranged attack range increased by Z.

UBs:

Sh'boan's Palace, replaces the Palace, produces +4 Spark in addition to the Palace's bonuses

UIs:

Immense Wall, generates +X Culture per turn, can only be built where Shara's borders meet another civilization. Enemy units cannot cross into hexes that have an Immense Wall from outside Sharan territory.
Shrine in Angarai'la, can be built on top of Angreal Caches and provides double Spark

Some notes on my suggestions above!

Exotic Treasures is quite different, and I think captures Shara's isolationist flavor quite well. We could gate the Prestige generation from their trade routes on a tech if we felt it was allowing them to generate Prestige too early in the game. I've marked "specifically against the civ being traded with" for the Prestige trade routes. Just to be clear, this is because when a civ generates Tourism in BNW, that accumulation is actually counted specifically against all of the civs that that civ has met. It's this per-civ accumulation that drives the Culture victory, and I figured allowing Shara to gain extra Prestige against particular civs would be an interesting strategic wrinkle. (quick example: civ A has met civs B and C, but not civ D. Civ A generates 5 Tourism per turn. So after two turns they have 10 total Tourism accumulated against civs B and C. Civ A then meets civ D. The next turn, civ A will have 15 Tourism against civs B and C and 5 Tourism against civ D.)

Prophecies of the Wyld nods to the flavor of Shara gearing up for battle for the LB.

Ayyad Harem is about the flavor of Sharans breeding channelers. I'm not sure if this is a bit too Liberation-y? Seems like a Spark bonus isn't something we want to avoid for all civs though. It could combo well with any of the channeling UUs, since it would allow Shara to field more channelers than most. X could be values of 100 or more if we were feeling brave.

Perpetual Government is to do with Shara never experiencing unrest during the whole After Breaking -> LB time period. I figured X could be something like 10, but it may need to be higher. This is potentially the most powerful thing ever, so X would need to be calibrated carefully. Shara could become a conquest machine, soaking up unhappiness off the back of trade routes. It would be impossible to convert Shara's Philosophy choice (which is quite flavorful). They wouldn't be able to ignore Happiness completely, since negative Gold eventually affects Science (which will lose Shara the game if they let it hold them back there) and eventually starts disbanding their units. Still, it's a very Shara-like ability and would give the players a very different experience in the game. Another yield aside from Gold might be appropriate, though I didn't want to go straight for Science, since that would hobble them immediately and make the UA largely useless.

The Freed is a simple upgrade to the Asha'man, same strength but unlocked earlier. We might consider doing something with madness on these guys?

Ayyad is a nod to Shara's female channelers being quite politically powerful. I felt like the Ta'veren Governor Type fit best (didn't go straight for a unique governor type, but we could do that), but maybe the Dignitary governor type fits better. (Link to the summary on Governors, in case it's difficult for you to get to on your iPad!)

Bao is freakin' nuts. I figured that, as you mentioned many years ago, Shara was kind of "sniped" into being Shadow at the last second in the books timeline. So what if in other timelines, someone else fulfilled the Bao prophecy? Like our favorite fulfiller of prophecies, the Dragon. This lets us create an Alignment-symmetrical unique that's still appropriate for each side.

To be clear, Shara would control only 1 Bao, so he would need to be strong. (For replacing the Dragon, Shara should be very invested in being the civ that controls the Dragon unit, since it will let them use this UU.) I was thinking Y (range of the range boost) would be something bananas like 8. Then Z (extent of the range boost) would be something like 2 or 3. That way, dropping a single Bao into the middle of a Channeler army will make that army a long ranged damage machine. (Range approaching but still a little short of Gateway units, but they can be moved more flexibly, obviously.) It's also worth noting that his range boost applies to all channelers that share an Alignment with him (rather than are owned by Shara). So it helps all your Light buddies as well, which incentivizes other Light civs letting Shara control the Dragon since they're working together. And is potentially a double-edged sword if you're a Shadow civ fighting another Shadow civ, which offsets being easier to get than the Dragon.

Sh'boan's Palace is fairly straightforward UB Spark boost. It would start Shara off with some Spark at the beginning of the game, which may be significant.

I generally found coming up with UBs for Shara quite difficult - their flavor seems to push more towards UUs and UAs.

Immense Wall is one that I quite like how elegant the mechanics are. Building one that entirely encircles Shara would be amazingly difficult (relies on other civs settling up against you on literally all of the tiles, and there's nothing you can do about the coast). Which is good, we don't want to make them completely unassailable, because that wouldn't be fun. But it could definitely force invaders into choke points. By constructing it only where Sharan territory meets other civs', it ensures that the border won't grow "past" the wall, where you'd end up with one in the middle of Sharan territory, which doesn't make much sense. And by disallowing civs from entering the hexes only from outside Sharan territory it "acts like a wall", which I think is really cool. (We don't want to disallow them from ever standing on the hex at all, because that's not how defensive fortifications work.) But of course, if it were a purely defensive improvement, it would not be playable. So I figure it "defends against foreign influence", which is exactly what Culture does. It's a nice bonus that there's a Culture UI in BNW (Polynesia's Moai) so we know that it's a viable bonus when properly restricted. (Being able to build an improvement that generates Culture everywhere would be crazy.) Also worth noting that, to avoid an endless stalemate in the theoretical position where Shara builds Immense Walls all around its original capital and then can't be killed, the endgame "short range Traveling" (paradrop equivalent) can cross Immense Walls. So those Traveling units can pillage the improvement and let the army in.

Shrine in Angarai'la is another Spark boost, but this time nodding to Shara's host of the powerful sa'angreal, Sakarnen. It's also a bit odd in that it seems like it should replace an existing Improvement? In captured land, they would simply have to replace other civs' Improvements by building over them.

counterpoint · Jun 9, 2016

Awesome stuff! Just stopping by to say that I've read this, and it's awesome, but I won't be able to post tonight, possibly even tomorrow. I'm low on time tonight, and realizing that doing a post this size on the iPad would be awful. Be back by Saturday or Sunday at the latest

counterpoint · Jun 11, 2016

Back on a computer! I couldn't convince myself that doing this post on an iPad was realistic. Between the switching between pages, looking up Shara, etc., it would have been a huge pain. The good thing about the wait is that it's giving me time to make some ideas!

S3rgeus said:
Yep, Shandalle is done! I've added them to the list of civilization designs.

As you've said, decided by our previous ranking order, up next is Shara! I feel like this one is quite special in that we're now past the initial 4! (To think we were going to do 4 at once! To think we even briefly entertained the concept of doing them all at once!) I'm happy to start us off on this one.

yeah, 4 at a time seems insane. In truth, though, we've gone into much more detail than I originally was picturing (for the better)!

S3rgeus said:
Some notes on my suggestions above!

Exotic Treasures is quite different, and I think captures Shara's isolationist flavor quite well. We could gate the Prestige generation from their trade routes on a tech if we felt it was allowing them to generate Prestige too early in the game. I've marked "specifically against the civ being traded with" for the Prestige trade routes. Just to be clear, this is because when a civ generates Tourism in BNW, that accumulation is actually counted specifically against all of the civs that that civ has met. It's this per-civ accumulation that drives the Culture victory, and I figured allowing Shara to gain extra Prestige against particular civs would be an interesting strategic wrinkle. (quick example: civ A has met civs B and C, but not civ D. Civ A generates 5 Tourism per turn. So after two turns they have 10 total Tourism accumulated against civs B and C. Civ A then meets civ D. The next turn, civ A will have 15 Tourism against civs B and C and 5 Tourism against civ D.)

I think that "wrinkle" in Prestige is appropriate, as would be a tech gate. This one is tough because I think the limitation is appropriate, but the benefit itself I'm not quite sold on. I guess the whole culture-spread-through-trading thing just doesn't seem particularly fitting for Shara. I'm magenta'ing this, because I'm not sure I know what to do with it yet.

S3rgeus said:
Prophecies of the Wyld nods to the flavor of Shara gearing up for battle for the LB.

yeah, this is an interesting example of a civ being an "LB" civ simply due to temporal circumstance. I'm not sure this is interesting enough to survive, but it's not a bad one.

I will take issue with the name, though, due to clash elsewhere. We have the Wyld stuff as a Path, and probably sort of need it to stay one (though it's not essential). We also might need aspects of the prophesy itself for our LWs.... I think there's a better way to frame this.

S3rgeus said:
Ayyad Harem is about the flavor of Sharans breeding channelers. I'm not sure if this is a bit too Liberation-y? Seems like a Spark bonus isn't something we want to avoid for all civs though. It could combo well with any of the channeling UUs, since it would allow Shara to field more channelers than most. X could be values of 100 or more if we were feeling brave.

Hmm... not sure on this. I think this is fine to keep around for now, but I think this Spark-related mechanic will transform by the end of our discussion and this one will disappear, as is. It is somewhat too liberation-ey. Some kind of limitation or specificity to this is needed to keep it from just being a Wilder-fest. It's related to the breeding flavor your specified, but it's also sort of an oversimplification of that breeding. One of my suggestions below (a nutty one, partially inspired by perpetual government) may address this)

S3rgeus said:
Perpetual Government is to do with Shara never experiencing unrest during the whole After Breaking -> LB time period. I figured X could be something like 10, but it may need to be higher. This is potentially the most powerful thing ever, so X would need to be calibrated carefully. Shara could become a conquest machine, soaking up unhappiness off the back of trade routes. It would be impossible to convert Shara's Philosophy choice (which is quite flavorful). They wouldn't be able to ignore Happiness completely, since negative Gold eventually affects Science (which will lose Shara the game if they let it hold them back there) and eventually starts disbanding their units. Still, it's a very Shara-like ability and would give the players a very different experience in the game. Another yield aside from Gold might be appropriate, though I didn't want to go straight for Science, since that would hobble them immediately and make the UA largely useless.

nutty! This one is interesting. I like keeping it around for now, though I think it could do with some tweaking.

What if it didn't literally eliminate happiness? What if you could still become unhappy, but that unhappiness was offset by some ratio by the Gold loss? For example, if, say, -10 Happiness translated into -60 gold and -2 happiness (using some complex calculation)? Or, perhaps, we capped unhappiness at -9 so you could never have rebellion...

As is, it might be too powerful, since happiness is one of the main limiters in civ - but that doesn't mean we can't adapt this into something more workable.

S3rgeus said:
The Freed is a simple upgrade to the Asha'man, same strength but unlocked earlier. We might consider doing something with madness on these guys?

Yeah, something with madness might be appropriate. I won't make an amendment now, since I'm proposing a few alternate Freed's - we can tweak whichever ones survive the next round.

S3rgeus said:
Ayyad is a nod to Shara's female channelers being quite politically powerful. I felt like the Ta'veren Governor Type fit best (didn't go straight for a unique governor type, but we could do that), but maybe the Dignitary governor type fits better. (Link to the summary on Governors, in case it's difficult for you to get to on your iPad!)

First off, I definitely wouldn't want to do this AND the Freed proposed above - two UUs that are mechanically the same (in combat) in the same civ would likely feel quite boring, unless they interfaced with the other Uniques in a very special way.

Hmm... I think the idea of this is cool, but on the other hand, does it feel that impactful to have a UU that simply exists to surrender itself to make something you can otherwise do? It's a bit like the Conquistador in BNW, but in the Conq, having a combat unit be able to found acity is pretty awesome. Having a combat unit replace the functionality of an LP is sort of neat in that you'll be able to have many more of them, but it's not very splashy.

Also, why the Ta'veren? T'a'r vision and hampering dragonsworn doesn't seem super related. Not bad, but also not obviously related. I suppose the question we should ask is - which VC is this meant to aid?

Lastly, on that note - and back to Shandalle for a minute - is it worth considering altering our UGov such that it's actually some kind of UU (GC or actual combat unit) that can then become the UGov?

S3rgeus said:
Bao is freakin' nuts. I figured that, as you mentioned many years ago, Shara was kind of "sniped" into being Shadow at the last second in the books timeline. So what if in other timelines, someone else fulfilled the Bao prophecy? Like our favorite fulfiller of prophecies, the Dragon. This lets us create an Alignment-symmetrical unique that's still appropriate for each side.

To be clear, Shara would control only 1 Bao, so he would need to be strong. (For replacing the Dragon, Shara should be very invested in being the civ that controls the Dragon unit, since it will let them use this UU.) I was thinking Y (range of the range boost) would be something bananas like 8. Then Z (extent of the range boost) would be something like 2 or 3. That way, dropping a single Bao into the middle of a Channeler army will make that army a long ranged damage machine. (Range approaching but still a little short of Gateway units, but they can be moved more flexibly, obviously.) It's also worth noting that his range boost applies to all channelers that share an Alignment with him (rather than are owned by Shara). So it helps all your Light buddies as well, which incentivizes other Light civs letting Shara control the Dragon since they're working together. And is potentially a double-edged sword if you're a Shadow civ fighting another Shadow civ, which offsets being easier to get than the Dragon.

Bao is nuts. Shame on you! :eek:

This is interesting. It's certainly "all in" on the LB, and I'm not sure about that, though I don't hate it (it's not side-biased!) I definitely like the notion of the Wyld (Bao is a name, the Wyld apparently is the role, so that should probably change...)

I don't have many thoughts on the mechanics itself. I think increased range is a nice touch (I do recall the Ayyad artillery and such). Not sure what I think of the overall balance and feel of it, yet. More thought needed.

S3rgeus said:
Sh'boan's Palace is fairly straightforward UB Spark boost. It would start Shara off with some Spark at the beginning of the game, which may be significant.

I generally found coming up with UBs for Shara quite difficult - their flavor seems to push more towards UUs and UAs.

re: UBs for shara - well, we never go there in the books, or even hear stories (like Seanchan), so that isn't surprising...

I don't love this one. I'm redding it, but you could perhaps convince me. I guess the Palace replacements just don't feel like a UB. I mean, you don't really *build* it, it's automatic. Feels more like a UA. Unless I'm somehow now understanding the palace...

S3rgeus said:
Immense Wall is one that I quite like how elegant the mechanics are. Building one that entirely encircles Shara would be amazingly difficult (relies on other civs settling up against you on literally all of the tiles, and there's nothing you can do about the coast). Which is good, we don't want to make them completely unassailable, because that wouldn't be fun. But it could definitely force invaders into choke points. By constructing it only where Sharan territory meets other civs', it ensures that the border won't grow "past" the wall, where you'd end up with one in the middle of Sharan territory, which doesn't make much sense. And by disallowing civs from entering the hexes only from outside Sharan territory it "acts like a wall", which I think is really cool. (We don't want to disallow them from ever standing on the hex at all, because that's not how defensive fortifications work.) But of course, if it were a purely defensive improvement, it would not be playable. So I figure it "defends against foreign influence", which is exactly what Culture does. It's a nice bonus that there's a Culture UI in BNW (Polynesia's Moai) so we know that it's a viable bonus when properly restricted. (Being able to build an improvement that generates Culture everywhere would be crazy.) Also worth noting that, to avoid an endless stalemate in the theoretical position where Shara builds Immense Walls all around its original capital and then can't be killed, the endgame "short range Traveling" (paradrop equivalent) can cross Immense Walls. So those Traveling units can pillage the improvement and let the army in.

I think this is a pretty cool idea. It's serious business, that's for sure, but it's also pretty compelling. I like how it is a flavorful combination of both culture and isolation-related quasi-domination (building them fast mid-war would be a really cool way of securing a new city).

However, there are also some issues with it. The main one has to do with worked tiles. Presumably, these tiles need to be worked to generate culture- that's pretty much what everything we know about BNW points to. It seems likely to me that these tiles will very often be outside of the radius of a sharan city, especially if we position Shara as a "culture civ," whose borders will expand well past the three hexes of normal city work-range. What do we do about this? I don't think I love the idea of the tiles producing culture even when *not* being worked - imagine the Polynesian UI with that element!

Also what happens if the enemy borders or your borders *do* change? For instance, their city is razed, your city is razed, or one of you captures the others' city? Would the wall fall, or stand? In those cases, the wall would either be in the middle of no-man's-land, your territory, or theirs. This isn't a problem so much as something we need to clarify.

S3rgeus said:
Shrine in Angarai'la is another Spark boost, but this time nodding to Shara's host of the powerful sa'angreal, Sakarnen. It's also a bit odd in that it seems like it should replace an existing Improvement? In captured land, they would simply have to replace other civs' Improvements by building over them.

I think I see what you're saying with the last point. You mean it serves the same purpose as whichever improvement normal civs will use to capture angreals. It's probably likely, though, that that improvement is one of the "regular" ones (camp, plantation, whatever), following in how BNW works - we wouldn't want to replace *all* mines into these, right?

I'm so-so on this improvement. OK, but not that exciting. Sort of straightforward, and not super strategically interesting.

OK. my recap, plus lots of new stuff!

Shara (Era 1-9, Wide, LB/Cul/Dom)

UAs:

Exotic Treasures, trade routes established by Shara produce Culture and Prestige (specifically against the civilization the trade route is with) in addition to Gold. Other players can only establish trade routes with Shara if they have adjoining borders (any two hexes where their borders meet).
Prophecies of the Wyld, all cities produce +X% (high number) more Production once the Dragon is born.
Ayyad Harem, Shara's population produces X% more Spark
Perpetual Government, instead of becoming unhappy, each net total unhappiness causes Shara to lose X Gold per turn. (Happiness remains at 0.)
Cycle of the Sh'boan, receive X Faith, Culture, Science, or Gold every 7 turns. Which yield is received depends on the actions of the previous 7 turns.
Beyond the Shroud of the Great Rift, choose you alignment in the LB after all other civs have chosen (and been made public)
The Freed (half mad), saidin units accumulate at half rate. If saidin has been cleansed, all madness is removed from saidin users.
The Freed (less mad), saidin units behave as if they operate at one lower madness tier, though they still receive the strength bonuses of the greater madness. Saidin units cannot go fully "rogue".
Insights of the Ayyad, +X yield for all governors for every Y Spark used (by active units)
River of Souls, every Relic housed within a city on a River produces +X Culture and +Y Faith
Breeding Power, units that consume Spark can be built even if Shara has run out of Spark. Every point of negative Spark produces X unhappiness. This value increases to Y when negative spark exceeds Z.

UUs:

Freed (early), replaces the Asha'man, unlocks on an earlier tech and does not require the Black Tower (same combat strength)
Freed (madness), replaces the Male Channeler or the Asha'man, uses one of the madness bonuses described above under the UAs.
Freed (distance), replaces the Asha'man, gains +X combat strength for every Y tiles away the closest Sharan city is (max Z)
Ayyad (Ta'veren), replaces the Wilder and Kin, same strength (upgrades at the same time/amounts as them), can become Ta'veren Governors
Ayyad (Gov Advisor), replaces the Kin, cities with governors within 3 hexes of the Ayyad produce +X Culture but -Y happiness, cities with governors with an Ayyad between 4 and 6 hexes away produce +Z happiness and +W Prestige (after a certain tech)
Wyld, replaces either the Forsaken or the Dragon (in unit form), determined by which side Shara picks during the LB, is a ranged male channeling unit, has an X% ranged combat boost against units fighting for the opposing Alignment. Channelers within Y hexes that share an Alignment with the Wyld (including himself) have their ranged attack range increased by Z.
Tattoo Warrior, replaces some Melee, Polearm, or Ranged Unit, receives +X combat strength against a civ for each Y Prestige you have against that civ.

UBs:

Sh'boan's Palace, replaces the Palace, produces +4 Spark in addition to the Palace's bonuses
Hearttomb (nat), replaces Culture National Wonder, +X Faith and +Y Culture for all channelers produced in this city for every +1 culture produced from Legendary Relisc housed within the city
Hearttomb (relics), replaces XP 2, adds 2 slots for Legendary Relics to the building who produce Culture and Faith (instead of Culture and Prestige)
Hearttomb (river), replaces Production (river), adds 2 slots for Legendary Relics to the building, +X XP for all units produced in the city for each Relic filling these slots
Ayyad's Enclave, replaces XP 1, each channeler produced in this city produces an instant yield of X culture.
Enclave of the Freed, replaces XP National Wonder, +X (large) XP for every Male Channeler born in this civilization

UIs:

Immense Wall, generates +X Culture per turn, can only be built where Shara's borders meet another civilization. Enemy units cannot cross into hexes that have an Immense Wall from outside Sharan territory.
Shrine in Angarai'la, can be built on top of Angreal Caches and provides double Spark

Cycle of the Sh'boan is meant to represent the fact that the Ayyad assassinate (apparently) the monarch every 7 years. Sort of like the Mayan Long Calendar, but much more common. The yields presented could be anything, and could be made to cover whatever strategy we wanted (I'm not married to these specifics). Also considered making it so the turn before that 7th, you get some kind of *penalty*.

Beyond the Shroud is meant to represent the "hi, we're here too!" of Shara in the LB. It's a recycling of the failed Seanchan UA (the flavor was actually better for the seanchan!) I expect it to die here as well, though the competition might not be as steep with this civ.

The Freed (half mad) has the post-cleansing element. I'm not so sure of this, as it makes Shara seek the Cleansing - we could eliminate that if need be.

The Freed (less mad) is probably more splashy than its cousin. Of course, its worth noting that these UAs are flawed in that they encourage MC use of all kinds, which is unflavorful... Thought the mechanic was interesting, though....

Insights of the Ayyad is based on the same advisor-ruler flavor you've highlighted. The yield could also be specific - X culture or something - instead of varying per Gov. Could also be "for every Ayyad used" or something more specific. The idea is that by *using* the Spark, you get a bonus. However, this promotes liberation, because it rewards high spark. It's possible that a better (but complex) system would be to give a bonus for the *ratio* of your unused spark (so if you had less spark, you could still get the bonus. However, then that rewards *avoiding* spark gains... oy. Promising, though.

River of Souls is based on that same Angarai'la flavor - this one would probably need a second aspect, likely a combat one. Also, has kind of weird strategy implications - hunting river cities, etc.

Breeding Power is meant to call to mind that same concentrated channeler you mentioned. Here it has a different mechanic, though . Instead of providing unlimited happiness, it provides "unlimited" Spark - breed away, but pay the price. I could see this tweaked variously, though.

Freed (madness) is left ambiguous in that it could use either of the madness components described by my UAs above, so would need to be clarified. Could also incorporate some other factor (combat bonus, etc.). Not sure if it would be Asha'man only or could be MCs as well.

Freed (distance) is weird and is based on the notion that these guys are hated within Shara, but epic warriors. I could actually see some kind of reality where it was the opposite, though. I could also see this being adapted with the reverse mechanic (stronger when closer) and applied to the Ayyad instead.

Ayyad (advisor) is nuts. Unfortunately duplicates some of our Ajah abilities, but I figured this one captures it in a different way. They can advise you if you're close, but it causes some problems because they are untrusted (this yield could also be science). If you're there, separate from society, you can still influence politics, but it makes the sharans happy. Weird?

I've been thinking of weird stuff with the Freed and the Ayyad - we can also come back and consider simply combat-related bonuses if we prefer that.

Tattoo warrior is meant to call to mind the notion that the tattoos show the rank of the given warrior in Sharan society (are these guys slaves)? This notion is obviously highly abstracted here. I'm not sure if these are sword, spear, or other weaponed guys - later in the process, I'll probably dig out the specific Shara chapters in aMoL and see if that gives us a better idea. I could also see a Tattoo mechanic simply being a "better" unit, and not having a weird gimmick like this.

Hearttomb (Nat) could get ridiculously powerful if it allows theming bonuses to apply to that total as well. It should probably be capped. Also, these yields are somewhat arbitrary - I went with Faith and culture, here. Note that the Hearttomb could also be a World Wonder. Could be called "River Tomb" or something.

The other Hearttombs are permutations of this same idea. Note that they provide the bonuses listed, but also promote culture in general by adding relic slots at all (these buildings don't normally have them)

Ayyad's enclave is pretty straightforward. As is the Freed's Enclave. could be made more interesting.

The Ayyad Enclave could also be a cool flavor piece to use for a UI, but I'll leave it at that since I just dumped a bunch of these on you. The same is true for the River Tomb - could perhaps be a floodplains UI.

Also, should note that that I also considering working in silk somehow, since that's where it comes from. Not sure how to do it, though - there aren't any buildings that use that resource in BNW.

S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

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