Are the Indonesians underpowered?

GoodSarmatian said:
I just won my third BNW game (continents map), and while I was very lucky to have some easily accessible islands (connected by coast) close to my continent, I was already on a good path before I could settle them. I decided to research Mathematics early and get the Hanging Gardens for a free Candi and Catapults for early conquest to make use of my Kris Swordsmen.

Now let me tell you something about Kris Swordsmen: Kris Swordsmen are one of the best UUs in the game. There, I said it !
There's one and a half bad promotions (I count Enemy Blade as half because the unit is still good for defense and barb hunting) and the good ones more than make up for it. Heroism practically gives you a free Great General, Ambition and Recruitment let you tear through enemy units and Invincible let's you soak up ridiculous amounts of damage. I understand that people dislike the unrealibility and I myself don't really like randomness in strategy games, but the Kris promotions are just that good if you adapt your tactics.
The Candi is also pretty nice, I guess...
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Kris aren't the best unit in the game. If your still building swordsmen over range units your not doing combat right since the system is horrifically imbalanced towards range.
 
AdamGM said:
I found them almost useless.
The gold value of trade routes coming out of that new city (on a different continent) was far less then average. I expected it to be worth more, considering they say that more unique resources are supposed to be worth more.
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The value is 0.5 per resource for caravans, 1 for cargo ships - the value here is that you always get this extra, regardless of the destination city, because no one else will ever have that resource in one of their cities. Basically, Indonesia gets a large portion of the Portuguese UA as a minor side effect of its own.

The key value of the resource - and the reason you get two copies - is diplomatic trade either for lump sum gold (with friends) or gold per turn. If you have happiness issues, you can always trade the copy for another luxury, so that that city gives you 8 free happiness instead of 4.
 
Also people fail to realize, you don't need to settle cities on other continents to make use of the UA as Indonesia. Just conquer cities on different islands/conts from the AI and you automatically get your unique luxuries from the new cities too
 
ToodleElNoodos said:
Good point about astronomy. You want to make one of the most lucrative sites for your first few cities. Indonesia is similar to Sweden, you don't shine till later, but you shine well when it matters.
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As I said earlier, I didn't experience this.
Unless it takes quite a bit of time for your new trade routes to "catch on", the value of the trade routes from the cities that should be benefiting from the UA were awful.
 
If you normally play Continents, try Continents Plus, I think it fixes a lot of Indonesia's problem.
 
Was about to talk about how I wrapping up a culture Indonesia game earlier but then my fortune changed late game and for the first time in all my civ years I got straight up taken over in the late game. Caveat, didnt find a spot/found a city on other continent until very late, never got to use kris swordsman because of iron loss. I was top score entire game with massive religion, world religion and big tourism from wonders and the reformation belief (gives tourism from buildings bought with faith).
Anyways, what I'm trying to say I did not get to use a single unique aspect of the Indonesia (besides two candis which were, alright...). So I'm blaming this total late game loss on not having any edge on the other civs.
 
AdamGM said:
As I said earlier, I didn't experience this.
Unless it takes quite a bit of time for your new trade routes to "catch on", the value of the trade routes from the cities that should be benefiting from the UA were awful.
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Where did you settle the cities? If you settle a random city in an area with no river, and access to only a single lux/strategic resource, you're going to get a bad trading city. The same will obviously be true if you settle nutmeg somewhere that wouldn't otherwise be a good trading spot. The value of adding one resource to a city's trade route income is, as I noted, only a minor side effect of the UA, but it can still pay off if you're in a spot that's otherwise good for trade.
 
They're great on the PerfectWorld map script, they almost always start on a large island in an archipelago region. I'm surprised to see so many people playing continents...
 
PhilBowles said:
Where did you settle the cities? If you settle a random city in an area with no river, and access to only a single lux/strategic resource, you're going to get a bad trading city. The same will obviously be true if you settle nutmeg somewhere that wouldn't otherwise be a good trading spot. The value of adding one resource to a city's trade route income is, as I noted, only a minor side effect of the UA, but it can still pay off if you're in a spot that's otherwise good for trade.
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My thoughts exactly.
If you can find a nice spot with 2 luxuries, or a luxury and a strategic, and then add your unique resource to it, you should have a slightly nicer city for people to trade with. Kinda like a mercantile city state.
 
I'm not sure if this counts as a minor exploit, but I just had a game AGAINST Indonesia. They zerg rushed my continent with their Kris Swordsmen and picked the +2 happy from Gardens belief, all very clever, but they only founded a single city on a tiny island for the spice.

I had two excellent tiny islands just north of me, covered in sea resources, so I settled a city on each of them, gifted them to Gajah, then declared war and took them back for three additional resources and additional trade route value. Impolite, yes, but if they show up on any maps I'm on in the future I might just take advantage of that again. Gift city > take back > new resource (and they'll REALLY struggle to defend them on new landmasses). I imagine that might get patched soon though so only cities they FOUND with settlers count.
 
Ta-dah! Unsporting but oh well :p Bydgoszcz has Pepper, as well, but hitting the screenshot button also quickloads game and I couldnt be bothered taking forever to reload it to show that, I dont see why you wouldnt trust me on this :p

Bonus: works doubly if you're Arabia!

I guess it doesn't even have to be on tiny islands. If you meet Indonesia, and they start on another continent, you could just gift them three of your cities and they get new resources AND become un-razable, and they'll almost certainly never be able to defend them over an ocean before you can take them back. Minor diplo hit and some loss of development might be worth it if you're planning for the long term.
 

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plokoon9619 said:
Kris aren't the best unit in the game. If your still building swordsmen over range units your not doing combat right since the system is horrifically imbalanced towards range.
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Or maybe you should switch up your cookie-cutter strategy? I'd argue that if you're not building Kris over range units that you aren't doing INDONESIA right. I know what you're saying, but the Kris is really cool. It's like saying that Venice is bad because the game is geared towards expanding and you just can't get your typical second city out fast enough.

But anyhow, has anyone had problems getting the Candi to work? My capital has two religions represented at this point and the building's only showing +2 religion.
 
They are pretty good actually if you plop a couple cities on any tile even just one coast tile away from your mainland.
Even those 1-tile islands AI loves to settle count as another "continent".

Plus their unique luxies are always accepted by the AI in trades since they can't have one copy.
I.E. if they already have spices they won't accept it from you but they can't possibly get your unique luxies.
 
Indonesia is inconsistent and therefore troublesome. The UA (need early accessible islands), UB (which needs a river) and the UU (need to not roll the bad promotions) all require some luck.

With good luck, Indonesia is incredibly powerful, but I couldn't blame anyone trying the civ and getting mostly bad luck rolls for concluding that the Civ is near unplayable.
 
Arkangelus said:
Ta-dah! Unsporting but oh well :p Bydgoszcz has Pepper, as well, but hitting the screenshot button also quickloads game and I couldnt be bothered taking forever to reload it to show that, I dont see why you wouldnt trust me on this :p

Bonus: works doubly if you're Arabia!

I guess it doesn't even have to be on tiny islands. If you meet Indonesia, and they start on another continent, you could just gift them three of your cities and they get new resources AND become un-razable, and they'll almost certainly never be able to defend them over an ocean before you can take them back. Minor diplo hit and some loss of development might be worth it if you're planning for the long term.
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Yeah that's a pretty mean way to abuse Indonesia. I had considered doing that in my last game because they had neglected to settle any cities on other landmasses. You're basically stealing Indonesia's whole UA.
 
I somehow admired how dev can distracts "wordy" player from "OMG! Their UU is OP" to "It's bad! I got Enemy Blade twice in a row! Indo' is suck!" IMO. Their UU is OP if you could spam at least few of it. and rushing too early to use Indonesia's UA and you basically screw your game (just like my first BNW game which I basically done above and, for some reason, I built Stonehenge as Indonesia)
 
The Candi provides +2 Faith by default. You get extra faith (on top of the +2 base faith) for every religion in the city. The amount of extra faith that you are currently generating from other religions doesn't show in the building info.

So the Candi provides the same faith generating power as a base temple. This also means that in the early game, if you can get a shrine, temple, and candi up and running, then you can get +5 faith out of city (without any pantheon or policy bonuses). Indonesia has very powerful faith generating capabilities.
 
BroOfTheSun said:
The Candi provides +2 Faith by default. You get extra faith (on top of the +2 base faith) for every religion in the city. The amount of extra faith that you are currently generating from other religions doesn't show in the building info.

So the Candi provides the same faith generating power as a base temple. This also means that in the early game, if you can get a shrine, temple, and candi up and running, then you can get +5 faith out of city (without any pantheon or policy bonuses). Indonesia has very powerful faith generating capabilities.
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Gotcha. Thanks for that.
 
Playing Venice on the Earth map will sometimes throw it in the middle of Africa or Siberia. Playing Polynesia on a Pangea won't be quite fun.

Indonesia has some really interesting traits for a map with a tincy-wincy more land masses. Situational? Yes. Underpowered? Far from it.
 
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