Indonesia's UA is secretly awesome?

kingofsealand

kingofsealand

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So everyone likes to rant about indonesia

Whether its the leader/nation name being inaccurate ( i am american and have european ancestors so have no clue whether or not gajah mada is an accurate representation of that era in indonesias past.

Or their crazy UU that can get promotions which make it essentially worthless or super-powerful

Or their UB being confusing/not very useful

But the fact is, the UA they get is better than many for a simple reason. We love the king day.

Prior to indonesia, it was possible for a wide player to obtain a copy of every luxury on the map, throwing his empire into permanent "we love the king mode" always giving a (i want to say 10%) empire wide growth bonus.

As Gajah, once you found that city on another continent with your unique resource, the other civs cities suddenly become aware of its existence and start desiring it. While it makes sense to trade this stuff away as gajah, you could just keep it all to yourself thereby preventing any city from another civ which desires one of the three from entering we love the king day.

In my mind, this is a very powerful bonus. You are wholesale denying a 10% growth bonus to every city on the map but your own. No other civ has a power which can essentially slow population growth in enemy cities where it would otherwise accelerate.

Do you think the game designers intended on the unique luxuries being wanted by other civs cities, or do you think it was an oversight that will be patched?
 
Well, hate to state the obvious, but they're luxuries the other civ's don't have access to. Indonesia gets two each time, so obviously it's intended that you have a copy to trade.
 
I'm pretty sure that's intentional behavior. As mentioned above, you get two copies of each, so it's pretty clear that the UA is based around trading those resources or at least being able to trade them.

As far as hoarding your unique luxuries, I don't think it's a very sound strategy. I'd rather take the gold from trading them than hold on to them in hopes of eventually slowing down the growth rate of other civs by 9%.
 
kingofsealand said:
So everyone likes to rant about indonesia

Whether its the leader/nation name being inaccurate ( i am american and have european ancestors so have no clue whether or not gajah mada is an accurate representation of that era in indonesias past.
Click to expand...

I know this is not your central point, but let me just say up front that the people arguing against this have no idea what they are talking about.

As an Indonesian and someone who obsesses over Southeast Asian history, the leader, nation and overall portrayal is 100% acceptable - more than that even, it is an honorable job by the Civ team (apart from the butchering of the narrator's pronunciation of Gajah Mada at the intro screen)
 
No i get that they get two copies with the intention of trading one. If you never trade them, or only trade any of the three to one particular civ then you are denying all the other civs the growth bonus their city would get ( if their city is desiring these which by the endgame many usually are). As for taking whatever you could get over the growth slow, alot of times the AI is trading even resource for resource so you are essentially gaining +X amount of happiness for 45 turns. Id rather my cities be size 30 and his size 25 i think thanks! Also does anyone else notice the AI indonesia trade away both copies of his luxury at the same time? I was just playing a game as babylon where the Iroquois has two copies of nutmeg available for trade. They had not captured any indonesian cities so it seemed strange theyd have both.
 
seancolorado said:
I know this is not your central point, but let me just say up front that the people arguing against this have no idea what they are talking about.

As an Indonesian and someone who obsesses over Southeast Asian history, the leader, nation and overall portrayal is 100% acceptable - more than that even, it is an honorable job by the Civ team (apart from the butchering of Gajah Mada's pronunciation at the intro screen)
Click to expand...

Lol good to know i love getting a good bit of factual historical information from my video games. Makes the countless hours i pour into them slightly more justifiable. Im glad the Civ team did a good job here as well. All of the new civs seem pretty accurate really.
 
Seems like a bit of a stretch, no? I mean you play two games: One with ToA and one without. There isn't much of a notable difference. WLTKD takes way more effort to keep up consistently, not until late game, and still won't make a difference.

I give credit for the unique line of thinking. I doubt there are many out there who would have thought of Indonesia's bonus as denying opposing Civs WLTKD, but in the big picture it isn't going to amount to much.
 
Just looking at the title of the thread, it's plain that there's a mistake - Indonesia's UA is not secretly awesome. There's no secret about it at all for anyone who stops to think. Reliable gold plus +4 happiness per city for the first three offshore cities?
 
I think the OP is raising an interesting point, thank you! Did not think about that
 
the UA, although very situational, is very beneficial because you geint a bonus luxury without haivng to find it, so you can plant an otherwise useless city anywhere and still benefit from h aving it around a luxury.

But the fact that you can trade this luxury also means, that you can gain access to other luxuries (if you trade a lux for a lux) that aren't inj your territory.
 
kingofsealand said:
So everyone likes to rant about indonesia

Whether its the leader/nation name being inaccurate ( i am american and have european ancestors so have no clue whether or not gajah mada is an accurate representation of that era in indonesias past.

Or their crazy UU that can get promotions which make it essentially worthless or super-powerful

Or their UB being confusing/not very useful

But the fact is, the UA they get is better than many for a simple reason. We love the king day.

Prior to indonesia, it was possible for a wide player to obtain a copy of every luxury on the map, throwing his empire into permanent "we love the king mode" always giving a (i want to say 10%) empire wide growth bonus.

As Gajah, once you found that city on another continent with your unique resource, the other civs cities suddenly become aware of its existence and start desiring it. While it makes sense to trade this stuff away as gajah, you could just keep it all to yourself thereby preventing any city from another civ which desires one of the three from entering we love the king day.

In my mind, this is a very powerful bonus. You are wholesale denying a 10% growth bonus to every city on the map but your own. No other civ has a power which can essentially slow population growth in enemy cities where it would otherwise accelerate.

Do you think the game designers intended on the unique luxuries being wanted by other civs cities, or do you think it was an oversight that will be patched?
Click to expand...

Are you sure "We love the king day" apply to AI? I'm not sure myself, I ask for.

It's like "Quebec wants Marble" when other Civ has Marble... Or "Almaty is searching a Natural Wonder", and this last 30 turn. No AI find any N.W. during all that time?
 
"Almaty is searching a Natural Wonder" is civ-specific, same with Resource, when it pops up YOU are the only one getting the option, same with "Road to". Other quests, such as the Cumulative Culture, Tech and Faith are present across ALL", same with Barbarian Camps.
 
One thing I've been experimenting with is building up a particularly expansive land empire before even planting those cities, and using them more as commercial outposts to trade to particularly attractive civs. I think I might try Indonesia in my next multiplayer game, with a nice iron intensive start I could get right onto expanding and denying people those lovely WLTK bonuses for the hell of it.
 
But generally only a player's civ will expand enough to get all resources for wltkd the AI doesn't usually manage to get every resource on the map.
 
Indonesia's (respectful interpretation) is confusing, which I think is ok. They're what I call a Toolbox Civ, not a Road Map.

From what I've been finding more and more is, you have to choose wisely how to take advantage of all of your perks.

Also, I think the UA: Spice Islands shouts out DIPLOMACY. Unique Luxury Resources are great for CS quests, great for gifting to make friends, and incentives to send caravans/cargo ships to you.

In which...now that I think about it, other diplomacy civs are weird too (Sweden).
 
I have to say that Indonesia could be quite good. I've just started a game with them to see if my strategy works.

Firstly, the uniques are actually quite synergetic. The extra luxuries means more resource diversity/trading, so basically more gold. With all that trading to get a copy of the spices, other civs may be friendly and send trade routes to you. If they have a religion, you get religious pressure and can get use out of the Candis. And with the Kirs Swordsman, you can (apparently) take over cities on other continents to make them a unique luxury city. Overall, a gold powerhouse that should specialise in getting the most strategic city locations.

Secondly, they ignore unhappiness for most of the game, if they're clever about it. It turns out that the Capital gets a luxury as well, so people are quite happy with Gajah from the beginning of the game. It also helps you get over the unhappiness in the mid-game.

Thirdly, the Kris Swordsman is OP. Just look at those promotions. Sure, only five are good, but Indonesia can leave those that have Evil Spirits or Enemy Blade to stay at home.

Finally, the music is awesome. That's reason enough to play Indonesia.
 
Haha, agreed with the music part.

I also agree with you, everything flows perfectly together...but, trying subsequent games with Indonesia, you'll find that you don't always get that perfect setup, and they suffer from Naval-Civ Syndrome (Pangaea maps are a negative). You don't always have a nice island to settle on. Not every civ decides to be friendly to you. You don't always get Iron. There's not always a river or lake available. Players on this forum disagree with a civ being disabled that easily, even if that isn't the majority

General consensus seems to be that Indonesia is good, but map generation can be unfair to the player, in which the player can't do anything other than roll with it. While that is true with EVERY civ, most players here want all civs to be balanced and fun for everyone.

It's not like Spain either where it's either freaking awesome or freaking blah. For Indonesia it's either "fancy blah" or "...BLAH!?!?!" They're still one of my favorite civs, right next to Polynesia, Sweden, and Netherlands.
 
Viregel said:
I have to say that Indonesia could be quite good. I've just started a game with them to see if my strategy works.

Firstly, the uniques are actually quite synergetic. The extra luxuries means more resource diversity/trading, so basically more gold. With all that trading to get a copy of the spices, other civs may be friendly and send trade routes to you. If they have a religion, you get religious pressure and can get use out of the Candis. And with the Kirs Swordsman, you can (apparently) take over cities on other continents to make them a unique luxury city. Overall, a gold powerhouse that should specialise in getting the most strategic city locations.

Secondly, they ignore unhappiness for most of the game, if they're clever about it. It turns out that the Capital gets a luxury as well, so people are quite happy with Gajah from the beginning of the game. It also helps you get over the unhappiness in the mid-game.

Thirdly, the Kris Swordsman is OP. Just look at those promotions. Sure, only five are good, but Indonesia can leave those that have Evil Spirits or Enemy Blade to stay at home.

Finally, the music is awesome. That's reason enough to play Indonesia.
Click to expand...
I played them and enjoyed them. I avoided the Kris Swordsman as I really loathed its dated, Gygaxian, slot-machine design. But other than that, they're an interesting civ.
 
One side effect of the UA is that the luxury resource will Replace any resource found on the city tile. I learned it the hard way last night when I lost my only Oil after founding on that strategic resource.
 
seancolorado said:
I know this is not your central point, but let me just say up front that the people arguing against this have no idea what they are talking about.

As an Indonesian and someone who obsesses over Southeast Asian history, the leader, nation and overall portrayal is 100% acceptable - more than that even, it is an honorable job by the Civ team (apart from the butchering of the narrator's pronunciation of Gajah Mada at the intro screen)
Click to expand...

This is a bit off topic, but what is the correct pronunciation of Gajah Mada's name? It's been bugging me that I don't know how to properly say it.
 
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