Hillarious Balance of Kuriotates

[Ekolite]

Ok so the Kuriotates are one of my favourite civs and I play them quite often in base FFH. Recently I decided to give them a whirl in wildmana and noticed they had some new leaders.

One of their leaders happened to be a Centaur called Yakut. She had the Egalitarian trait.

The Egalitarian trait, for those of you who don't know, provides a bonus food on every tile which already produces 3 food. To be specific, this includes any grassland tile with a farm, any plains tile with a farm and Sanitation, every food resource, and kelp in a city with a lighthouse.

As if this wasn't enough, Egalitarian also gives three happiness per city. On top of three three that sprawling gives.

Egalitarian carries a 10% penalty to gold but, when gazing in awe upon Yakut's unbelivable traits it is actually extremely difficult to focus on this small, irrelevant detail.

Yakut also has the Emergent trait, so just in case Sprawling and Egalitarian isn't enough for you, you also get yet another trait for free at some point during the game - I got Philosophical. What more could you ask for with a population like that? If I'd had continued that game I would have built the Tower of Complacency there and then converted to AV for StW.

By turn 100 my capital city was at about 13 pop and I was pumping out so many warriors that it wasn't even funny any more.

Surely this trait is a balance issue. Especially in the hands of the Kuriotates!

Also, it seems that Egalitarian is basically just a better version of Agricultural, which adds one food to every tile at 4 already. This is limitted to pretty much just food resources and grassland farms with Sanitation. Still extremely powerful, but not quite so unbalanced.

I think either the Egalitarian trait needs a far greater penalty, or Yakut should loose Spawling and Emergent and have just Egalitarian as a trait.

 

[Valkrionn]

Seeing as the Egalitariant trait comes from RifE (Yakut kinda, but she's from Notque's mod initially), I figured I'd reply to this one.

First off: I agree with you. Keep meaning to add a larger penalty to it... One thing suggested in the RifE forum was to block construction of the Market and other financial buildings. Not sure of any other maluses it could carry, so if anyone has ideas feel free to suggest them. You might get Sephi to use them as well.

 

[Ekolite]

That's a possibility. Maybe you could go a step further and link the bonuses and penalties of Egalitarian with a government civic that is only available to people with the trait. That way it blocks the player from using God King or Aristocracy, both of which have huge synergies with the trait.

Anyway, something has to be done. Up to you two to decide what exactly.

 

[Valkrionn]

Honestly, I dislike the idea of a civic that requires a trait. Civ-specific civics are stretching it enough, but a civic for just one leader is too much.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

Keep sprawling (thats the balance of forced city limits), loose emergent, make it a 15% penalty to gold and remove production from farmed tiles... This forces work on cottages, workshops, lumbermils, etc...

 

[Valkrionn]

Keep sprawling (thats the balance of forced city limits), loose emergent, make it a 15% penalty to gold and remove production from farmed tiles... This forces work on cottages, workshops, lumbermils, etc...

I'd prefer to keep Emergent as Yakut isn't a major leader, and I like the mechanic, but lack of production on farmed tiles isn't a good limiter IMO.

Mostly because with extra food on those tiles, you can then support more mines. No production from a farm doesn't do much.

 

[hbar]

Heh, I saw that trait and figured it looked a little powerful. I fired up a game, started with 6 floodplains in my BFC, and had triple the score of the next civ by turn 100. (This was on Emperor, and I usually play Monarch). My research was so huge, I managed to found RoK in my capital, and running GK and Ag all game never felt so good. By turn 200, I had over 600 beakers and 100 gold per turn at 100% science. I ended up quitting the game because I had essentially won, but I didn't want to whittle down SoDs with my champions. One unit per turn, per city is the only thing that kept me from crushing everything. And pyre zombies. I hate pyre zombies

 

[Ekolite]

Honestly, I dislike the idea of a civic that requires a trait. Civ-specific civics are stretching it enough, but a civic for just one leader is too much.

Haha yeah ok good point, although if I had it my way there wouldn't be leader-specific traits. I admire what you're doing trying to make each leader play differently but I don't think gimmics (like dominant for eg) are the way to do it.

In vanilla FFH, the leaders do play differently, but no one has their own personal trait. I would give Egalitarian to a couple of other leaders and see how they handle the trait differently. With two or three Egalitarians I think a civic would be ok, so long as it was only visible if you have the trait.

 

[Fafnir13]

I might suggest an increase in civic upkeep cost, much like organized only the opposite. Trying to keep everything equal for everyone (egalitarianism) isn't an easy thing to accomplish.

 

[Sephi]

thanks for bringing this up. I exchanged minor trait with agnostic now.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

And "Yakut" gets B*tchslapped yep that should balance her out pretty nicely...

 

[Valkrionn]

That works, but I dislike it. I don't really see why she should be agnostic other than balance... So I'd prefer a better method to balance things.

 

[Sephi]

Why should her Leadership favor a particular religion? Her Pedia entry in Rife is rather short on this . I could picture it that no religion has the power to become a state religion under her rule.

 

[Valkrionn]

Why should her Leadership favor a particular religion? Her Pedia entry in Rife is rather short on this . I could picture it that no religion has the power to become a state religion under her rule.

Yeah, I could see that too, and lore that doesn't exist yet can be written to support it. I just want to minimize Agnostic leaders at this point.

I think I still prefer a commerce penalty for it, honestly.

 

[Ekolite]

thanks for bringing this up. I exchanged minor trait with agnostic now.

Good idea. That prevents her using Tower of Complacency and StW which is helpful. I still think she is too powerful in the early game though, so I would probably cut the happiness bonus to Egal and give it a production penalty too.

 

[Sephi]

Do you really think Egal+Agnostic is more powerful than the traits Cardith gets? I would rather give Yakut a third minor trait.

 

[Ekolite]

To be honest yeah. Cardith iirc gets the Expansive and Philosophical traits. Philosophical is obviously pretty good, but expansive is fairly useless. You don't usually build many cities so the settler bonus isn't all that good, the discount to granaries is helpeful, but when you have a higher then average production anyway it's not such a big deal. The health bonus is nice, but it's just health.

Egalitarian is huge. The food and happiness bonus is enough to have a size 12, God King capital at turn 100. Warriors at one a turn, swordsmen not far behind.

 

[Sephi]

yeah, I forgot that the food bonus triggers at 3 not 4. Yakut now also builds settlers slower to balance this a bit.