Suggestions on the Scions : redesigning their population growth

[Jojo_Fr]

Suggestions to redesign and balance (improve) the very very weak Scions

- My english was bad and is still mediocre. But I wish my style is clear.

- The Scions are the weakest civilisation by far in Master of Mana Extended. It's fundamentally because they are an old creation, exogene of the creation and design of Master of Mana, but integrated a long time ago.

- The Scions are very weak mainly due to a very slow growth: the awaken mechanism is very slow and obscur. Without that, they could be have a normal developpemenp in science and join the global level of the MoM Civs, in solo and, more important, in multiplayer. Why more important ? Because I don't think the Scions A.I will really have a good A.I (it never had) one day. So it's only good to have functionnal Scions in solo vs A.Is, or in multiplayer, but not as an A.I player.

- Scions should be radically improved in their growth, but in a different mechanism, not just an early rebirth production access (because it is boring to just build your population, and not creative).

- Moreover, I don't think that givint to Scions a stronger faculty of converting units would be a good idea. Why? Because it does not feat with their roleplay concept: Scions are trying to ressurecting they own ancients populations who is sleeping in ruins all around Erebus. They should not rely heavily into rebirth strategy. Moreoever, killing units including barb to have new population, is really more adapted to evil Civ, the aristarkh. We should not have the same kind of mechanism.

- About the growth of Scions, I want to say that I don't like at all the Cathedral of Rebirth building because I find it complicated and uncreative to have (you need 6 cities + 6 Scion special theatres). I think the Cathedral should still exist, but without any need of theaters, just buildable in one city. But lets go: Here is ideas to try saving the Scions ! :

- Let's refocus the Scions civ on a new refocus gameplay civ, but with very few change to their buildings, feature or units :

Scions cities and Scions Crypts: limiting the number of true cities for the Scions

- The Scions have the same concept as Kuriotates: they have cities and they have settlements, named «Crypt». Cities are like any FFH2 cities, but Crypt can only have one population, zero trade, but +1 culture. Each conquered city by the Scions become a crypt, except any capital who can become Scions cities. But in any conquered city, population is wiped out, because Scions are Scions and undeads, it is absurd to have converted lived pop to them.

Scions Crypts can only build defence or strategic buildings (walls, or obsidian gate, for example).

- Scions city can only be build on very distant point from each one : 10 squares minimum !

Introducing an idea of a new growth mechanism of Scions : The number of trade road

- But the Scions have now a new strength:: each trade road give to a city a probability of 5 % to spam a rebirth unit each turn. 4 trade roads (mid-late game) would give 20 % each turn per each city.

- Off course, Scions would profit from peace and from their own building specialised in trade benefice. They would have huge growth interest to aim for commerce tech, regims and guilds, and building roads to their neighbour civs ! Not like the Aristarkh, who have a totally different roleplay, so must have a totally different gameplay focus.

Why this idea of trade roads ?

- In roleplay terms : Because the Scions are finding the remnants, tombs and ancients body of theirs ancestors, in the far settlements they build (the newest cities). But, mummies and tombs need to be bringed to the capital to be reanimated (a road to the capital). And why a trade road with a friend different civilisation could give Rebirth too ? Because these foreigners would exchange to the Scions the body, strange excavations what they find in they own soil (which have no value for them).

- In gameplay terms : roads, very distant city = difficulty to secure them vs barbarian or civs, which is interesting, exciting, and avoid any Infinite city spawn strategy. A new kinds of fast roads could be added to the Scions, to help them. Moreover, as scions have a natural to trade roads (some buildings, and now more features), others players, AI players or humans, would have land to put their cities between the distant Scions Roads. It is much different than the others civs.

Another idea to boost the Scions : better conversion into rebirth

- Second idea, more simple but less fantasy and interesting : each killed barb or enemy unit in scions territory give 25 % chance to create a Rebirth. And this probability inherent to their special priest units would be added. I don't really like this idea, because I anticipate abuses : the player could decide to never killed barbarian lair, taunt them, just to harvest regular body. It's not interesting, repetitive, and not feat with their background. So, I just propose that idea to have your opinion about it, But I don't support it, I prefer the first solution (trade road growth mechanism).

- Another possibility (no abuse possible, and more adapted to their culture) : for Scions, each barbarian lair destroyed would give them 3 rebirth to the unit who cleaned the lair.

Conclusion about these suggestions

- If you like these ideas, especially Evasth and his team, I would like to know it. But if you are not interested to work on these subjects, I can underestand and I will stop to propose more suggestions like this.

 

[Shoobs]

Interesting, but I question the AI's ability to play your suggestions.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

- Yes. But as I see that the Kuriotate A.I handle the fact he needs to build his cities at correct distance, I think it could be possible with few more squares (Kuriotate should build their city at 6 squares, Scions would can only at 10 squaures minimum).

 

[Psychodad]

Some good thoughts on that topic. I would also propose the posibility to "build" population in a city, whitch should be much cheaper than building a rebirth who can be settled in any city or even build new settlements.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

- Thank you. Psychodad you mean you prefer a localised city growth than a spawmned rebirth unit ? I think a rebirth is always better, because it gave to the player you choice to place it where he wants, which is one of the advantage of the Fallow civ (as infernal can plant they manes where they want). Without that, it would be very slow to populate the newest cities, unless we got others way to build rebirth units.

Moreover, if it's a localised city growth, it means the player will not be able to cancel a non desirate growth, or it would mean that the player will lost a pop growth if the game cancel it if it detect a maximum happiness or health.

- What do you think of this idea to fusion our ideas : Trade roads have a chance to give 5 % of population growth in a city per road. When the maximum happiness cap of the city has been obtained, the following growth per trade road is converted into one rebirth unit.

I think with that, the management would be simplified but the player would still have the benefit of growth in a big city.

 

[Psychodad]

I think the problem is, this would boost big citys too much. Would be nice to get a machanic to support fast groth in small citys and slow groth in big citys like the vanilla food system.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

- Yes. Maybe it would not be a too unbalanced system, because the Scions will have a limited number of city, so even if they are big, they cannot spawn them.

- As I aim to stay in the current features of each civ, I prefered to stay into the Awakened / Rebirth spawn mechanic. But if we can, to complety change the problem, it would be far better to export the Aristarkh soul vault system to the Scions.

Each road would increase in each city, the growth speed, by the food bar (as the Aristarkh city you know). We could too imagine a system where each commercial value of a road increase the growth proportionnaly. It would mean that the external commerce would be very important, and to create as soon as possible.

But is that possible and not so hard to do technically ?

 

[Tarquelne]

Hi there!

Interesting ideas Jojo_Fr! I think you're right about the AI - I gather it'd be a HUGE task, there are so many quirks to the Scions.

I'm not actively doing any Civ stuff (so PMing was a good idea, though I don't even come to the forums very often). I can point out a couple of boosts that'd be easy to implement. These really don't address your ideas, but pointing you in the direction of making a few tweaks is the best I can do. (I don't know how to implement the greater changes you proposed - I never *really* learned to code.)

Here's code on CvScions.py (this is from Master of Mana, btw) with an AI modifer for Awakened appearing. Altering this can at least give the AI more Awakened to be clueless about.

		# Difficulty level modifier
			iHumanmod = 1
			iAImod = 1

			if pPlayer.isHuman() == False:
				iDifficulty = gc.getNumHandicapInfos() + 1 - int(gc.getGame().getHandicapType())
		# LordShaggynator modified iAImod from .7 -> .3
				iAImod = .3 + (iDifficulty * 0.05)

The XML for buildings is pretty simple: It wouldn't take much to re-shape the Cathedrals to what you want.

Finally - and this is speculative - give Reborn a cost discount based on trade? IIRC there's a not terribly complicated way to do this for a unit, though ATM I've no idea what it is. Hopefully someone else can point you in the right direction.