v91 Arabia

[powergotnow]

Wow, this was a fun and interesting game. Here's what I noticed

The Arabia power to convert units sure is fun but it seems way too overpowered. In just 30 turns I built an empire from France to India by just walking next to units, I was able to convert settlers and even units within their territory and although it was impossible to maintain and part of the empire ended up breaking off to form a rebel faction (great stability mechanics by the way) I ended winning the game in only 120 or so turns just from how many points it gave me converting units. It really just seemed too easy. Not sure what adjustments could be made, but that's my feedback there no major bugs like before and everyone seemed to load in when they were supposed to.

 

[Jet]

I wanted to add to this thread because I was looking for other Arabia feedback. Playing v94, I agree that the ability of Arabia's units to flip other civs' units to Arabia is overpowered to the point of being not fun if you're playing Arabia or a civ next to it. Even playing China, I can't send a scout through Arabian territory because Arabia just flips it.

For example (for the benefit of players reading this) Arabia can even do it with missionaries and great prophets inside your territory. I don't know what limits the ability has, except I saw in the change log that great people were disallowed as targets, and that's good.

You can counter that by going to war with Arabia. Even then, you couldn't engage Arabia in melee (unless it only works during peacetime - I don't know.) If it only works during peacetime, then maybe that is OK, although it seems a bit extreme, and I imagine that the AI wouldn't know that it needs to counter the effect by entering a permanent war.

With all of that said, I didn't notice it in a dozen long games I played. I noticed it the first time I tried playing a nearby civ, Greece, beyond the Arabian spawn.

Ideas to limit it:
* make it usable only by great prophets, and it consumes a charge
* maybe missionaries could do it too, but then I think it would need additional limits
* it could cause the same diplomatic reaction as spreading religion
* in fact, it could simply occur only as a side effect of a prophet or missionary spreading their religion. To make the effect less convenient for a human player to counter, it could flip a unit within a certain number of tiles (maybe 5) rather than only flipping adjacent units, and it could prefer to flip a good unit rather than a weak/trash unit. At least not scouts.
* it could work during the medieval era only
* it could have a random chance to occur, rather than always occurring (if it doesn't already work that way)
* it could not flip units beyond Arabia's per-unit limits or supply limit (if it doesn't already work that way)