[Vote] (3-09) God of War & Goddess of Protection Proposals

[Zakuzelo]

Lets assuming a nice 6 city setup, not too tall, a good number for that early founding part of the game. So this version of Protection generates +12 CPT and +15 FPT. We will consider this the "baseline". Lets see how other pantheons stack up.

The problem here is how unlikely you are to build walls in all 6 of those cities. Even when faced by early pressure, you only need to prioritize walls in the direction of that pressure. If you're getting hit from the east then you don't need walls in the west, because if they ever do start hitting those walls you've probably already lost. Walls are situational buildings on a city-by-city basis, not an empire-wide one.
Legan's proposal is the only one to acknowledge this and try to address it, making it clearly the best choice of the three.

Fully agree. Heal on kill will be far too OP if combined with Dominance.

Some of the other healing concerns in this thread are fair, if subjective, but this one is nonsense. God of War with Dominance would heal 25 health per melee kill? Japan already does that, and even with all the other bonuses the Dojo gives it's nothing OP. Powerful, but not overly so. Hell, Aztec Jaguars with Dominance can heal even more, and I'm not hearing anyone complaining about that.

 

[pineappledan]

Some of the other healing concerns in this thread are fair, if subjective, but this one is nonsense. God of War with Dominance would heal 25 health per melee kill? Japan already does that, and even with all the other bonuses the Dojo gives it's nothing OP. Powerful, but not overly so. Hell, Aztec Jaguars with Dominance can heal even more, and I'm not hearing anyone complaining about that.

… yeah? The Jaguar and dojo are unique abilities. They should be powerful. They will also stack with dominance and 9b’s GoW together, so 3 combined heal on kill sources. Jaguar will be able to heal 50 hp, and all Japanese melee units can heal 35 on kill.

This is similar to a problem we had with too many stacking bonuses to naval movement, including England. At some point we decided too many of the same bonus was boring and oversaturated so we stripped some, not all, of them out. We’re also working on differentiating the tile cost reduction bonuses, because those were also too similar and stackable.

So why, if we’ve identified this as a design problem in other areas, are we reproducing it here by adding more stacking heal on kill effects?

 

[Zakuzelo]

… yeah? The Jaguar and dojo are unique abilities. They should be powerful. They will also stack with dominance and 9b’s GoW together, so 3 combined heal on kill sources. Jaguar will be able to heal 50 hp, and all Japanese melee units can heal 35 on kill.

Them being unique and appropriately powerful is irrelevant to my point, which is that healing 25 health per melee kill isn't overpowered.
35/50 healing doesn't sound OP either. It's really easy to overestimate this kind of bonus. Don't forget that your melee unit is taking damage from the fight too.

This is similar to a problem we had with too many stacking bonuses to naval movement, including England. At some point we decided too many of the same bonus was boring and oversaturated so we stripped some, not all, of them out. We’re also working on differentiating the tile cost bonuses, because those were similarly too similar and stackable.

So why, if we’ve identified this as a design problem in other areas, are we reproducing it here by adding more stacking heal on kill effects?

That's just a matter of perspective. What you call oversaturation I call synergy. Stacking similar bonuses is fun.

 

[pineappledan]

Them being unique and appropriately powerful is irrelevant to my point, which is that healing 25 health per melee kill isn't overpowered.
35/50 healing doesn't sound OP either. It's really easy to overestimate this kind of bonus. Don't forget that your melee unit is taking damage from the fight too.

And what I’m saying is shelve the “OP” talk, and consider that this is homogenous, repetitive bonuses. While I do think the heal on kill is unnecessary and goes too far, I am primarily opposed to it because it’s just not a desireable bonus to have 3 separate stacking sources of.

As you say, it’s not an overpowered bonus. In fact, stacking too many of them can be wasteful because you can only heal up to your max HP. I can see a lot of instances where this excessive amount of heal on kill won’t actually be useful.

That's just a matter of perspective. What you call oversaturation I call synergy. Stacking similar bonuses is fun.

And having a few stacking identical bonuses to find is great. You don’t want to overdo it, or have too many of the same bonus sprinkled throughout or it undermines what makes the bonus special.

 

[Legen]

I've said before, but an important reason for why I've settled for the alternative effects is because any of the proposed God of War and Goddess of Protection are hard to justify in economical terms, while I'm also being wary of adding just more yields to pantheons that currently focus on unique effects. Both pantheons only provide two yields, when most other pantheons provide three yields, and not in greater amounts to compensate for the lower variety (meaning lower total yields). Moreover, both War and Protection require buildings that are situational, expensive, have a maintenance cost and don't match the economic value of the other Ancient Era buildings. No matter how I look at it, focusing on Barracks or Walls mean falling behind in economy and development, compared to what the rest of the pantheons ask you to focus on.

God of War also can't afford to stay passive like the other pantheons due to reliance on the faith on kill. Compared to other pantheons, it requires a much bigger reward to justify it, as many of the other pantheons can provide a stronger economic engine with less effort and risk, doubly so if you account for the lower investment on military (and the associated maintenance costs) required for them. I didn't want to just make the Barracks provide over 4 total yields, or add another yield to the kills, so I settled for an alternative effect, and aimed to make it thematic, natural and made the pantheon more fun to use.

And then, I think the other two proposals miss the main point on why the current Protection is so slow, as both essentially require you to set garrisons for an extra point of faith. With the cheapest garrison unit costing 40 and having a 1 maintenance cost, both proposals are essentially asking your empire to pay a total of 150 and incur a 2 maintenance for 13 for each city, which is very inefficient and arguably worse than the current Protection. That extra maintenance in particular plays a role in why the current Protection is slow, you end investing in less buildings than usual due to that and is pressured to go for trade and build Markets (another expensive building) to address it, despite the pantheon itself having nothing to do with it. It is messy, and an important reason why Protection is tough to work with. Since neither of the other two proposals address this point, I had little reasons to think that they were an improvement over the current Protection.

I get that there are people wary of the alternative effects being strong, but I also think that the economic part plays a big role in a pantheon's balance, and that many other pantheons can outshine War and Protection solely on having better economic value. The alternative effects are meant to ensure both War and Protection are competitive with the rest without having to resort to extra yields.

 

[azum4roll]

One military unit per city + walls is what you want to build in your cities anyway due to the prominence of barbarians.