3rd and 4th Unique Components for VP - Official thread 87

[adan_eslavo]

Armada's bonus were never AI friendly. AI is too dumb to have its units stay at full health. First bonus is ok. It makes once-for-all attack and then may-the-go-be-with-us. But second one was just useless. We try to make it more useful. I will just increase range to 5. Tester need to test it carefully (@FoxOfWar, @Enrico Swagolo and the others).

Huge update on Github. Look for v36.5:
"Yassa Court rework. Andelsbevagelse addon. Armada tweak (5 range). Fixes. Lua corrections."

Spoiler Total beta changes for now. :

v37:

• simplified:

- Black Tug ==> lua deletion, sql value instead, deleted Massacre promotion,
- Monitor ==> lua deleted, sql does the same thing.

• tweaked:

- Riad ==> now uses dummies to show updated top bar with gold and culture income and merchant bar with GMP points. No notification now,
- Madrasah ==> lowered value of faith on purchase (if player got fealty and pacifism then it was too op).

• reworked:

- Barbican ==> total rework; now it's merged version of Castle and Armory, stronger from both with more offensive potential, blocks Armory building (gives dummy Armory instead),
- Pancerny ==> unit's promotion simplified: Grunwald is gone, Bogurodzica gets additional 25% Defense in all terrains,
- Homestead ==> instead of yields from border growth it claims all Horse, Cattle, Sheep and Bison sources on construction. For each tile claimed that way city gets boost from american UA,
- Monitor ==> added Hardened promotion instead of Cover I,
- Armada ==> Invincible change: no more XP from sailing at full health; instead on each Armada kill, rest of Armadas in 5-tile range get bonus XP.
- Yassa Court ==> now granted after conquering the city; bonus yields on conquering; global unhappiness reduction instead of local,
- Andelsbevægelse ==> now increases Worker's work rate by 3%.

• substituted:

- Qadi to Gumey/Daca (in progress) ==> replaces Caravansary.

• fixed:

- pedia categories for some promotions:
- Commandering, Admiralty (Suffet) ==> to CIVILIAN,
- Great Tactician (Suffet) ==> to SHARED,
- Reciprocity (Great Diplomat) ==> to DIPLO,
- Deck Spikes, Coastal Patrol (Turtle Ship) ==> to NAVAL,
- Siege Mobility (Ballista) ==> to SIEGE,
- Mingghan (Black Tug) ==> to MOUNTED.
- Proxenos ==> now works properly,
- Chaebol ==> fixed code (wrong function was used);
- Chaebol, Riad, Paradise Garden ==> now code runs only for UC's owner civ.

I didn't hear about some testing to new American UCs, also still waiting for some riad conclusions. Now there're new Yassa Court, Armada (!) and Andelsbevagelse to test. Go to work! :]

 

[pineappledan]

- Yassa Court ==> now granted after conquering the city; bonus yields on conquering; global unhappiness reduction instead of local,

A wire got crossed here.

If they are built immediately in occupied cities then they are too strong. That also is something that a level 3 Order tenet already does (Iron Curtain: courthouses immediately constructed in conquered cities)
I am suggesting the Yassa Court be built in Unoccupied cities (ie. settled cities), but they have to be built like a normal courthouse in occupied cities.

Mongol cities are accustomed to the Yassa; conquered people need to be introduced to the Yassa

 

[adan_eslavo]

Can Rome use UCs of other nation after conquer? If yes then I need to revert my changes to Chaebol, Paradise Garden and Riad. I just cannot remember.

 

[pineappledan]

Yes, they can

New Yassa Court code has no scaler for Era.

Yassa court needs 2 new triggers:
1) automatically constructed on settle
2) automatically constructed in non-occupied cities on researching philosophy

Yassa court construction of yassa needs to be removed from OnCityCapture lua trigger

 

[adan_eslavo]

I will do that later on. Now I understand. For now it needs to stay little bit OP

 

[FoxOfWar]

My testing on Morocco yielded... nothing, with the previous beta (I really hope I had the right version). No yields from trade routes from the city with Riad, at all. I will test again when you get v.37 out, though, just to be sure.

It's surprisingly hard to be certain due to Morocco's UA. Just to be certain: where should I see the yields now? City view? Top bar?

Currently playing a game with America, though still in Medieval. Homestead seems to work, and I think the yields are pretty good - somewhat city-dependant, but potentially incredible amount of yields from one building when you finish it. I like it. Monitor I am still a while away from, obviously, though my current game looks like it's definitely going to see use (using same version I tested Riad with the other day, so with Hardened): I am on a conquered continent of my own, behind in tech a bit and without a doubt civs will declare war on me by the time I get Monitors on my waters.

 

[pineappledan]

The gold and culture should be visible directly on the Riad

So how about this for the Gumey?

Songhai Gumey
Caravansary Replacement
200
unlocked at Currency
+2 , +1, +1 (up from 1 only)
When a Land Trade Route originating here and targeting another Civ is completed, receive a Tourism boost with the Civ based on your recent Culture output.
Land Trade Routes gain +75% Range and +3 Gold
+2 Production, +2Culture, and +2 Gold to International Trade Routes in this City for every Global Monopoly on Empire.
+1 from Merchants.
+1 / for every 3 desert, or tundra tile worked by city.
+1 to all Nearby Luxury resources
Truffles +2
Cotton +1/
Furs +1/

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Got Armada and updated the lua to 5 tile range. The range is not all that inconvenient and while AI won't use it as well as it canbe, it will get something out of it. It's definitely not too strong because it's only 2 XP in a rare case, but it does something. Too bad I conquered my initial continent(s) and the other one has only Celts and Inca who are an era and a sopol tree behind, but I declared war. I killed Sejongs galeasses on my continent, but the other one has Triremes and Penteconter the Pocahontas, so there's no point in continuing. The Armada seems okay to me and will be friendlier for the AI than the spotting at full health only, and the range can always be increased later if others decide it's not strong enough.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

We could just give the Andelsbevagelse the +15% Food the Agribusiness used to have. Or have it trigger an event that lets one decide how to boost their Farms & Pastures by +X Yield.

I liked the +2 Gold for Luxuries better on the Songhai Gumey. Seems more impactful.

 

[pineappledan]

Removed the +5% on Andelvegaelse for now. With +3% worker improve speed it's too much
removed santa maria promotion from Armada

Added sql and lua for Gumey, based on what i described in previous post.

 

[adan_eslavo]

Santa Maria could stay. Why did you delete it? With your changes we have xp to all armadas stay on upgrade which is odd and old santa maria with ga points is gone. Armada has no ability that stay on upgrade.

@pineappledan can you explain me what happened on github? I cannot understand the changes you made. There are mentioned files totally not connected to your description like dummy armory or culture to castle some merging problem. What a mess...

My plan for next 2 days:

• Finish yassa rework acording to suggestions
• Revert some changes i made
• Rework all dummies we have. With few of them there was no problem. Now as we have tons of them i will try to merge them in one file, sort and rename to follow some pattern. We created mess in that folder. Cleaning is advised.
• Finishing Gumey implementation. No rush.
• Test this bloody Riad

@pineappledan

• i can suggest reverting changes to armada
• Look into texts. We did many changes.
• Andels - maybe reduce work rate to 2 or 1 % and leave 5% food?

 

[FoxOfWar]

Gumey seems good, though for the sake of clarity I'd probably split

+2 Production, +2Culture, and +2 Gold to International Trade Routes in this City for every Global Monopoly on Empire.

into

+2 Production and +2Culture in the city for each Global Monopoly on Empire.
+2 to International Trade Routes from this City for each Global Monopoly on Empire.

Yes, it's way more wordy, but the first line can at a glance read like it gives all of the bonuses to the trade routes. I'd rather the building be crystal-clear on what it does. (Besides, we already have word-monsters like University of Coimbra and White Tower as far as that department goes.)

---

In other news, my America game went tits up, as I had way too much space, overexpanded and found myself in a crazy unhappiness spiral. Thankfully I had a save from just as I got the continent for myself, so trying again with a little bit more patience so I can actually get up to Monitors...

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Won't that Global monopoly bonus be super OP on wide empires? If you destroy your entire continent which Songhai can do with extreme ease, you get 4-6 monopolies, if not more. That's 8-12 Culture/Production per Gummy Bear. You get way more if there's Indonesia present among your victims, at which point each what's-it's-name will provide 6 C/P more. Even just giving the yields to trade routes still gives Songhai what ultimately is a better trade route bonus than Portugal, Ottomans and Morocco which shouldn't be the goal I say, especially considering it already has other base yield bonuses

 

[FoxOfWar]

Won't that Global monopoly bonus be super OP on wide empires? If you destroy your entire continent which Songhai can do with extreme ease, you get 4-6 monopolies, if not more. That's 8-12 Culture/Production per Gummy Bear. You get way more if there's Indonesia present among your victims, at which point each what's-it's-name will provide 6 C/P more. Even just giving the yields to trade routes still gives Songhai what ultimately is a better trade route bonus than Portugal, Ottomans and Morocco which shouldn't be the goal I say, especially considering it already has other base yield bonuses

Fair point number-wise. Could probably slash those boni to half and it'll still be good.

 

[Hinin]

Won't that Global monopoly bonus be super OP on wide empires? If you destroy your entire continent which Songhai can do with extreme ease, you get 4-6 monopolies, if not more. That's 8-12 Culture/Production per Gummy Bear. You get way more if there's Indonesia present among your victims, at which point each what's-it's-name will provide 6 C/P more. Even just giving the yields to trade routes still gives Songhai what ultimately is a better trade route bonus than Portugal, Ottomans and Morocco which shouldn't be the goal I say, especially considering it already has other base yield bonuses

That's why I chose to :
1. Make the building initially slightly weaker than a Caravansary in term of gold yields
2. Give the bonus yields as focused as possible on gold (I agree that the bonus production from strategic monopolies wasn't a good idea, so we'll scrap that), which is a yield whose value changes a lot throughout the game
3. Make so that other players can benefit from the bonus when trading with Songhai => Songhai would gain a lot of money from foreign TR to its cities, but other player would also gain more and more gold. It also allows a wide Songhai to enjoy some peace and trade after conquests, for other players will want to trade with it.

Hence, I propose a new version :

Songhai Gumey
Caravansary Replacement
200
unlocked at Currency
+2 , +1, +1 (up from 1 only)
When a Land Trade Route originating here and targeting another Civ is completed, receive a Tourism boost with the Civ based on your recent Culture output.
Land Trade Routes gain +75% Range and +1 Gold (from +3 Gold)
Trade Routes with other players to or from the city generate an extra 1 Gold for the city owner and an extra 1 Gold for the Trade Route per Luxury monopoly (of the owner of the city of course)
=> it's quite a complex explanation, but it is the most clear I find
+1 from Merchants.
+1 / for every 3 desert, or tundra tile worked by city.
+1 to all Nearby Luxury resources
Truffles +2
Cotton +1/
Furs +1/

This bonus, as I said, is initially weaker, but becomes better and better for each monopoly you have.
If you have zero monopoly, the Gumey gives +1 +1 +1 more than a Caravansary as base yields (without taking into account the Gold to Luxury resources) and +1 Gold to TR from the city (instead of +3 Gold)
If you have one monopoly, the Gumey gives you +3 Gold to TR from the city (+2 Gold to the TR value, and +1 Gold to the city directly), and each international TR to the city will also give you +1 Gold (while also giving +1 Gold to the ITR owner)
If you have two monopolies, the Gumey gives you +5 Gold to TR from the city (+3 Gold to the TR value, and +2 Gold to the city directly), and each ITR to the city will also give you +2 Gold (while also giving +2 Gold to the ITR owner)
That's quite similar to the kind of bonus Morocco has in vanilla Civ V, but scaling with monopolies.
If you manage to attract ITR, you'll be swimming in gold in no time.

 

[pineappledan]

Santa Maria could stay. Why did you delete it? With your changes we have xp to all armadas stay on upgrade which is odd and old santa maria with ga points is gone. Armada has no ability that stay on upgrade.

I was hoping that with a bonus to XP on kills, the GA points on kills could be done away with.
It's the same bonus as the Yamato, so I hoped to avoid the repetition.

can you explain me what happened on github? I cannot understand the changes you made. There are mentioned files totally not connected to your description like dummy armory or culture to castle some merging problem. What a mess...

Hand on my heart, I did not touch the armory dummy. Or at least I didn't intend to.
It looks like my Github pulled a version of the beta repository which was, at that point, several versions old. Then, it re-pulled all the changes which had been made over the past 2 months, and re-entered them as changes to be made with that commit. All the changes outside the Qadi/Gumey, Armada, and text files are just exact copies of previous commits.

I fekkin' hate github sometimes... This is why I stopped using the desktop version and started doing commits directly, because every time I do, ghetto sh!t like this happens.

Wow, yeah I did not touch even a tenth of the files it says I did. Maybe I revert that entire commit and just re-upload the files I ACTUALLY changed.

Andels - maybe reduce work rate to 2 or 1 % and leave 5% food?

A change in work rate of 1% will not be noticeable unless you have an empire of 10 cities. I know people are really concerned with the infinite cities that large maps can get, but this has to be usable with standard maps too.
The +5% food is an awful lot considering how much food this building brings in.
The biggest bonus to this building is probably that it does not consume horses.

I'm all for just reverting back to the 5% food and scrapping this worker rate change

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

TBH new XP bonus is a sidegrade to the old one that is simply less abusible by human and more usable by AI, so with Armada losing G. Admiral points it is a nerf. Sure, it might be the same as Yamato, but Samurai/Hoplite and some others share +Great General generation, so it doesn't seem like a big problem. But then there's no promotion like Great Generals I/II for navy, so Santa Maria can be turned into that if anything. No GA points on kill, instead generates far more GA points every natural XP gain (so hits a city, unit). It'd be far weaker because it rarely takes more than 3 hits to kill a naval unit and it won't generate as much Admiral points as it does now unless you constantly attack cities, but it is something to consider.

 

[pineappledan]

Gumey seems good, though for the sake of clarity I'd probably split

+2 Production and +2Culture in the city for each Global Monopoly on Empire.
+2 to International Trade Routes from this City for each Global Monopoly on Empire.

Yes, it's way more wordy, but the first line can at a glance read like it gives all of the bonuses to the trade routes. I'd rather the building be crystal-clear on what it does. (Besides, we already have word-monsters like University of Coimbra and White Tower as far as that department goes.)

Currently, the text reads:

"Incoming Trade Routes generate +2 Gold for the City and for the Trade Route owner for every Global Monopoly on Empire.
+2 Production and +2 Culture in City for every Global Monopoly on Empire."

So right now, gold from your own trade routes is unaffected by your monopolies, but your cities become very attractive as foreign trade targets. I don't think boosting the yields of your own trade routes is necessary, because those kinds of bonuses tend to devalue Internal TRs.

Most civs, starting out, only have 1 monopoly. Every civ you manage to wipe out means 1-2 new monopolies (which is How Songhai got its gold monopoly IRL: They wiped out Mali).
I'd prefer to have the building tested at 2 2 and 2 for ITRs from other civs for now. I'm getting the same vibes I got from the Kibitum discussion from this one.
Yes, it's a lot of good yields, but you need 2 monopolies to even begin to compete with Burial Tombs

 

[FoxOfWar]

"Incoming Trade Routes generate +2 Gold for the City and for the Trade Route owner for every Global Monopoly on Empire.
+2 Production and +2 Culture in City for every Global Monopoly on Empire."

Yesh, I think that works for formatting and idea. Balance-wise, I'd say it's in a decent enough place to test it out in practice.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Currently, the text reads:

"Incoming Trade Routes generate +2 Gold for the City and for the Trade Route owner for every Global Monopoly on Empire.
+2 Production and +2 Culture in City for every Global Monopoly on Empire."

So right now, gold from your own trade routes is unaffected by your monopolies, but your cities become very attractive as foreign trade targets. I don't think boosting the yields of your own trade routes is necessary, because those kinds of bonuses tend to devalue Internal TRs.

Most civs, starting out, only have 1 monopoly. Every civ you manage to wipe out means 1-2 new monopolies (which is How Songhai got its gold monopoly IRL: They wiped out Mali).
I'd prefer to have the building tested at 2 2 and 2 for ITRs from other civs for now. I'm getting the same vibes I got from the Kibitum discussion from this one.
Yes, it's a lot of good yields, but you need 2 monopolies to even begin to compete with Burial Tombs

If it's competitive with the Burial Tomb at 2 monopolies which you're very likely to have as you reach the tech and it's not improbable to have more than less, that's not good. Burial Tomb also contains most of the Egypt's UA because without it, it's just a great work and +1F -1Gold. If a new UC easily outclasses a vanilla UB that is also being buffed by the majority of a civ's UA, that's not good but a clear evidence of imbalance of the new component.