3rd and 4th Unique Components for VP - Official thread 88.10

[pineappledan]

I don't like the idea of boosting specialists. I feel we've done enough of that.

Some other other ideas:

• Each worked luxury could increase Trade Route Range by 10% and Trade Route Gold by +2 in this city
• Each Entrepot on empire could give a Resource Diversity Modifier of +5% (20 cities and you have the same power as Carthage's UA)

 

[Hinin]

Why not a bonus linked to monopolies ? It would be easily usable by the AI, it gives you incentive to grab/conquery territory, and it is thematically relevant for Songhai/Mali.

 

[pineappledan]

Why not a bonus linked to monopolies ? It would be easily usable by the AI, it gives you incentive to grab/conquery territory, and it is thematically relevant for Songhai/Mali.

That sounds like a great idea, but I don't know if it is possible to atomize a monopoly bonus like that

 

[pineappledan]

Another idea:
Old Mongolian Yassa Court
available at Philosophy
200 Production Cost
can be built in non-occupied cities
Production Cost is slightly increased with number of Cities
+20% Production towards Military Land Units (Range, Siege, Mounted and Armored)
Removes Extra Unhappiness from Occupation
Slightly reduces Distress, Boredom, Illiteracy, and Religious Tensions
conquering another City starts 10-turn long WLTKD

New Mongolian Yassa Court
available at Philosophy
200 Production Cost
can be built in non-occupied cities
Production Cost is slightly increased with number of Cities
Removes Extra Unhappiness from Occupation
+2% Production towards Military Land Units in all cities (Range, Siege, Mounted and Armored)
-1% Distress, Boredom, Illiteracy, and Religious Tension in all cities

So push mongolia ultra-wide with global production modifier and unhappiness reduction
Removes Extra Unhappiness from Occupation. I never really felt comfortable with this part. It triggers way too often, so it sort of trivializes WLTKDs for Mongolia, and makes things like theocratic rule/synagogues/burghers/halicarnassus bizarrely powerful on them.
I also feel it was horning in on China/Byzantium's game

 

[phantomaxl1207]

China will appreciate the removal of WLTKD for conquering as Mongolia.

 

[adan_eslavo]

Generally I like the idea. But shortening wltkd won't help? I liked the onconquer trigger. Maybe substitute wltkd with something else?

So how does current version of entrepot look like (with monopolies)? I think it is doable using standard resource functions.

 

[FoxOfWar]

+10-20 of all yields(fairly small amount, but enough to pay attention to) in city as conquering trigger, maybe? It would create some interesting doubling down on other city-conquest bonuses.

I do like the thought of it scaling better with the more of them, at any rate.

 

[adan_eslavo]

I think that those global modifiers for Mongolia can be op on huge maps. I usually play on small to medium that means about 8 cities? On huge I heard that players have 40-50 cities that means half time construction. Do we have smth similar existing now in vp? On that scale?

 

[pineappledan]

Rome gets +2% gold from city connections globally per colosseum.

To get the same power happiness power as right now, Mongolia would need 25 yassas. To get the same unit production they would only need 10. The nice thing about this though is that all cities would enjoy th me benefits of the yassa even before building one in the city.

 

[Hinin]

That sounds like a great idea, but I don't know if it is possible to atomize a monopoly bonus like that

Some things to say about this UB.
First, as you surely have noticed, "entrepôt" is a French word. Using a French word for a building meant to symbolize the Malian/West Sahelian region will appear as quite colonialist.

I've been searching a bit in a French/Malinke-Malinke/French dictionnary written by a missionary in 1906 (you can found it here) to see if a word with a similar meaning can be found (there is a chance that this dictionnary is unreliable, but this is the only one I've found with that much vocabulary).
The only word I've found for now is "Karfa" (page 89), translation of "Dépôt" ("deposit") but it's more a designation for the objects within than for the building itself, as the dictionnary indicates. There are also the words "Sigiula" or "Daca" (page 98), translated from the French word "Étape" (that can be translated into "station" in English, with the meaning of "place where you stop, escale").

For the building itself, here is what I have in mind after all the discussions we've had.

Name to be determined
Caravansary Replacement
200
unlocked at Currency
+1 Gold +2 Culture (up from + 1 Gold 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 +2 Gold (down 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
=> This bonus is taken from the Colossus WWonder and is initially weaker, but scales with your number of Luxury monopolies.
+ 3 Production for each Strategic monopoly
=> so for 25 % possession, no bonus for global monopoly for strategic resources, for they'll already give great yields
+1 from Merchants.
+1 / for every 3 desert, or tundra tile worked by city.

Truffles +2
Cotton +1/
Furs +1/

This way, the more luxury monopolies you have, the more your cities become attractive to foreign trade routes, and the more you gain in taxes. The UB will initially bring a bit less gold than a Caravansary, but it has the potential to be far more rewarding if you play well.

New Mongolian Yassa Court
available at Philosophy
200 Production Cost
can be built in non-occupied cities
Production Cost is slightly increased with number of Cities
Removes Extra Unhappiness from Occupation
+2% Production towards Military Land Units in all cities (Range, Siege, Mounted and Armored)
-1% Distress, Boredom, Illiteracy, and Religious Tension in all cities

I agree with adan_eslavo : the idea is interesting, but it could scale way out of control (imagine -40 % Distress, Boredom, Illiteracy and Religious Tension in all the 40 cities of a mega-empire : the happiness benefits would be far too great). One solution could be to put a limitation (like, +30 % Production, -20 % DBIRT), but I am not very satisfied with this (it would mean that the new YC is far weaker than the old YC for most of the game for finally being only a little better at the end). Another solution could be to make the building give a bonus scaling with the number of annexed/occupied cities (so cities you've settled won't count) so that the scaling requires a bit more risk-taking.

Rome gets +2% gold from city connections globally per colosseum.

Yes, but percentage of gold is far less important than percentage of production and unhappiness reduction (which gives bonus to all yields).

I have reduced the from faith purchases from the Madrasah.

I think it's a great mechanic, but I think Hinin is correct, it can get out of hand pretty easilly.

• On standard speed at Medieval, a standard missionary or religious building is 200
• As we had it, that translates to 40, or 1/5
• With the Fealty opener and Pacifism, Missionaries can be lowered to 84, so each purchase is 1/2. This is much too efficient.

At 15 per purchase, that's only 1/6.7

First, thank you for having modified the scaling. I've done one game, and it feels way more on point.

One other problem with this this building (I don't hate it, I swear) is that it gives a global yield (science) that won't be taken into account in the city production but it is however required in any city in which you want to make a faith purchase to be triggered to build a Madrasah beforehand. Because of this, every missionary/inquisitor bought in a city without a Madrasah is lost science, and it seems wrong to me that a bonus meant to bring a specific kind of global gameplay to a civ is only available in specific cities (it just makes you create religious units in the heart of your territory instead of in the extremities where they are needed for conversion).

Because of this, I would be for scraping the Madrasah and giving Arabia a UW replacing the School of Philosophy. Something like this :

House of Wisdom (replaces School of Philosophy)
Available at Philosophy
135 Production (cost scaling with number of cities)

+5 Science +5 Culture +5 Faith
+2 Great Scientist Points and +20 % GP generation in city
+20% Science and +50 % Faith in the city during Golden Ages
15 Science on Faith Purchase, scaling with era (increased to 75 on Great Person Faith Purchase) => Global effect

2 Great Work of Writing slot (+3 Science +3 Faith when themed with GWW of the same era) (up from 1 GWW slot)

This would only come one tech tier before the Madrasah, at a time when there isn't as much faith as in the Medieval era (the player will begin to build the Temples/GTemples which will allow to regularly buy units/buildings), so I don't think it is necessary to tone down the science bonus.
There is a bit more synergy with Tradition and Artistry here, but it's only a drop in the sea, seeing how much synergy Arabia already has with these two trees.
This is also a way to make more references to Harun al-Rashid, since he is believed to have built the HoW as a library for his collections.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

How does Armada work now? I just got some but the game crashed before I could pay mr Sejong yet another visit to check it out, so I decided I might as well ask. If it's 3 tile radius like the code suggests, then it's probably even less AI friendly than previous spotting (AI would move the units unwittingly to spot, AI prefers sprawling it's melee navy all around the globe so AIrmada will not give much benefit as it won't be clumped together).

Rome gets +2% gold from city connections globally per colosseum.

The value from that is much smaller than -needs or Production, city connections aren't important gold-wise. I am sitting at nearly 30 cities in renaissance this Spain game on Standard, I'd be getting +60% Production to land units and -30% needs were I Mongolia. This is way too much. A unit every turn every city if I were I to want one, doubly so with imperialism.

 

[adan_eslavo]

There were few concepts of Armada:

• 5/3/2 XP if 3/10/inf tile away from unit
• 2 XP if inside 3-tile
• 3 XP if inside 3-tile
• 2 XP if inside 5-tile.

@pineappledan suggested to not give too much XP and not to all units because we get constant promotion spam and he's right. You're too saying that it is not AI friendly. I could only suggest making the last option and increasing tile range. There's not so much computing with those checks if you have another suggestion tell us. Armada on kill when tested got 5 XP. It would be silly if other ones got more than the killer. So 5 is the limit.

@Hinin nice ideas regarding Karfa/Entrepot. I was thinking about adding smth to that very nice build. Maybe tr range from smth? Initial ideas gave more production. You cut base one too.

I also read carefully what you wrote about Madrasah and House of Wisdom. I was sceptic about such radical changes (first Qadi to Karfa now this), but your arguments are very well. I would vote on such change. Is there any UC replacing Schol of Philosophy? Because for University is Seowon right?

 

[pineappledan]

First off, I don't think you guys have an accurate idea of how the happiness modifiers work these days... low - medium - high happiness reduction is (-25) - (-50) - (-75) in the current system, and the current Yassa uses -25 at all levels right now. a global -30 in all cities would basically be the system we already have. You guys keep going at that happiness modifier like it's going to scale out of control, but it's not going to get out of hand unless an empire has 70+ cities. If you have that many cities, regardless of map size, you have already won.

New idea for Yassa Court: No maintenance, and all non-occupied cities get a free Yassa as soon as Philosophy is researched. This will help the building feel different from the Satraps Court, which has to be built everywhere, but is essentially an extra building to add to Persia's build list. The free Yassa makes it more like a policy than a building, which reflects its more abstract, intangible nature.

If people really like the on conquest bonus, then fair enough. I don't think the WLTKD system is the best idea for getting there; It interacts with too many other systems. 30 yields in every city, scaling with era should do the trick, yes? If you go any higher, I worry it will start to look better than Assyria's bonus on capture.

Spoiler Yassa Court :

New Mongolian Yassa Court
available at Philosophy
200 Production Cost
No Maintenance
Automatically built in non-occupied cities
can be built in non-occupied cities
Production Cost is slightly increased with number of Cities
+20% Production towards Military Land Units (Range, Siege, Mounted and Armored)
Removes Extra Unhappiness from Occupation
-1% Distress, Boredom, Illiteracy, and Religious Tensions in all cities
10//, in City whenever a City is captured, Scaling with Era.

I found a Humburi Senni - to English/French dictionary here. Humburi is a dialect of Songhay, which is a better fit than using a Malinke word. I wasn't able to find a word meaning "depot" or "waystation", but there is a word for a river port: 'Gumey'. This works well with Songhay's city connection on river theme. Otherwise, I prefer Sigiula/Daca

The idea of boosting this building via monopolies would be possible, but it would create a huge number of different problems One way you could do it would be to use the Building_ResourceMonopolyOrs to create a list of buildable augmentations to the Gumey, but then you would need to make a different building for each luxury in the game, and it would clog your building list UI. The other option is to add/remove dummy buildings, but that requires calculating all resources in the game, and calculating what proportion of those that Songhai controls every turn. That's a lot of work for a minimal buff.

Land Trade Routes gain +75% Range and +2 Gold (down 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
=> This bonus is taken from the Colossus WWonder and is initially weaker, but scales with your number of Luxury monopolies.

Not sure why nerfing a very minimal part of the base caravansary would be necessary
The East India Company uses the same code, and it's what I had proposed in my earlier drafts as well.

Making it focused on luxuries is the way to go, IMO. I don't want to add +1 to anything, because the Tabya already adds that to all river tiles. I'd rather focus on Gold, since I feel like that's an underserved part of the civ's history.
We could make the trade route distance scale with luxuries around the city too, but I would prefer not to because I planned to give that to the Timurids

Spoiler Gumey/Sigiula/Daca :

Gumey/Sigiula/Daca
Caravansary Replacement
200
unlocked at Currency
+2 , +2, +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
International Trade Routes gain +1 Gold for every luxury within 3 tiles of the City
+1 from Merchants.
+1 / for every 3 desert, or tundra tile worked by city.
+2 to all Nearby Luxury resources
Truffles +2
Cotton +1/
Furs +1/

Re: the Madrasah stuff

A change to a wonder is something I am opposed to

• The UA already puts a massive emphasis on the capital. A UW is unnecessary.
• Given that your suggested House of Wisdom uses the existing madrasah mechanic, it's obvious you don't actually have a problem with the mechanic, you just want it to be on a national wonder for aesthetic purposes.
• A major bonus scaling on Golden Ages with an emphasis on Great People. That's Korea. Your suggestion just makes the two civs MORE like each other, not less.
• There are no existing art assets for the House of Wisdom, or the Kaaba for that matter. We would be making our own art for this idea, and we would be tossing out an official art asset made by Firaxis itself. I'm not inclined to do that. There's no real good images to suggest what the House of Wisdom even looked like, so it's really starting from zero.
• It really does feel like change for change's sake at this point.

 

[adan_eslavo]

Madrasah:

• if we want it to be more accesible then maybe it should be available earlier or cheaper. I saw @Hinin mentioned that this is the real problem, that new cities need to improve themselves slightly to build madrasah to benefit from quick faith.

Daca:

• is there any problem with Colossus ability? Connot it be used on Daca? I liked the monopoly influence on Songhai. If there such ability we could focus on something else. You are saying that we shouldn't focus on Luxuries and then I can see:

International Trade Routes gain +1 Gold for every luxury within 3 tiles of the City
+2 to all Nearby Luxury resources

• I would vote for adding food to that gold. Pure gold is boring.
• TR range - ok, if it is planned somewhere else there's no point of adding that here.
• I would focus also on @Hinin's strategic monopolies: instead of production (to not pi$$ off tabya) give food.
• Drop production where it can be dropped.

Yassa:

• Now it looks like much better. I would only lower the WLTKD to 5 or even 2. Small bonus for while. People quickly forget. Conquering city is not easy thing and reward should be adequate.

Armada:

• @pineappledan what do you think about @Enrico Swagolo's arguments?

 

[Hinin]

You're the boss, boss. You've explained your points well, and I am not the one working here.

That aside, the +20 % GP generation isn't linked to GAge, and is a remnant of the GP bonus of the Madrasah that can be seen page 1 of this discussion. The additionnal GA bonus is a huge faith bonus percentage (plus, Arabia will usually take Artistry, since its finisher makes GA trigger historical events, and so usually have plenty of GA turns throughout the game).
As adan_eslavo said, the goal isn't to change for the sake of change, but only centralize the "faith buying" bonus so that you can faith-buy units in your smallest cities and still have the bonus science.

 

[adan_eslavo]

If the art is problem maybe we should look for something similar? Creating it from scratch can be problem, I admit. It should be easier if we do not really know how that building looked like. We can use imagination.

So Yassa debate can be treated as finished. I will start coding soon.
We have left Madrasah, Daca and Armada.
Also Andelsbevaegelse and Exam Hall was mentioned but dissapeared in the chaos of debate.
Did I miss something?

 

[Hinin]

If the art is problem maybe we should look for something similar? Creating it from scratch can be problem, I admit. It should be easier if we do not really know how that building looked like. We can use imagination.

We indeed don't know what the Bayt al-Hikma looked like, and we are not even sure what exactly it was (it could have taken a lot of forms)... Do you have any info on that @Ziad ?

Maybe we could use a picture like the one of the Library (with humans in it) ? I may have just found something that could do the trick.

Spoiler picture :

So Yassa debate can be treated as finished. I will start coding soon.
We have left Madrasah, Daca and Armada.
Also Andelsbevaegelse and Exam Hall was mentioned but dissapeared in the chaos of debate.
Did I miss something?

For the Andelsbevaegelse, I didn't suggest anything, and pineappledan said that what he liked in this building was its simplicity (it doesn't use LUA) and the variety of yields it brings. I agree for the variety side, and I have no authority to talk about code complexity, but I still think this building could use a little something to give it more flavour.

For the Exam Hall, the only thing I said was that the GP generation bonus during WLTKD should be dropped (for it is of almost no importance, compared to any other GP bonus ingame) in favor of a "double GP points at citizen birth during WLTKD" bonus, and pineappledan said that this GP bonus wasn't meant to be relevant, but to give a bit of flavour to the building. Once again, the worker has the power.

 

[adan_eslavo]

I agree that Andelsbevaegelse is very good and somehow powerful building. It only lacks the flavor like you said. Even at cost of lowering let's say Pasture yields we could add something original.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

There were few concepts of Armada:

• 5/3/2 XP if 3/10/inf tile away from unit
• 2 XP if inside 3-tile
• 3 XP if inside 3-tile
• 2 XP if inside 5-tile.

@pineappledan suggested to not give too much XP and not to all units because we get constant promotion spam and he's right. You're too saying that it is not AI friendly. I could only suggest making the last option and increasing tile range. There's not so much computing with those checks if you have another suggestion tell us. Armada on kill when tested got 5 XP. It would be silly if other ones got more than the killer. So 5 is the limit.

@Hinin nice ideas regarding Karfa/Entrepot. I was thinking about adding smth to that very nice build. Maybe tr range from smth? Initial ideas gave more production. You cut base one too.

I also read carefully what you wrote about Madrasah and House of Wisdom. I was sceptic about such radical changes (first Qadi to Karfa now this), but your arguments are very well. I would vote on such change. Is there any UC replacing Schol of Philosophy? Because for University is Seowon right?

The range on Armada would have to go up for AI to benefit more, but such a thing - if not global - won't be AI friendly. Similar problem is probably with unique GG of Zulu from what he looks like, but I don't play them and he's more straightforward than Armada anyway. It's hard, because I agree if it's too much, it'll cause you to ball too hard. Something like Quick Study would be the easiest to balance, but also the most boring.

Or... I have an idea, but it's even harder to balance. Have the number of Armadas you own influence the XP you get. There's two ideas:
1.Every X turns (15 scaling with game speed?), each Armada gets XP based on how many Armadas there is. 1 XP for 5 Armadas, up to 5 XP. AI cannot do it wrong, it'll spam Armadas if it can. It rips off from the Maya a bit I think
2. or maybe impossible, but have the XP be global but not proc if the unit is about to level up. This way, you can get closer to a promotion, but you'll waste XP if you don't hit something to level up.

Or some other idea, but I'm out of them for now.

 

[pineappledan]

if we want it to be more accesible then maybe it should be available earlier or cheaper. I saw @Hinin mentioned that this is the real problem, that new cities need to improve themselves slightly to build madrasah to benefit from quick faith.

Seowons already unlock earlier and are cheaper. I'd prefer to keep Madrasahs where they are, so we can avoid more points of comparison.
The fact that you need a madrasah in the city before you can enjoy the benefits of the faith purchases is a good point...sort of. I don't necessarily see much of an issue however. I think you guys are only viewing this as an issue because you decided it is one, rather than it actually being one. ie. They can't get the bonus until the building that gives the bonus is built in the city to receive the bonus... okay. Is that bad? That's how all buildings work in this game. Why is this bad?

Even if you took faith buildings as your tenets, your first early purchases will be missionaries to get your religion established. You aren't likely to lose out on a lot of science early because you are either spreading with missionaries or saving for a GProphet to enhance. Settling a new city or waiting for universities to be built in non-core cities is fine, because you will likely have plenty of time faith purchasing units and buildings in core cities, and converting those new cities so you can actually make those purchases. There's plenty to do to stall for time until universities are all up on the empire; I just don't see any issue. And no, a university doesn't match the timing of a religion perfectly, but, again, why should it?

One other point I failed to mention. Isn't giving Arabia a wonder which has bonus science yields on purchases on empire just the Exact. Same. Thing. as the E-temenanki?

Enhancers are all getting looked at again right now. They are being overhauled drastically, so that addresses the other part of your concern re: the faith purchasing. Right now, G has one enhancer belief, Diocese, which would utterly break the faith game in Arabia's favor (50% discount to missionaries), but it breaks the game in so many other different ways that I think it's not going to make final version.

is there any problem with Colossus ability? Cannot it be used on Daca? I liked the monopoly influence on Songhai. If there such ability we could focus on something else. You are saying that we shouldn't focus on Luxuries and then I can see:

No problem at all, I was just remarking that all my previous drafts had the same bonus, so I was confused as to why it even bears mentioning.

Now it looks like much better. I would only lower the WLTKD to 5 or even 2. Small bonus for while. People quickly forget.

My real problem with this is it resets luxuries in every city. Why do that? If you wanted the +25% growth boost, just give them a +25% growth boost for X turns after a city conquest, like how France gets a production/culture boost. I don't see a thematic reason to reshuffle the required luxury on each city every 10 turns during a conquest spree.

I would vote for adding food to that gold. Pure gold is boring.

Songhai is a pretty straightforward civ though, isn't it? The Tabya is just pure production, their cavalry unit is a massive promotion steroid. I've always considered Songhai a very meat-and-potatoes, uncomplicated civ.

I would focus also on @Hinin's strategic monopolies: instead of production (to not pi$$ off tabya) give food.

I don't know how strategic resource monopolies entered the conversation. If you limit yourself to strategics then it's significantly less work, but it makes zero thematic sense for what the Songhay actually controlled, which was the gold and salt trade: Luxury goods.

You would have to do a for loop of map:GetNumResources(), then Player:GetNumResourceTotal() for each resource type in the game, then calculate the proportion owned by the player each turn, then do another for loop of all cities to place the required monopoly bonus

If you did a calculation like this, it would look something like this, right?:

local MonopolyCount = 0
if (pPlayer:GetNumResourceTotal(GameInfoType.RESOURCE_GOLD) / map:GetNumResources(GameInfoType.RESOURCE_GOLD)) >= 0.51 then
   MonopolyCount = MonopolyCount +1
end
for pCity in pPlayer:Cities() do
    if pCity:IsHasBuilding(GameInfoTypes.BUILDING_SONGHAI_GUMEY) then
        pCity:SetNumRealBuildings(GameInfoTypes.BUILDING_SONGHAI_MONOPOLY_DUMMY, MonopolyCount)
    end
end

Then we have to decide what that bonus is. Imo, +2 +2 sounds good to me. I don't see much reason to use Food; Songhai has 3 bonuses: culture, production and gold, so I think we should take our pick of those.

I agree that Andelsbevaegelse is very good and somehow powerful building. It only lacks the flavor like you said. Even at cost of lowering let's say Pasture yields we could add something original.

You could do something really nuts like each Andelsbevaegelse could increase Worker improvement speed by 3% (use the same code as the Pyramids). The pedia entry talks about how the Andelsbevaegelse movement was a monumental effort to essentially overhaul Denmark's entire agricultural industries. That would take a lot of worker improvement turns.

The range on Armada would have to go up for AI to benefit more, but such a thing - if not global - won't be AI friendly. Similar problem is probably with unique GG of Zulu from what he looks like, but I don't play them and he's more straightforward than Armada anyway. It's hard, because I agree if it's too much, it'll cause you to ball too hard. Something like Quick Study would be the easiest to balance, but also the most boring.

Re this whole Armada change, I view it as a lateral move. None of these ideas are necessarily better than what the unit already had, either for AI usability or historicity or human fun-factor.

If other people want to change things around that's fine. I think it was always fine. I always really liked the Armada design, so I'm surprised it's come under such scrutiny in the first place.