3UC/4UC for VP: Project Coordination Thread

adan_eslavo · Dec 22, 2017

IcyAngel said:
India

Spoiler :

The Dhanuraashi could be a 6/7 imo.

Why? It has very useful and powerful abilities. It has RCP rised by 1. I think this is enough.

IcyAngel said:
Indonesia

Spoiler :

What is the purpose of the Prau? Seems exploration themed (Sentry, Slipstream, +2 movement) but in that case you hardly need more than 2, maybe 3 of them... and in combat it's hardly more than a generic Trireme (Slipstream isn't useful in combat this early on, because your unit is unlikely to be surrounded by ships and unable to move). It's a bit too generic/unspecific.

I love the Kampong though!

You're right. What about refining it a bit? Any ideas?

IcyAngel said:
Mongolia

Spoiler :

I played a Mongolia game before the Black Tug was nerfed and thought it was fine at 30 CS actually, though Mongolia is at baseline very strong so maybe 28 CS is warranted.

For my playstyle the Yassa Court is weak; I rarely hard build units past the early game (I keep my units for a long time and buy the rest), and once I have discovered most civilizations my cities are in more-or-less permanent WLTKD anyway from trading luxuries. I presume this is significantly better in AI hands though, and every human plays differently too so who knows.

BT has now 2 less CP. We'll see how it works. YC has shorter WLTKD, but it scales with speed (5/10/15/20 turns).

IcyAngel said:
Ottomans

Spoiler :

Amazing flavour and concepts again! Nothing to say about balance. Tersane's bonuses to ocean tiles alone make it great.

I deleted gold bonus to Ocean and Coast and TR gold bonus. @pineappledan claimed (and he was right I suppose) that it is too strong.

IcyAngel said:
Persia

Spoiler :

I would remove the gold maintenance on Pairidaeza; the bonuses to Guilds appear stronger than they are because they apply only 9 times in total, and likely in 3 cities only.

It will be too much probably.

IcyAngel said:
Poland

Spoiler :

The Polish terror with their unsiegeable cities. NotLikeThis

I don't mind.

IcyAngel said:
Polynesia

Spoiler :

The scout replacement is odd, as it's clearly meant to partake in combat but it has access to zero combat promotions on leveling-up. Not sure what to think.

The Fale Tel'e is good but I'm worried about giving Polynesia more early game bonuses (the Moai and UA do a banging job at that already). Will have to see how the AI performs with it I guess.

We can always nerf Fale construction bonus. Tests, tests, tests! The scout idea is too make it possible to defend easily. Mix of self-sustainables Koa's and Maoris should be threatening.

IcyAngel said:
Siam

Spoiler :

Help me understand the Baan Chang: if I'm receiving, say, 15 horses in total from three cities states, am I getting +15g and 15p on every Baan Chang, or +3g and +3p? In the first case, it's insanely overpowered, and in the second case too weak.

Ups, I suppose first option is in charge from what I can see in lua code. I can add scaler. 15*0.5 is fine?

IcyAngel said:
Spain

Spoiler :

Armada's Invincible promotion is highly abusable in player hands; it's easy to station all your Armadas in a remote enemy costal city and let them promote into behemoths. I'd remove the promotion, as the unit is already very strong as is.

Also, the Hacienda cannot be built next to a city without an adjacent luxury (I know you just didn't update the spreadsheet, as the description is correct ingame).

Deleting XP will weaken Armada very much. Maybe some change to this promotion? I don't understand quite what problem with hacienda is? It must be build next to luxury so if it is not there then you cannot. City adjacent is additional bonus not restriction. Ahhh, in game description is wrong. It ould be to hard to make it work like that.

Jarula · Dec 22, 2017

This is going to sound weird but why not give Armada survivalism promotions 1 and 2...?

adan_eslavo · Dec 22, 2017

Jarula said:
This is going to sound weird but why not give Armada survivalism promotions 1 and 2...?

Let me think about this. It's not a bad idea though. But one of them would be enough. Or I can put something similar to survivalism to invincible.

pineappledan · Dec 22, 2017

IcyAngel said:
I'd make it cost LESS than the Horseman, not more. (Actually, this is a good candidate for being horse-free

I'm quite opposed to it not needing horses because the horse archer already doesn't require horses. If both UUs didnt require horses then there would be nothing for them to even spend their strategics on. Could reduce the production cost instead of raisin it. sure. I'm not sure what the point is in making a promotion scale with era when the unit is not buildable in later eras.

IcyAngel said:
What is the purpose of the Prau? Seems exploration themed (Sentry, Slipstream, +2 movement) but in that case you hardly need more than 2, maybe 3 of them... and in combat it's hardly more than a generic Trireme (Slipstream isn't useful in combat this early on, because your unit is unlikely to be surrounded by ships and unable to move). It's a bit too generic/unspecific.

Yes, the prau is mainly a scout, but when I playtested it I found that the prau couldn't act as a competent scout without some way of either evading barbarians, or beating the hell out of them. Quiqueremes do the latter, so I made prau able to do the former

Because they cannot end turns in deep ocean, the slipstream is necessary so the prau can get around barbarian ships in the early game. Other civs can get hemmed into their starting points by ZOC, unless they brute force their way through endless barb galleys. The prau can skip that.

IcyAngel said:
Help me understand the Baan Chang: if I'm receiving, say, 15 horses in total from three cities states, am I getting +15g and 15p on every Baan Chang, or +3g and +3p? In the first case, it's insanely overpowered, and in the second case too weak.

The answer is it works like in A. Please keep in mind most CS allies don't provide any strategics at all. Instead of giving bonuses for just any old CS alliance like a chancery, the Baan Chang only gives bonuses for CS's that give you something.
eg. a religious CS with no strategics gives nothing at all.

We could tone it down to 0.5 p/g per strategics, as @adan_eslavo said, but I don't think it's nearly as OP as you're suggesting.

IcyAngel said:
Isn't the Mud Pyramid Mosque weak? It gets +1 faith, +2 culture and +10% prod to culture? For 50 less production. Feels a bit like a filler.

We haven't had a good discussion about this building yet. Definitely would like to hear some suggestions. The current proposal is basically as you described: filler until we think of something better.

IcyAngel said:
Armada's Invincible promotion is highly abusable in player hands; it's easy to station all your Armadas in a remote enemy costal city and let them promote into behemoths. I'd remove the promotion, as the unit is already very strong as is

This reminds of when G capped the XP from city states because he suggested people were farming CSs for endless XP, and then everyone's reponse in the forum was: ".... no we don't. We don't do that. Why would we do that? Why would anyone do that?"
This promotion was capped at one point at 60 XP. But we had a discussion about how all scouts get to do the same thing the spotter promotion. That promotion has no cap either and it's not conditional on full HP. I dunno, would reducing it to 2 XP per turn be better?

I think we can do away with the Boarding party II promotion though. Just give it the first one; I think we were trying too hard to go shot-for-shot with the sea beggar

IcyAngel said:
Why culture for GW of Music on the Iziko? Feels random, and GWoM come the latest so the bonus won't come online for a long time. The building overall feels weak, but God knows the Zulus don't need a buff.

The bonus to GWM is a reference to Isicathamiya, which is traditionally sung at an Iziko.
Yeah this is another placeholder one, it hasn't been discussed much because coding hasn't happened. definitely open to suggestions!

IcyAngel said:
I feel like the Laguna is out of place; first of all, Venice hardly gets to choose its city locations therefore the yields on river tiles and atolls are a bit too specific; also (and I say this as someone who never plays Venice but often forces them into their games as an AI), Venice only goes wide when it's stomping and conquering a lot - which isn't too common. Usually, it'll stay around 4-5 cities at most. In that sense, the yields per Laguna in the empire will tend to prove underwhelming.

I think the two UUs are an interesting concept, but easily misimplemented; will have to test them to give accurate feedback.

I'll delete the bonus from rivers. It made flavor sense, but you're right, CS rarely get placed on rivers anyways so it would rarely get used. What bonus would you think would be fitting? perhaps a bonus to internal trade routes? Or maybe increase the range of sea trade routes by 75% (up from 50%). I think the latest patch hit venice particularly hard with how it limits their trade route options. Increasing the range so they can get ships out further would help a lot.

Yes, the Fusta/GGall combo is going to be difficult to tweak. I want them to compliment each other without one being clearly more useful than the other. I'm really looking forward to a Venice player's feedback. Even when I've tried venice I've always played too passively to even need the UUs

Edit:
Teutonic Order - maybe drop it to + 5 CS on barracks down from 10?
Slaganz - we could drop it back to 6 cp for now maybe? I don’t think it should dip below 6 though.
Maybe we could even nerf Hanse a bit? Maybe drop it’s base yields to 3 culture/3 gold (currently 3 culture/5 gold
Also reminder that Germany just was nerfed 2 patches ago

adan_eslavo · Dec 22, 2017

For Baan Chang code sums all resources so consider 1 resource (4 each) in 6 types from 6 CS (1 is giving each). This is 4x6=24 in each city. I will add scaler.

I found unused promotion: "Desert Warriors". We can make use of this somewhere.

pineappledan · Dec 22, 2017

Should the Waag build cost be reduced, since it is in an earlier tech? It's currently 500prod (same as bank). contemporary buildings like workshop cost 350

adan_eslavo · Dec 22, 2017

We should do this for every building or unit that comes earlier. What is the pattern for VP UCs in that matter?

!!!Time to release the Kraken!!!
v19 out!

Spoiler v19 changelog :

Be careful, internal in-game description are not changed so you must follow my main post to keep up with new content.
All text changes (especially new promotion names) you can find in TextChanges.sql file in !TextChanges folder. It contains first part of promotion overhaul I plan to add (with that mod or as an optional addon). For now for testing purposes I will be adding all stuff with new UCs.

pineappledan · Dec 22, 2017

I think the new bombard is really neat. Should it have even more power now though, since it hurts itself when firing? Up it's RCP to 50 maybe? People will be reticent to actually fire the thing so it will really have to hurt
Could call the immortals double heal promotion "10 000 strong". The immortals got their name for being a corps of soldiers kept at exactly 10 000 men. I think the double heal is meant to reflect how even if a soldier died, they were immediately replaced by another Persian so the unit stayed at this exact number

Hinin · Dec 22, 2017

Did some tests already.
The 3d models, the animations, the flags, the pictures and the promotions work as intended (first time I haven't seen something wrong in the first playtest... something feels off...) : good job.
I think the two unique Mayan promotions are too weak (I would increase the effect of "Renewal cycle" and add something more to the Ball court promotion), but I'll do some tests to be sure (after all, the Mayans will be good in the hands of the players capable of calculating the movement of troops to increase the effectiveness of the healing/boost

).

Now, the main dish : I did an entire playtest with India (same settings as usual) and won a diplomatic victory soon after it became available.

Spoiler India :

- I played a peaceful game (only one war, with Ethiopia in the Modern era), but the Dhanuraashi was still a great unit in the early game : with it, I succeeded in quickly advancing through the Progress tree first policies (after that, their effect was negligible, although they were quite high level, since the +5 xp doesn't take into account the barbarian xp limit, which I think is a good thing).
- My capital, surrounded by flat forested grassland, became quickly a very very big city thanks to the Harappan reservoire : I picked the Cathedral for my religion, and spammed farms everywhere (no villages, no lumber mills, only farms on kilometers). Thanks to the Qila and the Cathedral, the absence of villages wasn't felt, and, finishing the Industrial era, my 40 pop capital had more than 400 food/production/culture/gold. Thanks to all this growth in my capital, the Progress tree gave also a lot of science.
- I played the diplomatic game very early and picked Progess/Statecraft/Industry (for less poverty, more TR and production on specialists) and then Communism (because I wanted to isolate Ethiopia, which was the main power during the first half of the game, and picked Freedom ; also, I already have all the tools to be a diplomatic power, so a ideology focusing on defense and economy was perfect for me). When the Congress was founded, I discovered that Ethiopia had a horrifying number of delegates, since only Haile had a religion on his part of the map (with 8 civilization, my part having only 4 counting me) : moreover, Poland was a volontary vassal to Ethiopia, and they waged wars across the continent. So, my first priority has been to isolate Ethiopia from its few allies, break the Shotelai/Pancerny alliance (it worked well) and nullify its influence in the Congress : all of this was achieved at the beginning of the Modern era.
- I succeeded in not entering war with Indonesia, my closest neighbour with a powerful navy, by allying myself with France and having a large pool of units (the HReservoire/Cathedral combo helped greatly on that side).
- Because I wanted the Qila to be as effective as possible, I focused, as I said, my capital on growth before anything else : the result was that the culture in it was very very high. I like this UB2 a lot since it synergizes well with the Indian UA/UB1.
- I had serious unhappiness issues during the first part of the game (because of all the growth in my empire), but it never went out of control, since I stayed at 10 cities beginning the Medieval era.

Did someone played a more wide/aggressive game with India ?

Blue Ghost · Dec 22, 2017

Assyria:
Agreed, the Lamassu Gate should definitely have a great work of writing slot. Not giving it was an oversight on my part.
Without a consensus on the Iron Chariot, I'm keeping it as is. My biggest issue with the Fury of Nergal promotion is just that it's going to be a pain to code. I may get around to it eventually, but it's not high on my list of priorities right now.

Aztecs:
Agreed, the XP will be changed to 3 per golden age, with a hard cap of 30. That's still quite a lot, maybe it could be toned down further.

China:
There's some contention here about whether or not to keep Supply on the Xiafan Guanjun. I think it's a good representation, so I'm leaning toward keeping it and reducing the CS. I wouldn't be opposed to changing it either, but I'd need a good flavor justification for Broadside.
I didn't realize that the chancery no longer gets paper. The resources of the Examination Hall are copied from the chancery, so no code changes are necessary. I just need to update the description.

IcyAngel · Dec 22, 2017

adan_eslavo said:
Why? It has very useful and powerful abilities. It has RCP rised by 1. I think this is enough.You're right. What about refining it a bit? Any ideas?BT has now 2 less CP. We'll see how it works. YC has shorter WLTKD, but it scales with speed (5/10/15/20 turns).I deleted gold bonus to Ocean and Coast and TR gold bonus. @pineappledan claimed (and he was right I suppose) that it is too strong.It will be too much probably.
I don't mind. We can always nerf Fale construction bonus. Tests, tests, tests! The scout idea is too make it possible to defend easily. Mix of self-sustainables Koa's and Maoris should be threatening.Ups, I suppose first option is in charge from what I can see in lua code. I can add scaler. 15*0.5 is fine?Deleting XP will weaken Armada very much. Maybe some change to this promotion? I don't understand quite what problem with hacienda is? It must be build next to luxury so if it is not there then you cannot. City adjacent is additional bonus not restriction. Ahhh, in game description is wrong. It ould be to hard to make it work like that.

India: my thinking was that the AI probably isn't competent at last hitting with specific units, therefore all but the culture on leveling up will be mostly lost.

Spain: the Armada gets two promotions for free and high CS! For a pre-coal melee ship (meaning you can spam as many as you want), it's very strong even without Invincible. Plus, I'm sure the AI is much less capable than humans when it comes to keeping its ships at full health. As for the Hacienda, yes: the description sometimes states it can be built only next to luxuries, and sometimes next to a luxury or a city. In effect the first description is the correct one.

Indonesia: The Prau isn't bad, merely uninspiring. I think it's the kind of unit you disregard until you play it, then find the QoL it brings amazing. Keeping +1 sight on upgrade is actually very potent (even moreso than for a land unit, as naval battles are generally games of cat-and-mouse in which you have to gauge enemy positioning very well).

IcyAngel · Dec 22, 2017

adan_eslavo said:
Any idea how to make it live longer, but not invincible? It will have Quick Study still so getting next levels of Legacy shouldn't be a problem. I think in VP units are taught to run away from battlefield if possible. It's not their fault that people focus on some units more. We cannot teach AI the same.I added flat 4 horses for now. Events are not in game yet.I can easily rise it up to 10 or 12 if 8 is too low. Remember that when we though about this unit for the first time I remember calls: "5 dmg? It's killer!!!". Now I rised it to 8.For now dummy building give 2gpp/2d per trait (10 max). I can make it 1/2(7)=7/14 and +3g to market.
Couldn't run from Shotel Swordsman?I reduced specialist back to 1 and deleted 1GSciP for now.Yup. @Hinin suggested a while ago to change it completely because it looks bland. If you have an idea to add new flavor, go on. Maybe something from later era, like Klepht.

I made Great Bombard v2. How it works? I will show you:

Dutch: 7/14 GPP/CS is not strong enough imo (look at Austria's Coffee House for example, which comes at the same time and grants 33% GPP - to me that's a lot stronger!). Obviously we cannot give the Waag 33% GPP too, but cutting it by ~15% to get ~15CS wouldn't be terrible. Somewhere between 15-20% GPP and 15 CS. And keep markets at +1g. Thoughts? (I think I overreacted initially... what can I say, I hate hard-to-siege cities! x.x)

Celts: You're right, the AoE dmg on move is very strong actually, so we shouldn't mess with the CS too much until more testing.

Greece: I like the flavour (diplomacy and GPP), but it's a bit bland only because there are multiple small bonuses instead of one bigger one. It doesn't bother me personally, but if you want you could eliminate the +5% GPP and make the diplomatic unit production +10% or +15%, or vice-versa.

IcyAngel · Dec 22, 2017

pineappledan said:
I'm quite opposed to it not needing horses because the horse archer already doesn't require horses. If both UUs didnt require horses then there would be nothing for them to even spend their strategics on. Could reduce the production cost instead of raisin it. sure. I'm not sure what the point is in making a promotion scale with era when the unit is not buildable in later eras.

You're right, didn't think of the horse archer.

Scale with era, as in the unit keeps the promotion on upgrade to go with it?

pineappledan said:
Yes, the prau is mainly a scout, but when I playtested it I found that the prau couldn't act as a competent scout without some way of either evading barbarians, or beating the hell out of them. Quiqueremes do the latter, so I made prau able to do the former

Because they cannot end turns in deep ocean, the slipstream is necessary so the prau can get around barbarian ships in the early game. Other civs can get hemmed into their starting points by ZOC, unless they brute force their way through endless barb galleys. The prau can skip that.

That makes sense. As I said earlier, it's probably better than it looks on paper.

pineappledan said:
This reminds of when G capped the XP from city states because he suggested people were farming CSs for endless XP, and then everyone's reponse in the forum was: ".... no we don't. We don't do that. Why would we do that? Why would anyone do that?"
This promotion was capped at one point at 60 XP. But we had a discussion about how all scouts get to do the same thing the spotter promotion. That promotion has no cap either and it's not conditional on full HP. I dunno, would reducing it to 2 XP per turn be better?

I think we can do away with the Boarding party II promotion though. Just give it the first one; I think we were trying too hard to go shot-for-shot with the sea beggar

Except it's what Invincible was designed for? The strategy section of the Armada mentions stay outside of city attack range and racking up experience during "long sieges", because enemy ships will be too scared to approach you. There is no other use for the promotion really. It's not like farming exp on city-states, where you have to go out of your way to do it.

But VP is purposely not modded to prevent human exploit, so I don't mind keeping Invincible if you guys care about it. I'd be on board with removing Boarding Party II though.

pineappledan said:
I'll delete the bonus from rivers. It made flavor sense, but you're right, CS rarely get placed on rivers anyways so it would rarely get used. What bonus would you think would be fitting? perhaps a bonus to internal trade routes? Or maybe increase the range of sea trade routes by 75% (up from 50%). I think the latest patch hit venice particularly hard with how it limits their trade route options. Increasing the range so they can get ships out further would help a lot.

I think a modification to Venice's UA (to increase trade route range and/or remove the 1 TR/city limitation) will be inevitable anyway if Gazebo sticks with the current changes. We've got to wait & see, but for now I like the bonus to internal trade routes yeah. Some %prod/food to target cities to help the puppets, maybe.

pineappledan said:
Edit:
Teutonic Order - maybe drop it to + 5 CS on barracks down from 10?
Slaganz - we could drop it back to 6 cp for now maybe? I don’t think it should dip below 6 though.
Maybe we could even nerf Hanse a bit? Maybe drop it’s base yields to 3 culture/3 gold (currently 3 culture/5 gold
Also reminder that Germany just was nerfed 2 patches ago

The Slaganz isn't strong enough to warrant a nerf imo. 5 CS sounds good, and as for the Hanse idk. The UA was nerfed and the Hanse was indirectly nerfed by the trade route changes too. We shouldn't overdo it for now. If Germany annihilates everyone in test games, we can nerf.

De_Genius · Dec 23, 2017

adan_eslavo said:
rewrited Scythe promotion (thanks to @De_Genius lua code),

Just curious, since my name got mentioned

Was it the Goedendag promotion LUA code ?

adan_eslavo · Dec 23, 2017

@De_Genius

Yup. My first version of scythe used triple as much code and did the same thing. Moreover I needed to analyze two possible variants (map tile numeration system) to make it work.

@IcyAngel

I will tweak Waag one more time.
Maybe also move one of the on kill bonuses of dhanuraashi to oter type. I will also rise up its rcp by 1.
I will tone down Armada a bit.
I will work more on agora.

@pineappledan

I found that Royal Library, Great Cothon, and Ostrog are the only UBs available earlier. Only Ostrog has reduced production cost. We moved it back to later tech so decreased production cost stayed as an additional flavor. I can add Waag's cost reduction for the same reason.
Lots of things changed and even more are coming up. How is going text update for new UCs? Suggestions worth mentioning are:
- @IcyAngel found that Hacienda's text are inconsistent with actual state,
- Mission has to have updated text (it adds +1f to every Hacienda),
- Buffalo Pound has many text errors,
- Oppidum lacks one text.
I added to main post new suggestions for Agora, Armada, Dhanuraashi, Waag and Immortals.
Prau design was taken into consideration. Do we change it somehow or leave as an fully recon unit capable to fight as normal tritreme?
For now I found two unused promotions:
- Desert Warrior (+50% CS on Desert). This could be added for desert unit or tied to the promotion tree (after Formation II or Charge II; after Shock III),
- Siege Engine II (former Bunus vs Cities; +100% RCS vs Cities). We actually did add it to Great Turkish Bombard. But it is not tied to the tree. I could add it and set the prereq to Siege I or some later promotion to not to overpower every siege unit (after Infiltrators).
What is the actual state of Rome? I know it was the very first civ claimed by @Jarula. If it is too difficult for him I can try to make it. Could you then place final version of Ballista, Latifundia and Figs we agreed? I would start then from adding it to main post.

pineappledan · Dec 23, 2017

After having slept on it, I think the "damage to itself" on the Turkish Bombard thing needs a little more thought.

The CP was kept very low on the unit (CP=10) as a way of making the unit extremely vulnerable to attack. Does that make the unit's self-damaging redundant, since both aspects are working towards making the unit risky to use?
if it can only fire twice before taking 8 turns to heal back up, this unit will be used very sparingly, and it might not actually feel that "fun" The main appeal of this unit was to make sieges fast, but if you have to spend 5-6 turns of downtime after taking a city just to fortify up then it defeats the purpose. It breaks the momentum of capturing cities, just in a a different way
With that much 'punishment for actually using the gun, this thing will never level up. like ever.

Here's what I think should be done:

increase CP to 15 (the gun is already killing itself. making it so weak defensively is redundant)
Reduce damage to itself to 15-20hp (hurt the unit, but don't hurt the unit so much that actually using the unit feels bad)
Sahi Topu promotion should double the healing rate in friendly territory (take the city, and cut downtime recovering from bombardment in half)

adan_eslavo said:
Lots of things changed and even more are coming up. How is going text update for new UCs? Suggestions worth mentioning are:

I'm honestly, I'm going to let the dust settle a little more for now. A lot of things can still change and rewriting everything now seems a bit Sisyphean.

adan_eslavo said:
new suggestions for Agora, Armada, Dhanuraashi, Waag and Immortals

Agora and immortal changes I have no opinions on. They look fine.

I agree that 20 CP was too powerful for the Waag. Once again I'm a bit bewildered as to why a Waag is even giving CP to begin with. A weigh house has nothing to do with the city's defense. I think it should be 3% GPP per stack to a max of 30, no CP, but I've spoken my peace about this before.
For Armada - mark me down as being in the camp that liked 'Invincible' as it was. At 1XP, the invincible promotion simply won't factor into people's strategy; It's inconsequential. 2-3 XP per turn at full health. All it takes is a single hit from a city, or a frigate and this promotion is turned off, and if they don't have supply then the party is completely over for them. I agree that that boarding party 2 was overkill though.
I'm reasonably ambivalent towards the changes to Dhanuraashi - it feel like change for the sake of change. I haven't heard a single strong argument w.r.t. gameplay or 'lore' which would dictate we change this. @Hinin is the only one with an educated opinion near as I can tell and he had no complaints whatsoever

adan_eslavo said:
Prau design was taken into consideration. Do we change it somehow or leave as an fully recon unit capable to fight as normal tritreme?

I believe at this point that myself and @FoxOfWar are the only two people who have actually tested the prau. I thought it worked very well, and I don't think giving any combat ability fits the unit's history. The unit does one thing, and that is map the coastline faster and cheaper than any other unit. Even if you only build 2 or 3 that's a massive edge.

It's funny, this UU is actually a case of the unit encourageing you to build LESS of it with its unique abilities. The unit's speed and ability to evade barbarian entanglements actually means that you can do the job of 2 or 3 triremes with 1 prau. People are hung up on the lack of combat ability, but early naval combat is pretty ineffectual, and the quinquereme already went that route.

adan_eslavo said:
What is the actual state of Rome?

Here's the current proposal for Rome, as up to date as I am aware:

Spoiler :

Contentious parts are highlighted in red.

People couldn't agree if each adjacent plantation should get yields or if plantations should add yields reflexively onto the plantation. Imo adjacent bonuses to plantations are easier to code, easier to understand, and it ends in the same total yields.
Couldn't agree how long it should take to spawn figs. my vote is 15 turns at standard, but other people were leaning more towards 10 before.

Art and coding resources for both the latifundium and the figs are in the art assets file I assembled.
You can also look through the code Jarula made. I'm not sure if it works or not

@Blue Ghost You said you were looking for a gameplay or lore reason to do away with supply and replace it with broadside, or another promotion. A good summary can be found on wikipedia under Zheng He or Expeditionary Voyages:

Reasons against supply:

Xiafan Guanjun and Sea Beggar both have supply and are both unlocked at the same tech, so it's not unique
Supply is made redundant by the ability to befriend city states, who would then make convenient ports to heal up
the Xiafan Guanjun were expeditionary voyages supplied directly from the coffers of the emperor of China. They went out, kicked ass, and then always returned to China to resupply. The supply makes more sense for the Sea Beggars because they were pirates that were scrounging at any port of call that they could get.
A list of things which happened during the expeditions:
Despite their more diplomatic overtures, the treasure fleet is also famous for
- Destroying a south China pirate fleet, killing over 5000 pirates and executing their leaders on the first voyage
- Bullying the Majapahit (Indonesia) into submission on the 2nd voyage, basically using gunboat diplomacy
- Destroying the army of the kingdom of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and kidnapping their king in the 3rd voyage.
- Deposing a Sumatran king and reinstating China's puppet king who had been usurped
- Bullying Mogadishu and Lasa on the 5th voyage.
Hence the Broadside promotion, because they be kicking landlubber asses and engaging in 16th century gunboat diplomacy
the high CS for the ships was meant to convey the sheer size and heft of these ships, as well as to acknowledge that they had ships in the fleet that could do basic repairs. Europe wouldnt be making ships as big as the Xiafan Guanjun for almost a full century

adan_eslavo · Dec 23, 2017

I remember that after my last post there was large comment about figs, so:

Spoiler Latifundium with Figs :

My current proposal Armada is:

Spoiler Armada after little nerfochange :

India:
- I decided to move faith from kill for two reasons:
  - faith from kill is so boring after we have Aztecs, Pancerny, Pictish Warrior and now Dhanuraashi,
  - faith from promotion is less afected by AI incompetence
- I increased RCP and lowered CP to even more help AI with it.
Netherlands:
- I kept defense from first design. And @Hinin was also in favor of it. I personaly have no opinion. On one side like said it is no historically accurate. In other hand it would be nice to help netherlands some how in defense.
- If cofee house has +33% GPP then +30% from Waag would be too similar. this method is good to differentate it.

pineappledan · Dec 23, 2017

editted my previous post re: the turkish bombard.

you might be forgetting the possibility that plantation resources could spawn adjacent to each other, but only 1 latifundium could be built in that case.
eg. 2 banana tiles next to each other -> latifundium built on 1 -> now have 1 latifundium, next to 1 banana and 1 fig
imo, the +1 production on farms is overkill. I see you took the boost from currency and moved it to an adjacency bonus. I don't really think it's needed, but that's not a hill to die on for me.

adan_eslavo said:
"Invincible" (+3 XP on Kill. +5 HP if unit is outside frinedly territory)

I think this works against the historicity of the unit in a big way.
The armada was this menacing presence off the coast of England, it seemed unbeatable. Then the english fired a few cannons at it and kept their distance and the illusion was broken. The Armada was forced to break off from their invasion due to weather, and ended up losing half its ships at sea due to bad navigation.

If the ship can heal at sea that's precisely what did NOT happen in real life, the armada got utterly f*cked when outside friendly territory
the accumulating more and more power until you actually face them feels much more historical. like you just have to take 1 pot-shot at one of these big bruisers and the whole mystique is broken.

How about this:
Armada
40 CP
3 moves (take the -1 move from santa maria, all it does is add clutter)
"Invincible" promotion - (2 or 3)XP for every turn in enemy territory if at full HP. +4CP (or +10%) if at full HP
boarding party I
Santa Maria promotion - generate Great Admiral Points on kills

And then absolutely do not give the unit any means of healing. So the first hit these units make, if at full hp, will pack a huge whallop, but then they are substantially weaker

Dnahuraashi changes sound fine then. (see? this is why I'm not updating the text yet)

adan_eslavo · Dec 23, 2017

So we do keep the adjacency restriction, right? In that case you are right.
I missed Currency bonus to be honest. I thought that if Lat will substitute both farm and plantation someway it should boost also both. So +1f on Farm maybe will do less overkill than +1p
Do we go with extremely long time to build for Lat? That was one of the ideas.
I agree on GTB changes.
I will modify Armada the way you said. Keep production increased cost? I will go with 2 XP.
What about rest of points from my previous post (India and Waag arguments, promotions tying up to tree and UBs earlier tech cost)?

Jarula · Dec 23, 2017

Latifundia is cool but cultural benefits are lacking.

I would swap the food for culture. Roman villas (latifundia) were lavishly decadent mosaics up the wazzoo. Although they were representative of the slave owning Roman aristocracy and the horrors of slavery they were all about a celebration of Roman decadence and lavishness.

They helped Rome progress but they really should be crapping out culture. I know I will personally change things to culture and gold on my comp but should be culture and gold or culture and food.

Today the villas are reminders of the exhorbitant amounts of money the patricians held.

Oh can't wait for Germany sounds like super cool with the order wonder.

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