3UC/4UC for VP: Project Coordination Thread

[Blue Ghost]

Looks like @Blue Ghost is critiquing the v1 proposal instead of the update?

There’s only 4 things going on with the Holkan. I agree that the 3 moves isn’t necessary. Especially with 3 moves already on kibitum.

The heal every 10 turns would stack with the survivalism promotion line, so I like the synergy there. The biggest gripe I have with early pathfinders is all the time you spend healing and this helps reduce that slightly. It’s also a fun, small, but very interactive bonus that gets you into thinking more about your turn counter, so it gets you into the unique maya long-count playstyle earlier.

I think the removal of the penalty vs Barbarians is good, Doesn’t feel right to hobble the UC like that. No other scout line UC has kept the penalty yet, indeed the only UC in the base CBP actually gets a BONUS vs Barbarians (bandeirantes).

There are now only 2 triggers on the arena, not 3, and one of them is very rare (only on change of era).

Re the quail ash, persia’s Deal is GAPs and gold, so I would subtract a culture and add 1 or 2 gold to the quail ash yields imo

I missed that the holkan no longer has the full heal on b’ak’tun, but the rest of my critique still applies. The third trigger on the arena I was referring to was the unit promotion every 20 turns. One of the triggers being very rare doesn’t actually make it any better, since my concern is complexity, not power level.
I’d be fine with either the extra movement or removing the penalty against barbarians, but not both, for reasons of aesthetics. I prefer the extra movement personally, for synergy with the goody huts. And I maintain that the healing isn’t significant enough to be worth the additional complexity.

 

[pineappledan]

I missed that the holkan no longer has the full heal on b’ak’tun, but the rest of my critique still applies. The third trigger on the arena I was referring to was the unit promotion every 20 turns. One of the triggers being very rare doesn’t actually make it any better, since my concern is complexity, not power level.
I’d be fine with either the extra movement or removing the penalty against barbarians, but not both, for reasons of aesthetics. I prefer the extra movement personally, for synergy with the goody huts. And I maintain that the healing isn’t significant enough to be worth the additional complexity.

I can get behind that. You vote for the 3 moves, and I vote for no barb penalty. We both agree not both though.
The 10 heals would use the same trigger as the k’atun ahaw promotions, so it justifies the complexity by making the new mechanic do 2 things. Helps justify the work imo, even if it is a very small bonus.

The k’atun trigger would be offloaded onto the unit’s, so it wouldn’t add to the complexity of the building at least. I really like how this has shaped up into a civ which makes you obsess about turn counts and dates. Really different

If people aren’t happy with the holkan, maybe the goody hut II promotion could give a consistent yield for every ruin, like 10 science or 5XP on every goody hut in addition to the +25% yields?

Re the Shofet, I realized the idea of simply adding GA promotions to a GG causes more problems than it solves because without the unit actually jumping class like it does, you don’t have the Shofet filling both GG and GA roles, and being generated by both. It might be fine though, if they can only disembark in cities. It’s not like a normal GA can disembark at all.

 

[FieryCharizard7]

Just ran a simulation with England, Denmark, Celts, Netherlands, France, Ethiopia, Spain, and the Ottomans. The Netherlands got squished between the Celts, who looked very powerful early on, and Denmark. Other than that, it was an even battle throughout the game. The game crashed right after all civs had an ideology so I didn’t get to see a victor but Eithopia had a good cultural lead, Ottomans had a scientific lead, and no one had a lead in score, diplo, or domination. I’ll post some action pics once I get Wi-fi.


England is done except that I can’t get the Crown Jewels great work working, but all else is good

 

[adan_eslavo]

Spoiler Persia and Maya v3 :

Persia:
UM - Qizilbash (replaces Lancer): 40 CP. Can be Purchased with Faith. "Safavi Agitator" (Gains +1 Faith, +2 Gold and +2 GAP for every turn spent in enemy territory) Promotion.
UB - Pairidaeza (replaces Garden): Does not require river. +3 Culture, +3 Gold, +3 Tourism. +25% GPP in City. +3 Culture and +3 Gold to Writer, Artist and Musician Guilds in City. 30 Culture as an instant boost when a Golden Age begins, scaling with Era. +1 Food and +1 Gold from Citrus and Cocoa. +2 Gold to Oases.

The Maya:
UM - Holkan (replaces Pathfinder): +1 Movement. Has "Goody Huts II" (Additional +25% Goody Huts Bonus) and "Renewal Cycle" (Heals unit by 20 HP every 20 turns).
UB - Pitz Court (replaces Arena): +2 Faith, +2 Tourism, +3 Culture. 10 Faith and 20 Science, scaling with Era at the beginning of every B'ak'tun. Land units trained in the city gain "K'atun Ahaw" (5% CS for every 20 game turns, stacks 4 times (20% total. Hun/Ka'a/Oox/Kan)) Promotion. -20% Boredom. +2 Culture from Perfume, +1 Food and +1 Gold from Olives. +2 Production to Armories, Barracks and Forges in City.

• deleted debuff reduction vs barbarians. It's indeed not needed and made Holkan to similar to Koa which is offensive version of Scout.
• I will leave bonus movement and "Goody Huts II" for better synergy.
• deleted +1 CP. Now it has 3 bonus abilities which makes him great early explorer. Until Scout will be available, it can really help Mayas get the advantage of local terrain. Imagine Maya with 2 Holkans on the beginning of the game.
• "Renewal Cycle" is some flavor I like. It will help this unit stay longer on track synergize with "Survivalism". I increased it's value to 20 HP to make more useful. IT only happens once on 20 turns.
• I really like to see Holkan in action. If it will lame, then we always can rework it even totally like I did with some other units before. But then we will have some experience about
  
• changed +2 to +2 and increased GAP to +2 . Reduced faith back to +1 on "Safavi Agitator". Like you said, to focus Persia on Gold and GAP more.
• changed "K'atun Ahaw". It is now based on game turns instead of unit life turns. It will simplify it a bit, make closer to real meaning of the K'atun Ahaw phrase and use the same part of code like "Renewal Cycle".
• moved science bonus to B'ak'tun. It is not necessary to split it up to Era when we have such wonderful trigger.

@FieryCharizard7:

• Many posts before I wrote you 2 bugs as far as I remember which I found in your database.log file. You can focus on them an check if it run well after resolving the problem.
• I'm looking forward to see screens and some more details. That would help us balance things more.
• What was the cause of crash? Our modpack?

 

[FieryCharizard7]

@edan_eslavo

Here’s the post with the bugs that should be resolved:

@FieryCharizard7
"Buildings.FreeGreatWork - "GREAT_WORK_THE_CROWN_JEWELS" does not exist in GreatWorks"

"no such table: Building_YieldModifier"

Try to resolve these errors in the beginning and check if still there will be problem post again your log. Maybe something new will appear.

Now the error that I get is “ARTIFACT_CROWN does not exist in GreatWorkArtifactClasses”

France also seemed underpowered as well since they don’t receive much of a power boost until late in the game. The crash was because I opened IGE as I was trying to look to see what cities were producing and then the game froze on me. I’m going to try and do it more CBR style next time so I’ll have some info addict slides and spies in cities which will give a better view.

 

[adan_eslavo]

@FieryCharizard7 You added GreatWorks entry in table with its own artifact class. Then you also need to make your own artifact class in GreatWorkArtifactClasses. Try to set there value to 7 (same like Sarcophagus) and check if it works. I would also suggest you checking Egypt in the same time because Free artifacts are not specified in any table. I'm not sure what factor game uses to choose what artifact to put in free artofact slot. Maybe it's that exact value. Then there will be problem with differentiating sarcophagus and great jewel.

 

[pineappledan]

Aw... I liked the end of era boost, it was unique and reflected the ancient-classic-post classic narrative which permeates Mayan historiography. If you want to use the bak’tun for both it has to be less than 20 science. The baktuns are every 15 turns or so in the early game, That’s a little too frequent.

The reason faith was the triggered yield is that people really don’t care about their faith generation around the time the baktuns start to get more spread out

EDIT: anyone have any opinions on how to fix the Tophet?
Should I add a production scaler?
Should I scrap the -Food, or reduce it to -1 food?
Should I add a different effect, like an instant faith boost on completion (since we removed that from Pitz Court)?
Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[adan_eslavo]

I plan to change some names to follow the same pattern as the rest:

• Barbican --> (pol.) Barbakan,
• Hippodrome --> (gre.) (H)ippodromos,
• Licorne --> (rus.) Jedinorog,
  
• Yellow Brow --> ???
• Buffalo Pound --> ???
• Prowler --> ???
• Sachem's Council --> ???
• Yellow Brow --> ???
• Scythed Chariot --> ???
• Tug Banner Warrior --> ???
• Monolithic Church --> ???

 

[David de Vasconcelos]

EDIT: anyone have any opinions on how to fix the Tophet?
Should I add a production scaler?
Should I scrap the -Food, or reduce it to -1 food?
Should I add a different effect, like an instant faith boost on completion (since we removed that from Pitz Court)?
Anyone have any other ideas?

Make an event to cut down on food for a few turns.
This event will occur once every 100 turns, or once per era.
It will not punish so much the player, and will fulfill its purpose of sacrifices.

 

[pineappledan]

Yellow Brow —> Ohamupe
Buffalo pound —> pis’kun
Scythed Chariot —> Covinni
Prowler —> Rotisken’rakehte

For sachems council that’s already a partial endonym, as is tug banner. Could just call it tug warrior though. Monolithic churches aren’t unique to Ethiopia, so it might be fine to use the English. The proper names of the churches are just... the actual names of the churches

Edit: I’m with blue ghost on this one. I think that if we are indeed going to do that “cultural sensitivity and better civilopedia text mod”, then we may as well use the accessible English names here. That gives people an option

 

[Blue Ghost]

It’s your call, but I think the names are fine as is. Using original-language names for everything when a distinctive English translation exists hurts accessibility.

 

[Jarula]

Because golden ages for the AI are rare why not make it 50 culture...?

Persia historically is cultural conquest.

Maya is WAAAY to strong.

That's 30 yield every 400 years.

Persias is too weak most games gardens don't even get built.

 

[adan_eslavo]

You are right, but everything almost everything we've created has it's original names. Langskib (longboat), Andelsbevægelse --> Danish Cooperative Movement, Holkan --> Obsidian Warrior etc. If we follow that pattern then we need to change only few names to make it look better. For non-english names we have civilopedia which translates all things and explain everything. In my opinion if this game is some kind of historical game (maybe not in 100%), then we should at least make this historical and unique feel present.

@Jarula That's what flavors are for.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Historical and unique feels can be present with English names. I think base Civ did a very good job in that regard. Again, this is a matter of preference. In my opinion, if the English name is recognizable as a culturally distinct entity, then we should use it. Yes, civilopedia can give explanations, but English names are easier for English speakers to talk about and remember. My personal rule of thumb is to go with the name that English speakers are more likely to use when talking about these entities.
In the examples you give, I strongly prefer Longboat to Langskib, because everyone knows what longboats are and associates them with the Vikings. Holkan has the advantage of being short and easy to remember, so that’s fine.
Again, these are just my opinions; feel free to do differently.

 

[pineappledan]

Holkan is a word that means warchief, it’s not really the same as obsidian warrior.

Andel’s beverage (really hard to spell) and dhanuraashi are basically a Co-operative and Indian archer if you don’t use an endonym to make them culturally distinct.

I think langskib could stand to be anglicized to longboat and then changed back to langskib in the endonym mod.

 

[adan_eslavo]

That's what I was going to suggest. For now we can do original names to not to change all of that stuff. Then we can add small englishizing patch to make it accessible for everyone. Both sides will be happy: those who wants simple and accessible game and those who want to feel that feel if feel what I mean. I will start putting proper names on my description main post. @pineappledan are you with me to make after that this big text overhaul mod where we could put native names for all stuff?

 

[Blue Ghost]

To elaborate a little more, I imagine the dialogue in-universe to be in the leaders’ native language, and what we’re seeing on screen is an English translation of that. In a translation, it’s sometimes more faithful to leave certain terms untranslated if there’s no good English equivalent, but leaving words untranslated without a good reason is jarring and immersion-breaking.

 

[pineappledan]

Okay, so we are going with endonym as default and English names as a patch now?

You know what I would do? I could change all the names to English names as default and then do the endonym as a patch. And that would include some of the endonym s already in the game.

Naga malla —> war elephant
Tabya —> cobworks
Ger —> yurt
Etc

And then have our endonyms patch which reverts the changes and changes additional names as well. I feel like the base game often used andlicized names even at the cost of clarity, even if it meant creating their own term because the nativized word is the most commonly used (floating garden). On the other hand, VP used native endonyms even when English had very specific words to describe that exact thing (Ger). This puts a very clear divide between the UCs made by firaxis and those made by VP

So I would make the base 4UC mod change VP names to be consistent with vanilla’s names

Then I would make the language patch make all the names consistent with VP

 

[Blue Ghost]

Okay, so we are going with endonym as default and English names as a patch now?

I’ve always advocated for treating names on a case-by-case basis, and I’ve given my arguments, but you can go whichever way you feel appropriate.

 

[adan_eslavo]

I updated names for each civ I wrote in my main post. Tel me please what of them I should use. I would like to update this as quickly as possible so I need to know that before next update.

Same things we should do with promotions.

List me please also all names from original game so I would put changes for them too.