3UC/4UC for VP: Project Coordination Thread

[Ziad]

The tophet wasn't my first pick, but honestly it was the only thing I could find even so much as a name for when looking for a building or improvement for.

I'd be fine with something to reflect their breakthroughs in agriculture, but I can't find a singular structure or organization to use to tack that on to, much less existing assets.

I'd be fine with some sort of barracks replacement to depict their (over)dependence on mercenaries. But I can't find anything attached to that other than the names of individuals or legislative bodies who paid for them.

What I did find, is that the widespread practice of child sacrifice in canaanite cultures forms the basis for judeo-christian beliefs about the afterlife, hell, and divine retribution and they continue to influence us to this very day. I even found neat artwork to go with it too.

Oh I missed this. By the way I'm not being contrarian for the sake of it. I appreciate all the work being done here and think it's really well done with a lot of ambitious work. I just think this particular instance is a little off the mark.

Well since names are important, Tophet isn't really a Carthaginian word at all but rather.... well... this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tophet#Etymology
The name was later attributed to these stelae, so not only are we basing the building on foreign sources, but also the name... part of the whole diabolization bit . So I don't think that should be a block

Mercenaries are already implicitly handled by how Carthage tends to buy their units with all the gold they get while focusing on infrastructure rather than units. Basically you buy your units rather than train them. I think the next VP iteration will have XP boosts on instant units halved in order to better promote hard building units (and buff the Imperialism scaler).

Perhaps make it so that Carthage does NOT get a reduction in XP gains from instantly bought units? This could be an avenue to take. Tack on some other bonus on it as well so that it's more useful in the early game. Maybe like +1 culture or something. If you want a name, "mhnt" is the Phoenician word for army.

So it would be:

Mhnt Qrt-hdsh (Army + Carthage in Semitic syntax)
Replaces Barracks
+2 science
+1 culture
+25 XP
No XP loss for buying units

Might need something else if too weak, but Carthage is already pretty beastly as is.

Picture would just be a pic of a mercenary or something.

Text would be about how they really, really depended on mercs.

For agriculture, we can refer to the goddess of fertility and prosperity Tanit and name their building Mwn Tnt (Temple of Tanit). She is the chief deity of Carthage (her symbol is the famous one we know). It could be a temple replacement that provides a boost to farms and plantations. You were right that India boosts farms, but they do that with food. Iroquois boost plantations, but they do that with food as well (production is in-built in Herbalist). Carthage could instead buff them with production. Maybe even production on plantation and gold on farms or some other mix. (Even if there is some minor overlap, other civs do it in some situations such as Mongolia/Polish UBs).

Basically you would spend the early game focusing on growth + gold on coastal cities, then later open up some avenues for more in-land tiles (and supporting in-land cities a bit more)..

Mwn Tnt
Replaces Temple
+4 faith
+1 culture
etc...
then one of the below:
+1 production on plantation + farm (probably best)
+1 food and production to plantation + farm
+1 gold and production to plantation + farm

Photo would just be the symbol of Tanit. (Carthage symbol).
The text would be about Tanit and Mago.

 

[Ziad]

Whole Aztec Civ 5 flavor is based on human sacrifice. Why Carthage couldn't follow somehow similar pattern?

Well the Carthaginian flavor is gold and expansion, while Aztec is built around growth and kills. Why should Carthage follow a pattern inconsistent with their entire flavor just for the sake of it?

Also Aztec sacrificial practices aren't as vague as those of the Carthaginians, and were far more commonplace. Carthaginian sacrifice was almost as uncommon as Incan or Greek ones for example, done only in desperate times. Also, isn't this mod aiming to shift away from that and call their UA "Flower Wars" or something to better represent their culture?

 

[Infixo]

@adan_eslavo I have one more issue in database.log file. This time it is lack of Chinese table. Once you helped me and it worked. Maybe one more advice?

[13428.363] no such table: Language_zh_CN
[13428.363] In Query - insert into Language_zh_CN('Tag', 'Text') values (?, ?);
[13428.363] In XMLSerializer while updating table Language_zh_CN from file Localization/IGE_ZH_CN.xml.

InGame Editor uses wrong table name. Should be Language_ZH_Hant_HK.

 

[pineappledan]

Mercenaries are already implicitly handled by how Carthage tends to buy their units with all the gold they get while focusing on infrastructure rather than units. Basically you buy your units rather than train them. I think the next VP iteration will have XP boosts on instant units halved in order to better promote hard building units (and buff the Imperialism scaler).

The implementation of that patch will inform my decision I think. If that change even occurs, and depending on what tools @Gazebo gives coders to circumvent it, then I can make an informed decision. I was thinking about this as a possibility earlier, just a matter of getting a decent picture to use

Perhaps make it so that Carthage does NOT get a reduction in XP gains from instantly bought units? This could be an avenue to take. Tack on some other bonus on it as well so that it's more useful in the early game. Maybe like +1 culture or something. If you want a name, "mhnt" is the Phoenician word for army.

+1 culture is identical to the yields of ikanda I would do this:

Carthaginian mercenary building
Barracks replacement
+2 Gold
+2 Science
15XP
Units purchased in this city receive full XP, equal to produced units
Receive 10 Culture in city as an instant boost when purchasing units in this city, scaling with era

Also Aztec sacrificial practices aren't as vague as those of the Carthaginians, and were far more commonplace.

Yes, but the tophet is only 1 component of 5. Comparisons to a UA are protportional, fair and apt, I think.

Also, isn't this mod aiming to shift away from that and call their UA "Flower Wars" or something to better represent their culture?

i was the one who proposed the flower war name change. Saying the flower wars weren’t about human sacrifices, however, is like saying the American civil war was about state rights.

 

[Jarula]

Why not while we're at it give the Celts human sacrifice buffs like the Maya and the Inca and practically every ancient civ besides Rome Greece persia and Egypt. That being said tofet is fine Carthage if anything the tofet or a unique market or an earlier stronger harbor are most fitting.

In those days human sacrifice was fun it was like hey man did you see the human sacrifice? JK but seriously all the other civs sacrificed more folks than the phoenicIan's/Carthage. The Celts and Germans were all up in institutional murder.

After all it's a game I do think though a carthaginian harbor available sooner and stronger is most fitting

Celebrates them for something they were proud of. Like the changes to basic Rome y'all have done a spectacular job.

Aztecs we're Kings of human sacrifice. Drown newborns to tlaloc, the yearly king sacrifice to tzcatlipoca, dick cutting for Quetzalcoatl, skinning for xipe hotec, shed a tear for the peaceful tainu maybe she'd a tear for the Inca but Spain freeing the Nuahtl from institutional mass murder was a good thing.

Same as Rome ending Cathage the Celts human sacrifices. Egypt ironically did little if any of that barbarism slavery yes but everybody did slavery then.

If we give Carthage a UB why not give it a unique port a harbor with extra trade bonuses. Maybe a extra trade route for every 4 harbors.

Or a unique trade ship with longer range or give the harbor a up granted that allows for extra movement while embarked...

 

[Ziad]

The implementation of that patch will inform my decision I think. If that change even occurs, and depending on what tools @Gazebo gives coders to circumvent it, then I can make an informed decision. I was thinking about this as a possibility earlier, just a matter of getting a decent picture to use

+1 culture is identical to the yields of ikanda I would do this:

Carthaginian mercenary building
Barracks replacement
+2 Gold
+2 Science
15XP
Units purchased in this city receive full XP, equal to produced units
Receive 10 Culture in city as an instant boost when purchasing units in this city, scaling with era
.

I like your version even more. A more active culture component that still manages to promote their imperialism.

T
Yes, but the tophet is only 1 component of 5. Comparisons to a UA are protportional, fair and apt, I think

The difference here is that one was baseline from vanilla (Sacrificial captives), shaping all decisions on the civ balance whether vanilla or the reworked form in VP. Jaguar heals on kills to promote even more kills for the UA. The new unit in this mod will produce a worker on kill. More kills. How to get more kills? More wars and more peace treaties with golden ages, benefiting the new building.

It all stems from the initial "culture on kill" style from vanilla. Carthage has nothing of the sort. Just a way to promote child sacrifice making them get more gold for some reason.

It's not just a numerical comparison.

American civil war was about state rights.

Haha right but it's giving it more of a background to fit the culture itself. Some actual structure and reasoning for their UA to reflect their history.

 

[Ziad]

If we give Carthage a UB why not give it a unique port a harbor with extra trade bonuses. Maybe a extra trade route for every 4 harbors.

Or a unique trade ship with longer range or give the harbor a up granted that allows for extra movement while embarked...

A harbor UB is actually an interesting idea and would be somewhat unique even (is there any harbor UB at the moment?). It would basically be a Cothon. Their old UB (Great Cothon) would synergize with it, buffing t

What would you suggest for a benefit? I think trade route bonus is redundant with the UA. Maybe some city bonus for every active naval trade route? +x% yield per route? Probably gold to be a bit different from Hanse, although static production would work as it would only work on naval trade units and would be a smaller amount. Maybe a production bonus to Farms/Plantations (moving agricultural goods)?

I like the barracks alternative proposed above, but if Gazebo doesn't go that route with the XP reduction on instant buys, perhaps we can look into this.

 

[pineappledan]

I’ll stick to the barracks, if I do a UC swap at all. The temple replacement idea would just be swapping a more iconic facet of their religion for a more obscure one. A cothon in addition to the great cothon wonder is just a tad absurd

Sigh... if ya’ll has such hangups about child sacrifice I wish you would have told me when I proposed this building. Like, months ago. That’s a custom icon and hours of work down the drain. I know @FoxOfWar liked it just fine. Adan and jarula are okay with it too. Do people prefer the barracks replacement now though?

At any rate, you’ll have to make do with the tophet for now, since I can’t make that barracks without the newest patch. See how it plays and tell me if you still hate the tophet

 

[ThirstQuencher]

Umm what just happened guys? Is the Latifundium broken some how? I think this may be Rome's first one built and it somehow caused me to claim the figs tile next to it, even though Rome and I are on different continents across an ocean ...

 

[adan_eslavo]

Wow what a bug! I told you that bugs can happen. I have really low time for testing. I will look into it as fast as I can. Its lua issue. It should look for closest Roman city not yours. I quickly checked the code by phone and it shouldn't have happened. I will get back home after work and then playtest it by myself. Play more please and don't bother with thaty bug. Please check only your lua.log file if there are some errors. Try also recreate this bug in new game. DON'T LOAD AUTOSAVE. It won't work with figs. Figs coordinates should restart on game start.

 

[IcyAngel]

Wow what a bug! I told you that bugs can happen. I have really low time for testing. I will look into it as fast as I can. Its lua issue. It should look for closest Roman city not yours. I quickly checked the code by phone and it shouldn't have happened. I will get back home after work and then playtest it by myself. Play more please and don't bother with thaty bug.

If you want, you can send your various works before release and I will gladly test for you! Play a game or two on quick to see if anything weird pops up.

Stands for all of you modders, of course.

 

[ThirstQuencher]

Wow what a bug! I told you that bugs can happen. I have really low time for testing. I will look into it as fast as I can. Its lua issue. It should look for closest Roman city not yours. I quickly checked the code by phone and it shouldn't have happened. I will get back home after work and then playtest it by myself. Play more please and don't bother with thaty bug.

No problem, the amount of tiles by this improvement has increased to 6 tiles all with the fig improvement. Not sure if just the AI being the AI but around turn 140 the Iroquois had around 5 more techs than me and 4 more than the rest of the AI, he went tradition then artistry, with all the population he had and even number one in production a couple of turns later he was just pumping out buildings and techs, I just took him a peg down but his capital is still a beast, because as of now he is 8 techs in the lead ... this is also at prince difficulty, nothing like immortal or higher
Edit: Are Denmark's Runestones allowed to be built in non coastal cities? I've been able to build them in cities that access to lakes and coastal tiles not directly adjacent

 

[pineappledan]

Not sure if just the AI being the AI but around turn 140 the Iroquois had around 5 more techs than me and 4 more than the rest of the AI, he went tradition then artistry, with all the population he had and even number one in production a couple of turns later he was just pumping out buildings and techs, I just took him a peg down but his capital is still a beast, because as of now he is 8 techs in the lead ... this is also at prince difficulty, nothing like immortal or higher

Weird. We gave Iroquois bonuses to diplomacy, so them being ahead in techs is not our doing

Edit: Are Denmark's Runestones allowed to be built in non coastal cities? I've been able to build them in cities that access to lakes and coastal tiles not directly adjacent

Yeah runestones have no building requirements, not even water. That is base VP

 

[Ziad]

I’ll stick to the barracks, if I do a UC swap at all. The temple replacement idea would just be swapping a more iconic facet of their religion for a more obscure one. A cothon in addition to the great cothon wonder is just a tad absurd

Sigh... if ya’ll has such hangups about child sacrifice I wish you would have told me when I proposed this building. Like, months ago. That’s a custom icon and hours of work down the drain. I know @FoxOfWar liked it just fine. Adan and jarula are okay with it too. Do people prefer the barracks replacement now though?

At any rate, you’ll have to make do with the tophet for now, since I can’t make that barracks without the newest patch. See how it plays and tell me if you still hate the tophet

I actually think the Barracks change makes more sense from both a thematic and functional perspective. A reward to spend their gold rather than (magically) making more, linked to their aggressive expansion and focus on infrastructure.

Thanks for taking it into consideration at least.

Maybe I can shave some time and get an icon/name for you?

 

[Hinin]

Because I agree than focusing the attributes of the Tophet of human sacrifice isn't a good idea (I've supported you on that point Ziad) but I also don't want to see the previous work of pineappledan wasted (particularly the picture of the UB, which looks very good), I would like to suggest a middle ground. I think adding some of the bonus of the mercenary barrack to the Tophet and scraping the food loss/gold gain of the building could be interesting and balanced.
Here is why I want this :
- We don't have any other shrine replacement (and I don't think we'll have any other), but we already have a Barrack replacement (Zulu UB1).
- We don't know yet what could be the name or the picture linked to that unique barrack, while we have a name and a good picture for the Tophet
- Because the barrack is the first building in the game to provide xp, moving the "no xp loss" to a previous building won't affect the result.

Here is what I'm suggesting :

Tophet (replaces Shrine)
3 faith (instead of 2)
1 culture
Units purchased in this city receive full XP, equal to produced units
Units purchased in this city can move immediatly (it also is a bonus to civilian units : workers, diplomats etc => it boosts Carthaginian economy and shows the fast growth of the civilization in terms of infrastructure and political influence)

No gold bonus (Carthage already had the lighthouse and the city connections to provide the gold it needs in the early game)

For the civilopedia description, a resume of how the Carthaginians herited their beliefs from the Phoenicians, how it translated in times of crisis, how fast they grew and how they welcomed peoples from all over the ancient world to help them in times of peace and in times of war.

What do you think ?

 

[Hinin]

Weird. We gave Iroquois bonuses to diplomacy, so them being ahead in techs is not our doing

The Iroquois are fearsome in the hands of the AI, and they can use their production to quickly gain important science buildings (Writing is particularly important, since they can build the Great Library, and have access to the Sachem's Council, which gives +2 science to all their Councils : as a consequence, a Iroquois player with Tradition policies can have Councils giving +5 science, a very important yield for such an early building with no maintenance cost).

What could be interesting is to see how the Iroquois perform on several games with no human intervention (there are mods allowing to do so) : if they are too powerful in terms of science in a majority of games, then we could talk about nerfing the Sachem's council by reducing the Council bonus to +1 science, or giving it another yield.

 

[Ziad]

Because I agree than focusing the attributes of the Tophet of human sacrifice isn't a good idea (I've supported you on that point Ziad) but I also don't want to see the previous work of pineappledan wasted (particularly the picture of the UB, which looks very good), I would like to suggest a middle ground. I think adding some of the bonus of the mercenary barrack to the Tophet and scraping the food loss/gold gain of the building could be interesting and balanced.
Here is why I want this :
- We don't have any other shrine replacement (and I don't think we'll have any other), but we already have a Barrack replacement (Zulu UB1).
- We don't know yet what could be the name of the picture linked to that unique barrack, while we have a name and a good picture for the Tophet
- Because the barrack is the first building in the game to provide xp, moving the "no xp loss" to a previous building won't affect the result.

Here is what I'm suggesting :

Tophet (replaces Shrine)
3 faith (instead of 2)
1 culture
Units purchased in this city receive full XP, equal to produced units
Units purchased in this city can move immediatly (it also is a bonus to civilian units : workers, diplomats etc => it boosts Carthaginian economy and shows the fast growth of the civilization in terms of infrastructure and political influence)

No gold bonus (Carthage already had the lighthouse and the city connections to provide the gold it needs in the early game)

For the civilopedia description, a resume of how the Carthaginians herited their beliefs from the Phoenicians, how it translated in times of crisis, how fast they grew and how they welcomed peoples from all over the ancient world to help them in times of peace and in times of war.

What do you think ?

Sounds good actually. The topheth structure was ultimately a place of worship for the Carthaginians, typically placed near the ports, that they used for rituals of prosperity. They were mostly dedicated to Baal Hammon and Tanit, the chief deities of Carthage. Both were the gods of fertility/vegetation and of protection.

So you could use that protection angle to justify the mercenary boosts.

If Gazebo does not ultimately implement the change to instant bought units, the culture on unit purchase could also work instead of the XP boost.

I actually like this a lot. A bonus to instant bought units (culture/XP and movement) fits well with Carthage's kit. It also leaves room to pursue an agricultural direction if the theme feels off or the gameplay feels weak/too strong. Nice work @Hinin

@pineappledan What do you think? I could scrape together a civpedia entry.

 

[Jarula]

That's not bad but why not change great cothon then to +1 trade route for every 4 harbors or something.

And wait wasn't it baal hadaad maybe I had a bit of a mental space cake mild TBI.

 

[pineappledan]

Sounds like a plan. I would scrap the “can move after purchase” and reduce the culture on unit purchase to 5, scaling. With lighthouses and their 175 settling gold, they could rush the tophet, then buy a worker for a quick culture boost.

Then they could rush fishing and culture on those workboats

I’m reasonably sure that unit’s moving after purchase is tied to the unit’s, and there’s nothing I can do with the building. It would not be possible without major changes to the C++ code
@Jarula the current cothon gives 2 trade routes, so your change would mean they would need at least 8 cities. If anything a flat 2 looks stronger on anything but the biggest maps

 

[adan_eslavo]

IMPORTANT!!!
v20 FIXED.

If you can run firetuner and scan lua.log for some errors. There can be always something I missed. This version has fixed latifundia and slightly reworked Polder. This one also need to be checked carefully.