[Vote] (5-40) Shoshone UA Change Proposals

[Recursive]

Voting Instructions
Players, please cast your votes in the poll above. Vote "Yea" for every proposal you'd be okay with if it were implemented. Vote "Nay" if you'd be okay if these proposals weren't implemented. You can vote for any number of options.

All votes are public. If you wish, you can discuss your choice(s) in the thread below. You can change your vote as many times as you want until the poll closes.

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VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 40
Discussion Thread: (5-40) Shoshone UA Change
Proposer: @azum4roll
Sponsor(s): @azum4roll

Proposal Details
Current Shoshone UA:
Cities claim up to 8 tiles on Founding and 4 tiles on Conquest. Land Units receive a +20% Combat Strength bonus when fighting in friendly territory. All Recon Units can choose rewards from Ancient Ruins.

Proposed Shoshone UA:
Cities claim up to 8 tiles on Founding and 4 tiles on Conquest. Land Units receive a +20% Combat Strength bonus when fighting in friendly territory. Founding a City spawns an Ancient Ruin nearby and immediately claims it.

The reason of having to spawn the ruin (instead of just triggering a reward) is a hidden buff to allow more Antiquity Sites to spawn near Shoshone.

Implementation details:
Ancient Ruin is an improvement. There's currently no trait that spawns an improvement, so new code is needed here.
It should be spawned on a random resourceless and unimproved tile within 3 plot distance of the newly founded city, that is not already someone else's territory. No weighting needed.

Rationale:

• Currently the AI doesn't know how to use the ruin picker and just picks one randomly, wasting that part of the UA. Humans however can pretty much guarantee a pantheon on turn 20 by picking the faith ruin on that turn.
• This part of the UA is turned off if Ancient Ruin is off, making Shoshone weaker.
• The more balanced between ruin types it is, the less useful the ruin picker is. But we want ruin types to be balanced.
• New UA is always beneficial to Shoshone regardless of ruin balance, and encourages Shoshone to found cities as early as possible to make use of the time when ruins are still useful. This could lead to a different playstyle, which is good for the game.

EDIT: Immediately claims the ruin spawned upon settle. Removed ability of any unit claiming ruins.

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VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 40a
Discussion Thread: (5-40a) Shoshone UA Change
Proposer: @samjooma
Sponsor(s): @samjooma

Proposal Details

Current Shoshone unique ability:
Cities claim up to 8 tiles on Founding and 4 tiles on Conquest. Land Units receive a +20% Combat Strength bonus when fighting in friendly territory. All Recon Units can choose rewards from Ancient Ruins.

My proposal:
Cities claim up to 8 tiles on Founding and 4 tiles on Conquest. Land Units receive a +20% Combat Strength bonus when fighting in friendly territory. You can choose rewards from Ancient Ruins, and you get an Ancient Ruin reward when you found a city.

This means that you can choose ancient ruin rewards no matter which unit (even a civilian unit) takes them, and even when ancient ruins are taken by border expansion. The ancient ruin reward from founding a city can also be chosen.

Rationale:
The original proposal removes the ability to choose ancient ruin rewards, but I think it's is a fun mechanic that should be kept even if the AI can't use it currently.
Spawning ancient ruins makes it possible for them to be stolen by someone who you are at war with or have open borders with, it's better to give the ancient ruin reward directly.

 

[pineappledan]

Voted nay for both of these. I have to say this is singularly the most frustrating and unwanted change of this congress, to my mind.

The proposed bonus is pure jank. Placing ruins inside your territory makes no historic or thematic sense whatsoever. This isn't something that relates to the Shoshone, their history, culture or geography, it's just a way to resolve how some players want to ram the ruins system down the throats of other players, even if those players turn the ruins system off.

This change offers no new gameplay angle or incentive. It only exists to increase the reward for settling. That is something the Shoshone are already rewarded for. It's redundant, all the code of a new ability with no new gameplay. One of the random rewards you could get is even 4 free tiles, a literal copy of what the UA already gives. If the problem is that the Shoshone are weak, then it would be sufficient to take an existing bonus and make it stronger.

This isn't just a bad change that adds nothing other than raw power to a civ in the most convoluted way possible. It's also imperious, forcefeeding players the ruins mechanic whether they want it or not. If I want to play a game as the Shoshone without randomly generated and distributed rewards, or those intrusive Native Tongue ruin prompts, I would now have to go in and mod the civ's kit out in 2 separate places, whereas before it was just an in-game option in the game menu.

 

[Rekk]

Ancient Ruin is an improvement. There's currently no trait that spawns an improvement, so new code is needed here.

It's a resource.

 

[azum4roll]

It's a resource.

Antiquity Site is a resource. Ancient Ruin is an improvement.

 

[Rekk]

Yes, you are correct.

 

[Rekk]

The original proposal is a lot of make work for little benefit.

 

[Stalker0]

It's also imperious, forcefeeding players the ruins mechanic whether they want it or not.

Ultimately there are many many civs in the game, so many that most people won't even play them all regularly. So having civs that generate specific mechanics is not innately "imperious".

If for example your not a big fan of the deal making game, you probably won't want to play the Dutch, and that's fine. If your not into heavy warfare, the zulus are not for you. If you think bum rushing mathematics is "stupid", the Mayans aren't your jam. And again that's ok, there are SO MANY civs to play, even if a quarter of them aren't to your tastes, you still have plenty to have fun with.


That isn't to say whether this bonus is good, bad, or the right one for shoshone....but I have no issue with a civ that gets some special ruins type benefit even in games that normally doesn't have ruins if that is the civ identify that people want to go with. I think both of these proposals does ruins in a way that doesn't feel "weird" for games that have them off normally, as they have made the ruins benefit "personal enough" that its a benefit shoshone enjoys without me playing another civ doesn't have to interact with.

Now personally if I were to pick I would take the second proposal. I think that gets to the heart of the shoshone bonus that people want, but removes the actual exploration of ruins for the people that turn those off (and guarantees that other civs will never interact with ruins if those are off). That seems a good compromise to me.

 

[azum4roll]

Ultimately there are many many civs in the game, so many that most people won't even play them all regularly. So having civs that generate specific mechanics is not innately "imperious".

If for example your not a big fan of the deal making game, you probably won't want to play the Dutch, and that's fine. If your not into heavy warfare, the zulus are not for you. If you think bum rushing mathematics is "stupid", the Mayans aren't your jam. And again that's ok, there are SO MANY civs to play, even if a quarter of them aren't to your tastes, you still have plenty to have fun with.


That isn't to say whether this bonus is good, bad, or the right one for shoshone....but I have no issue with a civ that gets some special ruins type benefit even in games that normally doesn't have ruins if that is the civ identify that people want to go with. I think both of these proposals does ruins in a way that doesn't feel "weird" for games that have them off normally, as they have made the ruins benefit "personal enough" that its a benefit shoshone enjoys without me playing another civ doesn't have to interact with.

Now personally if I were to pick I would take the second proposal. I think that gets to the heart of the shoshone bonus that people want, but removes the actual exploration of ruins for the people that turn those off (and guarantees that other civs will never interact with ruins if those are off). That seems a good compromise to me.

The only visible difference between the two is whether we're keeping the "can pick rewards from ruins" or not. Nobody's teaching the AI to pick.

 

[pineappledan]

And whether you teach the AI to pick or not, from a human player perspective it still brings up an intrusive UI window that pauses the game and tells you to pick rewards that the game would have given you randomly, with no button click, anyways. It's intrusive and stilted, and doesn't even give more reward than a normal ruin. With this change even if I turn ruins off I'm STILL forced to interact with the native tongue window.

I will say it again. Picking ruins is not stronger. It's the same yields in an order that you get to pick rather than an order that the AI picks. The main thing it adds is menu navigating busywork. It's a rotten bonus augmenting one of the least-liked, most-optional game elements, and it should die in a fire.

Now does that mean I prefer Azum's version of just bestowing randomly generated bonuses on settle to cities? No, they're both terrible in their own way.

 

[Stalker0]

The only visible difference between the two is whether we're keeping the "can pick rewards from ruins" or not. Nobody's teaching the AI to pick.

The first proposal creates a new ruin that you have to explore with a unit. The second you just get the choice list as soon as you settle a city.

 

[Rekk]

The first proposal creates a new ruin that you have to explore with a unit. The second you just get the choice list as soon as you settle a city.

Not even that, because the first proposal instantly claims it after it spawns.

The only difference between the two proposals is that the second one keeps the "choose ruins" effect.

The first one adds a bunch of coding busywork in order to achieve the same result.

 

[pineappledan]

Ultimately there are many many civs in the game, so many that most people won't even play them all regularly. So having civs that generate specific mechanics is not innately "imperious".

"If you don't like a civ don't play it"

The problem is I DO like the Shoshone. I like the big border blob and the aggressive-defensive playstyle of forward settling civs, trying to coax them into a war on your (massive) land where you get omnipresent chip damage and large CS bonuses to bleed them out. What I don't like is that playstyle being held hostage by these thoroughly irritating, mediocre ruins bonuses, which these proposals propose to blow up into a larger part of the civ's power budget, and into something that is even more unavoidable and intrusive. Furthermore it now turns ruins into chronic gameplay herpes that I need to mod out in the game files every new version to be rid of.

 

[Stalker0]

"If you don't like a civ don't play it"

The problem is I DO like the Shoshone. I like the big border blob and the aggressive-defensive playstyle of forward settling civs, trying to coax them into a war on your (massive) land where you get omnipresent chip damage and large CS bonuses to bleed them out. What I don't like is that playstyle being held hostage by these thoroughly irritating, mediocre ruins bonuses, which these proposals propose to blow up into a larger part of the civ's power budget, and into something that is even more unavoidable and intrusive. Furthermore it now upgrades this wretched mechanic into chronic gameplay herpes that I need to mod out in the game files every new version to be rid of it.

You could make that argument about any civ change made (including many of the ones you have made and proposed).

And I'm not saying this change is good, I'm fine if people don't like it. I only object that this is some special case where people are overly burdened in some unique way they don't have to deal with anywhere else. It like every other civ change ever proposed is a matter of taste, if you think this shoshone will provide a better experience, vote yes. If you don't vote no.

 

[pineappledan]

You could make that argument about any civ change made (including many of the ones you have made and proposed).

Yes, well that ignores that these are the kinds of proposals that I simply wouldn't make.

• They make the historicity of the civ worse.
• They add a highly era-locked ability which is something I specifically try to avoid
  • On-Settle bonuses all-but disappear after the early settling phase.
  • This is being proposed after we just got done extending the life of Shoshone's UA by adding free tiles onto city conquests. We just made this better only to make it worse again.
• They fail to respond to longstanding criticism
  • both double-down on and reiterate a part of the game that many users self-report as preferring to just turn off.
  • Rather than being receptive to the idea that this mechanic is divisive and unpopular, and leaving it as a game option, both of these proposals run the opposite way and now make that mechanic unavoidable
• 1 of them adds random elements to the game (which its own proposer seems to want to remove everywhere else???)
• Meanwhile, the other adds more user time spent in stilted pop-up menus that break up the game flow
• They both feel like kludge.
  • Neither of these look like the kind of bonus that gets us anywhere nearer to a 'gold' version of Shoshone, they look like stopgaps that we will just have to remove later
  • If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right the first time. And this ain't it.

There has been talk about how we could try to improve the Shoshone's design, make them more unique and interactive. None of those conversation up to now have involved adding ruins on settle. These are left field proposals with no precedent and very little deliberation that look like they might pass because a more thoughtful UA design will take some time. The ruins bonus is much-maligned, and I am confident in saying that we will be back here in 1 or 2 congresses taking a bonus like this out after some real thought has been put into this problem. In the meantime, adding an ability like this is makework.

 

[samjooma]

• They fail to respond to longstanding criticism
  • both double-down on and reiterate a part of the game that many users self-report as preferring to just turn off.
  • Rather than being receptive to the idea that this mechanic is divisive and unpopular, and leaving it as a game option, both of these proposals run the opposite way and now make that mechanic unavoidable

I think the reason why people turn off ancient ruins is because ancient ruin rewards are imbalanced, and finding ancient ruins is too luck dependent. Those problems are not relevant to this proposal.
There is no randomness in getting ancient ruins when you found a city, and the reward imbalance will (hopefully) be fixed by proposal 5-18. The reward imbalance is also not as big of a problem for Shoshone who can choose rewards.

 

[N.Core]

The reward imbalance is also not as big of a problem for Shoshone who can choose rewards.

Sadly the AI cannot choose the rewards.

 

[Recursive]

Timestamp post to arrange all the threads in a neat order.