(5-WD) Counterproposal: Rework Spain's UA and Conquistador

[axatin]

Counterproposal to (5-09) Simplify Conquistador

Spoiler Current Spain UA and Conquistador :

UA: Reconquista
+10 Gold and 4 Faith from gaining tiles, scaling with Era. Inquisitors unlock earlier and do not cost Gold Maintenance. Gain an Inquisitor whenever a City is conquered. May purchase Naval Units with Faith.

Conquistador:
Military unit that can settle cities on foreign continents (continents that do not contain Spain's capital). Founded cities start with some additional buildings compared to pioneers.
In cities settled by a conquistador (and only in them), it's also possible to buy a Mission with faith.

Mission: Costs 100 (scaling with era), and gives:
2 base
2 city defense
+1 to nearby haciendas
Instantly converts the city to the majority religion of the capital.
Cannot be captured.

Proposal:
Spain UA: Conquista
+10 Gold and 4 Faith from gaining tiles, scaling with Era. All cities with the majority religion of the capital gain +5 Defense. When a city is conquered, it is immediately converted to the majority religion of the capital. May purchase Naval Units with Faith.

Conquistador:
Founded cities are immediately converted to the majority religion of the capital. All other properties stay the same.

Mission: removed

Rationale:
- I agree with the OP that it's not a good design for Spain to have an extra secret UB, and I agree about removing it and replacing it with instant conversion on founding. But Spain actually has not one secret additional component, but two. The Spanish Inquisitor is a UU (it's not possible to implement it otherwise because it unlocks earlier). Both the earlier unlocking and the lack of gold maintenance are insignificant bonuses that can be dropped without weakening Spain much. Instant conversion on city capture has the same effect as a free inquisitor and would be more consistent with the conquistador.
- Cities with majority religion gain additional Defense: The ability to faith-buy naval units and the free inquisitor/instant conversion on city conquest suggest that Spain be played as an aggressive religious civ, combining city conquest with religious dominance. However, the UA only allows to buy ships, and successful naval invasions are difficult. Naval units don't increase city strength, so the UA doesn't provide Spain any help to keep the conquered cities*. The only reward for successfully capturing a city is that it's instantly converted, which is a weak reward. If cities with a majority religion gain additional Defense, it will be slightly easier for Spain to keep conquered cities, and the instant conversion will have a more meaningful effect. This is also a stronger and less situational version of the Defense bonus of the Mission, which is removed
- Rename Spain's UA from Reconquista to Conquista (the Spanish term referring to the colonization of Latin America), with the proposed changes that would be a more fitting name

Details:
- Instant conversion is achieved by giving the city instant +9999 pressure, as the current mission does.
- Unlike in the OP, the religion of a city founded by a conquistador is the majority religion of the capital, not the majority religion of the city the conquistador was built in. With the OP implementation, it would be necessary to store internally for each conquistador which religion it converts to, and a UI change would be needed to show that information to the player.

* Note that Proposal (5-19) Reduce faith cost increase with Eras would buff Spain's UA by reducing faith cost scaling. However, this wouldn't make it easier for her to hold conquered cities.

 

[pineappledan]

All cities with the majority religion of the capital gain +5 Defense. When a city is conquered, it is immediately converted to the majority religion of the capital.

The CS defense is whatever. Not a terrific bonus. It seems perfunctory, but it could be situationally useful. That part feels more Reconquista than Conquista to me, specifically it feels very Castilian.

The meat is the automatic conversion on conquest. This was the old Spain's ability, prior to the rework, and it had some serious problems with it. This is a call to partially revert Spain to its old, crap UA and now I will have to re-litigate exactly why I put that auto-conversion in the ground the first time:

Compared to the current bonus, which gives a free inquisitor on city conquest, the old auto-convert:

1. Removes player's control over when to convert. What if you wanted to buy the faith building of the old religion and then convert it to yours? What if you were doing a syncretism build?
2. Did massive damage to Spain's theme. This is Spain, and you want to specifically create an ability for them that removes the ability to use inquisitors? The free inquisitor gives the same result as auto-conversion in a way that gives Spanish inquisitors an actual use
3. Makes Spain incapable of using the inquisition enhancer belief. Auto-conversion puts Spain in the same category as India, because it would make some beliefs unusable for them. And the specific belief that it would render the most useless is the most "Spanish" feeling enhancer: Inquisition, which makes your inquisitors cheaper and give yields when deconverting cities.
4. Is weaker than the current bonus. What if you conquered a city that already has your majority religion? With the current bonus, you still get a free inquisitor, which can be used somewhere else, or can be stationed to give its passive resistance bonus. With auto-conversion you get nothing.

Both the earlier unlocking and the lack of gold maintenance are insignificant bonuses that can be dropped without weakening Spain much.

The maintenance-free and earlier inquisitors only exist to enable the free inquisitor on conquest.
If the inquisitors didn't unlock on founding, you would have to wait until enhancing before you got free ones. Giving inquisitors earlier allows you to benefit from the UA ability sooner without feeling pressured to enhance before you spread.
If you capture a city and get a free inquisitor, but have no use for one, Spain doesn't force you to pay maintenance costs on units it forced you to have

 

[axatin]

That part feels more Reconquista than Conquista to me, specifically it feels very Castilian.

that's actually true

Regarding your other points:
1. Faith buildings are kept on conquest, so buying faith buildings of the old religion will rarely be possible even if the old religion is kept after conquest. I agree that this change would makes Syncretism weaker.
2. I don't see how the historic inquisition/reconquista can be converted into something that actually gives Spain a kit that's in any way competitive. It will rarely happen that Spain's cities get conquered and they have to reconquer them, and building a kit around that obviously wouldn't work well. Conquering foreign cities that are not initially Spanish and then using inquisitors to purge other religions from them isn't Reconquista and it's ahistoric (the Spanish Inquisition wasn't allowed to try any non-Christians). Buying naval units with faith and settling on foreign continents clearly references Conquista, not Reconquista... Gameplay-wise, in order to make Spain work, a focus on conquest in combination with religion (aka Conquista) would at least give Spain an advantage towards one victory condition...
3. The Inquisition belief makes inquisitors cheaper, so how exactly does the current UA that gives them for free work well with it? The UA removes a large part of the reason why other civs would want to choose the Inquisition belief if they were in a similar situation. Basically all that's left of it is for Spain is that she gets some extra gold. Every other enhancer gives better yields than gold and would be more useful for Spain...
4. I agree with this

However, ignoring the thematic/conceptual problems I see with this civ for a moment, the main intention of this proposal is to remove the second UU of Spain because it is inconsistent in terms of the game design. Why exactly is it necessary to have a UU in order to get inquisitors earlier? World congress projects can also give units (Frigate, Infantry) that can't be obtained regularly yet... Free maintenance could be given as a promotion if that's necessary.

 

[Stalker0]

the main intention of this proposal is to remove the second UU of Spain because it is inconsistent in terms of the game design.

If that's the case you need to specify that in the proposal.

 

[axatin]

If that's the case you need to specify that in the proposal.

okay, one of the main intentions. The other one is the defense building part, which seems to be not so controversial

 

[pineappledan]

However, ignoring the thematic/conceptual problems I see with this civ for a moment, the main intention of this proposal is to remove the second UU of Spain because it is inconsistent in terms of the game design. Why exactly is it necessary to have a UU in order to get inquisitors earlier? World congress projects can also give units (Frigate, Infantry) that can't be obtained regularly yet... Free maintenance could be given as a promotion if that's necessary.

The free units on conquest ability requires that you be able to train the unit before it will give you free ones. For inquisitors you at least need a religion so that a free inquisitor can come loaded with a religion to remove heresy with. Otherwise it would be a blank inquisitor.

If you want to change how the trait DLL works, and create trait abilities that allow spain to do everything it currently does without requiring a secret duplicate inquisitor as a UU then just... do that? Why not just fix the actual problem you point out instead of proposing to make the UA worse? You wouldn't even need to propose that, it would just be a 'bugfix'.
All you would need to add is a trait column that lets Spain buy inquisitors on found instead of enhance, then it will work 95% as it does now. The maintenance-free bonus is a very minor QOL thing that I added since I was forced to make an entirely new unit anyways

 

[axatin]

You're right that the issue with the duplicate UU can also be solved by a DLL change and that it can be considered a bugfix. I will do that when I find the time.

Regarding the inquisitor -> free conversion change, I don't have strong feelings about either option. I'm fine with withdrawing the proposal just to make the voting phase easier, there are already enough proposals affecting Spain.

 

[axatin]

I will however use the opportunity and try to explain again and in more detail the problems I see with Spain.

Spain has no Science bonus, no bonus to City-State interactions, no bonus to Tourism. She does have a bonus to buying military units and a bonus that activates on city conquest. In addition, her UI gives production, gold, food and culture. So, Spain seems to be designed towards a Domination Victory. (Diplomacy is maybe an alternative because Spain is a wide civ and gets additional gold/production, but on the other hand Spain has no trait supporting Diplomacy Victory, unlike civs like Greece, Germany, etc.)

The main ability that's intended to support Spain in a domination victory is the ability to buy units with faith. As Spain is a wide civ, it's advisable to have a religion with faith buildings, which would help maximize Spain's faith output later. That means that it takes some time until the buildings have been bought and Spain actually has some faith left to buy units. Once Industrial has been reached, faith can also be used to buy Great Persons, which is then often a better alternative.

Naval units alone are not sufficient to conquer a city and then hold it. Capturing a city with a naval unit doesn't increase city strength anymore, so it's always required to use a land army as well. Spain has no bonus that would help her building up a land are, and she also has no bonus helping her in combat, unlike other Domination civs. In the end, all that Spain has is a weaker version of a production bonus (weaker because it's use is very limited).

The unique unit of Spain, the conquistador, is by far not the best unique unit there is in terms of fighting. The settling ability is very situational, it requires free land on an inhabited continent, which is often rare by the time conquistadors come into play, or which would often leave Spain with a non-puppeted city in a bad spot that adversely impacts science/culture throughout the rest of the game.

So, all in all, Spain does not get a lot of help to conquer other cities. Basically, it can produce a few more units, that's it.

The bonus that Spain gets for conquering a city is also quite weak. One free inquisitor... in many cases, that's not even enough to convert the city. And if going for domination, a lot of conquered cities will be puppeted and it which religion they have doesn't matter that much anyway.

If we look at the chart of the AI performances, the civs with many Domination wins are Rome, Japan, Zulu, England, which all have good UUs and special abilities helping them in combat (in case of Rome only against city-states, but that can be used as a stepping stone for later). Spain is near the bottom of the chart, with one diplomacy and one time (probably intended domination) victory. Also in the warlord data set, Spain is at the bottom of the chart, it's one of the few civs that are weak on both difficulties.

Taking all of this together, I don't see how Spain can get close to being a civ with a realistic winning chance, even with buffs to Haciendas and reduced faith costs.

The idea of the additional defense was to give Spain at least some help in city conquest (or more specifically in holding the city). But I agree that it would be too weak to make a difference, and it would probably just add up to the other weak and situational bonuses Spain currently has.

I would argue for a complete rework of this civ. The idea of conquest in combination with religion is nice and unique, but then Spain would need a) some help in actually winning wars and conquering cities (beyond just being able to produce a few more units), and b) some real bonus for converting the conquered cities to her religion.

 

[pineappledan]

The bonus that Spain gets for conquering a city is also quite weak. One free inquisitor... in many cases, that's not even enough to convert the city. And if going for domination, a lot of conquered cities will be puppeted and it which religion they have doesn't matter that much anyway.

Just want to point out that the Per tile also triggers on conquest for each tile of the flipped city, in addition to the inquisitor.

 

[axatin]

Proposal withdrawn by the author, the main intended effect of the proposal can also be implemented as a bugfix.