(7-25) Carthage UA/UNW Reworks

[azum4roll]

Is the +5 XP before the halving penalty or after? Also that's a lot of XP later on if they ever grab Draft Registration. Not much less than Assyria's without the need to make 9 Great Works of Writing. Too strong as a third of a UA.

What if they just have cheaper price when buying units?

 

[pineappledan]

Is the +5 XP before the halving penalty or after?

After

Also that's a lot of XP later on if they ever grab Draft Registration. Not much less than Assyria's without the need to make 9 Great Works of Writing.

It maxes out at 35 XP in information era. In comparison, Assyria’s maxes out at 45XP for 9 GWWriting. My experience is that usually takes me until late renaissance or early industrial, depending on if I managed to capture any GWs in wars.

Assyria’s bonus is also more flexible. Carthage’s bonus would only work on purchased units. At its max power in information, and with barracks/armory/military academy, that’s a net gain of +5 XP after you subtract the normal -30XP penalty for purchasing. Draft registration has a powerful synergy, but that is late, and it precludes being able to combine it with the 15XP from elite forces.

Too strong as a third of a UA.

I disagree. The yield on luxuries wont scale into late game (far better than the yields on settle, but still not enough), and Carthage would benefit from a component that grows and remains relevant past the mid game.

What if they just have cheaper price when buying units?

Boring. Also, aren’t you the guy that doesn’t like how cost reductions stack?

 

[azum4roll]

Boring. Also, aren’t you the guy that doesn’t like how cost reductions stack?

I forgot Military-Industrial Complex also affects buy prices. That tenet sure does a lot huh?

Forbidden Palace and Industry should really be changed to reducing building costs only...

Is the extra XP on purchase new code?

 

[pineappledan]

Is the extra XP on purchase new code?

Yes, as would unit purchase cost reductions on a trait.

 

[pineappledan]

while reproducing certain similar things, the loss of the slightly-inland advantages may render polynesia more vulnerable than they already are.

Free lighthouse would be unambiguously stronger than the current bonus, and the AI doesn't settle inland now so asserting that they would be made 'more vulnerable' than now should be taken with a dump truck of salt.

Consider giving free lighthouse to ALL cities, or all cities with >x water tiles in radius, etc.

... No. The point of changing it to a free lighthouse on coastal is to explicitly lock Polynesia into coast, and signal to the player that the inland settling that the current 'No Isolation' bonus facilitates now is not intended to encourage you to forego coastal infrastructure.

 

[Tekamthi]

explicitly lock Polynesia into coast

i think this is the crux of our misaligned visions on this -- I don't see why its a good thing to lock out a viable alternative playstyle that mechanically works just fine -- we discussed AI not optimizing towards this end, is this the motivation? As human its a viable play, settling just inland. Precise settlement position with poly is perhaps more crucial than most, especially to leverage in canals, so I suppose I get it from an AI-capacity perspective; they just aren't as good at making the "perfect" choice.

And I get that we want polynesia to be a little better. But here we propose rebuilding them entirely, in a way that results in them being closer to other civs, less unique. But to be a little better just needs a little more, something added to the almost-enough they currently are.

 

[Rekk]

I'm in the camp of giving a civilization a free lighthouse suggests that lighthouse were integral to the civilization, not that they didn't rely on lighthouses. It's a weird mechanical implementation that sticks out on the UA line when a player is browsing civilizations.

 

[pineappledan]

I'm in the camp of giving a civilization a free lighthouse suggests that lighthouse were integral to the civilization, not that they didn't rely on lighthouses. It's a weird mechanical implementation that sticks out on the UA line when a player is browsing civilizations.

Then neither group should have them. According to my very thorough 5 second google search, there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support Carthaginians even using lighthouses, or that the practice of lighting fires to mark the entrances of harbours was widespread in the time time before Carthage's destruction.

Edit: got owned.

 

[ma_kuh]

It's also very weird that a civilization renowned for seafaring would want to move their cities inland 1 tile, preventing them from making use of trade routes in the ocean entirely.

 

[Rekk]

Then neither group should have them. According to my very thorough 5 second google search, there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support Carthaginians even using lighthouses, or that the practice of lighting fires to mark the entrances of harbours had been adopted in the time time before Carthage's destruction.

okay

 

[pineappledan]

It's also very weird that a civilization renowned for seafaring would want to move their cities inland 1 tile, preventing them from making use of trade routes in the ocean entirely.

Or building boats.

 

[Rekk]

Then neither group should have them. According to my very thorough 5 second google search, there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support Carthaginians even using lighthouses, or that the practice of lighting fires to mark the entrances of harbours had been adopted in the time time before Carthage's destruction.

here's my 5 second google search.

“It was the Phoenicians who were the first to erect a tower carrying a hearth on its summit; this first lighthouse in history was built at Cadiz, probably in the 4th century BC. However, this structure has not left the least trace in the texts that we know of.”

“There was a strong tradition that the lighthouse of Cadiz was built by the Phoenicians, and it has been suggested that the circular Roman one, destroyed in the seventeenth century, was actually the reused Phoenician tower.”

The Phoenicians almost certainly did build another lighthouse much later in the mouth of the river Guadalquivir to the north. Strabo, writing in 20 BC, described a pharos at Caepio in Spain, the forerunner of the present lighthouse of Chipiona. He wrote that it stood on a rock washed on all sides by the sea and resembled the Pharos of Alexandria. He said that this beacon preserved vessels from the sunken rocks and shallows at the mouth of the river Guadalquivir [24]. This is a very early report of a rock-based, rather than a land-based, lightstructure.

Although they may have built some lightstructures in the later stages of their civilisation, it is equally possible that the lightstructures that have been reported in sites of Phoenician settlement may have been placed there at a later date. The single report of a lighthouse at Carthage is pure speculation. Thus we conclude that the Phoenicians were probably not builders of the first lightstructures.

another source (actually seems like it's the full version of what's paraphrased above)

 

[Legen]

Free lighthouse would be unambiguously stronger than the current bonus, and the AI doesn't settle inland now so asserting that they would be made 'more vulnerable' than now should be taken with a dump truck of salt.

Not strictly stronger than the no Isolation bonus, and can lead to suboptimal plays. Here's an example from the old Polynesia thread:

If we imagine the example above were from a more recent patch, when Moai also gets adjacency bonus with a city, Tuvalu's placement would mean not just an extra Moai on the coast, it would also act as a Moai adjacency bonus that can be placed inland, boosting the 4 Moai around it (5 if that Iron tile had a Moai on it as well, which I think wasn't possible back then).

For overseas city connections, only one city in a landmass needs to be coastal, the rest can be 1 tile inland to allow for more Moai. Giving free Lighthouses to Polynesia means pushing them towards suboptimal Moai placement and adjacency bonuses, as taking advantage of the free Lighthouse means taking space from a Moai and having less adjacency bonuses as a whole. The UA would be in conflict with what the UI asks Polynesia to do.

 

[Tekamthi]

It's also very weird that a civilization renowned for seafaring would want to move their cities inland 1 tile

I think to be accurate, and using civ terminology, we should say they renowned for "embarked seafaring" -- not seafaring all around. I think its quite common for societies that face frequent naval invasion to move slightly inland over long periods of time. The way they play currently, they are not necessarily locked into 1-tile inland, but its on par with being on coast, or close behind, still a viable choice. With proposal it won't be.

My own googling did turn up some speculative evidence of phoenician lighthouses, and given the period they existed in, I was prepared from that reading to conclude they were in fact pioneers of lighthouses. But saying so definitively, I can't do that.

 

[pineappledan]

here's my 5 second google search.

I will update my earlier post with my shame.

Not strictly stronger than the no Isolation bonus, and can lead to suboptimal plays. Here's an example from the old Polynesia thread:

That's a fair case in point for human players, but I was talking about the AI's ability to do this, and not a human's capacity to replicate this behaviour. Perhaps this is one of those edge cases where it is fine and good that the humans can judge a situation and settle slightly inland, and that no AI support is necessary.

 

[pineappledan]

Alright, I will amend my OP with the No Isolation and restore the yields to fish. That basically means my proposed changes to Polynesia are restricted to the UU changes in another proposal.

Maybe having an actually useful UU is all that's necessary for now; We'll see.

 

[Tekamthi]

Perhaps this is one of those edge cases where it is fine and good that the humans can judge a situation and settle slightly inland, and that no AI support is necessary.

I am leaning towards this -- currently its advantageous to be on coast cuz, to stack lighthouse on UA, but its also viable to go just inland without giving up too much that coast found gives. The fishing boat construction is also important, as once inland far from other cities, can't build workboats. Anyway, coast vs inland, one is not necessarily better in all cases and its nice from player perspective to have options to max bonus tiles without being stuck on coast, or even just consider between a few equivalent spots.

 

[pineappledan]

For clarification, this doesn’t ameliorate my (and @Yngwie ’s) assertion that the current no isolation and free connection bonuses on 2 different maritime settler-centric civs are basically just the same bonus. I maintain that one or the other should move off it.

 

[Rekk]

For overseas city connections, only one city in a landmass needs to be coastal, the rest can be 1 tile inland to allow for more Moai. Giving free Lighthouses to Polynesia means pushing them towards suboptimal Moai placement and adjacency bonuses, as taking advantage of the free Lighthouse means taking space from a Moai and having less adjacency bonuses as a whole. The UA would be in conflict with what the UI asks Polynesia to do.

We gave Moai the city adjacency bonus specifically so that players would be more willing to settle cities on the coast. Looks like it backfired.

 

[Tekamthi]

We gave Moai the city adjacency bonus specifically so that players would be more willing to settle cities on the coast. Looks like it backfired.

no it worked! its more viable now than it was, and that is good too