(7-25) Carthage UA/UNW Reworks

[Rekk]

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

but even more optimal play is to continue to settle inland so that the city isn't taking up a Moai tile, while still providing a bonus to those Moai.

 

[Tekamthi]

but even more optimal play is to continue to settle inland so that the city isn't taking up a Moai tile, while still providing a bonus to those Moai.

it depends, sometimes coast spot has more resources in range; thats really the determining factor, the changes have successfully evened up the weight of each option so that you're not inclined to pass up on coastal spot to go inland now

 

[pineappledan]

It changes the calculation from ([0 adjacency + coast] vs [1 adjacency]) to ([1 adjacency + coast] vs [2 adjacency]), and that is now more likely to break in coast's favor, since going from 0 to 1 adjacency is a bigger jump than going from 1 to 2.

The decision now weighs defensibility and from moais vs access to boats and TRs and boosts to fish.
So the current setup gives players a choice if they settle a good coastline without good sea resources vs a bad coastline with lots of sea resources.

 

[Legen]

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.

This puts me to think, does Polynesia really need these pseudo-lighthouse bonuses? The civ's power is intended to come from the Moai, which is partially why it even had the CS bonus from being around them. The embarkation bonus helps because it lets you find more coastal places to build Moai, maybe the rest of the civ's kit could be more synergistic with the Moai itself. Some brainstorming:

• Reconsider the whole Moai-Encampment CS move
• When a city's borders grow to a coast tile, claim an adjacent coast tile (similar to Huns' ability)
• Yields from every X non-specialists in the city (similar to Fealty's Serfdom)

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.

I'm laughing so much right now

 

[Rekk]

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.

and I'm not strictly against Carthage losing its free lighthouse, either. My source suggests that Phoenicia wasn't all that special when it came to lighthouses.

 

[Legen]

and I'm not strictly against Carthage losing its free lighthouse, either.

Personally, I'm wondering if we can't just make Carthage get free Harbors instead, and either add a special "that forms a City Connection via water" to those harbors, or make Harbors form connections just like Lighthouses. The only reason Carthage gets Lighthouses now was due to people wanting sea connections to come earlier than Medieval, but nothing really requires City Connections to be exclusive to the Lighthouse; both buildings could have it, even if for Carthage only.

The Harbor is also a lot more commerce-oriented than the Lighthouse right now, since it has two sea trade route boosts.

 

[pineappledan]

You should look at the Carthage UNW proposal in the OP, @Legen.

 

[Legen]

Yeah, but I meant fee Harbor back in the UA, just like it used to be years ago. Having it on the UB isn't the same thing.

 

[Rekk]

I think harbour is way too strong to be available turn 1.

 

[pineappledan]

It seems creatively bankrupt to give them a harbor in their UA and then make their UNW a special harbor that augments harbors.

The unique lighthouse in the UA is currently 1 era earlier and the UNW is already positioned to give harbors 1 era earlier too. Moving free harbors to the UA would make them 2.5 eras early, which sounds strong until you actually look at the bonuses it gives. The Harbor boosts sea trade routes in 3 separate ways, but you still don’t unlock cargo ships until sailing. Sure, you would be well-situated in classical, once you have sea TRs, but in that case you could just… give harbors in classical.
… Via the UNW that is in classical
… and is a harbor.

 

[azum4roll]

Why the change from +1 sight to +2 sight? They'll see further while embarked than on land.

 

[pineappledan]

Why the change from +1 sight to +2 sight?

So they have more sight. Wayfinding would go from making Polynesian units as good at navigating sea as they do land to better at navigating sea.

They'll see further while embarked than on land.

To be more accurate, they will have Scout vision while embarked.

Scout-line units (after pathfinder) have 3 vision radius on land, but all embarked units have a base vision radius of 1 regardless of type. The proposal increases the vision radius of embarked Polynesian units from base land unit vision to scout vision. I think that is both flavorful and gives an advantage early game.

 

[Tekamthi]

This Polynesia along with my 7-30c, and we have perfected this civ imo.

The other pieces here look good to me to but its a different order of magnitude entirely, thinking of all these things as one big bundle, than it is one by one. If I am finding it challenging as a near-daily visitor to CF, I can't imagine what the more casual voter that comes along for a quick forum surf 'n vote is gonna make of these bundles

 

[pineappledan]

I'm pretty sure these will be broken up and rewritten after sponsorship.

 

[Tekamthi]

The +1 embark vision (on top of pre existing +1) here is the least valuable. I think flat vision bonus is not such a fun gameplay feature. But it's no deal breaker. Just could be left aside with no effect on proposal attractiveness

 

[Rekk]

The +1 embark vision (on top of pre existing +1) here is the least valuable. I think flat vision bonus is not such a fun gameplay feature. But it's no deal breaker. Just could be left aside with no effect on proposal attractiveness

It makes it quite a bit easier to find new land, I think. Does extra vision help you see further inland so you can decide whether it's worth embarking to explore further?

 

[Tekamthi]

It makes it quite a bit easier to find new land, I think. Does extra vision help you see further inland so you can decide whether it's worth embarking to explore further?

Okay, this is probably true. But consider that we're likely gonna add embark vision to scouting promo line this round, most of ocean will be uncovered by either recon or naval unit, and this extra vision just gonna be redundant or not applicable.

As far as helping the AI climb the ranks of AI only games, not sure what embark vision does for it, and it's sometimes more fun as human to not be able to see everything so easily, to have to guess a little

 

[pineappledan]

vision helps AI a lot, probably more than any other change you can make. The AI is bad at remembering where things are from turn to turn because it doesn't store memory values like people do.

This is why we changed how vision works so you never re-cover things in fog of war by moving units around. The AI would move down a ridge, lose vision of units in the same turn and forget they existed. At least that's how it was explained to me.

 

[Rekk]

This is why we changed how vision works so you never re-cover things in fog of war by moving units around.

(and why high difficulty AI receive a vision bonus to all their units)

 

[Tekamthi]

okay well here we're just talking about embark bonus, and to the point above:

Does extra vision help you see further inland so you can decide whether it's worth embarking to explore further?

i think embark vision doesn't allow a ton of sight inland, but I haven't evaluated specifically. From what I understand water tiles are the lowest elevation, then flat land, then hills, then mountains -- could be wrong but i think embark vision does limited additional vision on land. iirc maybe it works over flat land but nothing else. Worth double checking though, will pay attention next time i load the game up.

Anyway I'm not against it, i just think the better way to add another +1 embark vision is how i've laid it out in my counter -- i've used that mechanism of having extra vision on a pre-combat promo in a few mods, such that you can see more leading up to the battle and less once it starts. Its a good compromise. I understand the AI considerations of more vision, they are valid, but it is fun to be able to make some surprise plays, and too much always-on vision spoils this