(7-48b) Songhai UA Tweak

[azum4roll]

Counterproposal to:

(7-48) Remove Triple Gold From Barb Camps + Cities From Songhai UA

Proposal : Remove triple gold from barb camps + cities to Songhai UA Rationale : Songhai is a bit too strong right now and their UA is just better than Iroquois, as they can move/fight along rivers and clear camps while Iroquois can only move/fight on forest. The city connection is also there...

forums.civfanatics.com

(7-48a) Songhai UA Change

Current Songhai UA Units moving along rivers as if they were roads Rivers make :c5trade: City Connections All Land Military units have the Amphibious promotion Triple :c5gold: Gold from capturing cities and clearing Barbarian Encampments Proposed Songhai UA Units gain Double Movement along...

forums.civfanatics.com

Current Songhai UA:
Triple Gold from destroying Encampments and plundering Cities.
Land Units gain the Amphibious Promotion, and move along Rivers as if they were Roads.
Rivers create City Connections.

Proposed Songhai UA:
Triple Gold from destroying Encampments and plundering Cities.
Land Units (including civilians) gain the War Canoes Promotion.

War Canoes
Ignore terrain costs and can move after attacking on River tiles.
Eliminate combat/movement penalties for attacking or moving across a river.

This counts the tile the unit is on after an attack, so a Songhai melee unit can deliver a kill from a non-river tile to a river tile and immediately move off.

Rationale:

• The current river connection doesn't care whether the cities are on the same river system, and lakes cut it off.
• Optimizing roads for Songhai is difficult and unintuitive, since the road movement is only along rivers and sometimes you have to build bridges for civilians who don't get Amphibious.
• The huge movement bonus and every land unit having no penalty attacking from water is what makes them one of the best civ played by a human. The AI doesn't utilize the latter as well but is still performing well with just the river movement alone.
• Iroquois arguably has the better movement bonus on the right terrain (they would win the fight if every tile was forest + river), but trees aren't omnipresent on the map unlike rivers.
• The proposal is a sidegrade - reinstating penalty attacking from water, nerfing movement speed (by 50% post-Machinery), but adding utility to river combat while allowing civilians (mainly workers and Great Generals) to benefit from crossing rivers.
• This decreases the overlap with Denmark who also has bonus on amphibious attacks.
• Ignore terrain cost fits more on Songhai than double moves, since this will make moving along and across rivers consistent (both requiring one move).
• There's an unfortunate overlap with Inca ignoring cost on hills and mountains. We may change it to double moves instead, but that would require more code change unless we also make it a promotion. Either way it belongs to another proposal.
• The move after attack on rivers is a minor bonus for non-mounted units to keep the momentum near rivers - otherwise the only bonus they have is moving across river/onto rough river tiles and still being able to attack.

Implementation:
Requires a new Promotions column/table to allow move after attack on rivers, and another for ignore terrain cost on rivers.

 

[pineappledan]

Songhai UU already can move after attack anywhere. A bit of an anti-synergy with mounted units there.

 

[azum4roll]

Songhai UU already can move after attack anywhere. A bit of an anti-synergy with mounted units there.

Which is why it's not considered a major buff, but only a small patch to the movement speed loss for non-mounted units.
And weren't you the one who suggested this?

 

[pineappledan]

I suggested costless attack on rivers originally, but decided it was likely too hard to implement.

 

[Rekk]

Songhai UU already can move after attack anywhere. A bit of an anti-synergy [overlap] with mounted units there.

The main benefit is the "ignore terrain costs", I think.

 

[azum4roll]

This looks pretty "Complex" to me. The SQL work isn't trivial.

 

[pineappledan]

Yeah, and there’s no model for conditional move after attack.

This just seems super weird to me for a few reasons.
- The units that benefit the most from move after attack already have it. It’s very hard to use this bonus on infantry and archer units with only 2 moves. If this gave move after attack to all 2 move units everywhere then it would be a useful, albeit situational bonus. Gating it to river tiles only makes it too awkward to bother trying to use.
- ignore movement penalties makes a lot more sense on Inca/hills, because all hills cost at least 2 movement; It is always useful there. Ignoring movement costs along rivers gives no benefit on flat river. There are lots of moves you will make in a game where, even if the UA bonus applies, it doesn’t do anything.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Move after attack is incredibly strong on ranged units even with only 2 moves. It is what makes Licorne quite a bit better than a normal field gun. You will pretty much always have built roads on the frontline which makes it possible to cycle around ranged units and shooting with a lot of them

 

[pineappledan]

The thing that makes that so great is that it's all of your units anywhere, and can therefore be dependable. Only having that ability on a 2 tile wide stretch of land makes it much harder to use.

 

[azum4roll]

Sponsored

 

[Recursive]

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