[Complex] (7-NS) Spain UA + UU rework

[Yngwie]

Problem: Spain seems to be Frankenstein, assembled from unrelated parts. And these parts don't work well together.

Spoiler UA :

Current UA:
10 Gold and 4 Faith from gaining tiles, scaling with Era.
Inqusitors unlock earlier and do not cost Gold maintenance. Gain an inquisitor when conquering a City.
May purchase naval Units with Faith

Proposed UA:
10 Gold and 4 Faith from gaining tiles, scaling with Era.
Founded Cities adopt Religion of your Capital.
Units gain +10% Strength vs Units of other Religions and +1% Strength for every follower of your religion within 2 tiles (cap at 15%)

Spoiler UU :

Current UU:
Conquistador (Explorer replacement)
23 CS (+6 CS from Explorer)
Vanguard (+125% CS vs Cities, -50 damage from Cities)
Overrun (+25 flanking, 10 damage to adjacent enemies after killing)
Can settle Cities.

Proposed UU:
Conquistador (Explorer replacement)
23 CS (+6 CS from Explorer)
Vanguard (+125% CS vs Cities, -50 damage from Cities)
Gold Hunter (Gain 100% of CS of defeated enemies as Gold, Steal Gold equal to 100% of damage inflicted when attacking Cities, capped at 10x City Strength) - land analog for Piracy promotion
Spawn a Settler when disembark on other landmass for the first time

Rationaly:
Spain is very unbalanced and fuzzy. They have 2 UU, 1 UB and 1UI, however part of them are not really useful (Spanish inquisitor and Mission). Naval part of the UA seemed to be ignored by AI (Personally, never saw "Spanish armada", AI prefer land Units)
Conquistador also have problems. AI cannot settle with them. Sometimes settling is not beneficial even for human players - you just lose Unit with tons of promotions, so you forced to create separate Conquistadors only for settling. Overrun promo seem to be out of Place for this Unit thematically. The role of the Gold hunter is not emphasized, although this is the main feature of the Conquistadors.

 

[Stalker0]

The conquistador change means they are no longer capable of combat, overrun is the one thing that gave them enough juice to be effective.

So you have a civ that you have given a more militaristic UA but with no military UU, feels weird

 

[Rekk]

Conquistadors are combat units. You removed the promotion that actually helps them kill units and replaced it with a promotion they will be hard-pressed to make use of.

 

[pineappledan]

I've never much liked the combat bonus vs other religions, because units don't have religions. The civ they are made by has a majority religion, but that can change, especially if you are fighting a non-founder. It's not terribly clear when the bonus applies or if it is checking a civ's majority religion or just the religion of the city that built the unit.

If I recall, these religion combat bonuses are pretty computationally intensive, because you have to:

Spoiler do a lot of stuff :

- get your unit.
- check what city built it
- get the majority religion of that city
- check the enemy unit
- check what city built it
- get the majority religion of that city
- compare the two

But you are also suggesting "+1% Strength for every follower of your religion within 2 tiles (cap at 15%)", which means you have to:
- get your unit
- check what city built it
- get the majority religion of that city
- get the tile coordinates of that unit
- iterate through all cities on the map and get their coordinates
- calculate the coordinates of those cities vs the coordinates of your unit and calculate a distance
- If any is at a distance of 2 or less you can cut that iterator off
- get that city's majority religion
- check it against the religion of the city that built your unit
- if they match, get the number of followers of your religion in that city
And since you stipulated that it is distance, and not just tile ownership that is the deciding factor, there are no shortcuts there.

We already permanently removed 2 versions of this bonus that were coded in the vanilla game because it required too much computation (Just War and Defender of the Faith Enhancers). It's a lot of resources for a meager 15% bonus. And you have to do this every time one of your units attacks anything or is attacked, which can be many times in a single turn.

I think being able to purchase naval units with faith is just a better bonus for that reason. It also already exists, which is nice.

I'm game for the other bonus though. It solidifies the raze-resettle playstyle that is present with the tile yields bonus, but not as explicitly stated.
Would newly founded cities follow your capital's religion also apply to pantheons, before religions are founded? If so that could be a nice QoL

Spain seems to be Frankenstein, assembled from unrelated parts. And these parts don't work well together.

[in thick French accent] A few minutes later...

Gold Hunter (Gain 100% of CS of defeated enemies as Gold, Steal Gold equal to 100% of damage inflicted when attacking Cities, capped at 10x City Strength) - land analog for Piracy promotion
Spawn a Settler when disembark on other landmass for the first time

Oh my god this is so much jankier than what is already on this civ. lol.

The role of the Gold hunter is not emphasized, although this is the main feature of the Conquistadors.

Conquistadors get instant gold when they settle cities.

 

[Rekk]

And you have to do this every time one of your units attacks anything or is attacked, which can be many times in a single turn

More specifically, the AI does a huge amount of simulation. Anything the human does is computationally insignificant.

 

[azum4roll]

We already permanently removed 2 versions of this bonus that were coded in the vanilla game because it required too much computation (Just War and Defender of the Faith Enhancers).

The tables still exist, but work differently.
Actually I don't even know how the vanilla version worked.

 

[pineappledan]

Yes, they now work off tile ownership. As written here, it would have to check distance, because a tile 2 tiles away from the nearest city isn't necessarily owned by that city.