[Complex] (7-NS) Polynesia UA changes (...and Carthage)

[azum4roll]

applied for free on great people except admiral, diplomat, prophet

What does this mean?

 

[Tekamthi]

In gameplay terms it means poly great people get double move in water, flat embark, and +1 embark vision. Because they never get into combat, it never falls off, but they also never get to use any of the combat features -- it's an always-on water-transit-only promo for civilians that acquire it.

First added it just to great general, so they could keep up when embarked -- because it never falls off on civilians, seemed unnecessary tedium to force them to tag up on moai to first acquire it -- also, generals and most GP have no unitcombats, and thus cannot be configured to pick it up from the improvement -- so it goes free for these units only. Struck me that great people with it just further added to the convenience of fast ocean travel without unbalancing anything.

Worker and settler are available too early to make it free for them, however, and having double ocean move on any starting unit is actually a very big advantage to poly -- unnecessary, so they must tag up on moai. For envoy and religious units there is somewhat of a race on, and intention is not to make poly faster at those races -- poly is island settlements and development focus civ, not speedboat preachers -- these units are excluded altogether.

The theory underlying transit promo on civilians is that a well-played poly will have more plots to cover between cities when setting up infrastructure, and being faster between cities will even them up with other civ inter-city transit times. Thus here we are with its current form -- but the civilian stuff is rather secondary, and of little consequence in my use of them so far. If there are exploits to be had I haven't yet figured out what they are. But this civilian piece can be removed entirely without upending the promo primary purpose.

Current promo attribute mix primarily on military makes it easier/faster to move between ocean locations, and the now-minimal combat portion will give archers attacking ships extra bite on their first attack, and will allow melee one penalty free attack from the sea followed by a free reposition; nice-to-haves but not must-haves, especially inland where promo is not easily reacquired. Without flat disembark (I'm treating as sacred for Denmark uniqueness), the amphib gives them a small something to their advantage in coast/island scenario. Fast movement in ocean and move after attack gives them the choice of where to first engage on coast. Nothing big going on here anymore, just utility, but very appropriate utility for poly. The closer they are to home islands, the more frequently these small advantages can be reactivated, and the more powerful it becomes.

The move to transit-oriented promo, and removal of timers, has greatly reduced the tactical quality here while still maintaining the moai-worship vibe. The proposal's remaining deficiency now comes in pathfinding, albeit relatively minor: when you assign a destination, units don't account for being able to pick up the transit promo and thus path faster to their destination, leaving it up to chance to acquire it on the way. When it's beneficial, it's often picked up anyway, but not always.

 

[Rekk]

applied for free on great people except admiral, diplomat, prophet

Very weird carve out to a limited number of great people.

Do you really want to spend word count in the UA box on this exception?

 

[Tekamthi]

Very weird carve out to a limited number of great people.

Do you really want to spend word count in the UA box on this exception?

I have been calibrating for maximum island gameplay value of the current attribute mix on this phase of revisions. Average player can move GP from one city to the next in like 1-3 turns typically -- poly commonly 3-5+ turns -- transit is big part of GP lifecycle, from gameplay perspective it fits well.

I am not especially motivated by text considerations personally -- but you're right there are currently many different parts here and any text is gonna be more wordy then the average. This concern becomes valid to me if the effect is just altogether too minor -- is that how transit promo on GP is here? Too minor to be worth the text? It's important on general but not so much the others

 

[Rekk]

I'm not familiar with the column. Does it apply to all units naturally? Or do you have to specify UnitCombats/UnitClasses?

 

[Tekamthi]

I'm not familiar with the column

I assume you're referring to the improvement promotion mechanism? If it's some other column, ignore what I'm saying here...

The structure starts with improvement in improvement table getting a defined promotion. Simple.

From there, only unit types defined for that promotion in the unitpromotions_unitcombats table can actually pick up the promotion. I am not aware of any other way to make a unit eligible to pick up the improvement promotion, and I'd say around 95% sure there is no other way (via database).

GP have no unitcombat, so they can't get the improvement promotion the same way as others. But they do have unitclass, which allows them to be assigned a free trait promo. For GP it's either free or not-at-all. Because the transit stuff is relatively minor effect, convenient but not powerful, I opt for free.

This is certainly the most minor and most removable attribute of current proposal though. I'll insist it sticks on general but happily remove from the others if it makes proposal more broadly palatable.

 

[Rekk]

only unit types defined for that promotion in the unitpromotions_unitcombats table can actually pick up the promotion

I understand now.

 

[Rekk]

Note that eventually, the fastest way to get into the water is via coastal cities (because they going a cheap embark), and the pathing won't know that the UI is going to give the unit a cheap embark.

 

[Tekamthi]

Note that eventually, the fastest way to get into the water is via coastal cities (because they going a cheap embark), and the pathing won't know that the UI is going to give the unit a cheap embark.

As maybe the only one testing this, I'll share my experiences thus far. All anecdotal, I am not recording stats, so where I throw out % consider there is some estimation error. I have played with my "default" move in mind first, compared to the resulting moai-encouraged move.

Obviously, in early game, most of ancient, there is no difference, everything plays same, there might as well be no promo.

In late ancient and throughout classical, you are building moai -- the experience here can vary wildly depending on city layout and initial moai placement -- as human, you are inclined to pick the first moai spots as common pathing spots, and in this sense a well-placed moai might see as much as 60% of domestic auto path unit traffic over it, or none if not well placed. As human, you will manually path the majority of units to a badly placed moai, if that's all that's available, as they come out of the city the first time. It's debatable how worthwhile it is to return to moai when already far away, generally I am not bothering with deliberate reloading except on defence, when the island and moai tiles are also the combat tiles, or very closeby.


By medieval most moai are setup. Now the experience varies on city and road placement. In the case of a 1-tile inland Island city, the Polynesia specialty with current UA, the moai promo toggles via auto-path like 80-90% of the time regardless of roads, maybe even more if you're just doing moai and no other improvements on coastal plots. Sometimes though, you need to build a non moai, or would otherwise like to, and sometimes these land in key pathing spots, which can honestly drop the auto pickup to somewhere near 50% in rare cases where one tile is just much more useful for embark/disembark. As human you just road into next best moai tile and this usually boosts auto pickup back up again. In coastal Island cities, units often end up pathing through the city, so maybe moai promo is only acquired around 50-70% of time without deliberately trying to. Road placement helps once again.

On coastal mainland cities, obviously presence of promo via non-deliberate acquisition drops quite low. Roads do help when expanding along the coast rather than inland, but the promo becomes pretty much non existent the moment you begin pushing perpendicular to coast line.

There are special cases where I have to send units to a far off island very quickly, and will often divert units already deployed to some other task -- if the far off destination is far enough, I will deliberately even reverse course for 1-3 turns to pickup promo. 0% automatic pickup in such cases.

Another unique use they requires deliberate planning. Coastal roads into moai can be very useful for archer defense of water tiles, and I very deliberately look for opportunities to set these up. Consider that archer adjacent to water vs naval benefits from stronger attack and ability to move away -- with good moai roads this is almost always on and 2-3 archers can be quite lethal island defenders

Once cities become the preferred embarkation point, roads will decide whether any further auto pickup occurs. Acquiring the promo does become much more deliberate in most cases EXCEPT 1-tile inland Island cities, the preferred poly configuration. Well placed forts also help.

So human has access to some improvement and road placement, as well as detour knowledge that probably boost its ability to acquire the promo somewhere around twice as often as the AI otherwise will meander blindly into it. The gap closes somewhat in island defense applications for which this was intended to be most impactful.

While this is nonetheless a substantial gap in usage, I remain a proponent on the basis that the promo effect itself, as only ever a 1-combat advantage, is subtle, and the effect of getting the promo more often in broader gameplay, as human will over AI, is also subtle. Despite being subtle, it is also a FUN feature to plan around, opening up some coastal ambush and surprise attack plays that did not exist previously. The moai promo is most effective for both human and AI 1-tile inland cities, and thus well on target for poly current UA.

TLDR AI will probably make use of this mechanism to around 50% of optimal effectiveness. It is most effective for 1-tile inland Island cities, where human and AI will be closer in their usage, and all but useless for fightng inland. Later in game requires more deliberate planning, widening gap between human AI usage. Promo effect is fun to play with but subtle enough to blur some of the human AI disparities

 

[pineappledan]

Colour me… unenthusiastic about the suggestion that the way to compensate Polynesia for removing a secondary bonus that encroaches on Shoshone’s core mechanic is to encroach on Denmark’s core mechanic instead.

 

[Tekamthi]

encroach on Denmark’s core mechanic instead.

I had this top of mind as I was selecting attributes -- I think you'd find the overall gameplay vibe to be different here. To requalify your critique, Denmark remains the premiere coastal offense civ, but maybe we could call Polynesia a denmark-lite with this ability. Or a pre-combat denmark-lite even. The way it all shakes out in game feels quite different to me anyway

Edit: it won't hurt anyone's game to load to the test model in OP even when playing non-poly... Would be interesting to get some more eyes on this mechanism before things wrap up here, especially some observations from poly opponents rather than poly player -- I haven't done this yet. The test mod uses some Lua to workaround a bug in 4.6 but it should be relatively minor system impact

 

[azum4roll]

AI does not settle cities one tile inland.

 

[Tekamthi]

Yeah don't see it very often -- but that really is where poly shines -- or rather having a mix of coastal and 1 tile inland. Sometimes even 2 tiles inland works well on Peninsula with resources positioned well. It's a fun kit to play as human, I'm not fond of removing anything from current UA

One possible solution to ensure the promo is picked up more often is just to give the moai themselves flat embark in addition. This will mean some units not intended to benefit from promo will get this flat embark bonus at home only, but the boost to pathing may be enormous.

edit: i've added this to proposal, and removed the flat embark from promo -- this would be some new code but ultimately only similar to what exists already for fort, and should vastly improve automated-pickup of the promo. Also dropped amphib as somewhat superfluous, and to preserve Denmark uniqueness

 

[Tekamthi]

I've made some adjustments here to finalize... Needs DLL updates to make the moai work like forts for embark/disembark purposes, plus some bugfix, so out of my hands sponsor wise.

If it does not move forward, I'm concerned we leave poly without anything to help defend the far flung island style it is currently designed for. None of the other proposals do anything to help poly move between islands, would be nice to see this addressed via counterproposal of some kind. If I hadn't already made proposal, something simple like double move in ocean for melee, worker, settler unlocked at sailing would be my next best

 

[azum4roll]

Vote for mine, then. 100% DLL compatible (for Polynesia).

 

[Rekk]

If you don't think the improvement shenanigans will pass, you can edit it to make a more generalized movement buff.

 

[Tekamthi]

A good congress captain goes down with the proposal vessel. If the proposal was just unworkable I'd abandon it, but this could legit work, the DLL adjustments required are all achievable if the will was there.

I'm feeling little urgency ultimately -- I like playing poly semi-often, and I think some ocean movement is well deserved, and that perhaps someone out there has even better idea to fix, but I can mostly address this in my own games with the OP attachment in the meantime, and nothing else is on the slate that would conflict. We'll see where the dust settles this round, how the various changes that pass translate into gameplay, and revisit next time if poly is still lacking.

What I'd like to do is see if the DLL issues can be addressed on git -- this will take time -- and maybe bring this back as database-only proposal, and thus something I can sponsor myself, as it would truly be a unique and fun UA

 

[Recursive]

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