(8-11a) 4UC China - Revolt China UA and Tweaked Baochuan and Siheyuan

[Hinin]

Current : See pineappledan 4UC version for China here.

Proposal :

UA - Mandate of Heaven

When you found, conquer or liberate Cities or start a Golden Age, permanently gain +2 Food in all existing Cities. When the Empire is Unhappy, gain +25% Faith and Culture globally (not in Cities) and +25% Production towards Units in all Cities (including Civilians). Cannot prevent Growth, and Cities revolt twice as fast.

UMU 2 - Baochuan (replaces Frigate)
available at Astronomy (instead of Navigation)
500 Production cost (+125)
Requires Iron

28 CS / 37 RCS / 2 Range (+3 / +2 / 0)
4 Movement / 2 Vision

Quick Study
Hull III
Kowtow - Whenever gaining Combat Experience, gain as much Influence with the nearest City-State ; lost with upgrade

UI - Siheyuan
Unlocked at Currency
Can only be built on flat land next to a City or to two other Siheyuan

+1 Production / Gold / Science
+1 Production / Gold / Science during WLTKD
+1 GGeneral / GAdmiral points during Golden Ages

Tech bonuses :
- Civil Service : +1 Culture
- Architecture : +1 Production / Science
- Electricity : +1 Gold / Culture

The two remaining components are kept as proposed by pineappledan.

Rationale : Throughout the years, I've found that China has lost quite a lot of the gameplay tension that previously made it one of my must-picks. One of the reasons, I've found, is that it's become easier and easier to enter an infinite virtuous circle where you're in a constant WLTKD and you just bath in passive and uninteractive bonuses. This has unfortunately also been the case for the Baochuan, whose passive influence gain is also quite AI-unfriendly.

My solution is to add tension to the kit by making the virtuous circle of the Chinese UA both a double edge sword and another source of opportunities. I decided first to axe the effect of Great Works, which too easily pushes China towards a passive playstyle. Furthermore, I decided to put at the forefront two underutilized elements of VP : unhappiness and revolt.

As you may know, Chinese history has been far from peaceful : it's been full of highs and lows, with some of the most impressive golden ages just next to the biggest civil wars in history. I wanted to convert this aspect of Chinese history into a gameplay element that forces the player to play on the knife's edge to benefit from a number of very good bonuses. The Food gained from founding, conquering or liberating Cities (or simply maintaining a happy empire) gives Chinese cities the potential to become the biggest in the world, but also pushes the empire towards unrest, and you would have no easy solution to simply nullify this. Turns of unhappiness, on the other hand, can help you do many things that can either push back against unhappiness... or let you continue your growth, with the risk of some cities quickly revolting... cities that can be reconquered for benefits or influenced through Chinese diplomatic bonuses once they've become City-States.

Finally, because WLTKD generation has been removed entirely from the Chinese kit, the Siheyuan needs something else to remain attractive, hence a bonus to Great Generals and Great Admiral generation during Golden Ages (a nice reference to the vanilla civ 5 Art of War, and a way for the civ to prepare against incoming bad times).

I'm well aware this kind of UA will be a bit wacky at first, but I'm convinced there is a lot of potential here.

As for the Baochuan, the Influence from Experience offers active ways to convert your military potential into diplomatic gains. The increased Production cost can be compensated thanks to the high population of the civ, its Siheyuan and potentialy its UA production bonus while unhappy.

"The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been." - Romance of the Three Kingdoms

As always, thanks for reading.

Edit 1 : Removed WLTKD entirely from the UA. Added a GGeneral / GAdmiral point bonus during Golden Ages to the Siheyuan.

 

[pineappledan]

or start a Golden Age, gain 10 turns of "We Love the Empress Day"

Isn't this just Brazil?

Personally I would rather see China moved off the WLTKD thing entirely. a civ with permanent WLTKD is not interesting, all it does is make WLTKD's trade incentives null, so you end up with fewer mechanics than other civs.

 

[Hinin]

Isn't this just Brazil?

Personally I would rather see China moved off the WLTKD thing entirely. a civ with permanent WLTKD is not interesting, all it does is make WLTKD's trade incentives null, so you end up with fewer mechanics than other civs.

You're right, especially since the UA already gives enough Food as is and WLTKD doesn't add anything more interesting to the kit. Removing WLTKD from the UA would liberate design space for other potential kits.

This will also make looking for WLTKD a lot more important for the civ. It will still gain a lot from it, but it's not automatic anymore.

Edit 1 : Removed WLTKD entirely from the UA. Added a GGeneral / GAdmiral point bonus during Golden Ages to the Siheyuan.

 

[Rekk]

Cities revolt faster

Please enumerate this.

 

[Hinin]

Please enumerate this.

Cities revolt in half the time they usually do. I'll edit the UA.

 

[pineappledan]

for your consideration:
Mandate of Heaven
When a Historic Event is triggered, gain +1 Food, 1 Production, and 1 Gold per turn in All cities. Bonus yields reset on era change. (ie. 100% decay)
Gaining a City Triggers a Historic Event.

Siheyuan
base yields changed to 2
1 for every 5Citizens in nearby city
Remove bonus yields during WLTKD

Chu Ko Nu
Remove Siege Volleys promotion
Add Repeater promotion (+1 attack, -50% RCS)

Baochuan
Change Kowtow to instant influence for 1-time mission like 'exotic cargo'

Exam Hall
unchanged

Rationale:
Way more triggers more often.
no more permanent WLTKD
Clear incentives on the UI and UB to grow large cities, and then capitalize on that to work lots of the UIs
UI has no food on them. On Era change, you get a massive rug pull and all your cities starve because you have no food, because you turned all your arable land into city sprawl
Massive Distress hit if you don't prepare for it

 

[hokath]

MAGI:
We have the exam hall from base
Trait_PermanentYieldChangeWLTKD needs a brother and sister for gaining a city and starting a GA
It needs a further table and a column for these:

When the Empire is Unhappy, gain +25% Faith and Culture globally (not in Cities) and +25% Production towards Units in all Cities (including Civilians).

Then we need this

Cannot prevent Growth, and Cities revolt twice as fast.

Which requires UI work to prevent the player from pressing the stop growth button and some visual indicator (maybe grey it out?), and also I would think the AI needs to be told to not want to be in revolt even more? Something.

Kowtow requires a XPtoInfluenceNearestCS column on UnitPromotions

The Siheyuan change I think also needs a table, Improvement_YieldsFromGA to go alongside the one for WLTKD

 

[Hinin]

The Siheyuan change I think also needs a table, Improvement_YieldsFromGA to go alongside the one for WLTKD

The same table will be needed for the Persian UI.

 

[azum4roll]

Also need to train the AI to not avoid dipping into slight unhappiness, but absolutely avoid the revolution threshold.

 

[Hinin]

DLL requirements :
- update Trait_PermanentYieldChangeWLTKD to be affected by city liberation and GoldenAge trigggers
- new Trait_GlobalYieldModifierWhenUnhappyEmpire (TraitType, YieldType, Modifier) table + a UnitProductionModifierWhenUnhappyEmpire column in the Trait table ?
- Improvement_GoldenAgeYield (ImprovementType, YieldType, Yield) for the updated Siheyuan that can take the GGeneral / GAdmiral points into acounts
- for the Baochuan, a UnitPromotions_InfluenceFromExperience table perhaps ?

 

[Gizmoman]

MAGI:

Which requires UI work to prevent the player from pressing the stop growth button and some visual indicator (maybe grey it out?), and also I would think the AI needs to be told to not want to be in revolt even more? Something.

The button would still need to be there to minimize food, it's just that it wouldn't ever stop overflowing food from getting you pop.
Else automation would stuffer massively compared to manual.

 

[Recursive]

I find this idea interesting enough compared to the other China proposals that I want to sponsor it.

 

[Recursive]

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