(8-24b) 4UC Japanese Medley Proposal

[Pipiskus]

Proposal :

- Move a part of the Dojo unique promotion to the UA (return to base Civ V)

UA - Bakufu
+1 Culture and Faith from Defense Buildings.
When a Great General or Great Admiral is born, gain 50% progress towards a Great Artist, Writer and Musician in your Capital.
Units always fight at full strength.

- Samurai replaced by Kondei

UU1 - Kondei (replaces Heavy Skirmisher)
Unlocked at Physics
175 Production / 300Faith cost
Requires 1 Horse
Mounted
19 CS / 15 RCS / 1 Range (+1 / +1 / +0)
5 MP / 2 Vision
Great General II
Kobudo (dummy promotion) - Can fortify and benefit from Terrain Defensive bonuses. Has no Attack malus against Cities and Naval Units. Lost upon upgrade.
Can move after attacking
Skirmisher Doctrine
Cannot melee attack
Attack malus against Naval Units
Attack malus against Cities
No Terrain Defense

- Kabuki replaced by Torii

UGPTI - Torii
Can be built by expending a Great Writer / Artist / Musician
Can be built on Land and Coastal tiles

6 Culture, 6 Tourism, 1 Faith
+1Culture, 1 Tourism, and 1 Faith for each adjacent Mountain

+3 Culture at Drama and Poetry
+3 Tourism, 1 Faith at Guilds
+3 Culture, 3 Tourism at Acoustics
+3Culture, 3Faith at Radio
All GPTI and Unique Improvement Bonuses from policies and buildings apply

UB - Dojo
Remove 8 Bushido Promotions
Gain 50 in city whenever an internal Trade Route to or from this city is completed, scaling with era

- No change for the Yamato

Spoiler Rationale: :

Rationale :
The Japanese kit, although well designed, suffers from 3 not-so-great sins, in addition to the 1 great sin that Hinin mentioned:

• The great sin of swords swords swords: Sword boy with Sword government that has a sword unique unit and a unique building where they can master the sword.
• The minor sin of overdetermined tech progression to get all the swords. The Dojo and Samurai, both of the base components, unlock on the same tech. The amount of emphasis placed on this single tech overrides all other considerations and makes players pick policies, beliefs etc. that fit this prescribed mad dash to the bottom of the tree.
• The minor sin of not enough places to put all the Great works that I make with my swords
  • ie. The UA can produce Great Musicians and Artists faster and in higher numbers than the slots that are available to house GWArt and GWMusic, forcing you to either bulb great people before the bulbs are useful, or park a great person (that costs unit maintenance) in a city for many turns while you wait for Castles and Temples to unlock.
• The minor sin of using only a fraction of my power to make a sword cult, but not tipping all the way over into being a religious civ
  • The UA, via the worst bonus ever, gives +1 per city per turn to an ancient era building, giving Japan a considerable edge on founding. This puts Japan into a halfway point where they are disruptive enough to the early founding game that they can ruin the religion race for other civs without being a civ that Needs to found in order to leverage the rest of their kit. This is the absolute worst kind of civ, in my opinion, because it makes the religion founding race less competitive for no discernible reason.

Name change to Bakufu
- This is the same thing as Shogunate, but is a more accurate endonym. It is still easy to pronounce and accessible to English speakers.

Replacement of building yields with fights better damaged
- Removes founding bonus and ugly, unimaginative building yield change on UA. Adds back vanilla UA bonus.

Kondei
- This unit is more time-appropriate than the Samurai, and more faithful to the real military history of Japan. It also sufficiently removes the overemphasis on glorious nippon steel.
- The move to Physics for the unlock unstacks all of Japan's base 2UC from Steel, which makes Japan's tech progression more open-ended
- Hinin's proposal to make the UU not a mounted unit for combat bonuses is just too visually confusing. They are on a horse. Something's got to give. Also it could mess with the promotion tree.

Replacement of Bushido promotions with ITR bonus
- Removes overt reference to Bushido which is an absolute win for historicity. Bushido as a formalized warrior code is at best semi-historical. It would be more correct to say it is a Flanderization of a far more complex network of customs and laws that was reinterpreted in the 19th century to be easily digestible by western audiences and then projected back onto the Japanese. Putting the 'fights well damaged' back onto the UA leaves it more amorphous and unspoken, which is better in this case.
- The removal of overt Bushido also de-emphasizes the swords-swords-swords. The heal on melee kill and other minor bonuses added by bushido also make less sense if the UU is being changed to a ranged unit.
- Adds yields on ITR end from the Kabuki UB2, which is replaced by Torii. This adds a soft incentive for that Edo period isolationism that characterizes pre-modern Japan's portrayal in pop history.

Removal of Kabuki for Torii
- This resolves the problem of not enough slots for early GWAMs produced by the UA. Give GWAMs a GPTI to place.
- Making the Torii scale with buildings, as in Hinin's proposal is unnecessary. It works well for GPTIs that otherwise would create UI issues if exposed to the tech tree like Ordo, but is not necessary here.
- The Kabuki was very late, it was stacked with another unique Opera House (the Brazilian Sambadrome), and it did not resolve Japan's slot issue.

Reduced the Faith bonuses and increased base culture
- The base faith is reduced to 1 point as a flavor-booster. This version of Japan is not a religious civ with major founding bonuses.
- Base culture and tourism increased to be more in line with a GPTI.
- Added mountain adjacency bonus for a bit of that Shinto flavor, gives a settle direction that could influence the decision to place the GPTI vs Great work.

 

[pineappledan]

Oh wait a minute, this has less DLL than the base 4UC proposal. It’s just the yamato. Neat!

 

[axatin]

If that's the case, I can sponsor it.

 

[Recursive]

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