Afghanistan for VP

[hokath]

The +2 culture and faith doesn't show on that screen.
It is giving the +4, with the Heritage policy increasing it to +6.
The +8, which correctly adds to my database, should fire for the domestic same era and therefore show a +12 with Heritage.
I will try to reproduce.

 

[Shah_Afshar]

Thank you very much for this Afghan civ that I will try as soon as VP 5.0 comes out.

I'd suggest some icon changes for the building to better reflect the region:

Maydan ==> change to the Divan icon from the Durrani mod (no sanskrit on it) : https://civilization-v-customisation.fandom.com/wiki/Afghanistan_(Ahmad_Shah_Durrani)

UNW ==> change to the Namazgah icon from the Bukhara mod (the present one really look north african instead of central asian) : https://civilization-v-customisation.fandom.com/wiki/Bukhara_(Shah_Murad)

 

[hokath]

We can certainly look at swapping out the art.
The Maydan is LastSword's original art so I wouldn't want to swap it without good reason, but I suppose Durrani would have written in a Pashto, arabic-looking script not this blockier indian-looking style?

 

[Shah_Afshar]

We can certainly look at swapping out the art.
The Maydan is LastSword's original art so I wouldn't want to swap it without good reason, but I suppose Durrani would have written in a Pashto, arabic-looking script not this blockier indian-looking style?

Yes sir ! The pashto alphabet is indeed very close to the Persian and Arabic ones.

 

[hokath]

Was hard to get a decent photo of the buildings, probably for religious observance related reasons, but I made a new one of the shrine.

Spoiler :

Will use the Divan one you suggested for the UB. Get a pop of purple in the color scheme

Edit: @AndreyK I reproduced the issue. Problem turns out to be that the game cares what order you add these theming bonuses to the database, so it seems to find the first one (the lower one) and then stops looking for more. I swapped the order and it worked again! Will update shortly.

 

[AndreyK]

After installing new version maidan gives 2 culture 2 faith, previously it gave 3 culture 2 faith. OP says 2c2f but +1c +2f, amphitheater gives 2 culture.

 

[hokath]

Right, didn't mention this above. OP 2/2 was meant to be correct amount, but 3/2 snuck into online version somehow. Now correct.
(testing suggests Artistry+Theme Bonus is pretty strong, maybe need further reductions but don't really want to go lower on the UB)

 

[H0dgvikin]

Gave Afghanistan a go. It is pretty fun, and I can confirm that with Tradition+Artistry you can theme the UBs pretty quickly and it's pretty strong. But I think it's at a fun level. The capital bulbing all the great people is also pretty powerful in a way similar to Austria/Arabia. More late-game than I expected, because cities don't tend to expand to mountains naturally, but my playthrough feels pretty good overall.

One minor bug: the artifact given by the Khirqa Sharif seems to behave as if it's music. I can move it to other music-taking slots, but not artwork/artifact slot.

 

[hokath]

Musical artifact, very cute.
It is because by default Great Temple holds Music, and this apparently overwrites the nature of the Artifact to go in an Art slot.
Didn't know this was possible!

Will fix in next version.

 

[hokath]

I've been watching some test games because [REDACTED] and I'm not very happy with how the Afghan UA is working out. 1) AI has no concept of it and 2) the swing level at the start is just super high.

Will try some more AI friendly alternatives while keeping the same theme as currently.

Current mood:

Spoiler :

New UA

I like the Writer synergy giving a small military edge. Citadel good for defense which we like, and we were sort of missing some reference to Durrani's military achievements.
Yields on the Mountains will make the AI go for them more, and the expansion bonus will claim them for us (which is ok now we dont have early scaling yields off them).
No Food on Mountain so no Turn 1 Culture. Later will convert well into Tourism!

Reworked Khirqa Sharif

Old Mountain scaling bonus delayed to Medieval, balancing early game and allowing a more to be given upfront than before.
Bonuses to Shrines removed and Culture reverted to the vanilla +1 Gold. We are getting Culture and Faith from the UA so drop it here for balance.

Thoughts? Seems like a big improvement to me but I want to playtest it before I overwrite the OP.

 

[hokath]

Ok, so there was an issue where the yields on birth were not era scaling correctly (due to a VP update).
Therefore we're going to do the update now anyway

Changelog:

Spoiler :

First, due to a VP table change the Building_YieldsFromBirth table is not era scaling by default. This update fixes that (for Afghanistan).

Second, to bring the civ more in line with VP balance, to reduce extreme start-dependence, and (most importantly) to make the AI play the civ better, we have made the following significant changes to the civ.

UA now reads
Pearl of Pearls
+1 Faith and Great General Point from Great Works of Writing. Mountains produce +1 Culture, scaling with Era, and +3 Production. Border expansion to a Mountain claims all adjacent unowned Mountains.

UNW now reads
Kerqa Sharif (Grand Temple)
Unlocked at Theology
Requires Temple
6
2 Great Writer Points
1 Great Work of Art or Artifact Slot
-2 from Religion in this City and -1 in all other Cities.
+2 , +1 to Temple and Maydan
Comes with a Free Artifact
1 Writer slot.
Gain 75 Tourism whenever a Unit dies.
City gains 25 Culture, and Faith whenever a Citizen is born, scaling with Era, and generates +25% Great Person Points. Bonus increases by 2 Culture and Faith and +5% Great Person Points for every Mountain in the Empire.

 

[Hinin]

Ok, so there was an issue where the yields on birth were not era scaling correctly (due to a VP update).
Therefore we're going to do the update now anyway

Changelog:

Spoiler :

First, due to a VP table change the Building_YieldsFromBirth table is not era scaling by default. This update fixes that (for Afghanistan).

Second, to bring the civ more in line with VP balance, to reduce extreme start-dependence, and (most importantly) to make the AI play the civ better, we have made the following significant changes to the civ.

UA now reads
Pearl of Pearls
+1 Faith and Great General Point from Great Works of Writing. Mountains produce +1 Culture, scaling with Era, and +3 Production. Border expansion to a Mountain claims all adjacent unowned Mountains.

UNW now reads
Kerqa Sharif (Grand Temple)
Unlocked at Theology
Requires Temple
6
2 Great Writer Points
1 Great Work of Art or Artifact Slot
-2 from Religion in this City and -1 in all other Cities.
+2 , +1 to Temple and Maydan
Comes with a Free Artifact
1 Writer slot.
Gain 75 Tourism whenever a Unit dies.
City gains 25 Culture, and Faith whenever a Citizen is born, scaling with Era, and generates +25% Great Person Points. Bonus increases by 2 Culture and Faith and +5% Great Person Points for every Mountain in the Empire.

Seems good.
Just be aware than the yield on unit death scaling is wacky. The increase throughout eras is near exponential, hence problems with Vietnam and Benin (still working on it).

 

[H0dgvikin]

The change sounds good. The border expansion AI has no concept of expanding to nearby mountains so I have to buy the tiles manually in game—the blobbing should make it more friendly to the AI now.

The main thing that jumps out for me with the new UA change is that Afghanistan no longer gets any early game faith for founding, even if a considerable power of the new Khirqa Sharif lies in the faith. But it should be fine–Afghanistan isn't thematically a religion founder anyway.

A very minor typo in the reworked text of Khirqa Sharif you posted above:

City gains 25 Culture, and Faith

I don't think that comma in the middle should be here

 

[hokath]

I find that it will claim the mountains fairly routinely if they are in ring 2. However if they are in ring 3 it basically ignores them. This is early on anyway.

 

[Rosete]

I can count on 1 hand the number of times I've seen my border expand to a mountain tile. Does Afghan cities have more or equal weight towards mountain tile?

 

[hokath]

Yeah so normal mountains have no yields, and then mountains are also deprioritized. You can see in CvCity.cpp function GetBuyablePlotList
Because this trait adds yields, mountains should become more desirable, same way it works for Inca. As eras advance and the culture goes up, this effect should get stronger.
In testing, for example, if I crank it up to the Atomic Era so mountains have tonnes of culture, the AI picker (the purple highlight in the city screen) swaps to prefer them (when before it wanted something else). So I think this is working.

Overall though you shouldn't read this as a significant part of the kit. It's mainly for a) the AI and b) to allow you to obtain mountains that are 4 tiles away much easier (expand to a 3 tile mountain adjacent), which you otherwise cant do with gold purchasing!

I did get a very juicy one in my last test game though where it expanded to a mountain in ring 2 and claimed 4 additional tiles :O

 

[TheHatOnTop]

Hey folks, love the faction although dont seem to be getting great general points from great works of writing?

 

[hokath]

Hmm you are right. I had wondered where my Great Generals were...!
Although it correctly displays in the UI, it seems the DLL doesn't add the Great General Points. I'll bring it up on github, thanks.

 

[hokath]

Ok so thanks to @azum4roll and @axatin for taking a look.
If you add the line

UPDATE CustomModOptions SET Value = 1 WHERE Name = 'BALANCE_CORE_JFD';

To a .sql file then GG points should appear (seems save game compatible)

I will update main post now.
Will also bump faith on Glit to +2

 

[jarcast2]

I also gave a look at the relevant DLL.
It seems that in other instances it correctly mentions only JFD's new yields

While in other it erroneously cuts earlier with GA points

I'm no DLL expert but instead of closing the issue we should push for the fix so to not have similar problems in the future.

Could someone do it please? @axatin @azum4roll

It's only the following 2 instances.

If they fix this won't be anymore needed.

UPDATE CustomModOptions SET Value = 1 WHERE Name = 'BALANCE_CORE_JFD';