Arabia

[Funak]

Units move faster in desert, caravans reach farther, and trade routes spread religion faster from your cities.

This UA suffers from both its components requiring different specific situations to actually be useful.

"Caravans reach farther" requires there to be a another civ within the extra range that gives more gold than your neighbors, it also requires you to be on a big landmass like a pangea, and finally it requires you to be landlocked, or a cargoship would be more useful.

"Trade routes spread religion faster from your cities" requires you to found a religion, it also requires the city you want to convert to actually be outside of your normal influence range or the caravan spread doesn't work. And even given those two situations considering how much missonaries/prohpets the AI spam, and how weak base religious spread is your caravans aren't going to make much of a difference.


Unique Unit: Camel Archer - ranged knight

This unit is solid, always been always will be. Suffers from there not being a mounted ranged unittype for it to upgrade to, but is still damn powerful because the AI can't deal with units moving and firing the same turn.

Unique Building: Bazaar - provides faith but no extra luxuries

This is a pretty significant nerf, the basebuilding was way too powerful but it was somewhat compensated with that lackluster UA. With this brought down to a more balanced level the UA needs to be brought up to par with other UAs.

 

[mitsho]

UA: "Units move faster in desert" should stay (but requires deserts to be 2 moves), that should be changed.

The rest seems quite random and I don't think it's quite interesting as a civ. I'd suggest copying from Beyond Earth and make it "1 free tech per x adopted policies" (4?).

Bazaar is religious since the UA has a religious component. When we don't find a suitable effect there, it can be quite anything... If we make arabia the culture civ that can keep up science wise, either a culture (1 on luxuries?) or gold (straight up bonus) on bazaars seems fine.

 

[Funak]

UA: "Units move faster in desert" should stay (but requires deserts to be 2 moves), that should be changed.

The rest seems quite random and I don't think it's quite interesting as a civ. I'd suggest copying from Beyond Earth and make it "1 free tech per x adopted policies" (4?).

Bazaar is religious since the UA has a religious component. When we don't find a suitable effect there, it can be quite anything... If we make arabia the culture civ that can keep up science wise, either a culture (1 on luxuries?) or gold (straight up bonus) on bazaars seems fine.

Arabia was religious, they started off as a religious idea and religion was one of the pillars of their society, that is true. But, they were so much more, they were the scientific and cultural leaders during a big timeperiod, mostly because their religion encouraged science instead of banning it.

That's why I liked the arabia civ in civ4 (or 3, can't remember) where you had a unique library (Madrasa or something I believe).
Anyways I wouldn't suggest actually replacing the Bazaar with a Madrasa, but the idea could still be here, and a clear focus would be nice, either economic or scientific or cultural. Honestly it's mostly just that UA thats ruining it for me.

Edit: forgot to mention this, but I really hate "free tech", there must be a better way of doing it. Giving them % of the faith as science or something.

 

[Gazebo]

My plan for the Bazaar is to make it provide resistance to religious conversion, thus helping Arabia spread its faith via trade without having counter-faiths move in on Arabian cities. I'm also going to increase the power of trade route faith gain for their UA, as it is a bit underwhelming in BNW.

G

 

[mitsho]

While not necessarily logical or historical or flavourful, I think that's a great idea gameplay wise.

 

[Gazebo]

While not necessarily logical or historical or flavourful, I think that's a great idea gameplay wise.

I think it works in the context of the Piety policy branch, which Arabia will most likely go for. Historically, one could argue that the Bazaar reinforces bonds between religious kin in a city by encouraging cooperation...(blah blah).
G

 

[Funak]

My plan for the Bazaar is to make it provide resistance to religious conversion, thus helping Arabia spread its faith via trade without having counter-faiths move in on Arabian cities. I'm also going to increase the power of trade route faith gain for their UA, as it is a bit underwhelming in BNW.

G

So the plan is to remove Arabias tradefocus totally and just have it focused on religion? I mean the main problem I see with that is that they aren't actually garanteed a religion in the first place. Kinda puts them in the seat of vanilla Theodora, with uniques to help your religion and no easier way to get one.

 

[Gazebo]

So the plan is to remove Arabias tradefocus totally and just have it focused on religion? I mean the main problem I see with that is that they aren't actually garanteed a religion in the first place. Kinda puts them in the seat of vanilla Theodora, with uniques to help your religion and no easier way to get one.

Nope.

I'm also going to increase the power of trade route faith gain for their UA, as it is a bit underwhelming in BNW

G

 

[Funak]

Nope.



G

That would still be religionfocus, not tradefocus(gold).

 

[Gazebo]

That would still be religionfocus, not tradefocus(gold).

Ah, I see what you mean. The double oil bonus is trade-focused, as is the need for caravans/cargo ships, the latter benefitting from religion as well. The theme is, overall, one of 'trade for religion, religion for trade,' which makes a lot of sense for Arabia (during the era of Harun al Rashid specifically).
G

 

[Funak]

Ah, I see what you mean. The double oil bonus is trade-focused, as is the need for caravans/cargo ships, the latter benefitting from religion as well. The theme is, overall, one of 'trade for religion, religion for trade,' which makes a lot of sense for Arabia (during the era of Harun al Rashid specifically).
G

How about that thing mentioned way back in the morocco thread about making your traderoutes immune to plunder, that would probably work out?

 

[Gazebo]

How about that thing mentioned way back in the morocco thread about making your traderoutes immune to plunder, that would probably work out?

Considering how the TacticalAI deals with plundering, this would probably cause a lot of problems for the AI, unfortunately. We also have a trait I made, but haven't used yet, that grants x yield every time your trade units move. This could be used to buff Morocco's UA.

G

 

[Funak]

Considering how the TacticalAI deals with plundering, this would probably cause a lot of problems for the AI, unfortunately. We also have a trait I made, but haven't used yet, that grants x yield every time your trade units move. This could be used to buff Morocco's UA.

G

Arabia or Morocco?

 

[Funak]

The current Arabian situation.

Arabian UA - Ships of the desert
Double movement in desert.
Acquiring desert tiles grabs desert tiles around those desert tiles.
Deserts gain +2 food/production/gold when city-connects or traderoutes passes over them. Not stacking.
The plan behind this UA is to make desert-settling more viable for the Arabian civ and works as a replacement for morocco as a desertfocused civ.


Arabian UB - Bazaar
Compared to normal market.
+2 gold
+1 faith
-1 gold/production on cocoa (probably a mistake)
+1gold/12 citizens
+50% trade route range
+100% trade route religious spread


Arabian UU - Camel Archer
Compared to normal Mounted bowman
+7 CS (not ranged)
+Chance to withdraw before melee.


Analysis
First off I'll say what I like about the current Arabia. The UA is certainly unique, that is a fact, the landgrab portion of it is pure genius, even if you'll go insane waiting for the auto-border-expand to actually grab desert-tiles. The Camel archer is a nice upgrade over a normal bowman, even if I still feel like the mounted bowman have its power completely misdirected. It upgrades well and it handles early warfare well.

Now on to what I don't really like.
The yield part of the UA. Mostly everything about this UA seems fun, but when you actually play around with it you realize that it all feels horribly broken. First off, the way you spread the yields, you're forced to use sub-par trade routes because you want your caravans passing over your desert-tiles, you're forced to run caravans over cargo-ships, because cargo-ships can't travel over desert (ships of the desert ). It promotes building extremely weird roads, usually going as far off the mark as possible just to cover more desert-tiles. Building roads also seems to make your caravans change their pathing to stay closer to the road for some reason (might just be me)
The main issue however rests with the yields and how they are added. +2 to three different yields early on is insane, it pretty much turns every flat desert tile into a GP-tile in terms of yields, Later on however since you can't improve flat desert tiles in any way (tradingposts can't be placed next to each other, and are useless) you're still sitting on 6 yield tiles (2 of them being gold, which is pretty useless at this point) Other civs are farming grassland-tiles and getting 6 or 7 yields in pure food from those at this point. Pretty much, for flat desert tiles the bonus is completely overpowered early on and pretty much pointless later on.
The other main issue is that the bonus works on tiles that aren't flat desert tiles, turning un-improved floodplains into 9 yield tiles, farmed floodplain tiles to anything from 10 to 14 yield tiles, floodplain wheat up to 16, 19 if you combine it with desert folklore. The same thing goes with desert-hills, and especially desert-hills with resources. The UA which imo is supposed to balance out the differences between the desert and the grasslands is instead improving some of the already most powerful tiles in the game, making them insanely overpowered.
The third crux is that while flat desert tiles aren't improvable by any normal improvements you can still stack great people tile improvements on them, which pretty much makes your capital into a pile of pure insanity even in late-game with the GPIs great scaling, while your other cities are pretty much left with the scraps.

In summery the UA doesn't really improve upon desert living, but instead promotes infinite restarts until you can get the capital with the most floodplain tiles and then just cheese around like crazy. I don't think that's a functioning way to balance an UA, at all, and that's really what I dislike the most about the Arabian UA.


Onwards to the UB. The Bazaar just looks extremely all over the place. It provides tons of extra gold, almost unreasonable amounts actually. The religious spreading mechanic is a REALLY powerful tool, probably way too powerful, but I just don't see what it is doing there. Sure the Bazaar gives you one faith per turn, but Arabia as a whole is hardly religion focused, yet they have a UB with the main ability being an extremely powerful improvement to religious spread. It feels so extremely out of place, like the Byzantium UA in vanilla. On top of all this stuff it also provides the benefit of a caravansary, as if the building wasn't already cluttered enough. The building is just way too strong and way too weird. I would recommend a course of action at this point but I have no idea if the idea would be making Arabia religion-based or not.

 

[Gazebo]

I actually had plans for an Arabia fix before this post, but hey, here goes. I'm going to scale the UA tile yield so it is as follows:

Ancient 1
Classical 1
Medieval 1
Renaissance 2
Industrial 2
Modern 3
Atomic 3
Information 4

Each # represents the +x Food/Gold/Production. Also, I'm going to make it ignore flood plains.

G

 

[Funak]

I actually had plans for an Arabia fix before this post

Right....

Each # represents the +x Food/Gold/Production. Also, I'm going to make it ignore flood plains.

I suspected this, but I don't think it will work. Wow that sounds negative.
It would fix the issue of scaling, early game would feel less overpowered. Floodplains would be left out, but hills, especially hills with resources would still be overpowering, 'the Petra effect'. The flat desert tiles would still suffer from not being improvable, leaving the great people tile improvement situation the same way as it currently is. Also those 3 yield flat desert tiles in medieval era would be painfully bad to work. It also wouldn't do anything about the weird roads you're forced to make.


If I may make a suggestion I would suggest the idea of someone anonymous(or I just forgot his name, either way) in another thread at some point, but with a twist to keep the spirit of the current UA alive.
Reduce the bonus from the UA to just +2 gold (or scaling if you like that better), remove the effect from roads, so it only works with trade-routes. Let it work on any tile, not only desert.
Add the ability for Arabia to farm flat desert tiles(sure it doesn't seem very historically accurate, but this is a game, and the game wants you to work all tiles around your city). Add some food bonus to the desert tiles to make them more attractive than for other civs, but still not make them outclass grassland, maybe +1 faith to all desert tiles and +1 food to all desert non floodplain tiles. If that isn't enough maybe add some food to great people tiles placed in the non-floodplain desert.
This would leave you with a pretty weak area in the desert, but still more manageable than it is for other civs. You would also bring the Religion focus back, since your response to my hate for the Bazaar sounded like you wanted it back. Assuming Arabia gets a desert-start with at least some workable tiles they could pretty easily score one of the first pantheons and probably an early religion. Collecting spare faith for holy-sites to place in the desert for bonus yields.

 

[Gazebo]

It would fix the issue of scaling, early game would feel less overpowered. Floodplains would be left out, but hills, especially hills with resources would still be overpowering, 'the Petra effect'. The flat desert tiles would still suffer from not being improvable, leaving the great people tile improvement situation the same way as it currently is. Also those 3 yield flat desert tiles in medieval era would be painfully bad to work. It also wouldn't do anything about the weird roads you're forced to make.

Desert hills are fine - bonuses to them make up for the less-than-valuable nature of flat desert. Weird roads are a choice, and are not forced - the cost in maintenance (and not being able to move your units around quickly) is offset by the bonus.

Reduce the bonus from the UA to just +2 gold (or scaling if you like that better), remove the effect from roads, so it only works with trade-routes. Let it work on any tile, not only desert.

This defeats the purpose of the UA being desert-focused, so no.

Add the ability for Arabia to farm flat desert tiles(sure it doesn't seem very historically accurate, but this is a game, and the game wants you to work all tiles around your city).

This would look really silly on the map, and defeats the purpose of the civ being 'land trade routes and desert.' The current UA works, and is balanced around the RNG + player choice regarding roads, tiles, and trade routes. I feel like this is more of an issue of 'you don't like it' (which is fine, but not necessarily grounds for change) than 'this is imbalanced.'

G

 

[Funak]

Desert hills are fine - bonuses to them make up for the less-than-valuable nature of flat desert. Weird roads are a choice, and are not forced - the cost in maintenance (and not being able to move your units around quickly) is offset by the bonus.

I mentioned hills because you can actually build improvements on them, not because they have 2 extra production. The maintenance cost argument falls pretty flat considering the improved tiles provide more gold than the cost of the maintenance for a roadtile

This defeats the purpose of the UA being desert-focused, so no.

This was mostly as a backup for the mentioned below, in a vacuum it really doesn't make sense.

This would look really silly on the map, and defeats the purpose of the civ being 'land trade routes and desert.'

Absolutely true. But having a majority of your tiles permanently un-improved isn't really interesting, at least in my opinion. It also creates a lowered value for liberty and the pyramids as well as workers in general.

The current UA works, and is balanced around the RNG + player choice regarding roads, tiles, and trade routes. I feel like this is more of an issue of 'you don't like it' (which is fine, but not necessarily grounds for change) than 'this is imbalanced.'

EVERYTHING I DID, I DID FOR THE MOD!
Jokes aside, yes this is absolutely a case of 'I don't like it' a case that I can back up by fabricating situation where the thing I don't like can be exploited.
I don't presume to be able to speak for everyone using the mod, but I try to back up my feelings with as much logic and reason as possible.
I personally could just ignore Arabia as I do with Assyria, but I wouldn't want what I consider clunky and strange mechanics to deter newbies or people who are afraid/just don't care reporting it. This is the main reason why I keep bringing up things I don't like as balance-issues, because all I can do is just assume that the majority either agrees with me, don't care either way, or rise up to challenge me if they actually like the existing mechanics.

 

[Mitch.sp]

I actually had plans for an Arabia fix before this post, but hey, here goes. I'm going to scale the UA tile yield so it is as follows:



Each # represents the +x Food/Gold/Production. Also, I'm going to make it ignore flood plains.

G

I for one like the actual Arabia's UA, but totally agree that in the early game some tiles can be totally out of control, and that the stacking with floodplains is too much.

Respect to the actual Gazebo's proposal, I think that the nerf is pretty big. My suggestion is make the increase of yields smoother, increasing food or production by 1 in each era, and increasing gold one every two turns (when the amount of food =amount production. Here is summarised, don't know if isn't practical or is labourly to implement.

 

[Funak]

I for one like the actual Arabia's UA, but totally agree that in the early game some tiles can be totally out of control, and that the stacking with floodplains is too much.

And you're here voicing your opinion, that's awesome.

Respect to the actual Gazebo's proposal, I think that the nerf is pretty big. My suggestion is make the increase of yields smoother, increasing food or production by 1 in each era, and increasing gold one every two turns (when the amount of food =amount production. Here is summarised, don't know if isn't practical or is labourly to implement.

While you're pretty unlikely to get roads/caravans going before classical era, your ancient era is still painful just to look at

I agree that 1 of each yield per tile throughout medieval era is pretty crazy, I mean even if you beeline, getting into renaissance is hard work.
Anyways while I still completely dislike the UA as it is, following your suggestion or just ramping up medieval era yields to +2 while keeping the rest of the table the same would be a better solution.


However if you are still committed to this UA that doesn't have any religious component at all, you should probably rework the religious part of the UB.