Babylon

void_genesis

Prince
Joined
Apr 12, 2011
Messages
429
I just started a random rolled Babylon game with the latest version of the mod, king, continents, standard speed and size. Given the science focus of the civ I am finding the walls somewhat useful to help me expand quickly, hopefully making it harder for enemies to give me serious trouble when I annoy them from expanding too fast in order to build my population. The walls are pretty boring though and could definitely use some additional effect. I think the extra scientist slot was a good synergy with the UA. Otherwise maybe 1 happy to help with the expansion?
The bowmen are so boring though. I reckon a good synergy would be to give them extra range like the longbows used to have. This would work beautifully with the stronger walls since a garrison could protect a city more effectively. It is also just a plain all-round fun effect and would bring babylon back to being worth playing. You could leave the strength the same as comparable units if necessary to stop it being overpowered.
The yield from settling great scientists is a bit poor though. Maybe it would be worthwhile to make them capable of settling on top of mountains and get a higher science yield? Not sure if it is historic, but the babylonians were big on astronomy early in history. Otherwise maybe add production/culture/faith on mountaintop academies?
 
In my opinion Babylon suffers from everything related to them being nerfed and most things around them being buffed.

What Babylon used to have was a free academy at writing and 50% faster academies later on. While I haven't had any real confirmation on this besides my feelings, academies are completely undertuned at the moment, they lost 3 science base, a long with their powerful scaling. Babylon also lost the ability to stack them with university/national college which almost doubled their effect. Finally scientist specialists have gotten worse for the same reason, and since you're pretty much forced to run scientists, this hurts you a lot.

What Babylon used to have was a decision that gave them the ability to buy a observatory in the capital(for full price) even if it wasn't near a mountain. They still have it, but observatories have lost most of their power now so this decision is garbage.

Babylons pretty mediocre UU is still in the game, and is somewhat more useful now, even if it was moved way later in the tree (and compbows lost A LOT of power in general).

Babylons UB lost some health and gained some defense, something that could seem like a fair trade, specially in this mod where defense is scarse, but. And this but is pretty huge, in vanilla defense wasn't scarse, meaning the extra health was REALLY good while the current UB isn't bad at all it is certainly worse given the circumstances.

What Babylon have gained. This is rather interesting, but from my point of view Babylon is now one of the most religion-dependant civs in the game. You're pretty much forced to get the extra 10% science from religion, you're pretty much forced to get the extra scientist-slot from piety. You're pretty much forced to get Knowledge through devotion, giving you the ability to double your number of academies by making all academies act as holy sites and all holy sites act as academies.


In general Babylon have gotten a lot worse while other civs around Babylon have gotten way stronger. Most can be blamed on the old national college+university academy-stacking. I'm afraid that fixing the academies still won't fix babylon however because 'fixed' academies are just going to be good, not overpowered like they used to be. And Babylon pretty much needs overpowered right now to stay in the game.



What I would suggest, besides a pretty much total rework of their UU and UB because is either a huge buff to great scientists in the UA or a complete rework of the UA.

One idea could be either giving the academy a flat +X science and the great scientist bulb a %bonus in the UA.

Another idea could be making their academies more useful by adding other yields to them, maybe a science/food yield bonus that scales with eras.
Thinking about it you could pretty much add any yield to the academy and it would still make sense.
 
I don't think Babylon needs a complete overhaul - a few tweaks, maybe, but not a full re-do. None of the civs need a 'full re-do' at this point.

Putting double range on the bowman is a fun idea– I'll consider it.

G

Their UB needs to be useful, that means either buffing the defensive stats A LOT, adding yields or adding a scientist specialist. Probably more than one of those options are needed.

Their UU needs to fill a role, extra range wouldn't be my first suggestion as I remember from the AI terrible use of longbows, that would probably be a waste.

Their UA needs work, I didn't want to write suggestions before the baseyields of the academy was increased, but that doesn't seem to be on the table at all so I'll guess I'll just do it anyways.


SUGGESTIONS

UU, tone down CS and RCS, add indirect fire, add march or accuracy1.

Indirect fire is a fun, pretty uncommon promotion, but I don't think that alone would be enough so I'd add march(less useful than it sounds) or accuracy(pretty boring) to it aswell to spice things up. I can't really think of other ranged promotions, so this is it.


UB 1, Add a scientist specialist slot and 2or3 flat science yield.

UB 2, Add a flat 2or3 science yield and a scaling 1 science per 5(6) pop.

UB 3, Add a scientist specialist slot and a scaling 1 science per 5(6) pop.

Tone down defensive stats as needed, alternatively buff defensive stats at the cost of mentioned above yields.


UA 1, 25% faster great scientists, 50% extra yields from academies, 20% extra science from great scientist bulbs.

UA 2, 25% faster great scientists. 2 science 2 food on all academies. 20% extra science from great scientist bulbs.

UA 3, 0% faster great scientists. Double yields from academies, 30% extra science from great scientist bulbs.

All three above could keep the free great scientist from writing, or not depending on opinions.
Just to make that clear, I did not include the 50% faster great scientists from the current UA, for example nr1 should just have 25% faster scientists, not 75%.
 
All those options sound useful to me. I wouldnt discount extra range on the bowmen only because the AI can't use it to full effect. If we used that criteria strictly then a lot of features would be left off. Extra defence on the walls is a bit situational since you can't be sure you will be attacked, though if they and the bowmen are strong enough it would change the playstyle to allow really aggressive settling in the early game since you could be fairly confident of holding off any attacks. Indirect fire would be useful for this since you could settle rough terrain without your defense from a garrison archer being limited.
 
All those options sound useful to me. I wouldnt discount extra range on the bowmen only because the AI can't use it to full effect. If we used that criteria strictly then a lot of features would be left off. Extra defence on the walls is a bit situational since you can't be sure you will be attacked, though if they and the bowmen are strong enough it would change the playstyle to allow really aggressive settling in the early game since you could be fairly confident of holding off any attacks. Indirect fire would be useful for this since you could settle rough terrain without your defense from a garrison archer being limited.

Indirect fire is really useful since cities are limited by line of sight now aswell (atleast pre-dynamite) and I'm pretty sure the AI can handle it pretty well.
You are pretty much forced to discount things the AI can handle, extra range have always been extremely powerful in human hands while useless in AI hands. The reason vanilla deityplayers makes a push at dynamite is because the AI suck at dealing with the 3 range artillery before they get planes.

The walls of babylon used to be fine in vanilla when the babylonian UA was powerful enough to win games by itself, your enemies pretty much had to attack you to stop your teching. Now with the pretty meh current UA they can probably beat you without attacking. Also as mentioned before the walls are worse now than they were in vanilla because of how citydefense and health works.
 
Indirect fire is really useful since cities are limited by line of sight now aswell (atleast pre-dynamite) and I'm pretty sure the AI can handle it pretty well.
You are pretty much forced to discount things the AI can handle, extra range have always been extremely powerful in human hands while useless in AI hands. The reason vanilla deityplayers makes a push at dynamite is because the AI suck at dealing with the 3 range artillery before they get planes.

The walls of babylon used to be fine in vanilla when the babylonian UA was powerful enough to win games by itself, your enemies pretty much had to attack you to stop your teching. Now with the pretty meh current UA they can probably beat you without attacking. Also as mentioned before the walls are worse now than they were in vanilla because of how citydefense and health works.

I'm going to add a scientist specialist to the walls, and give the Bowman indirect fire (in addition his current CS/RCS buff). Should be a nice little buff, and the specialist on the WoB will work well with the UA.

G
 
I'm going to add a scientist specialist to the walls, and give the Bowman indirect fire (in addition his current CS/RCS buff). Should be a nice little buff, and the specialist on the WoB will work well with the UA.

G

Still think the UA is underpowered, but atleast this will be a step in the right direction
 
It's rather unfortunate for Babylon that Health and Plague seems to often be left out in favor of EUI, since the two are incompatible. H&P academies give +2 health on top of their normal yield, which gives Babylon's UA a bit of a boost. It allows you to use high positive health to accelerate city growth, or simply counteract the -2 health that comes from working a manufactory.
 
It's rather unfortunate for Babylon that Health and Plague seems to often be left out in favor of EUI, since the two are incompatible. H&P academies give +2 health on top of their normal yield, which gives Babylon's UA a bit of a boost. It allows you to use high positive health to accelerate city growth, or simply counteract the -2 health that comes from working a manufactory.

Good point. I however think that Health and plagues kinda hurts some unfarily, and generally just makes you restart until you get a riverstart.
 
Yeah, the fact that, to a very large degree, city health seems to come down to "Does the city have fresh water yes/no?" Is one of the big reasons that I've also done what I just said and chosen to go with EUI instead.
 
Yeah, the fact that, to a very large degree, city health seems to come down to "Does the city have fresh water yes/no?" Is one of the big reasons that I've also done what I just said and chosen to go with EUI instead.

Because of the freshwater thing and the fact that there actually isn't anything you can do about health early on it seems like the plague usually hits the same capital every time, usually completely gimping that player/stuff around him.
 
Yeah, the fact that, to a very large degree, city health seems to come down to "Does the city have fresh water yes/no?" Is one of the big reasons that I've also done what I just said and chosen to go with EUI instead.

The big problem with H&P, and the reason I haven't integrated it (or emigration, or any other city management/yield mod) is that they are LUA only, and thus the AI has no idea how to use them.

G
 
The big problem with H&P, and the reason I haven't integrated it (or emigration, or any other city management/yield mod) is that they are LUA only, and thus the AI has no idea how to use them.

The Emigrationmod is kinda complicated, but there should be some way to add a migration-effect into the mod. Something like a light-edition of the lategame ideology-game. Instead of losing cities to higher happiness cities, you lose populationpoints to happier cities.


A healthsystem could also be added, something that the AI understands, if plagues are too extreme (which they kinda are imho) one could just have a system where unhealthy cities grow slower while healthy ones grow faster. And as health is based on population you'd eventually get unhealthy :D


These are just random things, don't add them just because I said so, suggestions on fun things to make the game unncessicarily complicated.
 
I just played a bit as Babylon and I've got to say I quite like them - they work extremely well with the reworked Tradition to make a core of really well-developed, really powerful cities, but I'm open to trying them with any of the others (it is really cool how there's way less of a pre-destined choice, all three are viable options for almost any civ). The GS part has definitely fallen a bit but an early Academy is still super useful to plow through much of the early tech tree, especially given that you need to fan out a lot more to get most of the essentials, and the bonus to gold investing is a really neat touch. But to compensate I find the Walls and Bowmen are now really good. Walls are now way more important in general since cities are more vulnerable and affect happiness, and with them up on cities on hills you get some sky-high defense values that can only be beat by the likes of a massive angry Hunnic horde. And the Bowmen are just super strong - when they were Archers it didn't matter much since you upgraded to composites almost immediately, but now that they're a stronger version of a core Classical unit, alongside being able to withstand more punishment since archers are flimsier, they're just an excellent all-purpose thing. I was astonished at just how great a group of two or three could just decimate pesky barbarian camps, and this is with Leugi's Enhancements to them so half the time they get GGs on them and recover a ton every turn. Indirect Fire makes them great at going after cities in tougher terrain too, and just a good positive in general.

In a technical sense they're probably not as high-tier, but to compensate they're just so much fun now when before they were the most boring ever. Besides, I get the feeling that science isn't necessarily the be-all end-all in CP. It's definitely super important still, obviously, but a civ that just does science and nothing else seems to me like it won't be truly the ultimate thing. You need a bit of everything to really succeed and Babylon is very flexible instead of locked into basically a singular path.
 
Tested some games with Babylone; It appears to be a robust civ if you have a good start with stone and/or marble and if you are able to rush the Mosoleum of Halicarnassus.

Else, restart your game, you loose :p
 
Going to try Babylon out now, just because it was mentioned and I'm boring.
More likely I'm going to play Diablo 3 instead, but who knows? Reporting back eventually.
 
What the? Why do you think that Babylon NEEDS MoH and stone/marble? I rather rush writing and build Great Library :)

Because :
  • masonry is needed to build walls
  • stone will grantly help you to build wonders (and up production and religion)
  • MOH will give you money from your stone
 
With free scientist and free library + tech from great library you can get your masonry anyway. Free tech and bonus :c5science: from academy and library is massive at this stage.

Anyway, there are civs that really require specific start to perform well (iroqois, celts, inca and so on). I think that babylon isn't restricted (although :c5food: heavy start is great for science, with some :c5production: to grab certain wonders like great library and porcelain tower).
 
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