Coming soon: Phoenicia for VP

[azum4roll]

I don't think you can build the East India Company for your starting monopoly until much later, if possible at all. How much population does it require?

We should reduce the supply bonus from Merchant Prince to 2. You don't really need that much supply. You really only need to maintain a huge navy since CS can't protect you from there.

 

[bigcat88]

Looks like the most beauty civ I ever seen.

Luxuries from City-State Allies contribute to Global Monopolies.
Does It works like statecraft policy?

 

[General_Drax]

Very interesting civ. I did not play Venice once but Phoenicia seems a lot better with a similar gameplay.

I'll finish my current with Songhai and DL the new beta.

I'll try a run when you'll fix the CTD bug.

Thank you for the great work across a zillion of mods (3/4 UC is like VP 2.0 !)

 

[BiteInTheMark]

First, two questions:
- What is, if this civ conquers a non-capital city and converts it to a CS. Is the enemy able to reconquer the city and get its old city back or does he have to deal now with a city which needs a courthouse? (If second one, then this is really an awkward mechanic)
- Is the AI capable of using this civ or are they only spamming settler over settler cause they want more than 1 city and dont understand they are getting only CSs?

Second, suggestions:
- Take away the extra luxury. This civ has already so many great parts from other civs put together, it doesnt really need that luxury spawn.
- Reduce the supply gain down to 2 from the UU. 4 is far too high.

- How would be a change of the UU, away from the GD to a unique settler, which didnt replace the settler. So you could settle normal cities and CS at same time, downside would be, that the cost for new settler, normal or unique, would increase eacht time, making it hard to gain too many CS early on.

 

[pineappledan]

They would gain the ability later anyways (who wouldt pick statecraft with this civ?) and Venice had the exact same problem for a long time and it was ok.

Not necessarily. This is specifically a concession to the AI, because the AI doesn't know to pick statecraft. A human player would also chafe at this, because they have no means of expanding to cover their monopoly resource, and they may never get a big enough capital to build an EIC, which would at least make it possible to get it in some instances. Being forced to wait until late medieval/renaissance for your monopoly would be brutal.

- What is, if this civ conquers a non-capital city and converts it to a CS. Is the enemy able to reconquer the city and get its old city back or does he have to deal now with a city which needs a courthouse? (If second one, then this is really an awkward mechanic)

Tested that. It just goes back to being a regular old city; you're just conquering it back from a civ same as any other, so no resistance turns.

- Is the AI capable of using this civ or are they only spamming settler over settler cause they want more than 1 city and dont understand they are getting only CSs?

Spamming settlers is the proper use of this civ, so yes. See above for concessions made for the AI.

- Take away the extra luxury. This civ has already so many great parts from other civs put together, it doesnt really need that luxury spawn.

It's funny that you are asking for this when this is the only part of the civ's kit that doesn't directly synergize with something else. You went on such a big tirade against synergies. I will remove the dye for now; it can be added back in easilly by re-activating 3 lines of code.

- Reduce the supply gain down to 2 from the UU. 4 is far too high.

This is pure speculation at this point and I want this civ to be a viable conquerer despite having 1 city. Venice gets supply from puppets and has +5 supply from San Marco's, so nerfing this is something that I would very much like to have evidence for before I do it. If people can demonstrate that they don't need all this supply then I will happily reduce it to 3 or 2.

- How would be a change of the UU, away from the GD to a unique settler, which didnt replace the settler. So you could settle normal cities and CS at same time, downside would be, that the cost for new settler, normal or unique, would increase eacht time, making it hard to gain too many CS early on.

Spoiler a measured response :

 

[Recursive]

Not necessarily. This is specifically a concession to the AI, because the AI doesn't know to pick statecraft. A human player would also chafe at this, because they have no means of expanding to cover their monopoly resource, and they may never get a big enough capital to build an EIC, which would at least make it possible to get it in some instances. Being forced to wait until late medieval/renaissance for your monopoly would be brutal.

Tested that. It just goes back to being a regular old city; you're just conquering it back from a civ same as any other, so no resistance turns.
Spamming settlers is the proper use of this civ, so yes. See above for concessions made for the AI.

It's funny that you are asking for this when this is the only part of the civ's kit that doesn't directly synergize with something else. You went on such a big tirade against synergies. I will remove the dye for now; it can be added back in easilly by re-activating 3 lines of code.

This is pure speculation at this point and I want this civ to be a viable conquerer despite having 1 city. Venice gets supply from puppets and has +5 supply from San Marco's, so nerfing this is something that I would very much like to have evidence for before I do it. If people can demonstrate that they don't need all this supply then I will happily reduce it to 3 or 2.

Spoiler a measured response :

Just a note, there is another unique Venice building (the Arsenal, I think) that grants another +5 supply.

 

[pineappledan]

So here's the civ more or less feature complete. I tried playing it for 50 turns or so, killed a capital and a non-capital city and didn't get a CTD in either case. Not sure what I did to fix it. Before I post this on the mods repository I would love if some other people could test it out a little and see if it is also working for them.

The art is finished, Thanks @TPangolin!

Melqart is back down to 2 per ally and settling on coast no longer gives a unique luxury resource. I'll update the OP

Link is in the OP

 

[Guynemer]

I'm expected to do husbandly things tonight (birthday) and Friday (v-day), but I'd be happy to mess around with this over the weekend

 

[pineappledan]

Toyed with it a bit. conquered a mongolian city on turn 165 and got a CTD. Got to late medieval, but it seems the conquest of non-capital cities is causing a fatal crash.

It's like the crashes occur only if you're not running firetuner or are legit trying to play a game, but don't have your logs open.... I can't really see a common thread.

Some notes:

• I had expended 5 Merchant Princes and 1 GGeneral by that point and 22supply.
• 5 merchant princes means 5 extra TRs. That effectively doubles my total TRs at that stage of the game (I had 10 total with Colossus), but I would expect that to slow down considerably as Merchant princes get more and more expensive.
• The Era degradation hits them hard and, as I expected, that large 4 is necessary just to keep them afloat, because they don't have a massive population to sustain themselves.
• I was at Compass and I had a 17 capital, which means I was at 17 global population.
• I am not getting a medieval-level national wonder any time soon. probably never.
• Even with the newly nerfed faith generation on Melqart, I was the second to found.
  • I built Stonehenge and took Goddess of Beauty.
  • I was able to enhance by turn 120.
  • I picked up Divine Inheritance, Veneration, Mastery, Symbolism, and Global Commandments

I'm not liking the Habiru's secondary bonus of replacing CS gifts to you. I'm thinking I might change it so gifting Habiru to CS gives an additional 15Influence and some other instant yield in your capital. Maybe 50Food?

I'm expected to do husbandly things tonight (birthday) and Friday (v-day)

That's a TMI, dawg

 

[pineappledan]

Seriously. With the difficulty I seem to be having getting conversion to CS on conquest working, maybe It's a better idea to just have conquered cities behave like a normal civ?

Or maybe I can force non-capital cities to raze automatically?

 

[H0dgvikin]

Tried out a game using Phoenicia using the most recent beta version, 3/4 UC and some QoL mods. CTD on turn 156 during one of the city-state turns. No warmongering on my part, just peaceful, tradition turtling.

Spoiler Mod List :

View media item 5906

The game overall runs fine until the CTD, but here are some miscellaneous issues and typo:

1. The default city name of the capital was set to SUR with BLOCK LETTERS. Seems more natural to just use Sur instead.

Spoiler 1 :

View media item 5911

2. The chalice of the character portrait was extended out beyond the frame and blocked some of the texts in the civ overview.

Spoiler 2 :

View media item 5909

3. Military city-states spawned by my settler couldn't generate unique units. Like you said, it's better to let CS send other types of unit. Is it possible to code the new military CS so they can also generate unique units?

4. The personalities of CS weren't displayed properly, even though their influence seems to be decaying properly.

Spoiler 3&4 :

View media item 5910

5. I saw this in the discussion thread of the latest beta too, and a CS produced a citadel that got swapped into a holy site every turn or two. I'm raising the issue here just to see if there might be some additional interaction between the new beta and the mod.

6. Not sure if it was a consequence of AI personality, but none of my CS produce any worker/work boat. I reached medieval era, and they still didn't improve any tile. Weirdly, the original CS improved their tiles as expected. Only the CS spawned by my settlers didn't.

Spoiler 5&6 :

View media item 5908

The one-city challenge mode of the game reduces the population requirement for national wonders to a level an OCC capital can achieve. Is it possible to manually change the population requirement to the level of OCC mode? Not sure how this works.

 

[Guynemer]

I'm not liking the Habiru's secondary bonus of replacing CS gifts to you. I'm thinking I might change it so gifting Habiru to CS gives an additional 15Influence and some other instant yield in your capital. Maybe 50Food?

With the growth issues you're having, a food bonus would probably be welcome; I'm not sure being locked out of national wonders is necessarily fun. Alternatively, could part of the UA be that it requires X fewer pop for NWs?

 

[Guynemer]

That's a TMI, dawg

Man, I'm old. I'm talking about making dinner and stuff like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.

 

[kenneth1221]

Seriously. With the difficulty I seem to be having getting conversion to CS on conquest working, maybe It's a better idea to just have conquered cities behave like a normal civ?

Or maybe I can force non-capital cities to raze automatically?

Could just steal the Venice route and force puppeting?

 

[pineappledan]

1. The default city name of the capital was set to SUR with BLOCK LETTERS. Seems more natural to just use Sur instead.

Stylistic choice on my part. Intended. I wanted the names to be legible to people used to a Latinized alphabet, but still resembled the original Phoenician spelling for those cities

2. The chalice of the character portrait was extended out beyond the frame and blocked some of the texts in the civ overview.

That’s fine.

3. Military city-states spawned by my settler couldn't generate unique units. Like you said, it's better to let CS send other types of unit. Is it possible to code the new military CS so they can also generate unique units?

4. The personalities of CS weren't displayed properly, even though their influence seems to be decaying properly.

i had noticed these too. I am wondering if it is a more general problem with newly spawned rebellion CSs. Maybe @Gazebo can comment? It happens so rarely in games I don’t know if this is specific to what I am trying to do

5. I saw this in the discussion thread of the latest beta too, and a CS produced a citadel that got swapped into a holy site every turn or two. I'm raising the issue here just to see if there might be some additional interaction between the new beta and the mod

DLL issue. All of my code is in lua and I have not touched how embassies or GP tiles work

6. Not sure if it was a consequence of AI personality, but none of my CS produce any worker/work boat. I reached medieval era, and they still didn't improve any tile. Weirdly, the original CS improved their tiles as expected. Only the CS spawned by my settlers didn't.

I noticed this as well. I really don’t know what to do about it; they build military units just fine. I have no good answer here, and it’s beyond my ability to explain why the CSs aren’t building civilian units.

The one-city challenge mode of the game reduces the population requirement for national wonders to a level an OCC capital can achieve. Is it possible to manually change the population requirement to the level of OCC mode? Not sure how this works

Alternatively, could part of the UA be that it requires X fewer pop for NWs?

If possible I would simply have Phoenicia ignore pop requirements on NWs, but that would have to be coded into the dll.

Man, I'm old. I'm talking about making dinner and stuff like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.

 

[pineappledan]

updated phoenicia mod. Should have more stability now. should throw up fewer database errors.

I Haven't resolved the personality/name/adjective problem, but that is going to require a DLL change. I would also like to add a trait that allows Phoenicia to ignore population requirements for national wonders, but that will also require more help from someone with knowledge/access to the DLL.

I am encountering an issue where conquering cities deletes the entire build list from all my cities, so I can't build anything after my queue is done. Sounds like this is a UI issue that has been encountered before, and I'm not sure if it's even specific to my mod. Have other people using 2-9 and 2-18 encountered a similar problem when conquering capitals?

 

[Guynemer]

Got another 110 pages in this manuscript to go over, but I think I shoul be able to start playing with this by Tuesday or Wednesday night. Really looking forward to it, I think this civ lends itself to a lot of things I enjoy about the game.

 

[pineappledan]

Gazebo made a Game.DoSpawnFreeCity() action which correctly applies personalities and UUs. The new city-states are functionally rebelling free cities, so they will behave as such. Functionally, this means that any bugs you see in AI behavior from a Phoenician city-state will also be present in base VP's rebellion mechanic, so testing with this mod could actually help make that base system better/more stable.

There are 64 player slots, 1 for barbs and 22 for major civs, so 41 city-states. A standard map with default settings starts with 16 city-states, so that is potentially 25 new city states. Cities settled after that point are given away to the nearest city-state, and give you a large amount of influence, scaling with era. I have set the influence at 35+30 per era for now, but I suspect that might be a bit low.

 

[Guynemer]

So, first impressions after playing nearly 200 turns:

The UA works as intended, is interesting, fun, and truly the standout mechanic. I don't know if this is a mod incompatibility or what, but when building new cities, the city billboard keeps the name (BIRUT, for example) and it shows up thusly on the trade route screen, but in all other contexts it is changed to a normal city-state name (a quest notification will call BIRUT Singapore, or it will say Singapore when clicking on the billboard, etc.) Not a big deal, but can take some work to keep track of which ally is which. The only thing I don't care for about the UA is the bit about resources from CS going to monopolies; it makes the Statecraft tree a little less attractive, which would otherwise be (and still probably is) the no-brainer pick. Could it instead provide 2x resources (luxury and strategic) from CSs? I'm not sure if that is duplicated from another civ, my hunch is that it probably is.

Beit Melqart is a good UNW. My instinct is to always use GDs for embassies whenever possible; would it be possible to grant a normal emissary in addition to the Merchant Prince? I can send the emissary to another CS, while the MP settles in my satellite CS. I do wonder if more food would be helpful; the lack of other available NWs is the biggest drag when playing this civ. I was entering the Renaissance and was still 10 population away from being able to build the National Monument.

The MP means I am swimming in trade routes, which means money money money. I like money.

The Habiru feels a little awkward. Coming early and being stronger than the base unit is always nice. But spearmen are a strange choice for pillaging; combine that with the bonus vs. barbarians, who provide nothing to pillage, and it feels a bit like a spare part. Perhaps it could instead provide food to the capital on pillaging and/or when defeating a barbarian and/or clearing a barb camp?

The Bireme is a solid, unspectacular UU. Cheap, fast, good support role to defend against barbs when escorting settlers overseas to establish new CS allies.

The biggest--perhaps only--weakness is the difficultly building any NW other than the BM. I have some ideas about how to address that, other than the increased food from BM or UU above, and the previously suggested .dll requiring lowering the NW pop requirements across the board. I have no idea how feasible these would be, either from a balance or coding perspective, just spitballing:

1. building a settler/pioneer/colonist does not halt growth
2. settling a new city adds +1 pop to SUR
3. TRs to CSs provide food in addition to regular yields
4. here's something that would be a major pain in the ass: the Phoenicians get a unique version of EVERY NW, but they are all the same as the base NW in every single respect (name, bonuses, prereq buildings, etc.) EXCEPT they require X fewer pops. I imagine this would make the Civilopedia a complete mess, and would be a non-starter.

 

[Guynemer]

Oh, FYI--I was third to found, so the BM can definitely help with that. Rizal was the first, but a country mile.