Coming soon: Phoenicia for VP

[pineappledan]

Thanks for the feedback!

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.

In my own game, I haven't unlocked a single monopoly and I'm only 1 more policy away from Statecraft. I thought it would be important to have that ability unlocked sooner, but with Phoenicia no longer having the unique luxury and how slow CSs are to improve their own tiles, maybe it's not doing anything? However, maybe it's still important to have it anyways, otherwise Phoenicia has absolutely no choice except Statecraft? Or maybe with everything, there is no viable choice for Phoenicia anyways, so it won't matter if it's on or off?

This is why testing is important!

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

I would really like to have a trait column added that either sets Phoenicia's NW requirements to OCC levels, or allows them to ignore pop requirements completely.
Your suggestions have 1 major hole that I can see: You are forgetting that you can capture a neighbour's capital and use THEIR capital to pump out settlers, so SUR wouldn't get stagnated. This is another reason why I have been pushing that Authority is viable for Phoenicia.

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 idea was that I wanted the Habiru to have both an early-game bonus and one that can be passed on. A bonus vs barbs is only useful in ancient, and a pillage bonus is almost useless in ancient since there are so few improvements. I like the idea of 1 bonus declining through the era as another bonus gains in power.

Sumer already does food on kills with their UU

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.

It would be possible, but I wanted to reinforce through the mechanics that phoenicia really isn't a strong civ for diplomacy via emissaries (extremely limited paper, very few cities, so the purchase CD is very noticeable).

 

[Guynemer]

I think the thing that limits them on diplomacy via emissaries isn't necessarily the lack of paper, it is the limit on how frequently one can buy diplo units in any given city. By the time my emissary/envoy/what have you has completed their mission, I probably can't buy another one in SUR just yet, unless they are going to a CS on the other side of the map, and I rarely build diplo units as opposed to buying them, since there are so many other things to spend my hammers on. That could be somewhat mitigated by capturing another capital or two, but there will still be more than enough paper for each of those cities to buy a diplo unit, given all the paper produced by the MPs.

The idea was that I wanted the Habiru to have both an early-game bonus and one that can be passed on. A bonus vs barbs is only useful in ancient, and a pillage bonus is almost useless in ancient since there are so few improvements. I like the idea of 1 bonus declining through the era as another bonus gains in power.

I find I do most of my pillaging with fast units--my scouts, my skirmishers, my knights, etc. The full heal is nice, since they aren't so powerful as to be able to roll over their contemporary opposition and will probably need a quick heal at some point, but I find myself usually not pillaging with infantry units until later eras, when the melee and anti-cav lines have merged and they have anti-city promotions for conquering. That's just my particular playstyle though, I am probably an outlier in this.

 

[pineappledan]

regardless, the point was that the civ de-emphasizes envoys.

 

[Guynemer]

No argument there, and sneakily a very powerful aspect of the civ. Less need for envoys, less oppotunity costs for not building other things. I like this civ a lot.

 

[pineappledan]

Welcome to the @BiteInTheMark is right about everything post.

02-09 version. Prince difficulty. I did exceptionally well at the start, and I have a very very good map to thank for a lot of that (sugar resource start, so rushing trade works really well).

I exterminated Poland, then exterminated Byzantium before turn 100 with a big spearman rush. I timed my 1st settler with Imperium policy and got Gebal and Sidon up while I took Krakow from Poland, giving me 3 fast CS allies and a big dump of / on settle/conquest. I unlocked Mathematics with that rush and bought some composite bowmen to take Warsaw. Casimir sued for peace and I then turned on Theodora, took Nicea and Adrianople, then constantinople. In this amount of time, Lodz - Casimir's last city - decided to build Petra instead of walls, so I turned back and killed that too. Between very lucky starts and well-timed conquests/settles catapulting me into an early tech lead, and very bad plays from the AI, I conquered my entire continent. This gave 3 a 3 city core very early, which allowed me to build the full compliment of national wonders/guilds and to delegate settlers to my secondary cities, so SUR wouldn't lose any more pop to city-state creation. By turn 160 I had settled/conquered 15 city-states.

Spoiler empire overview :

Hoping that @CrazyG or some others with lots of experience can weigh in on this. I'm playing a low difficulty and had some exceptionally bad blunders by a very passive AI that let me take some unprecedented advantages, but is this still too much?
I'm only at turn 216 and I'm 3 techs deep into Industrial, and nearly double the next highest score. I am currently 8 techs and 3 policies ahead.

Some changes I will note in my game so far:

• I forgot to set a faith purchase cooldown on the merchant prince, so that will be in next version
• I forgot about the strategic resources for every 3 city-state allies thing. I have a free 5 copies of every strategic on discovery. This was enough to push me into a strategic monopoly on both horses and iron
• I now agree with @BiteInTheMark that the % bonus to GDiplomat creation on the Beit Melqart should be removed. I'm currently getting +200% GD rate with 12 embassies (I did 'inherit' 1 from Byzantium though), and it's a bit much
• I got my first monopoly 10 turns before I unlocked Trade Confederation anyways, so the free monopoly on CS resources on the UA is doing absolutely no work except maybe freeing you up a little more from being locked into Statecraft. You are entirely locked into statecraft anyways though, so I have come around to this being an unnecessary bonus.
• As you can see from my total supply (33/57) I am doing quite alright for that and am giving away CS gifted military units to save on upkeep while still keeping a healthy balance of power with the AI. I will be lowering the Merchant Prince's freesupply to 2, as other's have recommended.
• Some unexpected things that I hadn't forseen:
  • I forgot that the number of free spies from Statecraft scales with number of CS in the game, so I got 5 free spies in Renaissance. Wow.
  • The number of free delegates also scales with number of CSs in the game, so Consulates/Palace of Westminster are magnified in the hands of Phoenicia. Between
  • All the other diplo wonders are practically useless for Phoenicia (except Roman Forum's free Merchant Prince), because they all depend on emissaries/wide empires.

 

[Guynemer]

I went tradition instead of authority because i like tradition and the whole one-city thing, but... wow. That's truly absurd. I guess I'll give authority Ithobaal a try.

I guess my new concern is if Authority outplays Tradition so much, is Phoenicia locked into two trees, instead of just Statecraft? Being able to get the NWs as Tradition would alleviate this somewhat, but that may not be in the cards, and even then seems like a suboptimal play by a long stretch.

 

[pineappledan]

G just notified me that my feature request for a national wonder pop modifier has just been added to the DLL, so whenever VP pushes a new version there will be that. Also, @HungryForFood caught a CTD bug on acquire city and rebellion, so that will help. Lastly G is looking into a change to the rebellion system which should help with the immersion problem of having the city name not match the minor civ’s name.

Putting this out there as well, @HungryForFood has said he really does not like the ALLCAPS in the city names. For my part, I like it. It is a nice stylistic touch referencing the original Phoenician script, but I’m also finding it has value in-game, because it gives me an easy shorthand in the trade screen; having Phoenician city-states in ALLCAPS lets me quickly prioritize where to send TRs.

I guess my new concern is if Authority outplays Tradition so much, is Phoenicia locked into two trees, instead of just Statecraft?

ignoring NW pop requirements will alleviate that somewhat. Authority has bigger benefits If You Win. Conquering a city is more efficient for making city-states than settling is, even more so than other civs because Phoenicia divests itself of city upkeep and empire management. Tradition also has a big hole in it: no civil servant specialist. I think tradition is simply the safer option, not necessarily the worse option.

 

[Guynemer]

I 100% agree with you on the all-caps. It is flavorful, and actually beneficial as far as CS trade routes go.

 

[kenneth1221]

Wow, okay, oof. @BiteInTheMark, apologies for being antagonistic earlier. Playtesting has proven you to be correct.

However, a few things to consider: I thought city-state-number scaling only applied to the number of city-states originally in the game. At least, that's what the text implies, but I guess it's only meant to count city states that have been conquered, not newly created ones.

Maybe the +Great Diplomat % could be pushed back a few eras, if embassies are the problem? Since you won't rely on emissaries in the late game, the only purpose of GDs would be to boost influence.

Authority is always a riskier pick compared to the other two trees. Close peaceful neighbors? Worth trying Authority. Lots of space? The one civ where you'd go Tradition instead of Progress.

Maybe it's worth going up a difficulty? In my warmongering Rome games, I find that 1000 AD is usually when I start to snowball. 1530 AD is a bit early for Slater Mill, though I usually play on Epic so I can't tell completely.

 

[pineappledan]

However, a few things to consider: I thought city-state-number scaling only applied to the number of city-states originally in the game. At least, that's what the text implies, but I guess it's only meant to count city states that have been conquered, not newly created ones.

evidently it works the same as a civ's city cap. ie. it works based off the max that have ever existed simultaneously at a time, so removing 1 won't increase the cap, but removing 1 and adding 1 won't increase it either.

Maybe the +Great Diplomat % could be pushed back a few eras, if embassies are the problem? Since you won't rely on emissaries in the late game, the only purpose of GDs would be to boost influence.

What I am thinking I will do is reduce the Beit Melqart back down to 1GDP and 1 Civil Servant Slot (same as base Scrivener), and keep the 10% rate per TR. That should make Phoenicia slower to get started, but will still keep some benefit to GD creation. It also makes the BM more different from Iroquois' Sachem's Council, which already provides more GDP and more slots.

Maybe it's worth going up a difficulty?

My first concern was testing and getting a feel for the civ's behaviour in all eras. I didn't specifically didn't want to be fighting for my life with a civ that no one has ever balanced before.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Welcome to the @BiteInTheMark is right about everything post.

Never thought I would hear something like this in this forum. I will copy this entry and put it in my living room on the wall.

 

[pineappledan]

some DLL integration was added to the march 1 patch, so I'm going to move this to the mod repository.

The civ is now complete, it's just a matter of balance. Thank you for everyone's input up to this point, I look forward to hearing people's feedback with the newest iteration

New thread is here
New download can be found here

 

[Bruhmoment]

old post, but game sometimes just gets stuck at Choose Production when I have another capital, any idea how to fix it?

 

[pineappledan]

weird necro dude. This civ has its own thread in the mods repository

The production bug is known. you can save and reload your game to fix it. Every time you conquer a city you will have to reload with Phoenicia. I don't know how to refresh the city UI so fix this.

@Recursive could I get this thread locked please?

 

[InkAxis]

Threads should probably lock automatically after a year of no activity

 

[Bruhmoment]

Looks like they dont, but weirdly enough - I conquer attila's cap, you'd think it bug out instantly, but it only soft locks after a few turns of having the capital. Pretty weird