Hello All --
Major new changes and updates here!
So I have been playing the Dural a bit lately. I tend to be more of a builder-style player, and they definitely fit that bill. However, they seem to lack a certain "oomph", a certain "je nais sais quoi". Other civilizations have a real point in their playstyle and a way to get there. For example:
* Calabim -- Beeline to feudalism, build Governor's Mansion, start spamming Vampires and eating Cities.
* Sheaim -- Drive the AC up, build Planar Gates and supporting buildings, start bringing the miniions of Hell into the world.
* Amurites -- Mages FTW, go for KoE, grab as much mana as you can.
I don't really know what to do with the Dural in comparison to these other civs. I have an idea -- let's make the Dural "strategy" really be around a cohesive start-to-end-of-game "training" approach. If the Dural culturally really are about learning and making everything better, a sober-minded approach to dealing with the problems of the world through hard work and study, give them the tools to do that! Also, they clearly want to learn from the study of various religions, but don't really buy into the whole dedicated craziness of them (perhaps with some restrictions, e.g. I can see them being pragmatic about aspects of Esus). E.g. the Dural would NEVER build a demon's altar. So, restrict them further religion-wise, but give them alternate Dural-only paths and unusual ways to incorporate religions into their strategy.
CURRENT STATE:
For special units, they have:
1. The Professor -- Weak Priest replacement although he can cast Hope and Inspiration. However, to get him you also have to get Feudalism as well as Priesthood and build a pretty expensive building (the College, see below). Not that great.
2. The Tactician -- Pretty cool Great Commander replacement with a bunch of additional promotions, but Great Commanders are rare.
3. Students of the Various Religions -- Interesting idea, instead of building Disciples the Dural build Students of Religions. The students are a bit weaker than the disciples they replace, but do not require a temple of the religion to build. This is good, because the Dural can't build temples (as we will see below!)
For special buildings, they have a lot -- and some of them are fairly cool although they often cost 10% more than the buildings that they replace.
Their hero, Karrlson, is a mid-game well-rounded guy that has the "Instructor" special ability to train units.
The big Dural limitation -- no Temples. No priests, no Tier 3 units that require temples like Stygian Guards or Crusaders.
So far, all of this makes sense, but I would like to take it all a step further and really make the Dural shine. They have some cool buildings and such, but their effects are kind of scattered and I think they are militarily weak. I have never seen them really rise or rule the world when driven by the AI. Here is what I have done so far to improve them:
ITEMS COMPLETED/STATE OF MOD EDITS:
Unit changes:
1. The Professor can upgrade to an a Tactician, a Diplomat (also see below), or a Lawyer. He also can upgrade to an Arcane Analyst if you are also running that mod. He requires L6 to upgrade any of these, you can't build any of them directly. Arcane Analysts can also upgrade from Mages.
2. Students of all of the religions can upgrade to the Professor. This makes some Profs with pretty cool abilities, like Woodsman II when upgrading from the Student of the Leaves. It also gives the students something to do, right now they are kind of a dead-end which makes no sense -- students become Professors in the real world!
3. The professor can now also promote Water I (Spring), Creation I (Growth), and Creation II (Fertility).
4. There is a new "Diplomat" unit. Dural-only, Professor upgrade, L6 required. Has an assortment of Diplomat-only promotions that allow for friendly pressure to be exerted on neutral or annoyed neighbors even if they have closed borders with you. They are intended to give the Dural an alternative strategy to war when they have a lot of foreign powers that are sort of moderately displeased but not ready to declare war. If things go badly they have a pretty dang good chance of getting out unscathed given a high withdrawl rate, although it is not guaranteed!
5. New “Surgeon” unit. Promotes from the Professor. Allows for Medic III (Dural have no other access to this) and also blocks any other units on the tile from acquiring Blackblood, Diseased, Plagued, Poisoned, and Withered.
6. New “Lawyer” unit. This one is really fun! If the Diplomat isn’t doing is job then start suing the heck out of everyone else – economic warfare! Lawyers can sue neutral and enemy units and add to their support costs. You can sue anything – Undead, Demons, even Dragons! Well, almost everything except bears. Lawyers really don’t like bears. You can park Lawyers in rival cities and siphon off gold (via new Lawyer-only promotions) via lawsuits. If you go to war with an enemy but lack the strength to attack their city, you can park the Lawyer next to their city and she may cause unhappiness in the city, lower trade, reduce hammer production, or any other amount of horrible effects. If she gets experienced enough and promotes to a senior Lawyer, she will give you +1 vote in the Undercouncil.
Changes to experience/promotion model:
After examining how the promotion system works, and how buildings can grant additional experience to units, with some suggestion from others I branched off in a different way of giving free experience to units. If the Dural build the right building(s), units will be auto-promoted to gain .5 XP/turn when they are in the city with that building. For instance, a Dojo will allow Melee units to automatically gain enough experience to promote to level 3. If the Dural build a College in a city with a Dojo, Melee Units can gain enough XP to promote to Level 5. If the Dural then also build the other “graduate schools” (for Melee units, the “School of Peace”
then Melee units can promote to Level 7. The graduate schools are definitely later in the tech tree and require a LOT of building, so I don’t think this is too overpowered. Also, different types of units have different requirements. For instance, Mages only auto-promote to Level 2 with a Mage’s guild (not that much.) With a College they can promote to Level 3. With a School of Peace they can promote to Level 5. With a University they can promote to Level 8, but building a University is a huge commitment!
Changes to buildings:
1. The College is now 50% faster for Philosophical Leaders. It was double before, but I think that is too much given Dannmos' Adaptive trait.
The College now requires a Library to build, and costs 150 hammers instead of 180. You now need a library to build a college. Most importantly, the College is now the gateway to a whole sequence of more powerful schools, each giving various additional benefits. If you build all of the Colleges (minus the College of Medicine) you can then build the University, which gives even more benefits. This is a LOT of building though, as befits the Dural's desire to build a beautiful world.
2. College of Theology -- now 50% faster for Spiritual Leaders. .5 training rate for Disciple units. Now requires a College to build, however.
3. College of Peace (haha, like the Department of "Defense") -- Cost 250 hammers, +2 Great Commander GPP
Requires a Dojo (Training Yard Substitute) and the regular College. 50% faster for Aggressive leaders. The real point of this is to train your Tacticians to new levels and abilities. I don't think anyone else can train Great Commanders. Also, it gives a 20% military unit production bonus.
4. College of Engineering -- Cost 250 hammers, +20% construction bonus. Requires an atelier and the regular college. 50% faster for Industrious leaders. +2 Great Engineer GPP.
5. College of Medicine -- Infirmary substitute for the Dural. Same, except 100 hammers cheaper (now 250), and cures not just disease, but also poison, withering, plague, and withered. Well, it will when I can figure out how to remove multiple promotions with one building... Tougher then the infirmary in one sense; it requires a regular college to be present.
6. The University -- Built ALL of the colleges? Not done yet, my friend! 400 hammers, 50% faster for Philosophical leaders. Also, this allow very advanced training specifically for Arcane, Disciple, and Great Commander/Officer units.
Also adds 4 non-specific GPP points to the pool. I may even bump this up, given all the techs and building you have to do it should be worth it late in the game. The eventual goal is to allow Professors to "wane" at a certain level into a University. Haven't figured that out yet, but that would allow crazy-super Dural specialist mega-cities.
Requires: College, College of Peace, College of Theology, College of Engineering (not College of Medicine, that is kind of a side-track.)
7. Explicitly forbidden from building a Demon's Altar as they can't build a Temple of the Veil anyway.
8. The Dural have a special training yard called the "Dojo" that gives +1% Great General emergence. One or two, no huge impact. Build them in all of your 20 cities, get +20%!
9. The Dural have a special Archery Range called the "Kyudo" (Japanese zen-archer kind of a thing) gives +1% Great General emergence. One or two, no huge impact. Build them in all of your 20 cities, get +20%!
10. Dural Herbalist Substitute, the Apothecary, now cures poison status.
I'll keep working on this, but the idea is that the Dural would try to go to get the professor, build the college, and start training Tacticians, Diplomats, and other units. They would also try to keep building the other schools and training units. They would purposefully hold back from too much warfare as wasteful and instead would be training the heck out of their units in their cities. If someone really annoys them, out come marching the highly-trained Dural armies with perfectly executed manuevers and almost-prescient commanders to slaughter the ill-equipped imprecise enemy hordes!
I am purposefully excluding Mounted training and buildings from this; I kind of like the idea of the Dural being very egalitarian. Great footmen, melee, archers -- not so much into the aristocratic Hippus Horselord thing. No nerfs for using Cavalry, but not the same bonuses either. Also, the Dural already have a special Equipment anti-horse bonus (Pikes) that noone else has. Seems like that fits nicely with this mythology. I might even introduce an anti-Hippus diplomacy penalty.
TO-DO
1. Create an early-game "Student" unit that can grow into the Professor. This student does not require any religions. The student has a flat-rate 3 strength, like a warrior, BUT can auto-acquire experience at a very fast rate! This is more experimental, I have already made some other changes that I could do in XML, but haven't really gotten into the student yet.
2. Art and Civilopedia entries!!! I am totally canibalizing (sp!) right now.
3. Lots more work on the abilities for the Diplomat. I wonder if changing the Diplomat to be a Great Spy would be interesting. Although the Diplomat is also intended to help in building positive relations with neighbors on the fence, and not being so focused on negative espionage like Great Spies were. I hated espionage in stock BTS, it always required too much micromanagement.
How does this sound -- any ideas, input?
Thanks!
Major new changes and updates here!
So I have been playing the Dural a bit lately. I tend to be more of a builder-style player, and they definitely fit that bill. However, they seem to lack a certain "oomph", a certain "je nais sais quoi". Other civilizations have a real point in their playstyle and a way to get there. For example:
* Calabim -- Beeline to feudalism, build Governor's Mansion, start spamming Vampires and eating Cities.
* Sheaim -- Drive the AC up, build Planar Gates and supporting buildings, start bringing the miniions of Hell into the world.
* Amurites -- Mages FTW, go for KoE, grab as much mana as you can.
I don't really know what to do with the Dural in comparison to these other civs. I have an idea -- let's make the Dural "strategy" really be around a cohesive start-to-end-of-game "training" approach. If the Dural culturally really are about learning and making everything better, a sober-minded approach to dealing with the problems of the world through hard work and study, give them the tools to do that! Also, they clearly want to learn from the study of various religions, but don't really buy into the whole dedicated craziness of them (perhaps with some restrictions, e.g. I can see them being pragmatic about aspects of Esus). E.g. the Dural would NEVER build a demon's altar. So, restrict them further religion-wise, but give them alternate Dural-only paths and unusual ways to incorporate religions into their strategy.
CURRENT STATE:
For special units, they have:
1. The Professor -- Weak Priest replacement although he can cast Hope and Inspiration. However, to get him you also have to get Feudalism as well as Priesthood and build a pretty expensive building (the College, see below). Not that great.
2. The Tactician -- Pretty cool Great Commander replacement with a bunch of additional promotions, but Great Commanders are rare.
3. Students of the Various Religions -- Interesting idea, instead of building Disciples the Dural build Students of Religions. The students are a bit weaker than the disciples they replace, but do not require a temple of the religion to build. This is good, because the Dural can't build temples (as we will see below!)
For special buildings, they have a lot -- and some of them are fairly cool although they often cost 10% more than the buildings that they replace.
Their hero, Karrlson, is a mid-game well-rounded guy that has the "Instructor" special ability to train units.
The big Dural limitation -- no Temples. No priests, no Tier 3 units that require temples like Stygian Guards or Crusaders.
So far, all of this makes sense, but I would like to take it all a step further and really make the Dural shine. They have some cool buildings and such, but their effects are kind of scattered and I think they are militarily weak. I have never seen them really rise or rule the world when driven by the AI. Here is what I have done so far to improve them:
ITEMS COMPLETED/STATE OF MOD EDITS:
Unit changes:
1. The Professor can upgrade to an a Tactician, a Diplomat (also see below), or a Lawyer. He also can upgrade to an Arcane Analyst if you are also running that mod. He requires L6 to upgrade any of these, you can't build any of them directly. Arcane Analysts can also upgrade from Mages.
2. Students of all of the religions can upgrade to the Professor. This makes some Profs with pretty cool abilities, like Woodsman II when upgrading from the Student of the Leaves. It also gives the students something to do, right now they are kind of a dead-end which makes no sense -- students become Professors in the real world!
3. The professor can now also promote Water I (Spring), Creation I (Growth), and Creation II (Fertility).
4. There is a new "Diplomat" unit. Dural-only, Professor upgrade, L6 required. Has an assortment of Diplomat-only promotions that allow for friendly pressure to be exerted on neutral or annoyed neighbors even if they have closed borders with you. They are intended to give the Dural an alternative strategy to war when they have a lot of foreign powers that are sort of moderately displeased but not ready to declare war. If things go badly they have a pretty dang good chance of getting out unscathed given a high withdrawl rate, although it is not guaranteed!
5. New “Surgeon” unit. Promotes from the Professor. Allows for Medic III (Dural have no other access to this) and also blocks any other units on the tile from acquiring Blackblood, Diseased, Plagued, Poisoned, and Withered.
6. New “Lawyer” unit. This one is really fun! If the Diplomat isn’t doing is job then start suing the heck out of everyone else – economic warfare! Lawyers can sue neutral and enemy units and add to their support costs. You can sue anything – Undead, Demons, even Dragons! Well, almost everything except bears. Lawyers really don’t like bears. You can park Lawyers in rival cities and siphon off gold (via new Lawyer-only promotions) via lawsuits. If you go to war with an enemy but lack the strength to attack their city, you can park the Lawyer next to their city and she may cause unhappiness in the city, lower trade, reduce hammer production, or any other amount of horrible effects. If she gets experienced enough and promotes to a senior Lawyer, she will give you +1 vote in the Undercouncil.
Changes to experience/promotion model:
After examining how the promotion system works, and how buildings can grant additional experience to units, with some suggestion from others I branched off in a different way of giving free experience to units. If the Dural build the right building(s), units will be auto-promoted to gain .5 XP/turn when they are in the city with that building. For instance, a Dojo will allow Melee units to automatically gain enough experience to promote to level 3. If the Dural build a College in a city with a Dojo, Melee Units can gain enough XP to promote to Level 5. If the Dural then also build the other “graduate schools” (for Melee units, the “School of Peace”
then Melee units can promote to Level 7. The graduate schools are definitely later in the tech tree and require a LOT of building, so I don’t think this is too overpowered. Also, different types of units have different requirements. For instance, Mages only auto-promote to Level 2 with a Mage’s guild (not that much.) With a College they can promote to Level 3. With a School of Peace they can promote to Level 5. With a University they can promote to Level 8, but building a University is a huge commitment!Changes to buildings:
1. The College is now 50% faster for Philosophical Leaders. It was double before, but I think that is too much given Dannmos' Adaptive trait.
The College now requires a Library to build, and costs 150 hammers instead of 180. You now need a library to build a college. Most importantly, the College is now the gateway to a whole sequence of more powerful schools, each giving various additional benefits. If you build all of the Colleges (minus the College of Medicine) you can then build the University, which gives even more benefits. This is a LOT of building though, as befits the Dural's desire to build a beautiful world.
2. College of Theology -- now 50% faster for Spiritual Leaders. .5 training rate for Disciple units. Now requires a College to build, however.
3. College of Peace (haha, like the Department of "Defense") -- Cost 250 hammers, +2 Great Commander GPP
Requires a Dojo (Training Yard Substitute) and the regular College. 50% faster for Aggressive leaders. The real point of this is to train your Tacticians to new levels and abilities. I don't think anyone else can train Great Commanders. Also, it gives a 20% military unit production bonus.
4. College of Engineering -- Cost 250 hammers, +20% construction bonus. Requires an atelier and the regular college. 50% faster for Industrious leaders. +2 Great Engineer GPP.
5. College of Medicine -- Infirmary substitute for the Dural. Same, except 100 hammers cheaper (now 250), and cures not just disease, but also poison, withering, plague, and withered. Well, it will when I can figure out how to remove multiple promotions with one building... Tougher then the infirmary in one sense; it requires a regular college to be present.
6. The University -- Built ALL of the colleges? Not done yet, my friend! 400 hammers, 50% faster for Philosophical leaders. Also, this allow very advanced training specifically for Arcane, Disciple, and Great Commander/Officer units.
Also adds 4 non-specific GPP points to the pool. I may even bump this up, given all the techs and building you have to do it should be worth it late in the game. The eventual goal is to allow Professors to "wane" at a certain level into a University. Haven't figured that out yet, but that would allow crazy-super Dural specialist mega-cities.
Requires: College, College of Peace, College of Theology, College of Engineering (not College of Medicine, that is kind of a side-track.)
7. Explicitly forbidden from building a Demon's Altar as they can't build a Temple of the Veil anyway.
8. The Dural have a special training yard called the "Dojo" that gives +1% Great General emergence. One or two, no huge impact. Build them in all of your 20 cities, get +20%!
9. The Dural have a special Archery Range called the "Kyudo" (Japanese zen-archer kind of a thing) gives +1% Great General emergence. One or two, no huge impact. Build them in all of your 20 cities, get +20%!
10. Dural Herbalist Substitute, the Apothecary, now cures poison status.
I'll keep working on this, but the idea is that the Dural would try to go to get the professor, build the college, and start training Tacticians, Diplomats, and other units. They would also try to keep building the other schools and training units. They would purposefully hold back from too much warfare as wasteful and instead would be training the heck out of their units in their cities. If someone really annoys them, out come marching the highly-trained Dural armies with perfectly executed manuevers and almost-prescient commanders to slaughter the ill-equipped imprecise enemy hordes!
I am purposefully excluding Mounted training and buildings from this; I kind of like the idea of the Dural being very egalitarian. Great footmen, melee, archers -- not so much into the aristocratic Hippus Horselord thing. No nerfs for using Cavalry, but not the same bonuses either. Also, the Dural already have a special Equipment anti-horse bonus (Pikes) that noone else has. Seems like that fits nicely with this mythology. I might even introduce an anti-Hippus diplomacy penalty.
TO-DO
1. Create an early-game "Student" unit that can grow into the Professor. This student does not require any religions. The student has a flat-rate 3 strength, like a warrior, BUT can auto-acquire experience at a very fast rate! This is more experimental, I have already made some other changes that I could do in XML, but haven't really gotten into the student yet.
2. Art and Civilopedia entries!!! I am totally canibalizing (sp!) right now.
3. Lots more work on the abilities for the Diplomat. I wonder if changing the Diplomat to be a Great Spy would be interesting. Although the Diplomat is also intended to help in building positive relations with neighbors on the fence, and not being so focused on negative espionage like Great Spies were. I hated espionage in stock BTS, it always required too much micromanagement.
How does this sound -- any ideas, input?
Thanks!
