Ithobaal I's Phoenician Civilization

[pineappledan]

Phoenicia - led by Ithobaal I
Download Here​

UA - Metropolis
Settled and Captured Non-Capital Cities are converted to City-States with 65 resting Influence towards Phoenicia. Ignores National Wonder Population requirements. Cannot capture City-States.

Resting Influence increased to 75 with Unique City-States modmod.


UB - Beit Melqart (replaces Scrivener's Office)

Available at Trade (1 tech earlier)​

Production cost scales with number of cities​

333​

+1 GDiplomat Points​

1 Civil Servant Specialist Slots​

+10%Production towards Diplomatic Units in this City​

+25%Defense in this City​

Receive a free Merchant Prince on construction​

+10% Merchant Prince Rate for every ActiveTrade Route on Empire​

2Food in City for Every City-State Friend​

2Food and 2Faith in City for Every City-State Ally​

UGP - Merchant Prince (replaces Great Diplomat)

Can Construct Embassies​

Can Perform a Diplomatic Action, Greatly increasing you influence with a target City-State, and reducing the influence of all other Civilizations with that City-State​

500 Gold when performing a Diplomatic Action​

+2Military Supply and +1Trade Route Slot when expended​

Spoiler 4UC Compatibility :

UU1 - Habiru (replaces Spearman):

available at Animal Husbandry (1 Tech earlier)​

55 Production Cost (15 cheaper)​

2Moves​

13CS​

"Formation I"​

"Habiru" (+25% vs Barbarians. Double Healing from Pillage)​

UU2 - Bireme (replaces Galley)

Available at Fishing​

70​

13CS (up form 12)​

4Moves (up from 3)​

Half move in Deep Ocean​

Cannot end Turn on Deep Ocean​

"Recon Experience" (Gains XP from revealing tiles)​

Credits:

• Janboruta - Bireme icon
• hangman - Chimu Axeman unit model
• Sun Dried Tomatoes - Peace Theme (Hurrian Hymn no. 6)
• Richard Beddow - War Theme (Ba'al Hammon's Wrath)
• Leugi - Merchant Prince and Bireme unit models
• TPangolin - DOM Splash, Map, Leader Scene
• Gazebo - DLL Trait integration
• Recursive - DLL Trait integration
• pineappledan - sql, lua, DOM Speech, text, icons

 

[Guynemer]

Having a weird error. I started on a small island with Ramses, AND Bismarck, AND Kamehameha. Quickly built a bunch of habiru and conquered Thebes, annexed it. So far, so good.

Built a monument in Thebes while I'm waiting for my guys to heal up to move on Otto, and as soon as the monument finishes, Thebes starts acting like a puppet--can't choose what to build, the build list isn't even there. But I can't move on to the next turn, as the game is expecting me to make a production choice.

It MIGHT have something to do with the Inuit--Thebes has a fishing boat next to it that looks like the boats that appear on Seal resources. There are no visible resources on the tile, and I haven't discovered pottery yet so I'm not sure if there is something there. Thebes is not on tundra, FWIW.

 

[pineappledan]

Known bug. The city build list sometimes disappears when you conquer. I was hoping something might have changed to resolve the bug this version.

It's an error that has to do with the city's UI either failing to load or trying to load twice. Saving and reloading the game fixes it every time. You can also try clearing your cache and rebooting.

 

[Guynemer]

Worked like a charm.

Happened again when I mopped up Kamehameha, this time in SUR. Weird as hell. Thanks for the tip.

I decided to go Tradition again, to see how the decreased pop requirements feel. I should have some input later. Founded with tradition, Goddess of Beauty around turn 85 or so, before I even built the BM.

 

[ASCII Guy]

It's such a flavorful and unique civ. Looking forward to playing them.

 

[Guynemer]

Tradition is very powerful, although that may have been an artifact of the map.

There were four of us on one small island continent; another four on a continent just barely bigger than ours. After I eliminated the other three civs on my continent, it was just a matter of settling where I could (could only fit three CSs on it), finding all the other CSes out in the ocean on 1-3 tile islands and small archipelagos, and using the MPs to generate trade routes and using the trade routes to generate CS alliances. Rolled to a cultural win in the 1800s. I'm not sure I could think of a better map for me; no one was able to settle more than three cities.

This is a FUN civ. Well done, Dan.

 

[wdprui2]

Played to Enlightenment on Emperor / Standard speed on VP and a few other mods. I was a runaway from the start. Spammed 3 settlers at 5 pop. 3 more again when pop recovered. Started with a weird amount of space to ring myself in and brutally forward settle my crew onto Bismarck. I gave the first settlers 5 spaces to Sur instead of 3 to be sure I didn't lose a precious workable tile but basically ICS'd the rest. No downside to making crappy-city CS. I might play another hundred turns but I don't see anyone catching up.

Couple observations:
1) The UUs are great in concept but I didn't get to use them much. Some slow terrain and my neighbor was far so I didn't force a Habiru rush which I could see being very effective.

2) The Bireme is a great concept with potential and I used them some to ferry. They always end up with one more movement point than the units they're stacked on which might be fine balance wise but adds an (F) to skip for every movement if you want to keep them stacked. It's a minor quality of life thing that stood out. Would it be too strong to have the embarked units keep up? Is that even intentional? (I reckon the stacked units are not inheriting the +1 movement from the promotion).

3) Settling tons of CS is hilarious. And strong. Crazy amounts of barbarian hordes though. Guessing CS spacing influences that. I had 3 early Mercantile CS that made pop loss from settlers very easy to recover from. If you somehow don't RNG Maritime CS and don't have great food tiles, the game will look a lot different.

4) I did encounter a bug. It felt pretty bad at the time but didn't ruin the game. At one point I lost the three extra trade routes gained from Merchant Princes. I didn't notice it right away but I'm pretty sure it happened with Colossus completion. +1 wonder, -3 princes, ended up with 5/3. A caravan got sacked right after so screenshot shows 4/3. The leftover extra caravans still functioned normally and Merchant Princes worked fine after.

Spoiler Lost Trade Routes :

Mods were VP with EUI, More Unique Components, Wonders Expanded (probably the issue right?), Enlightenment Era, JFD's Processes, Promotion Flags EUI, Enhanced Naval Warfare

Overall the Civ was incredibly strong in the situation which means fun and I will play again to see how it does with more adversity. Thanks for all your contributions. Which of your Civs should I run next?

Moderator Action: Please help us maintain a family friendly site by using appropriate language. Have edited the inappropriate language from this post without changing meaning. leif

 

[pineappledan]

Huh.

There shouldn't be any mod conflicts with the additional trade routes. They are added as dummy buildings into the capital, so it should be very straightforward, and there's no operation to remove them.

Very strange... especially because there are already multiple other cases of buildings that give extra trade route slots and can be built in the same city with no issue (EIC, Colossus and Petra, for example).

I can't see your picture, though I am sure it shows what you describe. If you had logs enabled, would you be able to post your lua log here and I could take a look?

Which of your Civs should I run next?

If you're asking for recommendations for things I would like more thoroughly tested, I would like my compatibility for Leugi's Israel tested as thoroughly as possible.

 

[Guynemer]

If you're asking for recommendations for things I would like more thoroughly tested, I would like my compatibility for Leugi's Israel tested as thoroughly as possible.

for some reason I thought it had been brought into the full VP mod. Not yet then?

I'd be happy to give it another go, since it lends itself to my preferred playstyle so strongly.

 

[Guynemer]

Speaking of Israel (who still kick serious ass in the Tradition/Religion game), I encountered something interesting when playing them

Both Spain and India had some Tyrian Purple to trade to me. Ithobaal is not present in the game. I suspect they obtained it via Great Admirals. So some vestiges of the old Phoenicia still exist.

 

[Cat-du-fromage]

i am wondering if venice is not a problem for the phoenician, since venice can annex all the city state you create?

 

[H0dgvikin]

Did some playtesting with Phoenicia and against AI Phoenicia. Thought someone else might be interested in how it plays out.

Phoenicia, Emperor difficulty, Continent, 4 other AIs on my continents. Can reaffirm that authority early rush works very well because of its early UU. Conquering spawns city-states much quicker than using my own settlers. By medieval era I've captured 3 capitals and pretty much ahead of everyone.

I think someone mentioned before that the capital cannot select through the production menu after conquering a non-capital city, I also encountered this issue, but save-and-loading solved the problem. A minor inconvenience.

Then, I played two games against Phoenicia.

The first game is pretty much designed against Phoenicia. Played as Austria, Immortal difficulty, Continent. Started with Phoenicia at a corner of the continent separated fromme by a mountain range. A chain of city-states separated me and Songhai, and Venice is at the other end of the continent. Progress Phoenicia only had room to settle 4 city-states, which very promptly became my diplo-married allies by medieval era because of city-state quests .Phoenicia did not found any religion and promptly fell last in the leaderboard behind even Venice. The game then became a competition between me, China and Siam, both of which went Tradition->Statecraft->Rationalism (China went freedom and Siam went order). Eventually Phoenicia (and everyone else in the world) declared war on me, and I managed to vassalize Phoenicia by sniping his units and cutting his trade routes before winning a diplomatic victory. As a sidenote Venice somehow did not purchase any city-state until late game.

The second game, on the other hand, left me pleasantly surprised because Phoenicia did really well.

I played as Portugal, Immortal difficulty, Communitas (to provide more land for Phoenicia). Phoenicia, Babylon and me spawned on a continent, with Babylon separating Phoenicia and me. With no aggressive neighbor he settled around 15 city states in total, founded the first religion (God of commerce, Divine Inheritance, Stupas, Cooperation, Sacred Calendar, Faith of the Masses) and was, together with a Progress->Statecraft->Industry Inca, the wonderwhoring runaways in the game. He was dominating the world congress by Industrial era (when I stopped playing), and would be quite likely to be able to win a diplomatic victory if his homeland remained unthreatened. I found it quite odd that Phoenicia chose Progress and beliefs like Faith of the Masses when he was limited to one-city play, but otherwise he was really competent.

(Austria was in the game too but became irrelevant after Persia conquered her capital)

Spoiler The Capital of SUR :

Spoiler My land and Phoenicia's leaderboard :

Spoiler Babylon and Inca's leaderboard :

Spoiler Phoenicia's satellites :

Spoiler World Congress :

 

[pineappledan]

It’s like everything I could have hoped for. Phoenicia can be at the bottom or the top, and is at least resilient enough to the AI’s sometimes questionable choices.

it sounds like CS rewards will be returned this next patch, so that should also help control the civ.

I gave up on my own test for Phoenicia. I tried a tradition game and just got super bored. Also, Siam and Venice were my neighbour’s, and they were jerks to go up against.

 

[wdprui2]

Couple more random notes after playing to modern:

So many CS on the map makes ai turns very long in the late game.

Your deathball loses a lot of momentum when you can't upgrade units in captured territory or drop forward citadels. Also my military cap felt insufficient even with tons of MPs and every relevant building.

Planes are essentially worthless until carriers. Or they were on my map. Nothing at all to attack from the two places I could base.

One time I settled right on an oil tile and it didn't give it to me. It showed up in the CS menu as Oil (2) given when allied. My game got pretty dicey when everyone decided to gang up on me and I really needed that Oil. lol

 

[kenneth1221]

I believe I've encountered a small bug that may originate from this mod. Unfortunately, I don't have saves/logs and my screenshots are unorganized, but I was able to consistently duplicate it. However, I was playing with an extensive mod list, so this may have arisen from an unwanted interaction.

Sometimes, upon capturing a city that was one of the city states originally in the game from another civ, Phoenicia will get to keep the city. Instant full annexation. No "annex/puppet/liberate prompt", just immediate build queue.

This happens consistently if I successfully capture a regular city in the same turn. I capture the city, some stuff happens under the hood to make it into a city-state, but if I capture an original-city-state capital on the same turn from an occupying civ, I get to keep it.

Might be an edge case, might be a memory error, might be an incompatibility. I will attempt to reproduce it, but wanted to let you know just in case it's an easy fix. Maybe it's related to the puppet issue, but I don't know.

 

[kenneth1221]

So as I was saying, I had a free evening and decided to try this out. Here is a link to the relevant parts of my playthrough with other modmods, but I'll say most of the relevant parts here and take ou tthe bits that are preaching to the choir. Not going into as much detail here as everything I want to say has been covered.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ders-for-vp-unique-city-states-others.656113/

Very well done. A level of polish about what you'd expect out of VP itself--or at the very least, the unpolished parts are under the hood.
Habiru are very good. They make a Spearman rush more than viable, but I don't know how much of that is from difficulty level. I faced shockingly little resistance in taking those two capitals. I may have to go up a difficulty sooner rather than later.
The UA: You can basically settle like an AI now. Settling 1-tile islands for luxuries is now beyond viable. Settling snow cities for resources or to get your monopoly is also viable because you don't have to care about keeping these cities viable or alive.

My concerns: Since you have no control over the cities, you can't make them build defensive structures, so they'll remain rather squishy and so you're best off settling them nearby where your army can reach them. I also think that it might be a better idea to plan on conquering to create most of your allies, it may be a better use of hammers especially since you need to conquer if you want other cities. That's what I ended up doing.

The buggy:
When I spawned my first city-state, a message popped up saying that "Bratislava has discovered that the world is round." I don't think this is intentional?

I noticed this close to the end of the game, but Scholars in Residence apparently gives me a -50% cost for techs known to other civilizations, even though I am 100% researching something that no one else has discovered yet, as I am tech leader by far. Maybe the city states are being counted as actual players, thus screwing things up? It's not noticeable if you're not looking, but maybe this is the reason I ran away.

Spoiler :

 

[SolutionIt]

Two questions: Is there some kind of percentage chance of what type of city-state will actually spawn? And is the capital guaranteed on the coast? Since they can't settle their own cities I could see issues with capitalizing on their ability to produce trade routes to trade with the city-states if their settler decides not to be on the coast. It also seems appropriate for them to start on the coast given that Carthage does.

Otherwise, I played with them for a bit and surged pretty fast after adopting 3/6 authority going towards Imperium and going full tradition just to make sure I could accomplish city state quests across the board. Gotta say they feel right since expanding more than what you're capable of keeping in check can screw you over, which is why you might want to at least conquer a few enemy capitals to produce diplomats if you're going that route. Let us just say I got too greedy and instead of trying to conquer i kept building more and it took away from my ability to produce an effective enough military to deal with my neighbors conquering the city-states and/or having diplomat spam I couldn't handle from from the nearby civs. Thanks Austria lol.

I think the linearity of their strategy is unavoidable, but is extremely effective regardless so it is just a matter of capitalizing on it early and prioritizing key techs to get to statecraft ASAP.

 

[pineappledan]

I believe I've encountered a small bug that may originate from this mod. Unfortunately, I don't have saves/logs and my screenshots are unorganized, but I was able to consistently duplicate it. However, I was playing with an extensive mod list, so this may have arisen from an unwanted interaction.

Sometimes, upon capturing a city that was one of the city states originally in the game from another civ, Phoenicia will get to keep the city. Instant full annexation. No "annex/puppet/liberate prompt", just immediate build queue.

This happens consistently if I successfully capture a regular city in the same turn. I capture the city, some stuff happens under the hood to make it into a city-state, but if I capture an original-city-state capital on the same turn from an occupying civ, I get to keep it.

Might be an edge case, might be a memory error, might be an incompatibility. I will attempt to reproduce it, but wanted to let you know just in case it's an easy fix. Maybe it's related to the puppet issue, but I don't know.

Found the issue I think. There was duplicated code from when the cities were given away using a different method than never was scrubbed properly, so the city giveaway on conquer was functionally firing twice.

Is there some kind of percentage chance of what type of city-state will actually spawn?

City-States are spawned in order of their IDs. At the start of the game, the city-states that populate the map are chosen randomly, so what CS are left over is random, but when Phoenicia spawns new ones, they will always go in order. Bratislava (Cultural) is the 1st city-state by ID in the game, so your second city will will be Bratislava approximately 4/5 of the time.

This mechanic is Gazebo's rebellion mechanic. Phoenicia's civs are effectively getting extremely unhappy and rebelling immediately on settle, so what I have called the "Bratislava Brocard" is a feature of the rebellion mechanic. I had a conversation with @Gazebo a few weeks back to see if the city names and adjectives could be changed, and that would mitigate the predictability of this mechanic by at least hiding it. Cultural city-states are the most common ones, after all, so if they didn't always start as Bratislava, then the biggest immersion-breaker would be fixed.

And is the capital guaranteed on the coast?

They have a coastal start bias, but that doesn't guarantee a coastal start. They have the same chance of starting on coast that Venice or Carthage does.

 

[kenneth1221]

Glad to hear you've found the bug! In the meantime, I'll probably play Israel or something.

I just remembered one more thing that irked me. Apparently if there's a wonder in a city state you capture, the game thinks it's been razed from the tech tree tooltip. Is this a display bug or are the wonders actually being destroyed?

City-States are spawned in order of their IDs. At the start of the game, the city-states that populate the map are chosen randomly, so what CS are left over is random, but when Phoenicia spawns new ones, they will always go in order. Bratislava (Cultural) is the 1st city-state by ID in the game, so your second city will will be Bratislava approximately 4/5 of the time.

This mechanic is Gazebo's rebellion mechanic. Phoenicia's civs are effectively getting extremely unhappy and rebelling immediately on settle, so what I have called the "Bratislava Brocard" is a feature of the rebellion mechanic. I had a conversation with @Gazebo a few weeks back to see if the city names and adjectives could be changed, and that would mitigate the predictability of this mechanic by at least hiding it. Cultural city-states are the most common ones, after all, so if they didn't always start as Bratislava, then the biggest immersion-breaker would be fixed.

I know you've mentioned there isn't any way to give a fixed city-state spawn order. Is there a workaround? Could you add city states to the list with early IDs, but give them a flag that says "Do not spawn on worldgen"? (I don't know the details of the codebase, are negative IDs allowed?). Just an off-the-cuff suggestion for how you could theoretically balance the first city states that show up.

 

[pineappledan]

I know you've mentioned there isn't any way to give a fixed city-state spawn order. Is there a workaround?

... Why should I open that kettle of fish? Right now the first city-state spawned is most often the most common type: cultured. If they had a set order, what would the best order be? How many of what kinds is "fair"?

I just have absolutely no interest in creating an arbitrary order for Mercantile/militaristic/maritime/cultural/religious CSs, in whatever proportion, and then forcing myself to defend it from scrutiny. That is even if it were possible.

EDIT: Posted lua update