Izica's Scythia (Antiquity) 1.0

[izica]

Thread for feedback and bug reports.

Download: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/izicas-scythia-antiquity.32037/

 

[The_J]

I do recommend in general to also paste the pictures and description from the download into the discussion thread, as there is some chance that people will first look at the threads here, and not first at the downloads .
Because it seems you did some nice work there, with also re-using the ingame graphics for other purposes.

 

[Ginway1010]

How does the horse pasture work? Is it something I have to build?

 

[izica]

How does the horse pasture work? Is it something I have to build?

By default, the game has two pastures: one for sheep and one for horses. They are built when the city expands you can "improve" a resource(sheep or horses).
The horse pasture replaces the default pasture(imrovement) on horse resource.

Currently, building has no model, because model replacement for buildings doesn't work right now, and it's not possible to add a custom model.

 

[eqn]

I love the design of this Civ, but I must say the yields on the Royal Kurgan are absurdly overpowered. It could be a much worse building (or not exist at all, even) and still, due to the strength of the rest of the Civ's abilities, the Civ would easily be top tier. Personally I'd recommend toning down this unique building substantially, just so it doesn't feel so 'cheaty' to play as this Civ. At the very least I think limiting it to just a Culture adjacency makes a lot of sense conceptually and balance-wise.

One thing I did notice, too, is using the TCS Tooltip Mod causes the "Horse Pasture" to show up as an "Improved By" option for Horses when playing with every Civ, not just Scythia, and that mod is not formatted appropriately to account for this new Improvement. It does not do this for any other unique improvements, even those from becoming a Suzerain while those improvements are unlocked, so maybe there is some way you can find to have the TCS mod ignore the improvement as an option for compatibility's sake.

 

[izica]

I love the design of this Civ, but I must say the yields on the Royal Kurgan are absurdly overpowered. It could be a much worse building (or not exist at all, even) and still, due to the strength of the rest of the Civ's abilities, the Civ would easily be top tier. Personally I'd recommend toning down this unique building substantially, just so it doesn't feel so 'cheaty' to play as this Civ. At the very least I think limiting it to just a Culture adjacency makes a lot of sense conceptually and balance-wise.

One thing I did notice, too, is using the TCS Tooltip Mod causes the "Horse Pasture" to show up as an "Improved By" option for Horses when playing with every Civ, not just Scythia, and that mod is not formatted appropriately to account for this new Improvement. It does not do this for any other unique improvements, even those from becoming a Suzerain while those improvements are unlocked, so maybe there is some way you can find to have the TCS mod ignore the improvement as an option for compatibility's sake.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'll think about how to weaken this building—my idea was to reduce its adjacency bonuses from 1 to 0.5.


I also reached out to the developer of the TCS Tooltips mod regarding the compatibility issue. Let's see what they say.

 

[eqn]

Sounds great

Thanks for the feedback!

I'll think about how to weaken this building—my idea was to reduce its adjacency bonuses from 1 to 0.5.


I also reached out to the developer of the TCS Tooltips mod regarding the compatibility issue. Let's see what they say.

Thanks for looking in to it!

I will say after testing a lot of custom Civs lately the building may not be so overpowered when it comes to the scaling in later ages, as an ageless building. If the building had some kind of scaling through the ages to give it a lot of staying power, once nerfed, I think that would go a long way!


Excited to see how you change things. Excellent work on this civ. ^_^

 

[Sufyan]

What is the reasoning behind Scythia unlocking the Normans?

 

[izica]

What is the reasoning behind Scythia unlocking the Normans?

there are no particular reasons other than the fact that they had some overlapping territories

I might remove this in an update, but I haven't decided for sure yet

 

[HasturGA]

First, let me say I like a LOT of what you've done with them so please take my minor critiques as just that. These are just ideas I had while playing them and I'm looking forward to what you do with the Scythians next.

The first is while I love the mounted scouts, they run into a couple problems. Being mounted lets them travel farther but they instantly drop to 1 hex movement if there's trees or rough terrain which means in general, they feel slower than other scouts. The other is that since the Kurgan Ancestors Mastery turns them into regular cavalry, you stop having scouts or at least you stop having anything with the scouting abilities. Perhaps thematically you could handle this with a traditional scout with one extra move that uses the model you have now. That lets them move a bit faster but keeps them out of the cavalry progression so your scouts can stick around and be as fast as their cavalry counterparts. Social policies/traditions might then boost them by giving them something special, whether that's by making them a combat scout like the Maya if that's where you're looking to go or maybe increased vision range for them. Or maybe they deal with terrain easier..

The biggest noticeable pain point was the lack of traditions. That really hurts going into future ages because you don't have any traditions to slot into your initial policy slots in the Exploration era until you finally unlock enough social policies. And that's before how traditions slot into the overall build of a civ out of its many components.

I'll agree that the Royal Kurgan is definitely buff for the Antiquity age, when you can place it. Which means it's either really incredible or not buildable for a given city largely depending on its latitude.Shifting the focus to the neighboring terrain being flat rather than plains would give it more flexibility of placement. I could also see breaking it into two buildings, each half of a unique quarter. One gives the science bonus, one gives the culture bonus, maybe the unique quarter together gives the gold bonus. That puts it more in line with unique buildings/quarters from other civs.Plus it puts in the production cost of two separate buildings to make it take a little more effort/time to get the really nice value out of it. It's just a lot of bonus for a single building in the Antiquity age.

 

[HasturGA]

Oh, one other thing I noticed when playing. I was playing as Charlemagne (because of the cavalry synergy obviously) and when I'd get a celebration, it would create scouts (since they're considered cavalry in this civ) instead of the Saka Rider which meant instead of getting free combat units, I was getting tons of free scouts which wasn't really as useful. If you do keep the scouts as cavalry, it'd be awesome if you can make sure that Charlemagne's ability generates Saka Riders instead of Eyes of the King.

One last thing... I've been turning it over in my head a good bit and another idea I could see you doing is to replace their slinger/archer line with horse archers. Give them an extra move, maybe even move after attack if they still have move available (this extra could easily be a + ability unlock on one of their civics). Or do the reverse and give cavalry a ranged attack. It'd make them real skirmishers and to my knowledge would be the only mounted archers in the game as of right now. And it was actually a major part of Scythian war tactics so totally appropriate for them.

Again, forgive me being a bit of a torrent of ideas, it's honestly just enthusiasm for what you've done already. Thank you!

 

[Guerlot]

Loved it on my 1st playthrough! Thanks for this!

However, not sure if this was intended but the Scythia civics' policies are not traditions