Jarcast & pineappledan's Hittites

[CromulentRomulan]

Its why I asked if anyone else had had success with the UA, I play with modmods and one of them might be impeding the UA. Started another game with hittites as the AI and the ability wasn't working for them in that game either

 

[KlHannibal2]

I just tried them and I also don't get the vote and city state influence from winning a war.

This was before world congress was founded.

What exactly does steal influence mean? You get it and the current ally loses it? Or every other civ loses influence?

 

[KlHannibal2]

Some feedback.
The production bonus is helpful, but not too strong. A peak period is early medieval, when you have armories and still build classical units and later upgrade them. It also helps with civilian units and diplomats. I expect it to fall of drastically in the late game though. Unit costs will outscale your cap.

The influence and vote from winning wars sounds very interesting. You should fight many short wars, taking only 1 or 2 cities each time. Unfortunately, this did not work for me. I got nothing.

The science from both UBs was very strong.

I played on deity and so far was not able to pledge protection. I have 23 units in medieval with 7 cities. I would need to take over at least 1 AI to get enough unit cap. So I could not use this aspect. A buff to unit cap could help here.

The chariot obloletes at chivalry. I would prefer metallurgy, so you can still get them when you unlock knights. Ignore ZOC is quite useful.

The ship is interesting. Often you will not get that many kills if you don't have a water-heavy start. But if you have a sea resource, you can go for sailing early and do heavy tributing with them. Carthage style.

 

[pineappledan]

What exactly does steal influence mean? You get it and the current ally loses it? Or every other civ loses influence?

If you had 100 War Score in a war with France, You go up 50 influence with all CS and France goes down 50

 

[KlHannibal2]

If you had 100 War Score in a war with France, You go up 50 influence with all CS and France goes down 50

Nice, that's quite realistic too.

 

[jarcast2]

Update is online.

Changelog:
- fixed UA, now the Influence steal works as intended
- fixed Ansukurra flag icon
- removed pop requirement from E Dubsargis
- Anyt now unlocks at Sailing Fishing

Jarcast & pineappledan's Hittites for VP

Discussion thread.

forums.civfanatics.com

@pineappledan could you add the donwload link in the first post?
Also you forgot to mention I made the E Dubsargis icon art in the credit list

 

[pineappledan]

OP updated with download link

 

[jarcast2]

Music bug fix update is online.

 

[CromulentRomulan]

There was a music bug in this mod?
Oath and Bond is now working as expected, however I may have found a bug (or maybe not).
In my current game Oath and Bond procced when I made peace with a city state that had been allied with a Civ I was at war with. I made peace with that city state when another neutral Civ became their ally.
First time it happened I got 33 influence with all met city-states. 2nd time I don't recall being notified of influence. In both cases a world congress vote was added. So it seems to be recognising city states as a major civ peace deal, but possibly only under these circumstances. But I believe its not the intention of the UA for it to trigger in those conditions.
Strong civ, really appreciate how well they work with authority into statecraft. Don't feel like many Civs do that well and its enjoyable to play different tree combos. Music is top notch too

 

[jarcast2]

There was a music bug in this mod?

There was the piece of code supposed to trigger it so I deleted it.

Oath and Bond is now working as expected, however I may have found a bug (or maybe not).
In my current game Oath and Bond procced when I made peace with a city state that had been allied with a Civ I was at war with. I made peace with that city state when another neutral Civ became their ally.

I forgot to add a city state check in the code.
Update is online.
Now the UA won't trigger when one party of the peace deal is a CS.

 

[CromulentRomulan]

I think its worth considering a nerf to this Civ's kit as they feel like they have no drawbacks and as such you don't have to make any decisions or trade offs on your path to victory.
My evaluation is based on their whole kit, 3/4 UC included. I think that's fair to do because anyone playing with a custom civ is quite likely to be playing with unique components consistently
The unique national wonder and unique building means that you can go bottom tech tree with a very nice science output and lock in the buildings that make your war supply and PoP bonus sing. If you managed to lock in even a couple of embassies you can have the world congress vote decided very early. I halted my playthrough of them because I was 6 votes shy of the world leader threshold in the industrial era.
I really like the UA and I like the effort to create a mirror to Assyria but for diplomatic victory. But it seems like it could be very easy to gain an insurmountable delegate lead from it.
Irrespective of whether you agree that nerfs are warranted could a clarification text be added to the UA? I didn't confirm it in my playthrough but my assumption is that the trigger for the additional vote (winning a war) is the same criteria as the historic event and Aztec UA - which is warscore > 25. If that is the case I think including it in the UA would be useful and consistent with the Aztec UA

 

[jarcast2]

I really like the UA and I like the effort to create a mirror to Assyria but for diplomatic victory. But it seems like it could be very easy to gain an insurmountable delegate lead from it.

In terms of UA nerf I was thinking about a cap (2 or 3) to the number of delegates Hittites can gain when winning a war against the same civ.
It would avoid to continuously wage war against weak civs and keep them alive to farm delegates.

Irrespective of whether you agree that nerfs are warranted could a clarification text be added to the UA? I didn't confirm it in my playthrough but my assumption is that the trigger for the additional vote (winning a war) is the same criteria as the historic event and Aztec UA - which is warscore > 25. If that is the case I think including it in the UA would be useful and consistent with the Aztec UA

The threshold to trigger the UA is indeed warscore > 25.
In the next update it will be specified in the UA text.

 

[CromulentRomulan]

In terms of UA nerf I was thinking about a cap (2 or 3) to the number of delegates Hittites can gain when winning a war against the same civ.
It would avoid to continuously wage war against weak civs and keep them alive to farm delegates.


The threshold to trigger the UA is indeed warscore > 25.
In the next update it will be specified in the UA text.

Philosophically I don't think you should balance against player's employing cheese strategies in a game such as Civ but I do think some sort of cap on the delegates possible from each Civ is a good idea. The Civ definitely does incentivise you to pursue a different form of warfare, essentially favouring a cold war that can be boiled over into conflict and a delegate whenever needed. So the Civ really thrives from the way war tends to break out in VP.
I'm comparing the Hittites to the Canada custom Civ who also has access to bonus delegates, but at the cost of assigning spies as diplomats. Hittites don't really have any trade off for how they secure bonus votes.
I honestly felt like they were so strong in other areas of the game that a cap of 1 extra delegate per Civ was sufficient (having an early strong unique naval unit in addition to the horseman means that they exert a lot of map presence) but that doing so might make their UA a bit lacklustre on paper. Is there a way in which the UA could be changed so that it is 1 delegate per Civ that you win a war against, but successive victorious wars either multiply the influence steal with met city-states or increase the Hittite resting influence with met city states (I don't know which would be more powerful and thus a worthwhile incentive)? If there was an extreme 1-per-civ cap on possible delegates then it would be good to have some reward from waging successful wars.
An aspect of the UNW E Dubsargis that maybe warrants revision irrespective (but could factor into how the Civ UA is rebalanced) is the +2 Science and War Supply for each active Pledge of Protection and Vassal. Vassalage currently makes very little sense for the Hittites, its way better to take an extortionate peace deal and wait for the next war to secure another bonus delegate and CS influence than the bonus supply and science offered by the UNW. Maybe the rewards for vassalage on that wonder could be increased and perhaps its something that could inform any design choices you make on delegate caps

 

[pineappledan]

Should the WC vote be dropped, and the influence steal stand on its own?

 

[jarcast2]

Is there a way in which the UA could be changed so that it is 1 delegate per Civ that you win a war against, but successive victorious wars either multiply the influence steal with met city-states or increase the Hittite resting influence with met city states (I don't know which would be more powerful and thus a worthwhile incentive)? If there was an extreme 1-per-civ cap on possible delegates then it would be good to have some reward from waging successful wars.

The creation of the cap on delegates requires to save how many victorious wars Hittites achieved against a specific player.
I can use that number to scale also the influence steal.
I was thinking of the following formula:

InfluenceSteal = warscore/2 * [1 + (numVictoriesSamePlayer -1) /4]

So basically the influence steal increase by 25% for every victory against the same player beyond the first victory.
And maybe add a cap so that max InfluenceSteal = warscore (in this case numVictoriesSamePlayer = 5).

Should the WC vote be dropped, and the influence steal stand on its own?

We could just cap at 1 delegate per specific defeated civ.

 

[pineappledan]

Hmm. Seems complicated, and I generally abhor a strict cap.

WC votes are sort of crummy as UA bonuses anyways on account of how late they unlock for the player. This is especially stark on a civ that didn’t exist in those later eras.

We also have another problem in that the freezing influence decay mechanic has been removed from base VP. I think that was a good decision and we should follow suit with the Hittites.

I’ve got some ideas for how we could rearrange or modify bonuses

 

[looorg]

I don't know if the vote stealing is the weirdest part about the civ. I find it's the forge with it's more or less infinite amount of Iron (+2 iron per city so far) that will spawn but yet none of the uu require it. So you get iron for? The boat line will never require it nor will the horseman path. Civs that normally spawn a resource of some kind use it for their units, I guess here it's just an extra massive production boost since all your mines will get more yields and since you get free iron spots plopping down you'll have more mines. Still it feels somewhat weird that you don't have a UU that uses Iron.

Beyond that it seems to be working fine. Have not found any issues or such things.

 

[pineappledan]

What if the DoProtection bonus and the war winning bonus swapped places?

Remove the WC and change the decay bonus to per turn? That would remove the OP'ness of influence freezing (so OP we removed it everywhere else in VP), and it would get rid of the WC vote reward, which is not a good civ UA bonus in general (unlocks too late)

Spoiler new UA and UNW, changes are bolded :

UA - Bond and Oath:

Gain 1 influence per turn with City-States you have a Declaration of Protection with, scaling with Era.​

Your War Supply is your starting Production for all Units.​

UNW: E Dubsargis (Scrivener's Office)

available at Writing​

22​

+1 Food in City for every City-State Friend, and +1 / Faith for every Ally​

+2 Science to all Barracks and +3 Production to all Armories​

+10% Production towards Diplomatic Units​

+1 Great Diplomat Points​

+2 Paper​

1 Civil Servant Specialist Slot​

1 free Emissary​

When you win a War, gain +5 Science and 3 War Supply in this City, and steal Influence with all City-States equal to half your War Score.​

 

[KlHannibal2]

I don't know if the vote stealing is the weirdest part about the civ. I find it's the forge with it's more or less infinite amount of Iron (+2 iron per city so far) that will spawn but yet none of the uu require it. So you get iron for? The boat line will never require it nor will the horseman path. Civs that normally spawn a resource of some kind use it for their units, I guess here it's just an extra massive production boost since all your mines will get more yields and since you get free iron spots plopping down you'll have more mines. Still it feels somewhat weird that you don't have a UU that uses Iron.

Beyond that it seems to be working fine. Have not found any issues or such things.

Being the first iron user is the most well known perk of historic Hittites though.

 

[jarcast2]

What if the DoProtection bonus and the war winning bonus swapped places?

Remove the WC and change the decay bonus to per turn? That would remove the OP'ness of influence freezing (so OP we removed it everywhere else in VP), and it would get rid of the WC vote reward, which is not a good civ UA bonus in general (unlocks too late)

Spoiler new UA and UNW, changes are bolded :

UA - Bond and Oath:

Gain 1 influence per turn with City-States you have a Declaration of Protection with, scaling with Era.​

Your War Supply is your starting Production for all Units.​

UNW: E Dubsargis (Scrivener's Office)

available at Writing​

22​

+1 Food in City for every City-State Friend, and +1 / Faith for every Ally​

+2 Science to all Barracks and +3 Production to all Armories​

+10% Production towards Diplomatic Units​

+1 Great Diplomat Points​

+2 Paper​

1 Civil Servant Specialist Slot​

1 free Emissary​

When you win a War, gain +5 Science and 3 War Supply in this City, and steal Influence with all City-States equal to half your War Score.​

Nice.
I will get on it tomorrow.