Kuriotates and Cities

[MayNilad Man]

Problem: What happens of the Nexus is already built?

Maybe the settlements should be allowed to build mercenaries?

 

[Shadowsong0]

True, the nexus is a nice exploit for the Kuriotates but by the time you get it you will probably have won by culture victory anyhow.

I feel the Kuriotates are really lacking a more emphasized flavour.
Well they get big cities and crank out great people well, so their favoured strategy is pretty much set. Turtle-style.

What the Kuriotates do really need is an equivalent to the nexus for the early/mid-game. Not as powerful of course.
And they need a means to get from their surrounding tiles (what use is the food from sprawling if you cannot keep your cities growing).

So in most of my games their cities just end like that:
Buried under Ancient forests and tended by elven slaves.

So i thought a bit on how to improve the Kuriotates both in playability and flavour and came up with this:

- City / Settlement Improvement: Enchanters Guild (replaces Mages Guild)
-- All roads inside the cultural borders of the city / settlement are upgraded to enchanted roads (equivalent to railroads in vanilla civ, maybe with some fancy golden glow to them)

- City Improvement: Dragons perch (Available with Awaken the Ancients)
-- All worked city tiles, which generate 3+ gold give 1 happiness.
-- All worked city tiles, which generate 3+ food give 1 health.

Enchanters guild would give settlements a whole new meaning.
You will not only build them near ressources but as waypoints as well.
Moving units fast is one hell of a thing to the Kuriotates as you are stuck with only a bunch of producing cities.

 

[MayNilad Man]

Oh! Oh! How about making their City hubs grant +n food, +n commerce, and +n production for every settlement?

 

[Go Boks]

I think those are all a little unbalancing myself.

Nexus will work like any other wonder I would imagine (i.e. you get an obsidian gate in all new/captured cities).

 

[Shadowsong0]

Last time i tried you only get obsidian gate in cities / settlements you already own when building the nexus.
Same goes for the free mage guild wonder-thingy.

You will get no obsidian gates in settlements you capture after building the nexus as they are not buildable in settlements.
Same goes for mage guilds.

On top of that you cannot build any units in settlements, even those who own a mage guild.
So i fail to see how these ideas are "a little unbalancing" at all.

Or was that aimed at the +n everything idea?

 

[BlazeRedSXT]

Actually Shadowsong, The Nexus, Catacomb Lib. etc do grant buildings to New/Captured settlements and cities after they have been built.

But its true you can't build units in Settlements, even if they have the requisite buildings... I'm not sure why that is... I mean, I know the code that only allows certain buildings to be built, but I am not sure why it restricts units as well.

Cheers!

 

[Go Boks]

Or was that aimed at the +n everything idea?

Yup.

I was the one who originally suggested the Nexus strategy as a good one...

 

[Shadowsong0]

Hm, i stand corrected.

So i'd get free enchanted roads -IF- i got the mage-guild-wonder-thingy.
At least -ONE- reason to get it (as Kuriotates with 1-5 cities at all).

Having the possibility to move their units fast within a well developed but fragile infrastructure would be what sets them aside from "another bunch of goodly humans, who happen to live in big cities they don't know how to keep happy and worship some dragon".

 

[Go Boks]

They are better at keeping happy than anyone else...

Also, I don't know how "goodly" they are. They are members of a degenerative cult and follow a policy of aggresive assimilation. Think of them as the Borg or the Zerg of FfH, with less of an obvious sense of evil around them. I know their alignment is good, but I hardly think of them that way. They are good if you agree with them, but you would not want to live in their empire if you were an independent person or a free thinker. They remind me of the Soviets in a way.

 

[MayNilad Man]

I think those are all a little unbalancing myself.

Hm. Well, it always annoyed me to no end that the Kuriotate supercities couldn't grow any larger from having enormous amounts of settlements. I visualized them as something similar to the Ancient Greeks, having most of their food imported from agricultural colonies. We could always scrap the commerce and production and leave the food bit. They ARE meant to be GPP farmers, plus it gives a little more incentive to limit their empire size.

 

[Go Boks]

Well, I think Civ in general should bring back caravans and colonies.

 

[Mesix]

I think the settlements should benefit the city hubs more. As it stands now, there is really no incentive to expand beyond the limited number of city hubs. If there were some sort of bonus provided be each settlement or improvements that could be built in settlements that add some sort of benefit to the core cities of the empire, then a player would be more likely to expand and also to defend the settlements. When playing the Kuriotates in the current build, I usually expand to the three or four city limit as early as possible and build up those cities, ignoring settlement all together. When I go to war I generally raze the nemy cities as settlements are pretty much worthless to keep.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I think the settlements should benefit the city hubs more. As it stands now, there is really no incentive to expand beyond the limited number of city hubs. If there were some sort of bonus provided be each settlement or improvements that could be built in settlements that add some sort of benefit to the core cities of the empire, then a player would be more likely to expand and also to defend the settlements. When playing the Kuriotates in the current build, I usually expand to the three or four city limit as early as possible and build up those cities, ignoring settlement all together. When I go to war I generally raze the nemy cities as settlements are pretty much worthless to keep.

Resources?

 

[Shadowsong0]

True.

Plus settlements NEVER should benefit city hubs depending on number.

You forget you can spam them 1 per 3x3 tile without added cost.
Producing settlers with Kuriotates is a breeze later on. (food anyone?)
Making them benefit the hubs would be like increasing their worked on tiles to insane numbers.

It's not that the Kuriotates are too weak (balancewise) it's that they are quite boring to play because their preferred game mechanism is sitting around and building/growing. Having them maintain any kind of infrastructure (outside their city cluster) would give them a new strategic option, something to do for the player and more usefulness for their settlement.

 

[onedreamer]

What the Kuriotates do really need is an equivalent to the nexus for the early/mid-game. Not as powerful of course.
And they need a means to get from their surrounding tiles (what use is the food from sprawling if you cannot keep your cities growing).

Oh ? They have several buildings for that purpouse. Tailor, Jeweler, etc.

Also, I don't know how "goodly" they are. They are members of a degenerative cult and follow a policy of aggresive assimilation. Think of them as the Borg or the Zerg of FfH, with less of an obvious sense of evil around them. I know their alignment is good, but I hardly think of them that way. They are good if you agree with them, but you would not want to live in their empire if you were an independent person or a free thinker. They remind me of the Soviets in a way.

How did you come to these conclusions ? Aggressive assimilation ? If you, by any chance, are referring to the mechanics of the Dragon's Cult,
1) it's optional, and currently even disabled
2) it's clearly DEFENSIVE in its mechanics, not aggressive...

The leader is a Gold Dragon to my understanding...

 

[Shadowsong0]

Oh ? They have several buildings for that purpouse. Tailor, Jeweler, etc.

Well looking at the a fully improved tile can deliver you can easily have cities around 50 by endgame..
+1 from a building or 5 is nice but not really that impressive.
+37 and +37 from 37 worked tiles is.

Just go OO with the Kuriotates, fetch some elven slaves (read as crush them and steal their leaves holy city),
dip into order to regain your alignment and possibly Law mana if you happen to found it,
wait till armageddon counter raises to 40, switch to leaves and spring/bloom away.
You'll still grow every 5 turns or so, even when far beyond 30 pop.

Valid as a playing style.. i think so.. builder / extreme
Valid in respect of lore or flavour.. no way.

I - do like - the synergy with leaves seeing them as humans in league with the more fey creatures of erebus (dragons, centaurs, more to come, i hope).
What i - do not like - is the need to get elven slaves for their one unique power, - sprawling -, to really shine.

Thats why i suggested the Dragons perch.

But my main point of that post was the Enchanters guild and the improved roads.
Centralized nations -need- good roads.. the romans would never have reached spain if their enrolled legions (in italy) had to bushwhack through france every time.
Plus it would give settlements another use save ressource grabbing.

 

[cvlowe]

I wonder if it would be possible to allow captured cities to remain standard cities. That would alleviate the second concern, and make more sense overall. I mean, essentially you are importing a people and culture that doesn't have the same cultural value as your people, so wouldn't necessarily accept being forced into a Super city ideal, though being crushed down to a settlement... thought in that thought, perhaps all captured cities should automatically become settlements... you know, being subdued and all...
just a thought...

Cheers!

I wouldn't be opposed to allowing them to keep "normal" cities. As long as when another civ conquers one of their supercities, they get to use the "super" city- third ring!

 

[Ringtailed]

- City Improvement: Dragons perch (Available with Awaken the Ancients)
-- All worked city tiles, which generate 3+ gold give 1 happiness.
-- All worked city tiles, which generate 3+ food give 1 health.

It's overpowered. With that kind of improvement you'd have Kuriotates with size 50 cities when everyone else is stuck in the single digits.

 

[Go Boks]

How did you come to these conclusions ? Aggressive assimilation ? If you, by any chance, are referring to the mechanics of the Dragon's Cult,
1) it's optional, and currently even disabled
2) it's clearly DEFENSIVE in its mechanics, not aggressive...

The leader is a Gold Dragon to my understanding...

The leader is a Boy King (kind of odd that he never grows up - must be Peter Pan ).

Dragon's Cult may be disabled, but it is clearly their "intended" religion. Sheaim might be able to get it too, but they aren't nearly as aligned with it as the Kuriotates are.

The Kuriotates are clearly aggressive in their mechanics. If played correctly, they are a production powerhouse (not as good as the Khazad, but close enough). Production = war. If you sit back and defend with these guys, you aren't playing them very well.

+1 from a building or 5 is nice but not really that impressive.
+37 and +37 from 37 worked tiles is.

Impressive, sure. Balanced, no.

 

[Shadowsong0]

It's overpowered. With that kind of improvement you'd have Kuriotates with size 50 cities when everyone else is stuck in the single digits.

Nah.. but i pretty often do have size 37+ cities, when they are stuck around 12.. on maps with elves.
What you just called overpowered would actually lessen the imbalance.

Impressive, sure. Balanced, no.

Never said it was.
But thats what the Kuriotates are atm.