Kuriotates Settlements

[AgentTBC]

I'm playing the Kuriotates for the first time, with the Orbis modmod. The documentation says that settlements produce no research, commerce etc, can't build anything, and cost no maintenance. However in my game it is pretty clear that they are exactly the same as regular cities except they can only work one ring of tiles instead of two like a normal city or three like a Kuriotates city. They incur maintenance costs (ouch!), produce gold, research, and hammers, and can build as normal. Well, I haven't tried building a national wonder or anything like that but they build regular buildrings as normal.

Is this a bug, a change made by Orbis, or an undocumented change in the original FFH2 mod? Now that I know it's not a big deal but I certainly would have placed my settlements differently had I known!

 

[Valkrionn]

Change by Orbis. They also can't build wonders.

 

[AgentTBC]

Thanks for the answer.

The changes makes the Kuriotates very powerful. Working a third ring of tiles makes the core cities much, much stronger than a regular city and only being able to produce a few units at once (3 in a standard size game, for example) was one check on that power. I wonder if they aren't too powerful now?

Of course I thought the same thing about a couple other civs too. I guess if every civ is very powerful then that's the same as none being overpowered. I gather this is why it's suggested to move the difficulty up a couple notches compared to vanilla BTS since a human player can exploit a civs advantages better than the AI. On vanilla BTS I'd play on Monarch for a casual stress-free game and Emperor if I wanted to really concentrate and work for it, but Emperor doesn't seem hard enough to me so far, so I'll kick it up to Immortal. After one or two more games as I think I had a very lucky start on this one.

 

[AgentTBC]

Wow, the Kuriotates cities really become monsters once they get going. Popping out wonders in 4 turns, any unit in 1 turn, many regular buildings in 1 turn, and so on. I decided to go for a culture victory since anything else seemed unfair.

Legends sure is a weak sauce world spell, though. +300 culture per city? When my cities are putting out 300+ culture a turn? Hooray?

 

[Ahwaric]

Yes, it is a change I have added a few versions back.
With improved forts, settlements were not that usefull. So I decided to improve them, while keeping the flavour.

They can build any normal buildings (which fixes some problems on small maps by the way) and units. Maintenance is added back to nerf the improvement a bit. Also, no wonders (always inselectable, I could not make them to not show at all) and use any means of hurring (not sure about soldiers of kilmorph and great engineers).

That should help AI, as Kurios are not that strong, and settlements are not that powerfull with their small workable area (8 + 1 tiles compared to 20 + 1 of a normal city)

But if you think they are too strong now, I can cut their production by 25% or even by half, maybe coupled with reduced maintenance?

Spell is weak, but the balance in FfH and thus in Orbis is on the macro scale - weak spell for strong civs, strong one for a weak civ...

 

[AgentTBC]

My own personal opinion is that anything that cuts the usefulness of the Kuriotates settlements would be good, including a production penalty. Their core cities are so uber powerful that ideally settlements would be a DRAIN on the core city resources. Right now they're a small but real bonus on top of the uber cities.

I hadn't considered that the settlements as originally designed weren't sufficiently distinct from the new fort mechanics in Orbis (which is probably my single favorite change. LOVE IT). But I'm not sure that is an argument for improving settlements rather than getting rid of them altogether and just having the Kuriotates player use improved forts mechanics. Maybe they could be renamed for the Kuriotates and called something else, and slightly more cultural promotions could be found for the commanders. Ehh, that's getting pretty involved.

As forts currently stand it would be very difficult for the Kuriotates player to maintain culture at the forts if they were too far away from the core cities, but that's actually a good thing. They are a highly centralized civ with weakly associated outlying areas. But I realize this is a pretty radical change I'm just one guy, so...

But when I have 3 cities pumping out 200 hammers a turn, plus a bazillion culture and commerce I think anything that weakens the satellite cities and makes them harder to protect is a good thing.

 

[Dominicius]

Only 200 hammers? Dude that's weak.

 

[arcticnightwolf]

Spell is weak, but the balance in FfH and thus in Orbis is on the macro scale - weak spell for strong civs, strong one for a weak civ...

Well ... that spell isn't that weak ... if you pop it when you have quite amount of settlements (especially in borders with neighbours) it can do quite nice mess

 

[AgentTBC]

Only 200 hammers? Dude that's weak.

That was a while ago, its up to 300-450 hammers each now. I havent bothered to tweak the cities much (rebuilding improvements as stuff makes more food, etc) so I realize its not as efficient as it could be but I'm going to win in 40 turns from culture so I'm not bothering.

 

[Breez]

I am going to try Orbis again, this civ is the number one thing that caught my eye.

I Love that they can built buildings now. I wonder if simply removing the ability to make military units would be enough of a change and therefor a drain on the cities that would have to defend them.

 

[BenjaminEmbarec]

Nananananano. Seriously, don't take away the ability to build units. If ANYTHING give units built in settlements Held so they HAVE to be deffensive and stay in their city.... But four cities, even super cities putting out one unit a turn, really isn't that hard even for the other nations. I have eight Clan cities in one game popping out two Ogres per turn each. True, I'm playing Order clan for the hell of it, but the possibility is still there for the others as well... I had a similar ability back when I was still using Esus for the civic on them, although it was every two turns then. And THAT is on diety.

Now 50% penalty on production, rounded up? That I could get behind. Or leave the production as is, and give them a 50% penalty on COMMERCE. That way they won't super-tech, they'll still be able to produce [which flavor wise why COULDN'T they produce?] and maybe take away their Centaurs from the settlements for flavor reasons, or have it random [if possible] so that they can either ONLY produce centaurs or ONLY the human units....

Actually, that sounds kinda cool/flavorful and would make sense.

 

[AgentTBC]

I suppose the problem is that Kuriotates is overpowered... against the AI. But a bunch of the FFH civs are overpowered against the AI because the AI doesn't know how to handle the new mechanics and such. So the question is whether you want to balance it for play against the AI or play against other humans.

Against other humans it's true that you don't want to take away the ability of the settlements to build units. Not sure there is a good answer except to make the AI smarter, but anybody who could do that easily would find a lucrative career as a game developer.

 

[Thonnas]

I always felt like settlements should be prime targets for conscripting soldiers. After all, the venerable hero is often from some small village in the countryside. As they are more of the village, in contrast to the megalopli, they totally should have some commerce restrictions and certainly minimal/limited trade routes. It's too bad there isn't an easy way to implement c3 style waste/corruption, as more distant settlements would certainly be less affective than those in your backyard. Simple solution would be some flat reduction to commerce, and IMO production as well, but only when it comes to buildings. Getting materials and craftsmen to come out from the cities to help with the construction would certainly make producing buildings in the settlements more tedious, but training units (given the right building) would be unaffected.

For legends... make it double city/settlement culture. Of course you'd have to have some limit on it, otherwise it'd be a cultural win button at some point for the large cities, but having it double settlement culture basically means that the longer you wait to use it (like any good world spell) the more powerful it becomes (and the more epic your legends are). I'd probably cap it between 2-5k. Late in the game that could mean a border push, but wouldn't be terribly significant (though not worthless, either) for the large cities.

 

[bread smith]

One question about the Kuritates:
How do I actually build their big main cities? In FFH the first 4 settlers automatically built the big cities.

Now with Orbis, after having built the Capital (advanced start), all further cities are only Settlements.
Settlers just have the one icon called "build city" - but I'm only getting settlements by using it...

Where is the trick, please?

 

[Valkrionn]

You probably need to have a unit in the city use the "Promote Settlement" spell.