lanun

Why not take some example from another firaxis game.

Alpha Centauri. Or more specificalyl, the expansion, Alien Crossfire. It added a seafaring race. Their main thing was that they got extra production from ocean shelf tiles, I believe. As well as free naval yards (move movement and experience fro ships built in the city) when the appropriate tech was researched, rather than having to build them, and the free special ability to capture defeated enemy ships, which other factions had to buy for their units.

Also, alpha centaurii had sea improvements, which did generally make building at sea more viable. Kelp farms provided mroe food than land farms, and they spread naturally like forests. In addition, you could build either a tidal harness (more commerce than the equivilant land thing) or a mining platform (More production, but less than a land mine)

Overall, the pirates in that game did struggle a little for production, but ended up with much more food, and a little more commerce. I think they worked mostly well, might have been a little overpowered.
 
Well, some guys complain that water tiles are underpowered when compared with others...

Coastal tile, 2 food/2 gold
Riverside grassland tile with farm, civics agrarianism/aristocracy, sanitation teched, 4 food/3 gold
Riverside grassland tile with cottage, taxation teched, 2 food/6 gold

...looks like this is true. Water tiles need at least a minor buff. Perhaps +1 commerce at one point, foreign trade perhaps? Or a new building at optics... + 100% trade routes yield then would be a nice incentive to found cities at the coast, because of trade route mayhem... or make the building only supply 50% extra yield and give the lanun an UB... Food is usually supplied through water ressources...

On topic, it would be very thematic to give the lanun an UB, something like a pirate pub, at sailing perhaps...-

+10% maintenance, +1 happy, +1 happy with ale, +3 xp for ship units, or something...
 
A coastal city already has harbor (+50% trade routes) and lighthouse (+1 trade route), resulting in quite a good boost to trade, is a further boost needed ? lighthouses also make the basic tile 3 food/2 gold (for lanun). I can't remember the stats of pirate improvement stuff, but it is quite oomph. You can have one or two of these per city (most often two, if you try to have enougth coastal tiles).
 
Two Words: Pirate Ports

The Lanun can improve water tiles without resources..... do NOT underestimate this ability.... a Lanun city on a one tile isthmus will generate so much money from the water it'd wake Danalin up to start hiring accountants! :eek:
 
Yep, I know Pirate Coves are awesome, but that's a Lanun only feat. Other races still could use a late game improvement for coastal cities. Put it where you want, Astronomy or something. +1 commerce sounds alright for me.

Trade routes are pretty neat in coastal cities. Basic route + Lighthouse + GLighthouse + Foreign Trade + Inn + Tavern + Harbor = 8 routes with at least 2 commerce, even more for foreign trade routes/oversea routes. PER CITY.

But if you exclude Foreign Trade (most peole will want agrarianism anyway), the Great Lighthouse (AI) and the Tavern (way too late in the techtree), you have 3 routes with 175% yield. That isn't that much. And the discussion was about underpowered sea tiles, at least partly. And in the late game, your basic civ still has 2f/2c from one tile, which is veeeeeeeery low.
 
I think that there really need to be Features in the sea like there are on land. The sea all seems the same since there is nothing like Forests or Jungles to break up the monotony, change yields, slow units down, or effect combat odds. Things like Kept Forests and Coral Reefs could be nice additions, plus maybe some things more sinister.


I tried adding Coral using the Xenofungus graphics from the Planetfall Mod, but it really didn't look right. I'm thinking that the Tormented Souls graphics from the Lord of the Balors scenario could pass for kelp, although it might be nice to recolor them first.

I'd really like it if we could add tradewinds that make movement faster in certain directions while slowing it in others, but that sounds really difficult. Now that I think of it, I could probably make it work by setting set up different features for each of the 8 different direction and using 8 different <PythonOnMove> functions to make naval units entering a tradewind tile have a chance of automatically being pushed in the proper direction, but that sounds like it could be really complicated and would be impossible to teach the AI to use.

How about adding a Doldrums feature (which probably wouldn't need to have any real graphics, as it just represents an area where the wind is too weak to power a ship's sails) that reduces the trade yields and makes makes units moving though them have very high movement costs--perhaps enough that no ships could move multiple spaces though them per turn. Then, we could make the Fair Winds promotion grant flat movement costs, so ships that have casters on board to make their own wind can ignore this penalty and use the Doldrums to help them evade enemy ships. (Edit: I just realized that promotions cannot grant flat movement without granting flying in normal FfH, although they can in FF.)
 
sea features would be awesome indeed. btw, what is exactly the reasoning behind making sea tiles so crappy for all but Lanun? I wouldn't mind a default coast tile to yield 2 food tbh...
 
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