Leaders first draft

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I think you put too much emphasis on the criteria and not enough on the practical gameplay outcomes: Ahriman and mystikx21 provided good real examples of how your approach is good on paper but less so ingame.

what's more important, the voyage or the destination? I think the end result is more important than having a design that looks right.

war is a big part of Civ5, more than other games. it ultimately is just a choice in playstyle, do I want to go to war or not? there's a similar issue with the vanilla UA, but the issue there is on the Tall-Wide spectrum instead of the Peace-War one.

I think both options have the same drawback: i.e. they limit the player too much instead of rewarding him for choosing the "flavourful" style while still letting him stray from the path.

this is way in the OP I've tried to come up with a compromise to have the strength of both approachs while getting rid of the drawbacks

 

[Ahriman]

works for a variety of strategies

My complaint is that it works for too many strategies - it works well for wide. I think it is a mistake to try to generate leader abilities that work for a wide variety of strategies. That makes them generic.

I think the game is more fun when leaders are suited to particular strategies better; ie when the leader you pick changes your platystyle. FFH was really good at this; Civ5 is better than Civ4, but still isn't great, particularly with all the new civs, some of which do not really support a coherent style. The UAs and UBs should fit together to favor a particular playstyle; if you don't want to follow that playstyle, then pick a different civ.
And I think the goal with Ghandi should be to make him favor Tall cities with large populations over Wide. The vanilla ability does this. IMO, your ability does not.

Anyway, I've complained enough about this already. If the final decision is to go with the +1 pop per building effect, then so be it.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I agree FFH is a brilliant example of how any given civ should guide the gameplay towards a direction.

each civ pushes the player towards a playstyle. the same is true for each religion, and some civ+religion combos go together like bread and butter.

however, you can still choose to play in a very unflavourful way. there's nothing that prevents you from doing that, there's just some things that would recommend you do otherwise.

you wanna play Ashen Veil Bannor and burn the world? be my guest. the AI won't do that, but a player can which adds replayability.

similarly, you can play peacefully as Doviello. your unique assets won't be exploited as much as they could, but there's nothing that makes you particularly bad at playing peacefully compared to other civs. it's just that some civs have some explicit benefits for being peaceful and you don't.

this is why I don't think the fact that the vanilla India UA allows you to be a good warmonger is an issue. you wanna do that? go ahead and have fun, what's the problem? it's not like you're better at war than peace anyway, and the AI still won't play Gandhi as a warmonger anyway. more freedom to the player.

otoh, the fact that the vanilla India UA explicitly prevents the player from REXing IS an issue. it's not that others are better at it than you, you just can't period. this takes away options from the player which is bad. thus why in the OP I suggested ways to keep the good about the vanilla UA while removing/minimizing the bad.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

His war elephants appear later, are slower, and are more defensive.

did you make them melee instead of ranged? if not, I don't see the point of denying them an early mounted melee unit making chariot archers useless in the process.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Thal, could you post how the leaders' Start Bias are set up in VEM?

alongside with the Civilization Analysis which also includes G&K info :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=475038

we can use that to start thinking of GEM start bias

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

what are people's thoughts on the hunnic battering ram?

with 1upt, a melee siege unit weak on defense doesn't work very well imo. it could be nice to have them work like a GG ( so you can stack them with another unit for defense ) that gives a big vs city bonus to a melee unit standing on its tile . alternatively you can make that a smaller bonus to all adjacent melee units ( more akin to flanking, GG and discipline so this is probably better for the AI ) .

actually you could probably just give them a unique GG with this ability and remove rams altogether.


also, could the egyptian burial tomb be changed to better support a tall empire? happines per population would be nice.

 

[Naeven]

I agree the battering ram need some rework, I specialy don't like how it replaces spearman.
Sure with Levys it's not that big of a problem but how about making it a replace catapult that you get earlier (bronze working?), give it a goodie promotion to keep for the siege line.

It already uppgrades to Trebutchet.

 

[Zai]

This may be sort of out-there, but I really feel like the unique improvements a few of the civs get are kind of above and beyond the normal flavor other civs have. Unique units are cool, but they last an age then disappear, unique buildings are useful longer but are never seen, the improvements however are used throughout the game, are continually upgraded, and really stand out when playing as or against those civs. I would actually suggest a nerf to this, but by spreading these improvements to other civs they might make a little sense on, and then adding a +1 bonus to other civs for normal improvements they might be known for.

Moai could be renamed totems and used by pretty much any tribal influenced civ.
Terrace farms aren't really that unique to begin with, pretty much every Asian civ has these for rice.
Podwhatever are just windmills right? Give them to every European civ.

Then the odd civs out could get that +1 bonus to mines, lumbermills, villages or farms.

This just gives every civ/leader an extra thing to think about, some sort of improvement strategy which I think is a really good thing to have.

I understand this is probably a really odd suggestion, I only make it because I think it's fairly simple to change. I guess other than the part where a new UB or UU would be needed for the three civs who lost something unique from this.

 

[Ahriman]

Polders aren't windmills. They are a form of land reclamation, whereby marshy areas are surrounded by embankments and are drained, and so coastal marshlands are turned into productive use. The Netherlands has been doing this for centuries, an has reclaimed huge amounts of land, most of which are now below sea level. This really is a special Dutch characteristic; they have done this more than any other civilization, and even now the Netherlands has arguably the best coastal engineers in the world.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder

 

[Zai]

Ah yes, that explains the marsh restriction. I haven't played as the Netherlands yet so was just going off the icon. Still that wiki link includes a long list of other nations that have used "polders" so I don't think it's unreasonable to give the improvement to a few more civs. It's not a cultural characteristic, it's just regional circumstance that they have built so many.

 

[mystikx21]

Most civs have universities too. I am not sure why UIs are worse or better than UBs. UU effects can be limited to a unit but many are upgradeable features that last the entire game.
The significance for the Dutch or Inca is to represent civil engineering in a particular way. Best to keep it minimal to marshes and flood plains (hills and mountain effects for terraces).

 

[mitsho]

The thing I dislike about polders is that they are most efficient with floodplains that are most often found in deserts (ingame). That's just weird, for the Dutch to excel with a Egypt Start... So I wouldn't be opposed to a change there. Limiting the Polder to just marches however just makes them hit-or-miss, incredibly strong if I have marches and a non-entity if not. Could they be made into a coastal UI (on water) that provides production? But I do not feel particularly strong about it anways...

Going back to my Spain-Mongolia-Germany Switcheroo, I feel a good German Replacement UA would be "(Prussian) Discipline and (Swabian) Precision" (or Discipline and Precision): Units need 20% less Experience Points for each new Promotion and Military Training Buildings (Barracks->Armory->etc.) grant 1 each. This way, Germany stays a warmongering civ, but one that goes towards specialized units and the science helps them keep up, especially with wide empires. I would change the Landsknecht a bit, perhaps by granting it the Cameraderie promotion of the Vanguard unit line, or not.