Leaders

Thalassicus

Bytes and Nibblers
Joined
Nov 9, 2005
Messages
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Location
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I've created a new menu at the top of the website, and all details of the mod components have been consolidated into that one place for easy reference. This thread is now just for feedback on the Leaders component.

Website: civmodding.wordpress.com


These are some of my main criteria for improving leaders:

  • Novelty
    Does the leader dramatically change gameplay?
    .
  • Active
    Active bonuses are generally more exciting than passive effects.
    .
  • Theme
    Do the leader's unique characteristics fit a cohesive theme?
    .
  • Uniqueness
    Are the leader's bonuses different from anything else we can get in the game?
    .
  • Realism
    Does it fit the leader and civilization historically?
    .
  • Time
    Early effects are more enjoyable than late ones, since we can use them more. Late effects therefore need to be more powerful than early ones.
    .
  • Persistence
    Bonuses like strength and movement speed are short term, while promotions that persist when upgraded are long term. Buildings are also long term.
    .
  • Generality
    When a leader is better than everyone on a particular map script, and not good on other maps, it's not really a choice at all.
    .
  • Ease of implementation
    Most things fall into two distinct categories of hours to complete (writing new code) or minutes to complete (changing a few numbers).
Due to the "Generality" criterion, I strongly feel unique air and naval units in the Civ series are underwhelming. They cannot capture cities, don’t benefit from things like terrain bonuses or great generals, have limited promotion capability, and so on. In particular, unique aircraft are so late they aren’t nearly as significant as an early ground unit like the Legion. For these reasons, I replaced the Zero, B17, and Ship of the Line with UUs/UBs that also have important historical significance.
 
Yeah i just saw this in the mod browser. Downloaded and installed it, went to start a new game to see what's different.. and all the descriptions look unchanged in the setup screen.

Did you forget to change those or did my mod install go haywire?
 
Ohhhh nevermind, you just tweaked the unique units, not the leader abilities lol.

ok, well thats why i campaigned you in the other thread to put the details in the mod browser (especially whats different between previous & new version on updates),

It's a pain to alt-tab out and have to run here and look through all the threads to find out whats different.
 
On the whole, improving the UU's and UB's seemed a more logical choice. The Iroquois and Ottoman abilities are very situational, and improving them too much would make them overpowered in certain situations, while still relatively useless in other situations, depending on the map and terrain. I think it's better to leave those two as just flavor, not the core of the leader.

The Arab ability was adjusted for this mod, and is shown on the leader selection screen.

I did consider giving Washington an additional +1 sight, but improving the UU's seems a better route. I'm avoiding improving his tile purchase ability, or there'd be balance problems with a similar social policy where, when combined, tiles could be purchased for almost zero.

I'm still on the fence over whether Montezuma's UA needs to be improved more, or his UU/UB. All three are rather weak. I'm going to play a full game through on immortal with him to get a better feel of how he plays.

I can't put the details in the mod browser. There's a limit of 1024 characters. I'd run out of room to put a version history there too... the basic description I have already takes up most of the space available.
 
America always starts next to river tiles, it's in the game's starting location files. The name was probably a remnant of that, I doubt it gave a particular river-related bonus.
 
That's very true, it could simply be a legacy of the start-along-river setting. Still, that leaves a mystery as to what "FasterAlongRiver" was intended for.
 
Since you seem to have the handle on buffing units, can you buff Scouts to get +1 speed for each era? Otherwise they are pretty much useless...
 
Since you seem to have the handle on buffing units, can you buff Scouts to get +1 speed for each era? Otherwise they are pretty much useless...

They're not useless. Unlike Civ 4, you aren't in a huge rush at the start. That makes them a pretty good 1st build.
 
BTW, would it be overpowered if, instead of making them cheaper, you removed the iron requirement for the Mowhawk warrior? The Iroquois weren't exactly known ironworkers.
 
That's very true, it could simply be a legacy of the start-along-river setting. Still, that leaves a mystery as to what "FasterAlongRiver" was intended for.

It likely was meant to be exactly as it sounds - I'm guessing that the Manifest Destiny ability was supposed to have some sort of link to the Lewis & Clark expedition, hence something to do with rivers.
 
You should make the minutemen take an extremely short amount of time to build (1 or 2 turns) because that's why they are called minutemen, they'd be ready for battle on a minute's notice.
 
I do wish the Longhouse effect happened on Jungles as well just like the UA. But then an Iroquois Trading Post Jungle might be a little too good...
 
I did actually originally change Minutemen to have 50%:hammers: cost of Musketmen, something that has precedent with Bismark's pikemen. Any other opinions on the subject?

@The Boz
Scouts are a very early unit shared by all civs, so it's a little tricky to adjust them without upsetting game balance. The first one is still very useful for popping ruins, and later in the game you can build one for the +1 sight range bonus, which can be valuable. Overall I do agree they're sort of weak.

@AlienFromBeyond
That's actually a really interesting idea, would make them less situationally dependent upon forests alone. Currently that civ is entirely up to luck in map generation. It would also synergise fantastically with Universities. I'll make a test mod to play a game through as the Iroquois, and think about how it affects gameplay, to see if it might work or would be too strong. It would certainly improve the faction, but when you compare the Iroquois to other civs like China or Babylon they really are quite situational/weak.
 
I did actually originally change Minutemen to have 50%:hammers: cost of Musketmen, something that has precedent with Bismark's pikemen. Any other opinions on the subject?
-50% is great. maybe make them weaker as well
 
[*]Harun al-Rashid - Arabia
2:commerce:/city (up from 1)
Bazaar: 2 merchant specialist slots (up from 1)

Would just make his UA +10% trade route income, personally.

Bazaar was pretty solid as it was, IMO, though it'll be interesting to see how the extra slot changes things.

.
[*]Montezuma - Aztec
Jaguar: Woodsman promotion (faster movement in forests and jungle).
Floating Garden: -25%:hammers:, and 0:commerce:/turn (down from 1).
.

Floating Garden was already one of the best UBs in the game, IMO. Don't see the need to improve it further.

I like the Jag improvement. Would improve the Aztec UA though. Maybe have culture yield increase with age, like CS bonuses do?

.
[*]Suleiman - Ottomans
Janissary: -15%:hammers:.
Sihahi: 4 sight range (up from 3)
.

That kinda breaks the Ottomans though. I think balance-wise the Ottoman UUs are good enough to actually make you play them despite the craptastic UA, and making them even stronger makes them almost OP imo.

Those are just first impressions though. Good stuff, I'll try this out.
 
BTW, would it be overpowered if, instead of making them cheaper, you removed the iron requirement for the Mowhawk warrior? The Iroquois weren't exactly known ironworkers.

I've been thinking about this for several days, it's an interesting possibility. The unit is already quite strong though, so I'm worried making it spammable might be too much of a change.

@Vordeo
There's not an option for %-based trade route income, sadly, neither is there a way to have Montezuma's culture income increase with era.

Regarding the Ottomans, I never see them ranked among powerful civs, in any prominent strategies, or high in polls, and something just feels "off" about them. I do agree they have good UU's. The Janissary cannot be upgraded to from previous units however, and obsoletes quickly with the Rifleman. Perhaps giving some class of their units the Amphibious promotion?

@player1 fanatic
Thank you for pointing that out, I had a slight error on that xml entry.


Based on feedback, I've made some updates, and details are in the Version History of the first post.
 
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