Mazatl: Feedback, and general questions

[WarKirby]

I've just started a game as the Mazatl. Playing with them for the past few hours. Playing with patch D, by the way. apologies if any of these things have changed since then

The first thing I noticed, is that they can build in jungles without cutting them down. I discovered this by accident, which is bad, I think. Shouldn't that be mentioned in their civilopedia entry?

I've noticed there are 3 kinds of "wet" terrain. Marshes, wetlands, and swamps. This is extremely confusing. What's the point of all of those? what are the differences between them? why are 3 needed, wouldn't 1 do?

I like the tactical flexibility they have. Essentially, all their units start with amphibious. This makes the amphibious promotion pointless for them, of course. So maybe it would be a good idea to add "Forbidden to aqquire: Amphibious" to the lizardman racial promo, just to save accidental misclicks and such.

I've noticed that my shapers can cast spring on Wetlands, which creates a swamp. Alarmingly, this destroys improvements on the tile with no warning or notification, and leaves you unable to rebuild them, until you use scorch. Which seems to take away the wetlands as well as the swamp, and reverts the terrain to grassland.

I'm thinking the civiliopedia entries for those spells need to be updated to reflect these new functionalities. I'm not sure if the spring thing is a bug or not, it doesn't feel right to be able to accidentally destroy your own improvements like that. maybe there should at least be some warning "will destroy the <improvement>"

Do the Mazatl have any way of spreading/creating jungle? similar to FoL's forest creation spell? There isn't a great deal of jungle outside my starting area. Also, how do you create deep jungle? does it just happen naturally? any way to influence it ?

Finally, the Mazatl swordsman model, doesn't look very good. 2 reasons.

1. The sword is badly positioned. It's sort of attached to the back of the hand, rather than being held. doesn't look right.

2. The style of sword doesn't seem to fit. I'm thinking something more along the lines of the curved swords used by priests of kalshekk, would be better.


more questions/comments/etc may be coming as I play farther in.

 

[Nessuno]

Same thing with destroying improvement happened to me when I first played the Mazatl. I could use some warning first time, but if I looked in civilopedia I would have noticed that swamp IS an improvement, and it would be predictable. Therefore it isn't needed (look below).
Hence there are two kinds of "wet" terrain, but anyway I don't know what for. Maybe it was needed for coding issues? But it doesn't bother me.
When the scorch spell reverts wetland to grassland it doesn't destroy deep jungle, deep jungle still can grow on grassland and as grassland and wetland yield same amount of food, I think there is no problem with using it to build improvement instead. I usually scorch swamps and spam cottages.
There is no way to manually spread wetlands and jungles and I think it shouldn't. It automatically spreads overtime first of all near rivers and quite slower anywhere else on grassland.

 

[WarKirby]

I could use some warning first time, but if I looked in civilopedia I would have noticed that swamp IS an improvement, and it would be predictable. Therefore it isn't needed (look below).

I have to disagree here. Because I had no idea what spring would do, due to having new, undocumented functionality.

It really needs an expanded tooltip, that explains what it does to wetlands, and a warning when casting it will destroy an improvement.

Oh, also, it seems spring is still castable when standing on a swamp, but it does nothing. Presumably not checking if the tile already contains a swamp..

 

[Nessuno]

You are right. I completely forgot about the spring description. Need to pay more attention when posting...
I agree about needing an extended tooltip and maybe the warning.
P.S. About the warning and my words "Therefore it isn't needed (look below)": again I mixed up, so I take those words back.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yeah, wetlands and marshes are redundant. wetlands ARE marshes, so they could easily be merged. Vehem said he wanted to do this, but I guess he has more important stuff on his mind right now

( swamps otoh are an improvement, not base terrain. so I'm fine with them )

 

[Humakty]

If I remember well, lizardman promo only gives no penalty for crossing rivers, whereas amphibious also gives no penalty attacking from a boat. So it's only partly useless.

 

[WarKirby]

If I remember well, lizardman promo only gives no penalty for crossing rivers, whereas amphibious also gives no penalty attacking from a boat. So it's only partly useless.

Nope, you remember incorrectly.

Lizardman promotion does both of those effects.

 

[Humakty]

Wow, Mazatl are even more Over Powered than I thought !

 

[Seven05]

The swamp is effectively their version of a farm aside from not being able to connect resources, so scorth away at will unless you need the extra food (increased with the tracking tech)

 

[WarKirby]

Why do they need their own version of a farm, though? They HAVE farms. and you can build them in deep jungle without removing it.

 

[Sephi]

swamp gives less food to other civs
wetlands sometimes automatically create swamps (if no other improvement exists)
with the spring spell swamps are faster to make than farms
trails give commerce to swamps

Both jungle civs can use a lot of food (slavery/specialists) and jungle spammed with farms is weird.

 

[Seven05]

Swamp also doesn't require jungles but at the same time it doesn't destroy the forest like building a farm would so the forest can eventually turn into a deep jungle for you.

 

[WarKirby]

I don't see how giving food to other civs matters. You're generally only building things in your own territory, and I never, ever lose cities. or at least, never for very long.

 

[zup]

Against AI it mean very little. But in multiplayer it gives a diplomatic advantage.

"Look, I don't want your land, too much hassle to make it useful. Lets just leave each other alone."

And yet another useless war avoided.

 

[WarKirby]

It would be nice if the AI was smart enough to realise that when declaring war...

 

[WarKirby]

Swamp also doesn't require jungles but at the same time it doesn't destroy the forest like building a farm would so the forest can eventually turn into a deep jungle for you.

Are you saying Forests can turn into jungles? or did you mean to say jungle instead of forest.

 

[Sephi]

yeah, sometimes forests turn into deep jungle

 

[HadesScorn]

Forests on flat terrain have a % of turning into Deep Jungle every turn. This chance is increased by their base terrain and whether the terrain is irrigated via a river/lake or not. Casting Spring allows you to upgrade the tile's base terrain, which affects the chance of the forest to change.

Desert- No chance, shouldn't have a forest on it in the first place.
Plains- low chance. I play marathon, and without casting Spring it can take a few dozen turns
Grassland- middling chance.
Wetlands- high chance.

Trails in Deep Jungle grant a free commerce. As a result, in my games I almost always try to power out an early worker and go on an upgrade spree. Well before cottages become available I'm able to have several high-population cities with middling income powering out workers and settlers for an early expansion rush. Late game, grabbing the +1 food in swamp tech allows you to switch to the civic that uses surplus food for military production and power out a massive army.

Finally, trails do not work for commandos! This is a huge advantage in games against raider civilizations. I have thanked my lucky stars several times as Clan riders barely make it past my borders.

 

[Zurai]

Wetlands and marshes shouldn't be combined - or, at least, if they are, marshes should be enhanced for lizardmen. Both lizardmen civs suffer the same -1 food, +25% build time penalty for marshes that every other civ does.

And, to get technical, marshes, wetlands, and swamps are different. From Wikipedia:

In North America, swamps are usually regarded as including a large amount of woody vegetation, but elsewhere this may not necessarily apply, such as in African swamps dominated by papyrus. By contrast a marsh in North America is a wetland without woody vegetation, or elsewhere, a wetland without woody vegetation which is shallower and has less open water surface than a swamp. A mire (or quagmire) is a low-lying wetland of deep, soft soil or mud that sinks underfoot.with large algae covering the waters surface.

Although to be fair, both marshes and swamps are types of wetlands.

 

[Breez]

My only issue with the Mazatl is that their trails are hard for me to physically see to know where I still need to put them.