[Module] Maogata

[Calavente]

again, just lurker comments :
having %vs cajar + 75 turns might be a bit too much (or not).

I'd rather you have both the %vs cajar
+ prey can be civ (maybe not at first, maybe based on %of game) (I mean, if you launch the hunt spell at 25% of total turns of the game (that value is already being calculated somewhere), 25% of the prey are other civs (or maybe 10% +turn%)

Is it possible that when targetting the civs (not barbs) the prey are assigned not really randomly but either :
-more chance for stronger strength units (or arcane)
-or more chance for high xp units +heroes.

As for effect of prey :
it would be good if prey has no effect on cajar and cajar +1 and only on cajar >= 2 (beware of prey giving +20% against cajar 2 + +30%against cajar 3 ...etc +50%against cajar 6 for a grand total of +110%against your unit) maybe a small cumulative 10% would be ok.
or instead, maybe the "prey" promotion gives +25%xp per combat => more xp means harder to kill.

Or, maybe you can have odd "cajar" give +1 and the even number cajar give "+2FS" => thus you half the effect of the cajar promotion, but still make it a good promotion.

I hope you won't use all the propositions ever made as in the end there is the risk of nerfing the hunt system too much.

lastly : about more "tier IV" units.
it is not really that I want them to have stronger units (well, if you nerf/balance the cajar system, maybe they won't be so overpowered and you'll want them to have more tier IV units.) It was mainly for them to have something to aim for and something they want to upgrade too.

On the no-weapon theme :
-They have no bronze-iron weapons. so Melee is not really more interesting than recon.
Cajar works for all. thus, even if initially weaker, recon can be stronger than melee.
thus I hope you'll have some interesting things to propose to the melee line (more than theire ability to get shockII, coverII, City Raiding, that the recon line can't get).
(maybe you can propose for them (melee) a special equipement at iron working /mithril working : said equipement gives them some instant bonus (+2/+1), costs money : removes the ability to get any more stackable "cajar" promotion. => one can chose to buy the equipement to many units to have a strong strike force... or to not buy it and hope to get the "cajar" promotion out of some "prey" that were dispersed into the attacked city. One can chose to recycle the old 7times cajar unit with the equipement, or not buy the equipement, him hoping to get 1 more cajar trophy to his belt.


For equipements from any "blacksmith" /outfitter...ect. I think you'll want to disable.
I propose that you do not. I think it wouldn't be too unthematical for some of the Maogata to play wise and use a bit of equipment (plates, moutain kit......Etc).

 

[Swinkscalibur]

Yeah, I guess I made a few errors in python. Thanks for finding them. I thought I had found them all. I had figured out that PromotionInStack ignores the unit with the promotion, but didn't get around to fixing it yet. Did you fix it by adding a python requirement, or by making a second spell. Also something else I found but haven't had a chance to change (simple fix). You might want to limit the spell to Maogata units. Not doing so allows friendly (or hidden) units use your unit as a gate as well. Also the enchantment infusion boost should get a maogata requirement as well (for the same reason).

 

[Viatos]

Suggestions and Commentary:

No Sage building early hurts their Arcane path a lot; possible for a Mage Guild UU to fix this? Had an idea for an "Echo Chamber" - +1 , 2 sages allowed, +1 Sage , training bonus as usual.

Switch Hunting Grounds bonus from fur to deer. Thematic and advantageous.

Hunting line can train and carry hawks. Intentional?

Chearsul's unique ability, unless I've missed something, is a huge waste of nodes. Why would you use it and not pick up an actual Infusion like Fire or Body?

Sea Serpents can become prey. Realistically, you're never killing these. Things like lich summons or meteors might also be applicable here.

AI will probably never figure out the worldspell, so that's a downside. The mechanic is interesting but extremely random, compensated by the potential for immense power; little too much of a roulette for me, but it's fun while it lasts. Interesting in that it strongly encourages you to send out your Recon as far away as they can get to kill as many barbs as possible, heightening the chances of Prey in lairs back home. Frustrating when there's a ten-goblin stack and the one you want is at the bottom; is it possible to have an ability like the Marksman/Guardsman interaction for Prey and Maogata units?

Chearsul steamrolls really fast. Standard map, standard speed, no special spawning options; turn 130, strength 17 base, 92xp (level 12 with Charismatic). If you can find and down two or three Prey, he becomes more or less unstoppable: Mobility II, no terrain costs, might as well be flying as he charges for bonus after bonus. He can outrun anything and it's not like hillgiants could gank him anyway; he doesn't have march, but with all those first strikes he won't lose strength very often, so a moot point. Subdue Animal doesn't hurt either, especially since flavorstart includes jungle and jungle includes Raptors.

I'm in deep wilderness with Chearsul now, popped a lair and got three diseased corpses led by an Azer...with three cyklops and two hillgiants in the area. That entire force did a grand total of 0 damage over the course of 2 turns of assault thanks to first strikes from Cajar.

Ashar can be sacrificed for Tiger Blood and also have the Hunter's Prize ability.

So it's Emperor, I build three random cities and spammed cottages, my economy is awesome, I'm doing nothing but spamming warriors for the Great Hunt, and Chearsul has like a billion strength and two billion first strikes; he could probably take Auric Ascended at this point. Almost turn 200, yet to even use an infusion, no economy techs except what I needed for Horseback Riding.

Just a suggestion out of personal preference, but what if the Great Hunt added something like Jheral's Lifedrinker promo to the whole civ, where each unit they kill (any unit, anywhere) gives them a 1% strength bonus, but they can only increase the bonus when the worldspell is active - say, for 20 turns. Possibly make it a ritual or something similar to cooldown the worldspell, so you could use it more often during war instead of feeling pressured to pop it every time it's up.

 

[shoggi]

Thanks for the feedback.
I will go through it point by point.

Suggestions and Commentary:

No Sage building early hurts their Arcane path a lot; possible for a Mage Guild UU to fix this? Had an idea for an "Echo Chamber" - +1 , 2 sages allowed, +1 Sage , training bonus as usual.

I like the idea of the unique Mage Guild. Wanted to have one anyway, but couldn't think of a good one. Could have the flavor that the smarter maogata try out new things to stop the voices there, discovering other stuff along the way.

Switch Hunting Grounds bonus from fur to deer. Thematic and advantageous.

Makes sense. Will do that.

Hunting line can train and carry hawks. Intentional?

I thought about blocking them, but i see no real reason why. I know you could argue that using birds as scouts is against their flavor, since their all about doing things by hand, but it's not that an important mechanic in my opinion, that it warrants blocking.

Chearsul's unique ability, unless I've missed something, is a huge waste of nodes. Why would you use it and not pick up an actual Infusion like Fire or Body?

Like is said a while ago, i don't like the ability much myself. It's more or less a placeholder mechanic until i figure out his exact flavor better and think of a fitting abiltiy.

Sea Serpents can become prey. Realistically, you're never killing these. Things like lich summons or meteors might also be applicable here.

Oh, yeah. Sea Serpents. I actually had a kraken becoming prey once, was about to change it so that it doesn't target water units, but totally forgot.
Also good thinking about summons or fireballs and stuff. Have to block summoned or at least units with a duration from it.

AI will probably never figure out the worldspell, so that's a downside. The mechanic is interesting but extremely random, compensated by the potential for immense power; little too much of a roulette for me, but it's fun while it lasts. Interesting in that it strongly encourages you to send out your Recon as far away as they can get to kill as many barbs as possible, heightening the chances of Prey in lairs back home. Frustrating when there's a ten-goblin stack and the one you want is at the bottom; is it possible to have an ability like the Marksman/Guardsman interaction for Prey and Maogata units?


Chearsul steamrolls really fast. Standard map, standard speed, no special spawning options; turn 130, strength 17 base, 92xp (level 12 with Charismatic). If you can find and down two or three Prey, he becomes more or less unstoppable: Mobility II, no terrain costs, might as well be flying as he charges for bonus after bonus. He can outrun anything and it's not like hillgiants could gank him anyway; he doesn't have march, but with all those first strikes he won't lose strength very often, so a moot point. Subdue Animal doesn't hurt either, especially since flavorstart includes jungle and jungle includes Raptors.

I'm in deep wilderness with Chearsul now, popped a lair and got three diseased corpses led by an Azer...with three cyklops and two hillgiants in the area. That entire force did a grand total of 0 damage over the course of 2 turns of assault thanks to first strikes from Cajar.

The AI is actually blocked from playing them for the moment. Main reason is the worldspell (and their inability to keep good units alive). Apart from them being to stupid to understand HOW to use it properly I would have to make a clever requirement for them, to make them understand at least roughly WHEN they should use it.

I assumed the Cajar system can get out of hand pretty fast (especially now that you can locate prey rather easily) but i wanted to hear some game feedback from others first before make any lasting changes.
If the new magic system is in i could make the locate prey spell have a rather high mana cost, so that you can't use it too often.

Ashar can be sacrificed for Tiger Blood and also have the Hunter's Prize ability.

Somewhat intended. They start with Tiger Blood, which allows that and it sounded like an interesting idea.
Does it still give the promotion to the whole stack? I thought it was supposed to be changed to one tiger per promotion.
Anyway, will probably remove that. Doesn't do much on itself anyway. Was just a flavor thing.

So it's Emperor, I build three random cities and spammed cottages, my economy is awesome, I'm doing nothing but spamming warriors for the Great Hunt, and Chearsul has like a billion strength and two billion first strikes; he could probably take Auric Ascended at this point. Almost turn 200, yet to even use an infusion, no economy techs except what I needed for Horseback Riding.

Just a suggestion out of personal preference, but what if the Great Hunt added something like Jheral's Lifedrinker promo to the whole civ, where each unit they kill (any unit, anywhere) gives them a 1% strength bonus, but they can only increase the bonus when the worldspell is active - say, for 20 turns. Possibly make it a ritual or something similar to cooldown the worldspell, so you could use it more often during war instead of feeling pressured to pop it every time it's up.

Hmmm... your last idea sounds kind of interesting. Will think about it for a while, but don't expect it to appear in that exact form, or in the next few versions.

What i will do,for the next version, is tone down the great hunt a bunch.
1. Delay between casts increased to 75 turns.
2. Targeting of other civs beside barbs allowed.
2.1 Prevent targeting of sea critters and temporary units.
3. Give the Prey promotion a bonus vs. Cajar. For the moment this would be a static bonus, since the possibility for it to count promotions is not in yet. With good luck it will be in RifE 1.31. We'll see. For now, I'm thinking of somewhere between 25% and 50%. Will see what works best.

 

[Calavente]

for the "find prey spell".
maybe have 2 spells :
1)cost not a lot, useable by any unit: "find nearest prey" : google dot toward the prey that is nearest to the caster.
2)costs more, useable only in city (maybe with a tech ? cartography?) that works as the current one : indicates all the preys.

Would it be interesting to have the worldspell need at least hunting and mysticism (as it is a religious hunt and as it is a hunt )

for the 'anti cajar' promotion : your idea will make it harder for Cajar 1, but it will become easier for further cajar.

Is it instead possible that each great hunt searches mostly for "high or high xp" preys ?
thus, you won't have easy wolfs becoming prey when nearby cyclops are wandering. (to show that the great hunt is a show of strength and not only on finding the prey)

 

[shoggi]

And now to comment on Calaventes thoughts (not the ones he wrote while i wrote this post, the ones before that), which i forgot to say anything about.

again, just lurker comments :
having %vs cajar + 75 turns might be a bit too much (or not).

We'll see.

Is it possible that when targetting the civs (not barbs) the prey are assigned not really randomly but either :
-more chance for stronger strength units (or arcane)
-or more chance for high xp units +heroes.

Could probably do that. Have to think about that.

As for effect of prey :
it would be good if prey has no effect on cajar and cajar +1 and only on cajar >= 2 (beware of prey giving +20% against cajar 2 + +30%against cajar 3 ...etc +50%against cajar 6 for a grand total of +110%against your unit) maybe a small cumulative 10% would be ok.
or instead, maybe the "prey" promotion gives +25%xp per combat => more xp means harder to kill.

Have to wait until Valkrionn or someone makes that change anyway. For now, only a static bonus against cajar. Will talk to him, to see how he plans to do it and what is possible with that system.

Or, maybe you can have odd "cajar" give +1 and the even number cajar give "+2FS" => thus you half the effect of the cajar promotion, but still make it a good promotion.

I have some ideas to make the "social and political position" aspect of the cajar flavor tie in better with the actual gained promotions, so a more dynamic bonus system is coming sometime anyway.

I hope you won't use all the propositions ever made as in the end there is the risk of nerfing the hunt system too much.

Nah, i pick out what i like and what i think will make it better. Could be that the next change i have wrote in the post above make it be too much on the bad side, but then i have at least a notion where the best point of balance is.

lastly : about more "tier IV" units.
it is not really that I want them to have stronger units (well, if you nerf/balance the cajar system, maybe they won't be so overpowered and you'll want them to have more tier IV units.) It was mainly for them to have something to aim for and something they want to upgrade too.

On the no-weapon theme :
-They have no bronze-iron weapons. so Melee is not really more interesting than recon.
Cajar works for all. thus, even if initially weaker, recon can be stronger than melee.
thus I hope you'll have some interesting things to propose to the melee line (more than theire ability to get shockII, coverII, City Raiding, that the recon line can't get).
(maybe you can propose for them (melee) a special equipement at iron working /mithril working : said equipement gives them some instant bonus (+2/+1), costs money : removes the ability to get any more stackable "cajar" promotion. => one can chose to buy the equipement to many units to have a strong strike force... or to not buy it and hope to get the "cajar" promotion out of some "prey" that were dispersed into the attacked city. One can chose to recycle the old 7times cajar unit with the equipement, or not buy the equipement, him hoping to get 1 more cajar trophy to his belt.

The melee line has at least some unique things going for them. The Amparsho (Axeman unique) is a rather decent defender, with 5 defense, but only 3 attack.
The Spirit of the pride (Champion unique) is immortal, but with only 5 strength. I had fears that this would be to good that early, but i have not heard any comments about it yet. Maybe nobody tried to go for melee with them yet.
The upgrade only Fury is a really good version of the berserker. I don't actually know how much money it costs to upgrade, since that is somehow based on the difference in cost between the unit you want to upgrade from and the unit you upgrade to. Well, i made the Fury cost more, so i hope it is at least somewhat expensive to upgrade it. Everything is better than the berserker and the collateral is a lot better. more targets, more damage.

For equipements from any "blacksmith" /outfitter...ect. I think you'll want to disable.
I propose that you do not. I think it wouldn't be too unthematical for some of the Maogata to play wise and use a bit of equipment (plates, moutain kit......Etc).

I actually plan to ignore the master buildings and guilds completely. The will change anyway in future versions of RifE. Until then i will do nothing with them. Enjoy them while they're still there.

 

[Swinkscalibur]

What if the worldspell added a duration promotion to all Maogata units (possibly limited with unitcombat) with a PythonPostCombatWon that looks at the strength of the defeated unit. Then like the lifedrinker promotion the victorious units strength is increased by (DefeatedUnitsBaseStrength * 1%).

Ex) Defeating a lowly wolf (strength 2) increases strength by 2%
Ex) Defeating a Cyclops (strength 11) increases strength by 11%

The duration could be 25 turns with an addition 50 turns between hunts. That gives a total of 75 turns between casts.

 

[Iskar Jarak]

with that i would think that factoring in the hunting units strength would be important.
a strength 2 unit should get more bonus from killing a strength 2 unit, than a strength 8 killing a strength 5

 

[shoggi]

lol
I was just reminded of my first design approach to the great hunt.
It started with exactly the same thought, after the initial concept of the great hunt was done: The benefit of a prey-kill should be greater the weaker the hunter is in relation to the prey.
So i made this whole system based on the hunter/prey strength difference. They got a certain number of bounty points per kill (based on that strength difference) and when you reached a specific number of bounty points you got a cajar level (at this time, the cajar system had 12 levels).
Until i realized something (Maybe you noticed it too at this point). I just created a clunkier, less flexible version of the xp system.
Because that is exactly what xp does. Giving you a certain number of points based on the difference between yours and the enemy strength. If those points reach a specific number you gain a level and get a promotion. Though of course, the xp system does this better and with more choices available.



Like I said, the next version will include the toned down, all civs targeting version of the great hunt, to see how it plays.

That said, I'm kind of divided on what to do with it after that.

With all ideas and variations suggested here, the core concept stays the same, which is good.
You pop your worldspell, you send your units out to kill stuff, they get stronger from it. Hooray!

One one hand, i like the simplicity of it. You get a promotion, it makes you stronger by one point (and a little extra FS). On the other hand, the lifedrinker variant allows way more balancing and fine tuning.The idea i had with the social/political positions works easier with the straight promotion approach but would be doable with the lifedrinker variant.
I'm kinda leaning more to the percentage gain myself after some tought.
Ahhhh, questions, questions!

Anyway, on to something i mentioned before:

Political/Social Positions

To explain:

Imagine that the participants in the great hunt are mostly younger maogata, with the occasional older one thrown in. The young ones need to prove themselves to be accepted and find their place in society. The old ones don't participate as often. Why? Because they have more important things to do. Sure the Great Hunt is really important to their society, but so is managing the pride. Somebody has to assign guards (or be the guard for that matter), be the lore keeper or oversee works in their city. They just can't leave for something that has no (large) impact on their continued survival as a civilization. Sure, it brings some food in, but so do the herds of domestic animals they keep and the plantation outside the walls, which have to be managed as well. So why should an older hunter, who beat down a mammoth, killed some pit beast, ran through hail of fire to rend an amurite archmage apart with his hands and took down a beasts of agares by himself, still bother with the hunt. He earned his postition (as highest elder in the council, leader of the guard, probably whatever he wants at that point). He doesn't need to prove anything, anymore.


How would that be represented ingame?

I'm thinking about events. Once one of your units reaches a certain success while participating in the great hunt (how that is measured is based on what concept i will go with finally), there would be a chance that he triggers an event. There will be more events, based on how good a cajar he is.
The event would go something like this:

Your <Unit> is known as a strong and resourceful hunter by most maogata in the pride and has reached a certain fame among his peers. The council of elder hunters decided to grant him a position appropriate to his skills.

- Member of the Guard (Promotion that gives + ?% defensive strength, chance that he can't take part in the great hunt anymore)
- Scribe (Promotion that gives science and culture to the city he is in, chance that he can't take part in the great hunt anymore)
- Something else (Can't think of anything else of the top of my hat, this is just an example anyway)
- Decline (He thinks he is destined for something greater)

Now this would be an event that one or more of your units could get. i mean, the guard has more than one member, and in a well populated city, there will be more than one scribe running around.


How would that chance to not take part in the hunt work?

I'm not sure actually. If i go with the timed approach (promotion with duration, during which they can get prey kills), i would cut down the time they have that promotion, because they are occupied with doing their job.


Can the unit get a better "job" later on?

I'm not sure either. For some jobs i think it should be possible, for some, not so much.
I think it would be easier if once your unit has a job, it won't be hit by the events anymore.

Other events that require a far higher cajar "level" could have more consequences.

So you got some of the events and either declined each time, or you haven't gotten any events yet(since it's still a chance) and have reached a high cajar level.
Now you've gotten to the VIP stuff. (remember, still all examples that i came up with on the fly)

Pride Leader/City Leader - Can't take part in the hunt anymore at all, maintenance bonus, increased production, more trade routes. maybe an additional trait instead , whatever. huge boost.
Lore Keeper - Huge Science and Culture boost, maybe able to build a national wonder. Can't take part in the hunt like the city leader, loses all his cajar boosts, since he can't really keep in shape in that job.
Leader of the elder council - diplomacy boost, trains other units, don't know, can't think of anything at the moment.
Eternal Hunter - Won't get any events anymore. If i go with the hunting duration thing, he would gain increased duration for all the following hunts.

This event, or rather, each separate choice, should only be choseable once (well, except the eternal hunter). there is only on pride leader and one lore keeper. If that job is taken, it's taken.


Like i said, this works with most approaches, except some details that would need to change.

Thoughts on the concept?
Don't need any ideas for specifics yet. Have to work the details out myself before i can take any suggestion into consideration.

 

[Swinkscalibur]

^ this is really interesting. I have a few ideas for how you could make something like this work if you wanted to do it without using events. It could all be done using promotions (probably easier then events). If you used the percent strength gain have the various job levels/options become available at certain numbers of the stackable "percent strength" promotions.

Ex) The following levels and jobs would be available

• Member of the Guard -> Tribal Elder -> Member of the Elder Council -> Tribal Chief
• Scribe -> Sage -> Lore Guard -> Lore Keeper
• Greater Hunter -> Proven Hunter -> Legendary Hunter -> Eternal Hunter

Taking the first job in one of the first two line locks you into that line. A unit can move out of the hunter line up until they become Legendary (the other options are Council Elder/Lore Guard).

1. At +25% (25 of the stackable promo) the following jobs are available
   1. Member of the Guard
   2. Scribe
   3. Greater Hunter
2. At +50% (50 of the stackable promo) the following jobs are available
   1. Tribal Elder - (for Members of the Guard and Greater Hunters)
   2. Sage - (for Scribes and Greater Hunters)
   3. Proven Hunter - (for Greater Hunters)
3. At +100% (100 of the stackable promo) the following jobs are available
   1. Member of the Elder Council - (for Tribal Elders and Proven Hunters)
   2. Lore Guard - (for Sages and Proven Hunters)
   3. Legendary Hunter - (for Proven Hunters)
4. At +200% (200 of the stackable promo) the following jobs are available
   1. Tribal Chief - (for Members of the Elder Council)
   2. Lore Keeper -(for Lore Guard)
   3. Eternal Hunter - (for Legendary Hunter)

Some other random thoughts
- I don't think you should factor in the winning units strength. Older units already have a much better chance to achieve higher jobs. At least if the unit has a higher starting strength it should have a chance to catch up somewhat (a good thing).
- The first two jobs in the hunting line simply improve the rate at which the stackable promotions are gained (1.5 times, and 2 times respectively)
- I balanced the number of promos needed for the jobs to the idea that I wrote about gaining x promos for the strength of the unit defeated.
- Each of the roles is gained by a spell, so that their can be a pyReq which checks the number of each job already filled. The ability to gain the job promotion is dependent on the required esteem and a job opening.

I have a bunch of ideas of what each of the jobs could do as well.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Why not have the chance to loose the ability to participate in the hunt be high (something like 95%) if the unit accepts the job.

However, if the unit accepts a job and does not lose the ability to hunt than there should be (at some later time) a further event providing him with a new job that is a extension of it's chosen one.

Like Member of the Guard -> Captain of the Guard -> King's Personal Guard...

These would be increasingly hard to attain through some mechanism or just low probability but if you do manage to do it they should be epic indeed.


What do you think?

 

[Swinkscalibur]

On second thought. Taking into account the idea of some jobs not taking part in the hunt. Perhaps the levels don't need to be the same for each line. On top of this the length of time of the promotion allowing the hunt would be decreased as you said.

 

[Calavente]

I think I don't like the "timed" approache for the spell.

I think also that % does not compete with weapon promotions (even 100% !)

Spoiler some maths for spirit of the pride :

(especially for the spirit of the pride : 5 100%cajar is IMO, inferior to a champion with iron 6+2=8 : it means 10 vs 8... and if the champion is in a city, or on hill/forest, or across a river, you get -25%/-50%, making the +100%of the SoP a mere +70%/+50% 8 against 8 or 7.5 against 8 : if you need to get 4-5 cajar promotion to take out an unpromoted champion..
I don't even speak about the unpromoted longbow : +40%CD1 +25%defense in city, +25%defense on hill, and 8defense the cajar promoted unit has ... 5,5 vs 8 !!! 0.1%chance !!)
IMO, the "immortality" + cajar doesn't compensate for the loss of iron weapons.

Maybe some of the cajar promotion could be as actual and some be %. like 1 in 2 or 1 in 3.
Another possibility would be to have all cajar promotion give stackable : +1, +2FS -10%vs prey. What is fun here, is that 50% of a 5+5 unit is 5 while 20% of a 5+2 unit is 1.4 : with cajar 2, the hunter is stronger against the prey than with cajar 5 (not counting additional promotions -various combat promotions-nor the FS) so maybe a stackable -10% is a bit too strong a nerf.

on the other hand :
I like your ideas for "retirement".
I like the idea of the spell available at a numbered cajar promotion.

Spoiler some random ideas :

cajar 3 allows for +20% (or +1 +2Fs as actual) + member of the guard spell + scribe spell
spells
-member of the guard : -25%strength against "prey", +1defense, guardsman. can take promotion lieutnant of the guard at level 4, cannot use scribe spell.
-scribe : -25%strength against "prey", mindI (or an equivalent (boost in city)), +1FS, cannot use "member of the guard spell", can take promotion sage at level 4,

cajar 6 : allows for +20% (or +1 +2Fs as actual) + lieutnant of the guard spell + sage spell
-lieutnant of the guard : -50%strength against "prey", +1, guardsman, removes "member of the guard" can take promotion Pack Elder or guard commander at level 6, cannot use scribe spell.
-sage : -50%strength against "prey", mindI +spirit II (or an equivalent (boost +culture in city)), +2FS +15%withdrawal, removes "sage" cannot use "member of the guard spell nor lieutnant of the guard", can take promotion sage at level 6,

cajar 8 : idem : spells guard commander (big strength boost +guardsman +can get minions and some commader promtions?), Pack elder or Member of Elder council : cannot participate in the hunt. ; Pack Elder and Member of the Elder Council can boost the city they are ; as you proposed.
cajar 10 : idem : spells Tribal Chief / Lore keeper ..etc. cannot participate in the hunt. both give boost for the whole civ.

 

[BiffQJ]

Hi there,

I've been lurking on this thread for a while being very interested in trying out this civ (the concept seems really cool). So I finally had a chance to download it, and when I tried to play as the Maogata, I keep getting a CTD after I create my first city and try to build a warrior. As soon as I click on the warrior build order (with the pink box next to it), the game crashes. I'm running .33. I'm also running the two mods that came with RIFE. Any idea what's wrong? Thanks.

 

[Torugu]

I started a new game with Tassany (part of the reason why I haven't been taking part in the discussion). Feedback:

Concerning Maogata and religions:

• As intended the Maogata are blocked from building temples, however this also means that they can't build disciples and hence have no way to activly spread religions to their cities nor can they use inquisitors to remove unwanted religions and increase the chances for their state religion to spread passively. Perhaps you could give a spread religion "spell" similar to the one used by the Jotnar disciple units to the Voices of Mana? And perhaps they could gain an autoaquired promotion at a certain level which allows them to use the inquisition ability?
• The obvious religious choice for the forest-dwelling Maogata would be FoL, however as it is now the synergy between the two is very low, in fact you're probably better off with every other religion except AV (hell doesn't like trees): When Maogata forest "upgrade" to AF they gain 1P and 1C, in exchange they loose 2 Food, enough the feed another population point, which could be turned into a priest (+1P +1G +1H +3GPP), an elder (+3R +3GPP), an engineer (+2P +3GPP) etc. It gets even worse if the tile the AF grows on is unimproved, in this case you loose all bonus yields as Maogata workers can't build on Ancient Forests and Plant Forest doesn't work on improved tiles. If this is just an oversight it can easily be fixed by allowing them to build on forests and giving them +1F on Ancient Forest, in the unlikely event that this is intentional and the Maogata are for some reason not meant to adopt FoL you should probably explain this somewhere in the civilopedia.
• I like how the Maogata can't build temples, this stops them from getting more than 1 Happiness from adopting a state religion and makes adopting the Religion civic unattractive to them which fits an civilization which is 2/3 agnostic quite nicely. Nonetheless you should probably think about it again, being unable to recruit most religious units is a huge loss for all religions other than FoL.

Concerning the Maogata unit roster:

• The melee line: First of all, I don't have as much experience with this line as I have with the other lines, in my previous games, without the No Linked Builds module, I avoided researching Bronze Working for as long as possible in order to keep my ablity to build in forests. But I doubt I will be using this line mich more than that I the future: The Amparasho, the basic unit of this line from which as others need to be upgraded is a decent defender. And that's it. 3 strength means it's pathetically weak on the offense, unless highly promoted it won't even be able to beat a warrior with bronze weapons let alone the 7 strangth Hill Giant who could give it the Cajar promotion it so desparetly needs. And training it using it's 5 defense strength is like training a Great Commander in combat, except it's less rewarding and you don't get a promotion which gives you bonus experience on lvl. 1. This also means that you won't get Spirits of the Pride till very late in the game (passive training) and even then they will be few in numbers and very weak compared to champions who have used the time to actively gain levels.
  Currently the only leader who has a chance to make use of the melee line is Tassany, since bronze weapons Amparashos have 4 strength and 4 is the minimum stregth any unit that wants to actively train needs to do so. There are very few units with less than 3 strength but there are tons of 3 strength units for a 4 strength unit to reliably win against. The problem is that I don't really see a solution for this, except to improve the attack strength of the Amparashos unit to 4, which would make it very similar to headless Scions and pacifistic Elohim units.
• About the recon line: Not much to say, they are the mainstay of the Maogata armies and they do an excelent job, the Cajar promotion they are most likely to have make up for their reduced city strength.
• The mounted line: I think this line's design is a bit strange, the Ashar's Tiger Blood promotion and the Beast unit type indicate that the unit is an actual tiger yet it becomes available at horseback riding? And the Asharri at Armored Cavalry? Well, I guess it doesn't matter all that much and there isn't really any better place for them, seeing how the recon techs are already pretty crowded with UU. This is just something I came up with while typing this, but perhaps you could give them a "Tiger Stables" UB which is required to recruit Ashars and Asharris and is unlocked at Horseback Riding and them move the Ashar to Tracking (and the Asharri to some late game recon tech)? This would also allow for the base strehgth of the Ashar to be increased, I have already stated what I think about the usefullness of strength 3 units, and 3 FS doesn't make up for that, especially since the weakest unit the Ashir has a 4o% bonus against already has 5 defense strength and no reason do anything other than ranged attacks.
• About the Arcane line: I'm playing exclusively with Wild Mana so my experience may be a bit one sided, I don't think the impact is *that* big though. The Infusion mechanism has an interesting design and the scarcity of Mana Nodes prevents abuse. At the same time this also means that arcane units are of little importance for the Maogata, there are going to be 2 or 3 very strong arcane units, especially if you can get them to hook up a couple of Cajar promotions as well, and that's it. It's a great mechanism and very flavourful though I think you could give the arcane units some more use if you give them the inquisition ability as I said above. That's just to get more of them out to the field, it doesn't really matter (for the Agnostic leaders anyway).
  There's another issue with the Voices of Mana: They gain experience very fast but they don't have promotions to spend it on, my first idea to solve this was to give them access to promotions based on which infusions they have (So units with Infusion of Fire could be eligible for a "Fireinfusion II" (name is a placeholder) promotion which gives them an additional fire strength.) But I did some thinking and I read about the social standing mechanic and now I don't like my own idea anymore.
• The archery line: I believe you said that you had some ideas for the archery line? I suggest you use them. The way they are now there's absolutely no reason to research Archery, the Amparosho can do everything Archers can , unlike Archers it can be upgraded into the more elite units of the melee line and it becomes available at a tech which is crucial to get Sanatation and other important late game techs (Animal Mastery, Warfare) anyway.

Concerning Leaders:
By now I have played with all three Maogata leaders and the ranking is pretty obvious:
Rishakim, Tassanny, the Arcane leader whose name I didn't even bother to remember.

• Rishakim: I already said something along these lines when I first started playing the Maogata but I just have to say it again: Rishakim is one of the best leaders in the game and by far the best Maogata leader. Nothing stops the armies of an Agg/Char leader who can get Cajar promotions on his ridiciously strong elite units. I'd say leave him unchanged for now though. As long as the likes of Haephastus (the Jotnar leader) are allowed to exist in the main mod you can have an Agg/Charm leader in your module as well.
• Tassany: I suppose she will get to use Iron and mithril weapons in 1.4? She is a very unique leader, not only because she can adopt a religion and use weapons but also because this allows her to use the melee line effectivly. The advantages she has over other leaders are balanced out by her ability to adopt religions. That's right, it's a nerf and a buff at the same time: If you can have a religion you will want to have one, even if you can't build temples you still get happiness, religious techs, civics and other boni. However the techs required to found the religions most interesting for the Maogata are found in the early mid-game. Teching in this stage of the game is already challenging for Agnostic leaders since the Maogata have an interest in getting a wide variety of Mid game techs as fast as possible: Sanitation which requires Bronze Working (or the less useful Construction) is effectively on the melee path and needed early to get forests on your tiles before you build improvements over them, Sorcery on the arcane path gives you your Powerful Voices of Mana and the recon path is your most important research path seeing how it gives you access to your hero and your most powerful military units. This does not include the Code of Laws - Taxation path which is interesting for every civs if only to ensure a steady income which in turn ensures a steady research rate.
  Add to this the need to research a religious tech + requirements and you got a enough of a nerf not to make Tassanny overpowered.
• The other one: I'm not sure if he will get any better due to changes made in 1.4 but as he is now the only thing he does is reduce the build time of the only mage guild you're going to build and give your Arcane units bonus experience which they can't use/don't need. So that's what playing without leader traits feels like. I think he should at least get Philosophical, it fits his lore and gives him at least some use.

My opinion on the Cajar Discussion:

• I like the Cajar promotion the way it is now, I don't think it should be changed towards a system which gives percentage bonuses, I'm to tired to do the maths now, but basically percentages cause stronger units to become stronger faster than weak units making low base strength units increasingly more inferior to stronger units with the same amount of Cajar promotions as they get more. I don't think this goes well with the already underused Spirit of the Pride unit...
• On the other hand the timed hunting approach (not sure how to call it, I hope you understand what I'm talking about) seems like a great solution. In fact this is what I first imagined when I heard "Great Hunt", on the call of the highest ranking mystic of the tribe all able-bodied Maogata travel into the wilds to hunt down as much prey as they can get and to thus prove themself as the most powerful of hunters. This would of course be a huge nerf and but at the same time it would make casting the worldspell a lot more interesting, ATM you're probably better of casting it whenever it is available but with the new mechanism in place it would be as impoertant a dicission as with other civs (and that's the way WS are supposed to be after all).
• I think the social standing mechanic would be a great way to bring the player to use multiple units to hunt rather then Cajar-up his elite units. However you can tell from the actual examples made that Calavente isn't familiar with how the Cajar system works out in-game, Cajar promotions are still difficult to get, you can get units up to Cajar 10 and higher, but this basically requires you to semi-abuse the Great Hunt, by the time a unit has reached this number of Cajar promotions it will be well above lvl. 15 and have between 1/3 and 1/2 of the total number of Cajar promotions a player has acquired. This is not the way of playing we should encourage. I don't think there should be more than 2 job levels (if you want to have different levels at all) and the effects should be strong enough to make the player want to leave one of his elite units inside his cities rather than take them into the field, this also means that the effects would have to be economical or (city-)defence related, not combat related. Good Cajar levels would be between 3 (quite low, only if you really want 2 job levels) and 5, 6 at most, though this means that you may have to outweigh a 20 strength, 12 FS Stalker.
• Giving the Cajar promotion a negative percentage bonus against prey sounds like an excellent idea, just don't give prey a static bonus against Cajar, even if it is just temporary it goes in the completely wrong direction since it makes it more difficult for the "young" hunters to kill their prey while old, seasoned will hardly be handicapped.

Torugu's bugs and question corner:

• In my Tassanny game I have access to bronze yet I don't get Bronze Weapons on my units. I suspect this has something to do with them being blocked by the Unarmed promotion my Reformed units still have. Perhaps Reformed should both remove Unarmed when acquired and stop units from getting Unarmed?
• As I understand it from the descriptions of the promotions Reformed allows all units types to use weapons. Is this intended?

I wanted to write even more but I'm tired know and I forgot what so this is all for today. I also wanted to repeat that I love the Maogata, if some part of this post sound somewhat negative that's because I wanted to give you feedback that allows you to make your civ even better and I can't do that by doing nothing but praising.

 

[shoggi]

Lots of great comments again. I should have made a public thread way earlier. All this feedback is really helping me make the maogata a really interesting civ.

^
-snip-

Don't fixate too much on the jobs i used in the example. They were just stuff i came up with on the fly. Tough some will maybe make it into the final version.

Why not have the chance to loose the ability to participate in the hunt be high (something like 95%) if the unit accepts the job.

However, if the unit accepts a job and does not lose the ability to hunt than there should be (at some later time) a further event providing him with a new job that is a extension of it's chosen one.

Like Member of the Guard -> Captain of the Guard -> King's Personal Guard...

These would be increasingly hard to attain through some mechanism or just low probability but if you do manage to do it they should be epic indeed.


What do you think?

I actually don't plan of using job "levels". Yes the jobs i used in the examples sounded as if they were upgrades (scribe - lore keeper), but that was more of a result of me not coming up with other ideas fast. The general idea is that, if you have a job, you stay with it. Some jobs will may be in the same line of work, like the member and captain of the guard example (though i don't really like that example, anyway), but they are not dependent on each other. you don't have to be a member of the guard to become leader.

Hi there,

I've been lurking on this thread for a while being very interested in trying out this civ (the concept seems really cool). So I finally had a chance to download it, and when I tried to play as the Maogata, I keep getting a CTD after I create my first city and try to build a warrior. As soon as I click on the warrior build order (with the pink box next to it), the game crashes. I'm running .33. I'm also running the two mods that came with RIFE. Any idea what's wrong? Thanks.

Weird, others don't seem to have that problem and i can't really see a reason why it would ctd when building a city. The module really doesn't do anything at that point. Though I will investigate if I missed something that could break the game.

-snip-

wow.. this is a rather comprehensive feedback.
First: All comments are welcome. This is the kind of stuff that helps make the civ better.
Now to answer your thoughts and questions, roughly ordered the same way you wrote them.

Religions:

-As i said before, I don't like the thought of them building temples as it doesn't fit them very much. Yes, Tasanny is supposed the "tolerant", open-minded leader, but she still has to work against old entrenched social norms and values. Even if most Maogata of her pride agree with her general thinking, they won't be to happy if changes are happening too fast. This includes temples popping up everywhere.
I'm also okay with them not be able to build priests.
But i agree with your thinking, they need a way to spread and remove religion. Where I will place that ability, I'm not sure, yet.
- FoL: Okay, you got me there. I didn't put that much though into their interaction with the different religions yet, since Tasanny was actually the last leader added and her being able to adopt religions was supposed to come with the second level of her trait initially. But since it's not possible to level traits yet, she gains that ability at the first level instead. But this is just a temporary solution. Anyway, back to FoL:
Yes, FoL may be the most appropriate religion for them, lore-wise. But they suck with it, because there forest bonus is lost once you go ancient forest.
The food bonus is supposed to come from hunting animals in forests and i assume that hunting in ancient forests is rather hard, since they have less places to hide and actually less food sources for animals than normal forests. Huge trees eating up all the light and poisoning their surroundings so that no other tree can grow there and stuff.
I will think about their interaction with religions more, especially FoL, since it should probably first choice..
- Bonus point: There is actually some lore justification for going with Ashen Veil, but that includes a new leader who is just at the planning stages right now and I'm not even sure if I will add her at all.

Units:

- Melee. Amparasho: Putting it at 4 offensive strength actually makes it better than normal axeman (beside not being able to take weapons). I wanted them to be to be roughly the same strength as Axeman, but with another focus. But it seems that the loss of weapons hit them harder than I imagined.
Maybe I up the strength of them a bit.
I still think the SotP has to be upgrade only, since directly building an Immortal still screams "broken" to me.
- Recon. Well, at least this works as intended
- Mounted. Yes, there are supposed to be actual tigers. (and saber tooth tigers respectively). They should have fitting art, since it is already in the game. If not, I screwed up. The tiger blood promotion was a last minute addition: I thought it was fitting at that time, but it really wasn't. Will be removed in the next version.
They are on the mounted line because.... well, there would be nothing much else on it, if they were not.
Unique Building. Yes, they really should get one (or two). Especially since the normal stable and the mounted training building (forgot what it's called) don't do anything for them, since they don't need stables and are animal and beast combat type, so mounted training doesn't work either.
Will think about the requirements and upping the strength you proposed.
- Arcane. Okay, that surprised me. I really thought it would be as overpowered as the cajar system is at the moment, but you make it sound as if the self limiting through the low number of mana resources works. Interesting.
I'm actually okay with there only being very few voices. I like that.
The lack of other promotions is a real problem though that i noticed too. Will think about that. But I don't like upgradable versions of the infusions. Maybe I will enhance the commander role more, that they already kind of have now.
- Archer. Yeah. They need some. The original ideas was something different, but maybe this is the place to put some siege capability.

Leaders.

The leaders were actually balanced to be at the same level as all other leaders are supposed to be after the RifE leader pass.
So rishakim would keep his two traits (yes, I know he is rather strong), kirbasfen would get arcane (which sucks right now, but is supposed to get stronger in future versions) and one other trait during the game, like emergents are now. tasanny is, like you correctly assumed, supposed to level up her trait. I think this has been mentioned here and there enough times now on the forum, so I don't spoil anything with it.
But I don't know exactly how far away RifE 1.4 is, so i might do some temporary fixes to them in order to balance them for now until RifE is at the point so I can make them work as I intended.

Cajar

The problem with the timed hunt approach is that it doesn't work really well with the + 1 Strength promotions. If you would keep the prey promotion it would be incredible annoying, since you probably won't kill most of the targeted units in the time you have. If I drop the prey promotion and give promotions out for any killed unit, it would be an insane and lasting strength boost.
If I go with percentage gains, i still could give boosts for every unit killed and i could easily balance it.

About the bonus against cajar. Yeah, i totally thought about it the wrong way. Why give Prey a static boost, if I already have a dynamic system within the stackable cajar promotion.


Finally Bugs:
Unarmed vs Reformed. Weird. I actually tested exactly that, to make sure it does work and it seemed that "Allows promotion" trumped "excludes promotion" in all ways I could think of. Have to look again, if I changed anything which would break this.
- And i Have no idea what you mean with your second bug. But this may be because it's in the middle of the night and I'm dead tired. What does say what, where?


And like I said, i have no problems with criticism, especially if it's constructive and written in such detail as yours.

And now I really need to sleep.

 

[Calavente]

I think the social standing mechanic would be a great way to bring the player to use multiple units to hunt rather then Cajar-up his elite units. However you can tell from the actual examples made that Calavente isn't familiar with how the Cajar system works out in-game, Cajar promotions are still difficult to get, you can get units up to Cajar 10 and higher, but this basically requires you to semi-abuse the Great Hunt, by the time a unit has reached this number of Cajar promotions it will be well above lvl. 15 and have between 1/3 and 1/2 of the total number of Cajar promotions a player has acquired.

I said I haven't played it yet. Your comments show that the actual hunt system is balanced but that one has just to lessen the "try to have all cajar promotion on 1 unit".
Maybe a stackable -5% or -10% could do the trick.

As for jobs : I think you'll still have to give a combat aspect to the "retiring" unit.
if you don't you'll have something like the former "shade" of the Sidar" with the only offset being that you'll still have maintenance for the unit + but on the other hand it can help defend. It would still be a nice incentive to have the guys that took job be compensated, in a combat way (combat is 30% of Civ fun), as as you said, you'll miss the opportunity to have a 20 unit with commando and blitz... and you know those units can be important to gain territory.

as for axes replacement : axes are 4 +1/+2
archers are 3/5
warriors are 3

so if Amparasho are 3/5 they are archer equivalents (without ranged attack) and not axes equivalent.
replacing axes would be to give them either 4 but then they are nerfed hunters with 1 mvt that can't get poisonned blade. or give them 5strength. less than a wood golem (6) but more than a standard axe. or maybe 4 + some FS

 

[Torugu]

I actually don't plan of using job "levels".

Excellent.

The food bonus is supposed to come from hunting animals in forests and i assume that hunting in ancient forests is rather hard, since they have less places to hide and actually less food sources for animals than normal forests. Huge trees eating up all the light and poisoning their surroundings so that no other tree can grow there and stuff.

I think we have I completely different image of ancient forests. The Ancient Forests are closely tied to the FoL religion and - according to the lore text of the Disciple of Leaves which comes straight from vanilla FFH and can thus be considered to be canon - the philosophy of the Fellowship is "Nature does not prefer life over death. Every creature gets both given once, and will in return deliver each as much as it is able. Your duty is not to preserve life over death, my blossoms, but to expand the scope of the struggle."
That's why I see the Ancient Forests as the ideal Hunting Grounds, brimming with life and with the huge amount of possible prey and the better cover for the hunter making up for the better cover the prey enjoys. The image you draw of AF is more similar to what I imagined Blighted Forests to be like. (The ones that are created when you scorch the tile an AF is on to Wasteland, not the ones which are placed by the Dark Forests options, those I see as corrupted rather then dead.)

- Bonus point: There is actually some lore justification for going with Ashen Veil, but that includes a new leader who is just at the planning stages right now and I'm not even sure if I will add her at all.

You should. Part of the reason why I mentioned the AV is that for no apparent reason I can't stop thinking about what Veil Maogata would be like.

I still think the SotP has to be upgrade only, since directly building an Immortal still screams "broken" to me.

I agree. No buildable immortals. What we need is a clever way around the xp problem for Amparasho without making SotP to easy to get. Perhaps you should just change them to 4/5 for the moment and then we can see how it goes?

The problem with the timed hunt approach is that it doesn't work really well with the + 1 Strength promotions. If you would keep the prey promotion it would be incredible annoying, since you probably won't kill most of the targeted units in the time you have.

I admit that it would be more difficult to balance, but at the same time it would be much more rewarding: Of course you won't be getting many Cajar promotions if you just hit "Great Hunt" whenever it is available, you have to do some preparations, move your hunters to areas with many barbs where prey promotions are likely to pop up or close to units which still have the promotion from your last Hunt. You would probably have to go back to a 50 turns delay and players won't be getting many promotions from their first 2 or 3 hunts, but is that really so bad? IIRC the Great Hunt was originally meant to make up for the lack of weapons and Mithril Working is pretty late tech...

- And i Have no idea what you mean with your second bug. But this may be because it's in the middle of the night and I'm dead tired. What does say what, where?

It wasn't so much of a bug as it was a question. Normally only melee and mounted units are allowed to gain weapons. But IIRC all my units, including recon and arcane units had the Reformed promotion, thus this mean that Tassanny's recon units can use Bronze Weapons?

I said I haven't played it yet.

I'm aware. In fact I was referring to that, sorry if it sounded like I was blaming you for it.

Your comments show that the actual hunt system is balanced but that one has just to lessen the "try to have all cajar promotion on 1 unit".
Maybe a stackable -5% or -10% could do the trick.

An interesting idea, but unless I made an error somewhere (very likely) this would mean that for a 5 strength unit the bonus from the Great Hunt caps at 7 Cajar promotions (7.8 strength), starting with the 9th Cajar promotion the strength goes down again until 16 Cajar when the unit has actually become weaker than it was when it didn't have any. That's actually a fun mechanism if you know how it works, but it's extremely counter-intuitive and would probably make the civ unplayable for everyone who isn't following this thread.
I still think encouraging players to spread out their Cajar promotions is a better approach then disencouraging stacking them.

As for jobs : I think you'll still have to give a combat aspect to the "retiring" unit.
if you don't you'll have something like the former "shade" of the Sidar" with the only offset being that you'll still have maintenance for the unit + but on the other hand it can help defend. It would still be a nice incentive to have the guys that took job be compensated, in a combat way (combat is 30% of Civ fun), as as you said, you'll miss the opportunity to have a 20 unit with commando and blitz... and you know those units can be important to gain territory.

The similarity to the former Sidar mechanism is a valid concern... Though as long as there aren't combat penalties you'd still have to decide whether to use them to boost your economy or to use them in battle (and you could change your decision anytime you want), so I don't think it would be quite as bad.

as for axes replacement : axes are 4 +1/+2
archers are 3/5
warriors are 3

so if Amparasho are 3/5 they are archer equivalents (without ranged attack) and not axes equivalent.
replacing axes would be to give them either 4 but then they are nerfed hunters with 1 mvt that can't get poisonned blade. or give them 5strength. less than a wood golem (6) but more than a standard axe. or maybe 4 + some FS

The Amparasho is meant to be the defensive unit of the Maogata so it's okay for it to have the same strength as an archer, the problem is that you need lvl 4 (?) Amparashos to upgrade them to Spirits of the Pride and that it is night impossible to train an "archer" without ranged attack fast enough for the 5 strength SotP to stand a chance against other civ's champions. Especially when you can't rush to Bronze working because your best UU and UB are on the recon line.

 

[Swinkscalibur]

Here is an idea to balance the hunt:

1) Make it repeatable every so often (75 turns sounds good)
2) Make the hunt timed (25 turns sounds good)
3) Make every kill count
4) Killing a unit with "x" base strength gives "x" percent chance to gain +1 strength
5) Killing a unit with "x" base strength gives "2x" percent chance to gain +1 FS
6) Killing a unit with "x" base strength gives you "x" of a stackable +1% strength promotion.
7) Base future job options off of either base strength boost or number of stacked promotions.

I personally like the idea of their being a bit of unknown and chance (but not everyone likes that)

sooo if you want the +1 strength and FS promotions to be predictable ...


1) - 3) remain the same
4) Killing a unit with "x" base strength gives you "x" of a stackable +1% strength promotion.
5) Make the standard Cajar promotions require increasing numbers of the stacked promotion - suggested values for Cajar levels: 5, 15, 30, 50, 75, 105 (140, 180, 225, 275?) - perhaps simply make Cajar 6 (or whatever higher number you think the ceiling should be) block the "hunting" promotion (the one that gives the stackable promo on combat wins) but give the best level of job option.

I think this would encourage the swarm of units leaving to do the hunt, the more units out hunting the stronger the civ. Also it sets a firm cap on the strength of an individual unit, allowing better balance. Still a unit reaching its hunt cap would gain approx. +6 strength, +6 FS, +105%, + promotions from levels. Though you might want to restrict this a bit more for the Leader that allows weapons.

 

[Calavente]

lol.
I meant a stackable -5% -10% against "prey", not against all other units.
But then you'll have to have the combat generator not take this liability to "prey" promotion into account when chosing the best defense. Otherwise, "prey" would always be chosen to defend a stack against a high cajar unit.

for your math. It seems you are right, but you forget that -50% is less remarkable when you have combatV or are defending on a forested hill than if you have no promotion.

For Amparasho, I understood the concept. But IMO, the melee line was designed for combat, the archery line for defense, the mounted line for raiding, fast reaction and pillaging, and the recon line for exploration.
The way the Amparasho is designed tells me that for the Maogata, melee becomes defense, archery becomes ???siege? (for mounted... why not have them really mounted ? either : Maogata on tigers (svartalfar-like) or Moagata on elephant ? rhino ? raptors ? bears ?)