New Q&A session

[Buccaneer]

I don't think we disagree there. I said it was 1% related to the World Congress, in that Polynesia might be the first to contact all other civilizations and thus might have an extra delegate in the first Congress (something that has spawned a few threads here, some might even have included the words "game breaking").

The main implicit benefit in BNW for Polynesia is that they can earlier establish sea trade routes over Ocean.

Of course they also have an explicit new benefit in BNW (which I forgot about because Polynesia seemed to be listed with civs that get an implicit benefit), and that is that the Hotel returns half of the Moai culture as tourism.

One simply does not disagree, even a little bit, with MadDjinn.

 

[m15a]

I covered that with the second part of that sentence. I was referring to the fact that you would have a drain of 4 unhappiness from the city itself and its starting population in the form of a useless island city that would make the happiness redundant.

You can't possibly be trying to rebut my statement and suggest Indonesia with legions of single tile island cities will match up to other more standard civs purely on the basis of these extra resources?

It's UA shouldn't have to by a trade off (India anyone...), it should be a bonus. I fail to see how this provides a bonus for Indonesia if you're forced to settle in compromised city spots on the majority of map types.

not saying indonesia isn't weak (i'm not sure), but the benefit isn't really analogous to india's. you don't lose anything if you happen to settle only on one continent. a number of the UAs are only helpful in certain situations. also, there's no rule that you need to settle on 3 new continents. you can settle on 1 new continent (in a good location) and get 1 type of bonus luxury. also, if you create a city, you don't need to make it productive. you can just keep it at size 1, doing basically nothing.

again, i'm not saying that this would necessarily be worth it, but there are some strategic options that are worth exploring.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

Nice!! It was 3 separate resources after all!!

But you have to settle in 3 separate continents to get them !

 

[seasnake]

As long as your first city produces the unique luxuries and you only need to settle two other landmasses Indonesia is quite strong (immediate bonus happiness, tradeable luxury and bonus income from trade route). If it's your first three AFTER you found your capital, that bonus becomes a lot weaker and kicks in much later, if at all. Generally settling landmasses other than your capital can be pretty poor outlook.

I agree that we need more islands and small continents to appear in Continents map script for this to be reasonable. As it is, I only play continents or Continents Plus because I think I every civilization can thrive in that map type with no major disadvantages.

 

[PhilBowles]

So one of Indonesia's resources is Pepper? As in, black pepper? As in, black pepper from India? That seems an odd choice. I would have guessed Mace, but I guess they thought that was too close to Nutmeg.

Black pepper is a historically accurate choice. While most of the black pepper used in the West is of Indian origin, there are varieties native to Indonesia (counting Sarawak pepper since despite political boundaries Sarawak is is in geographical Indonesia - and at least when used in pepper steak, Sarawak pepper is worth building a trade route for, believe me). But it may simply be "pepper" generically, which would include another Indonesian spice, white pepper. The only other choice as obvious (aside from nutmeg and cloves which are already included) is cardamom, which is also found in South Asia as well as in Indonesia.

 

[PhilBowles]

No ... most likely as in Javanese Long Pepper ...

Probably not, there's no particularly notable historical market in it.

Arabia probably had their UA switched to trade routes.

I think the UA as worded already mentions trade routes - the game definition of a trade route has changed, but if that was all that was different it would count as an indirect buff to an existing civ a la Carthage rather than a change. Plus it would then be strictly worse than Morocco's (+1 gold instead of +3 and +1 culture) until you reached oil, although I suppose it would add the gold bonus to domestic trade routes which would be novel.

there no need to change Germany UA why? just because the Zulus UA uses part of Germany UA just because one Civ/Civs uses another Civ/Civs UA does not mean it need to be changed

It's not just the technical details of the UA (although Germany's UA is unpopular), it's the mechanical implications: Germany = warmonger Zerg. Zulu = warmonger Zerg, only better at it (it's even the same unit - Pikeman - that's replaced by the primary UU in both cases). It's the same deal as Morocco vs. Arabia - you need to change something, or you end up with one civ that's a strictly weaker version of another, rather than having its own distinct playstyle.

 

[chazzycat]

pepper is fine. It was an important resource in Indonesia during the colonial period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

control-f for pepper and it comes up quite a lot.

 

[PhilBowles]

pepper is fine. It was an important resource in Indonesia during the colonial period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

control-f for pepper and it comes up quite a lot.

Or just look up "black pepper"...

 

[adwcta]

I think the indirect boost may be more general than all that: Wide empires do better in BNW.

That makes sense because simply:
- Wide SP trees got slight upgrades, while tall trees got slight downgrades.
- SP penalty for additional cities dropped by 33%.
- Tech gain for tech leader is slowed down a bit (from rationalism nerfs). As usual, wide shines more as the game progresses.
- Wide allows for more resource diversity, which is good for trade routes.

This makes sense, as at higher difficulties, tall was significantly better than wide on standard settings (I put the break-even point for tradition v liberty, using a normal civ, at "large" map size). Now, the balance will shift back to "standard" map size, which is what it should be.

 

[Loaf Warden]

I wasn't trying to say black pepper doesn't exist in Indonesia. I was just saying that, unlike nutmeg and cloves, it's not actually uniquely native to Indonesia. It just seemed weird that pepper would be available natively to Indonesia while not to India, another in-game civ, whose Malabar Coast is famous for the stuff. Not nearly as ridiculous as all the people who kept suggesting one of the Indonesian resources would be rice, but still slightly odder than mace would have been.

 

[Craig_Sutter]

What is the nature of the Chateau? Is it a fort replacement with culture or gold yield?

 

[Calouste]

I wasn't trying to say black pepper doesn't exist in Indonesia. I was just saying that, unlike nutmeg and cloves, it's not actually uniquely native to Indonesia. It just seemed weird that pepper would be available natively to Indonesia while not to India, another in-game civ, whose Malabar Coast is famous for the stuff. Not nearly as ridiculous as all the people who kept suggesting one of the Indonesian resources would be rice, but still slightly odder than mace would have been.

Mace would have been rather odd, considering that Mace and Nutmeg are two different parts of the same plant (Nutmeg is the seed, Mace is made of the covering around it).

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

What is the nature of the Chateau? Is it a fort replacement with culture or gold yield?

Unique Tile improvements don't replace generic tile improvements like unique buildings do.

 

[Loaf Warden]

Mace would have been rather odd, considering that Mace and Nutmeg are two different parts of the same plant (Nutmeg is the seed, Mace is made of the covering around it).

I wouldn't have found it that odd if the resource comes directly from the city, as opposed to appearing on the map itself as some have suggested. I would have just taken it for granted that both cities are growing that plant, but this city specializes in exporting nutmeg, while that once specializes in mace. It still would have been slightly odd, yes. But not as odd, to me at least, as adding pepper and making it unavailable to India.

 

[SnowKomodo]

The first three times Indonesia founds a city on a brand new continent(where it hasn’t yet founded a city) it gets two copies of a special resource: Nutmeg, Cloves, or Pepper. This resource cannot be razed or destroyed. Indonesia has the option to trade any of these resources it wishes.

I don't know...to me this is still as ambiguous as it was before. Or did everyone around here already figure it out? (Just got home, kinda tired to scroll through the threads). Hesitant to start throwing around strategies until I know for sure

Also, glad pepper was the choice. Very lucrative history long before the Dutch came even. The whole originated from India is a non-issue. Like many of the Unique Units in the game, it's tied enough to the history where it's basically Indonesian

EDIT: Slightly leaning towards four separate continents. But, again, if people figured this out somewhere else let me know

EDIT 2: More I read it the more I lean towards four separate continents. If they only meant capital, wouldn't they just say "(that is anywhere other than capital continent)" ?

 

[MadDjinn]

I don't think we disagree there. I said it was 1% related to the World Congress, in that Polynesia might be the first to contact all other civilizations and thus might have an extra delegate in the first Congress (something that has spawned a few threads here, some might even have included the words "game breaking").

The main implicit benefit in BNW for Polynesia is that they can earlier establish sea trade routes over Ocean.

Of course they also have an explicit new benefit in BNW (which I forgot about because Polynesia seemed to be listed with civs that get an implicit benefit), and that is that the Hotel returns half of the Moai culture as tourism.

I probably should have been more accurate in my response -

the running around the world part isn't going to a 'buff' wrt the new mechanics, for any of them.

You still have to research Printing Press first, even if you met all of the civs. So if any civ makes it there first, and also met the civs, then Polynesia misses out.

Trade routes are distance limited, so no cross ocean trade routes unless they're also in range. That might mean Polynesia can get a 'safer' trade route (cross ocean before barb caravels) if a city is in range (and you see it), but that's about it.


The Moai is the big booster for Polynesia due to the tile yield culture.

 

[N2dFuture]

I wonder what counts as a continent for Indonesia? After all, Asia and Europe are on the same land mass. And North America and South America are connected by a thin strip of land. Does that count? Africa is even connected to Asia. I bet, though, that it will need to be completely separate land masses. Then how big does the land mass need to be before it goes from being an island to a continent?

 

[MadDjinn]

I wonder what counts as a continent for Indonesia? After all, Asia and Europe are on the same land mass. And North America and South America are connected by a thin strip of land. Does that count? Africa is even connected to Asia. I bet, though, that it will need to be completely separate land masses. Then how big does the land mass need to be before it goes from being an island to a continent?

As with every 'off continent' mechanic, even a 1 tile island counts - hence why you can settle a 1 tile island 2 tiles from another city. If it's directly on the same landmass, it's the same 'continent'.

 

[Colin]

I probably should have been more accurate in my response -

the running around the world part isn't going to a 'buff' wrt the new mechanics, for any of them.

You still have to research Printing Press first, even if you met all of the civs. So if any civ makes it there first, and also met the civs, then Polynesia misses out.

Trade routes are distance limited, so no cross ocean trade routes unless they're also in range. That might mean Polynesia can get a 'safer' trade route (cross ocean before barb caravels) if a city is in range (and you see it), but that's about it.


The Moai is the big booster for Polynesia due to the tile yield culture.

We have no first hand experience yet of what the greatest buff will be to Polynesia, but given that in all the previews we've seen sea trade routes have a significantly greater rage than land trade routes (45 tiles?) then Polynesia's ability to get those set up from the get go looks very powerful economically.

OTOH the Moai yield boost is something which happens much later, and we don't even know yet if the tourism boost will be significant in impacting cultural victories.

 

[MadDjinn]

We have no first hand experience yet of what the greatest buff will be to Polynesia, but given that in all the previews we've seen sea trade routes have a significantly greater rage than land trade routes (45 tiles?) then Polynesia's ability to get those set up from the get go looks very powerful economically.

OTOH the Moai yield boost is something which happens much later, and we don't even know yet if the tourism boost will be significant in impacting cultural victories.

that doesn't mean that polynesia specifically benefits from the sea routes. Everyone else can get those trade routes as well.