New Version - September 2nd (9-2)

[Galbias]

Dojo is pretty unfun to use as it is.

It basically comes in two flavours - unfun, action intensive but powerful being the first, and weak (esp comparing it to fellow buildings of its era) but not requiring 50 billion actions every turn.

I wrote more in the Japan thread, but basically the best tactic with it is to just spam Scouts/low-prod-stuff, disband/gift to CS (can't do that with scouts) - you can become almost Poland-tier by doing so, but it requires you to manually level up every single scout/unit you make! That's not exactly what I call entertaining. Denmark/Greece can become cultural Polands too, but all they need is to simply bash somebody's head in, not just force you to unit promo disband ad infinitum if you don't want your UB to be pretty underwhelming.

Poor AI Oda can't do stuff like this too, so his Dojo is not exactly something great for him. It's peanuts if you don't focus your production on it.

If you don't make units just to give them their lvl 3 with barracks + dojo, choose promos for them and then disband/gift them, then the culture you get from this UB will be pathetic, making Dojo pretty much only a promotion which makes it basically poor man's Zulu Barracks that need way more production and have +1C+1S compared to the Armory they're the replacement for, which is so little it doesn't matter by this point in medieval.

I even suggested an alternative equation there that'd fix it, but Dojo/Japan would probably need some more love after my changes.

Ottomans have similar problem with their Forge. Broken to build stuff just to disband (even more cheesy), but at least their Forge gives IIRC +3Prod +1Science compared to replacement which is noticeable, esp considering how much earlier in the game it comes - so AI Giant Turban Guy Suleiman still gets a lot from it.


Besides that, the patch is great.

You can't really complain about something being unfun if it's basically an exploit. Though it probably does warrant a change.

The culture gain with promotions is a neat idea but in addition to making it only for earned promotions, having the culture gain scale with era might not be bad. Unless you're playing extremely carefully/on low difficulty or savescumming, you will be losing units so the average culture you're gaining isn't going to be going straight up (the Japanese UA even encourages you to be a bit more reckless with your units), and in some games you might not end up in any Medieval era wars, and the culture is going to be pretty weak if it starts in the Industrial era or w/e.

 

[kaspergm]

I'm well into a new game with the 02-09 version. This time I play with a normal size continent map to force players a bit closer to each other, to see how AI react to this. Overall, AI still seems too friendly to me.

I play as Denmark and start almost on top of Iroquois. I extremely forward settle him to some juicy locations, and this does put him off (as it should). He turns up demanding some luxuries from me, and when I refuse him, he DoW's me. So that's good. He even could have done some damage to my newly founded cities had I not been gifted two units from city states a couple of turns later.

While I more or less wipe out the Iroquois, Babylon and the Dutch sit by and do absolutely nothing. I leave Iroquois with one city left and proceeds to DoW Babylon and wipe him out completely. I also take the last Iroquois city. Dutch still does nothing. He even comes asking me for a DoF (which technically is the smart thing to do, assuming it might prevent me from DoW'ing him, but does seem odd). He doesn't build up his military. He has a prime start with lots of marsh and floodplains, but only one coastal city, so I decide to wipe him out before I make contact with the other continent and before he gets Sea Beggers. At this point, he has not constructed a single naval unit. He did build Great Lighthouse, however. I take his three cities quite easily, with a slew of nice wonders to boot (apart from GL, there's also Hanging Gardens, Petra and Angkor Wat).

Now I'm in Industrial era, and I have made contact with the other continent. It holds Rome, Persia, Siam and Austria. The three latter a friends with each other, while Rome is isolated but not at war with any of them. There has not been a single DoW between AI players in entire game from what I have witnessed (technically there might have been war on the other continent before I made contact, but no cities seem to have changed hands).

So bottom line? I see fewer DoF go around than in the 08-18 version, but still AI is way to friendly and forgiving for my taste. It may technically be the smart thing to do for the AI, but it does kill a lot of fun in the game imo. that AI just sits around minding its own business. I guess it was encouraging that I did get Iroquois to DoW me, but it was only after I extremely forward-settled them with four cities boxing them completely in. On the other continents, both Rome, Siam and Persia have huge armies running around, but nobody seems to put them to use.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

You can't really complain about something being unfun if it's basically an exploit. Though it probably does warrant a change.

The culture gain with promotions is a neat idea but in addition to making it only for earned promotions, having the culture gain scale with era might not be bad. Unless you're playing extremely carefully/on low difficulty or savescumming, you will be losing units so the average culture you're gaining isn't going to be going straight up (the Japanese UA even encourages you to be a bit more reckless with your units), and in some games you might not end up in any Medieval era wars, and the culture is going to be pretty weak if it starts in the Industrial era or w/e.

I suppose you're right, but the action itself was unfun - what was fun was the fact I kept up culturally with a runaway Poland with Oracle and almost all the possible wonders.

 

[Txurce]

GW is almost broken initially, competently used makes you almost impossible to conquer. It is fine it obsoletes later on. It even gives you a free GG which you can make a citadel with to make yourself virtually unassailable.

Also it's not the only one that loses out later. Stonehenge is a wonder in ancient era, but it is inferior to a regular classical era building, Temple, provided you go Piety. It is also far inferior to the Grand Temple, which literally is a national wonder.

Don't even get me started on Terracotta from Honour, once the Golden Age and units are gone (none which are as important as free GG + harder movement for enemy), it's just +1C per turn and a bit less unhappiness, nothing more.

It is how it is, I don't see the problem. GW is one of the best wonders in the game, granted yeah it obsoletes but it well should.

Nailed it.

Sometimes I think Stonehenge is as weak as it is because it's Gazebo's little gift to the humans. I know this human is very grateful for it.