Persia

[Funak]

+50% Culture and +1 Movement during Golden Ages.

I think this is a better solution than 50% longer golden ages. I think it is thematic and with the new happiness system, natural golden ages take longer to build up so I think 50% could work

Starts with an Immortal.

This is really powerful, and I don't know if we want to go there.

Unique Unit: Immortal. - heals faster and is stronger

Never had any complaints about the immortal, if we delay it's obsoletion as well as improve the upgradepath (pikeman to musket, as mentioned in some other post) it is going to be a powerhouse.

Unique Building: Satrap's Court - provides an instant quantity of Golden Age points and happiness (market)

If i remember correctly it still have that standard 2 happiness bonus from vanilla but now it's a market instead of a bank. As always I'm not a huge fan of the instant reward buildings, I find them exploitable, have two cities permanently sell and rebuild your Satrap's Courts and you'll have permanent goldenage.
I would suggest either a gold or a culture bonus instead aswell as changing the 2 bonus happiness to something fitting CPP, maybe poverty and disorder? Keeping them as global happiness could also work and would help with the collection of GApoints.

 

[mitsho]

Starting with an immortal is also really fun

Don't these instant rewards function only the first time you build them? If so, it's an easy solution since you as a player can avoid doing this and the AI won't. As for multiplayer, well, the community isn't that large and nobody should abuse something so obvious when playing with friends...

Thus, the instant golden age points are fine and interesting. So let's keep them. The only other possibility would be to replace them with GA points per turn, but that's minor.

 

[Funak]

Starting with an immortal is also really fun

Not sure fun should come before balance however

Don't these instant rewards function only the first time you build them? If so, it's an easy solution since you as a player can avoid doing this and the AI won't. As for multiplayer, well, the community isn't that large and nobody should abuse something so obvious when playing with friends...

Thus, the instant golden age points are fine and interesting. So let's keep them. The only other possibility would be to replace them with GA points per turn, but that's minor.

I'd prefer GAP/turn in that case, instanteffects make the buildings boring after they are done.

 

[Gazebo]

Persia is almost always an AI powerhouse in the games I've observed for the AI. I'm not sure they need a buff, to be honest.

G

 

[Jdoug312]

Hey G, what do you think about removing the medieval era requirement to make vassals for Persia? It's moreso to shine a light onto Persia's unique history (especially right around Darius' time) of having vast amounts of vassals.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

Hey G, what do you think about removing the medieval era requirement to make vassals for Persia? It's moreso to shine a light onto Persia's unique history (especially right around Darius' time) of having vast amounts of vassals.

This is a good idea, and it's as good idea as China having a unique paper-proudcing building from City State Diplomacy, but I suspect that the latter is precedent for locking the former out. It crosses streams. Makes me sad, as I see the CBP bundle of mods as unanswerable and think both ideas are good.

 

[Gazebo]

Hey G, what do you think about removing the medieval era requirement to make vassals for Persia? It's moreso to shine a light onto Persia's unique history (especially right around Darius' time) of having vast amounts of vassals.

This is a good idea, and it's as good idea as China having a unique paper-proudcing building from City State Diplomacy, but I suspect that the latter is precedent for locking the former out. It crosses streams. Makes me sad, as I see the CBP bundle of mods as unanswerable and think both ideas are good.

You'd need to bring it up with Putmalk, as vassal era is current set as a define, not on the player level. Probably not going to happen, truth be told.

G

 

[Funak]

You'd need to bring it up with Putmalk, as vassal era is current set as a define, not on the player level. Probably not going to happen, truth be told.

Sounds too complicated to be worth it, honestly.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

If you found a couple of cities early, and take the authorothy policy that provides units for pop 8 cities, you can end up with a instant army of several immortals which can easily domintate at this time of the game.

 

[Bromar1]

Is there anyway to only allow Immortal promotions to carry over until pikeman? Tercios with armor plating and double heal is pretty brutal...


EDIT: actually now that I think about it, the Immortal is by far the strongest Spearman UU. It's promotions and no reliance on iron allow it to compete with swordsmen pretty handily. I'd suggest removing it's promotions upon upgrade altogether.

 

[Funak]

Is there anyway to only allow Immortal promotions to carry over until pikeman? Tercios with armor plating and double heal is pretty brutal...


EDIT: actually now that I think about it, the Immortal is by far the strongest Spearman UU. It's promotions and no reliance on iron allow it to compete with swordsmen pretty handily. I'd suggest removing it's promotions upon upgrade altogether.

I disagree.
Hoplites are pretty much just as good and in fact so is the Pictish warrior.

The hoplite promotions aren't really any better than the Jaguar promotions, that carry over the exact same way. Main reason why the spearmen and Jaguar have such good promotions is because pikemen are a pretty bad unit, meaning you're somewhat locked out of combat during that era and by the time you get to Tercio you've probably wasted a whole lot of gold on the unique units, for upgrades and maintenance.

In fact they have all been made even worse by the choice of removing iron-cost on early siegeweapons, meaning you pretty much always have iron over for swords and longswords.

 

[Bromar1]

Yeah but the thing is that immortals can favorably trade against swordsmen. So even without iron, Persia can dominate the classical era, which is fine for one era. Once you hit medieval, now you have pikeman that can favorably trade against longswords. Then you hit renaissance and you're again dominating for the rest of the game with your immortal tercios.

Compare pikeman upgraded from hoplites to pikeman upgraded from immortals. Iron plating and double heal is wayyyyy stronger on a pikeman than discipline and great generals. Discipline can get you +10% CS, but only if you have an adjacent unit. Also, it's possible to get a huge combat boost from the Greek UA but that requires maintaining lots of CS allies, which is quite an investment. Immortal promotions are too powerful on later era units and don't require any investment. Also, Persia is very golden age oriented, so they really have no trouble getting enough gold to maintain their army.

There's just not a whole lot of counter play to immortal upgraded units. Pictish warrior upgraded into pikemen are powerful and very mobile but if you can establish good zoc you can slow them down. The pictish defense bonus only applies on hills too, so the immortal defense bonus is strictly better because it is terrain independent (of course immortals should have better defense options but the problem is that their promotions are too strong offensively and defensively) Greece can be shut down by denying them CS allies.

Immortal promotions are just too overwhelming because it's almost impossible to have a decent counter-attack against those units. Armor plating and double heal seem like purely defensive promotions, but when you park a pikeman with medic 2 on top of a wooded hill in your opponents territory, you can absorb an incredible amount of damage while moving in your siege weapons.

 

[kiwimaster]

Immortal promotions are just too overwhelming because it's almost impossible to have a decent counter-attack against those units. Armor plating and double heal seem like purely defensive promotions, but when you park a pikeman with medic 2 on top of a wooded hill in your opponents territory, you can absorb an incredible amount of damage while moving in your siege weapons.

Agreed. Double healing is great for a UU but double healing and armor plating just seems like overkill. I wish it was the Hoplites who could get the armor plating bonus instead of the immortals, since they did tend to be more heavily armored in history.

 

[Funak]

Yeah but the thing is that immortals can favorably trade against swordsmen. So even without iron, Persia can dominate the classical era, which is fine for one era. Once you hit medieval, now you have pikeman that can favorably trade against longswords. Then you hit renaissance and you're again dominating for the rest of the game with your immortal tercios.

Compare pikeman upgraded from hoplites to pikeman upgraded from immortals. Iron plating and double heal is wayyyyy stronger on a pikeman than discipline and great generals. Discipline can get you +10% CS, but only if you have an adjacent unit. Also, it's possible to get a huge combat boost from the Greek UA but that requires maintaining lots of CS allies, which is quite an investment. Immortal promotions are too powerful on later era units and don't require any investment. Also, Persia is very golden age oriented, so they really have no trouble getting enough gold to maintain their army.

There's just not a whole lot of counter play to immortal upgraded units. Pictish warrior upgraded into pikemen are powerful and very mobile but if you can establish good zoc you can slow them down. The pictish defense bonus only applies on hills too, so the immortal defense bonus is strictly better because it is terrain independent (of course immortals should have better defense options but the problem is that their promotions are too strong offensively and defensively) Greece can be shut down by denying them CS allies.

Immortal promotions are just too overwhelming because it's almost impossible to have a decent counter-attack against those units. Armor plating and double heal seem like purely defensive promotions, but when you park a pikeman with medic 2 on top of a wooded hill in your opponents territory, you can absorb an incredible amount of damage while moving in your siege weapons.

First of all, I think you're severely underestimating the power of the Great generals promotion, but that's really up to you.

Second, an upgraded unique unit dominated same era non-unique units isn't a problem, in fact it is intended, Jaguars turned Tercio are just as crazy as Immortals turned Tercio. The real problem here would be if Immortals upgraded to pikemen could keep up with Samurai, or if Immortals upgraded into Tercio could keep up with Musketeers, which they certainly can't.

You also lose your ability to reinforce your army once you hit gunpowder, which is usually the time when the big wars break out. Sure, you could keep your Immortals alive passed that, but this is really not vanilla, the AI is brutal in making sure you can't escape.


The final point I want to bring up is that in practice I've not seen Persia overperform at all, I've seen them destroying people in ancient/classical era, but I've seen Greece, Aztecs, Celts, Romans do the same. Other than that I almost never see Persia topping the board.

 

[Bromar1]

First of all, I think you're severely underestimating the power of the Great generals promotion, but that's really up to you.

Okay, you might be right on this point. Still though, Greece needs to be very active diplomatically to reach it's full potential while Persia always has overwhelmingly powerful units.

Second, an upgraded unique unit dominated same era non-unique units isn't a problem, in fact it is intended, Jaguars turned Tercio are just as crazy as Immortals turned Tercio. The real problem here would be if Immortals upgraded to pikemen could keep up with Samurai, or if Immortals upgraded into Tercio could keep up with Musketeers, which they certainly can't.

Immortals turned Pikeman hard counter any kind of unique knight (do pikeman still have 50% bonus against ranged mounted units? If so then they also lock out any kind of unique skirmisher). Also, Immortals turned Tercio hard counter any kind of Ren era mounted unit.

Jaguar needs forest to be good and has to be on the attack to get the healing part of it's ability. Similarly with pictish warriors: you have to kill to get faith out of the ability. The pictish terrain bonuses are good but still pretty situational (Bonus in hills is good but how often are you fighting in snow and tundra?)

Immortals on the other hand have substantial bonuses regardless of the combat situation, regardless of terrain, regardless of CS alliances or anything else. What's worse is that these bonuses are extremely powerful both offensively and defensively. Double heal armor plating Tercios don't care at all about counterattack, they don't care about being flanked, they don't care if they're stationed on hills, tundra, forest etc for their bonuses, they don't care about cover promotions, they don't even care if you're in a Golden Age because the GA bonus is just icing on the cake. You just march in and fortify while letting your ranged units pick off the enemy army.

There are two solutions to this.
1. Nerf the promotions themselves. Instead of armor plating, give them homeland guardian or something similar. This will greatly limit their flexibility and put them in a more defensive role.
2. Remove the promotions on upgrade. In it's place increase their GAP generation on their unique court or let them heal all units upon entering a Golden Age.

I personally would rather see the second option. I like Persia as an ancient and classical era powerhouse. Let them have the crazy powerful upgrades to help establish them into the renaissance era so they can start rolling hard on Golden Ages.

 

[Funak]

Okay, you might be right on this point. Still though, Greece needs to be very active diplomatically to reach it's full potential while Persia always has overwhelmingly powerful units.



Immortals turned Pikeman hard counter any kind of unique knight (do pikeman still have 50% bonus against ranged mounted units? If so then they also lock out any kind of unique skirmisher). Also, Immortals turned Tercio hard counter any kind of Ren era mounted unit.

Jaguar needs forest to be good and has to be on the attack to get the healing part of it's ability. Similarly with pictish warriors: you have to kill to get faith out of the ability. The pictish terrain bonuses are good but still pretty situational (Bonus in hills is good but how often are you fighting in snow and tundra?)

Immortals on the other hand have substantial bonuses regardless of the combat situation, regardless of terrain, regardless of CS alliances or anything else. What's worse is that these bonuses are extremely powerful both offensively and defensively. Double heal armor plating Tercios don't care at all about counterattack, they don't care about being flanked, they don't care if they're stationed on hills, tundra, forest etc for their bonuses, they don't care about cover promotions, they don't even care if you're in a Golden Age because the GA bonus is just icing on the cake. You just march in and fortify while letting your ranged units pick off the enemy army.

I really don't think Immortals turned into Pikeman stand a chance against Manducav or Conquistadors, but even if they do, Maducav and Conquistadors aren't designed to attack pikemen. One of them is designed to rush your rivers, use your roads, pillage all your tiles and then flanking the crap out of your ranged units, alternatively burning down undefended cities. Conquistadors are designed for exploration and scouting, and I completely hate them for that boring design but people seem to like them, so whatever.

Immortals turned Tercio can definitely stand up to both unique knights, as can pretty much any unique unit upgraded to Tercio, the Tercio is imho way too powerful against mounted units for. The one existing Lancer replacement however would completely bash the Immortals turned Tercio into the next world, but that's another story entirely.

The way you deal with Tercio isn't exactly by flanking with mounted units, it's by blasting them in the face with cannons. And here is the interesting part of this story, Immortals turned Tercio doesn't have any kind of advantage against against the Cannon which is meaningful in any way. Sure it has a defensive bonus, but it has no mobility bonus so it can't reach the cannon. Here the ability to move 4 steps through forest/jungle or hills is a lot more attractive, and can lead to you flanking the cannons down.

There are two solutions to this.
1. Nerf the promotions themselves. Instead of armor plating, give them homeland guardian or something similar. This will greatly limit their flexibility and put them in a more defensive role.

If the unit was too strong and were causing global issues, which I kinda doubt because the only one who brought it up were you, slightly nerfing the armor plating promotion would probably be the way to do it. I would suggest not using homeland guardian as the immortal is meant for offense. One could however reduce the number on the Armor-plating by 5% alternatively make it only work versus melee-attacks, kinda like a reverse Cover.

Again I really don't see Persia overperforming in my games and I really don't see anyone else complaining about Persia overperforming in their games.

2. Remove the promotions on upgrade. In it's place increase their GAP generation on their unique court or let them heal all units upon entering a Golden Age.

This option is boring as all hell, and is something I've been trying to move away from with pretty much all unique units (with limited success). Being forced to fight in the Classical era and having a unique unit that only stays active for 4 techs, them being cheap early techs as well, is just not a viable strategy.
There is way too much things going on in the early-game that you can't in any way guarantee that there will be an opining to use a spearman replacement.

 

[glaivemaster]

This seems like the best place to mention this, though I don't know if it's been brought up before elsewhere:

On conquering Persian cities, their Satrap's Court turns into a Courthouse. Should the Satrap's Court be auto-destroyed on conquest, or are we ok with making Persian cities better to conquer thanks to a free Courthouse?

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

Oh, good observation.
Should be autodestructed, imo.

 

[Funak]

This seems like the best place to mention this, though I don't know if it's been brought up before elsewhere:

On conquering Persian cities, their Satrap's Court turns into a Courthouse. Should the Satrap's Court be auto-destroyed on conquest, or are we ok with making Persian cities better to conquer thanks to a free Courthouse?

I actually thought it was intentional, I had even suggested the letting conquerors keep the full Satrap because of how the Satraps interacted with Alexander and so on.

 

[matlajs]

even if this is old discusion between Funak and Bromar i have to say immortals turned into pikemens are still(even with full power from GA) weakest unit in era. Even swordsman can do well against them in duel. rly cant see reason to complain about this unit. They are nightmare since antic till classical- depend if you have iron for swordsman.