[Extension] Pineappledan Tweaks for VP

[ridjack]

I hold steady in my belief that the tribute modifier is the main offender for Mongolia's OP status. Their ability allows for such dirty amounts of raw yield bursts.

Mongolia AI has always performed well* in the early game even without tributing much. They do fall off later on though.

* Using Logistics Skirmishers instead of pdan's tweaks. But their skirmishers end up being extremely similar (5 moves, 2 attacks, full exp gain).

I just completed my first-ever Domination victory using Mongolia, on Emperor.. Tributed two religious CS early on to get to a religion more quickly, then once again completely forgot about tributing.

Pdan-tweaked Mongolia is absolutely stupid in player hands. I stayed between 1/4 and 1/2 of my unit supply the entire game, never built a unit that wasn't a mounted unit (or a bomber, eventually), and was consistently fighting wars on multiple fronts without ever struggling even slightly. I had to go up against a strong Ethiopia, at the height of his Mehal Sefari's power AND he had Defender of the Faith. Even working with just Cavalry, I chewed through his entire army without even slowing down, while fighting an equally strong Japan on the opposite side of the continent. My mid-game was marked by declaring war on the #1 and #2 civ at the same time and taking them both down.

I think the XP is what's making him so ridiculous, personally. I ended the game with a level 12 unit (tier 4 promotions on both promotion paths plus Cover, Parthian Tactics and March), multiple lv 11s and a TON of lv 10s. This meant that even in the rare cases where I was slightly out-teched, my horses were just absolutely demolishing more advanced units. A particularly strong, more advanced unit (Mehal Sefari when they first came online) could be one-rounded with four units. Anything else took two, occasionally three with damage variance. The only unit I ever lost (discounting some explorers that got caught out after a DoW) was when an Ethiopian city jumped from ~60 CS to ~80 and I left him out of position.

I love ya @pineappledan, but you're wrong on this point. The tributing has nothing to do with Mongolia being OP, at least for players.

 

[pineappledan]

Rather than Terror, I could just give Mogolian units logistics, which has that -30% RCS.

 

[ridjack]

Rather than Terror, I could just give Mogolian units logistics, which has that -30% RCS.

Could. It would slow down the early game, but I'm not confident it would make up for the insane power they get from all those promotions.

FWIW, @Stalker0 came to a similar conclusion with regards to the Logistics Skirmishers mod.

EDIT: That conclusion being that Logistics Skirmishers were also OP.

 

[InkAxis]

Doesn't the logistics skirmishers mod give them -50% XP?

 

[pineappledan]

Doesn't the logistics skirmishers mod give them -50% XP?

and then gives Mongolia back full XP

 

[Teholb]

Regarding the thicc China rework, I find that I'm consistently able to keep permanent WTLED. When I play as Wu, I'm usually far ahead of the pack. When the AI on emp plays as Wu, they're usually leading or competitive. I know it triggered on 8th citizen previously, would you consider adjusting it to 6?

 

[Rekk]

You want to make it easier to have WLTED?

 

[Teholb]

No, currently it triggers on the 5th citizen born. At one point, it was the 8th but that was deemed too weak. I'm asking for the 6th as an in-between.

 

[pineappledan]

I tried to stick to thematically appropriate numbers for Chinese numerology. 8 is the most auspicious, lucky number, and 5 is considered an imperial number.

The previous trigger at 8 was too infrequent, so I lowered it to 5. I did shorten the WLTED length to 8 turns though.

I'd prefer to go after other components of that kit first, like removing the 10% on WLTED, or lowering the / on GW production back down to 1.

I don't think you're going to manage to make the WLTED bonuses feel good if you're focused on not making them permanent, and I don't really see the point. China is the permanent WLTKD civ, while Brazil is the really strong -- but less frequent -- WLTKD civ.

 

[Teholb]

I understand and appreciate your thoughtful attention to culture; whatever the adjustment is, you have far more experience tweaking and designing these things so I trust your judgement. Thanks for considering it, the design of China is great, it just feels a little too great!

 

[Closed Sky]

I’ve only played one game with changes to Carthage and now the game felt too easy on deity, even though I had very weak capital. It might be accidental, Byzantium is reasonably strong, and others might just had been very unlucky with their positions and resources. I’m curious, what are the exact differences between lighthouses and harbours? They shouldn’t be to much apart from city defence which was irrelevant, they should just trade gold for production on sea resources or am I missing something?

Also I used less supply mod from which could influence the outcome, I further increased unit cost to 1.8 and removed one free supply per city under “widener” section. Rome, apart from bad terrain blocking him, was able to kill many of my units and take Celtic city fast. I had clear tech and production advantage so I was milking peace dividend (declarin on Rome to stop his settlers two times) by building wonders, mass envoys and only crucial buildings. Petra, Colossus, two trade routes from UNW, now going industry for another two, but I have 14 CS allies and losing interest is this game massively. I’ll try another one with lighthouses and no supply changes to see if that was the reason.

Please take a look at this imgur album! I think this supply mod makes them pay exorbitant money for defensive pacts, I went from 150 to 260 in a couple of turns, while I was not able to spare production to eliminate one barbarian comp now and got my pledges of protection annulled (never make them until late game, maybe ever! They hit me with -40 something penalty, for a 15% more influence from quest which probably was less than ten at that time) It feels so weird to be first place at deity, I’m usually close to middle or bottom even on immortal. One another thing: I never locked growth this time, simple grinding though urbanisation and working ever more production tiles. Is this the new meta that is bringing back food to the table? I locked growth in Poland game for 100 turns and it didn’t end well, though I remained decently positioned. +30 yields from religion in the capital is from Global Commandments reformation, very good for strong capitals. im technically not even ahead, assyria has more policies, both assyria and byz more techs but they have no chance. i decided to make my capital specialist and GPTI and famine capital of the world through apostolic and having only 4 resources there.

https://imgur.com/a/YzbJkaX

 

[pineappledan]

The Carthage changes are the one tweak I never actually use in my own games. It was something that @Ziad wanted implemented, but I have personally found it pushes Carthage a bit too far ahead. Rushing lighthouse with that tweak enables your maritime cities to be very strong very early, and you get a lot more out of the Cothon's empire-wide yields on Lighthouse/Harbor sooner.

 

[Rekk]

Do you have to delete the folders of mods you don't want, it is there a matter file with booleans you can set to false?

 

[pineappledan]

I just change the name of the Carthage file, rather than delete it. No Boolean values, no.

 

[Rekk]

Why does renaming the file work?

 

[pineappledan]

Because if you change the name of the file, the mod won’t know what to look for any more when the mod is loading up. I just change the .sql into a .txt extension

 

[Rekk]

What's the difference between the Commando in Tweaks v26 and the Commando in base VP?

 

[pineappledan]

no difference

 

[KlHannibal2]

Some feedback on the Germany mechanic of getting influence for gifting units:

The ability feels very powerful if the map is favorable. On a huge Milae's map, I managed to get 4 allies and 2 friends (which will soon be allies too) while being on 4 cities and 2 techs into classical. All these city states have direct land access to me. That puts me at top score, ahead of Carthage, which is quite something at this stage and on deity.

To max this bonus, I delay bronze working until I have 2 to 3 warriors per potential CS ally out or already gifted. High production or gold starts are best.

Apart from the innate CS bonuses and Germany's UA bonus, 6 allies in classical will give 12 production from a chancery, which is insane.

On the other hand, I had a game on a huge continents map with direct access to only 1 CS where I am struggeling against my english neighbor.

Compared to the Ulfhedinn they had before, it feels stronger but less consistent. It allows you more freedom in first policy tree choice, which is good. With Ulfhedinn you would always go authority.

Bottomline: very strong ability if the map supports it and therefore inconsistent. But I guess all CS-related bonuses have this issue. Overall I like it. It's a unique play style

 

[KlHannibal2]

Continuing from the last post: I'm into industrial now and was able to hold on to my 6 allies while gaining 3 more friends with quest rewards. As wars started all over the place, several of my gifted units were killed. By now, the statecraft policy that gives influence from trade routes has kicked in, so I did not have to replace all the gifted units. It also feels less of a good investment at this stage of the game. Nevertheless, the ability does its job well IMO. It kick-starts your alliances early and later it is supplemented by other ways to gain influence. Once I conquer a bit and get better access to more city states, I might pour some production or gold into gifting units to those newly available city states.

Some feedback on the conquistador, as I am fighting Spain: the unit looks interesting to use with overrun and vanguard. I shall try them. But the AI does not make good use of them. About 40% of their land army is conqs and they use them in the front line, which makes attacking easier for me. They did use them well on the flanks though, sniping some ranged units that they could attack thanks to ignore terrain cost. They did not use them well for city attack.