Shatner
Warlord
It doesn't seem possible to build the Pirate's Cove (hereafter referred to as PC) over an actual water tile, or if there is I haven't found it. This strikes me as being very odd, thematically speaking. The PC (and its subsequent upgrades) have done a wonderful job making the Lanun more competitive and flavorful (very good job there, dev team). However, not being able build them over pre-existing water tiles has several implications:
1) a pillaged PC cannot be rebuilt
2) the ultimate PC city is actually an originally landlocked Lanun city that has been arduously terraformed one sacrificed worker at a time
3) the Lanun city founded on a one-tile island is at a disadvantage over the coastal or aforementioned landlocked city
Item 3 especially strikes me as a deviation from theme. As far as solutions, I have a couple of ideas:
The simplest is to allow Lanun Work Boats to build PCs. The problem with this is that a worker cost 75 hammers to produce (as well as time your city could have been growing in population) and a work boat costs 30. You could require two or three work boats be sacrificed to cast the spell (the stack effecting spells seem capable of telling when their stack meets their specifications, like Enchant Weapon only being a castable option when a Enchantment I caster shares a stack with an unenchanted melee unit) or have each work boat create a partial improvement. By this I mean having the first boat create an improvement called "incomplete cove" (or something similar) which doesn't do anything except allow another work boat to upgrade it to a proper PC.
Another option is to allow workers aboard ships to cast the spell. I honestly have no idea how difficult this would be to implement but it corrects any hammer disparities.
The only other thing I can think of is having a special 75 hammer work boat that does nothing but create a PC. Not terribly elegant, though.
One last little quibble; is it still a desired game mechanic to have a PC not buildable within 3 tiles of another PC? That seems like a legacy constraint from back when the PC was more like water-born fort and less like a yield-improving tile improvement. Now you have to wait ten rounds for the current one to upgrade so you can build the new one, which really seems like unnecessary micromanagement, but there might be a balance issue that I have simply overlooked.
I also would like to thank the development team for creating such a marvelous game. I can honestly say I have sunk more time into playing FFH than I have into unmodified Civ IV and the ONLY reason I purchased Beyond the Sword was for the Ice scenario and to play FFH: Shadow. The game is a triumph in diverse game play, strategic depth and creativity. I've grown especially fond of trying to tease out more information concerning the setting (history of Eberus, info on the various Angels and heroes, etc.) and have read pretty much the entirety of the Civilopedia and Wiki (back when it was still up) to that end. Thanks especially for being so open to feedback and so quick to update.
1) a pillaged PC cannot be rebuilt
2) the ultimate PC city is actually an originally landlocked Lanun city that has been arduously terraformed one sacrificed worker at a time
3) the Lanun city founded on a one-tile island is at a disadvantage over the coastal or aforementioned landlocked city
Item 3 especially strikes me as a deviation from theme. As far as solutions, I have a couple of ideas:
The simplest is to allow Lanun Work Boats to build PCs. The problem with this is that a worker cost 75 hammers to produce (as well as time your city could have been growing in population) and a work boat costs 30. You could require two or three work boats be sacrificed to cast the spell (the stack effecting spells seem capable of telling when their stack meets their specifications, like Enchant Weapon only being a castable option when a Enchantment I caster shares a stack with an unenchanted melee unit) or have each work boat create a partial improvement. By this I mean having the first boat create an improvement called "incomplete cove" (or something similar) which doesn't do anything except allow another work boat to upgrade it to a proper PC.
Another option is to allow workers aboard ships to cast the spell. I honestly have no idea how difficult this would be to implement but it corrects any hammer disparities.
The only other thing I can think of is having a special 75 hammer work boat that does nothing but create a PC. Not terribly elegant, though.
One last little quibble; is it still a desired game mechanic to have a PC not buildable within 3 tiles of another PC? That seems like a legacy constraint from back when the PC was more like water-born fort and less like a yield-improving tile improvement. Now you have to wait ten rounds for the current one to upgrade so you can build the new one, which really seems like unnecessary micromanagement, but there might be a balance issue that I have simply overlooked.
I also would like to thank the development team for creating such a marvelous game. I can honestly say I have sunk more time into playing FFH than I have into unmodified Civ IV and the ONLY reason I purchased Beyond the Sword was for the Ice scenario and to play FFH: Shadow. The game is a triumph in diverse game play, strategic depth and creativity. I've grown especially fond of trying to tease out more information concerning the setting (history of Eberus, info on the various Angels and heroes, etc.) and have read pretty much the entirety of the Civilopedia and Wiki (back when it was still up) to that end. Thanks especially for being so open to feedback and so quick to update.
