S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

[S3rgeus]

I know what you mean. There's not much said about this approach after this point, and you don't come out and say it - but am I assuming that you are a clear vote for the Feature solution? If so, I'm fine with that. I'm abstaining.

Yeah, I find I prefer the feature version.

interesting. The Caemlyn waygate isn't in the grove, then?

I can't find any sources on the exact location of Caemlyn's Waygate, but based on what I remember: the Waygate was in the cellar of a building somewhere in the city, whereas the Grove was in the royal palace grounds? Based on what I read about Waygates in general, they were usually made near Groves or Stedding, but not in them.

and

OK, I should start off by saying it feels like you're contradicting yourself a little bit. You don't want people to just be able to dump their useless units into a waygate, and... you want them to use recon units in Waygates because they aren't that useful...?

Whichever the unit it, it's cheapness is basically the thing that will determine whether player will produce the unit for the sole purpose of Waygate exploration.

It's not a contradiction - I'm saying we don't players to be able to recycle every single unit they no longer have use for into some kind of value through Waygates. That makes Waygates too big of a deal in the general loop of the game. But we do want players to use Waygates in situations where losing those Recon units isn't much of a concern for them. The Waygate reward should be balanced so that explicitly building new units in order to explore Waygates isn't something the mechanics encourage, because that's a lot of busywork (and weird flavor) that we don't want the player to have to do to play effectively. Players are of course free to funnel a bunch of units into Waygates to have wacky unit travel, if they want, (it's fun from a flavor perspective to see what will happen) but they shouldn't feel like the optimal strategy is to produce units explicitly to dump them into Waygates, which would mean they're obligated to do so to do better.

That said, I agree with the overall point here. That the waygates shouldn't really be a bit strategic element, so much as a thing to do, sometimes. I could be fine with it being recon units. It's not perfect, but if we balance the risk/reward properly, it's also not terrible.

Agreed, I think it's all about balancing the risk/reward so that Waygates are a good flavor nod and tangentially useful to the player, but not the crux of their strategy unless they're doing something super bizarre.

Hmmm... I could imagine us allowing settlers in addition to the recon units. Just so player could do this crazy thing if they wanted. Not likely to pay off often, though.

Yeah, I'd be fine with this as well. If we balance the rewards against Recon units, which are way cheaper than Settlers, then this can be a "wacky option" for players if they like. On very rare occasions it may pay off gloriously and players have a good story to tell, but an objective assessment of the likely rewards wouldn't make it something someone trying to be optimal would recommend.

ok, I'm fine with tentatively allowing a very small chance of global Waygate teleport, though we'll have to reassess later if it turns out that such an occurrence, rare as it is, messes up the game (even if it's just 1/20 games it messes up).

Yep, let's see where that goes!

Good point about how the Ways are used in the books. You'd only really dump a bunch of units in there if there was certain death otherwise. Though, on that note, it doesn't sound like we're allowing that, so quasi-strategic troop movement isn't really an element here.

Exactly, for that kind of desperate situation, the Ways could suddenly play a really fun role, but it's not something that dominates the game normally, which is a nice balance for this.

And I think the trolloc units going through it is flavorful enough - presumably, huge numbers of them died in there....

Agreed, we can assume the Shadow has effectively infinite numbers to pour into things like that, so they can statistically invade the world, even if they don't quite know where each individual unit will end up.

Yeah, definitely see what you mean, and I think the answer is likely to keep it the same throughout the game, as you say. It is kind of weird to make the mid-game be the point at which movement such as this is gimped.

Also, the mechanics of it get way more complex if they start "clean" - we'd have to somehow make them not be to impossibly good in the early game.

Agreed, let's keep it the same throughout the game then.

huh? I think it's kind of an upside to meet stedding.

Yeah, it's an upside to meet a Stedding as a civ, but it's not particularly an upside of the Ways system that it might occasionally introduce you to Stedding. You're much more likely to find that Stedding by exploring manually instead.

I was thinking more along the lines of exploring the waygate successfully or something. Or even locking it.

Yep, those would make good quests!

Right. It'd be kind of mean of us, but we could even make it so the amount of trollocs that spawn is somewhat dependent on how close players are. Far away from players? Spawn a million of them and send em hunting!

Yeah, exactly, that would make the Shadowspawn invasion affect more of the world, without overtaxing players who happen to be close to the Blight.

Interesting. Not sure which is best. I suppose the latter is a little more elegant, unless we get into a situation where there's likely to be no available waygates or something like that. Hmmm... Which do you prefer? The first is more flavorful, i suppose, but a little weirder

I think disallowing transport to Waygates that have been claimed by civs you don't have Open Borders with is the better of the two. Depending on placement, the unit may not even be able to see the Waygate that they "exited from" when they get dropped outside the borders, which I think would be super confusing.

OK, this sounds like a good plan. Diminishing chances of success for finding rewards after repeat entrances. Good.

That said, should we also have there be increased chance of teleportation, though, as you find your way around? I could also, however, imagine the opposite, that Machin Shin gets wise to you and waits for you at the gates, so raises the chance of death and such...

Yes, I really like the idea of shifting the chances towards teleporting the more a Waygate is used! That will make both mechanics more relevant to players at different times and also lets us diminish the output of the rewards without punishing players.

Right, so you're thinking the quests give you the keys? Not finding them in Mythic sites or something?

But yeah, if the rewards get harder to find, then almost by definition the waygates will be more useful earlier in the game (though you'll be able to teleport to further places, that's not unreliable).

We could do both, quests and Mythic Sites. I don't think Mythic Sites need more in them though - a Waygate key would be relatively underwhelming compared to the other things you find in Mythic Sites. Whereas the Stedding quests are something players will do anyway for influence with the Stedding CS anyway, and the key will be a nice incidental reward then.

But defensive it is. I'm assuming that an unlocked waygate will splill shadowspawn in the LB, right? That's interesting if you're a shadow player - keep it unlocked!

Yes, it will. That's very interesting for Shadow players! Can Waygates be unlocked? In the flavor, anyone can unlock them, right?



Also, before I get on to the expanded stuff below, this Waygate stuff should be summary-ized somewhere. Is the Channeling summary the right home for this? Or should it live in the Diplo or Misc summaries?

seems like we have a general idea of how this all works now, yes? So, any thoughts on how this might interact with the Ogier stumps?

Looking up the Stump in the diplo summary, apparently they determine which "Age" will follow... but, unless I'm wrong, it doesn't detail what those do (which is probably fine for now). But one of them could be related to the Waygates - higher chances of success or teleportation or something.

This sounds like a good thing to consider. We can probably take that on when we come back to the specifics of what the various Ages do.

Should there be anything special about Waygates that are in the territory of Stedding? Should they offer different rewards or different probabilities or the existing rewards or something like that?

Should players who have Waygates in their territory or have cities that are working Waygates get some special dispensation with Stedding somehow? +5 resting influence, something small like that? (Per Waygate? Which could get big by the end of the game.)

Also, again, we could add a quest or two to the ogier list.

I like this idea. We seem to have had three ideas thus far, do we like them all?

Finding Your Way
The Stedding will reward you if you find a new Waygate within 30 turns. Targeted Quest.

Defy Machin Shin
The Stedding will reward you for venturing into the Ways and returning with a prize within the next 30 turns. Targeted Quest.

Or, a global version:

Defy Machin Shin
The Stedding will reward the player who returns with treasure from the Ways the most times during the next 30 turns.

Darkness at Bay
The Stedding will reward the player who locks <nearby Waygate>.

Yes, killing a shadowspawn nets you Light, but that's only successfully killing it, not trying to kill it. You're talking about essentially making a choice "I want some shadow points" and that being a guarantee. That's not the same thing as with the Light points - you can't just send some scout or worker and get Light points. You need an appropriate army, and there's a risk of failure.

Yes, there's a risk of consequence here too (losing the unit, damage, etc. [but who cares about damage on a scout, usually?]), but there isn't currently a chance of no shadow points, and that's what I'm advocating for. I wouldn't want, especially once recon units are cheap, shadow players just to be constantly sending units in there, not caring about the result, for the shadow points.

Why is that problematic, then?

I think the problem is that it's down to chance. Killing Shadowspawn units is something the player can control. Yes, the Shadowspawn can escape and the like, but that's a tactical failure if the player was actually trying to kill them to gain Light points. If they had moved their units differently or brought different units, then they could have gained that Light.

There's nothing a player trying to gain Shadow points can do to increase the likelihood that they would get Shadow points from using the Ways if only some of the Ways outcomes provide Shadow. Likewise a player trying very hard to avoid Shadow points will probably avoid the Ways entirely because of the chance of gaining Shadow points. So it loses the Ways utility on both ends of the Alignment scale.

Even for the Neutral player, they don't know how much Shadow they need to offset, since they don't know how much they'll get from going into the Ways X times. In the event of a Shadowspawn unit, if they're in a dominant position they can just not kill it if they really don't want to gain Light points (likewise for Shadow players).

As for concerns about Shadow players pumping recon units into the Ways, I think we want this to only be a very small amount of Shadow. Like single digit small. Similar to the reward mechanism in general, there are more efficient ways to generate Shadow than producing Recon units to send into the Ways.

any further thoughts on this? Saidin units aren't eligible to enter them, so it seems moot.

Could one of the low probability outcomes of exploring a Waygate be spawning a partially-mad Male Channeler? Is that too punishing?

thoughts on this? It seems now that we could affect the following things:

1) Chance of success in waygate (UA or UU)
2) better rewards/success in waygate (UA or UU)
3) better yields from Waygate when in territory (UA or UB)
4) something weird (choosing teleport destination, etc.)

Does any of that feel right for Andor? I do kind of think if we do anything, it should be small, and attached to another Unique - having a Waygate-focused unique may seem a bit too far in this case.

The UB options seems to fit the best, flavorwise, but maybe not mechanically - we'd have to do something lame like better-yields-when-nearby or something

Looking at the Andor design, what about adding something to the Queen's Writ UA, since that already deals with trade routes connecting to CSes? Something like:

Andor can transport any unit to a Waygate in a Stedding it is trading with from another Waygate at will, without generating Shadow.

Too strong? Is the flavor too strange? (Some kind of Ogier guides flavor.)

The UB option could also work. I do worry a little that it may make Waygates too important to Andor, when it isn't a huge part of their flavor.

What about a UI that could be built on Waygates that locks them and provides a yield? That might not fit for Andor, but it seems like a cool UI for someone.

yeah, they can just check page 58!

Yep!

 

[counterpoint]

lots of quote blocks disappearing here!

I can't find any sources on the exact location of Caemlyn's Waygate, but based on what I remember: the Waygate was in the cellar of a building somewhere in the city, whereas the Grove was in the royal palace grounds? Based on what I read about Waygates in general, they were usually made near Groves or Stedding, but not in them.

gotcha!

It's not a contradiction - I'm saying we don't players to be able to recycle every single unit they no longer have use for into some kind of value through Waygates. That makes Waygates too big of a deal in the general loop of the game. But we do want players to use Waygates in situations where losing those Recon units isn't much of a concern for them. The Waygate reward should be balanced so that explicitly building new units in order to explore Waygates isn't something the mechanics encourage, because that's a lot of busywork (and weird flavor) that we don't want the player to have to do to play effectively. Players are of course free to funnel a bunch of units into Waygates to have wacky unit travel, if they want, (it's fun from a flavor perspective to see what will happen) but they shouldn't feel like the optimal strategy is to produce units explicitly to dump them into Waygates, which would mean they're obligated to do so to do better.

OK, I can see the logic here. I think I'm fine with this for now, as stated before.

Yeah, I'd be fine with this as well. If we balance the rewards against Recon units, which are way cheaper than Settlers, then this can be a "wacky option" for players if they like. On very rare occasions it may pay off gloriously and players have a good story to tell, but an objective assessment of the likely rewards wouldn't make it something someone trying to be optimal would recommend.

cool. Recon and settler, it is!

Agreed, let's keep it the same throughout the game then.

Yeah, it's an upside to meet a Stedding as a civ, but it's not particularly an upside of the Ways system that it might occasionally introduce you to Stedding. You're much more likely to find that Stedding by exploring manually instead.

got it. agreed.

I think disallowing transport to Waygates that have been claimed by civs you don't have Open Borders with is the better of the two. Depending on placement, the unit may not even be able to see the Waygate that they "exited from" when they get dropped outside the borders, which I think would be super confusing.

ok, sounds good. a lack of Opbor means you can't enter the gate. I think probably waygates in general will spawn far enough away that this won't be the case really early in the game (not until people have a few extra cities)

Yes, I really like the idea of shifting the chances towards teleporting the more a Waygate is used! That will make both mechanics more relevant to players at different times and also lets us diminish the output of the rewards without punishing players.

cool. The more you explore it, the less chance of rewards, but greater chance of teleporting.

or, rather, the more times you find a reward, the less chance you have of finding more, and the more times you teleport, the higher chance you have of teleporting, right?

teleporting to a site - does it increase your chances of teleporting back to *that* site, or is that too complex?

We could do both, quests and Mythic Sites. I don't think Mythic Sites need more in them though - a Waygate key would be relatively underwhelming compared to the other things you find in Mythic Sites. Whereas the Stedding quests are something players will do anyway for influence with the Stedding CS anyway, and the key will be a nice incidental reward then.

well, about mythic sites - aren't those quite often pulling up junk, though? I mean, a fake Seal? It's only rarely that you get a real seal, or the horn, so to me this doesn't seem that weird.

Yes, it will. That's very interesting for Shadow players! Can Waygates be unlocked? In the flavor, anyone can unlock them, right?

well, anyone can unlock them with the trefoil leaf key. so... is there a way to steal the key? probably not, right?

does each key correspond to a *specific* waygate, or *any* Waygate? If it's specific, then I suppose we could have two copies of the key in the world.. each able to unlock or lock. Though that's a lot of keys... If it's not specific, then having your own key could unlock it... is that too easy? it's certainly simpler.

Also, before I get on to the expanded stuff below, this Waygate stuff should be summary-ized somewhere. Is the Channeling summary the right home for this? Or should it live in the Diplo or Misc summaries?

I think the Misc summary certainly makes the most sense (it's a very "misc" topic), or an eventual "terrain" or "Features" summary (luxuries, etc.). I don't think channeling makes sense - but if you bring that one up because you want me to write the summary, then I suppose that's fine (I think there's room. the LB one is the only full one of mine, I think), or I could start a new one. Up to you.

This sounds like a good thing to consider. We can probably take that on when we come back to the specifics of what the various Ages do.

agreed!

Should there be anything special about Waygates that are in the territory of Stedding? Should they offer different rewards or different probabilities or the existing rewards or something like that?

Should players who have Waygates in their territory or have cities that are working Waygates get some special dispensation with Stedding somehow? +5 resting influence, something small like that? (Per Waygate? Which could get big by the end of the game.)

wait, I thought there wouldn't be waygates *in* the stedding, though? I guess that makes sense, since they are things of the Power, which isn't possible in the sted's.

I'm thinking it could be as simple as the Waygates near steddings are particularly likely teleport destinations, maybe. Other than that, I'm not sure it makes sense to do much more. The fact that they'd be offering quests about it might be enough.

Eh, I don't think the influence floor needs to be a thing - perhaps it's a component of some other Policy or something, though.

I like this idea. We seem to have had three ideas thus far, do we like them all?

Finding Your Way
The Stedding will reward you if you find a new Waygate within 30 turns. Targeted Quest.

Defy Machin Shin
The Stedding will reward you for venturing into the Ways and returning with a prize within the next 30 turns. Targeted Quest.

Or, a global version:

Defy Machin Shin
The Stedding will reward the player who returns with treasure from the Ways the most times during the next 30 turns.

Darkness at Bay
The Stedding will reward the player who locks <nearby Waygate>.

These all sound good to me. Not sure which version of DMS is the best. I've lapsed into forgetfulness over the logic behind when a quest should be global or targeted, design-wise. I think this one in particular depends a bit on how likely treasure is. If it's pretty darn unlikely, then it shoudl be global, if not, then it's something that somebody could reasonably shoot for, and should be targeting (leaning towards targeted)

I think the problem is that it's down to chance. Killing Shadowspawn units is something the player can control. Yes, the Shadowspawn can escape and the like, but that's a tactical failure if the player was actually trying to kill them to gain Light points. If they had moved their units differently or brought different units, then they could have gained that Light.

There's nothing a player trying to gain Shadow points can do to increase the likelihood that they would get Shadow points from using the Ways if only some of the Ways outcomes provide Shadow. Likewise a player trying very hard to avoid Shadow points will probably avoid the Ways entirely because of the chance of gaining Shadow points. So it loses the Ways utility on both ends of the Alignment scale.

Even for the Neutral player, they don't know how much Shadow they need to offset, since they don't know how much they'll get from going into the Ways X times. In the event of a Shadowspawn unit, if they're in a dominant position they can just not kill it if they really don't want to gain Light points (likewise for Shadow players).

As for concerns about Shadow players pumping recon units into the Ways, I think we want this to only be a very small amount of Shadow. Like single digit small. Similar to the reward mechanism in general, there are more efficient ways to generate Shadow than producing Recon units to send into the Ways.

OK, I guess I'm fine with it always pumping out Shadow, though it does seem a little weird, flavor-wise. The truth is, the analogue between the SS-killing and this isn't the best comparison, so we've been a little caught up on the randomness of it all (me, at least). We're probably fine, if it's a quite low number. Like SS killing, not really a likely way to significantly alter your alignment.

Could one of the low probability outcomes of exploring a Waygate be spawning a partially-mad Male Channeler? Is that too punishing?

hmmm... punishing in some ways, yes. Also, super bizarre flavor-wise. I'd think FD points would be more reasonable, but even then, that's pretty strange.

Looking at the Andor design, what about adding something to the Queen's Writ UA, since that already deals with trade routes connecting to CSes? Something like:

Andor can transport any unit to a Waygate in a Stedding it is trading with from another Waygate at will, without generating Shadow.

Too strong? Is the flavor too strange? (Some kind of Ogier guides flavor.)

Yeah, I think it's both kind of strange and possibly too strong. I see the Andor Waygate thing - and probably *anybody's* Waygate uniques as being less about being "good at it" and more about "benefiting from it." Sort like I think we'll do for Illian and the Hunt - they don't *find* the horn, but doing the hunt generates culture or something.

So, it'd be fine to alter Queen's Writ, but I'd rather it be something where you didn't get actual improved functionality, just a reward for having it or doing it. So, if you trade with a stedding near a waygate or something, you get X, or, if you teleport to a stedding, you get Y. That kind of thing. None of those are great, though. I think it might fit better on a UB.

The UB option could also work. I do worry a little that it may make Waygates too important to Andor, when it isn't a huge part of their flavor.

Yeah, if we do UB, it should be pretty darn incidental, somehow. Like +Faith (low) to any waygates worked by this city or something, attached to the Inner City Gates or something.

What about a UI that could be built on Waygates that locks them and provides a yield? That might not fit for Andor, but it seems like a cool UI for someone.

Oh, so Features can be Improved upon?

An interesting idea. I suppose it's not a likely fit for *anybody*, so I guess that makes Andor as good as anybody. But, I dunno, that's pretty darn powerful, if we're talking about Rare items being the thing that normally locks them.

Also, it seems like a rather rarely-useful UI, since I don't suppose these things'll be *that* common.

just about done here, I think!

 

[S3rgeus]

ok, sounds good. a lack of Opbor means you can't enter the gate. I think probably waygates in general will spawn far enough away that this won't be the case really early in the game (not until people have a few extra cities)

Agreed.

cool. The more you explore it, the less chance of rewards, but greater chance of teleporting.

or, rather, the more times you find a reward, the less chance you have of finding more, and the more times you teleport, the higher chance you have of teleporting, right?

Hmmm, base it on uses or on rewards found. I'm not sure. I can't think of any compelling mechanical reason to go one way or the other, so I'd say we should go with the "more rewards found, less chance of finding more" since that makes more flavor sense. (More likely to venture farther when the nearby rewards have already been found.)

Also, is this per Waygate or per player? Or per player per Waygate?

Per player will probably be the most impactful on the player experience - the player can see how their own actions feedback into the changes throughout the game. Per Waygate makes more flavor sense (as the treasures near the Waygate are removed, units need to venture farther to try and find any more). Per player per Waygate kind of gives us a bit of both, but is a bit illogical on a global scale. (The players effectively have Diablo-style instanced loot.)

teleporting to a site - does it increase your chances of teleporting back to *that* site, or is that too complex?

I think that's too complicated, mainly because given the frequency players will travel through Waygates (quite infrequently) this kind of probability shift will barely impact the player experience.

well, about mythic sites - aren't those quite often pulling up junk, though? I mean, a fake Seal? It's only rarely that you get a real seal, or the horn, so to me this doesn't seem that weird.

Yeah, but fake Seals are a part of the Seals system - the player doesn't know whether or not they're valuable yet (when discovered) and that's part of how the Seals were designed to work. The Horn is a one-off that's strong, so it's always a nice surprise. But these keys would be significantly less useful than either of those - especially if you're desperately hunting for Seals of the Dark One, the keys' presence would be very frustrating.

well, anyone can unlock them with the trefoil leaf key. so... is there a way to steal the key? probably not, right?

I don't think we want to have stealing of keys, that would mean we'd need to track who used which keys where and the like (and represent that to the player) - I think the state of the Waygate should just be locked or not in itself, regardless of who locked/unlocked it.

does each key correspond to a *specific* waygate, or *any* Waygate? If it's specific, then I suppose we could have two copies of the key in the world.. each able to unlock or lock. Though that's a lot of keys... If it's not specific, then having your own key could unlock it... is that too easy? it's certainly simpler.

I think any Waygate is fine, a specific Waygate would make it too difficult to keep track of.

Having your own key to unlock it could work. It makes the keys a bit more important during the LB than I would have first expected though. If we let any unit just open it if they want to (which is what the flavor lines up with - anyone can pull the trefoil leaves off the door), then the Waygates themselves become more tactically relevant during the LB. I think allowing any unit to unlock a Waygate (consuming all of its movement, or just one movement?) and making the Waygates more tactically important will be better overall. I think the keys will be in relatively low supply, and it would make getting them too much of its own meta if we require a key to unlock the Waygate as well.


Also, which Quests give players the key? Does any Quest completed for a Stedding have a chance of giving the player a key, or just the Ogier-specific ones? And when do keys start being given out?

I think the Misc summary certainly makes the most sense (it's a very "misc" topic), or an eventual "terrain" or "Features" summary (luxuries, etc.). I don't think channeling makes sense - but if you bring that one up because you want me to write the summary, then I suppose that's fine (I think there's room. the LB one is the only full one of mine, I think), or I could start a new one. Up to you.

I suggested the Channeling summary because that's where we put the National Wonder Waygate stuff last time, but I do agree that it fits better elsewhere. The Misc summary seems like a good home. A Terrain/Map Summary does sound like a good concept - the Misc summary is approaching getting full and moving Resources and Waygates out of it would reduce that. Hopefully we don't have many things left to add to the existing summaries in the future though!

I've gone through and added all of the stuff we've decided so far to the Misc summary.

wait, I thought there wouldn't be waygates *in* the stedding, though? I guess that makes sense, since they are things of the Power, which isn't possible in the sted's.

We wouldn't place them inside Stedding borders, but I don't think we should stop Stedding borders from expanding onto Waygates, and since they tend to be close, that would tend to happen.

I'm thinking it could be as simple as the Waygates near steddings are particularly likely teleport destinations, maybe. Other than that, I'm not sure it makes sense to do much more. The fact that they'd be offering quests about it might be enough.

Yeah, maybe the Quests are enough. I'd be inclined to leave the teleport probabilities differentiated just by seen/unseen for the player involved for the moment, that kind of probability change very rarely impacts the player experience since it's an infrequent event but its effects can only be seen in large sample sizes.

Eh, I don't think the influence floor needs to be a thing - perhaps it's a component of some other Policy or something, though.

Sure, we can keep it in mind for then.

These all sound good to me. Not sure which version of DMS is the best. I've lapsed into forgetfulness over the logic behind when a quest should be global or targeted, design-wise. I think this one in particular depends a bit on how likely treasure is. If it's pretty darn unlikely, then it shoudl be global, if not, then it's something that somebody could reasonably shoot for, and should be targeting (leaning towards targeted)

I'm leaning towards targeted as well, so let's do that. I've added them all to the Diplo summary. We could have both if we wanted as well?

OK, I guess I'm fine with it always pumping out Shadow, though it does seem a little weird, flavor-wise. The truth is, the analogue between the SS-killing and this isn't the best comparison, so we've been a little caught up on the randomness of it all (me, at least). We're probably fine, if it's a quite low number. Like SS killing, not really a likely way to significantly alter your alignment.

Agreed, a little incidental Shadow that should offset the incidental Light of killing Shadowspawn, if the player wants to do either of those things.

hmmm... punishing in some ways, yes. Also, super bizarre flavor-wise. I'd think FD points would be more reasonable, but even then, that's pretty strange.

Yeah, the flavor strangeness isn't great here. Let's not do it.

Yeah, I think it's both kind of strange and possibly too strong. I see the Andor Waygate thing - and probably *anybody's* Waygate uniques as being less about being "good at it" and more about "benefiting from it." Sort like I think we'll do for Illian and the Hunt - they don't *find* the horn, but doing the hunt generates culture or something.

So, it'd be fine to alter Queen's Writ, but I'd rather it be something where you didn't get actual improved functionality, just a reward for having it or doing it. So, if you trade with a stedding near a waygate or something, you get X, or, if you teleport to a stedding, you get Y. That kind of thing. None of those are great, though. I think it might fit better on a UB.

Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch and distracts from the main purpose of the Queen's Writ UA. I'm fine with leaving this off.

Yeah, if we do UB, it should be pretty darn incidental, somehow. Like +Faith (low) to any waygates worked by this city or something, attached to the Inner City Gates or something.

I'm finding with both of these that the balance of keeping the Waygates system relatively minor means that we don't want to focus any of Andor's uniques on it exclusively. But the flipside of that is I'm not a big fan of how split the focus of such a unique that references the Waygates obliquely is. Maybe we'd be best leaving the Waygates out of Andor's uniques and another good candidate might pop up elsewhere. (Who knows, we might eventually have some kind of Ogier civ, which would be perfect for it! Or maybe a really Waygate focused civ is better off in a scenario.)

Oh, so Features can be Improved upon?

An interesting idea. I suppose it's not a likely fit for *anybody*, so I guess that makes Andor as good as anybody. But, I dunno, that's pretty darn powerful, if we're talking about Rare items being the thing that normally locks them.

Also, it seems like a rather rarely-useful UI, since I don't suppose these things'll be *that* common.

Yes, Features are things like Forests, Ice, and Atolls. So Forests get Improvements in Lumber Mills, as a precedent.

I don't really see it as being powerful. I see it more as making something that's uncommon for most civs common for one. That capability isn't necessarily very strong - I certainly think the yield would be the defining component of this UI in most cases. And like the other UIs that have had a strong showing, it has some unique behavior that makes it stand out and doesn't compete directly with any Improvements in the base game. It would certainly have an impact during the TW (unless it was unlocked afterwards), but for most of the game, locked and unlocked Waygates behave the same.

I don't really see this as being a particularly Andor thing though.


Unrelated to Andor, can a player found a city on a Waygate? At first I was thinking no, but the more I think on it, I think yes makes sense. It doesn't really change any of the stuff we're discussing above if the Waygate tile also happens to be a city tile, right?

just about done here, I think!

Agreed! Just a few loose ends above and we're all good. Let me know if I've missed anything from the summary!

I'll start us off on Tear tomorrow!

 

[counterpoint]

Hmmm, base it on uses or on rewards found. I'm not sure. I can't think of any compelling mechanical reason to go one way or the other, so I'd say we should go with the "more rewards found, less chance of finding more" since that makes more flavor sense. (More likely to venture farther when the nearby rewards have already been found.)

Also, is this per Waygate or per player? Or per player per Waygate?

Per player will probably be the most impactful on the player experience - the player can see how their own actions feedback into the changes throughout the game. Per Waygate makes more flavor sense (as the treasures near the Waygate are removed, units need to venture farther to try and find any more). Per player per Waygate kind of gives us a bit of both, but is a bit illogical on a global scale. (The players effectively have Diablo-style instanced loot.)

hmmmm indeed.

I think per player is the simplest, but doesn't necessarily encourage exploration and such. Players will essentially just "mine" whichever waygate is closest to them, for the whole game. essentially no reason to ever touch others. If it's per Waygate, though, then there's the cool notion of, say, once you get ocean travel, finding that random island with a waygate on it, with a much higher reward chance than the ones you've been mining for the whole game. In short, this encourages people to venture out and explore, and/or secure new areas of the map. This doesn't have the be our aim, but given the nature of waygates, it seems appropriate.

so i'm for "per waygate." Is there some way to represent this to a player, though? So, if they find a new one, they can tell whether it's "fresh" or has been thoroughly explored by others?

If you really think we want the strong self-feedback of per-player, then i think we need to go with per player per waygate.

I think that's too complicated, mainly because given the frequency players will travel through Waygates (quite infrequently) this kind of probability shift will barely impact the player experience.

agreed

Yeah, but fake Seals are a part of the Seals system - the player doesn't know whether or not they're valuable yet (when discovered) and that's part of how the Seals were designed to work. The Horn is a one-off that's strong, so it's always a nice surprise. But these keys would be significantly less useful than either of those - especially if you're desperately hunting for Seals of the Dark One, the keys' presence would be very frustrating.

I don't know. based on what you're suggesting below, with their use for the LB and such, I actually think keys are relatively useful, strategically. Mythic sites are pretty much for LB-prep and such, so we can assume that people will be digging pretty deep, anyways. As long as these aren't too common, they'll feel worth it.

Plus, it makes more sense, flavorfully, than quests, really. (though we can do both, i guess)

I don't think we want to have stealing of keys, that would mean we'd need to track who used which keys where and the like (and represent that to the player) - I think the state of the Waygate should just be locked or not in itself, regardless of who locked/unlocked it.

I think any Waygate is fine, a specific Waygate would make it too difficult to keep track of.

Having your own key to unlock it could work. It makes the keys a bit more important during the LB than I would have first expected though. If we let any unit just open it if they want to (which is what the flavor lines up with - anyone can pull the trefoil leaves off the door), then the Waygates themselves become more tactically relevant during the LB. I think allowing any unit to unlock a Waygate (consuming all of its movement, or just one movement?) and making the Waygates more tactically important will be better overall. I think the keys will be in relatively low supply, and it would make getting them too much of its own meta if we require a key to unlock the Waygate as well.

Hmmm... actually the meta game in the LB is part why I think having them in mythic sites is fine.

So, any key can lock or unlock any gate. During the lb, i'm guessing most light players will lock the gates, asap. Shadow players will be trying to get to them to unlock the gates. (the possibility of rewards digging and player-teleporting is still present in the LB, but less reliable and thus much less important, I'd say). To me this seems pretty strategically viable, and in keeping with the push-pull of the Seals - which reinforces the notion that they make sense as a Mythic Site "drop."

I feel like if you don't need a key to unlock, it makes all the work going towards locking it kind of pointless - you'd have to really defend it strongly to preserve your effort.

Also, which Quests give players the key? Does any Quest completed for a Stedding have a chance of giving the player a key, or just the Ogier-specific ones? And when do keys start being given out?

as far as timing, I'd say around the same time as Mythic Sites open up (I don't recall when that is), since I think keys should be in them. If they aren't in MS's, then I'm not sure... probably around the mid game or even later. Not necessarily something we want available during the TW, and it's kind of a pointless gesture before we get ready for the LB.

As far as quests, hmmm... The quests don't seem totally essential if we do the MSs, but I'd say maybe any Ogier quests can yield them... though it is a little odd to have a random reward be apart of a "cs" quest. Then again, having some quests only give a key, without influence, is also kind of random.

I'm not sure. what do you think?

I suggested the Channeling summary because that's where we put the National Wonder Waygate stuff last time, but I do agree that it fits better elsewhere. The Misc summary seems like a good home. A Terrain/Map Summary does sound like a good concept - the Misc summary is approaching getting full and moving Resources and Waygates out of it would reduce that. Hopefully we don't have many things left to add to the existing summaries in the future though!

I've gone through and added all of the stuff we've decided so far to the Misc summary.

great. thanks.

we can pull out the terrain stuff at a later date into its own summary.

checking out what you put...
Oh, so the rewards are just yield dumps? When you said ancient ruins, I also thought it could be population, techs, unit upgrades, that kind of thing. It's probably best if we don't go there, though.

the rest looks good, excepting what I'm debating above

also, funny to see red meaning "in question" as it has for so long... because now my brain is interpreting it as "cut this" and wondering why it isn't magenta!

We wouldn't place them inside Stedding borders, but I don't think we should stop Stedding borders from expanding onto Waygates, and since they tend to be close, that would tend to happen.

yeah, I can see that. it's unfortunately flavor-broken, given the power-base o f the waygate...

Yeah, maybe the Quests are enough. I'd be inclined to leave the teleport probabilities differentiated just by seen/unseen for the player involved for the moment, that kind of probability change very rarely impacts the player experience since it's an infrequent event but its effects can only be seen in large sample sizes.

agreed on probability

I'm leaning towards targeted as well, so let's do that. I've added them all to the Diplo summary. We could have both if we wanted as well?

targeted, yes. I suppose we could have both - what would be the purpose?

could also have an *un*lock waygate quest, right?

Agreed, a little incidental Shadow that should offset the incidental Light of killing Shadowspawn, if the player wants to do either of those things.

right

Yeah, the flavor strangeness isn't great here. Let's not do it.

ok, no direct saidin link.

just to check, am I right that the cleansing of saidin didn't seem to overtly affect the Ways?

I'm finding with both of these that the balance of keeping the Waygates system relatively minor means that we don't want to focus any of Andor's uniques on it exclusively. But the flipside of that is I'm not a big fan of how split the focus of such a unique that references the Waygates obliquely is. Maybe we'd be best leaving the Waygates out of Andor's uniques and another good candidate might pop up elsewhere. (Who knows, we might eventually have some kind of Ogier civ, which would be perfect for it! Or maybe a really Waygate focused civ is better off in a scenario.)

good point. Putting in the WG the way that feels right (i.e., minor) makes things feel really random and scattered.

I feel like it's possible we can add WG functionality to some civ that isn't necessarily grounded in direct flavor, but rather connects tangentially (like what we've been proposing) in a more understandable (though maybe not flavorful) way, less random. So, like, a civ getting a bonus to t'a'r, or ancient ruins, or GP improvement yields or something, might also have that bonus applied to waygate yields or exploration, or whatever. Not likely the direct mechanics, though.

Also, popped into my head - due to flavor, should we allow LP to explore the Ways?

Yes, Features are things like Forests, Ice, and Atolls. So Forests get Improvements in Lumber Mills, as a precedent.

I don't really see it as being powerful. I see it more as making something that's uncommon for most civs common for one. That capability isn't necessarily very strong - I certainly think the yield would be the defining component of this UI in most cases. And like the other UIs that have had a strong showing, it has some unique behavior that makes it stand out and doesn't compete directly with any Improvements in the base game. It would certainly have an impact during the TW (unless it was unlocked afterwards), but for most of the game, locked and unlocked Waygates behave the same.

I don't really see this as being a particularly Andor thing though.

i guess its power depends on how we view the WG as an LB mechanic. If, as you propose, anybody can unlock them, then no, this isn't that powerful. If as I say, it requires a rare item, than that's rather different, certainly.

I agree though that this isn't super obviously andor. After all, they don't lock the caemlyn waygate... for some reason... and pay for it.

On that note, I suppose some Andor Unique could have a "If Shadowspawn spawn in your waygate, receive X" or something.

Unrelated to Andor, can a player found a city on a Waygate? At first I was thinking no, but the more I think on it, I think yes makes sense. It doesn't really change any of the stuff we're discussing above if the Waygate tile also happens to be a city tile, right?

I actually think no. It actually changes almost all of the stuff we've been talking about, unless I misunderstand your meaning. If a WG is on a city tile, then:

1) other players can't explore it
2) other players can't lock or unlock it
3) Shadowspawn can't spawn on it (they could spawn next to it, I suppose)

to me, that's almost everything. It could still generate a yield, of course.

I say no. too weird.

I'll start us off on Tear tomorrow!

noice!

 

[S3rgeus]

hmmmm indeed.

I think per player is the simplest, but doesn't necessarily encourage exploration and such. Players will essentially just "mine" whichever waygate is closest to them, for the whole game. essentially no reason to ever touch others. If it's per Waygate, though, then there's the cool notion of, say, once you get ocean travel, finding that random island with a waygate on it, with a much higher reward chance than the ones you've been mining for the whole game. In short, this encourages people to venture out and explore, and/or secure new areas of the map. This doesn't have the be our aim, but given the nature of waygates, it seems appropriate.

so i'm for "per waygate." Is there some way to represent this to a player, though? So, if they find a new one, they can tell whether it's "fresh" or has been thoroughly explored by others?

If you really think we want the strong self-feedback of per-player, then i think we need to go with per player per waygate.

Yeah, I like the encouraging of exploration that you've mentioned here. Let's go with "per Waygate". I think we can still get the player feedback loop by representing how much of a Waygate's treasure has been explored in the mouse-over for that tile. Something simple like a phrase that describes the general state of it, not stating any numbers or anything.

Updated the summary.

I don't know. based on what you're suggesting below, with their use for the LB and such, I actually think keys are relatively useful, strategically. Mythic sites are pretty much for LB-prep and such, so we can assume that people will be digging pretty deep, anyways. As long as these aren't too common, they'll feel worth it.

Plus, it makes more sense, flavorfully, than quests, really. (though we can do both, i guess)

Hmmm... actually the meta game in the LB is part why I think having them in mythic sites is fine.

So, any key can lock or unlock any gate. During the lb, i'm guessing most light players will lock the gates, asap. Shadow players will be trying to get to them to unlock the gates. (the possibility of rewards digging and player-teleporting is still present in the LB, but less reliable and thus much less important, I'd say). To me this seems pretty strategically viable, and in keeping with the push-pull of the Seals - which reinforces the notion that they make sense as a Mythic Site "drop."

I feel like if you don't need a key to unlock, it makes all the work going towards locking it kind of pointless - you'd have to really defend it strongly to preserve your effort.

Hmmm, you make a lot of good points. This will mean that we'll have significantly more Mythic Sites than we would have had otherwise, but I do quite like how that makes the endgame LB tech (reveal all remaining undiscovered Seal locations) even more game-defining. And as you've said, it does let us use the keys more liberally during the LB as a tactical tool to control Shadowspawn spawning. I'm finding I very much like the visuals of how that works for players on both sides fighting over the Waygates.

However, I would say we should do both the Quests and the Mythic Sites. Mainly because the Mythic Sites have a finite number in a given game and I don't think we want to end up in a position where additional keys become unattainable. It's fine that the Stedding Quests are less reliable and slower than digging up Mythic Sites, because they're mainly a fallback in this set up, but I think the lack of a hard limit on key count is important.

I've added the Mythic Sites stuff to the summary.

as far as timing, I'd say around the same time as Mythic Sites open up (I don't recall when that is), since I think keys should be in them. If they aren't in MS's, then I'm not sure... probably around the mid game or even later. Not necessarily something we want available during the TW, and it's kind of a pointless gesture before we get ready for the LB.

At the same time as Mythic Sites appear sounds good to me. Added to the summary.

As far as quests, hmmm... The quests don't seem totally essential if we do the MSs, but I'd say maybe any Ogier quests can yield them... though it is a little odd to have a random reward be apart of a "cs" quest. Then again, having some quests only give a key, without influence, is also kind of random.

I'm not sure. what do you think?

I've covered the Mythic Sites + Quests stuff above. I don't think we want to have any of the quests give only a key, I would suggest they all give the normal influence they would have otherwise and give the key as well.

I'm unsure if we should have it as a probability for any Quest given by a Stedding, a guarantee from any Stedding-only-Quest, or a probability from only Stedding-only-Quests. I like that the second one (guaranteed from Stedding-only-Quests) means that the player has a very clear objective to complete if they specifically want a key. What I don't like about it is that the player can know that they've been denied the possibility of getting a key at all if none of those Quests are available. But at the same time, options 1 and particularly 3 can leave the player feeling the same way if they want a key and do several Stedding Quests but don't happen to get one.

Oh, so the rewards are just yield dumps? When you said ancient ruins, I also thought it could be population, techs, unit upgrades, that kind of thing. It's probably best if we don't go there, though.

Right, yes! I realize now that I didn't make that very clear when I proposed it first!

also, funny to see red meaning "in question" as it has for so long... because now my brain is interpreting it as "cut this" and wondering why it isn't magenta!

Yeah, it was super weird when I was writing it up as well!

targeted, yes. I suppose we could have both - what would be the purpose?

Global might be interesting if Stedding Quests guarantee a key, since that creates a competitive situation for keys between players.

could also have an *un*lock waygate quest, right?

We could, though it seems a bit strange on a flavor level. Seems like only a Shadow-declared Stedding would ask for this, given that the Ways are corrupted for the whole game in our set up?

just to check, am I right that the cleansing of saidin didn't seem to overtly affect the Ways?

I don't think it did. That darkness was theorized to have come about as a consequence of the Taint on Saidin when the Ways were made, but I think Machin Shin, like Mashadar, had become his own separate source of evil by the time Saidin was Cleansed or the Bore was sealed for good. (There's also good flavor basis for the parallel relationship between Machin Shin and Mashadar since Fain encounters Machin Shin and it seems to willfully leave him alone.)

good point. Putting in the WG the way that feels right (i.e., minor) makes things feel really random and scattered.

I feel like it's possible we can add WG functionality to some civ that isn't necessarily grounded in direct flavor, but rather connects tangentially (like what we've been proposing) in a more understandable (though maybe not flavorful) way, less random. So, like, a civ getting a bonus to t'a'r, or ancient ruins, or GP improvement yields or something, might also have that bonus applied to waygate yields or exploration, or whatever. Not likely the direct mechanics, though.

Agreed, putting Waygates as one of several "old things on the map" that some UB or UI cares about would be a good way to connect to them without it feeling scattershot.

Also, popped into my head - due to flavor, should we allow LP to explore the Ways?

There's a good achievement here, which makes me want to do it. But I'm not so sure, since LPs isolated from the rest of a civ are generally quite useless, and the potential loss of an LP is enormous (much more than a Settler). Of course, players are free to not do it.


Also, it seems like it would be quite interesting, flavor wise, to allow Blue Sisters to explore the Ways. It could replace their tier 0 ability (+2 Faith to Governors within 3 hexes), which I've never been a big fan of. "Blue Sisters can explore the Ways through Waygates and have a significantly reduced chance of being lost in the Ways. When teleported, her Warder is teleported with her." Are Blues and Sisters in general useful enough that the opportunity cost of not having her available is enough to discourage using a Blue Sisters as a yield machine in the Ways?

I agree though that this isn't super obviously andor. After all, they don't lock the caemlyn waygate... for some reason... and pay for it.

On that note, I suppose some Andor Unique could have a "If Shadowspawn spawn in your waygate, receive X" or something.

Agreed. It's possible we could add that to a unique, but it also feels quite scattershot like our suggestions above on the uniques we have now. Did you have a specific unique in mind, or a new one?

I actually think no. It actually changes almost all of the stuff we've been talking about, unless I misunderstand your meaning. If a WG is on a city tile, then:

1) other players can't explore it
2) other players can't lock or unlock it
3) Shadowspawn can't spawn on it (they could spawn next to it, I suppose)

to me, that's almost everything. It could still generate a yield, of course.

I say no. too weird.

This is a good point. Up until now, I've been debating about whether it should be possible to do the Ways things from adjacent to the Waygate in addition to on top of it. That's generally what civ does and solves a lot of problems here. And given our decisions above about using keys to unlock Waygates (as well as lock them), being able to unlock them from one hex away isn't really a problem, since the player needs to expend a key to do it, which is the bigger cost by far. (This problem with making it too easy to unlock Waygates is why I didn't suggest it before now.)

So this makes me think if we allow adjacency to be used for the Waygate functionality, then cities on Waygates make sense again.

I think it would be super weird if Waygates prevented cities, in the general sense, because it would be the only terrain feature that Settlers can stand on that stops players from founding cities on it. (Not to mention that there are Waygates in cities in the flavor.) The closest thing is embarking, which already has a well established mechanic of removing most abilities from most land units while embarked. (Actually, the closest is probably Carthaginian Settlers and Mountains, but that one makes more sense to me in the context of the wider game as well.)

So for these three points, #1 and #2 aren't a problem any more since other players can now do that stuff using adjacent hexes. #3 I think we could avoid regardless, since I figure we'll want to spawn Shadowspawn on adjacent hexes purely to be able to spawn more than one Shadowspawn unit in a single turn from a given Waygate, so we just avoid the city hex in the event of a city on the Waygate.

I also like the double-edged sword of a Waygate in a city being easier to defend, but much more difficult to deal with if another player does unlock it.

noice!

Tear incoming!

 

[S3rgeus]

Tear! This has been a quite interesting modern civ to come up with uniques for. I've referred to the wiki and the flavor dive on page 49 and cherry picked some things from there. Also some interesting (I think) mechanical-driven ones as well.

It's also worth noting that this feels like the first truly Tall civ that we've done so far. We've flagged some of the others as Tall, but they were a bit borderline and didn't really have very specific flavor that pushed them that way. But Tairen flavor seems to be all about the city of Tear, and how the country exists because of the city's influence. So it's nice to try out some ideas that deliberately Tall-encouraging.

Tear (Era 5-9, Tall, Diplo/Dom/Culture)

UAs:

• Hard as Stone, Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Merchants' Rugs, Tear produces a set of additional luxury resources as a byproduct of the luxuries normally found on the map. These new luxuries do not produce Happiness for Tear, but do for other civilizations when traded to them.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Unruly Neighbor, Tairen units have +X% combat strength when fighting units owned by a civilization Tear shares a border with.
• Hoarding Artifacts, Tairen Historians can explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory twice as fast as usual, but cannot find Artifacts of Power in them. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.

UUs:

• Defenders, replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Only X Conscripted Peasants can ever be built in a single game. Cities founded by Conscripted Peasants start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory.

UBs:

• The Stone, replaces the Palace. This city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.

UIs:

UGs:

• High Lord, spawned by Merchant Lords. Yield is Gold and City-State influence with City-States connected to this city by trade routes. Upgrade 2 ability is "City-States connected to this city by trade route do not have elections and cannot be the victim of coups. When an election would occur, instead Tear gains X influence with that City-State." Relevant LP is the Merchant Lord.

Hard as Stone is a straight up military Tall encouragement UA. It also has a subtle anti-channeler-usage theme which plays well into Tear's flavor without needing to make it too overwhelming.

Merchants' Rugs is quite cool (though could use a more glamorous name). So all of these "additional luxuries" would be "derived" resources - Oil from Olives, Carpets from Silk, and so on. We may wish to restrict it to a subset of luxuries, but that risks making Tear's UA quite dependent on the map generation randomness giving them some of those nearby. Originally I was going to put these up as normal Luxuries, but then I realized that that's quite a Wide-favoring ability. This way, Tear uses them for trading, which will often give them a few Luxuries, but will mainly give them a lot more trading clout, since they'll have a bunch of things they want to trade that no one else has.

Ambitions for Vassals encourages Tear to play it tough with CSes and rewards them for it - letting them conduct CS diplomacy very differently from other civs. It also encourages them to trade with CSes instead of other players in order to make this UA do more work for them.

Unruly Neighbor is a reference to Tear's ongoing feuds with Illian. It's a bit abusable via forward settling.

Hoarding Artifacts is a more Culture-focused UA and changes the way Tear interacts with Historians and Sites of Power. Tear has a history of hiding away artifacts that use the One Power, so they don't see the public eye (hence getting rid of those artifacts' capacity to generate Prestige). So I figured we could encourage them to not create/find Artifacts of Power where appropriate, and the mechanical alternative to that is Portal Stones. (Obviously we want to encourage the Culture victory with this UA, hence the Prestige on the Portal Stone to make up for the lack of being able to generate Prestige from the Artifacts they would have discovered.) The penalty to foreign Historians also encourages other players to prioritize non-Tairen Sites first, giving Tear more time to use the UA effectively. And in a happy intersection of mechanics and flavor, Tear apparently has one of the highest concentrations of Portal Stones in the Westlands in the canon!

Defenders is a simple unit replacement that's stronger. I think this captures the "defensive" flavor of the Defenders nicely without its usefulness being dependent on the actions of other players. I also put it in era 5/6 instead of the later game, because the Defenders have been around for a long time and we'll have fewer uniques lining up for that time overall, flavor-wise.

Conscripted Peasants is a very direct Tall UU that forces Tear to play that way, but gives them some advantages for it. They can get started with multiple cities much faster than any other civ. I figured X would be 3 (number that can be trained in a single game), Y would be 4 (good head start for Population), and Z would be 4 (some extra tiles, but not a whole ring like the Shoshone). It would encourage Tear to pick and choose its settling locations very carefully. (And also to defend its Settlers very, very well, since it would need to capture them back or have one less city, though we could make that less punishing if we wanted to.)

The Stone is a UB version of Hard as Stone. The difficulty with this approach is that the Palace moves to the new capital if the Tairen original capital is taken, which makes absolutely no sense with this flavor.

The High Lord is a UG that's focused on Diplomacy through trade, which I think is pretty cool. The amount of influence s/he generates by default would need to be very low, like +1. I think the unique ability is interesting for keeping alive CS relationships over the course of the game, and forcing enemies to use different strategies than last minute coup-snipes. I could see us using the Ambassador as the LP to spawn this UG (and as the relevant LP for upgrade 3), but I think the Tairen flavor is more merchant-y/trade-y than pure diplomacy, so I figured the Merchant Lord was a good fit. I also don't think this flavor as a UG is mutually exclusive with having a High Lord as the Leader of the civ, given how many High Lords there have been at certain times in Tear's history.


I couldn't really come up with any UIs for Tear - we don't seem to hear much about their actual countryside. I mulled over having something that acted sort of like a Plantation and worked on some of the Luxuries they were known for, but it felt like it ended up "replacing the Plantation" too much. There's definitely room for a lot more UBs! And I didn't really find a home for their naval trading flavor.

 

[counterpoint]

bye bye to many quote blocks!

Hmmm, you make a lot of good points. This will mean that we'll have significantly more Mythic Sites than we would have had otherwise, but I do quite like how that makes the endgame LB tech (reveal all remaining undiscovered Seal locations) even more game-defining. And as you've said, it does let us use the keys more liberally during the LB as a tactical tool to control Shadowspawn spawning. I'm finding I very much like the visuals of how that works for players on both sides fighting over the Waygates.

However, I would say we should do both the Quests and the Mythic Sites. Mainly because the Mythic Sites have a finite number in a given game and I don't think we want to end up in a position where additional keys become unattainable. It's fine that the Stedding Quests are less reliable and slower than digging up Mythic Sites, because they're mainly a fallback in this set up, but I think the lack of a hard limit on key count is important.

I've added the Mythic Sites stuff to the summary.

fine with doing both MSs and Quests

I've covered the Mythic Sites + Quests stuff above. I don't think we want to have any of the quests give only a key, I would suggest they all give the normal influence they would have otherwise and give the key as well.

I'm unsure if we should have it as a probability for any Quest given by a Stedding, a guarantee from any Stedding-only-Quest, or a probability from only Stedding-only-Quests. I like that the second one (guaranteed from Stedding-only-Quests) means that the player has a very clear objective to complete if they specifically want a key. What I don't like about it is that the player can know that they've been denied the possibility of getting a key at all if none of those Quests are available. But at the same time, options 1 and particularly 3 can leave the player feeling the same way if they want a key and do several Stedding Quests but don't happen to get one.

fine with Influence+Keys

No strong opinions here. I'm wondering if simply any global stedding quest should do it - global to provide for competition for such keys and so we can more closely control their number. Don't feel strongly though.

Global might be interesting if Stedding Quests guarantee a key, since that creates a competitive situation for keys between players.

yeah, agreed.

We could, though it seems a bit strange on a flavor level. Seems like only a Shadow-declared Stedding would ask for this, given that the Ways are corrupted for the whole game in our set up?

eh, yeah, probably right. Shouldn't do it.

There's a good achievement here, which makes me want to do it. But I'm not so sure, since LPs isolated from the rest of a civ are generally quite useless, and the potential loss of an LP is enormous (much more than a Settler). Of course, players are free to not do it.

yeah, I feel like if we do it, people will feel like there's a good reason to do it... and they'd probably be bummed to realize that its not the case.

Also, it seems like it would be quite interesting, flavor wise, to allow Blue Sisters to explore the Ways. It could replace their tier 0 ability (+2 Faith to Governors within 3 hexes), which I've never been a big fan of. "Blue Sisters can explore the Ways through Waygates and have a significantly reduced chance of being lost in the Ways. When teleported, her Warder is teleported with her." Are Blues and Sisters in general useful enough that the opportunity cost of not having her available is enough to discourage using a Blue Sisters as a yield machine in the Ways?

I'm actually ok with this! I feel like the +2 Faith to governors thing is something that feels better as a Unique, policy, or some othe rsuch thing, anyways, and isn't awesome as just a standard Sister abilitiy (though we unfortunately lose the "advisor" and "concerned with world events" flavor that essentially defines the Blue.

Good question re: permanent yield machine. One related question - does exploration take time, or is it instant? Just the one turn? This might affect this - we could make them faster or something.

I think the balance, in any case, is hard to strike. One thing to do would be to raise the likelihood of teleporting, or of finding a reward, but not lower the risk of death very much (eat away from the probability of "nothing happens" or "happens with damage" or something). Is this then not useful enough of an ability? Some other effect? use Ways from two hexes away? Aura that affects adjacent units?

Agreed. It's possible we could add that to a unique, but it also feels quite scattershot like our suggestions above on the uniques we have now. Did you have a specific unique in mind, or a new one?

nope. nothing specific.

This is a good point. Up until now, I've been debating about whether it should be possible to do the Ways things from adjacent to the Waygate in addition to on top of it. That's generally what civ does and solves a lot of problems here. And given our decisions above about using keys to unlock Waygates (as well as lock them), being able to unlock them from one hex away isn't really a problem, since the player needs to expend a key to do it, which is the bigger cost by far. (This problem with making it too easy to unlock Waygates is why I didn't suggest it before now.)

So this makes me think if we allow adjacency to be used for the Waygate functionality, then cities on Waygates make sense again.

I think it would be super weird if Waygates prevented cities, in the general sense, because it would be the only terrain feature that Settlers can stand on that stops players from founding cities on it. (Not to mention that there are Waygates in cities in the flavor.) The closest thing is embarking, which already has a well established mechanic of removing most abilities from most land units while embarked. (Actually, the closest is probably Carthaginian Settlers and Mountains, but that one makes more sense to me in the context of the wider game as well.)

So for these three points, #1 and #2 aren't a problem any more since other players can now do that stuff using adjacent hexes. #3 I think we could avoid regardless, since I figure we'll want to spawn Shadowspawn on adjacent hexes purely to be able to spawn more than one Shadowspawn unit in a single turn from a given Waygate, so we just avoid the city hex in the event of a city on the Waygate.

I also like the double-edged sword of a Waygate in a city being easier to defend, but much more difficult to deal with if another player does unlock it.

OK, I'm sold on that, I think. We can do adjacent exploration. It actually seems that we'd have to, in order to make SS-swarming possible at all!

 

[counterpoint]

Tear! This has been a quite interesting modern civ to come up with uniques for. I've referred to the wiki and the flavor dive on page 49 and cherry picked some things from there. Also some interesting (I think) mechanical-driven ones as well.

It's also worth noting that this feels like the first truly Tall civ that we've done so far. We've flagged some of the others as Tall, but they were a bit borderline and didn't really have very specific flavor that pushed them that way. But Tairen flavor seems to be all about the city of Tear, and how the country exists because of the city's influence. So it's nice to try out some ideas that deliberately Tall-encouraging.

cool! For some reason I'm really glad to be here! I didn't come into this civ having a bunch of ideas, specifically, but something about this civ feels satisfying to reach. Like we're normal now and in friendly territory. Andor should have felt that way, but it was also a tremendously large dump of so many flavor alternatives, much like the 'chan.

Agreed on Tallness!

Hard as Stone is a straight up military Tall encouragement UA. It also has a subtle anti-channeler-usage theme which plays well into Tear's flavor without needing to make it too overwhelming.

I like how this is the Stone flavor without literally being the stone - which will likely be a Wonder, and causes so many flavor problems if your capital moves. So, the anti-channeler flavor is subtle, but the mechanic isn't. *double* production on any non-channeling unit? Doesn't that seem a bit epic? True, it only works for one city, but honestly, it's often reasonable to have only one city cranking out units anyways (maximize EXP and free-promotions and such). Maybe thisis fine, but it's really strong.

Merchants' Rugs is quite cool (though could use a more glamorous name). So all of these "additional luxuries" would be "derived" resources - Oil from Olives, Carpets from Silk, and so on. We may wish to restrict it to a subset of luxuries, but that risks making Tear's UA quite dependent on the map generation randomness giving them some of those nearby. Originally I was going to put these up as normal Luxuries, but then I realized that that's quite a Wide-favoring ability. This way, Tear uses them for trading, which will often give them a few Luxuries, but will mainly give them a lot more trading clout, since they'll have a bunch of things they want to trade that no one else has.

ok, I'm a little confused by this. You're saying:

Each *copy* of each regular luxury gives to Tear some new luxury (flavored after the original luxury) that provides no happiness to Tear, but can be traded. Correct?

This is like the Feitoria, right? (in that it's mostly for trade, right?)

Wait, so how is this not wide favoring, if it's per copy? (or even if it isn't, but its per luxury). Having a lot of different resource within your sphere would = having more byproduct resources.

Sorry, I guess I'm a little confused on some aspect of the mechanics. Can't really judge until clarified.

Ambitions for Vassals encourages Tear to play it tough with CSes and rewards them for it - letting them conduct CS diplomacy very differently from other civs. It also encourages them to trade with CSes instead of other players in order to make this UA do more work for them.

Super hard for me to judge this one, as Tribute Demanding (like Pledging to Protect) is something I almost *never* do (by almost, I mean I've probably done it three times, maybe, ever - yes, that means I never go with Gunboat Diplomacy..; On that note, doesn't this sort of step on that tenet, if we wanted to have a version of it?).

What limits are there to how often you can intimidate? Why not just do it all the time and rack up the influence?

The final component of this UA is easily fine, though.

Unruly Neighbor is a reference to Tear's ongoing feuds with Illian. It's a bit abusable via forward settling.

Yeah, Illian *and* Mayene. I do think it's likely to foster a semi-wide style of play, with stupid 1-pop cities founded just to get this rather massive bonus. So I red.

Hoarding Artifacts is a more Culture-focused UA and changes the way Tear interacts with Historians and Sites of Power. Tear has a history of hiding away artifacts that use the One Power, so they don't see the public eye (hence getting rid of those artifacts' capacity to generate Prestige). So I figured we could encourage them to not create/find Artifacts of Power where appropriate, and the mechanical alternative to that is Portal Stones. (Obviously we want to encourage the Culture victory with this UA, hence the Prestige on the Portal Stone to make up for the lack of being able to generate Prestige from the Artifacts they would have discovered.) The penalty to foreign Historians also encourages other players to prioritize non-Tairen Sites first, giving Tear more time to use the UA effectively. And in a happy intersection of mechanics and flavor, Tear apparently has one of the highest concentrations of Portal Stones in the Westlands in the canon!

Interesting. I have mixed opinions of this one.

First off, doesn't this step on the conception of the Brown Sister quite a bit? Like above with the Blue, I'd prefer to keep such things as separate as possible.

I was about to poopoo on most of this, but that last bit about the portal stones is pretty cool and kind of nuts. Tear doesn't *feel* like it should be a PS-civ (whatever that means), but if that's true, then that's true.

So, putting that, and the Brown thing, aside, I feel like this flavor basis is good, but the application feels disjointed from that flavor. Yes, hoarding artifacts... should lead to artifacts, not *prevent* them. I understand that you aren't supposed to be showing them off, or whatever, but having them not exist doesn't feel right to me. Better, I'd say, to simply not provide prestige, or something.

I like the 2x speed for foreigners thing. I'm magentaing this, because it has some problems, but not redding it. I'm adding a second version that might address some of those problems.

Defenders is a simple unit replacement that's stronger. I think this captures the "defensive" flavor of the Defenders nicely without its usefulness being dependent on the actions of other players. I also put it in era 5/6 instead of the later game, because the Defenders have been around for a long time and we'll have fewer uniques lining up for that time overall, flavor-wise.

looks good to me!

Conscripted Peasants is a very direct Tall UU that forces Tear to play that way, but gives them some advantages for it. They can get started with multiple cities much faster than any other civ. I figured X would be 3 (number that can be trained in a single game), Y would be 4 (good head start for Population), and Z would be 4 (some extra tiles, but not a whole ring like the Shoshone). It would encourage Tear to pick and choose its settling locations very carefully. (And also to defend its Settlers very, very well, since it would need to capture them back or have one less city, though we could make that less punishing if we wanted to.)

Interesting, would it be less mean to change it up a bit, so instead of only being able to build 3 units in a game, you can only build 3 CITIES in a game like this? That way, if the settler gets killed, or even the city gets razed (taken? probably razed), you could build another. So this would be a complete Settler replacement, meaning you COULD build more than 4 cities, just not with the special bonus, right?

Also, presumably this applies to the first settler, yes? That's a pretty darn good opening city, though....

Some changes below, though I'm not totally solid on all of it.

The Stone is a UB version of Hard as Stone. The difficulty with this approach is that the Palace moves to the new capital if the Tairen original capital is taken, which makes absolutely no sense with this flavor.

yeah, I think that's kind of a deal killer, flavor-wise. But perhaps the flavor doesn't have to be *literally* the stone of tear.

The High Lord is a UG that's focused on Diplomacy through trade, which I think is pretty cool. The amount of influence s/he generates by default would need to be very low, like +1. I think the unique ability is interesting for keeping alive CS relationships over the course of the game, and forcing enemies to use different strategies than last minute coup-snipes. I could see us using the Ambassador as the LP to spawn this UG (and as the relevant LP for upgrade 3), but I think the Tairen flavor is more merchant-y/trade-y than pure diplomacy, so I figured the Merchant Lord was a good fit. I also don't think this flavor as a UG is mutually exclusive with having a High Lord as the Leader of the civ, given how many High Lords there have been at certain times in Tear's history.

yeah, interesting. I know the ML is a more flavorfully apt LP, but given the mechanics of them versus the Amb., the Amb might make more sense. Why not both?

RECAP, with some new stuff!

Tear (Era 5-9, Tall, Diplo/Dom/Culture)

UAs:

• Hard as Stone, Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Merchants' Rugs, Tear produces a set of additional luxury resources as a byproduct of the luxuries normally found on the map. These new luxuries do not produce Happiness for Tear, but do for other civilizations when traded to them.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Unruly Neighbor, Tairen units have +X% combat strength when fighting units owned by a civilization Tear shares a border with.
• Hoarding Artifacts (no artifacts), Tairen Historians can explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory twice as fast as usual, but cannot find Artifacts of Power in them. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige), Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power and Mystic Sites in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Cultural output. Artifacts housed in Tairen cities produce Faith instead of Prestige.
• Ban on Channeling, Tairen units have +X% defense against channeling attacks while in Tairen territory. Tear gains +Y Gold (low) and +Z Faith (low) at the end of every turn in which no Tairen channeling unit channels. When Tear is at war, every W turns without any Tairen channeling, these yields increase by 1, to a maximum of V.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Class Divisions, When a city gains a population point, Tear receives X Gold. Tairen cities can "Push the Populace," providing Y% bonus production and Z% bonus gold yields in that city, but also +W Unhappiness, for V turns. Tear's Happiness surplus does not contribute to Golden Ages, and We Love the King Days cannot occur.
• Rule of Lords, Each turn, Tairen cities gain X% bonus generation of a given, randomly-selected yield type (selecting from Gold, Production, Science, Faith, and Food)
• The Stone Stands (Dragon), Before the Dragon is born, the Tairen capital cannot be conquered or sacked.
• The Stone Stands (misc), Tairen cities that are garrisoned by a Defender of the Stone receive 50% bonuses to HP, combat strength, healing per turn, and ranged attack. Horses yield double the normal amount, and provide +1 culture and +1 gold. Olives provide +1 production and +2 gold when worked. (kidshowbusiness)

UUs:

• Defenders, replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Only X Conscripted Peasants can ever be built in a single game.Gains the "Found Developed City" mission. Cities founded by Conscripted Peasants Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Only X Developed Cities may exist in the world at any one time. The Tairen capital cannot be founded as a Developed City.
• Riding Lord, receives +X% bonus to combat strength for every friendly mounted unit in an adjacent tile. All melee and polearm units in adjacent tiles (friendly or enemy) receive -Y% combat strength.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
  [*]Coastal Defender, replaces Naval Melee 4-5 or Naval Ranged 3-4. While in Tairen territory, receives +X movement, +Y Sight, and +Z Range. Pillaging foreign trade routes produces +W extra Gold.
• Defender of the Stone, replaces a melee or polearm unit. If adjacent to another Defender, receives +X% combat strength. If garrisoned in a city, receives a 25% bonus to combat strength, and a ranged attack of one hex (kidshowbusiness).

UBs:

• The Stone, replaces the Palace. This city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Heart of the Stone, replaces XP National Wonder, receives one Legendary Craft or Artifact Slot. If the slot is filled, The Heart of the Stone generates +X of whatever yield the city is currently dedicating the most citizens towards producing (on tiles or in specialist buildings)
• Great Holding, replaces Culture 4, receives an extra Legendary Craft and Artifact slot. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Artifacts from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.
• Dragonwall Gate, replaces Production (Pasture), +X% XP for all Mounted units build in the city. +Y Hit Points for every Pasture.
• Oil Press, replaces Production 1, Provides an addition +X Gold and Y% Gold production in the city. (kidshowbusiness)

UIs:

• Lord's Corral, built on Horses, Lopar, and S'redit. In addition to providing the resource, provides +X Gold and +Y% production when building Mounted units and Defensive buildings.

UGs:

• High Lord, spawned by Merchant Lords. Yield is Gold and City-State influence with City-States connected to this city by trade routes. Upgrade 2 ability is "City-States connected to this city by trade route do not have elections and cannot be the victim of coups. When an election would occur, instead Tear gains X influence with that City-State." Relevant LP is the Merchant Lord.

Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige) is the aforementioned version with less flavor weirdness. Maybe not strong enough, though. I considered adding slower-glimmer-harvesting-for-foreigners, but that seemed to random. Ideas?

Channeling Ban is a relatively straightforward application of straightforward flavor. Kind of weird, I know. The increase by 1 after W turns is to provide an incentive to channel very rarely.

Port of Storms is a way to be a dick about trading. The CS boost is sort of a "in case there's nobody good to trade with" option. Otherwise, the idea is that your trading vessels plunder others - my application of the aggressive trading flavor.

Class Divisions represents the lords-lording-over-everybody nastiness in tear. Not sure bout this nutty mechanic - more of an attempt at the general idea than anything I specifically like.

Rule of Lords, is again, an attempt at grabbing some flavor. Meant to represent how Tear has no King, merely an oligarchy. The idea is each Lord/Lady is ruling for one turn, improving various things. Hard to make this lead to any real strategy, though.

The Stone Stands (Dragon), based on the fact that the stone never fell til Rand. Really, this is another placeholder - perhaps this inspires an actual *useful* ability. This one is problematic in various ways, but there's also something kind of noble about it. Again, maybe it inspires something.

The Riding Lord is based on the social inequality of Tear, and the fact that the horsemen are mostly nobles. Don't think this one will work, but again, maybe will inspire a unit that will. Right now the double edged sword is a little too sharp, though - way to make this worth it? I want to encourage unusual tactics, but this just encourages Carpet of Mounted Units, which isn't interesting.

The Guarded Trader is simply a UU version of the Port of Storms UA

The Coastal Defender is a rather hamfisted attempt at a naval unit that doesn't give them a good offensive navy, but gives them control over their territory - and this would be really really good control. Sort of a like a turtle ship that can enter oceans. Not sure if it's still too limited, though. I suspect that we should consider a few more naval options - I think Tear may be one of the only options for such we have. I know they have only a levied navy, but still...

Heart of the Stone is a sort of weird way of looking at the flavor. Allows it to be a rather flexible bonus. Not sure exactly how it should work.

The Great Holding is another relatively literal use of flavor. Not sure how easy this would be to balance, given the stupid trade mechanics and such. Obviously encourages an aggressive Historian fest, though.

Dragonwall Gate is a combination of the Tear-has-good-horses flavor and the fact htat it's a part of the Stone.

Lord's Corral tries to capture a bit of all of this flavor in one UI.

Decided to check... and found that kidshowbusiness had done a few things as well!

His "The Stone Stands" is a good example of the "custom Uniques shoudl be super OP" school of thought...

His "Defenders" are sort of similar to yours, with that "Elite Formation" promotion once again. The ranged attack is interesting, but I'm not sure the "point" of it.

Oil Press is a pretty straightforward yield UB. Interesting in that it goes in a very different direction than the source building - adding a bunch of gold to a production building.

Hmm... I think we need another Defender option.

Not sure I love most of these new ideas, anyway.

 

[S3rgeus]

No strong opinions here. I'm wondering if simply any global stedding quest should do it - global to provide for competition for such keys and so we can more closely control their number. Don't feel strongly though.

I like "any global Quest from a Stedding" - that provides the same kind of visible goal for players and I like the competition you've mentioned here.

With either approach, it does mean that the "lock this Waygate" quest will yield a key. Are we ok with that or should we find a way to exclude it?

yeah, I feel like if we do it, people will feel like there's a good reason to do it... and they'd probably be bummed to realize that its not the case.

Agreed

I'm actually ok with this! I feel like the +2 Faith to governors thing is something that feels better as a Unique, policy, or some othe rsuch thing, anyways, and isn't awesome as just a standard Sister abilitiy (though we unfortunately lose the "advisor" and "concerned with world events" flavor that essentially defines the Blue.

Good question re: permanent yield machine. One related question - does exploration take time, or is it instant? Just the one turn? This might affect this - we could make them faster or something.

I think the balance, in any case, is hard to strike. One thing to do would be to raise the likelihood of teleporting, or of finding a reward, but not lower the risk of death very much (eat away from the probability of "nothing happens" or "happens with damage" or something). Is this then not useful enough of an ability? Some other effect? use Ways from two hexes away? Aura that affects adjacent units?

I'm ok with losing that bit of the flavor here, I think it would be possible to get that in elsewhere if we really want to include it. I'm also not a big fan of the general concept of a unit aura that affects static elements (like cities or Improvements or the like). We've done it a few times since we had very specific things we were trying to achieve, but I feel like it encourages a kind of "sentry" playstyle where the player needs to dot units around at loads of specific locations that isn't very fun.

I'm leaning towards Exploring the Ways being instant. I think if it takes multiple turns it should be more like Workers constructing an Improvement, whereas this flavor suggests that the unit should disappear from the map, which is weird in CiV terms. (As a flavor justification for the exploration being instant, each turn is often quite a large amount of actual time.)

However, that does make this a bit more difficult. I think if we leave the probability of the unit being lost the same for Blue Sisters as it is for Recon/Settlers then it's not a strong enough ability for Blue tier 0 - the Waygates don't provide enough value to the player for them to risk the Blue Sister, who is otherwise quite strong.

Maybe the answer is to beef up just the chance of teleporting, rather than teleporting and treasure, to compensate for a lowered chance of being lost. This will mean the Blue Sister will often be moved around the map by the Waygates, where she may not be at her most useful, but is certainly much better than dead. At the same time, that risk offsets against the relatively low reward of Waygate rewards (especially since travel chance goes up). It's also interesting that this would encourage usage of the Ways as an escape mechanism for Blue Sisters in desperation, which is very cool.

I think we're best lowering the chance of getting lost and raising the chance of teleporting to compensate. We'll need to tweak how much we raise/lower to hit that sweet spot and avoid it being a yield farm, and I think that's something we can adjust as we play.

If you're happy with that I'll edit it into the Diplo summary!

OK, I'm sold on that, I think. We can do adjacent exploration. It actually seems that we'd have to, in order to make SS-swarming possible at all!

Awesome, I've edited that into the summary.

Also, can you remove the line about Waygates being a National Wonder from the Channeling summary?

 

[S3rgeus]

cool! For some reason I'm really glad to be here! I didn't come into this civ having a bunch of ideas, specifically, but something about this civ feels satisfying to reach. Like we're normal now and in friendly territory. Andor should have felt that way, but it was also a tremendously large dump of so many flavor alternatives, much like the 'chan.

Agreed on Tallness!

Yes, same! Tear has quite focused but well defined flavor, which means we've got a very directed design space to work with and that restriction is quite liberating because it takes a lot of the big picture decision making out of our hands on this one!

I like how this is the Stone flavor without literally being the stone - which will likely be a Wonder, and causes so many flavor problems if your capital moves. So, the anti-channeler flavor is subtle, but the mechanic isn't. *double* production on any non-channeling unit? Doesn't that seem a bit epic? True, it only works for one city, but honestly, it's often reasonable to have only one city cranking out units anyways (maximize EXP and free-promotions and such). Maybe thisis fine, but it's really strong.

I think since the bonus only applies to one city, it needs to be epic to compete with civ-wide bonuses that other civs have. It means that the Tairen capital will often be producing units instead of buildings, so it may not have all of the yield buildings other capitals would. I agree that it's strong but I think we're best adjusting between double, 50%, and triple when we see how it plays out.

I'd say the anti-channeler flavor is fairly mechanically subtle. It doesn't penalize them for having channelers or reward them for not having channelers, it just encourages them to build other stuff aside from channelers. I think that will lead to a Tairen military that's quite channeler-light, which is pretty cool with how it lines up with flavor.

ok, I'm a little confused by this. You're saying:

Each *copy* of each regular luxury gives to Tear some new luxury (flavored after the original luxury) that provides no happiness to Tear, but can be traded. Correct?

This is like the Feitoria, right? (in that it's mostly for trade, right?)

Wait, so how is this not wide favoring, if it's per copy? (or even if it isn't, but its per luxury). Having a lot of different resource within your sphere would = having more byproduct resources.

Sorry, I guess I'm a little confused on some aspect of the mechanics. Can't really judge until clarified.

Right, I should have expanded on this more!

The idea is that as long as Tear has at least one of the base luxuries connected for your civ, then they also have one of the "extra" one that corresponds to that luxury. So it rewards resource diversity, rather than quantity.

I suppose this is Wide favoring, which is annoying. I don't think it's strongly so, because you can get those resources through trading as well, and an extra luxury will often translate into other trade deals aside from additional luxuries. (The AI does take the Dutch UA into account when evaluating the value of a final-quantity-luxury-giveaway trades, for example, so they would do something similar here - knowing that Tear doesn't benefit from the extra resource and so not valuing it more than duplicates of normal resources.)

I'm a big fan of this mechanic, but if we want Tear to be very deliberately Tall, it seems the mechanics don't fit.

Super hard for me to judge this one, as Tribute Demanding (like Pledging to Protect) is something I almost *never* do (by almost, I mean I've probably done it three times, maybe, ever - yes, that means I never go with Gunboat Diplomacy..; On that note, doesn't this sort of step on that tenet, if we wanted to have a version of it?).

What limits are there to how often you can intimidate? Why not just do it all the time and rack up the influence?

The final component of this UA is easily fine, though.

You can't do it all the time because CSes that become more resilient to being intimidated the more you do it. The way that swings, it effectively has a cooldown (already present in BNW), but also modified by several other factors (they're all on the wiki page, specifically the "Demanding a Tribute" section).

I figure this will also come with all of the other normal, non-influence effects of demanding tribute from a CS, which also prevents players from just machine gunning it. So diplo penalties with civs that are allied with or protecting the CS, cancellation of Quests from that CS to the Tairen player, and progress towards the "all of these CSes hate me and are now locked into permanent war with me" state.

I don't think it steps on a Gunboat Diplomacy equivalent's toes - they seem to work together quite well. This ability makes CSes afraid more often, which helps Gunboat Diplomacy work even better. The demanding of tribute could be a cap off to gain an alliance, when using both in concert, or something like that.

Yeah, Illian *and* Mayene. I do think it's likely to foster a semi-wide style of play, with stupid 1-pop cities founded just to get this rather massive bonus. So I red.

Agreed, let's remove it.

Interesting. I have mixed opinions of this one.

First off, doesn't this step on the conception of the Brown Sister quite a bit? Like above with the Blue, I'd prefer to keep such things as separate as possible.

I was about to poopoo on most of this, but that last bit about the portal stones is pretty cool and kind of nuts. Tear doesn't *feel* like it should be a PS-civ (whatever that means), but if that's true, then that's true.

So, putting that, and the Brown thing, aside, I feel like this flavor basis is good, but the application feels disjointed from that flavor. Yes, hoarding artifacts... should lead to artifacts, not *prevent* them. I understand that you aren't supposed to be showing them off, or whatever, but having them not exist doesn't feel right to me. Better, I'd say, to simply not provide prestige, or something.

I like the 2x speed for foreigners thing. I'm magentaing this, because it has some problems, but not redding it. I'm adding a second version that might address some of those problems.

I don't think this conflicts with Brown Sisters - I figure it can apply to them as well.

I see what you mean about the flavor, but I think the crux of the problem is the use of the phrasing "cannot find Artifacts of Power in them", which suggests an absence, rather than a lack of display. I mostly said that because it's how I think the mechanics should work out, but we could flavor that differently. (Also worth noting this only applies to Sites of Power in Tairen territory, so the Tairens will still have Artifacts.) I'm not sure where to insert that "hide away the Artifact and get the Portal Stone instead" flavor in the flow of exploring the Site, but that's the actual flavor justification, and I think we could get that in somewhere to make it sensible to the player.

The reason I think that hoarding Artifacts (the concept, rather than the name of this UA) shouldn't lead to a bunch of artifacts on the Culture screen, is because Artifacts on the Culture screen are specifically things that a civ is putting on display in order to influence others. That's why they generate Prestige at all. And Tear is very specifically not doing that by keeping its Artifacts hidden away in a vault somewhere. The flavor isn't that they don't exist - they're just not in the display cabinet that is the Culture screen.

I've also proposed tweaking the name for this one, since that name also played into the above flavor difference.

Interesting, would it be less mean to change it up a bit, so instead of only being able to build 3 units in a game, you can only build 3 CITIES in a game like this? That way, if the settler gets killed, or even the city gets razed (taken? probably razed), you could build another. So this would be a complete Settler replacement, meaning you COULD build more than 4 cities, just not with the special bonus, right?

Also, presumably this applies to the first settler, yes? That's a pretty darn good opening city, though....

Some changes below, though I'm not totally solid on all of it.

Yes, being able to found a fixed number of cities with them, rather than only train a fixed number of units, is much better!

Do you mean that this wouldn't be a complete Settler replacement? That seems to be what you're saying in that sentence, given its structure!

I don't think we want a non-hero unit that does that kind of mixed partial-replacement of a base game unit. I'd be all for replacing Tairen Settlers wholesale, even the first one. It will give them a serious leg up at the beginning, but it does also rapidly diminish over the course of the game, since it only gives them an edge if they found those cities before other civs would have grown to that size anyway, which is all very early days.

yeah, I think that's kind of a deal killer, flavor-wise. But perhaps the flavor doesn't have to be *literally* the stone of tear.

Yeah, but I think it leans toward the Stone flavor, even if we make it not the actual Stone of Tear, which still feels like a flavor problem to me. I'm going to red it.

yeah, interesting. I know the ML is a more flavorfully apt LP, but given the mechanics of them versus the Amb., the Amb might make more sense. Why not both?

Yeah, let's go for both!

I've left the LP for upgrade 3 as the Merchant Lord, because I think the Merchant Lord is the closer fit of the two. Even though the Ambassador does CS stuff, all of the High Lord Governor's abilities are hinged on trade, which makes me think the Merchant Lord is better connected to those mechanics.

Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige) is the aforementioned version with less flavor weirdness. Maybe not strong enough, though. I considered adding slower-glimmer-harvesting-for-foreigners, but that seemed to random. Ideas?

I'm not a big fan of how two pieces of this UA compete with each other. Making Artifacts generate Faith (which makes them special), but then encouraging players to not generate Artifacts from their own Sites of Power plays against that.

I think Faith as a yield works flavorfully, but since this only becomes available once Historians and Brown Sisters can find Artifacts, it's quite late in the game for Faith generation, which I worry will mislead players a bit. Science could work mechanically, but it flies in the face of the Tairen flavor of hiding-and-not-using their Power artifacts. Same with Gold, Production, and Food, I feel like giving the artifacts yields doesn't play well with this flavor.

In terms of strength I'd say it's fine - the Portal Stone Prestige buff is strong enough to stand alone, I'd say. Portal Stones generate a decent amount of Culture, and generating that much Prestige as well is really strong for the Culture victory.

I'll mark this one as red.

Channeling Ban is a relatively straightforward application of straightforward flavor. Kind of weird, I know. The increase by 1 after W turns is to provide an incentive to channel very rarely.

I like the flavor of this one, but I feel like the flavor pushes towards a more direct effect on the actual channeler units themselves.

I also think that given Tear's sort-of-Authority leaning in their channeler attitude, we should be less mechanically direct about rewarding non-channeling than we were with the Seanchan and Aes Sedai - where we directly rewarded them for not using Aes Sedai.

Not quite enough for me to propose removing it, but I'm not a big fan.

Despite my criticisms, I've proposed a related UA as well.

Port of Storms is a way to be a dick about trading. The CS boost is sort of a "in case there's nobody good to trade with" option. Otherwise, the idea is that your trading vessels plunder others - my application of the aggressive trading flavor.

I like this one! I love the plunder-when-finished mechanic, it creates a really nice, antagonistic trading environment. I do think that with the contention we have for UAs, the UU version is more likely to succeed, but I wouldn't propose removing this yet since it's nice to have the option on the UA level.

Class Divisions represents the lords-lording-over-everybody nastiness in tear. Not sure bout this nutty mechanic - more of an attempt at the general idea than anything I specifically like.

I feel like this one is way underpowered. I think we could drop the whole final clause of penalties, because Y and Z would need to be super high for the Unhappiness not to offset them by itself.

You mention this not being something you specifically like, so I've suggested an edit that changes it quite a bit.

Rule of Lords, is again, an attempt at grabbing some flavor. Meant to represent how Tear has no King, merely an oligarchy. The idea is each Lord/Lady is ruling for one turn, improving various things. Hard to make this lead to any real strategy, though.

Yeah, I feel like players will be frustrated by this UA because there's no way for them to direct it effectively toward their plan for the game. I'll mark it as red.

The Stone Stands (Dragon), based on the fact that the stone never fell til Rand. Really, this is another placeholder - perhaps this inspires an actual *useful* ability. This one is problematic in various ways, but there's also something kind of noble about it. Again, maybe it inspires something.

I think the biggest problem is that it makes enemy Domination victories impossible before the Dragon is born, which is very unfun to play against.

I like the flavor inspiration, it fits very well with the prophecies and such. I can't think of another way to do this kind of bonus though. Anything that cuts off when the Dragon is born seems very punishing to Tear in the late game, since it so suddenly removes a bonus they've had for so long.

The Riding Lord is based on the social inequality of Tear, and the fact that the horsemen are mostly nobles. Don't think this one will work, but again, maybe will inspire a unit that will. Right now the double edged sword is a little too sharp, though - way to make this worth it? I want to encourage unusual tactics, but this just encourages Carpet of Mounted Units, which isn't interesting.

We could encourage a mix of units by making it a bonus that inverts at a certain distance. I've suggested a change to do this.

I could see this one applying only to friendly units, otherwise the edge of that double edge is a bit sharp with this change.

The Guarded Trader is simply a UU version of the Port of Storms UA

Awesome, looks good!

The Coastal Defender is a rather hamfisted attempt at a naval unit that doesn't give them a good offensive navy, but gives them control over their territory - and this would be really really good control. Sort of a like a turtle ship that can enter oceans. Not sure if it's still too limited, though. I suspect that we should consider a few more naval options - I think Tear may be one of the only options for such we have. I know they have only a levied navy, but still...

I don't think we should feel pushed to consider naval military options for Tear. Given the flavor (which you've mentioned), I think that would push us away from it. There are plenty of coastal civs in the Westlands, and even if we don't include the more naval of them in the first batch we release, the Sea Folk give significant presence to a sea-based civ for launch already.

+ movement in Tairen territory doesn't really help much, because ships don't often move through large patches of owned waters, and it would lose that movement once it moved into unclaimed water, effectively not letting it use it most of the time. Range and sight as pretty strong and I like the flavor intersection of encouraging keeping them at home and pillaging trade routes (though that will usually require them to be sent abroad).

Heart of the Stone is a sort of weird way of looking at the flavor. Allows it to be a rather flexible bonus. Not sure exactly how it should work.

I think highest yield from citizens could work, but I think some yields are significantly under-represented in citizens (Faith, Prestige). And even then, given that yields have different relative values, a numerical comparison (which is what the player would understand well) doesn't make as much sense for this.

The Great Holding is another relatively literal use of flavor. Not sure how easy this would be to balance, given the stupid trade mechanics and such. Obviously encourages an aggressive Historian fest, though.

I like this one, it's a solid upgrade on the existing building. I don't think it creates much of a trading problem since it has the same kind of requirements as some of the base buildings (non-local nationality and certain eras).

Dragonwall Gate is a combination of the Tear-has-good-horses flavor and the fact htat it's a part of the Stone.

This provides HP to the city, right? Looks good.

Lord's Corral tries to capture a bit of all of this flavor in one UI.

This doesn't completely replace the Pasture, which is good, but it does compete with it (well, outclass it) on the resources it works on, which I don't think is ideal for a UI. I do like the bonuses though, they work well with the flavor. I also like the idea of an Improvement that produces more yields while the city is producing something specific.

Decided to check... and found that kidshowbusiness had done a few things as well!

Thanks for doing this! I didn't remember these at all, so it's good that we're considering them again now!

His "The Stone Stands" is a good example of the "custom Uniques shoudl be super OP" school of thought...

All of the abilities. Yes, I think this one is a bit scattershot and too strong. The first part is also quite narrow and encourages weird gameplay for producing loads of Defenders before they go obsolete to station them in your cities for the rest of the game.

His "Defenders" are sort of similar to yours, with that "Elite Formation" promotion once again. The ranged attack is interesting, but I'm not sure the "point" of it.

The ranged attack ability is cool, but I think the difficulty with this one is it's only particularly useful if Tear is on the defensive (at least for the second part). Despite their flavor, I think we want to avoid that because it's not very fun to play. We've shown in a few places here that we can make defensive-useful bonuses that are also good for Tear in general, so I'd be inclined to stick with that approach.

I'm not a big fan of the adjacent-unit-of-same-type-is-stronger ability, because it encourages swarms rather than diverse tactics. That's cool for some flavor (a Zerg civ from Starcraft!), but not really this one.

Oil Press is a pretty straightforward yield UB. Interesting in that it goes in a very different direction than the source building - adding a bunch of gold to a production building.

Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like the flavor of it should connect to Olives somehow, but there are risks with connecting to specific luxuries without some mechanism for the civ to gain access to them reliably.

Hmm... I think we need another Defender option.

One new Defender option, coming right up!

Not sure I love most of these new ideas, anyway.

I seem to have ended up with a lot of red, which lines up with this sentiment.

Recap!

Tear (Era 5-9, Tall, Diplo/Dom/Culture)

UAs:

• Hard as Stone, Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Merchants' Rugs, Tear produces a set of additional luxury resources as a byproduct of the luxuries normally found on the map. These new luxuries do not produce Happiness for Tear, but do for other civilizations when traded to them.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts (hidden artifacts), Tairen Historians can explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory twice as fast as usual, but cannot find Artifacts of Power in them. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige), Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power and Mythic Sites in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Cultural output. Artifacts housed in Tairen cities produce Faith instead of Prestige.
• Ban on Channeling (war), Tairen units have +X% defense against channeling attacks while in Tairen territory. Tear gains +Y Gold (low) and +Z Faith (low) at the end of every turn in which no Tairen channeling unit channels. When Tear is at war, every W turns without any Tairen channeling, these yields increase by 1, to a maximum of V.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Class Divisions, When a city gains a population point, Tear receives X Gold. Tairen cities can "Push the Populace," sacrificing 1 Population in order to rush the city's current construction by Y hammers (scaling) and produce Z Unhappiness (like 2) for W turns. (like 30)providing Y% bonus production and Z% bonus gold yields in that city, but also +W Unhappiness, for V turns. Tear's Happiness surplus does not contribute to Golden Ages, and We Love the King Days cannot occur.
• Rule of Lords, Each turn, Tairen cities gain X% bonus generation of a given, randomly-selected yield type (selecting from Gold, Production, Science, Faith, and Food)
• The Stone Stands (Dragon), Before the Dragon is born, the Tairen capital cannot be conquered or sacked.
• The Stone Stands (misc), Tairen cities that are garrisoned by a Defender of the Stone receive 50% bonuses to HP, combat strength, healing per turn, and ranged attack. Horses yield double the normal amount, and provide +1 culture and +1 gold. Olives provide +1 production and +2 gold when worked. (kidshowbusiness)
• Ban on Channeling (channelers), channeling units have -X% combat strength in Tairen territory. Tear generates Culture equal to the Population of its capital minus the number of channelers in its territory, all multiplied by X. And half that in Prestige after <tech>.
• Ban on Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, instead Tear receives a Legendary Person of the type of their choice.

UUs:

• Defenders (wonderful), replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission instead of the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Only X Developed Cities may exist in the world at any one time. The Tairen capital cannot be founded as a Developed City.
• Riding Lord, receives +X% bonus to combat strength for every friendly mounted unit in an adjacent tile. All melee and polearm units in adjacent tiles (friendly or enemy) receive -Y% combat strength, and melee and polearm units (friendly or enemy) 2-4 tiles away receive +Z% combat strength.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Coastal Defender, replaces Naval Melee 4-5 or Naval Ranged 3-4. While in Tairen territory, receives +X movement, +Y Sight, and +Z Range. Pillaging foreign trade routes produces +W extra Gold.
• Defender of the Stone, replaces a melee or polearm unit. If adjacent to another Defender, receives +X% combat strength. If garrisoned in a city, receives a 25% bonus to combat strength, and a ranged attack of one hex (kidshowbusiness).
• Defenders (spy), replaces era 5/6 unit. Has higher combat strength and has an X% chance of finding and killing foreign Eyes and Ears stationed in the city it is garrisoned in every Y turns.

UBs:

• The Stone, replaces the Palace. This city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Heart of the Stone, replaces XP National Wonder, receives one Legendary Craft or Artifact Slot. If the slot is filled, The Heart of the Stone generates +X of whatever yield the city is currently dedicating the most citizens towards producing (on tiles or in specialist buildings)
• Great Holding, replaces Culture 4, receives an extra Legendary Craft and Artifact slot. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Artifacts from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.
• Dragonwall Gate, replaces Production (Pasture), +X% XP for all Mounted units build in the city. This city gets +Y Hit Points for every Pasture.
• Oil Press, replaces Production 1, Provides an addition +X Gold and Y% Gold production in the city. (kidshowbusiness)

UIs:

• Lord's Corral, built on Horses, Lopar, and S'redit. In addition to providing the resource, provides +X Gold and +Y% production when building Mounted units and Defensive buildings.

UGs:

• High Lord, spawned by Merchant Lords and Ambassadors. Yield is Gold and City-State influence with City-States connected to this city by trade routes. Upgrade 2 ability is "City-States connected to this city by trade route do not have elections and cannot be the victim of coups. When an election would occur, instead Tear gains X influence with that City-State." Relevant LP is the Merchant Lord.

Ban on Channeling (channelers) tries to make the absence of channelers into a yield. X as a multiplier is adjustable for balance. Not sure I like this one, for the same reasons I mentioned on the other Ban on Channeling UA.

Ban on Channeling (LP) is potentially way powerful, since choosing LP types that often is super strong for rushing wonders and stuff. We might want to make it select-them-all-in-sequence like the Mayan Long Count. I find I like this better from a flavor perspective, compared to the other two, because it completely changes Tear's relationship with Sisters. I don't know if it will be problematic that Tear wouldn't have access to any Sister units though.

Defenders (spy) seems like a defensive ability on a unit that would always be quite useful. If we wanted, we could make it throw the Eyes and Ears out, instead of killing them, and elevate it to a chance every turn, instead of every Y turns. We could work out something for them to interact with Diplomats as well?

 

[counterpoint]

I like "any global Quest from a Stedding" - that provides the same kind of visible goal for players and I like the competition you've mentioned here.

With either approach, it does mean that the "lock this Waygate" quest will yield a key. Are we ok with that or should we find a way to exclude it?

ooh, that's quite weird. I think we want to exclude it. Or, maybe that's should only be a targeted quest?

I'm ok with losing that bit of the flavor here, I think it would be possible to get that in elsewhere if we really want to include it. I'm also not a big fan of the general concept of a unit aura that affects static elements (like cities or Improvements or the like). We've done it a few times since we had very specific things we were trying to achieve, but I feel like it encourages a kind of "sentry" playstyle where the player needs to dot units around at loads of specific locations that isn't very fun.

I'm leaning towards Exploring the Ways being instant. I think if it takes multiple turns it should be more like Workers constructing an Improvement, whereas this flavor suggests that the unit should disappear from the map, which is weird in CiV terms. (As a flavor justification for the exploration being instant, each turn is often quite a large amount of actual time.)

Instant means "takes the turn" though, right? I'm fine with that, but truly instant, or like pillaging (costs movement) is kind of lame in its easiness.

However, that does make this a bit more difficult. I think if we leave the probability of the unit being lost the same for Blue Sisters as it is for Recon/Settlers then it's not a strong enough ability for Blue tier 0 - the Waygates don't provide enough value to the player for them to risk the Blue Sister, who is otherwise quite strong.

Maybe the answer is to beef up just the chance of teleporting, rather than teleporting and treasure, to compensate for a lowered chance of being lost. This will mean the Blue Sister will often be moved around the map by the Waygates, where she may not be at her most useful, but is certainly much better than dead. At the same time, that risk offsets against the relatively low reward of Waygate rewards (especially since travel chance goes up). It's also interesting that this would encourage usage of the Ways as an escape mechanism for Blue Sisters in desperation, which is very cool.

I think we're best lowering the chance of getting lost and raising the chance of teleporting to compensate. We'll need to tweak how much we raise/lower to hit that sweet spot and avoid it being a yield farm, and I think that's something we can adjust as we play.

If you're happy with that I'll edit it into the Diplo summary!

Yeah, I think that's probably wise. I suppose you chose teleport over rewards because the teleporting is more likely to be useful in the mid-late game, right?

I still kind of feel like this needs some extra dimension, though. Part of me wants to allow the "undiscovered teleport" to be higher, but that'll cause problems, as described before. Another part of me wants to somehow allow some actual agency on the part of the Blue. Like, when teleporting, can choose which continent they're going to, or something. Or, when teleporting, always has the option of teleporting to the WG closest to the capital. Maybe, when teleporting, they receive +X Faith or something?

The thing is, these are quite useless once traveling is around, I'd say. But perhaps that's fine, since many things are useless that late in the game, and this is a tier zero.

Awesome, I've edited that into the summary.

Also, can you remove the line about Waygates being a National Wonder from the Channeling summary?

done!

 

[counterpoint]

I think since the bonus only applies to one city, it needs to be epic to compete with civ-wide bonuses that other civs have. It means that the Tairen capital will often be producing units instead of buildings, so it may not have all of the yield buildings other capitals would. I agree that it's strong but I think we're best adjusting between double, 50%, and triple when we see how it plays out.

I see what you mean, but my issue is more that, for Tall civs, a capital-only bonus kind of is a civ-wide bonus, when it's powerful like this.

I'd say the anti-channeler flavor is fairly mechanically subtle. It doesn't penalize them for having channelers or reward them for not having channelers, it just encourages them to build other stuff aside from channelers. I think that will lead to a Tairen military that's quite channeler-light, which is pretty cool with how it lines up with flavor.

right. That's fine. This comes up a little later with some othe runiques. This is fine though.

Right, I should have expanded on this more!

The idea is that as long as Tear has at least one of the base luxuries connected for your civ, then they also have one of the "extra" one that corresponds to that luxury. So it rewards resource diversity, rather than quantity.

I suppose this is Wide favoring, which is annoying. I don't think it's strongly so, because you can get those resources through trading as well, and an extra luxury will often translate into other trade deals aside from additional luxuries. (The AI does take the Dutch UA into account when evaluating the value of a final-quantity-luxury-giveaway trades, for example, so they would do something similar here - knowing that Tear doesn't benefit from the extra resource and so not valuing it more than duplicates of normal resources.)

I'm a big fan of this mechanic, but if we want Tear to be very deliberately Tall, it seems the mechanics don't fit.

OK, the width thing does put us in a dilly of a pickle. The wideness of this does seem to go quite against the grain of what we're going for. I'm wondering if there might be some ways around that, though. Some ideas on how we might do this:

1 - make the derived resources based on resources you trade for, not ones you find on the map. This is weird, i know, but it certainly wouldn't really be Wide anymore. Big problem with this is that it's quite possible nobody would sanely trade with Tear, unless they specifically wanted the derived resource, and felt reasonably assured that they'd get it.
2 - Limit the number of derived resources, by making multiple luxuries produce the same derived resource, and still not allowing multiple copies. So, Cotton, Silk, Furs, and Dyes would all produce the "Textiles" resource. This still sort of encourages width, but much less so, especially if it's paired with some other unique that lets you get resources more easily without building cities. Could also see each of these, since there would be far fewer, provide you the happiness we don't allow in the base version of this unique. Coming up with the categories might involve some stretching, but is probably doable.
3 - Only allow it from resources gained via trade or through your first four cities. This might be overly harsh
4 - Something tied in with another Tall-favoring mechanic - National Wonders, LP, etc. Not sure what this would be.

So, I dunno. I feel like if we can't solve this, then this ability becomes much less useful to us!

I added a UB that is *sorta* like this.

You can't do it all the time because CSes that become more resilient to being intimidated the more you do it. The way that swings, it effectively has a cooldown (already present in BNW), but also modified by several other factors (they're all on the wiki page, specifically the "Demanding a Tribute" section).

I figure this will also come with all of the other normal, non-influence effects of demanding tribute from a CS, which also prevents players from just machine gunning it. So diplo penalties with civs that are allied with or protecting the CS, cancellation of Quests from that CS to the Tairen player, and progress towards the "all of these CSes hate me and are now locked into permanent war with me" state.

I don't think it steps on a Gunboat Diplomacy equivalent's toes - they seem to work together quite well. This ability makes CSes afraid more often, which helps Gunboat Diplomacy work even better. The demanding of tribute could be a cap off to gain an alliance, when using both in concert, or something like that.

Just read the bit of the wiki. makes sense. I can see how this would fit into all of this. I'm not sure how *fun* the mechanic is, though. But it's not terrible.

I don't think this conflicts with Brown Sisters - I figure it can apply to them as well.

Oh, I misremembered how Browns work!

I see what you mean about the flavor, but I think the crux of the problem is the use of the phrasing "cannot find Artifacts of Power in them", which suggests an absence, rather than a lack of display. I mostly said that because it's how I think the mechanics should work out, but we could flavor that differently. (Also worth noting this only applies to Sites of Power in Tairen territory, so the Tairens will still have Artifacts.) I'm not sure where to insert that "hide away the Artifact and get the Portal Stone instead" flavor in the flow of exploring the Site, but that's the actual flavor justification, and I think we could get that in somewhere to make it sensible to the player.

The reason I think that hoarding Artifacts (the concept, rather than the name of this UA) shouldn't lead to a bunch of artifacts on the Culture screen, is because Artifacts on the Culture screen are specifically things that a civ is putting on display in order to influence others. That's why they generate Prestige at all. And Tear is very specifically not doing that by keeping its Artifacts hidden away in a vault somewhere. The flavor isn't that they don't exist - they're just not in the display cabinet that is the Culture screen.

I've also proposed tweaking the name for this one, since that name also played into the above flavor difference.

Hmmm... I think a major problem I have with this ability is that it's very very arguable, in that you seem to think the lack-of-artifacts is logical, where I'm inclined to think it feels kind of "off," and the exact opposite of what I'd expect (more on that below). You or I could continue to discuss it and come to a consensus, I'm sure, but the fact of the matter is I think when there are binary choices based on flavor like this, and legitimate arguments for either path, we're going to run into people feeling like we made a clear wrong choice. Of course, we make choices all the time, but usually they aren't binary like this. The whole Seanchan puppet-vs-annex thing was perhaps a similar choice, and we ended up kind of riding the middle on that one, which was probably wise.

As for my specific take on it, I can definitely see where you're coming from, and how they aren't "displaying" the artifacts for the world. That's true, certainly, in some respect. However, I'm not sure that that provides them with less prestige. Sure, there's the hidden stuff, the ter'angreal door, and all that, that nobody knows about. That fits the bill of what your talking about. But, by far, the most notable thing hanging out in Tear is Callandor, and that is very, very famous. This, I think, is going to jump out at people more immediately than the hidden channeling artifacts.

Also, there's arguably some literal prestige in hoarding tons of artifacts, even if you don't show them off. And I'd also say that the GW system in BNW doesn't *have* to be the literal "showing publicly" of items. True, in BNW it is (museums, etc.), but in many of Randland's nations, I suspect this is a bit more like "the Lords have them in their palaces and show them to guests, and or sit and stare at them quietly, alone," which the stuff in Tear may fall under.

When I think of what you're talking about, I think more of Ebou Dar, and the whole Bowl of the Winds. Equally hidden, but unlike in Tear, nobody knew there was even anything hiding in there. People know there's a cache of artifacts in Tear, and that adds to the mystique - the prestige - of the civ, given the impenetrability of the Stone and all that.

But again, the fact that we can go so deep on this topic means it's a rather risky direction to go in with a UA.

Yes, being able to found a fixed number of cities with them, rather than only train a fixed number of units, is much better!

Do you mean that this wouldn't be a complete Settler replacement? That seems to be what you're saying in that sentence, given its structure!

I don't think we want a non-hero unit that does that kind of mixed partial-replacement of a base game unit. I'd be all for replacing Tairen Settlers wholesale, even the first one. It will give them a serious leg up at the beginning, but it does also rapidly diminish over the course of the game, since it only gives them an edge if they found those cities before other civs would have grown to that size anyway, which is all very early days.

Nope, I definitely did mean "would," not "wouldn't." I'm saying that this would be a total-replacement of the settler unit. However, the specific awesome-sauce functionality of the Settler would only be usable 3 times (or 4 or whatever) ("So this would be a complete Settler replacement, meaning you COULD build more than 4 cities, just not with the special bonus, right?"). So, after four cities, you're still building the Unique, but pumping out regular cities. We could perhaps give the unit some other perk, as well (movement or something). So yeah, no partial replacement suggested here.

I suppose the first-city bonus could be allowed. It does seem like we're begging for early rushes and stuff though, and that Tear will likely get a substantial tech lead often, right?

Also, it's kind of flavor-weird - Tear being the best civ in Era 1, right?

Yeah, but I think it leans toward the Stone flavor, even if we make it not the actual Stone of Tear, which still feels like a flavor problem to me. I'm going to red it.

no disagreement here.

Yeah, let's go for both!

I've left the LP for upgrade 3 as the Merchant Lord, because I think the Merchant Lord is the closer fit of the two. Even though the Ambassador does CS stuff, all of the High Lord Governor's abilities are hinged on trade, which makes me think the Merchant Lord is better connected to those mechanics.

ok, sounds good.

I'm not a big fan of how two pieces of this UA compete with each other. Making Artifacts generate Faith (which makes them special), but then encouraging players to not generate Artifacts from their own Sites of Power plays against that.

I see this as quite similar to what we did with (I think) PC-Seanchan. They don't compete. Rather, it offers the player an option - get *this* if you harvest it, and get *that* if you don't. It's rather similar to the PC-S mechanic, as I recall (we wouldn't do both, obviously). Not quite sure why that kind of thing is acceptable in that case but not in this.

I think Faith as a yield works flavorfully, but since this only becomes available once Historians and Brown Sisters can find Artifacts, it's quite late in the game for Faith generation, which I worry will mislead players a bit. Science could work mechanically, but it flies in the face of the Tairen flavor of hiding-and-not-using their Power artifacts. Same with Gold, Production, and Food, I feel like giving the artifacts yields doesn't play well with this flavor.

A decent point about Faith. Faith is still useful at that point in the game, but not as much in a formative way. Your problem with the artifacts produces anyyields at all is kind of odd to me, though. Why make them totally useless? If you're really focusing on the flavor, I don't see anything in the flavor that suggests the Tairens are doing anything special with stuff in their own territory - it seems like a somewhat arbitrary division in the UA above. Here it's removed, but we're of course left with the previously-discussed different interpretations of this flavor. Please elaborate on the no-yields thing. If Tear didn't get anything out of doing what they do with artifacts, why do they do it?

In terms of strength I'd say it's fine - the Portal Stone Prestige buff is strong enough to stand alone, I'd say. Portal Stones generate a decent amount of Culture, and generating that much Prestige as well is really strong for the Culture victory.

I'll mark this one as red.

magenta!

I like the flavor of this one, but I feel like the flavor pushes towards a more direct effect on the actual channeler units themselves.

I also think that given Tear's sort-of-Authority leaning in their channeler attitude, we should be less mechanically direct about rewarding non-channeling than we were with the Seanchan and Aes Sedai - where we directly rewarded them for not using Aes Sedai.

Not quite enough for me to propose removing it, but I'm not a big fan.

Despite my criticisms, I've proposed a related UA as well.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I agree with your first point. Channeling is just as effective in Tairen lands - perhaps moreso, since its so rare. However, using it has consequences. This is similar to the Waygates-Uniques-for-Andor thing. I'd think that Tear's attitude on channeling would affect things connected to channeling, rather than the channeling itself.

And, re: authority. We're rewarding them for not *using* their channelers, not not having them.

I like this one! I love the plunder-when-finished mechanic, it creates a really nice, antagonistic trading environment. I do think that with the contention we have for UAs, the UU version is more likely to succeed, but I wouldn't propose removing this yet since it's nice to have the option on the UA level.

agreed

I feel like this one is way underpowered. I think we could drop the whole final clause of penalties, because Y and Z would need to be super high for the Unhappiness not to offset them by itself.

You mention this not being something you specifically like, so I've suggested an edit that changes it quite a bit.

OK, I can see the point, but isn't sacrificing population worse than some unhappiness? Especially given Tall civ's general lack of happiness problems, typically. Leaving the colors alone on this one, because magenta'ing it makes it super confusing.

Yeah, I feel like players will be frustrated by this UA because there's no way for them to direct it effectively toward their plan for the game. I'll mark it as red.

agreed

I think the biggest problem is that it makes enemy Domination victories impossible before the Dragon is born, which is very unfun to play against.

I like the flavor inspiration, it fits very well with the prophecies and such. I can't think of another way to do this kind of bonus though. Anything that cuts off when the Dragon is born seems very punishing to Tear in the late game, since it so suddenly removes a bonus they've had for so long.

yeah, fine to axe this. It's possible that this flavor belongs best with the Stone wonder itself (probably an era 1 wonder, or 2, maybe), in that part or all of its bonuses could cease when not-Rand is born.

We could encourage a mix of units by making it a bonus that inverts at a certain distance. I've suggested a change to do this.

I could see this one applying only to friendly units, otherwise the edge of that double edge is a bit sharp with this change.

yeah, it applies to friendly because of the morale hits caused by these @ssholes. That said, I get the criticism. However, I feel like your addition makes the unit kind of unintuitively complex to use, unfortunately.

I've put in a suggestion that fits the flavor well, but might be kind of opaque for the player, and loses the morale thing too.

I don't think we should feel pushed to consider naval military options for Tear. Given the flavor (which you've mentioned), I think that would push us away from it. There are plenty of coastal civs in the Westlands, and even if we don't include the more naval of them in the first batch we release, the Sea Folk give significant presence to a sea-based civ for launch already.

Hmmm, I don't think I agree.

First of all, I think Tear is a notable coastal city, and I think we should be pushed to consider naval military options for essentially all of the coastal cities from the lore.

This isn't so much about Tear having to have an epic navy and be a "naval civ", it's about us needing, I'd say, to have more than a single naval UU in the game. It's true that vanilla civ doesn't have a lot of naval UUs, but G&K definitely seemed to be directly remedying this, by adding multiple. So yeah, consider more than just the SF.

As far as Tear, specifically, I don't see why levies have to be a deal breaker. One thing about this quasi-feudal universe is that essentially *all* of the armed forces are levies of nobles for the monarch. This is certainly true with most of the navies, and virtually all the armies, with the exception of the few "elite" forces that exist. I say this to point that that most of our UUs are probably levies or conscriptions - arguably, that's even true with the Sea Folk ships. As I recall, isn't "professional navy" or something like it one of our final techs? That proves the point that "not professional navy" is pretty much the norm throughout most of the timeline, at least as represented in our game.

So, I think we should feel free to have some naval UUs in Tear. Tear is described as perhaps the biggest trade power there is, and they apparently do it mostly via the sea. They must protect those ships, right? Thus, I'd say defensive or trade-related (pillaging, etc.) combat UUs are a good choice here.

+ movement in Tairen territory doesn't really help much, because ships don't often move through large patches of owned waters, and it would lose that movement once it moved into unclaimed water, effectively not letting it use it most of the time. Range and sight as pretty strong and I like the flavor intersection of encouraging keeping them at home and pillaging trade routes (though that will usually require them to be sent abroad).

yeah, agreed re: movement.

I've added another few.

I think highest yield from citizens could work, but I think some yields are significantly under-represented in citizens (Faith, Prestige). And even then, given that yields have different relative values, a numerical comparison (which is what the player would understand well) doesn't make as much sense for this.

ok, well the idea here is really just to provide a variable bonus - what's a good mechanism for such, instead of the based-on-production thing?

This provides HP to the city, right? Looks good.

correct.

This doesn't completely replace the Pasture, which is good, but it does compete with it (well, outclass it) on the resources it works on, which I don't think is ideal for a UI. I do like the bonuses though, they work well with the flavor. I also like the idea of an Improvement that produces more yields while the city is producing something specific.

Hmmm... aren't ALL UIs directly competing with other Improvements?

I was originally thinking of this as a Gold alternative to the typical production from pastures, but now I'm realizing that S'redit and Lopar are from camps which provide Gold. So it sort of is too similar.

Suggestions?

 

[counterpoint]

Thanks for doing this! I didn't remember these at all, so it's good that we're considering them again now!

yeah, I seem to remember something like:

If I never hear the name kidshowbusiness again, it'd be too soon

and

Anything posted in this thread before page 4 is garbage. I refuse to remember it.

Me, I thought you were being harsh, but there it is.

All of the abilities. Yes, I think this one is a bit scattershot and too strong. The first part is also quite narrow and encourages weird gameplay for producing loads of Defenders before they go obsolete to station them in your cities for the rest of the game.

oh yeah, that infinitely scalable defender bonus. Agreed on the red.

The ranged attack ability is cool, but I think the difficulty with this one is it's only particularly useful if Tear is on the defensive (at least for the second part). Despite their flavor, I think we want to avoid that because it's not very fun to play. We've shown in a few places here that we can make defensive-useful bonuses that are also good for Tear in general, so I'd be inclined to stick with that approach.

I'm not a big fan of the adjacent-unit-of-same-type-is-stronger ability, because it encourages swarms rather than diverse tactics. That's cool for some flavor (a Zerg civ from Starcraft!), but not really this one.

agreed. Also agreed on the Elite Formation promotion.

Also, hmm... a starcraft mod! I can't think of much that'd be more soulless than a turn-based strategy adaptation of an RTS... though, truth be told, I've been replaying warcraft 3 (it's 2003, right?) and have been thinking of hypothetical civs for that to (and struck with how uninspired they'd be: the Gnome civ, with it's UUs: the two Gnome units! and it's UB: the Gnome building!)

Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like the flavor of it should connect to Olives somehow, but there are risks with connecting to specific luxuries without some mechanism for the civ to gain access to them reliably.

yeah, it'd have to be something "extra." If we were to choose this, we'd likely just tweak the name to make it less specific.

Ban on Channeling (channelers) tries to make the absence of channelers into a yield. X as a multiplier is adjustable for balance. Not sure I like this one, for the same reasons I mentioned on the other Ban on Channeling UA.

Eh, not sure about this one. Above I describe the combat strength thing as being kind of strange. But, also, the keep-channelers-outside-of-your-territory seems on the one hand, very easy to make happen (save when you're at war and enemy channelers are there), but on the other hand, any jerk with an OpBor agreement could just camp their chanellers in your territory and deny you the bonus. Not sure on this one.

Ban on Channeling (LP) is potentially way powerful, since choosing LP types that often is super strong for rushing wonders and stuff. We might want to make it select-them-all-in-sequence like the Mayan Long Count. I find I like this better from a flavor perspective, compared to the other two, because it completely changes Tear's relationship with Sisters. I don't know if it will be problematic that Tear wouldn't have access to any Sister units though.

Interesting! This had potential, but also some flaws.

First, I definitely don't like the fact that this really encourages them to have zero Aes Sedai. Of course, in the books, Tear has none, but no civs, barring maybe Andor, "have" Aes Sedai - our sisters are really more like tower agents acting in the interest of your civ, etc. So that flavor isn't too weird, IMO. We do perceive Tear as "Fear but Authority," and that Authority component essentially means we need to reasonably let them use Aes Sedai, since that's achief benefit of Authority in the first place (in a sense, this actually kind of makes the whole quest to limit channeling kind of counterproductive for us, maybe). So, I'd say we shouldn't do something this drastic to that particular end.

I'm thinking maybe we could do something like every 2nd Sister is given as an LP, or, if we have a Maya-like round-robin, just work in X number of Sisters throughout the whole round robin. That might do the trick.

Secondly, I worry how this buts up against Channeling Quota. If the TW sees they are under quota, they will offer a Sister. Tear gets an LP, and is forever under quote. So, next available opportunity, Tear gets another Sister (LP, of course). Seems kind of alike a never-ending stream that kind of flies against how the Tower assignments of Sisters work. And if we're going for Fear-but-Authority, The Tower will likely reasonably like Tear, and offer them aplenty. How could we work around this?

I am starting to consider this whole anti-channeler thing, and am wondering if maybe we can find inspiration from the Fear but Authority thing. How can we create a Unique that capitalizes on the Fear thing, without necessarily venturing into Oppression (or Liberation, obviously) territory). According to the Summaries, "Fear Branch - gain bonuses for a low channeler count (especially males), and protect yourself against Dragonsworn". Is there a way to link that in, somehow, and/or possibly "penalizing" or at least disincentivizing actual *channeling*, if not the existence of the units?

Defenders (spy) seems like a defensive ability on a unit that would always be quite useful. If we wanted, we could make it throw the Eyes and Ears out, instead of killing them, and elevate it to a chance every turn, instead of every Y turns. We could work out something for them to interact with Diplomats as well?

Hmmm... Not sure. Any specific flavor on this one? Seems kind of random (which might be fine). Not sure how much this will play into people's actual strategy, though, which isn't ideal. Might be something people kind of forget about.

No direct thoughts on the toss out-vs-kill. Any ideas on the Diplomat thing?


Recap!

Tear (Era 5-9, Tall, Diplo/Dom/Culture)

UAs:

• Hard as Stone, Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Merchants' Rugs, Tear produces a set of additional luxury resources as a byproduct of the luxuries normally found on the map. These new luxuries do not produce Happiness for Tear, but do for other civilizations when traded to them.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts (hidden artifacts), Tairen Historians can explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory twice as fast as usual, but cannot find Artifacts of Power in them. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige), Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power and Mythic Sites in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Cultural output. Artifacts housed in Tairen cities produce Faith instead of Prestige.
• Ban on Channeling (war), Tairen units have +X% defense against channeling attacks while in Tairen territory. Tear gains +Y Gold (low) and +Z Faith (low) at the end of every turn in which no Tairen channeling unit channels. When Tear is at war, every W turns without any Tairen channeling, these yields increase by 1, to a maximum of V.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Class Divisions, When a city gains a population point, Tear receives X Gold. Tairen cities can "Push the Populace," sacrificing 1 Population in order to rush the city's current construction by Y hammers (scaling) and produce Z Unhappiness (like 2) for W turns. (like 30)providing Y% bonus production and Z% bonus gold yields in that city, but also +W Unhappiness, for V turns. Tear's Happiness surplus does not contribute to Golden Ages, and We Love the King Days cannot occur.
• Ban on Channeling (channelers), channeling units have -X% combat strength in Tairen territory. Tear generates Culture equal to the Population of its capital minus the number of channelers in its territory, all multiplied by X. And half that in Prestige after <tech>.
• Ban on Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, instead Tear receives a Legendary Person of the type of their choice.

UUs:

• Defenders (wonderful), replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission instead of the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Only X Developed Cities may exist in the world at any one time.
• Riding Lord, receives +X% bonus to combat strength for every friendly mounted unit in an adjacent tile. All melee and polearm units in adjacent tiles (friendly or enemy) receive -Y% combat strength, and melee and polearm units (friendly or enemy) 2-4 tiles away receive +Z% combat strength. +Y% additional combat strength against non-mounted units with less than Z total EXP.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Coastal Defender, replaces Naval Melee 4-5 or Naval Ranged 3-4. While in Tairen territory, receives +X movement, +Y Sight, and +Z Range. Pillaging foreign trade routes produces +W extra Gold.
• Defenders (spy), replaces era 5/6 unit. Has higher combat strength and has an X% chance of finding and killing foreign Eyes and Ears stationed in the city it is garrisoned in every Y turns.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route, and X Prestige. +Y movement when following a friendly or foreign trade route.
• Tariff Galleon, replaces Naval Melee 4-5. Can detect non-enemy sea trade units up to X hexes away. If ending its turn on a non-enemy sea trade unit, the Tariff Galleon receives Gold equal to half the amount to be received by the trade unit owner, who receives the other half. Exacting this Tariff does not cause a declaration of war.

UBs:

• Heart of the Stone, replaces XP National Wonder, receives one Legendary Craft or Artifact Slot. If the slot is filled, The Heart of the Stone generates +X of whatever yield the city is currently dedicating the most citizens towards producing (on tiles or in specialist buildings)
• Great Holding, replaces Culture 4, receives an extra Legendary Craft and Artifact slot. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Artifacts from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.
• Dragonwall Gate, replaces Production (Pasture), +X% XP for all Mounted units build in the city. This city gets +Y Hit Points for every Pasture.
• Oil Press, replaces Production 1, Provides an addition +X Gold and Y% Gold production in the city. (kidshowbusiness)
• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each bonus resource worked by this city produces a derived resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.

UIs:

• Lord's Corral, built on Horses, Lopar, and S'redit. In addition to providing the resource, provides +X Gold and +Y% production when building Mounted units and Defensive buildings.

UGs:

• High Lord, spawned by Merchant Lords and Ambassadors. Yield is Gold and City-State influence with City-States connected to this city by trade routes. Upgrade 2 ability is "City-States connected to this city by trade route do not have elections and cannot be the victim of coups. When an election would occur, instead Tear gains X influence with that City-State." Relevant LP is the Merchant Lord.

The Reaver Sail might not be worthy enough and might need some other boost. Not sure if the movement bonus is mechanically possible.

Tariff Galleon is the start of an interesting idea. I can't quite figure out how to make it something other than a rather tedious following-around of every trade unit.

The Idea behind the Processing Workshop is like the Merchant's Rugs thing. Started out just as a Sea resource thing, but I decided to make it more epic. Tall-favoring because it's a nat wonder and only applies to one city. The idea would likely be that there would only be 3 distinct types of resources, but that you could get a bunch of them, if you had the right city.

 

[S3rgeus]

Woops, I forgot to mention I wouldn't be around yesterday! Sorry about that. I was at a D&D session and then out later in the evening, so no time to post!

Also, I'm going to be away tomorrow and Saturday, so next post on Sunday!

ooh, that's quite weird. I think we want to exclude it. Or, maybe that's should only be a targeted quest?

I can see how we would make it a targeted quest ("The Stedding will reward you for closing <nearby Waygate>. Targeted Quest.") but I think that would be strange. It's quite mechanically close to the "destroy this barbarian camp" quest, which is global. Another player might lock the Waygate, in which case you'd need to get a "you can no longer lock this Waygate".

I suppose the Wonder quests are kind of like that (targeted, but can be deprived completing them by another player building the Wonder before you), but they're "one way" - once the Wonder is built it can never be unbuilt. Since Waygates can be unlocked, players may expect to be able to do that. Though that's sort of a problem in both cases?

I've talked myself in circles now and I'm not sure which is better. I'm sort of thinking the targeted-wonder-like quest might be the way to go?

Instant means "takes the turn" though, right? I'm fine with that, but truly instant, or like pillaging (costs movement) is kind of lame in its easiness.

Yes, consumes all remaining movement!

Yeah, I think that's probably wise. I suppose you chose teleport over rewards because the teleporting is more likely to be useful in the mid-late game, right?

I still kind of feel like this needs some extra dimension, though. Part of me wants to allow the "undiscovered teleport" to be higher, but that'll cause problems, as described before. Another part of me wants to somehow allow some actual agency on the part of the Blue. Like, when teleporting, can choose which continent they're going to, or something. Or, when teleporting, always has the option of teleporting to the WG closest to the capital. Maybe, when teleporting, they receive +X Faith or something?

The thing is, these are quite useless once traveling is around, I'd say. But perhaps that's fine, since many things are useless that late in the game, and this is a tier zero.

done!

In "you chose" do you mean me or the player who's choosing to using a Blue Sister?

I mostly chose to raise the teleport probability rather than the reward probability because it will mean Blue Sisters are less of a yield farm with Waygates in the early game, since there's inherent risk in them being teleported elsewhere where they can't serve their primary function. I think the "bonus" part of this is getting the reward a lot more with them, since they won't be lost in the Ways nearly as often as Recon or Settler units.

I worry that any fixed yield bonus that we attach to it will mean that Blue Sisters become all about farming that yield in the early game, which is super not fun. I like being able to teleport back to the Waygate at the capital by choice though! The only thing that misses out is that Blue Sisters will no longer use the Ways as an escape out of desperation - it's now a guaranteed escape. Are we ok with that? (It's also a bit weird flavor wise, unless we leave the chance of getting lost even when doing that?)

 

[S3rgeus]

I see what you mean, but my issue is more that, for Tall civs, a capital-only bonus kind of is a civ-wide bonus, when it's powerful like this.

And that's kind of the idea - a UA usually provides a civ-wide bonus, and by providing a bonus to only the capital we encourage the player to play Tall, because that strategy makes a capital bonus more impactful. If it doesn't become a civ-wide bonus when played Tall, then it's just worse than a UA that is actually a civ-wide bonus. We don't want Tear to just have one really strong city with an ability like this, we want it to help them make a strong civ (as any other unique does).

OK, the width thing does put us in a dilly of a pickle. The wideness of this does seem to go quite against the grain of what we're going for. I'm wondering if there might be some ways around that, though. Some ideas on how we might do this:

1 - make the derived resources based on resources you trade for, not ones you find on the map. This is weird, i know, but it certainly wouldn't really be Wide anymore. Big problem with this is that it's quite possible nobody would sanely trade with Tear, unless they specifically wanted the derived resource, and felt reasonably assured that they'd get it.
2 - Limit the number of derived resources, by making multiple luxuries produce the same derived resource, and still not allowing multiple copies. So, Cotton, Silk, Furs, and Dyes would all produce the "Textiles" resource. This still sort of encourages width, but much less so, especially if it's paired with some other unique that lets you get resources more easily without building cities. Could also see each of these, since there would be far fewer, provide you the happiness we don't allow in the base version of this unique. Coming up with the categories might involve some stretching, but is probably doable.
3 - Only allow it from resources gained via trade or through your first four cities. This might be overly harsh
4 - Something tied in with another Tall-favoring mechanic - National Wonders, LP, etc. Not sure what this would be.

So, I dunno. I feel like if we can't solve this, then this ability becomes much less useful to us!

I added a UB that is *sorta* like this.

I really like your UB version of this, because it deals well with the Tallness of it. I think as a UA, the difficulty is that it needs to apply to more of the civ overall, which with the nature of this bonus, doesn't really lend itself to Tall. I'd say let's go with your UB!

Just read the bit of the wiki. makes sense. I can see how this would fit into all of this. I'm not sure how *fun* the mechanic is, though. But it's not terrible.

I think it will be quite fun. It certainly shares something with Gunboat Diplomacy, and the first Google result for "civ v gunboat diplomacy" (at least for me) is a CivFanatics thread titled "Gunboat Diplomacy is amazing!" So players do enjoy bullying CSes when it presents more general advantages.

Hmmm... I think a major problem I have with this ability is that it's very very arguable, in that you seem to think the lack-of-artifacts is logical, where I'm inclined to think it feels kind of "off," and the exact opposite of what I'd expect (more on that below). You or I could continue to discuss it and come to a consensus, I'm sure, but the fact of the matter is I think when there are binary choices based on flavor like this, and legitimate arguments for either path, we're going to run into people feeling like we made a clear wrong choice. Of course, we make choices all the time, but usually they aren't binary like this. The whole Seanchan puppet-vs-annex thing was perhaps a similar choice, and we ended up kind of riding the middle on that one, which was probably wise.

As for my specific take on it, I can definitely see where you're coming from, and how they aren't "displaying" the artifacts for the world. That's true, certainly, in some respect. However, I'm not sure that that provides them with less prestige. Sure, there's the hidden stuff, the ter'angreal door, and all that, that nobody knows about. That fits the bill of what your talking about. But, by far, the most notable thing hanging out in Tear is Callandor, and that is very, very famous. This, I think, is going to jump out at people more immediately than the hidden channeling artifacts.

Also, there's arguably some literal prestige in hoarding tons of artifacts, even if you don't show them off. And I'd also say that the GW system in BNW doesn't *have* to be the literal "showing publicly" of items. True, in BNW it is (museums, etc.), but in many of Randland's nations, I suspect this is a bit more like "the Lords have them in their palaces and show them to guests, and or sit and stare at them quietly, alone," which the stuff in Tear may fall under.

When I think of what you're talking about, I think more of Ebou Dar, and the whole Bowl of the Winds. Equally hidden, but unlike in Tear, nobody knew there was even anything hiding in there. People know there's a cache of artifacts in Tear, and that adds to the mystique - the prestige - of the civ, given the impenetrability of the Stone and all that.

But again, the fact that we can go so deep on this topic means it's a rather risky direction to go in with a UA.

This is a very good point. I certainly see how someone could think that not getting artifacts isn't how it should work. Even if there is a flavor logic to it, there are players who won't think of it that way and will think it's a mistake, which isn't good.

Nope, I definitely did mean "would," not "wouldn't." I'm saying that this would be a total-replacement of the settler unit. However, the specific awesome-sauce functionality of the Settler would only be usable 3 times (or 4 or whatever) ("So this would be a complete Settler replacement, meaning you COULD build more than 4 cities, just not with the special bonus, right?"). So, after four cities, you're still building the Unique, but pumping out regular cities. We could perhaps give the unit some other perk, as well (movement or something). So yeah, no partial replacement suggested here.

Ah, ok, I see what you mean now. The UU has both abilities, the original Found ability that's the same as the Settler and the Found Developed City ability. That makes this make a lot more sense to me.

I suppose the first-city bonus could be allowed. It does seem like we're begging for early rushes and stuff though, and that Tear will likely get a substantial tech lead often, right?

They will do, but with increased Population comes increased Unhappiness as well. They'll probably need to fight that pretty hard to get this tech advantage, otherwise going into negative Happiness would cap their growth and therefore tech advancement for a while as well, eating away at that early lead.

Also, it's kind of flavor-weird - Tear being the best civ in Era 1, right?

Kind of weird, but I think any Tall-favoring ability that works "in your first X cities" or "in the capital" will inherently favor early when all players are in that same situation (few cities), but without those bonuses. I don't think we want to avoid that kind of bonus in general because of this flavor.

I see this as quite similar to what we did with (I think) PC-Seanchan. They don't compete. Rather, it offers the player an option - get *this* if you harvest it, and get *that* if you don't. It's rather similar to the PC-S mechanic, as I recall (we wouldn't do both, obviously). Not quite sure why that kind of thing is acceptable in that case but not in this.

The main difference here is that the P-C Seanchan ability (this is the Portal Stone Culture/Science choice, right?) allows the player to do something that's just good in the early game and then choose later on whether they want to change tack if they were going Culture and have changed their mind, or stay the course if they still like it. (and the other combinations of switching from Culture to Science, going Science and deciding to stick with it) The early "just good" action is the meat of the bonus, and the choice for later is a bonus in its flexibility.

In this case, a Tairen player is just presented with a choice and needs to stick with it. If they find they want to change tack from generating Faith with their Artifacts to generating Prestige from Portal Stones, there's nothing they can do. The Portal Stones producing Prestige is a bonus, because they would otherwise just produce Culture, but the Faith instead of Prestige is a trade-off that may not remain a good idea as the game goes on.

A decent point about Faith. Faith is still useful at that point in the game, but not as much in a formative way. Your problem with the artifacts produces anyyields at all is kind of odd to me, though. Why make them totally useless? If you're really focusing on the flavor, I don't see anything in the flavor that suggests the Tairens are doing anything special with stuff in their own territory - it seems like a somewhat arbitrary division in the UA above. Here it's removed, but we're of course left with the previously-discussed different interpretations of this flavor. Please elaborate on the no-yields thing. If Tear didn't get anything out of doing what they do with artifacts, why do they do it?

Flavor wise, the main thing Tear got out of hoarding those artifacts is that no one could use them against them. That isn't a bonus in itself, in CiV terms, it's a lack of a bonus to your opponents. Tear lock all these artifacts away and never let anyone see them or use them or study them, exactly as you've said, they don't do anything special with them. It's the doing of something special with them that should produce yields. Hiding them away and explicitly never using them for stuff seems fairly clearly that they're not yielding anything for Tear, they're just depriving their enemies. That's why I think bonuses to artifact yields is a strange thing to give to Tear, because their flavor tells us that their artifacts are not used, unlike everyone else's.

I can definitely see your point above about the mystique of this cache of artifacts adding to the nation's Prestige, but that doesn't point to a bonus to me. I can see it as a semi-justification of why their artifacts do still produce Prestige at all, but a Prestige bonus would certainly seem to be the opposite of what the flavor suggests. Possibly as a different vehicle for generating Prestige? That they generate it on a nation level somehow, instead of on a per-artifact level.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I agree with your first point. Channeling is just as effective in Tairen lands - perhaps moreso, since its so rare. However, using it has consequences. This is similar to the Waygates-Uniques-for-Andor thing. I'd think that Tear's attitude on channeling would affect things connected to channeling, rather than the channeling itself.

And, re: authority. We're rewarding them for not *using* their channelers, not not having them.

I see what you mean, and in terms of affecting the channeler units, I was more thinking of the flavor meaning that channelers needed to use non-standard, more difficult ways of channeling than they would have otherwise because of the laws. And that would reduce their effectiveness. A channeler would be less likely blow up the enemy battalion because channeling is illegal, so they would often do something more circumspect like bind a few key ones with air and make the normal Tairen soldiers more likely to win. This is less likely to work, so they have "less combat strength," and it's a consequence of that law.

I see what you mean about rewarding them for not using their channelers rather than rewarding them for not having them. I'd like to capture that flavor well, but I think one of the key risks with that approach is that it can be very annoying for the player experience. We don't want to allow players to invest in something that their UA will punish them for using - I think we'll have more success in enticing them to not use them in the first place. They shouldn't feel like these channeling units they produced are useless, they should find that they produce less channelers because other stuff is more useful, or that their channelers are somehow useful for non-channeling things in ways they aren't for other civs. (The latter is the closest to what you've suggesting, I think.)

OK, I can see the point, but isn't sacrificing population worse than some unhappiness? Especially given Tall civ's general lack of happiness problems, typically. Leaving the colors alone on this one, because magenta'ing it makes it super confusing.

Tall would generally be more able to sacrifice Population than Wide in any given city, since their cities produce enough Food to get that Population back relatively quickly. A single citizen normally produces 1 Unhappiness, which is why I put the 2 Unhappiness here (may want to go higher than 2), otherwise sacrificing Population could be a permanent tool for escaping Unhappiness and getting constant production hurries. The idea here was to allow the Tairen player to make a long term sacrifice for a short term boost, which seems to fit very well into hurries and Population loss. If Y is large enough, this can be very significant for Wonder races and units that are needed as quickly as possible.

yeah, fine to axe this. It's possible that this flavor belongs best with the Stone wonder itself (probably an era 1 wonder, or 2, maybe), in that part or all of its bonuses could cease when not-Rand is born.

Yeah, we have a precedent in the Great Wall for an obsolete-able Wonder, though this one would be relevant for longer.

Also, happy flavor moment, I thought the Stone had been around for a long time before the Breaking and we would have to use it as a Wonder anyway, but apparently it was constructing during or shortly after the Breaking, which is perfect for era 1.

yeah, it applies to friendly because of the morale hits caused by these @ssholes. That said, I get the criticism. However, I feel like your addition makes the unit kind of unintuitively complex to use, unfortunately.

I've put in a suggestion that fits the flavor well, but might be kind of opaque for the player, and loses the morale thing too.

Yeah, I figured that was the flavor for these guys, but I'm saying applying the bonus to non-friendly units as well (which is how I had it written last time) would make it very hard to manage. I do agree that this guy would be really difficult to keep track of on a crowded battlefield though, the zones are super complicated.

With the new changes he still pretty much encourages swarms of copies of this unit - are we ok with that? Also, which unit does he replace?

Hmmm, I don't think I agree.

First of all, I think Tear is a notable coastal city, and I think we should be pushed to consider naval military options for essentially all of the coastal cities from the lore.

This isn't so much about Tear having to have an epic navy and be a "naval civ", it's about us needing, I'd say, to have more than a single naval UU in the game. It's true that vanilla civ doesn't have a lot of naval UUs, but G&K definitely seemed to be directly remedying this, by adding multiple. So yeah, consider more than just the SF.

As far as Tear, specifically, I don't see why levies have to be a deal breaker. One thing about this quasi-feudal universe is that essentially *all* of the armed forces are levies of nobles for the monarch. This is certainly true with most of the navies, and virtually all the armies, with the exception of the few "elite" forces that exist. I say this to point that that most of our UUs are probably levies or conscriptions - arguably, that's even true with the Sea Folk ships. As I recall, isn't "professional navy" or something like it one of our final techs? That proves the point that "not professional navy" is pretty much the norm throughout most of the timeline, at least as represented in our game.

So, I think we should feel free to have some naval UUs in Tear. Tear is described as perhaps the biggest trade power there is, and they apparently do it mostly via the sea. They must protect those ships, right? Thus, I'd say defensive or trade-related (pillaging, etc.) combat UUs are a good choice here.

I'm totally fine with us having that kind of defensive-flavor, trading-flavor naval units, I was talking about uniques that give them a generically good navy. I think the flavor pushes us away from that, but the specifics you've outlined here about defending trade routes and that like totally make sense.

ok, well the idea here is really just to provide a variable bonus - what's a good mechanism for such, instead of the based-on-production thing?

A variable bonus as in one that changes a lot or one that can be changed a lot? The former is difficult because it's difficult to line up with any particular strategy if it keeps changing. But it does match this flavor, which is a challenge.

We could make it produce a yield corresponding to the Governor of the city? That could be any yield and it's chosen by the player, so very focusable. It can be changeable since Governors can be changed, but will often remain fixed for most of the game.

Hmmm... aren't ALL UIs directly competing with other Improvements?

Not quite in this way. The primary functionality of the Pasture is to make these resources better for the player, and if we give them "Pasture but better" for certain resources, then we're competing directly with the Pasture.

But using the Terrace Farm as an example, the Farm is most useful when next to fresh water. (There are techs that compensate for this obviously, but a Farm by water will produce more Food over the course of the game than a Farm without, if both constructed early.) It usually ends up next to rivers and lakes. The Terrace Farm takes a dimension that doesn't specifically interact with Farms - Hills - and makes them better for the player. That's not competing nearly as directly with the Farm. And given the Terrace Farm's yield, it doesn't compete with the Mine, which nromally the Hill Improvement, since the Mine is achieving a different goal.

I see here that I'm using the word "compete" to mean two subtly different things here and above when discussing the P-C Seanchan ability. Up there it's about options that are mutually exclusive, whereas here it's about replacing functionality.

I was originally thinking of this as a Gold alternative to the typical production from pastures, but now I'm realizing that S'redit and Lopar are from camps which provide Gold. So it sort of is too similar.

Suggestions?

Hmm, the difficulty with those resources is that they're luxuries, so Tear has no guarantees it will have any access to them. I see those bonuses as mostly an "if you happen to have these" on top the primary bonus being to Horses, which they're much more likely to have. I think it could be ok to have those just produce more Gold in that case - the primary use of the ability is a normally Production-rich strategic also producing Gold.

We could have them produce Prestige after a certain tech? That would be quite different.

 

[S3rgeus]

yeah, I seem to remember something like:


and

Me, I thought you were being harsh, but there it is.

I was suck a jerk!

Also, hmm... a starcraft mod! I can't think of much that'd be more soulless than a turn-based strategy adaptation of an RTS... though, truth be told, I've been replaying warcraft 3 (it's 2003, right?) and have been thinking of hypothetical civs for that to (and struck with how uninspired they'd be: the Gnome civ, with it's UUs: the two Gnome units! and it's UB: the Gnome building!)

What with all the Pokémon, it seems to be 1996!

Warcraft probably has enough backstory to do a game of CiV! It would super different, but could be really cool. I've never actually played Warcraft 3 though!

yeah, it'd have to be something "extra." If we were to choose this, we'd likely just tweak the name to make it less specific.

Sounds good.

Eh, not sure about this one. Above I describe the combat strength thing as being kind of strange. But, also, the keep-channelers-outside-of-your-territory seems on the one hand, very easy to make happen (save when you're at war and enemy channelers are there), but on the other hand, any jerk with an OpBor agreement could just camp their chanellers in your territory and deny you the bonus. Not sure on this one.

I've gone through the combat strength flavor above, but the point about having a jerk for a neighbor is a very good one! Can't really do that. I'm not a big fan of this ability anyway, so let's red it.

Interesting! This had potential, but also some flaws.

First, I definitely don't like the fact that this really encourages them to have zero Aes Sedai. Of course, in the books, Tear has none, but no civs, barring maybe Andor, "have" Aes Sedai - our sisters are really more like tower agents acting in the interest of your civ, etc. So that flavor isn't too weird, IMO. We do perceive Tear as "Fear but Authority," and that Authority component essentially means we need to reasonably let them use Aes Sedai, since that's achief benefit of Authority in the first place (in a sense, this actually kind of makes the whole quest to limit channeling kind of counterproductive for us, maybe). So, I'd say we shouldn't do something this drastic to that particular end.

I'm thinking maybe we could do something like every 2nd Sister is given as an LP, or, if we have a Maya-like round-robin, just work in X number of Sisters throughout the whole round robin. That might do the trick.

Secondly, I worry how this buts up against Channeling Quota. If the TW sees they are under quota, they will offer a Sister. Tear gets an LP, and is forever under quote. So, next available opportunity, Tear gets another Sister (LP, of course). Seems kind of alike a never-ending stream that kind of flies against how the Tower assignments of Sisters work. And if we're going for Fear-but-Authority, The Tower will likely reasonably like Tear, and offer them aplenty. How could we work around this?

I made this with the quota stuff in mind - I don't think it's a problem how it interacts with Sister Quota. The intention was that every time the Tower would give them a Sister, they get an LP instead and that would continue. So Tear should optimize for making Tar Valon give them Sisters more often. The difficulty here is that we don't have a good way of tweaking that for balance in isolation - the Sister-give-out-rate is too global of a system to change for this unique. A free LP is the minimum granularity, though the ground-robin approach and your suggestion of every X Sisters instead of every Sister could also provide balance tweak points.

Something a bit structurally different, what if when Tear chooses the Ajah of a Sister they would receive, if they have less than tier 1 influence with that Ajah, they receive a random free LP instead? And the LP type randomness could be weighted based on the Ajah chosen. So Tear could cultivate relationships with specific Ajahs that help its game plan, but use the others for LPs when necessary. Overall this would reduce Tear's Aes Sedai count, since they would get LPs instead of Sisters sometimes, but wouldn't remove it completely. It also gives the player a lot more agency in the process since it isn't just happening at a known interval - so they can choose to "play it differently" in any given game. Having some LPs only available from certain Ajahs would allow the player to be more strategic about their Ajah choices.

I am starting to consider this whole anti-channeler thing, and am wondering if maybe we can find inspiration from the Fear but Authority thing. How can we create a Unique that capitalizes on the Fear thing, without necessarily venturing into Oppression (or Liberation, obviously) territory). According to the Summaries, "Fear Branch - gain bonuses for a low channeler count (especially males), and protect yourself against Dragonsworn". Is there a way to link that in, somehow, and/or possibly "penalizing" or at least disincentivizing actual *channeling*, if not the existence of the units?

I really like this perspective on Tear's channeling approach and how we could use it to make new uniques. Unfortunately I have no time for brainstorming tonight, so I'll have to pick it up at the weekend!

Hmmm... Not sure. Any specific flavor on this one? Seems kind of random (which might be fine). Not sure how much this will play into people's actual strategy, though, which isn't ideal. Might be something people kind of forget about.

Nothing beyond the Defenders being very good at keeping enemies out of the Stone.

No direct thoughts on the toss out-vs-kill. Any ideas on the Diplomat thing?

I figure they could do the same with Diplomats as suggested with Eyes and Ears. Or they could reduce the Prestige output of the Diplomat.

The Reaver Sail might not be worthy enough and might need some other boost. Not sure if the movement bonus is mechanically possible.

The movement bonus should be possible. Isn't a "friendly or foreign trade route" just any international trade route? Or should this be "non-enemy"?

I like this one, it feels very unique and fits well with the Tairen trading flavor.

Tariff Galleon is the start of an interesting idea. I can't quite figure out how to make it something other than a rather tedious following-around of every trade unit.

This doesn't solve the problem of the tedious-following part, but what about giving the other half of the tariff to the player at the trade route's destination? That seems like it could be used in nicely nefarious ways and achieves a similar goal of benefiting another player, but lets Tear specifically stick it to their enemies. I can see this might have been set up to be used with allies, but the flavor of a tariff suggests to me that it shouldn't be good for the player who owns the stuff Tear is taxing.

As for the tedious-following, that's difficult to resolve when this is a UU. Though it could work very well as a UB? Some kind of tariff dockyard that gives this bonus to Tear when trade units pass through hexes worked by the city?

The Idea behind the Processing Workshop is like the Merchant's Rugs thing. Started out just as a Sea resource thing, but I decided to make it more epic. Tall-favoring because it's a nat wonder and only applies to one city. The idea would likely be that there would only be 3 distinct types of resources, but that you could get a bunch of them, if you had the right city.

I like this one! Solves the Tallness problem with the custom resources quite well. I think we could still go with luxury resources on this one, since most of the flavorful Tairen stuff works better with those.


Recap!

Tear (Era 5-9, Tall, Diplo/Dom/Culture)

UAs:

• Hard as Stone, Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Merchants' Rugs, Tear produces a set of additional luxury resources as a byproduct of the luxuries normally found on the map. These new luxuries do not produce Happiness for Tear, but do for other civilizations when traded to them.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts (hidden artifacts), Tairen Historians can explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory twice as fast as usual, but cannot find Artifacts of Power in them. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige), Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power and Mythic Sites in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Cultural output. Artifacts housed in Tairen cities produce Faith instead of Prestige.
• Ban on Channeling (war), Tairen units have +X% defense against channeling attacks while in Tairen territory. Tear gains +Y Gold (low) and +Z Faith (low) at the end of every turn in which no Tairen channeling unit channels. When Tear is at war, every W turns without any Tairen channeling, these yields increase by 1, to a maximum of V.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Class Divisions, When a city gains a population point, Tear receives X Gold. Tairen cities can "Push the Populace," sacrificing 1 Population in order to rush the city's current construction by Y hammers (scaling) and produce Z Unhappiness (like 2) for W turns. (like 30)providing Y% bonus production and Z% bonus gold yields in that city, but also +W Unhappiness, for V turns. Tear's Happiness surplus does not contribute to Golden Ages, and We Love the King Days cannot occur.
• Ban on Channeling (channelers), channeling units have -X% combat strength in Tairen territory. Tear generates Culture equal to the Population of its capital minus the number of channelers in its territory, all multiplied by X. And half that in Prestige after <tech>.
• Ban on Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, instead Tear receives a Legendary Person of the type of their choice.

UUs:

• Defenders (wonderful), replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission instead of the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Only X Developed Cities may exist in the world at any one time.
• Riding Lord, receives +X% bonus to combat strength for every friendly mounted unit in an adjacent tile. +Y% additional combat strength against non-mounted units with less than Z total EXP.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Coastal Defender, replaces Naval Melee 4-5 or Naval Ranged 3-4. While in Tairen territory, receives +Y Sight and +Z Range. Pillaging foreign trade routes produces +W extra Gold.
• Defenders (spy), replaces era 5/6 unit. Has higher combat strength and has an X% chance of finding and killing foreign Eyes and Ears stationed in the city it is garrisoned in every Y turns.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route, and X Prestige. +Y movement when following a friendly or foreign trade route.
• Tariff Galleon, replaces Naval Melee 4-5. Can detect non-enemy sea trade units up to X hexes away. If ending its turn on a non-enemy sea trade unit, the Tariff Galleon receives Gold equal to half the amount to be received by the trade unit owner, who receives the other half. Exacting this Tariff does not cause a declaration of war.

UBs:

• Heart of the Stone, replaces XP National Wonder, receives one Legendary Craft or Artifact Slot. If the slot is filled, The Heart of the Stone generates +X of whatever yield the city is currently dedicating the most citizens towards producing (on tiles or in specialist buildings)
• Great Holding, replaces Culture 4, receives an extra Legendary Craft and Artifact slot. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Artifacts from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.
• Dragonwall Gate, replaces Production (Pasture), +X% XP for all Mounted units build in the city. This city gets +Y Hit Points for every Pasture.
• Oil Press, replaces Production 1, Provides an addition +X Gold and Y% Gold production in the city. (kidshowbusiness)
• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each bonusluxury resource worked by this city also produces a derived luxury resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.

UIs:

• Lord's Corral, built on Horses, Lopar, and S'redit. In addition to providing the resource, provides +X Gold and +Y% production when building Mounted units and Defensive buildings.

UGs:

• High Lord, spawned by Merchant Lords and Ambassadors. Yield is Gold and City-State influence with City-States connected to this city by trade routes. Upgrade 2 ability is "City-States connected to this city by trade route do not have elections and cannot be the victim of coups. When an election would occur, instead Tear gains X influence with that City-State." Relevant LP is the Merchant Lord.

 

[counterpoint]

Woops, I forgot to mention I wouldn't be around yesterday! Sorry about that. I was at a D&D session and then out later in the evening, so no time to post!

Also, I'm going to be away tomorrow and Saturday, so next post on Sunday!

everytime you mention d&d, my heart aches!

I can see how we would make it a targeted quest .......................................m not sure which is better. I'm sort of thinking the targeted-wonder-like quest might be the way to go?

you mean that players might expect to be able to, if somebody else locks it, unlock it and then lock it and still get the CS reward? Eh, I think it's fine, if the quest disappears upon someone else's unlocking.

Given that we don't want this quest to provide a key, I think we're fine going with targeted here.

In "you chose" do you mean me or the player who's choosing to using a Blue Sister?

I mostly chose to raise the teleport probability rather than the reward probability because it will mean Blue Sisters are less of a yield farm with Waygates in the early game, since there's inherent risk in them being teleported elsewhere where they can't serve their primary function. I think the "bonus" part of this is getting the reward a lot more with them, since they won't be lost in the Ways nearly as often as Recon or Settler units.

yeah, I meant "you," s3rgeus, the avatar of a human being, "chose" to suggest teleporting over rewards. I think your logic here is sound.

I worry that any fixed yield bonus that we attach to it will mean that Blue Sisters become all about farming that yield in the early game, which is super not fun. I like being able to teleport back to the Waygate at the capital by choice though! The only thing that misses out is that Blue Sisters will no longer use the Ways as an escape out of desperation - it's now a guaranteed escape. Are we ok with that? (It's also a bit weird flavor wise, unless we leave the chance of getting lost even when doing that?)

Well, I don't think it's a guarantee. You can choose to go to the capital only if your "roll" ends up teleporting you in the first place. So, say Blues have a 40% chance of teleporting, if they hit that 40%, they then have the option of selecting the capital one. If they don't hit the 40, then they get whatever they were going to get (death, long-distanct teleport, reward, etc.)

And that's kind of the idea - a UA usually provides a civ-wide bonus, and by providing a bonus to only the capital we encourage the player to play Tall, because that strategy makes a capital bonus more impactful. If it doesn't become a civ-wide bonus when played Tall, then it's just worse than a UA that is actually a civ-wide bonus. We don't want Tear to just have one really strong city with an ability like this, we want it to help them make a strong civ (as any other unique does).

I see your point, but we can balance against this. A bonus applying to only one city doesn't mean it's objectively worse - the ability could be scaled appropriately. Anyways, at this point this is largely abstract, I don't disagree with you as this applies to our current situation.

I really like your UB version of this, because it deals well with the Tallness of it. I think as a UA, the difficulty is that it needs to apply to more of the civ overall, which with the nature of this bonus, doesn't really lend itself to Tall. I'd say let's go with your UB!

ok, good. agreed.

I think it will be quite fun. It certainly shares something with Gunboat Diplomacy, and the first Google result for "civ v gunboat diplomacy" (at least for me) is a CivFanatics thread titled "Gunboat Diplomacy is amazing!" So players do enjoy bullying CSes when it presents more general advantages.

well, dang. you crowd-sourced the convincing!

This is a very good point. I certainly see how someone could think that not getting artifacts isn't how it should work. Even if there is a flavor logic to it, there are players who won't think of it that way and will think it's a mistake, which isn't good.

yeah, to me this is the most important element to consider here.

They will do, but with increased Population comes increased Unhappiness as well. They'll probably need to fight that pretty hard to get this tech advantage, otherwise going into negative Happiness would cap their growth and therefore tech advancement for a while as well, eating away at that early lead.

got it.

Kind of weird, but I think any Tall-favoring ability that works "in your first X cities" or "in the capital" will inherently favor early when all players are in that same situation (few cities), but without those bonuses. I don't think we want to avoid that kind of bonus in general because of this flavor.

just an interesting observation. And also, just because Tear might be ahead in the early phase of the game, doesn't mean we can't also give them a kind of peak during the canonical eras.

The main difference here is that the P-C Seanchan ability ............................................The Portal Stones producing Prestige is a bonus, because they would otherwise just produce Culture, but the Faith instead of Prestige is a trade-off that may not remain a good idea as the game goes on.

yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. The later-choice is what makes the PCS ability work, and makes it a far more interesting ability, besides.

Flavor wise, the main thing Tear got out of hoarding those artifacts is that no one could use them against them. That isn't a bonus in itself,..................................as a different vehicle for generating Prestige? That they generate it on a nation level somehow, instead of on a per-artifact level.

don't want to stay so deep in this particularly line of discussion because, as described previously, this side of their flavor is too open for debate for us to really build a mechanic out of (without pissing off half the people, etc.).

But do recall that I was suggesting that Tairen artifacts would produce faith anyways, not prestige.

I see what you mean, and in terms of affecting the channeler units, I was more thinking of the flavor meaning that channelers needed to use non-standard, more difficult ways of channeling than they would have otherwise because of the laws. And that would reduce their effectiveness. A channeler would be less likely blow up the enemy battalion because channeling is illegal, so they would often do something more circumspect like bind a few key ones with air and make the normal Tairen soldiers more likely to win. This is less likely to work, so they have "less combat strength," and it's a consequence of that law.

well... remember that Aes Sedai are kind of already doing that anyways, since they aren't allowed to "blow up the batallion" given their oaths.

In any case, your general point is taken. I just think there's a better way to represent that idea than a combat strength penalty.

I see what you mean about rewarding them for not using their channelers rather than rewarding them for not having them. I'd like to capture that flavor well, but I think one of the key risks with that approach is that it can be very annoying for the player experience. We don't want to allow players to invest in something that their UA will punish them for using - I think we'll have more success in enticing them to not use them in the first place. They shouldn't feel like these channeling units they produced are useless, they should find that they produce less channelers because other stuff is more useful, or that their channelers are somehow useful for non-channeling things in ways they aren't for other civs. (The latter is the closest to what you've suggesting, I think.)

Yeah, I don't think gimping their channeler's comabt abilities is the right way to go - rather, boosting other abilities, or something.

That said, I don't have clear ideas for how to pull this off, and it's not essential, so, yeah.

Tall would generally be more able to sacrifice Population than Wide in any given city, since their cities produce enough Food to get that Population back relatively quickly. A single citizen normally produces 1 Unhappiness, which is why I put the 2 Unhappiness here (may want to go higher than 2), otherwise sacrificing Population could be a permanent tool for escaping Unhappiness and getting constant production hurries. The idea here was to allow the Tairen player to make a long term sacrifice for a short term boost, which seems to fit very well into hurries and Population loss. If Y is large enough, this can be very significant for Wonder races and units that are needed as quickly as possible.

ok, that makes sense.

Yeah, we have a precedent in the Great Wall for an obsolete-able Wonder, though this one would be relevant for longer.

Also, happy flavor moment, I thought the Stone had been around for a long time before the Breaking and we would have to use it as a Wonder anyway, but apparently it was constructing during or shortly after the Breaking, which is perfect for era 1.

oh, nice. I too thought it was during the breaking (though it looks like it might be, but also might be after). Who the heck built it?

so., it's possible that the Stone will be our Great Wall equivalent...

Yeah, I figured that was the flavor for these guys, but I'm saying applying the bonus to non-friendly units as well (which is how I had it written last time) would make it very hard to manage. I do agree that this guy would be really difficult to keep track of on a crowded battlefield though, the zones are super complicated.

With the new changes he still pretty much encourages swarms of copies of this unit - are we ok with that? Also, which unit does he replace?

huh, forgot about his replacing...

Yeah, the unit-swarm thing, I'm pretty, is just going to lead to us ditching this unit. I've modified him below - not necessarily as flavorful, but still kind of flavorful. Obviously this is just a subtraction - presumably, these values would now be increased to offset that.

I'm totally fine with us having that kind of defensive-flavor, trading-flavor naval units, I was talking about uniques that give them a generically good navy. I think the flavor pushes us away from that, but the specifics you've outlined here about defending trade routes and that like totally make sense.

ok, gotcha.

A variable bonus as in one that changes a lot or one that can be changed a lot? The former is difficult because it's difficult to line up with any particular strategy if it keeps changing. But it does match this flavor, which is a challenge.

We could make it produce a yield corresponding to the Governor of the city? That could be any yield and it's chosen by the player, so very focusable. It can be changeable since Governors can be changed, but will often remain fixed for most of the game.

well, variable in the sense that it could be different bonuses in different situations, or at least in different cities.

I think the problem with the governor approach is that it... requires a governor. It's reasonable that Tear might have one in whatever city this is, but it is also not guaranteed. That said, if we want Tear to be incentivized to use governors, this could be a way to go. I think I'd want it to still do something even if there was no governor, though. Modified below... though I don't love this solution.

Not quite in this way. The primary functionality of the Pasture is to make these resources better for the player, and if we give them "Pasture but better"........................................................

We could have them produce Prestige after a certain tech? That would be quite different.

I understand what you're saying, but this isn't a Pasture, but Better. It produces a totally different yield than the Pasture. It is, however, unfortunately a Camp, but better.

In any case, I think this one's not gonna work, it seems... Maybe prestige could work, though. I dunno. I'm considering red. What do you think?

I was suck a jerk!

yeah, luckily you've matured since then.

What with all the Pokémon, it seems to be 1996!

Warcraft probably has enough backstory to do a game of CiV! It would super different, but could be really cool. I've never actually played Warcraft 3 though!

well, I've never played WoW...

I've gone through the combat strength flavor above, but the point about having a jerk for a neighbor is a very good one! Can't really do that. I'm not a big fan of this ability anyway, so let's red it.

agreed

I made this with the quota stuff in mind - I don't think it's a problem how it interacts with Sister Quota. The intention was that every time the Tower would give them a Sister, they get an LP instead and that would continue. ....................................... It also gives the player a lot more agency in the process since it isn't just happening at a known interval - so they can choose to "play it differently" in any given game. Having some LPs only available from certain Ajahs would allow the player to be more strategic about their Ajah choices.

ah, maybe I'm not explaining myself correctly. When you're awarded a LP instead of a Sister, that doesn't count against your quota, right? Or would it, somehow? Because if not (as would be intuitive), The Tower would keep giving them, forever, because you'd essentially never fill up. Or if w do one of the things we've suggested, you'd *slowly* fill up, but at that point have a billion free LPs.

As far as your specific suggestion, I think the problem with that is that I wouldn't want to create a meta-game where, in order to secure more LPs - which, for many VCs are likely more useful than sisters - Tear has to artificially keep their Ajah influence *down*. This is especially annoying given the fact that ajah influence isn't entirely up to the player in the first place. Also, I do feel like that kind of thing - ajah's you don't know reward you with LPs - is kind of flavor-suspect, especially given this is Tear.

I think this ability has potential, but there has to be a good way to keep this all in balance, and I'm not sure what it is! I think the Round Robin (quasi-Maya) or every-other options might work best, but I think, if you are confident that the quota thing isn't an issue, you should outline how exactly we'd manage the rising (or not rising) quota against the acquisition of LPs.

I really like this perspective on Tear's channeling approach and how we could use it to make new uniques. Unfortunately I have no time for brainstorming tonight, so I'll have to pick it up at the weekend!

keeping this "Fear while Authority" block open!

I can't think of ways to reward players for not having/using Aes Sedai (or channelers) that don't fly in the face of being Authority. I mean, I suppose it could be that you get an LP (or huge yield) dump whenever you *refuse* an Aes Sedai from the Tower (very close to what we're discussing above), which might work, assuming an Authority player gets offered more often, but again with the tower quota. Even then, it doesn' treally help outline "fear" - just low channeler count.

MAybe something to do with how they treat Males? That's not literal flavor, though.

Unfortunately, the "channeling is illegal" thing is the clearest representation of this flavor, but doesn't work elegantly mechanically...

Although... from the wiki: "Tairens of all classes have an avowed fear of anything to do with the One Power. This is due partly to the fact that it is prophesied that the Stone of Tear will never fall until the Dragon has been Reborn. The High Lords like to think that by protecting Callandor, the 'sword that is not a sword' that resides within an inner chamber of the city's ancient fortress, they are protecting the world from the Dragon Reborn. "

Wait, so are we confused about the illegality thing? Is that just Amadicia?

I figure they could do the same with Diplomats as suggested with Eyes and Ears. Or they could reduce the Prestige output of the Diplomat.

I suppose either could work, but I don't totally see the flavor connection, especially given all the diplomats that literally lived there during some of the middle books (right? berelain, etc.)

The movement bonus should be possible. Isn't a "friendly or foreign trade route" just any international trade route? Or should this be "non-enemy"?

I like this one, it feels very unique and fits well with the Tairen trading flavor.

non-enemy, it was supposed to be!

This doesn't solve the problem of the tedious-following part, but what about giving the other half of the tariff to the player at the trade route's destination? That seems like it could be used in nicely nefarious ways and achieves a similar goal of benefiting another player, but lets Tear specifically stick it to their enemies. I can see this might have been set up to be used with allies, but the flavor of a tariff suggests to me that it shouldn't be good for the player who owns the stuff Tear is taxing.

As for the tedious-following, that's difficult to resolve when this is a UU. Though it could work very well as a UB? Some kind of tariff dockyard that gives this bonus to Tear when trade units pass through hexes worked by the city?

Yeah, but a tariff that means the owning civ receives *nothing* (tear gets half, destination gets half) is most definitely *not* in line with what a tariff is. I also think that makes it a bit more annoyingly complex for the Tairin player - you need to worry about who you're stealing from AND who you're gifting to.

As far as the tediousness... what if there was a cool down, or something, or a limit somehow on repeating it, though what you're receiving is only one turn's worth of yields, so it's not such an awesome bonus that we should limit it to once or anything. What if there was an automated mode you could put it in ("Follow Trade Ship") that would just do it for you? That feels like it might be really annoying for the other civs though - how do we limit this unit so it doesn't just turn into a leech fest (especially considering Tear can, presumably, build as many of them as they want).

The UB idea, at least as described here, seems kind of unpredictable, from a player experience perspective. I'm never quite away what ships are passing by. It could be based on *incoming* ships (with your city as a destination), but then that's a simple +yield UB, which is ok, I guess. Should we add something like that?

I like this one! Solves the Tallness problem with the custom resources quite well. I think we could still go with luxury resources on this one, since most of the flavorful Tairen stuff works better with those.

right, but if we're going with luxuries instead of bonuses, we're talking about way fewer possible resources. This is a natural wonder, so you can only have one of them - you'd be lucky to get two in one city (thus, in your whole civ).

Recap!

Tear (Era 5-9, Tall, Diplo/Dom/Culture)

UAs:

• Hard as Stone, Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts (hidden artifacts), Tairen Historians can explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory twice as fast as usual, but cannot find Artifacts of Power in them. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige), Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power and Mythic Sites in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Cultural output. Artifacts housed in Tairen cities produce Faith instead of Prestige.
• Ban on Channeling (war), Tairen units have +X% defense against channeling attacks while in Tairen territory. Tear gains +Y Gold (low) and +Z Faith (low) at the end of every turn in which no Tairen channeling unit channels. When Tear is at war, every W turns without any Tairen channeling, these yields increase by 1, to a maximum of V.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Class Divisions, When a city gains a population point, Tear receives X Gold. Tairen cities can "Push the Populace," sacrificing 1 Population in order to rush the city's current construction by Y hammers (scaling) and produce Z Unhappiness (like 2) for W turns. (like 30)
• Ban on Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, instead Tear receives a Legendary Person of the type of their choice.

UUs:

• Defenders (wonderful), replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission instead of the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Only X Developed Cities may exist in the world at any one time.
• Riding Lord, replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, receives +X% bonus to combat strength for every friendly mounted unit in an adjacent tile. +Y% additional combat strength against non-mounted units with less than Z total EXP.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Coastal Defender, replaces Naval Melee 4-5 or Naval Ranged 3-4. While in Tairen territory, receives +Y Sight and +Z Range. Pillaging foreign trade routes produces +W extra Gold.
• Defenders (spy), replaces era 5/6 unit. Has higher combat strength and has an X% chance of finding and killing foreign Eyes and Ears stationed in the city it is garrisoned in every Y turns.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route, and X Prestige. +Y movement when following a non-enemy trade route.
• Tariff Galleon, replaces Naval Melee 4-5. Can detect non-enemy sea trade units up to X hexes away. If ending its turn on a non-enemy sea trade unit, the Tariff Galleon receives Gold equal to half the amount to be received by the trade unit owner, who receives the other half. Exacting this Tariff does not cause a declaration of war.

UBs:

• Heart of the Stone, replaces XP National Wonder, receives one Legendary Craft or Artifact Slot. If the slot is filled, the artifact generates (instead of culture and prestige) +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +Y (lower) Faith). the Heart of the stone generates +X of whatever yield the city is currently dedicating the most citizens towards producing (on tiles or in specialist buildings)+X of whichever
• Great Holding, replaces Culture 4, receives an extra Legendary Craft and Artifact slot. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Artifacts from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.
• Dragonwall Gate, replaces Production (Pasture), +X% XP for all Mounted units build in the city. This city gets +Y Hit Points for every Pasture.
• Oil Press, replaces Production 1, Provides an addition +X Gold and Y% Gold production in the city. (kidshowbusiness)
• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each bonus resource worked by this city also produces a derived luxury resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.

UIs:

• Lord's Corral, built on Horses, Lopar, and S'redit. In addition to providing the resource, provides +X Gold and +Y% production when building Mounted units and Defensive buildings.

UGs:

• High Lord, spawned by Merchant Lords and Ambassadors. Yield is Gold and City-State influence with City-States connected to this city by trade routes. Upgrade 2 ability is "City-States connected to this city by trade route do not have elections and cannot be the victim of coups. When an election would occur, instead Tear gains X influence with that City-State." Relevant LP is the Merchant Lord.

Not sure where we're at with Tear. Do yo uhave many more ideas? Should we start culling?

Also, what about Locks? I'm not sure we really *have* any locks, beyond the Defender (the obligatory "this is a unit you've heard of" UU). I'd say we want something trade related, but beyond that... I *like* the "stone" flavor, but given that it's also a wonder, it's not essential. Also, I like the anti-channeling stuf f(whatever it is), but it's proving too mechanically iffy to make it a requirement, I think.

Lastly, what's the next civ? I've found it hard to determine the proper order clearly. I think I'm up next. OBviously we're not ready for it now, but I'd like to start back-of-the-mind brainstorming.

 

[S3rgeus]

you mean that players might expect to be able to, if somebody else locks it, unlock it and then lock it and still get the CS reward? Eh, I think it's fine, if the quest disappears upon someone else's unlocking.

Given that we don't want this quest to provide a key, I think we're fine going with targeted here.

Coolio, sounds good! Edited the summary.

yeah, I meant "you," s3rgeus, the avatar of a human being, "chose" to suggest teleporting over rewards. I think your logic here is sound.

I am the Avatar!

Spoiler :

Well, I don't think it's a guarantee. You can choose to go to the capital only if your "roll" ends up teleporting you in the first place. So, say Blues have a 40% chance of teleporting, if they hit that 40%, they then have the option of selecting the capital one. If they don't hit the 40, then they get whatever they were going to get (death, long-distanct teleport, reward, etc.)

Ah, that makes a lot of sense! I've edited the Diplo summary to reflect this.

just an interesting observation. And also, just because Tear might be ahead in the early phase of the game, doesn't mean we can't also give them a kind of peak during the canonical eras.

Yep, totally, we can use their other uniques to make their prime time later in the tree to match their flavor.

don't want to stay so deep in this particularly line of discussion because, as described previously, this side of their flavor is too open for debate for us to really build a mechanic out of (without pissing off half the people, etc.).

But do recall that I was suggesting that Tairen artifacts would produce faith anyways, not prestige.

Yeah, I figured I had addressed Faith before, and was discussing how the flavor interacts with the usual yield of Prestige that the artifacts would give out.

However, I think we can solve the flavor conundrum and keep Hoarding Artifacts (hidden artifacts), which I think is otherwise a strong contender. I've made some changes below to do that.

The idea behind the change is that Tear can now still create Artifacts from their own Sites of Power normally, but they have a strong incentive to go for Portal Stones instead. Arguably the flavor of this is now more about the Portal Stones than the Artifacts, and could be reflavored accordingly.

well... remember that Aes Sedai are kind of already doing that anyways, since they aren't allowed to "blow up the batallion" given their oaths.

In any case, your general point is taken. I just think there's a better way to represent that idea than a combat strength penalty.

Yeah, I don't think gimping their channeler's comabt abilities is the right way to go - rather, boosting other abilities, or something.

That said, I don't have clear ideas for how to pull this off, and it's not essential, so, yeah.

We've eliminated this option now, right? This was Ban on Channeling (channelers)?

oh, nice. I too thought it was during the breaking (though it looks like it might be, but also might be after). Who the heck built it?

This is a very good question, I had much the same thought! I'm surprised anyone had the organizational capacity to build something like the Stone during that time.

so., it's possible that the Stone will be our Great Wall equivalent...

Quite possible

huh, forgot about his replacing...

Yeah, the unit-swarm thing, I'm pretty, is just going to lead to us ditching this unit. I've modified him below - not necessarily as flavorful, but still kind of flavorful. Obviously this is just a subtraction - presumably, these values would now be increased to offset that.

I see what you mean, yeah, we would bump up the remaining % to compensate. As you've said here though, and with culling in mind below, I've suggested to red this one.

well, variable in the sense that it could be different bonuses in different situations, or at least in different cities.

I think the problem with the governor approach is that it... requires a governor. It's reasonable that Tear might have one in whatever city this is, but it is also not guaranteed. That said, if we want Tear to be incentivized to use governors, this could be a way to go. I think I'd want it to still do something even if there was no governor, though. Modified below... though I don't love this solution.

The change looks good. I see what you mean about wanting a more variable yield, but I'm not sure how to do that without annoying the player.

I understand what you're saying, but this isn't a Pasture, but Better. It produces a totally different yield than the Pasture. It is, however, unfortunately a Camp, but better.

In any case, I think this one's not gonna work, it seems... Maybe prestige could work, though. I dunno. I'm considering red. What do you think?

Yeah, this one isn't popping as a strong candidate for me, so I'm fine with removing it given the problems with Camps and Luxuries.

ah, maybe I'm not explaining myself correctly. When you're awarded a LP instead of a Sister, that doesn't count against your quota, right? Or would it, somehow? Because if not (as would be intuitive), The Tower would keep giving them, forever, because you'd essentially never fill up. Or if w do one of the things we've suggested, you'd *slowly* fill up, but at that point have a billion free LPs.

Correct that the LP wouldn't consume quota. They wouldn't keep going forever because the Tower only tries to give each civ a single Sister every time it does a "round robin" of each of the civs, and checks if they're below quota. If Tear is 5 below quota (because their quota is 5), then the Tower will try to give them 1 Sister and Tear will get 1 LP. The Tower doesn't try to refill to quota on each rotation, because that would make Sisters much less valuable in general.

Depending on the rate that the Tower round robins through the civs in the game, this may be a free LP too often - which is what I was saying before about that not being tweakable for balance, since the Sister-give-out-rate can't be adjusted solely to balance Tear. Every X Sisters is something that's tweakable though. And using a round robin of LP types would also reduce the power of the ability overall, since Tear would need to cycle through the LP types that don't contribute to their strategy as directly.

As far as your specific suggestion, I think the problem with that is that I wouldn't want to create a meta-game where, in order to secure more LPs - which, for many VCs are likely more useful than sisters - Tear has to artificially keep their Ajah influence *down*. This is especially annoying given the fact that ajah influence isn't entirely up to the player in the first place. Also, I do feel like that kind of thing - ajah's you don't know reward you with LPs - is kind of flavor-suspect, especially given this is Tear.

I think this ability has potential, but there has to be a good way to keep this all in balance, and I'm not sure what it is! I think the Round Robin (quasi-Maya) or every-other options might work best, but I think, if you are confident that the quota thing isn't an issue, you should outline how exactly we'd manage the rising (or not rising) quota against the acquisition of LPs.

I'm not really sure what you mean about managing the quota against acquisition of LPs. Hopefully I've answered that above. What we want to be able to do, in an ideal world, is to be able to tweak the rate that this system gives Tear LPs in isolation, without affecting the rest of the game. If we can do that, then it's just a matter of finding what the right rate is to be balanced. The concern above is that we can't tweak the rate that Sisters are given out for this.

Quasi-Maya and every X Sisters are also combinable, if we find that leads to a better balanced ability.

This is a very good point about LPs often being more useful than Sisters. What if we inverted my previous suggestion - Tear gets LPs if it chooses Sisters from Ajahs it has tier 2 or 3 influence with? (or maybe just tier 3, we can choose that based on balance as well) Would it be kind of backwards that they can't get Sisters of the type that have the strongest tier abilities that Tear has unlocked? That seems to be the main issue with that approach.

keeping this "Fear while Authority" block open!

I can't think of ways to reward players for not having/using Aes Sedai (or channelers) that don't fly in the face of being Authority. I mean, I suppose it could be that you get an LP (or huge yield) dump whenever you *refuse* an Aes Sedai from the Tower (very close to what we're discussing above), which might work, assuming an Authority player gets offered more often, but again with the tower quota. Even then, it doesn' treally help outline "fear" - just low channeler count.

MAybe something to do with how they treat Males? That's not literal flavor, though.

Unfortunately, the "channeling is illegal" thing is the clearest representation of this flavor, but doesn't work elegantly mechanically...

Although... from the wiki: "Tairens of all classes have an avowed fear of anything to do with the One Power. This is due partly to the fact that it is prophesied that the Stone of Tear will never fall until the Dragon has been Reborn. The High Lords like to think that by protecting Callandor, the 'sword that is not a sword' that resides within an inner chamber of the city's ancient fortress, they are protecting the world from the Dragon Reborn. "

Wait, so are we confused about the illegality thing? Is that just Amadicia?

You know, this rings a bell. I don't see any mention of channeling being illegal in Tear in the wiki or the Companion. I do definitely remember the suspicion of channelers from the flavor, but it seems that Amadicia was the only place it was outlawed in the Westlands?

There's still room for us to use that Fear flavor a bit though. I think part of the difficulty is that we don't know what the Policies will do in the two channeling branches, which this kind of unique would want to complement. I've suggested one new UB that touches on this.

I suppose either could work, but I don't totally see the flavor connection, especially given all the diplomats that literally lived there during some of the middle books (right? berelain, etc.)

It's more of a mechanical consideration since we haven't touched Diplomats yet elsewhere, but yeah, we don't want to run against the flavor with it.

Yeah, but a tariff that means the owning civ receives *nothing* (tear gets half, destination gets half) is most definitely *not* in line with what a tariff is. I also think that makes it a bit more annoyingly complex for the Tairin player - you need to worry about who you're stealing from AND who you're gifting to.

Wouldn't an accurate representation of what a tariff really is only give Gold to Tear, not anyone else? Tear is the civilization imposing the tariff, right? Right, I get it now. The Gold is normally destined for the player who set up the route, but Tear is taking some of it. I was thinking of a single turn's worth of Gold as the whole tariff and they were for some reason paying off the trade route owner. This does make me think that the UB version is a more sensible use of this flavor, since what gives Tear the ability to enforce a tariff in waters they don't claim? This is more of a privateer scenario (in the real world sense, not the Privateer unit sense) of taking stuff from merchant vessels.

The complexity isn't any different if it goes to the trade route owner or target - it's exactly the same consideration, the Tairen player just needs to check where the trade route is going (which is already on the tooltip in BNW) instead of where it started.

I do agree that taking part of it for Tear makes more sense though, for the flavor above, but I think we need slightly different flavor for this to make sense as a UU. And is that kind of privateering flavor in line with Tear's flavor?

As far as the tediousness... what if there was a cool down, or something, or a limit somehow on repeating it, though what you're receiving is only one turn's worth of yields, so it's not such an awesome bonus that we should limit it to once or anything. What if there was an automated mode you could put it in ("Follow Trade Ship") that would just do it for you? That feels like it might be really annoying for the other civs though - how do we limit this unit so it doesn't just turn into a leech fest (especially considering Tear can, presumably, build as many of them as they want).

We could have it so that each unit could only impose the tariff on each instance of a trade route once. So the duration of the route would provide a cooldown that way. The way to get the most out of it, you should be ranging far to find many trade routes.

The UB approach also doesn't have problems with annoying other players, since it's a static state of the map layout, and can be communicated to the player who starts the route that it will go through Tairen waters.

The UB idea, at least as described here, seems kind of unpredictable, from a player experience perspective. I'm never quite away what ships are passing by. It could be based on *incoming* ships (with your city as a destination), but then that's a simple +yield UB, which is ok, I guess. Should we add something like that?

I see what you mean about the player experience, but I think that's only because players aren't used to looking for it. That information is already there (trade routes you have line of sight on are drawn on the map and can be mouse-overed to see info about them), so I think Tairen players who need to know this will learn to check. I think this would make it more interesting than the straight up yield bonus for it being a target city of a trade route.

right, but if we're going with luxuries instead of bonuses, we're talking about way fewer possible resources. This is a natural wonder, so you can only have one of them - you'd be lucky to get two in one city (thus, in your whole civ).

I would say in most games a civ will have at least one city that has access to more than one luxury, and so they would build this there. I agree that luxuries require the player to be more selective about which city they put the national wonder in, but I don't think it will be way fewer, or that they need to be very lucky. Looking through my screenshots of past games, I see cities with luxury diversity at a relatively similar rate to cities with bonus diversity.

Not sure where we're at with Tear. Do yo uhave many more ideas? Should we start culling?

I have a few more ideas that I've added below. I've also proposed some removals of some of the things that aren't our strongest candidates from what we have so far.

Also, what about Locks? I'm not sure we really *have* any locks, beyond the Defender (the obligatory "this is a unit you've heard of" UU). I'd say we want something trade related, but beyond that... I *like* the "stone" flavor, but given that it's also a wonder, it's not essential. Also, I like the anti-channeling stuf f(whatever it is), but it's proving too mechanically iffy to make it a requirement, I think.

Yeah, I think the Defender as the only lock is a good place to be for Tear. I think something that encourages them to be Tall could be as well - since they are notably quite Tall in the books.




Recap!

Tear (Era 5-9, Tall, Diplo/Dom/Culture)

UAs:

• Hard as Stone, Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts (hidden artifacts), Tairen Historians can explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory twice as fast as usual, but cannot find Artifacts of Power in them.be expended on Sites of Power in Tairen territory to instantly create a Portal Stone. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige), Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power and Mythic Sites in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Cultural output. Artifacts housed in Tairen cities produce Faith instead of Prestige.
• Ban on Channeling (war), Tairen units have +X% defense against channeling attacks while in Tairen territory. Tear gains +Y Gold (low) and +Z Faith (low) at the end of every turn in which no Tairen channeling unit channels. When Tear is at war, every W turns without any Tairen channeling, these yields increase by 1, to a maximum of V.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Class Divisions, When a city gains a population point, Tear receives X Gold. Tairen cities can "Push the Populace," sacrificing 1 Population in order to rush the city's current construction by Y hammers (scaling) and produce Z Unhappiness (like 2) for W turns. (like 30)
• Fear of Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, instead Tear receives a Legendary Person of the type of their choice.

UUs:

• Defenders (wonderful), replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission in addition to the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Tear can have only X Developed Cities may exist in the world at any one time.
• Riding Lord, replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +Y% additional combat strength against non-mounted units with less than Z total EXP.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Coastal Defender, replaces Naval Melee 4-5 or Naval Ranged 3-4. While in Tairen territory, receives +Y Sight and +Z Range. Pillaging foreign trade routes produces +W extra Gold.
• Defenders (spy), replaces era 5/6 unit. Has higher combat strength and has an X% chance of finding and killing foreign Eyes and Ears stationed in the city it is garrisoned in every Y turns.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route, and X Prestige. +Y movement when following a non-enemy trade route.
• Tariff Galleon, replaces Naval Melee 4-5. Can detect non-enemy sea trade units up to X hexes away. If ending its turn on a non-enemy sea trade unit, the Tariff Galleon receives Gold equal to half the amount to be received by the trade unit owner, who receives the other half. Exacting this Tariff does not cause a declaration of war.

UBs:

• Heart of the Stone, replaces XP National Wonder, receives one Legendary Craft or Artifact Slot. If the slot is filled, the artifact generates (instead of culture and prestige) +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +Y (lower) Faith.
• Great Holding, replaces Culture 4, receives an extra Legendary Craft and Artifact slot. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Artifacts from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.
• Dragonwall Gate, replaces Production (Pasture), +X% XP for all Mounted units build in the city. This city gets +Y Hit Points for every Pasture.
• Oil Press, replaces Production 1, Provides an addition +X Gold and Y% Gold production in the city. (kidshowbusiness)
• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each bonus resource worked by this city also produces a derived luxury resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.
• Taxation Office, replaces Coastal2, international trade routes established by other civilizations that pass within X hexes of this city contribute Y% of their value to Tear in addition to what they give to the civilizations at either end of the route.
• Unassailable Fortress, replaces Defense3/4, provides additional city strength. Has a Specialist slot for a new Specialist that provides city strength, city HP, and X Happiness. This Specialist provides points toward generating Great Captains.
• <flavor>, replaces Culture5, provides a number of Culture Specialist slots equal to Tear's unused Spark.

UIs:

• Lord's Corral, built on Horses, Lopar, and S'redit. In addition to providing the resource, provides +X Gold and +Y% production when building Mounted units and Defensive buildings.
• Lords' Shipyard, can be constructed only on coastal flatland. Produces an amount of Production equal to the Population of the city working this tile.

UGs:

• High Lord, spawned by Merchant Lords and Ambassadors. Yield is Gold and City-State influence with City-States connected to this city by trade routes. Upgrade 2 ability is "City-States connected to this city by trade route do not have elections and cannot be the victim of coups. When an election would occur, instead Tear gains X influence with that City-State." Relevant LP is the Merchant Lord.

Taxation Office is the UB version of the Tariff Galleon UU.

I also wanted to have some more non-UA options that encouraged Tallness.

Unassailable Fortress uses a new Specialist to create a uniquely yieldful UB that helps Tall players out the most.

I couldn't come up with suitable UB flavor for the channeler suspicion mechanic I've suggested, but the idea of it is to replace the latest-game Culture building and provide a ton of Specialists. It encourages Tall and the Culture victory, and still has an impact despite appearing quite late, by letting Tear produce a lot of LPs in the late game with them.

Lords' Shipyard scales along with the size of the city working it, and so encourages large coastal cities. (The way Production scales with Population is easily tweakable for balance.) It nods towards the flavor of Tear's navy being levied, and so their production centers aren't necessarily all inside the city.

Lastly, what's the next civ? I've found it hard to determine the proper order clearly. I think I'm up next. OBviously we're not ready for it now, but I'd like to start back-of-the-mind brainstorming.

Yeah, you're up for starting the next one and as you've said, it'll probably be a few posts until then. The next civ should be Illian. Then Cairhien and I believe we're finished with the lock civs and will want to work out what we're going to do from there!

 

[counterpoint]

I am the Avatar!

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

actually... never seen it...

Ah, that makes a lot of sense! I've edited the Diplo summary to reflect this.

just to clarify, though, I'm not suggesting that number actually be 40%...

Yeah, I figured I had addressed Faith before, and was discussing how the flavor interacts with the usual yield of Prestige that the artifacts would give out.

However, I think we can solve the flavor conundrum and keep Hoarding Artifacts (hidden artifacts), which I think is otherwise a strong contender. I've made some changes below to do that.

The idea behind the change is that Tear can now still create Artifacts from their own Sites of Power normally, but they have a strong incentive to go for Portal Stones instead. Arguably the flavor of this is now more about the Portal Stones than the Artifacts, and could be reflavored accordingly.

yeah, I think this change, mechanically, is th best iteration we have so far.

However, I do feel like it's run quite far afield of flavor that makes sense for Tear - the lots-of-stones-in-Tear flavor is rather obscure, and the Tear-doesn't-showcase-its-artifacts flavor isn't very clearly represented by this. So, I say we keep it this way, but that it's rather unlikely we'll choose this one.

We've eliminated this option now, right? This was Ban on Channeling (channelers)?

yup

I see what you mean, yeah, we would bump up the remaining % to compensate. As you've said here though, and with culling in mind below, I've suggested to red this one.

Yeah, I liked the snobbery flavor, though.

That said, we might be able to adopt it into the game somehow agnostically, through a tenet or something.

Yeah, this one isn't popping as a strong candidate for me, so I'm fine with removing it given the problems with Camps and Luxuries.

ya

Correct that the LP wouldn't consume quota. They wouldn't keep going forever because the Tower only tries to give each civ a single Sister every time it does a "round robin" of each of the civs, and checks if they're below quota. If Tear is 5 below quota (because their quota is 5), then the Tower will try to give them 1 Sister and Tear will get 1 LP. The Tower doesn't try to refill to quota on each rotation, because that would make Sisters much less valuable in general.

Depending on the rate that the Tower round robins through the civs in the game, this may be a free LP too often - which is what I was saying before about that not being tweakable for balance, since the Sister-give-out-rate can't be adjusted solely to balance Tear. Every X Sisters is something that's tweakable though. And using a round robin of LP types would also reduce the power of the ability overall, since Tear would need to cycle through the LP types that don't contribute to their strategy as directly.

OK, I think I'm seeing how this works now. I didn't remember that the round-robin would bounce between civs. I misrememberd it as something as simple as "every X turns, tower checks if civ is under quota, then gives them a sister", which obviously wouldn't work, seeing that that encourages really reckless use of sisters.

I think this is fine.

I'm not really sure what you mean about managing the quota against acquisition of LPs. Hopefully I've answered that above. What we want to be able to do, in an ideal world, is to be able to tweak the rate that this system gives Tear LPs in isolation, without affecting the rest of the game. If we can do that, then it's just a matter of finding what the right rate is to be balanced. The concern above is that we can't tweak the rate that Sisters are given out for this.

Quasi-Maya and every X Sisters are also combinable, if we find that leads to a better balanced ability.

This is a very good point about LPs often being more useful than Sisters. What if we inverted my previous suggestion - Tear gets LPs if it chooses Sisters from Ajahs it has tier 2 or 3 influence with? (or maybe just tier 3, we can choose that based on balance as well) Would it be kind of backwards that they can't get Sisters of the type that have the strongest tier abilities that Tear has unlocked? That seems to be the main issue with that approach.

hmmm.... I think I'd prefer to just leave the Ajah's out of it. I like the depends-on-tower-influence-for-LP-acquisation thing (i.e., better the influence, more often WT wants to grant you a sister, as its sort of flavorful, but I don't think we should be really encouraging Tear to get all up in the tower politics all that much. To me, that feels like it isn't fitting with the flavor

(that said, achievement for a Tairen novice reaching the level of Amyrlin [if it's possible to represent that], "Fishmonger's Daughter" or something about silverpike )

You know, this rings a bell. I don't see any mention of channeling being illegal in Tear in the wiki or the Companion. I do definitely remember the suspicion of channelers from the flavor, but it seems that Amadicia was the only place it was outlawed in the Westlands?

There's still room for us to use that Fear flavor a bit though. I think part of the difficulty is that we don't know what the Policies will do in the two channeling branches, which this kind of unique would want to complement. I've suggested one new UB that touches on this.

Well, that UB is a rather blunt of the flavor, isn't it? And I find myself with the first impression that it may be *too* blunt. To me, this tells me "to maximize your culture output, use zero sisters." That'll feel like an oppression civ, in the end (assuming you're going for culture, which this UB strongly points towards). I'm not sure it's tweakable, though....

It's more of a mechanical consideration since we haven't touched Diplomats yet elsewhere, but yeah, we don't want to run against the flavor with it.

I'd guess there's a better place to use diplomats than Tear.

I could understand the opposite, some kind of mumbo jumbo whereas everybody gets a free embassy with Tear, or free diplomats in Tear, but that doesn't really help Tear, does it? I suppose we could add a UA component that provided culture for embassies and diplomats. I'll put it in below, but I'm not sure it's strong enough to stand alone (might need to be added elsewhere).

Wouldn't an accurate representation of what a tariff really is only give Gold to Tear, not anyone else? Tear is the civilization imposing the tariff, right? [strikethrough] Right, I get it now. The Gold is normally destined for the player who set up the route, but Tear is taking some of it. I was thinking of a single turn's worth of Gold as the whole tariff and they were for some reason paying off the trade route owner. This does make me think that the UB version is a more sensible use of this flavor, since what gives Tear the ability to enforce a tariff in waters they don't claim? This is more of a privateer scenario (in the real world sense, not the Privateer unit sense) of taking stuff from merchant vessels.

The complexity isn't any different if it goes to the trade route owner or target - it's exactly the same consideration, the Tairen player just needs to check where the trade route is going (which is already on the tooltip in BNW) instead of where it started.

I do agree that taking part of it for Tear makes more sense though, for the flavor above, but I think we need slightly different flavor for this to make sense as a UU. And is that kind of privateering flavor in line with Tear's flavor?

Yeah, I think it makes flavorful sense that Tear would be trading aggressively, and using a form of gunboat diplomacy, but I don't think full-on privateer action makes much flavorful sense. I'm fine with units that pillage and stuff (like the other UU), but this one, with the Tariffs and stuff, is a bit more odd.

We could have it so that each unit could only impose the tariff on each instance of a trade route once. So the duration of the route would provide a cooldown that way. The way to get the most out of it, you should be ranging far to find many trade routes.

The UB approach also doesn't have problems with annoying other players, since it's a static state of the map layout, and can be communicated to the player who starts the route that it will go through Tairen waters.

Yeah, that cooldown could work, but is probably a pain to keep track of. I'd say this one should probably go red.

I see what you mean about the player experience, but I think that's only because players aren't used to looking for it. That information is already there (trade routes you have line of sight on are drawn on the map and can be mouse-overed to see info about them), so I think Tairen players who need to know this will learn to check. I think this would make it more interesting than the straight up yield bonus for it being a target city of a trade route.

ok, I see what you mean. I can see this one working ok.

Would this affect ones going into Tairen cities directly, or only passers-by?

I'd say, also, that this UB does not play nice with a hostile-to-sea-trading-units UB option, as such a UU takes away from the benefit of the UB.

I would say in most games a civ will have at least one city that has access to more than one luxury, and so they would build this there. I agree that luxuries require the player to be more selective about which city they put the national wonder in, but I don't think it will be way fewer, or that they need to be very lucky. Looking through my screenshots of past games, I see cities with luxury diversity at a relatively similar rate to cities with bonus diversity.

ok, fair enough.

Taxation Office is the UB version of the Tariff Galleon UU.

yeah, I am fine with this one, though I do have questions (listed above). Also, would this apply to land trade routes as well?

I think the fact that it doesn't literally take the money from the other civs is, which sort of unrealistic, the correct mechanical choice.

I also wanted to have some more non-UA options that encouraged Tallness.

Unassailable Fortress uses a new Specialist to create a uniquely yieldful UB that helps Tall players out the most.

I think there's something cool about this one, but I'm not sure I love the addition of a brand new specialist just for this, relatively minor purpose. But you're also talking to somebody who leaves Specialists on auto-pilot virtually all the time. That's fine, mechanically-wise, as I'm sure we could tweak the AI to employ this specialist adequately. But what it isn't is splashy and particularly fun. It'll probably feel UB that just runs in the background and gives a yield. Which is ok (many are like that), but it's also kind of a case of a "Big Deal" thing (a Unique Specialist) being added for what amounts to a relatively statis +X to this and that yield (though at the cost of citizenry).

It might be less of a "Big Deal" if we make the Specialist be some existing type of Specialist (a builder or something), or else *any* kind of Specialist (though how we'd make that possible is weird), that produces their normal LP points, but also provide the bonuses you've listed (via one of the "When filled with a Specialist, the Fortress..." things). Thoughts?

That said, on the other hand, this would give us an opportunity to, if we so wished, use the Defender flavor without using a UU, in case we don't find a UU we like. Name the Specialist the "Defender," and make him a little more active, or something. I try this below.

Are GC LP points generated via a city going to cause any weirdness?

I couldn't come up with suitable UB flavor for the channeler suspicion mechanic I've suggested, but the idea of it is to replace the latest-game Culture building and provide a ton of Specialists. It encourages Tall and the Culture victory, and still has an impact despite appearing quite late, by letting Tear produce a lot of LPs in the late game with them.

Hmmm...As stated above, I think this one is problematic in its never-use-Sisters way. I know it's late game only, but still. I'm not going to Red this one, but I'm suspicious.

As far as flavor, I think theoretically this could be one of the hoarding things. Not great flavor-linke, but possibly acceptable.

Lords' Shipyard scales along with the size of the city working it, and so encourages large coastal cities. (The way Production scales with Population is easily tweakable for balance.) It nods towards the flavor of Tear's navy being levied, and so their production centers aren't necessarily all inside the city.

very interesting. Is this one going to get ridiculous? Like +30 production from one tile?

I do like that this creates a balancing act between the loss-of-food production from such tiles (thus lower population) and wanting to plant the UI there.

Recap!

Tear (Era 5-9, Tall, Diplo/Dom/Culture)

UAs:

• [*]Hard as Stone, Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts (hidden artifacts), Tairen Historians can be expended on Sites of Power in Tairen territory to instantly create a Portal Stone. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige), Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power and Mythic Sites in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Cultural output. Artifacts housed in Tairen cities produce Faith instead of Prestige.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Class Divisions, When a city gains a population point, Tear receives X Gold. Tairen cities can "Push the Populace," sacrificing 1 Population in order to rush the city's current construction by Y hammers (scaling) and produce Z Unhappiness (like 2) for W turns. (like 30)
• Fear of Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, instead Tear Tear can instead elect to receives a Legendary Person of the type of their choice. Tear may not select the same Legendary Person more than X times in the game.
• Housed in the Stone, Every foreign embassy in the Tairen capital provides +X Culture in the capital. Every foreign diplomat in the capital generates +Y Prestige in the capital.

UUs:

• Defenders (wonderful), replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission in addition to the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Tear can have only X Developed Cities may exist in the world at any one time.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Coastal Defender, replaces Naval Melee 4-5 or Naval Ranged 3-4. While in Tairen territory, receives +Y Sight and +Z Range. Pillaging foreign trade routes produces +W extra Gold.
• Defenders (spy), replaces era 5/6 unit. Has higher combat strength and has an X% chance of finding and killing foreign Eyes and Ears stationed in the city it is garrisoned in every Y turns.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. +X Movement. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route.and X Prestige. +Y movement when following a non-enemy trade route. Has its full Movement restored when pillaging a sea trade route or killing a Lawless or Dragonsworn naval unit.
• Tariff Galleon, replaces Naval Melee 4-5. Can detect non-enemy sea trade units up to X hexes away. If ending its turn on a non-enemy sea trade unit, the Tariff Galleon receives Gold equal to half the amount to be received by the trade unit owner, who receives the other half. Exacting this Tariff does not cause a declaration of war.

UBs:

• Heart of the Stone, replaces XP National Wonder, receives one Legendary Craft or Artifact Slot. If the slot is filled, the artifact generates (instead of culture and prestige) +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +Y (lower) Faith.
• Great Holding, replaces Culture 4, receives an extra Legendary Craft and Artifact slot. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Artifacts from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.
• Dragonwall Gate, replaces Production (Pasture), +X% XP for all Mounted units build in the city. This city gets +Y Hit Points for every Pasture.
• Oil Press, replaces Production 1, Provides an addition +X Gold and Y% Gold production in the city. (kidshowbusiness)
• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each luxury resource worked by this city also produces a derived luxury resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.
• Taxation Office, replaces Coastal2, international trade routes established by other civilizations that pass within X hexes of this city contribute Y% of their value to Tear in addition to what they give to the civilizations at either end of the route.
• Unassailable Fortress, replaces Defense3/4, provides additional city strength. Has a Specialist slot for a new Specialist <Existing Specialist(s)> that, when filled, that provides city strength, city HP, and X Happiness. This Specialist provides points toward generating Great Captains it's normal Legendary Person.
• Artifact Horde, replaces Culture5, provides a number of Culture Specialist slots equal to Tear's unused Spark.
• Defender's Fortress, replaces Defense3/4, provides city strength. Has a Specialist slot for a new Specialist type, the Defender, that provides X Happiness, and one additional city attack per turn. The Defnder provides points towards generating Great Captains.
• Fishmonger's Wharf, replaces Food (Coastal), In addition to its normal benefits, each sea bonus resource produces +X Gold (low) when worked, and each sea luxury resource produces +Y culture (low) when worked.

UIs:

• Lords' Shipyard, can be constructed only on coastal flatland. Produces an amount of Production equal to the Population of the city working this tile.

UGs:

• High Lord, spawned by Merchant Lords and Ambassadors. Yield is Gold and City-State influence with City-States connected to this city by trade routes. Upgrade 2 ability is "City-States connected to this city by trade route do not have elections and cannot be the victim of coups. When an election would occur, instead Tear gains X influence with that City-State." Relevant LP is the Merchant Lord.

I find Hard as Stone somewhat lacking. The non-channeler-production thing is also a rather roundabout way at flavor, so I don't love it.

You were always not so hot on Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige), so I'll go ahead and red it for you.

regarding Class Division... I feel like this one might be too weird. It's a bit extreme for the flavor. I think a mechanic like this could exist in this game, but I'm not sure this is the civ for it. Not sure we should red it, but possibly.

I've gone ahead and made a modification to Fear of Channeling, based on what we've been discussing. I left off the "every second Sister" thing for now, but put in a quasi-Maya stipulation. I figured we might want to allow Tear to shape their strategy somewhat, so allowed for double-dipping up to a certain point. Since we've put in a few extra LP types, you might get a few you want early in the game, and then choose never to use the ability again, so as not to have to mess with the LPs they don't want. Unless that's a mechanic we *do* want...?

I also considered making a cooldown ("cannot choose the same LP until they have chosen two others or received two sisters", that kind of thing) or even limit it by era. What do you think?

re: conscripted peasants, I left your color changes alone to keep it clear what's being suggested here. I'm mostly fine with this change, but I actually worry about what happens with conquest. Say Tear builds 3 of these, and one gets conquered. They then immediately, rightly, build another. Then they recapture their lost city - they now have four? Do we somehow gimp one of the four cities back to normalness? Feels clunky.

I think the Coastal Defender might not be worth it. Kind of like the Turtle Ship (though not gimped by no-ocean), I feel like the Tallness of Tear limits its usefulness. What do you think? Can he be saved?

Made a tweak to the Reaver Sail, taking away some of the weird micromanaging. not sure how useful this could be, but theoretically can chain-pillage trade routes in one long turn, or kill a barb and move on to the next one (though not attack twice, I'd guess).

Redded the Tariff Galleon, as I think we've poked enough holes in it.

Should we continue to play with both HotS and Great Holding, or should we axe one or merge them?

Dragonwall gate is pretty meh, so I'm redding it.

same with Oil Press (hi, ksb!)

Defender's Fortress already described.

The Fishmonger's Wharf is brought in for flavor, mostly, what with all the talk of silverpike and all. Possibly too powerful. I considered adding (or replacing an ability) with something weird like "Produces X Gold for each unworked sea resources out of the city's range, but within Tear's territory," to compensate you for that frequent, annoying crab one tile too far away. Thoughts?

Yeah, you're up for starting the next one and as you've said, it'll probably be a few posts until then. The next civ should be Illian. Then Cairhien and I believe we're finished with the lock civs and will want to work out what we're going to do from there!

OK, cool!

 

[S3rgeus]

actually... never seen it...

It's so good! And there's even a second show after you finish it!

just to clarify, though, I'm not suggesting that number actually be 40%...

Yes, totally. I just put "When a Blue Sister is teleported through the Ways" - the probabilities we decide in the end will end up in the Misc summary.

yeah, I think this change, mechanically, is th best iteration we have so far.

However, I do feel like it's run quite far afield of flavor that makes sense for Tear - the lots-of-stones-in-Tear flavor is rather obscure, and the Tear-doesn't-showcase-its-artifacts flavor isn't very clearly represented by this. So, I say we keep it this way, but that it's rather unlikely we'll choose this one.

And just as I was going to sleep yesterday, I realized how we can get the flavor back to where it should be with this! Change proposed below. (Not everything that's highlighted in green is new, but I had to rephrase enough of it that it was easier to highlight the whole thing.)

I quite like this change because it's exactly the same functionality as last time, mechanically, but gives the player a much clearer idea of the flavor.

Yeah, I liked the snobbery flavor, though.

That said, we might be able to adopt it into the game somehow agnostically, through a tenet or something.

Yep, this is one we can consider for then!

OK, I think I'm seeing how this works now. I didn't remember that the round-robin would bounce between civs. I misrememberd it as something as simple as "every X turns, tower checks if civ is under quota, then gives them a sister", which obviously wouldn't work, seeing that that encourages really reckless use of sisters.

I think this is fine.

Sounds good.

hmmm.... I think I'd prefer to just leave the Ajah's out of it. I like the depends-on-tower-influence-for-LP-acquisation thing (i.e., better the influence, more often WT wants to grant you a sister, as its sort of flavorful, but I don't think we should be really encouraging Tear to get all up in the tower politics all that much. To me, that feels like it isn't fitting with the flavor

Yeah, I'm fine with leaving this out.

(that said, achievement for a Tairen novice reaching the level of Amyrlin [if it's possible to represent that], "Fishmonger's Daughter" or something about silverpike )

I love this achievement, but unfortunately our mechanics don't really work that way. Once an Accepted becomes a Sister then we lose track of her, I believe. And we don't want to restrict the Amyrlin elections based on the players' use of Novices and the randomness that decided which Ajahs they joined. I figure flavor wise there are a ton more Sisters than the ones represented by our mechanics, so there's no reliable way to connect them to the Novices stuff.

Well, that UB is a rather blunt of the flavor, isn't it? And I find myself with the first impression that it may be *too* blunt. To me, this tells me "to maximize your culture output, use zero sisters." That'll feel like an oppression civ, in the end (assuming you're going for culture, which this UB strongly points towards). I'm not sure it's tweakable, though....

But Sisters don't cost Spark. This discourages the use of Wilders, Kin, Male Channelers, and Asha'men, which I think all make a lot of sense for Fear. Tear would be free to use Aes Sedai like any other civ. I think that dichotomy meshes well with their flavor of Authority-but-distrustful.

Do we have other mechanics that manifest the Fear/Acceptance choice? It would be good to have more variety when designing mechanics to go with that flavor.

I'd guess there's a better place to use diplomats than Tear.

I could understand the opposite, some kind of mumbo jumbo whereas everybody gets a free embassy with Tear, or free diplomats in Tear, but that doesn't really help Tear, does it? I suppose we could add a UA component that provided culture for embassies and diplomats. I'll put it in below, but I'm not sure it's strong enough to stand alone (might need to be added elsewhere).

Yeah, other people having Diplomats in Tear (the city) doesn't help Tear without some other mechanic that gives them advantage for it.

I agree that Housed in Stone might not be strong enough alone, but I do like how it solves the Culture/Prestige game timing issue (can't let players have Prestige too early) with the presence of Diplomats, rather than needing a tech gate to do it.

Yeah, I think it makes flavorful sense that Tear would be trading aggressively, and using a form of gunboat diplomacy, but I don't think full-on privateer action makes much flavorful sense. I'm fine with units that pillage and stuff (like the other UU), but this one, with the Tariffs and stuff, is a bit more odd.

Yeah, that cooldown could work, but is probably a pain to keep track of. I'd say this one should probably go red.

Yeah, I'm ok with removing this. It's a cool ability, but creates a lot of work for the player.

ok, I see what you mean. I can see this one working ok.

Would this affect ones going into Tairen cities directly, or only passers-by?

I could see it working either way. I'd say let's go with both to start with.

I'd say, also, that this UB does not play nice with a hostile-to-sea-trading-units UB option, as such a UU takes away from the benefit of the UB.

Yes, we wouldn't want to put these in the same set.

yeah, I am fine with this one, though I do have questions (listed above). Also, would this apply to land trade routes as well?

I think it could apply to both, but let's start with sea trade routes, since that's closer to the flavor.

I think the fact that it doesn't literally take the money from the other civs is, which sort of unrealistic, the correct mechanical choice.

Agreed, I wrote it the other way first (take it away from the Gold given the trade route owner). But I figured this would just make civs not trade with cities where the route would pass through Tairen lands, defeating the ability.

I think there's something cool about this one, but I'm not sure I love the addition of a brand new specialist just for this, relatively minor purpose. But you're also talking to somebody who leaves Specialists on auto-pilot virtually all the time. That's fine, mechanically-wise, as I'm sure we could tweak the AI to employ this specialist adequately. But what it isn't is splashy and particularly fun. It'll probably feel UB that just runs in the background and gives a yield. Which is ok (many are like that), but it's also kind of a case of a "Big Deal" thing (a Unique Specialist) being added for what amounts to a relatively statis +X to this and that yield (though at the cost of citizenry).

It might be less of a "Big Deal" if we make the Specialist be some existing type of Specialist (a builder or something), or else *any* kind of Specialist (though how we'd make that possible is weird), that produces their normal LP points, but also provide the bonuses you've listed (via one of the "When filled with a Specialist, the Fortress..." things). Thoughts?

I don't think a new Specialist type needs to be a big deal here. I think it makes the building more interesting, even for players who autopilot their Specialists (I do this too). All of the existing Specialists explicitly contribute toward a certain LP type, so if we use a Builder or something we would be contributing to the Ogier Stonemason, rather than the Great Captain (we could have it do both, but that's quite strong and a bit weird). We could make that Builder Specialist not produce Ogier Stonemason points, but by that point we might as well make the new Specialist type.

The combo of a Specialist that produces GCs is that it's a Tall-favoring mechanic that encourages Domination, which plays well into Tear's flavor.

That said, on the other hand, this would give us an opportunity to, if we so wished, use the Defender flavor without using a UU, in case we don't find a UU we like. Name the Specialist the "Defender," and make him a little more active, or something. I try this below.

Yeah, that's good flavor for this Specialist. Would we be fine with that co-existing with a Defender UU, since Defenders were both guardsmen and military units in the canon?

In fact, I prefer your version of this, so I'll propose axing mine.

Are GC LP points generated via a city going to cause any weirdness?

I don't think we'll have a problem with contributing to GCs from a city, rather than EXP. We discussed this a long time ago and found some other sources in BNW that already do this.

Hmmm...As stated above, I think this one is problematic in its never-use-Sisters way. I know it's late game only, but still. I'm not going to Red this one, but I'm suspicious.

Luckily that's not the case!

As far as flavor, I think theoretically this could be one of the hoarding things. Not great flavor-linke, but possibly acceptable.

Yeah, I like that flavor for this UB.

very interesting. Is this one going to get ridiculous? Like +30 production from one tile?

Yep, if you get a city to 30 Population. It's certainly quite strong, but it's easy to scale down if it's too much.

I do like that this creates a balancing act between the loss-of-food production from such tiles (thus lower population) and wanting to plant the UI there.

Sounds good.

I find Hard as Stone somewhat lacking. The non-channeler-production thing is also a rather roundabout way at flavor, so I don't love it.

Funny, I was going to suggest this one for a set! I think it's a good strong, Tall encouraging UA that sets Tear's focus quite well. The roundabout-ness of the non-channeler bonus is also something that I particularly like about it. It, like the other UA discussed above, lets Tear use Aes Sedai as normal, but discourages them from producing their own channeler units, which fits very well with the type of gameplay encouraged by the Fear tree choice. It also doesn't make it a huge part of the mechanics, it just subtly pushes players away from training channelers, which is more in line with Tear's flavor of distrust, but not outright opposition.

You were always not so hot on Hoarding Artifacts (no prestige), so I'll go ahead and red it for you.

Fine with removing this one.

regarding Class Division... I feel like this one might be too weird. It's a bit extreme for the flavor. I think a mechanic like this could exist in this game, but I'm not sure this is the civ for it. Not sure we should red it, but possibly.

Yeah, it seems like it should fit more for a civ that's more about slavery than social classes. I'm going to mark it as red.

I've gone ahead and made a modification to Fear of Channeling, based on what we've been discussing. I left off the "every second Sister" thing for now, but put in a quasi-Maya stipulation. I figured we might want to allow Tear to shape their strategy somewhat, so allowed for double-dipping up to a certain point. Since we've put in a few extra LP types, you might get a few you want early in the game, and then choose never to use the ability again, so as not to have to mess with the LPs they don't want. Unless that's a mechanic we *do* want...?

I also considered making a cooldown ("cannot choose the same LP until they have chosen two others or received two sisters", that kind of thing) or even limit it by era. What do you think?

I like this version, it gives them a lot of flexibility and also provides us with something we can easily tweak for balance. It's a bit of an arbitrary cap, but still works. I don't think we want to force them to go through all of the LP types they don't care about.

I've magenta'd one part you marked as Red "of the type of their choice". I think we still need that phrasing otherwise it's unclear that Tear does get to pick (as opposed to random or some other method), it's just the next sentence places a restriction on that choice.

re: conscripted peasants, I left your color changes alone to keep it clear what's being suggested here. I'm mostly fine with this change, but I actually worry about what happens with conquest. Say Tear builds 3 of these, and one gets conquered. They then immediately, rightly, build another. Then they recapture their lost city - they now have four? Do we somehow gimp one of the four cities back to normalness? Feels clunky.

Ah, good point! I was editing to deal with the case where there were multiple Tear players, but didn't account for conquests. I've tweaked it again to do that better. The intended result is that a single Tairen player can't found more than 4 Developed Cities, which I think is what this does now!

I think the Coastal Defender might not be worth it. Kind of like the Turtle Ship (though not gimped by no-ocean), I feel like the Tallness of Tear limits its usefulness. What do you think? Can he be saved?

I think this is a good unit, but it accomplishes a similar goal to the Reaver Sail, which I now think is much better, so I'd go ahead with removing the Coastal Defender.

Made a tweak to the Reaver Sail, taking away some of the weird micromanaging. not sure how useful this could be, but theoretically can chain-pillage trade routes in one long turn, or kill a barb and move on to the next one (though not attack twice, I'd guess).

I love it. This is awesome - refreshing their movement when they pillage a trade route should make using this unit a ton of fun, since it requires short term strategic thinking but without any of the busywork from before.

I've magenta'd adding the +X Movement and removal of the movement bonus when following trade routes. I think the latter was really interesting, and since the movement bonus doesn't overlap with the trade routes the unit can pillage, I don't think it causes a problem. Was there another reason you suggested swapping this out?

Redded the Tariff Galleon, as I think we've poked enough holes in it.

Fine with me.

Should we continue to play with both HotS and Great Holding, or should we axe one or merge them?

I think we should axe one, because they're achieving very similar goals both in the UB slot. I'm totally not sure which to remove though. I like HotS because it's a National Wonder and so plays well with Tall. I also really like the custom theming bonus in Great Holding.

We could go with your merge suggestion and combine those two elements into one UB? Is there another particular part of them you think is important?

Dragonwall gate is pretty meh, so I'm redding it.

same with Oil Press (hi, ksb!)

ksb got far again! I'm fine with these removals.

The Fishmonger's Wharf is brought in for flavor, mostly, what with all the talk of silverpike and all. Possibly too powerful. I considered adding (or replacing an ability) with something weird like "Produces X Gold for each unworked sea resources out of the city's range, but within Tear's territory," to compensate you for that frequent, annoying crab one tile too far away. Thoughts?

I prefer the latter approach, though I don't think I would pick either over our existing UB candidates. I do like that the "out of range" is implicitly Tall-favoring without making that too obvious, which is quite nice. The only difficulty here is we'd need to use "city ownership" of hexes (to deal with overlapping cities and define a maximum bound for the ability to take effect), which isn't exposed to players as it is. Are we ok with that?


Recap!

Tear (Era 5-9, Tall, Diplo/Dom/Culture)

UAs:

• Hard as Stone, Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts (hidden artifacts), Tairen Historians have the "Hide Artifact" mission, which causes them to be expended when used on Sites of Power in Tairen territory and instantly creates a Portal Stone. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Class Divisions, When a city gains a population point, Tear receives X Gold. Tairen cities can "Push the Populace," sacrificing 1 Population in order to rush the city's current construction by Y hammers (scaling) and produce Z Unhappiness (like 2) for W turns. (like 30)
• Fear of Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, Tear can elect to instead receive a Legendary Person of the type of their choice. Tear may not select the same Legendary Person more than X times in the game.
• Housed in the Stone, Every foreign embassy in the Tairen capital provides +X Culture in the capital. Every foreign diplomat in the capital generates +Y Prestige in the capital.

UUs:

• Defenders (wonderful), replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission in addition to the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Tear can found only X Developed Cities at any one time in a single game.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Defenders (spy), replaces era 5/6 unit. Has higher combat strength and has an X% chance of finding and killing foreign Eyes and Ears stationed in the city it is garrisoned in every Y turns.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. +X Movement. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route.+Y movement when following a non-enemy trade route. Has its full Movement restored when pillaging a sea trade route or killing a Lawless or Dragonsworn naval unit.

UBs:

• Heart of the Stone, replaces XP National Wonder, receives one Legendary Craft or Artifact Slot. If the slot is filled, the artifact generates (instead of culture and prestige) +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +Y (lower) Faith.
• Great Holding, replaces Culture 4, receives an extra Legendary Craft and Artifact slot. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Artifacts from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.
• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each luxury resource worked by this city also produces a derived luxury resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.
• Taxation Office, replaces Coastal2, international sea trade routes established by other civilizations that pass within X hexes of this city contribute Y% of their value to Tear in addition to what they give to the civilizations at either end of the route.
• Unassailable Fortress, replaces Defense3/4, provides additional city strength. Has a Specialist slot for a new Specialist <Existing Specialist(s)> that, when filled, that provides city strength, city HP, and X Happiness. This Specialist provides points toward generating Great Captains it's normal Legendary Person.
  [*]Artifact Hoard, replaces Culture5, provides a number of Culture Specialist slots equal to Tear's unused Spark.
• Defender's Fortress, replaces Defense3/4, provides city strength. Has a Specialist slot for a new Specialist type, the Defender, that provides X Happiness, and one additional city attack per turn. The Defender provides points towards generating Great Captains.
• Fishmonger's Wharf, replaces Food (Coastal), in addition to its normal benefits, each sea bonus resource produces +X Gold (low) when worked, and each sea luxury resource produces +Y Culture (low) when worked.

UIs:

• Lords' Shipyard, can be constructed only on coastal flatland. Produces an amount of Production equal to the Population of the city working this tile.

UGs:

• High Lord, spawned by Merchant Lords and Ambassadors. Yield is Gold and City-State influence with City-States connected to this city by trade routes. Upgrade 2 ability is "City-States connected to this city by trade route do not have elections and cannot be the victim of coups. When an election would occur, instead Tear gains X influence with that City-State." Relevant LP is the Merchant Lord.

Some more removals to get us down closer to making some sets.

With the UA competition as it is, I've marked Port of Storms as red since we can use the Guarded Trader UU to fulfill that part of the Tairen flavor if we want.

Despite Defenders being a lock, I've suggested removing Defenders (spy). I think Defenders (wonderful) is a much stronger candidate, and (spy) encourages a a playstyle that gives the player less agency (sit back with the unit garrisoned in your cities). With this removal we'd either need to take Defenders (wonderful) or use the Defender flavor on the Specialist in Defender's Fortress (or both). Or come up with a new UU. But I'm quite happy with Defenders (wonderful) as the frontrunner for that flavor.

I've proposed removing Fishmonger's Wharf for the reasons mentioned above, but I could see us still using the other variant.