S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

[counterpoint]

Sorry I didn't get to post yesterday, I had a bunch of people over so didn't get time to sit down at my computer!

alas, I didn't get to yesterday either! Things are going to possibly be a little slower, as I'm traveling this week. I'll get some chances to post, but it won't always be easy to find time and a computer, so I might be a bit slower.

All good suggestions! I like the idea of double projections because it stands out to the player immediately as something that's quite powerful.

Also, down below we're looking for some way to ensure that the Aiel have a purposefully enhanced military presence. T'a'r's connection with the Domination victory could be a good way to do that. What if the Dreamwards made by Wise Ones were more difficult to destroy/affected a wider area? (Wider area is particularly powerful since I believe we chose the Dreamwards' size so you couldn't cover multiple cities with a single ward?) This would help them shore up Happiness while pushing for Domination, which is usually one of the limiting factors on an invasion. Combine that with their other uniques allowing them to make more units, and it seems like they'd be a military powerhouse.

OK, cool. I'd say double projections is definitely a decent option, though I'd like to toss out another option or two as well, so we have more to work with when it comes to actually decision time.

Below, I'll present two other wise one abilities - deal more/take less damage from other projections, which I forgot about before, and harvest glimmers faster/shorter cooldown. I'm not saying I prefer these over double-projection, necessarily, but they come at t'a'r in somewhat different ways (the former improves their "dominance" within tar, , while the latter specifically aids the LP-generation side of thing, not dreamwards), and I think we should leave some other options on the table. Of course, different abilities could be combined into a single unit

Part of me feels like altering the dreamwards itself isn't quite the way to go. It's hard to pin down why I think that, but I do *feel* it. I don't see how we could make one dreamward harder to destroy than another, and make it not appear frustratingly surprising to other players. The wider area could work, but it's also sort of redundant to multiple projections - why not just drop a second projection? It'd be harder to remove.

I agree to an extent. If a suggestion's flavor doesn't make sense, then I would be inclined to discuss that now. But given how we've reused flavor in multiple mechanics elsewhere, I wouldn't say that crossover with another system we've done would be something we'd want to consider renaming now, because it's assumed we're going to rename it later if it gets through. In this case, we wouldn't keep the plain name "Gai'shain" in the end, so the fact that that name is also a Custom doesn't seem like something we want to care about yet. (The fact that it's redundant, as you pointed out before, due to another suggestion that is basically the same, is totally what we want to discuss now, as we've done here.)

I mostly understand, but that seems like a weird limitation that is somewhat arbitrary. We before suggested that we keep these abilities general, mechanically, at this stage, but then later amended that to "but if you have a specific idea, feel free to share it," which has been the case a few times. Why isn't this the same? We're not going out of our way to critique names and propose alternates - that will truly take a long time - but if we do happen to notice a problem now, shouldn't it be mentioned? Right now we're immersed in thinking about a civ, so it's possible that next time around we might not remember the particular conflict, or problem associated with a name.

Mostly, it just seems weird to make that one small aspect be off-limits right now. I can't see who we're hurting to mention such things now

Up to us, that seems like a balancing decision we'd make based on how powerful this proves to be in game. (There might not be any yield penalties necessary, just the lack of any bonuses may be enough.)

ok. Well, for now, I'm not sure I have a strong preference. so determine this one later, in any case!

User interface-wise we could either add it to the city screen somehow or make it a separate "queue" screen that is its own entity you get sent to by the "choose production" notification. (The production queue on the left hand side of the city screen should be extractable and presentable by itself.)

ok! so if you think this is possible, code-wise, let's leave it at that for now!

True, I could either see it not working for other civs (sort of like the Feitoria if you capture a CS) or just letting other players have it.

oh, the feitoria doesn't work for others? hmm... well, I guess that makes sense, as that's really a different thing, in that it doesn't help the CS itself, but a foreign civ.

I would say we keep it simple and just reset the improvement if it gets pillaged - start again as if it were a new one when it gets repaired.

that would be simplest, but I wonder if that'd be too easy to "break." If you're at war (especially with a human player), or even facing barb problems, it seems like it'd be really really easy to totally cripple this extra production by just rushing in the pillage every ten turns or so, so the unit could never be produced. Is that a fine tactical element, or do we want it to be more stable than that?

We do have The Fifth as a Custom (Double yield from international trade routes with civilizations that you have annexed a city from.), so the flavor isn't missed completely.

oh, damn! There she is. OK, concern withdrawn.

Blarg, these are good points on both counts. The Dragon's availability will vary hugely between separate games, so it's difficult to create a sensible ability that depends on "when you control him" unless it actually changes something about the Dragon himself, rather than your civ.

yeah, that ability dies a humiliating death, I'd say.

Sound sgood - that's something we can use when naming the uniques then, right?

yup.

Woops, I should've specified that replacing Food (Wheat) wouldn't necessarily keep the requirement for Wheat. (Like our Sea Folk bank suggestion that requires the coast, we can also do the opposite and remove requirements from buildings we replace.) Totally agreed that if it still needed Wheat it wouldn't make sense.

gotcha.

And agreed on the Temporary Hold.

Desert Sept vs Desert Hold is sort of what I mean above about names. I totally agree with your reasoning here and that Hold is better, and this is a flavor mistake since Septs aren't buildings (dang ASoIaF and their Sept buildings!). But we'll end up with two things called Hold here that we're trying to work together, so we could end up renaming one regardless. I would be fine with this one being called "Deserty building" at this point, and we can name it properly later, because it's more focused on using the mechanics of a building to capture the Aiel's more general city structure and placement flavor.

ok, and this is what *i* mean above on this. "Sept" feels good, intuitively to us - because it truly is a thing in WoT, and it's a building in aSoIaF. It took me a few times reading it before I noticed the problem. It's quite possible, if I didn't mention it now, I'd forget to later. Why not mention it now? If there's multiple Uniques with the "Hold" name at this stage in the design process, that's much less problematic than something "wrong" that's hanging around.

Think of it this way, if I spelled a prospective UU wrong ("to'rakun"), you'd correct it now, wouldn't you?

Totally agree, we're running into some difficulty here! It seems strange that the UA is the part that's ended up not being overcontended, but that's where we're at!

I agree that the Maidens and Wise Ones are largely mandatory. Your suggested workarounds could work, but I agree that they feel like cheating and wouldn't capture the flavor as players (and we!) want it to.

agreed.

So, the UB and the UI, converted into UAs, and the difficulties with that:

Desert Sept as a UA could be something like "Cities with population X or less founded on a Desert (not Flood Plains) tile have +Y Food and +Z Production from desert tiles". I feel like the population restriction is a way of compensating for the fact that it's no longer replacing a building, so it isn't a static bonus to Food/Production all the time. (Could possibly restrict just the Food bonus to lower pop cities, letting the Production bonus stand everywhere that has desert.)

hmmm. This could work. It's not very exciting as a UA, though. Which is interesting, because it feels pretty darn good as a UB

Warriors' Hold as a UA could be something like "Cities founded on desert tiles can produce units at X% normal production rate at the same time as working on something else". This feels like it loses a lot of the oomph of the UI approach, but achieves a similar mechanical goal.

yeah, agreed. It's also likely to be kind of confusing-seeming when framed as a global UA.

However! I have an alternative plan. I totally agree that the Maidens are an essential unique, so what if we use the Algai'd'siswai UA and tweak it a little? One of the issues we're discussing with that one is that it would be difficult for another player (or even the Aiel player) to know how strong a given Algai'd'siswai unit is at a glance. We also think that the Aiel UU's lack of a presence in the endgame would be somewhat annoying, flavorfully.

So how about we grab the flavor of all the different warriors clans you mentioned (Stone Dogs, Red Shields, etc.) including the Maidens and replace the Aiel's sword units with them as their UA? Most could be straight up replacements with no inherent combat implications, beyond them being pole units rather than sword units, and then the Maidens could replace the last sword unit (or wherever we end up wanting to put them), and be marginally stronger. That way, each unit type has a known strength. Stone Dogs are always Swordsman equivalents, Red Shields always Sword Dancer (made up name) equivalents, Maidens always Blademaster equivalents, etc.

So the UA would be something like "Aversion to Swords, All sword units are replaced with Aiel warrior clan units using spears". This would also play into the flavor of the UI really well, allowing us to make the Warriors' Hold only able to produce warrior clan unit types. (Which solves our "conquered by other players" quandary, since they can't build those unit types, so the UI doesn't work for them.)

great idea! I like this, for sure! I think it also has the effect of making the Aiel feel very different, and very epic on a military scale, but not necessarily forcing their uniques to all be military-related. I guess we're sort of cheating, in a way similar to how we're likely to cheat with the Seanchan (damane/suldam will probably be "one" UU).

A few things, though:

I wouldn't want to commit to the Maidens being the last unit. Remember, we still want to keep the option open for the Aiel to be "mechanically active" early in the game, since we have potentially few other civs that will be. So, I'd say their heyday should either be something like eras 2-3 or, probably, 7-8 or something like that. Of course, we have zero idea exactly how many sword units we will have, so it's something absolutley to hold for later. I do suspect we'll go with the final one, though. This assumes that they are indeed stronger - if they aren't, then we can put them wherever (and I'd like the last one).

What about other units that happen to have swords? It's possible that, say, Gateway Skirmishers, or Asha'man will be depicted as using swords. Ignore this kind of thing?

Do you think we have to add the pole "functionality" (bonus vs horse) to these units? I feel like we could probably get away with just leaving them as regular old melee units. I feel like it's a little weird, as it'd make the Aiel have tons of pole units, and change the usefulness of the actual pole units (because they won't always be the best pole unit available), which is kind of weird. I'd say we'd probably be able to get away with not doing this - they are spearmen, of course, but they don't use Pikes or other ones that are obvious anti-cavalry weapons. thoughts?

also, do you think we can get away with the Maidens being more of a "true UU" despite them being created and described via a UA? How would we make that work? Alternatively, we could make all the Warrior Clan units have extra movement in desert, or +X% strength in desert, or something, and then it doesn't feel much like we've given one unit a specific bonus (thus, more UA-like than UU-like). If you have a way of making it not feel like cheating, I'd be happy with it.

Then the whole line up could be:

UA - Aversion to Swords
UU - Wise One
UB - Desert Sept
UI - Warriors' Hold

yeah, that could be cool

With all that in mind, recapping the Aiel!

I still haven't come up with any way for Clanship to actually work, so I figure we can axe it. If I do come up with something for it, I'll suggest it again.

yup

I've suggested culling a lot of options here. Partially because several of them combine into the Aversion to Swords UA (Algai'd'siswai, warrior clans, and Maidens).

Yeah, though I'm going to leave the Maidens in an an option. It's true that we won't select them if we go with Algai'd'siswai. But if we don't go with that, we'll want to consider the Maidens as a stand-alone UU.

Also it looks like neither of us are big fans of the Car'a'carn ability? I would be happy to keep developing that if we think there's more though!

axed

I figure The Fifth UA is quite underwhelming.

yuup

The Brotherless, Water Oath, and Hold I've left standing separate. I like the overall synergy of the four uniques I outlined before the recap, but there's room for us to keep a parallel proposal for the civ alive as well, right?

absolutely, if not more than one of them alive!

One thing I notice about Hold is that it encourages a lot of player micromanaging. It gives a bonus based on which tiles are worked when a unit is completed. So the optimal way to do that would be to get as close as possible to finishing the unit on one turn, then reassign all citizens to have as many worked improvement-less desert tiles as possible on the turn that the unit completes. We could go straight for "each unimproved desert tile near this city" (where "near" is technically defined by tiles that are owned due to this city's culture) to avoid that.

ugh... that's kind of tediously complex. I'm tempted to go with the suggestion you just made.

You mentioned that the Brotherless UU probably wants a supporting UA. Water Oath also needs a bit more due to its niche-ness. It'll have to be quite a punchy effect though, to keep the UA succinct and understandable. It could be very straightforward (and very powerful) by giving all units the March promotion (while they're on desert tiles)? Healing every turn would allow a unit to stand alone against several enemies for much longer, when they otherwise would've been worn down by attrition.

Yeah, I think that could work. I don't think it needs to be an actual promotion (since it'd be removed when you leave desert - can we do tha?), but the healing nonetheless.

Any ideas for a UU or other Unique that synergizes well with Water Oalt as well?

recap!

The Aiel (Era 2-9, Wide, Dom/Cul/LB)
UAs:

• Water Oath, Production or Happiness bonuses when multiple cities work flood plains on the same river (includes international and CSs)
• Aversion to Swords, replace all sword units with an equivalent Aiel warrior clan spear unit.
• People of the Waste, Units heal on desert tiles, even when performing an action, double normal healing rate when taking no action on desert tiles.

UUs:

• Maidens of the Spear, replaces an era 2/3 spear unit, is stronger and has a movement bonus on Desert
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that create stronger Dreamwardscan project into T'a'r twice
  [*]Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that harvests glimmers faster/has shorter projection cool-down
  [*]Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit whose projections deal triple damage to projects/take half damage while in T'a'r
• Brotherless, replaces an era 8 spear unit, significant combat bonuses when only adjacent to X or fewer friendly units

UBs:

• Hold, replaces XP 1 or XP 2 - +X XP to every melee unit produced in this city for every unimproved desert tile near this city.
• Desert Hold, replaces Food1, Food (Wheat), or Food (Production), +Food in city and +X (very low number) Production from Desert tiles worked by this city

UIs:

• Warriors' Hold, buildable on Desert tiles, can produce (warrior clan) units at a rate equal to X% (low, like 20-ish) of the production rate of the city working this tile.

ok, getting to be pretty much done with the Aiel, I think! when we finish, this should go into some kind of summary/master list, right? (obviously not really a summary, since it's not actually done)

 

[S3rgeus]

alas, I didn't get to yesterday either! Things are going to possibly be a little slower, as I'm traveling this week. I'll get some chances to post, but it won't always be easy to find time and a computer, so I might be a bit slower.

No worries, I've certainly had my share of slow weeks!

OK, cool. I'd say double projections is definitely a decent option, though I'd like to toss out another option or two as well, so we have more to work with when it comes to actually decision time.

Below, I'll present two other wise one abilities - deal more/take less damage from other projections, which I forgot about before, and harvest glimmers faster/shorter cooldown. I'm not saying I prefer these over double-projection, necessarily, but they come at t'a'r in somewhat different ways (the former improves their "dominance" within tar, , while the latter specifically aids the LP-generation side of thing, not dreamwards), and I think we should leave some other options on the table. Of course, different abilities could be combined into a single unit

Sounds good, more options for us to consider later!

Part of me feels like altering the dreamwards itself isn't quite the way to go. It's hard to pin down why I think that, but I do *feel* it. I don't see how we could make one dreamward harder to destroy than another, and make it not appear frustratingly surprising to other players. The wider area could work, but it's also sort of redundant to multiple projections - why not just drop a second projection? It'd be harder to remove.

Oh, we would definitely need to make it look different (different label, different model, something) if it was stronger, so that it was obvious at a glance that a given Dreamward was created by a Wise One and therefore stronger. We don't want it to be a surprise for players who have vision on it.

Regarding the area boost, do you mean drop a second Dreamward? Being able to overlap two cities would allow the Aiel to cover an area in Dreamwards much faster. Since it takes time to build them, and particularly with two projections off a single unit, they could cover a soon-to-be-invaded enemy quite quickly (giving the defender less warning). Combined with a more difficult to destroy Dreamward it wouldn't be so much of a stability trade off. (How much stronger we make them would determine whether it was a trade off, and if so, to what extent.)

I mostly understand, but that seems like a weird limitation that is somewhat arbitrary. We before suggested that we keep these abilities general, mechanically, at this stage, but then later amended that to "but if you have a specific idea, feel free to share it," which has been the case a few times. Why isn't this the same? We're not going out of our way to critique names and propose alternates - that will truly take a long time - but if we do happen to notice a problem now, shouldn't it be mentioned? Right now we're immersed in thinking about a civ, so it's possible that next time around we might not remember the particular conflict, or problem associated with a name.

Mostly, it just seems weird to make that one small aspect be off-limits right now. I can't see who we're hurting to mention such things now

I don't think it's arbitrary because the specific name doesn't help us make a decision about which uniques to keep, as long as we're aware of what general flavor it's aiming for. The specific mechanics might, which is why we're exploring some of them now, since small differences can have such big implications. I would think when we do a naming pass later, we'll be immersed in that civ again. I totally understand about correcting spelling or flavor mistakes, but I think since we're prioritizing making things faster, we could cut discussing naming until later because it takes us a decent amount of time, and we won't end up giving final names to most of the things we come up with at this stage.

oh, the feitoria doesn't work for others? hmm... well, I guess that makes sense, as that's really a different thing, in that it doesn't help the CS itself, but a foreign civ.

Yeah, the way it's designed is quite nice - I hadn't really considered the difficulty of UIs with unique behavior falling into enemy hands. The Feitoria is set up very well to avoid that ever being a problem.

that would be simplest, but I wonder if that'd be too easy to "break." If you're at war (especially with a human player), or even facing barb problems, it seems like it'd be really really easy to totally cripple this extra production by just rushing in the pillage every ten turns or so, so the unit could never be produced. Is that a fine tactical element, or do we want it to be more stable than that?

I think it's fine that this would remain as a tactical element. If a player is able to remain at war and constantly pillage the improvement, then I think the defender missing out on the bonus makes sense. It would need to be a very close war for this to happen a few times, otherwise the attacker would break through and take the city or be beaten back and need to make peace.

ok, and this is what *i* mean above on this. "Sept" feels good, intuitively to us - because it truly is a thing in WoT, and it's a building in aSoIaF. It took me a few times reading it before I noticed the problem. It's quite possible, if I didn't mention it now, I'd forget to later. Why not mention it now? If there's multiple Uniques with the "Hold" name at this stage in the design process, that's much less problematic than something "wrong" that's hanging around.

Think of it this way, if I spelled a prospective UU wrong ("to'rakun"), you'd correct it now, wouldn't you?

I'm not saying that multiple uniques being named Hold at this stage is a problem, I'm saying that we're going to need to rename some of them anyway because there are multiple the same, so back and forth about specifics of this name isn't really useful. I totally take your point and this was the "sort of" from my last post, because you're right that this change is a correction, rather than discussing a change to a name.

I'm mostly thinking that we've done specific naming for things quite early in the design process for a lot of our other systems, and that wouldn't be something we'd want to do again here, since we have so many things that won't make the final cut.

hmmm. This could work. It's not very exciting as a UA, though. Which is interesting, because it feels pretty darn good as a UB

Agreed, it's strange how that works!

yeah, agreed. It's also likely to be kind of confusing-seeming when framed as a global UA.

Agreed, in both of these cases it's quite significant that the abilities feel like they fit well as one type of unique and not another.

great idea! I like this, for sure! I think it also has the effect of making the Aiel feel very different, and very epic on a military scale, but not necessarily forcing their uniques to all be military-related. I guess we're sort of cheating, in a way similar to how we're likely to cheat with the Seanchan (damane/suldam will probably be "one" UU).

Awesome, glad you like it!

A few things, though:

I wouldn't want to commit to the Maidens being the last unit. Remember, we still want to keep the option open for the Aiel to be "mechanically active" early in the game, since we have potentially few other civs that will be. So, I'd say their heyday should either be something like eras 2-3 or, probably, 7-8 or something like that. Of course, we have zero idea exactly how many sword units we will have, so it's something absolutley to hold for later. I do suspect we'll go with the final one, though. This assumes that they are indeed stronger - if they aren't, then we can put them wherever (and I'd like the last one).

Totally agree, we put the Maidens wherever they fit best when we decide what the units are later.

What about other units that happen to have swords? It's possible that, say, Gateway Skirmishers, or Asha'man will be depicted as using swords. Ignore this kind of thing?

I think we can ignore that sort of "incidental swordage". If a lot of people take issue with it then we can consider swapping out additional units, but as long as they are the same strength, the biggest difficulty there is making new artwork for them.

Do you think we have to add the pole "functionality" (bonus vs horse) to these units? I feel like we could probably get away with just leaving them as regular old melee units. I feel like it's a little weird, as it'd make the Aiel have tons of pole units, and change the usefulness of the actual pole units (because they won't always be the best pole unit available), which is kind of weird. I'd say we'd probably be able to get away with not doing this - they are spearmen, of course, but they don't use Pikes or other ones that are obvious anti-cavalry weapons. thoughts?

Yeah, that seems good - leaving them as normal melee units keeps the Aiel having a balance in the rock-paper-scissors of unit advantage.

also, do you think we can get away with the Maidens being more of a "true UU" despite them being created and described via a UA? How would we make that work? Alternatively, we could make all the Warrior Clan units have extra movement in desert, or +X% strength in desert, or something, and then it doesn't feel much like we've given one unit a specific bonus (thus, more UA-like than UU-like). If you have a way of making it not feel like cheating, I'd be happy with it.

I think a bonus to the Maidens or to some/all of the units involved makes a lot of sense. Thinking about this since my last post, if we don't give them some kind of bonus, then the UA is basically just an artwork swap-out that, while cool, doesn't actually give the player any advantages! Treat deserts as roads on all of them? And a combat strength boost for the Maidens (compared to the unit being replaced)?

Yeah, though I'm going to leave the Maidens in an an option. It's true that we won't select them if we go with Algai'd'siswai. But if we don't go with that, we'll want to consider the Maidens as a stand-alone UU.

Good call!

ugh... that's kind of tediously complex. I'm tempted to go with the suggestion you just made.

Totally agree, that micromanaging would be a huge pain, I don't think we want to force players to do stuff like that in order to play their best.

Yeah, I think that could work. I don't think it needs to be an actual promotion (since it'd be removed when you leave desert - can we do tha?), but the healing nonetheless.

Yeah, promotions can be added and removed on the fly. In this case though, a "heal while on desert" promotion would be the most effective. (Rather than having a healing promotion and giving it and taking it away as the unit moves.) That's largely an implementation detail though - the former is just less work for the game.

I was thinking that this UA would combine with Water Oath (so that that still worked with the Brotherless) - do we still want to list them separately?

Any ideas for a UU or other Unique that synergizes well with Water Oalt as well?

I feel like finding a way to move rivers a hex or two would be pretty awesome. But this is one of our rare technical limitations, in that we (mostly) can't visually update the map mid-game, and rivers that don't line up with the visuals would be super confusing for the human player.

An important thing to do would be to make it easier for players to found cities that fulfill the Water Oath UA's requirements. How about a military unit that can found cities on Flood Plains?


Aiel recap!

The Aiel (Era 2-9, Wide, Dom/Cul/LB)
UAs:

• Water Oath, Production or Happiness bonuses when multiple cities work flood plains on the same river (includes international and CSs)
• Aversion to Swords, replace all sword units with an equivalent Aiel warrior clan unit.
• People of the Waste, Units heal on desert tiles, even when performing an action, double normal healing rate when taking no action on desert tiles.

UUs:

• Maidens of the Spear, replaces an era 2/3 spear unit, is stronger and has a movement bonus on Desert
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that can create stronger Dreamwards and project into T'a'r twice
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that harvests glimmers faster/has shorter projection cool-down
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit whose projections deal triple damage to projects/take half damage while in T'a'r
• Brotherless, replaces an era 8 spear unit, significant combat bonuses when only adjacent to X or fewer friendly units
• Water Seeker, replaces era 3/4 military unit, can found cities on Flood Plains

UBs:

• Hold, replaces XP 1 or XP 2 - +X XP to every melee unit produced in this city for every unimproved desert tile near this city.
• Desert Hold, replaces Food1, Food (Wheat), or Food (Production), +Food in city and +X (very low number) Production from Desert tiles worked by this city

UIs:

• Warriors' Hold, buildable on Desert tiles, can produce (warrior clan) units at a rate equal to X% (low, like 20-ish) of the production rate of the city working this tile.

ok, getting to be pretty much done with the Aiel, I think! when we finish, this should go into some kind of summary/master list, right? (obviously not really a summary, since it's not actually done)

Agreed, most of the way there! If you're happy with all of the remaining above, I'll start a list post and add the Aiel as the first entry!

Then on to the Sea Folk, since we've done one back and forth on them? Or shall we go back to the original order and go to Seanchan?

 

[counterpoint]

Greetings from the Republic of Texas!

Oh, we would definitely need to make it look different (different label, different model, something) if it was stronger, so that it was obvious at a glance that a given Dreamward was created by a Wise One and therefore stronger. We don't want it to be a surprise for players who have vision on it.

Regarding the area boost, do you mean drop a second Dreamward? Being able to overlap two cities would allow the Aiel to cover an area in Dreamwards much faster. Since it takes time to build them, and particularly with two projections off a single unit, they could cover a soon-to-be-invaded enemy quite quickly (giving the defender less warning). Combined with a more difficult to destroy Dreamward it wouldn't be so much of a stability trade off. (How much stronger we make them would determine whether it was a trade off, and if so, to what extent.)

by area boost, I think I assumed that by DWs that could cover two cities, you meant they'd cover a larger area. I guess you simply mean that they literally can cover two cities, but aren't necessarily bigger? I see.

Yeah, these are options. Not sure I love it as the best option, but now's not the time to get that picky!

I don't think it's arbitrary because the specific name doesn't help us make a decision about which uniques to keep, as long as we're aware of what general flavor it's aiming for. The specific mechanics might, which is why we're exploring some of them now, since small differences can have such big implications. I would think when we do a naming pass later, we'll be immersed in that civ again. I totally understand about correcting spelling or flavor mistakes, but I think since we're prioritizing making things faster, we could cut discussing naming until later because it takes us a decent amount of time, and we won't end up giving final names to most of the things we come up with at this stage.

but aren't I talking about situations that are flavor mistakes? Pointing out the "inaccuracy" of Septs, and pointing out where flavor is already "tied up" elsewhere in the mod doesn't seem to be the same as a true discussion, or giving final names...

But all this talk is becoming rather ironic - lots of letters typed trying to convince me not to write a few words now and then that point out a conflict elsewhere in the mod, or a flavor mistake...

I'm sorry, I feel pretty confident in predicting a future in which if I see something that feels wrongheaded in a name, I'm going to mention it. You can of course feel free to ignore it. I really wish that didn't seem problematic to you.

I do agree in general that we shouldn't be wasting time talking about "thematic" or poetic titles at this point. But even then... what's the harm? Mentioning something doesn't equal a discussion, and I would contend that these names do somewhat matter, in that they make a given item more or less attractive. Take the Brotherless for example - that's a really random ability. If I had proposed that as "lone soldier" or something. You'd be like "meh, a cool ability, but what's the point". But if you responded with, "a cool ability, but much cooler if tied to the Brotherless," I'd then say "great idea" and update my next bounce-back of the list with that name. That ability then has a much higher chance of survival, IMO.

Point being - the names color the way we think about these abilities. If one of us has a better name - especially something directly from in the universe - I would suggest that person share that. Doesn't have to spawn a big discussion. Just can be accepted or not. If it does need to be discussed further, then probably that is something that should be discussed later. I don't htink thats been the case in so far.

As is, the "no name suggestions allowed" policy seems to me to give too much framing "power" to the person who first proposes the ability. Clearly, we've been thinking of some similar (if not the same) kinds of abilities in a few cases. Just because one of us decided to post first, that person shouldn't unilaterially get to set the flavor-frame of that ability forever, especially if the other person might have something better. Take the old "kidshowbusiness" abilities I resurrected previously. Some of these are rather similar to things that might end up used by us - however, it seems silly to be committed to let his/her specific verbiage and nomenclature persist without alteration through this whole phase of the process (this statement is not meant to be negative towards ksb's names, just the existence of them at all).

Yeah, the way it's designed is quite nice - I hadn't really considered the difficulty of UIs with unique behavior falling into enemy h
ands. The Feitoria is set up very well to avoid that ever being a problem.

I should say, though, that part of a UI does tend to be that it CAN fall into enemy hands. Probably we should allow this to be the case with an Aiel unit-generating UI. The Feitoria is somewhat different, because it doesn't affect the city working its tile.

I think it's fine that this would remain as a tactical element. If a player is able to remain at war and constantly pillage the improvement, then I think the defender missing out on the bonus makes sense. It would need to be a very close war for this to happen a few times, otherwise the attacker would break through and take the city or be beaten back and need to make peace.

sure. This is simply something that we'll track when playtesting (if this one survives that long) - could be changed later.

I'm not saying that multiple uniques being named Hold at this stage is a problem, I'm saying that we're going to need to rename some of them anyway because there are multiple the same, so back and forth about specifics of this name isn't really useful. I totally take your point and this was the "sort of" from my last post, because you're right that this change is a correction, rather than discussing a change to a name.

I'm mostly thinking that we've done specific naming for things quite early in the design process for a lot of our other systems, and that wouldn't be something we'd want to do again here, since we have so many things that won't make the final cut.

very much agree with the sentiment here. However, don't think it specifically applies to most (if not all) of the name-suggestions I've made, since they, as I recall, were about conflicts and errors, not ideals and themes.

I think we can ignore that sort of "incidental swordage". If a lot of people take issue with it then we can consider swapping out additional units, but as long as they are the same strength, the biggest difficulty there is making new artwork for them.

I agree. And the people that complain particularly bitterly... can build their own mod.

Yeah, that seems good - leaving them as normal melee units keeps the Aiel having a balance in the rock-paper-scissors of unit advantage.

great.

I think a bonus to the Maidens or to some/all of the units involved makes a lot of sense. Thinking about this since my last post, if we don't give them some kind of bonus, then the UA is basically just an artwork swap-out that, while cool, doesn't actually give the player any advantages! Treat deserts as roads on all of them? And a combat strength boost for the Maidens (compared to the unit being replaced)?

I think the roads thing is quite fine. I still can't help but feel like the Maidens getting the extra bonus feels like a "free UU," though...

What if we did something like either of these:

everybody gets desert-are-roads, plus some small other bonus on desrt
or
everybody gets desert-are-roads, plus some small incrimental bonus (strength) that increases as the world era increases

I like the latter, I think. It makes a bunch of semi-UUs, all probably less improved than the typical one UU by another civ, but they also improve over time, leading up to the Maiden (presumably) being the best one - and likely approximating a "real UU"). I like this because it gives us the real end result we want, but still feels like a real UA.

Yeah, promotions can be added and removed on the fly. In this case though, a "heal while on desert" promotion would be the most effective. (Rather than having a healing promotion and giving it and taking it away as the unit moves.) That's largely an implementation detail though - the former is just less work for the game.

I was thinking that this UA would combine with Water Oath (so that that still worked with the Brotherless) - do we still want to list them separately?

gotcha. I agree - combine it with W.Oath.

I feel like finding a way to move rivers a hex or two would be pretty awesome. But this is one of our rare technical limitations, in that we (mostly) can't visually update the map mid-game, and rivers that don't line up with the visuals would be super confusing for the human player.

that would have been pretty cool, though perhaps not flavor-justified... also probably impossible.

An important thing to do would be to make it easier for players to found cities that fulfill the Water Oath UA's requirements. How about a military unit that can found cities on Flood Plains?

yeah, that's somewhat interesting. Doesn't feel super Aiel-ey, though. Also, I feel like between Brotherless, Wise Ones, and Maidens, we have enough UU options at this point (even if we don't have a perfect synergy partner with each OA... that's fine)

Aiel!

The Aiel (Era 2-9, Wide, Dom/Cul/LB)
UAs:

• Water Oath, Production or Happiness bonuses when multiple cities work flood plains on the same river (includes international and CSs), all units receive a "Heal on Desert" promotion.
• Aversion to Swords, replace all sword units with an equivalent Aiel warrior clan unit that can move on desert as if they are roads, and receives +X% combat strength per world era while on desert.
  [*]People of the Waste, Units heal on desert tiles, even when performing an action, double normal healing rate when taking no action on desert tiles.

UUs:

• Maidens of the Spear, replaces an era 2/3 or 7/8 spear unit, is stronger and has a movement bonus on Desert
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that can create stronger Dreamwards and project into T'a'r twice
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that harvests glimmers faster/has shorter projection cool-down
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit whose projections deal triple damage to projects/take half damage while in T'a'r
• Brotherless, replaces an era 8 spear unit, significant combat bonuses when only adjacent to X or fewer friendly units
• Water Seeker, replaces era 3/4 military unit, can found cities on Flood Plains

UBs:

• Hold, replaces XP 1 or XP 2 - +X XP to every melee unit produced in this city for every unimproved desert tile near this city.
• Desert Hold, replaces Food1, Food (Wheat), or Food (Production), +Food in city and +X (very low number) Production from Desert tiles worked by this city

UIs:

• Warriors' Hold, buildable on Desert tiles, can produce (warrior clan) units at a rate equal to X% (low, like 20-ish) of the production rate of the city working this tile.

Question about "Warrior's Hold" - what if there is no current "Warrior Clan" unit? (meaning, the melee unit of this era isn't a sword) - would it produce the previous one, or just a melee unit?

Agreed, most of the way there! If you're happy with all of the remaining above, I'll start a list post and add the Aiel as the first entry!

yeah, do it! (though I did make some adjustments)

Then on to the Sea Folk, since we've done one back and forth on them? Or shall we go back to the original order and go to Seanchan?

yeah, onto the Atha'an Miere!

 

[S3rgeus]

Greetings from the Republic of Texas!

Howdy!

by area boost, I think I assumed that by DWs that could cover two cities, you meant they'd cover a larger area. I guess you simply mean that they literally can cover two cities, but aren't necessarily bigger? I see.

Yeah, these are options. Not sure I love it as the best option, but now's not the time to get that picky!

It occurs to me now that a 3 radius DW (the default) can obviously cover two cities already (put it part way between both). I don't know why I've been thinking that wasn't the case. I was indeed talking about boosting the range of the Dreamward, so they would cover a larger area. Anyway, yes, still one option among several for the Wise Ones, which we can narrow down later!

but aren't I talking about situations that are flavor mistakes? Pointing out the "inaccuracy" of Septs, and pointing out where flavor is already "tied up" elsewhere in the mod doesn't seem to be the same as a true discussion, or giving final names...

But all this talk is becoming rather ironic - lots of letters typed trying to convince me not to write a few words now and then that point out a conflict elsewhere in the mod, or a flavor mistake...

I'm sorry, I feel pretty confident in predicting a future in which if I see something that feels wrongheaded in a name, I'm going to mention it. You can of course feel free to ignore it. I really wish that didn't seem problematic to you.

I do agree in general that we shouldn't be wasting time talking about "thematic" or poetic titles at this point. But even then... what's the harm? Mentioning something doesn't equal a discussion, and I would contend that these names do somewhat matter, in that they make a given item more or less attractive. Take the Brotherless for example - that's a really random ability. If I had proposed that as "lone soldier" or something. You'd be like "meh, a cool ability, but what's the point". But if you responded with, "a cool ability, but much cooler if tied to the Brotherless," I'd then say "great idea" and update my next bounce-back of the list with that name. That ability then has a much higher chance of survival, IMO.

Point being - the names color the way we think about these abilities. If one of us has a better name - especially something directly from in the universe - I would suggest that person share that. Doesn't have to spawn a big discussion. Just can be accepted or not. If it does need to be discussed further, then probably that is something that should be discussed later. I don't htink thats been the case in so far.

As is, the "no name suggestions allowed" policy seems to me to give too much framing "power" to the person who first proposes the ability. Clearly, we've been thinking of some similar (if not the same) kinds of abilities in a few cases. Just because one of us decided to post first, that person shouldn't unilaterially get to set the flavor-frame of that ability forever, especially if the other person might have something better. Take the old "kidshowbusiness" abilities I resurrected previously. Some of these are rather similar to things that might end up used by us - however, it seems silly to be committed to let his/her specific verbiage and nomenclature persist without alteration through this whole phase of the process (this statement is not meant to be negative towards ksb's names, just the existence of them at all).

I think I've framed this incorrectly. I totally see your point about Desert Hold vs Desert Sept and the other changes suggested thus far (and to be sure, I wasn't suggesting that those weren't good changes!). I pushed too far in my last post against something that I think we've run into before, but I haven't really called out (and that's on me!), and didn't correctly evaluate the "flavor mistake" nature of these specific suggestions.

My main point here is that I think that several times thus far we've dived into quite specific naming at an earlier stage than would be most efficient in our previous designs. That's totally fine if we want to do it that way, if it helps us to find the right framing flavor, but I figured with this part of the design, with our deliberately shorter posts, we were emphasizing faster turnaround times more so than before.

I think we're probably very close to being on the same page - your comments about specific verbiage and such are very much what I'm going for too. I'm definitely not saying we want to avoid flavor corrections or flavor reclassifying like the example you've given with the Brotherless.

I should say, though, that part of a UI does tend to be that it CAN fall into enemy hands. Probably we should allow this to be the case with an Aiel unit-generating UI. The Feitoria is somewhat different, because it doesn't affect the city working its tile.

Yeah, we can definitely keep our options open on this one if it becomes too unusual/strange/powerful if other players can't use the UI.

very much agree with the sentiment here. However, don't think it specifically applies to most (if not all) of the name-suggestions I've made, since they, as I recall, were about conflicts and errors, not ideals and themes.

Yeah, agreed, I went farther than intended against corrections when my main concern is spending loads of time on naming specifics.

I agree. And the people that complain particularly bitterly... can build their own mod.

Or make a modmod!

I think the roads thing is quite fine. I still can't help but feel like the Maidens getting the extra bonus feels like a "free UU," though...

What if we did something like either of these:

everybody gets desert-are-roads, plus some small other bonus on desrt
or
everybody gets desert-are-roads, plus some small incrimental bonus (strength) that increases as the world era increases

I like the latter, I think. It makes a bunch of semi-UUs, all probably less improved than the typical one UU by another civ, but they also improve over time, leading up to the Maiden (presumably) being the best one - and likely approximating a "real UU"). I like this because it gives us the real end result we want, but still feels like a real UA.

Agreed, the latter seems like a good plan!

yeah, that's somewhat interesting. Doesn't feel super Aiel-ey, though. Also, I feel like between Brotherless, Wise Ones, and Maidens, we have enough UU options at this point (even if we don't have a perfect synergy partner with each OA... that's fine)

Yeah, it's not really linked to their flavor.

Question about "Warrior's Hold" - what if there is no current "Warrior Clan" unit? (meaning, the melee unit of this era isn't a sword) - would it produce the previous one, or just a melee unit?

That can be something else we can tweak based on balance. My gut reaction would be that it can only produce the most recent warrior clan unit, rather than the most recent melee unit.

yeah, do it! (though I did make some adjustments)

All agreed and the Aiel listed below!

One final note - we don't really seem to have or have considered any Culture options. (We considered some LB ones, but didn't go for them in the end.) I don't think that's necessarily a problem, but it's worth noting since we did flag up Culture as a possible for them.

yeah, onto the Atha'an Miere!

And then all the way back on page 52:

The most recent Sea Folk recap, for context:

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Fierce Negotiators, receive double gold from foreign sea trade routes established with your cities (just by sea?)
• Sea Folk, embarked movement is doubled
• Land Legs, all land units become naval units when embarked (Melee1 is NavalMelee1, Siege1 is NavalRanged1, Ranged1 is NavalRanged1, etc), and naval units can disembark as corresponding land units
• Home at Sea, big bonuses (food? gold? happ?) when building on the coast, significant penalties when not on the coast
• Calming Waters, +X% combat bonus for land units when within 2 tiles of the coast

UUs:

• Raker, replaces the trade ship, gives boosted range to trade routes
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder, embarks into a combat ship? a ship that boosts other ships?
• Windfinder, replaces NavalMelee6, can move farther and enemy ships have -X combat strength within 5 hexes of it
• Swordmaster or Master of Blades - replaces some sword unit for some nice effect (better when embarked?)
• Darter, Soarer, Skimmer, Raker - any number of combat ships or trade ships (more detail when necessary, which is probably very soon)

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, and has some additional effect (not sure! happiness?)
• Cargomaster's Hold, replaces coastal 1, +Production for every international sea trade route, more if they trade with you too.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city.

UIs:

• (unknown flavor), UI fishing boats for some better yield (though this is probably better for one of the civs that is known for fishing, e.g. Tear or Mayene)

this is very interesting. Also potentially very powerful. Need to think on this a bit more. I will say, though, one thing I don't like about this is that it turns the A'M into an "amphibious" civ, that can swarm from sea and go nuts on lank (like Denmark in BNW). That doesn't seem to fit, IMO.

Yeah, them becoming a completely amphibious civ isn't really in line with their flavor. We may not want to disadvantage them in land war, but we most likely don't want them to have significant advantages at it!

Yeah, I thought of this as well (a UU cargo ship). I don't know that it needs to be the Raker, but it could be. Also, we can maybe do something more interesting than boosted range, right?

I could see it maybe giving different yields as well? Replacing the trade unit doesn't have a lot of surface area for doing strange things, since the unit itself isn't usually controllable.

The unit could return to the source city even when the trade route was plundered?

If we wanted to target the Diplo victory with this UU, we could make trade routes it establishes provide a small influence boost with any CS on the other end of the route?

Yeah, so I actually don't like Porcelain as a unique resource. It feels very, very ripped off from CiV. It's bad luck that the trakemark A'M resource is also one of just a few like that in CiV. We'd decided previously that Porcelain would just be a "craft" material for legendary works. We can totally have the Porc. flavor show up for this civ, but I don't think we want it to literally be as a resource.

Blarg, BNW and their wasted Porcelain flavor! I do think though that having the building produce a luxury resource plays really well with the Sea Folk flavor. It will ensure that they always (when playing near water) have access to several copies of a luxury no one else does, which gives them a built in trading advantage with other civs. That works really well, I think - are there alternatives to Porcelain for the flavor of the resource? Would it be too directly related to go for something like Glassware or a-word-that-is-not-Crockery-but-means-Crockery?

Regardless of what we do for Land Legs, I do think that sea+land functionality switch could be pretty cool on a Windfinder UU. Interesting how the Windfinder would also make a good UU Great Admiral... too bad we don't have those!

Yeah, that sounds like a good approach!

I should also say that, if we don't go with an actual UU ship (that can fight), we definitely should have some aspect of their UA that at least lets them potentially have naval dominance.

Yeah, they should feel like they have power on the sea.


For Home at Sea, I think, like the Aiel, we'll want to go more towards encouraging the coast rather than discouraging inland. Though I could see us having some inland discouraging stuff (Gandhi has Wide discouraging stuff in BNW after all). Still, I think we can get this ability to work with some bonuses to yields from water tiles. Specific changes below!

Calming Waters is a good one - it makes the Sea Folk powerful but ties them to the sea. Still, it does sort of advantage them in land warfare, where I think the flavor would lead us away from making their land units stronger.

The Master of Blades is good flavor. I'm struggling to come up with what the bonus could be for that unit that doesn't run afoul of making the Sea Folk more powerful on land. Maybe that isn't a problem, and he should just be slightly stronger, and also embark as a combat ship? Would we have two UUs that do that (assuming the UA doesn't allow it across the board) with both the Windfinder and Master of Blades? It seems like it's a nice theme for them, even if it isn't universal.

I've put the Darter/Soarer/etc entry as Magenta, since it's something we can feed into other uniques as the flavor fits. Does that seem like a good use of the highlight?

Both Cargomaster's Hold and Shipyard sound like good ways of encouraging the Sea Folk to play naval. They're both different, and Shipyard works particularly well if the other uniques give them a lot of excess Gold. I doubt we'd choose both since they're similar, but they're both good options at the moment.

Porcelain shop could work, I feel like something about its mechanics should feed more into the flavor of it. Or maybe there should be more "normal" uniques - a Gold building that also produces Happiness would let them expand much more.

For the fishing boats UI, I agree that we're probably better off using that on other civs.


Recap!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Fierce Negotiators, receive double gold from foreign sea trade routes established with your cities
• Land Legs, all land units become naval units when embarked (Melee1 is NavalMelee1, Siege1 is NavalRanged1, Ranged1 is NavalRanged1, etc), and naval units can disembark as corresponding land units
• Home at Sea, coastal waters and ocean hexes provide +X Production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>.
• Calming Waters, +X% combat bonus for land units when within 2 tiles of the coast
• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters
• Established Bargains, influence with city-states you have established sea trade routes with rises by X per turn

UUs:

• Raker, replaces the trade ship, gives boosted range to trade routes
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Windfinder, replaces NavalMelee6, can move farther and enemy ships have -X combat strength within Y hexes of it
• Swordmaster or Master of Blades - replaces some sword unit for some nice effect (better when embarked?)
• Darter, Soarer, Skimmer, Raker - any number of combat ships or trade ships (more detail when necessary, which is probably very soon)
• Darter, replaces NavalMeleeX/NavalRangedX and is stronger than the unit it replaces

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, and has some additional effect (not sure! happiness?)
• Cargomaster's Hold, replaces coastal 1, +Production for every international sea trade route, more if they trade with you too.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city.
• Amayar Shrine(/Village/something?), replaces Culture3, can only be built on the coast, has an extra Craft slot

UIs:

• (unknown flavor), UI fishing boats for some better yield (though this is probably better for one of the civs that is known for fishing, e.g. Tear or Mayene)
• Canal, built on land, allows non-enemy ships to pass through these tiles

My two Windfinder suggestions have ended up being quite similar - I think the embarkable replacement for the Wilder fits the Sea Folk flavor better? But that does mean the UU would have to be in/near Era 1, where the Wilder is.

For my new suggestions:

While appropriate flavor, Fierce Negotiators doesn't feel strong enough to stand alone as a UA to me.

Life at Sea is all of the craziness. I'm not 100% sure this is technically possible, though I have some theories about how it might work. I think flavor wise (and visual wise), the "cities" founded at sea would be gatherings of ships that remain on that tile and have culture borders and produce things etc. like a city would. Civ:BE has this apparently (I think added in the expansion?) and their cities can even move (I think)! (Theirs are flavored very differently though - mechanized floating platforms.)

In terms of what it would do to the Sea Folk as a civ, it could be really awesome - their cities would require their opponent to engage in a naval war in order to attack them. The cities themselves would provide presence on the water that makes the Sea Folk much more commanding at naval wars. I could also see (sea? eh? eh?) unlocking cities on ocean hexes in a later game tech (along with some bonuses that would make such cities viable, since there are no yields in the ocean).

Established Bargains is a straightforward way of targeting the Diplo victory directly.

Darter is a simple stronger-ship UU, which plays into the Sea Folk flavor that they have good ships. Not very splashy, but consistent.

Amayar Shrine (or something more appropriate - I couldn't find the right flavor for this), gives them something quite targeted for the Culture victory. It's also a nice nod to their flavor that an extra Art slot is probably the most mechanically appropriate, and Crafts, as our Art replacement, contains the Porcelain crafts, which you mentioned above!

Canals are interesting and naval-y, but not particularly linked to the Sea Folk flavor. (Were there any notable canals in the WoT canon?) It would let the Sea Folk move their navy across islands and narrow points on continents though, which would make them much better at fielding ships in the right places.

 

[S3rgeus]

Civilization Designs

The below are provisional design options for the various WoTMod civs, to be whittled down further to final designs at a later stage in the process!

For each civilization, the prominence of some flavor from the books makes some flavor component of their unique a lock: flavor that is guaranteed to be represented in a unique of one type or another in the final design. Locks have their names in bold.

Some of the proposals here have multiple uniques that are complementary to one another. Such "sets" of uniques are all listed after their respective civs.

This list continues in Part 2 and Part 3 of this post.

The Aiel (Era 2-9, Wide, Dom/Cul/LB)
UAs:

• Water Oath, Production or Happiness bonuses when multiple cities work flood plains on the same river (includes international and CSs), all units receive a "Heal on Desert" promotion.
• Aversion to Swords, replace all sword units with an equivalent Aiel warrior clan unit that can move on desert as if they are roads, and receives +X% combat strength per world era while on desert.
• The Fifth, when capturing a city above X population, gain a random Legendary Work (not one that actually exists in the original city) [flavor conflict with Paths acknowledged]
• Masters of the Dream, Dreamwards over foreign territory produce +X (low) Prestige per turn and Dreamwards over your own territory produce +Y Culture turn

UUs:

• Maidens of the Spear, replaces an era 2/3 or 7/8 spear unit, is stronger and has a movement bonus on Desert
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that can create stronger Dreamwards and project into T'a'r twice
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that harvests glimmers faster/has shorter projection cool-down
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit whose projections deal triple damage to projects/take half damage while in T'a'r
• Brotherless, replaces an era 8 spear unit, significant combat bonuses when only adjacent to X or fewer friendly units

UBs:

• Hold, replaces XP 1 or XP 2 - +X XP to every melee unit produced in this city for every unimproved desert tile near this city.
• Desert Hold, replaces Food1, Food (Wheat), or Food (Production), +Food in city and +X (very low number) Production from Desert tiles worked by this city
• Reclaimed Possessions Stockpile, replaces the Courthouse, has 2 LW slots

UIs:

• Warriors' Hold, buildable on Desert tiles, can produce (warrior clan) units at a rate equal to X% (low, like 20-ish) of the production rate of the city working this tile.

Sets:

Military
UA: Aversion to Swords
UU: Wise One
UB: Desert Hold
UI: Warriors' Hold

Culture
UA: The Fifth/Masters of the Dream
UU: Maidens of the Spear
UU: Wise Ones
UB: Reclaimed Possessions Stockpile

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters and coastal and ocean hexes provide +X production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>. Cities on water captured by other civilizations must be razed and provide the capturing civ with <bonus>.
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Allied to and +Y influence per turn with every CS they are Friends with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ). The other civ receives +Y (lower value) influence per turn with any CS you are Allied with.
• Catch the Wind, all naval melee units receive the ability to retreat from battle, all naval ranged units receive the ability to move after attacking.

UUs:

• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and prestige to every LW housed within the city
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.

UIs:

Sets:

On the Sea
UA: Life at Sea
UU: Raker/Soarer
UU: Windfinder
UB: Porcelain "forge"/Porcelain shop

Masters of Trade
UA: Legendary Bargains
UU: Raker/Skimmer
UU: Windfinder
UB: Porcelain "forge"

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul)

UAs:

• Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities produce X% less extra unhappiness and will periodically produce units, including the Unique Units of the civilization that originally founded the city.
• Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
• Insights of the Blood, puppetted and annexed cities do not increase technology costs
• Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives a free social policy every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
• Mandatory Testing, the Spark earned from occupied cities is doubled.

UUs:

• Deathwatch Guard/Gardener, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health. The ability becomes available again once the unit has returned to full health.
• Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane*.
• Morat'torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
• S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy and land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.
• Morat'grolm - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, enemy mounted units consume their whole turn when attacking the morat'grolm.

UBs:

• Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city and foreign Diplomats have a Z% chance of being killed every W turns they spent in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.
• Tower of the Blood (Uniques), replaces the courthouse, enables the production of the Unique Uniques of the civilization who founded the city.
• Tower of the Blood (Production), replaces production 1, -X% production or gold cost to construct this building, if this city has a governor, the city receives +Y% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related builidng, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Z turns.
• Tower of the Blood (Science), replaces the courthouse, the increase in technology cost created by this city's population is halved and generates +X Science per turn, up to a maximum of Y, for each turn since the Seanchan last controlled an Aes Sedai.
• Marath'damane Study Facility, replaces ScienceX, this city produces +Y% Science per turn for each puppeted city controlled by Seanchan, times the number of turns since Seanchan last controlled an Aes Sedai, up to a maximum of Z%.

UIs:

* Sul'dam and damane have several "derived mechanics" that it's worth specifying here. These mechanics all have a variety of parameters that can be tweaked in order to balance the UU:

• Sul'dam are melee units that cost Spark and have a combat bonus against female channelers
• Female channelers killed by sul'dam have a chance of becoming a damane
• Each damane is linked to the sul'dam that created them
• Damane are high ranged combat strength female channeling units that cannot projection into T'a'r, do not have a healing aura, and do not cost Spark
• When a sul'dam is killed, any damane linked to that sul'dam suffer a penalty (damage per turn, inability to move, something)
• Damane that are more than X hexes from their linked sul'dam suffer a penalty (damage per turn, inability to attack, something)
• Killing an Aes Sedai (controlled by any civilization) and making them damane incites a Tower Influence penalty against the Seanchan player

Sets:

Master of Puppets
UA: Ever Victorious Army
UU: Deathwatch Guard
UU: Sul'dam/damane
UB: Marath'damane Study Facility

Channeling Specialty
UA: Channeling Dogma
UU: Deathwatch Guard
UU: Sul'dam/damane
UB: Tower of Blood (Uniques)

Shandalle (Era 3-4, Wide, Dom/Diplo)

UAs:

• Trusted Advisors, all Governors spawn at second level
• Provincial Dominance, double rewards from being the High King, double rewards gifted to you when you are a province, bonuses given to you cannot be "Meager" and "Nothing"
• Insightful Rule, if you are the High King, select a Provincial bonus for yourself, if you are a Province, select which bonus you receive and gain boosted yields
• Endless Siege, siege units controlled by Shandalle take Y% less damage from cities and enemy ranged units garrisoned in cities, and receive an X% combat strength bonus (high number) on a turn they pillage

UUs:

• Golden Hawk Catapult, era 4 Siege, can pillage already pillaged tiles. If this happens more than X times by the same stationary unit, the improvement is destroyed when the Golden Hawk Catapult leaves the tile.
• Captors of Guaire, replaces some unit in era 3/4, bonus fighting against Dragonsworn and False Dragons, super bonus if they kill a False Dragon
• Decorated Leader, replaces the Great Captain, melee combat unit (strength based on Shandalle's current era), enemy units within X hexes of this unit do not exert zone of control. Allied ranged units within X hexes of this unit have +1 range.

UBs:

• Glorious Statue, replaces DefenseX, enemy units within Y hexes of this city have -Z combat strength and have -W maximum HP
• Circuit Rover's Watch Station (replaces Era 3-4 XP or Defensive building), X% chance to spawn a contemporary ranged unit adjacent to the city when this city is attacked
• Imperial Governor's Mansion, replaces DefenseX/EXPX (where X is the last one), can only be built in the conquered capitals of eliminated city-states, the Governor in this city produces double yields and Shandalle gains the Compact votes that would have been available from being the former city-state's ally.

UIs:

• Forward Encampment, built only in foreign city-state territory, this city-state cannot declare war on Shandalle, even if its ally does. Shandalle can still declare war on it. Pillaging this improvement constitutes a declaration of war against Shandalle.

UGs:

• Provincial Ruler, unique Governor type, can be generated by Great Captains and Ambassadors, upgrade 2 special ability is "Internal trade routes established in this city also provide +Z Gold", and has 3 yield states:
  • Before the High King is elected: +X Food, +X Production, and +Y% production toward the High King's Palace
  • During the High King event: improves the yield output of this city corresponding to Shandalle's provincial bonus
  • After the High King event: +X Science, +X Prestige, and +Y Ambassador points per turn

Sets:

The True King
UA: Insightful Rule
UG: Provincial Ruler
UB: Imperial Governor's Mansion
UU: Golden Hawk Catapult

Hawkwing's Conquest
UA: Trusted Advisors
UU: Decorated Leader
UI: Forward Encampment
UB: Glorious Statue


Shara (Era 1-9, Wide, LB/Dom/Sci)

UAs:

• Perpetual Government, instead of becoming unhappy, each net total unhappiness causes Shara to lose X Gold (scaling) per turn. (Happiness remains at 0.)
• Cycle of the Sh'boan, receive X Faith, Culture, Science, or Gold every 7 turns. Which yield is received depends on the actions of the previous 7 turns.
• The Freed (less mad), saidin units behave as if they operate at one lower madness tier (though "going rogue" still occurs at the standard times), though they still receive the strength bonuses of the greater madness. (Should be combined with another UA if appropriate.)
• Isolationism, Civilizations that Shara provides Open Borders to generate no bonus Prestige. Every point of Prestige generated by a civilization that Shara does not provide Open Borders to generates X Science for Shara. Shara can Exhibit Innovations in its own cities that have more than Y population as though they were foreign capitals.

UUs:

• Freed (less mad), replaces the Asha'man, behaves as if it operates at one lower madness tier, though still receives the bonuses of the greater madness (and can still go rogue). +X% combat strength against channeling units.
• Wyld, replaces either the Forsaken or the Dragon (in unit form), determined by which side Shara picks during the LB, is a ranged male channeling unit, has an X% ranged combat boost against units fighting for the opposing Alignment. Channelers within Y hexes that share an Alignment with the Wyld (including himself) have their ranged attack range increased by Z.
• Tattoo Warrior, replaces some Melee, Polearm, or Ranged Unit, receives +X combat strength against a civ you do not have an Open Borders agreement with or a CS you are not friends or allies with.
• Ayyad (battle), replaces the Wilder or Kin or anti-channeler, +X% combat strength against channelers and warders, Ignore Zone of Control from channelers and warders.

UBs:

• Hearttomb (river), replaces Production (river), adds 2 slots for Legendary Relics to the building that produce Culture and Faith instead of Culture and Prestige, with a theming bonus that provides <promotion> to channeling units trained in the city.
• Enclave of the Freed, replaces XP National Wonder, +X (large) XP to every Male Channeler born in this civilization
• Hearttomb (Culture3), replaces Culture3, Prestige generation from Legendary Works is halved. Each Legendary Work produces X culture and Y Science
• Isolated Trade Plaza, replaces Gold (trade), Shara receives double the usual Science from international trade routes to and from this city with civilizations it does not permit open borders to, and those civilizations do not receive Science from trade routes with this city.

UIs:

• Immense Wall, generates +X Culture per turn, can only be built where Shara's borders meet another civilization and the tile it is on can be worked by the closest Sharan city (even if normally out of range). Enemy units cannot cross into hexes that have an Immense Wall from outside Sharan territory.
• Ayyad's Enclave, Sharan cities within 3 hexes of this improvement produce +X Culture and -Y Happiness per turn. Sharan cities 4 to 6 hexes away produce +Z Happiness and +W Prestige (after <tech>). Each city can only be affected by each of these bonuses once.

Shara has no well defined sets that we could decide in a first pass, due to the variety of possible combinations that all worked together. There are some points of Sharan flavor and mechanics that we wanted to hit with the final set:

Isolationism
Male channelers or the Ayyad (including both if possible)


Malkier (Era 5-7, Tall, LB/Cul/Dom)

UAs:

• Edge of the World, all units receive the <no HP loss on the Blight> promotion, Blight tiles can be improved as if they are plains tiles.Malkier's borders can expand into Blight as if it were normal terrain.
• Rally to the Crane Banner, there is an X% chance per turn for a random contemporary military unit to spawn outside the borders of any known civ you are not at war with, when you are at war with a common foe.
• Stand Against the Shadow, whenever a Shadowspawn unit pillages a hex owned by Malkier, there is a X% chance that a melee unit spawns in Malkier's capital
• Memories of the Golden Crane, Malkieri Legendary Epics and Relics provide an additional +1 Culture. Epics and Relics of Malkieri origin kept by foreign civilizations preserve this bonus, but also provide +X Prestige for Malkier.

UUs:

• Hadori Cavalry (swarm), replaces era 7 mounted unit, half movement cost in Blight and Tundra, attacking Shadowspawn doesn't consume any of their movement or attacks for the turn.
• Diademed Battle Lord, replaces the Great Captain, can fight as a melee unit, when Malkieri units within two hexes of the Diademed Battle Lord are killed, +X culture is gained and all adjacent Malkieri units have half of their health restored
• True Blade, replaces the Warder, +X% (significant) combat strength in non-enemy foreign territory (including CSs). +Y Culture and +Z Faith when killing an enemy unit in non-enemy foreign territory. The Aes Sedai he is bonded to has +W Sight and +V% combat strength against Shadowspawn. Malkier receives +U influence per turn with that Sister's Ajah. The owner of the territory receives +T Faith (small) as well. Malkier may only have one True Blade at any given time
• Surviving King, replaces the Warder, has an X% (massive) combat bonus against Shadowspawn and units controlled by civilizations declared for the side opposite of Malkier in the Last Battle.
• Crane Scion (culture), replaces era 8-9 melee, ranged, or polearm unit, whenever a unit adjacent to the Scion is killed, heal +X HP and gain +Y Prestige, the latter bonus increasing by Z for every subsequent ally slain.
• Crane Scion (XP), replaces era 8-9 melee, ranged, or polearm unit, whenever a Malkieri unit adjacent to the Scion is killed, gain +X EXP.

UBs:

• Tower of the Crane, replaces Defense 1, +X culture per turn for every Blight tile within this city's workable radius, +Y prestige (after <tech>) for every Blight tile worked by this city.
• Blightborder Outpost, replaces Defense2, tiles with Blight on them can be purchased at a fixed rate of X Gold per tile.
• Cranes Holdfast (XP), replaces XP2, In addition to providing the standard EXP bonuses to trained units, when a Shadowspawn unit pillages a tile within this city's radius, the next unit to be trained in this city receives +X EXP (additional pillaging does not add to this bonus).

UIs:

• Border Tower, can be constructed on Blight. In addition to the normal effects of a Fort, non-enemy units on Blight tiles adjacent to or in the tower do not suffer HP loss per turn from the Blight. This bonus applies to any non-Shadowspawn units if the Tower is left standing outside of Malkieri territory.

Sets:

Once and Future King
UA: Edge of the World
UU: Hadori Cavalry
UU: True Blade
UB: Tower of the Crane

Never Fallen
UA: Edge of the World
UU: Hadori Cavalry
UU: Crane Scion (culture)
UB: Crane's Holdfast (XP)


Manetheren (Era 2-3, Tall, Dom/LB/Cul)

UAs:

• Storied Legacy, Manetheren nationality Legendary Works count toward any Theming bonus, regardless of era or nationality required by the building. This trait is present for any civilization in possession of Manetherenan Works. For each instance a foreign civilization takes advantage of this trait, Manetheren receives +X Prestige.
• Mountain Home, mountain tiles can be worked, and provide X production and Y culture. Any unit adjacent to a mountain can retreat into that mountain (these units can only take the move or wait actions while standing on mountains).
• Carai an Caldazar, the beginning and end of every "global event" (Trolloc Wars, High King, the birth of the Dragon, and Last Battle) triggers a Golden Age that lasts X turns, in addition to providing a one-time yield of Y Faith.
• Unconditional Alliance, Manetheren's units can move freely through the territory of any civilization with which it has an embassy in their capital. In foreign, non-enemy territory, Manetheren's units can attack units that are at war with that foreign civilization without declaring war on the civilization that owns the unit. +X Culture/other yield when destroying such a unit. Foreign units can attack units owned by civilizations at war with Manetheren while in Manetheren territory without declaring war on the attacking civilization.

UUs:

• Sister Queen, the first Aes Sedai Manetheren receives, when it does not control a Sister Queen, becomes a Sister Queen unit instead and has the abilities of the Ajah the player selected and her (first, if Green Ajah) Warder becomes a Warder King unit instead of a Warder. Manetheren cities within X hexes of a Sister Queen unit produce double Alignment and +Y% Culture.
  Manetheren units within Z hexes of a Warder King unit can only be killed by Shadowspawn or Mashadar if they are at 1 HP (attacks that otherwise would normally kill them reduce them to 1).
• Band of the Red Hand (Culture), replaces some era 2 unit, generates +X Culture when they attack a Shadowspawn unit in Manetheren territory. +Y Faith in unclaimed territory. And +X Culture and +Y Faith in another civilization's territory.
• Band of the Red Hand (garrison), replaces Melee 2/3, has higher combat strength and, when fortified in a city, this unit fights instead of the city when it is attacked by a melee unit.
• Red Eagle Bowman, replaces era 2/3 ranged unit, gains +1 Range when on hills

UBs:

UIs:

• Staging Grounds, produces +X Alignment (choosing Light or Shadow based on the Alignment of the citizen working the tile). Whenever a Shadowspawn tries to pillage a tile within Y hexes of this Improvement, that unit is not healed, all of its movement is consumed, and the host civilization receives +Z Faith.
• Mountain Waystation, built on Hills, base X (low) gold, and +Y culture for every adjacent Hill or Mountain Tile. After an enemy unit is killed in an adjacent tile, the player receives an amount of Alignment equal to the 2x the net Alignment yield of the city working this tile.
• Foreign Garrison, built in another player's territory, not on a resource, not within X tiles of another Foreign Garrison, and not on a tile that can be worked by a city. As long as Manetheren and the player that owns the hex this Improvement is on are at war with a common enemy, this tile produces a random land military unit for Manetheren every Y turns.

UGs:

• Channeler, created from an Aes Sedai instead of an LP, yield is Tower Influence, unique upgrade 2 ability is "Novices sent to the Tower from this city cannot fail to become Sisters and Manetheren may choose which Ajah they join", relevant LP for upgrade 3 ability is the Ambassador. Produces double Alignment (if chosen) from upgrades 1 and 3.

Sets:

Your Land is my Land
UA: Unconditional Alliance
UU: Sister Queen
UU: Band of the Red Hand (Culture)
UI: Mountain Waystation/UG: Channeler

Blood of the Mountain
UA: Storied Legacy
UU: Band of the Red Hand (Culture)
UI: Mountain Waystation / UU: Red Eagle Bowman
UG: Channeler / UU: Band of the Red Hand (garrison)


Pre-Consolidation Seanchan (Era 1-4, Wide, Cul/Diplo/Sci/Dom)

UAs:

• Diverse Tribes, Ancient ruins have X% chance of spawning a settler when explored. Clearing Lawless and Dragonsworn encampments provides +1 population in the nearest city.
• Enduring Legacy, Pre-Consolidation Seanchan Wilders can detect the presence of Sites of Power within home territory beginning in Era 3. These Sites can be made into Portal Stones by Wilders (but not harvested as Relics). Pre-Consolidation Historians can remove a Portal Stone, providing a Relic.
• Dreams of the Ancestors, Pre-Consolidation Seanchan Legendary People generate X% more Glimmers and P-C Seanchan Glimmers provide T'a'r sight for 1 hex around them.. If these Glimmers are harvested by a foreign civilization, Pre-Consolidation Seanchan gains Y Faith/Culture.
• Sight Beyond Worlds, Portal Stones provide sight into T'a'r. Each Portal Stone generates X Science and P-C Seanchan Historians can explore Portal Stones to generate Relics, removing the Portal Stone in the process.

UUs:

• Trophy Hunter, replaces Ranged 2, +1 Range when on Hills. Every unit killed by the Trophy Hunter provides a unique yield: for Lawless and Dragonsworn, +X Faith, for major civilizations, +Y Culture, and for Shadowspawn, +Z Science.
• Matriarch, replaces the Wilder, can detect Sites of Power beginning in Era 3, and convert them into Portal Stones (consuming the unit). +X movement and ignores Zone of Control while in friendly territory.
• Feral Grolm, replaces Mounted 2, +X% combat strength when adjacent to a Feral Grolm. Does not suffer the loss of terrain bonuses of other Mounted units.
• Torm Tracker, replaces Recon 2, +X movement and +Y sight. Diminished combat strength, but does not suffer losses to combat strength when injured
• Corlm Hunter, replaces Mounted 2, as long as the Corlm Hunter has at least 1 movement remaining, it can "jump" to any unit within its sight line and perform an attack.
• Raken Scourge, replaces Mounted 2, does not need to Embark in Coast (not ocean), and can fight as normal on Coast and when crossing rivers. Fights as a melee unit, but has an operational range of 2 when attacking.
• To'raken Behemoth, replaces Melee 3, powerful combat unit that can cross rivers without penalty and receives a bonus +X% bonus to combat strength against Cities
• Lopar Goliath, replaces Mounted 2, requires the Lopar resource, powerful combat unit with diminished movement but greatly increased combat strength.
• Tribal Hunter, replaces Recon 1, has +X% combat strength against Dragonsworn. Exploring Ancient Ruins has a Y% chance of creating a settler. Clearing a Dragonsworn encampment provides +1 Population in the nearest P-C Seanchan city.
• Grolm Swarmer - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, enemy mounted units consume their whole turn when attacking the morat'grolm.

UBs:

• Lorekeeper's Domain, replaces Science 1, can house any Legendary Works (not just Prophesy). Provides a different bonus yield for each Work type placed within it: for Prophesy, +X Science, for Epics, +Y Culture, for Crafts, +Z Production, and for Relics, +W Gold.
• Exotic Menagerie, replaces Culture 2, each Lopar resource provides +X Science. Units trained in this city get +X EXP for each Portal Stone worked by this city.

UIs:

• Sacred Stones, can be built on Sites of Power. Produces +X (low) Science and/or +Y Faith (low) per turn. Adjacent Improvements produce +1 Science per turn. A city that works this tile has +Y% Production towards mounted units.

Sets:

Portalled Stones
UA: Sight Beyond Worlds
UU: Matriarch
UB: Exotic Menagerie
UU: Exotic

Exotic Diversity
UA: Diverse Tribes
UI: Sacred Stones (amended so XP/production bonus applies only to the Exotic UU only, and is greater)
UU: Exotic
UB: Lorekeeper's Domain/UU: Trophy Hunter/UU: Exotic


This list continues in Part 2 and Part 3 of this post.

 

[counterpoint]

Greetings from the Triumvirate of California!

It occurs to me now that a 3 radius DW (the default) can obviously cover two cities already (put it part way between both). I don't know why I've been thinking that wasn't the case. I was indeed talking about boosting the range of the Dreamward, so they would cover a larger area. Anyway, yes, still one option among several for the Wise Ones, which we can narrow down later!

right, I guess we were thinking that DWs would sit on cities, which I imagine they actually can't. So yeah, 3-range DW is enough to cover two cities. Howver, they'd have to be cities that are pretty close to each other - maybe the range would need to be extended to make it more frequently usable.

I think I've framed this incorrectly. I totally see your point about Desert Hold vs Desert Sept and the other changes suggested thus far (and to be sure, I wasn't suggesting that those weren't good changes!). I pushed too far in my last post against something that I think we've run into before, but I haven't really called out (and that's on me!), and didn't correctly evaluate the "flavor mistake" nature of these specific suggestions.

My main point here is that I think that several times thus far we've dived into quite specific naming at an earlier stage than would be most efficient in our previous designs. That's totally fine if we want to do it that way, if it helps us to find the right framing flavor, but I figured with this part of the design, with our deliberately shorter posts, we were emphasizing faster turnaround times more so than before.

I think we're probably very close to being on the same page - your comments about specific verbiage and such are very much what I'm going for too. I'm definitely not saying we want to avoid flavor corrections or flavor reclassifying like the example you've given with the Brotherless.

OK, we're in agreement! Definitely don't want to actually dig into the naming stage until far later in the process.

That can be something else we can tweak based on balance. My gut reaction would be that it can only produce the most recent warrior clan unit, rather than the most recent melee unit.

ok, le'ts go with that, then. It obviously makes the ability less powerful, but I think we then simply use that as a strategic element of the civ - we don't have tons to go on for generic unit flavor, so I'm guessing we can essentially place the sword units more-or-less wherever we want to get the flow of power right, here. I' guessing, of the 9 (right?) melee units, something like 5 of them will be sword units, give or take.

All agreed and the Aiel listed below!

yeah, the list looks good!

One final note - we don't really seem to have or have considered any Culture options. (We considered some LB ones, but didn't go for them in the end.) I don't think that's necessarily a problem, but it's worth noting since we did flag up Culture as a possible for them.

ah, we did forget that...

I don't know what I'd really suggest. Right now them winning a Dom victory looks like it'd mostly be on the backs of invasion (capturing wonders, etc.). I think I'd originally expect that T'a'r would aid in culture somehow, but now that I'm thinking about it somehow, I'm not sure that's the case.

It seems to me, since ji'e'toh, is a path, the Aiel-as-cultural could really stem from two things:

- culture being generated by something unrelated to culture
- the Fifth

So, sorry to dig it back up, but...

The Aiel (Era 2-9, Wide, Dom/Cul/LB)
UAs:

• Water Oath, Production or Happiness bonuses when multiple cities work flood plains on the same river (includes international and CSs), all units receive a "Heal on Desert" promotion.
• Aversion to Swords, replace all sword units with an equivalent Aiel warrior clan unit that can move on desert as if they are roads, and receives +X% combat strength per world era while on desert.
  [*]Aversion to Swords, replace all sword units with an equivalent Aiel warrior clan unit that can move on desert as if they are roads, and receives X culture for each enemy unit killed while on desert
  [*]Way of the Spear, +X culture for every sword-bearing enemy unit killed
  [*]The Fifth, when capturing a city above X population, gain a random Legendary Work (not one that actually exists in the original city) [flavor conflict with Paths acknowledged]

UUs:

• Maidens of the Spear, replaces an era 2/3 or 7/8 spear unit, is stronger and has a movement bonus on Desert
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that can create stronger Dreamwards and project into T'a'r twice
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that harvests glimmers faster/has shorter projection cool-down
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit whose projections deal triple damage to projects/take half damage while in T'a'r
  [*]Wise Ones, replaces the King, Dreaming unit that gains X culture for every glimmer harvested
• Brotherless, replaces an era 8 spear unit, significant combat bonuses when only adjacent to X or fewer friendly units

UBs:

• Hold, replaces XP 1 or XP 2 - +X XP to every melee unit produced in this city for every unimproved desert tile near this city.
• Desert Hold, replaces Food1, Food (Wheat), or Food (Production), +Food in city and +X (very low number) Production from Desert tiles worked by this city

UIs:

• Warriors' Hold, buildable on Desert tiles, can produce (warrior clan) units at a rate equal to X% (low, like 20-ish) of the production rate of the city working this tile.

Not sure I love any of those. I think the +culture on kill thing is the easiest to slide in, but it's also repetitive of a BNW policy, as I recall. I don't like that the Fifth flavor is in conflict with the Path, but an ability like that is relatively flavorful, and could fuel a Culture victory. The Wise One ability is kind of bleh - most likely, it'd be best paired with other functionality of the Wise ones (perhaps faster glimmers and +culture). I'd be fine with killing all of these, but these are the best I got!

:
Yeah, them becoming a completely amphibious civ isn't really in line with their flavor. We may not want to disadvantage them in land war, but we most likely don't want them to have significant advantages at it!

yeah, for me, this makes Land Legs pretty problematic.

I could see it maybe giving different yields as well? Replacing the trade unit doesn't have a lot of surface area for doing strange things, since the unit itself isn't usually controllable.

The unit could return to the source city even when the trade route was plundered?

If we wanted to target the Diplo victory with this UU, we could make trade routes it establishes provide a small influence boost with any CS on the other end of the route?

Hmm... I have some ideas on this below, but yeah, it's tricky

Regarding the survival-of-plundering, didn't we create that as an ability somewhere else? Like, an edict or something? In any case, a cool ability, but for sure only worthy as a secondary ability - it's hard to leverage this as a true advantage... if you're patrolling your coasts well, nobody'd ever be destroying your routes!

As far as the diplo one, don't trade routes already provide some influence? Certainly more influence would be good though.

I'm hoping some of my ideas below are splashier. we'll see...

Also, I know we aren't talking names, but I think we should get some flavor straight to help how we're conceiving of this stuff. I've done a little poking, and found out some more about the ships (there isn't much out there)- this site gives some basic info. I don't have my Companion here in the Triumvirate, so can't verify. Clearly the Raker is the most recognizable ship, and the fastest and strongest. The next strongest is the Skimmer (possibly too close to "skimming"?), then the soarer, but the soarer is faster. The darter is the smallest and weakest - also possibly not as fast.

I'm thinking if we end up with a "true" UU, i.e. one that's good at fighting, there's a compelling argument that could be made that it should be the Raker. Possibly the Skimmer. If we had the Raker as that, then I'd suggest the Soarer as the trade vessel. Of course, if we don't have a UU in addition to a trade unit, I'd say we should definitely go with Raker for whatever we do have.

Blarg, BNW and their wasted Porcelain flavor! I do think though that having the building produce a luxury resource plays really well with the Sea Folk flavor. It will ensure that they always (when playing near water) have access to several copies of a luxury no one else does, which gives them a built in trading advantage with other civs. That works really well, I think - are there alternatives to Porcelain for the flavor of the resource? Would it be too directly related to go for something like Glassware or a-word-that-is-not-Crockery-but-means-Crockery?

hmmm... I definitely think that anything we go with here that *isn't* porcelain will just feel very "not porcelain." There's nothing else noteworthy in the lore, I think. I think we can think of a different way to incorporate this.

Calming Waters is a good one - it makes the Sea Folk powerful but ties them to the sea. Still, it does sort of advantage them in land warfare, where I think the flavor would lead us away from making their land units stronger.

Yeah, I see that. However, it forces their successful warfare to be coastal. I have a feeling that that might be the best we'll get, without making eall their abilities water-only.

The Master of Blades is good flavor. I'm struggling to come up with what the bonus could be for that unit that doesn't run afoul of making the Sea Folk more powerful on land. Maybe that isn't a problem, and he should just be slightly stronger, and also embark as a combat ship? Would we have two UUs that do that (assuming the UA doesn't allow it across the board) with both the Windfinder and Master of Blades? It seems like it's a nice theme for them, even if it isn't universal.

hmm.. Definitely think we could come up with something distinct that isn't "embark as ship" for both these units. I've posited something weird below...

I've put the Darter/Soarer/etc entry as Magenta, since it's something we can feed into other uniques as the flavor fits. Does that seem like a good use of the highlight?

yeah, though I'm nuking it here by replacing it with some specifics.

Both Cargomaster's Hold and Shipyard sound like good ways of encouraging the Sea Folk to play naval. They're both different, and Shipyard works particularly well if the other uniques give them a lot of excess Gold. I doubt we'd choose both since they're similar, but they're both good options at the moment.

Porcelain shop could work, I feel like something about its mechanics should feed more into the flavor of it. Or maybe there should be more "normal" uniques - a Gold building that also produces Happiness would let them expand much more.

For the fishing boats UI, I agree that we're probably better off using that on other civs.

I agree with all of this. Still tweaking and adding...

My two Windfinder suggestions have ended up being quite similar - I think the embarkable replacement for the Wilder fits the Sea Folk flavor better? But that does mean the UU would have to be in/near Era 1, where the Wilder is.

hmmm... I'm not sure if Wilder or Kin is better than the other. I think we could decide this later. I can see either working. I think what I don't like about Wilder isn't so much that the flavor will be blown early, or that the A'M will be powerful early, but that there'll be a strong naval unit at all early in the game. It seems weird - you could beeline to Wilders and totally ignore the naval techs and end up with a unit that's likely to dominate all the other naval units for the next two eras... kind of problematic.

It's true that your two WF suggestions are similar, but one is a land unit while the other is a strictly naval unit. The other viable combinations would be to swap the abilities and create an additional unit ( the land unit that makes naval units faster). The truth is, whatever UU ideas we end up not using could probably be pasted onto this unit.

While appropriate flavor, Fierce Negotiators doesn't feel strong enough to stand alone as a UA to me.

yep

Life at Sea is all of the craziness. I'm not 100% sure this is technically possible, though I have some theories about how it might work. I think flavor wise (and visual wise), the "cities" founded at sea would be gatherings of ships that remain on that tile and have culture borders and produce things etc. like a city would. Civ:BE has this apparently (I think added in the expansion?) and their cities can even move (I think)! (Theirs are flavored very differently though - mechanized floating platforms.)

In terms of what it would do to the Sea Folk as a civ, it could be really awesome - their cities would require their opponent to engage in a naval war in order to attack them. The cities themselves would provide presence on the water that makes the Sea Folk much more commanding at naval wars. I could also see (sea? eh? eh?) unlocking cities on ocean hexes in a later game tech (along with some bonuses that would make such cities viable, since there are no yields in the ocean).

hmmm... so, I both love and dislike this ability. I think it's really cool, and could be really fun, but I also think it might send us down a dangerous path. Mostly I think that because of what I imagine to be a hard coding-road to actually get it to work. Also, I think it kind of opens up a huge can of unpredictability. I'm thinking of what happens when another civ conquers one of these cities, for instance (and don't have the UA to make that city thrive). Also, I can imagine it leading to some cheese strategies whereby, pre- ocean travel, civs are cut off from exploration in very drastic ways. I like the nuttiness of this, but I think we'd maybe be nutty to choose it.

Established Bargains is a straightforward way of targeting the Diplo victory directly.

Yeah, isn't this already a thing, maybe through an ideology tenet or something? If not, this could be cool, though it's a little straightforward in a way that might not be as fun.

Darter is a simple stronger-ship UU, which plays into the Sea Folk flavor that they have good ships. Not very splashy, but consistent.

Note the name discussion above. I'll suggest something more specific below.

Amayar Shrine (or something more appropriate - I couldn't find the right flavor for this), gives them something quite targeted for the Culture victory. It's also a nice nod to their flavor that an extra Art slot is probably the most mechanically appropriate, and Crafts, as our Art replacement, contains the Porcelain crafts, which you mentioned above!

yeah, this is another building that could also have its flavor merged with Porcelain Shop or something.

Canals are interesting and naval-y, but not particularly linked to the Sea Folk flavor. (Were there any notable canals in the WoT canon?) It would let the Sea Folk move their navy across islands and narrow points on continents though, which would make them much better at fielding ships in the right places.

Isn't there a city with canals Illian or something? Ebou Dar? In any case, not really a SF city, I don't think. This is another one like the Home at Sea one, wher eI want this functionality to exist, but worry that it might not actually work, mod-wise. If so, the other issue is that it seems like it'd be used to make them powerful on land - think of bringing in a bunch of range-upgraded "frigates" into a land war. So that, with the possibility of flavor blurriness (other westlands cities with canals), makes this an axe for me.

OK, recap, with some new stuff!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• 
  [*]Land Legs, all land units become naval units when embarked (Melee1 is NavalMelee1, Siege1 is NavalRanged1, Ranged1 is NavalRanged1, etc), and naval units can disembark as corresponding land units
  [*]Home at Sea, coastal waters and ocean hexes provide +X Production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>.
• Calming Waters, +X% combat bonus and increased movement for land units when in friendly territory within 2 tiles of the coast
• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters
• Established Bargains, influence with city-states you have established sea trade routes with rises by X per turn
  [*]Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Friendly to or Allied with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ)
  [*]Blood from a Stone, can trade a final copy of a luxury resource to any civ with whom you have at least one active sea trade route while still retaining the happiness from that luxury resource.

UUs:

• Raker, replaces the trade ship, gives boosted range to trade routes
• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
  [*]Soarer, replaces the trade ship, the Gold bonus due to resource diversity is tripled
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
  [*]Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) friendly naval units gain increased movement and sight.
• Windfinder, replaces NavalMelee6, can move farther and enemy ships have -X combat strength within hexes of it
• Swordmaster or Master of Blades - replaces some sword unit and receives combat strength bonus when within 2 tiles of coast.
  [*]Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn, while in friendly coastal waters.
• Darter, Soarer, Skimmer, Raker - any number of combat ships or trade ships (more detail when necessary, which is probably very soon)
• Darter, replaces NavalMeleeX/NavalRangedX and is stronger than the unit it replaces
  [*]Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking
  [*]Raker/Soarer, replaces the Exploration Ship, can make landfall on a coastal land tile and found a city.

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, and adds +1 culture and tourism to every LW housed within the city
  [*]Porcelain shop, replaces Coastal 2, +X culture for every sea trade route emerging from this city that leads to a city that controls a luxury resource not owned by you.
• Cargomaster's Hold, replaces coastal 1, +Production for every international sea trade route, more if they trade with you too.
  [*]Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y culture when purchasing naval units.
• Amayar Shrine(/Village/something?), replaces Culture3, can only be built on the coast, has an extra Craft slot

UIs:

• Canal, built on land, allows non-enemy ships to pass through these tiles

Absolutely massacred the UAs...

"Famed Bargains" is sort of weird, I do, and can be scaled. The idea here is to try to mimic the trade realities of the SF - they trade with everyone and everyone wants to trade with them. Thus, I'm trying to incorporate the civ-to-civ trade as a part of things. The ability would likely need some checks and balances - making sure it isn't too powerful, but also perhaps providing some incentive for civs to trade with the A'M, as it'd be the worst to have players (humans, especially) simply ignore trade requests with the A'M for this reason.

Blood from a Stone - perhaps not the best use of that name, since you aren't really fleecing the opponent - is kind of weird. Maybe not powerful enough. The idea, though, is to encourage trading with other civs on a far greater scope than normally one would.

The Soarer trade unit is meant to be a kind of happiness factory, presumably to encourage wide play. To clarify, if you don't "grow" a resource at home, but trade for it, you could still get this bonus. What happens with this one when your empire is huge and you have all the resources is another matter (though that's true with other lux-related Uniques in BNW)

The second Soarer - that number (3x) is arbitrary. Not sure what it should be.

Any other creative ways to merge diplomacy-trade and trade-routes, or perhaps just other off-center ways to beef up trade?

The second Master of Swords ability is meant as a way of dealing with the "land-agressive" problem with the amphibious thing. This way, this unit becomes their Turtle Ship, in the sense that it's designed chiefly to defend territory and such - invasion isn't really an option with these guys.

The Raker/Skimmer unit wouldn't really need to be any stronger than the generic unit. However, it would be great at harassment and stuff, helping the A'M defend their trade routes and shores, but wouldn't really lead to naval invasion or anything.

The Raker/Soarer expship idea is cooky I know - sort of adjacent to some of the ones you've proposed.

Porcelain shop modification - too powerful? Limit to coastal cities or something?

The new porcelain shop - perhaps too convoluted? Am I headed towards an interesting direction?

Cargomaster update is rather straightforward, as is the new one.

I still feel like I'm circling around the "right" diplo-related ability. Getting close though!

 

[S3rgeus]

Greetings from the Triumvirate of California!

I've only ever heard triumvirate used in some of Alastair Reynolds' books (very good books btw!).

right, I guess we were thinking that DWs would sit on cities, which I imagine they actually can't. So yeah, 3-range DW is enough to cover two cities. Howver, they'd have to be cities that are pretty close to each other - maybe the range would need to be extended to make it more frequently usable.

Agreed, this could be useful for that.

OK, we're in agreement! Definitely don't want to actually dig into the naming stage until far later in the process.

Coolio, sounds good!

ok, le'ts go with that, then. It obviously makes the ability less powerful, but I think we then simply use that as a strategic element of the civ - we don't have tons to go on for generic unit flavor, so I'm guessing we can essentially place the sword units more-or-less wherever we want to get the flow of power right, here. I' guessing, of the 9 (right?) melee units, something like 5 of them will be sword units, give or take.

I did figure most of our melee units would have swords. Something we can decide later on both counts, either way!

ah, we did forget that...

I don't know what I'd really suggest. Right now them winning a Dom victory looks like it'd mostly be on the backs of invasion (capturing wonders, etc.). I think I'd originally expect that T'a'r would aid in culture somehow, but now that I'm thinking about it somehow, I'm not sure that's the case.

It seems to me, since ji'e'toh, is a path, the Aiel-as-cultural could really stem from two things:

- culture being generated by something unrelated to culture
- the Fifth

Like some other stuff (Aridhol and Shadar Logoth etc), we could also have some Ji'e'toh-ish stuff, as long as it doesn't create obvious conflicts that we don't like. I think these are good approaches to giving them a cultural something though!

So, sorry to dig it back up, but...

We were done! No digging!

Kidding, of course, we can finalize this.

Not sure I love any of those. I think the +culture on kill thing is the easiest to slide in, but it's also repetitive of a BNW policy, as I recall. I don't like that the Fifth flavor is in conflict with the Path, but an ability like that is relatively flavorful, and could fuel a Culture victory. The Wise One ability is kind of bleh - most likely, it'd be best paired with other functionality of the Wise ones (perhaps faster glimmers and +culture). I'd be fine with killing all of these, but these are the best I got!

I don't think we can do the Culture from kills UA, because that's Montezuma's UA (and that one works everywhere).

I think Way of the Spear falls under a similar thing - Culture for enemy units killed, so very similar to the Aztec UA. And seeing as Montezuma gets it for all units and that's not overpowered, I don't think we want to introduce restrictions to that.

The Fifth UA could work, I quite like it. It will generate a lot of LWs, which is good.

The Wise Ones that generate Culture from Glimmers is a possibility. I think the other Wise One options are better choices though. I don't feel like this will help players as much as we'd want since Glimmer gathering is relatively infrequent (compared to killing units) and the Culture would therefore come in bursts.

I have some other options below for Culture-related uniques!

Recapping!

The Aiel (Era 2-9, Wide, Dom/Cul/LB)
UAs:

• Water Oath, Production or Happiness bonuses when multiple cities work flood plains on the same river (includes international and CSs), all units receive a "Heal on Desert" promotion.
• Aversion to Swords, replace all sword units with an equivalent Aiel warrior clan unit that can move on desert as if they are roads, and receives +X% combat strength per world era while on desert.
  [*]Aversion to Swords, replace all sword units with an equivalent Aiel warrior clan unit that can move on desert as if they are roads, and receives X culture for each enemy unit killed while on desert
  [*]Way of the Spear, +X culture for every sword-bearing enemy unit killed
• The Fifth, when capturing a city above X population, gain a random Legendary Work (not one that actually exists in the original city) [flavor conflict with Paths acknowledged]
• Masters of the Dream, Dreamwards over foreign territory produce +X (low) Prestige per turn and Dreamwards over your own territory produce +Y Culture turn

UUs:

• Maidens of the Spear, replaces an era 2/3 or 7/8 spear unit, is stronger and has a movement bonus on Desert
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that can create stronger Dreamwards and project into T'a'r twice
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that harvests glimmers faster/has shorter projection cool-down
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit whose projections deal triple damage to projects/take half damage while in T'a'r
• Wise Ones, replaces the King, Dreaming unit that gains X culture for every glimmer harvested
• Brotherless, replaces an era 8 spear unit, significant combat bonuses when only adjacent to X or fewer friendly units

UBs:

• Hold, replaces XP 1 or XP 2 - +X XP to every melee unit produced in this city for every unimproved desert tile near this city.
• Desert Hold, replaces Food1, Food (Wheat), or Food (Production), +Food in city and +X (very low number) Production from Desert tiles worked by this city
• Reclaimed Possessions Stockpile, replaces the Courthouse, has 2 LW slots

UIs:

• Warriors' Hold, buildable on Desert tiles, can produce (warrior clan) units at a rate equal to X% (low, like 20-ish) of the production rate of the city working this tile.

Masters of the Dream lets the Aiel use their T'a'r-boosting Wise One UU (any of our options will work with it) to fuel a Culture victory. I could see two ways of deciding on the yields: the position of the Dreamward itself or the area the Dreamward covers.

For the former, it's fairly simple, whichever hex the Dreamward is on, who owns that hex determines what yield it produces.

For the latter, it might be possible to place Dreamwards so that they cover both your own and foreign territories, therefore producing both yields. (We could also restrict this to covering cities, rather than territory. This may be wiser, since only one DW can cover each city at a time.)

Reclaimed Possessions Stockpile (mouthful of a name - either nodding to the reclaiming of Avendoraldera from Cairhien or something vaguely associated with The Fifth, needs to be more focused) rewards the Aiel capturing cities by making them better at Culture (for clarity, like the Courthouse, can only be built in conquered cities and still provides the usual Happiness bonus), which I think is pretty cool - plays well into a "warlike Culture" kind of approach. An extra building that provides LW slots (not sure what type is best - probably a decision for later) lets the Aiel go crazy on finding/making as many as they can. This combos quite well with The Fifth UA.

yeah, for me, this makes Land Legs pretty problematic.

Agreed.

Hmm... I have some ideas on this below, but yeah, it's tricky

Regarding the survival-of-plundering, didn't we create that as an ability somewhere else? Like, an edict or something? In any case, a cool ability, but for sure only worthy as a secondary ability - it's hard to leverage this as a true advantage... if you're patrolling your coasts well, nobody'd ever be destroying your routes!

Trade routes that would be plundered when players declare for the Shadow are instead returned to their owners. That might be what you're thinking of?

Agreed about this as a bonus in general - it's completely useless if you're doing well. It could be seen as a comeback mechanic, but still, it's so minor compared to the civilization-wide deficit that leads to constant pillaging of your trade routes.

As far as the diplo one, don't trade routes already provide some influence? Certainly more influence would be good though.

There's the "CS quest" that provides a dump of influence for establishing a trade route with the CS who gives you the quest, but by default trade routes with CSes don't provide influence over time.

Also, I know we aren't talking names, but I think we should get some flavor straight to help how we're conceiving of this stuff. I've done a little poking, and found out some more about the ships (there isn't much out there)- this site gives some basic info. I don't have my Companion here in the Triumvirate, so can't verify. Clearly the Raker is the most recognizable ship, and the fastest and strongest. The next strongest is the Skimmer (possibly too close to "skimming"?), then the soarer, but the soarer is faster. The darter is the smallest and weakest - also possibly not as fast.

I'm thinking if we end up with a "true" UU, i.e. one that's good at fighting, there's a compelling argument that could be made that it should be the Raker. Possibly the Skimmer. If we had the Raker as that, then I'd suggest the Soarer as the trade vessel. Of course, if we don't have a UU in addition to a trade unit, I'd say we should definitely go with Raker for whatever we do have.

I've just looked up the four ships in the Companion and Raker/Skimmer/Soarer seem to be accurate, but the Companion describes the Darter as very fast and agile, usually with better than the Soarer (it is correct about the Darter being the smallest). This makes me think the Darter could be the trade vessel - but it probably depends on what we go for with the mechanics. If we boost the yield, a "bigger ship" like the Soarer makes sense. If we go for boosted range, then a faster ship like the Darter will make more sense.

hmmm... I definitely think that anything we go with here that *isn't* porcelain will just feel very "not porcelain." There's nothing else noteworthy in the lore, I think. I think we can think of a different way to incorporate this.

This makes me want to re-introduce Porcelain the resource into the running. I see what you said before about it looking copied from BNW, but I think this will be a very obvious case for readers of the books, where "Sea Folk Porcelain" means something very specific in the books and just happens to also be in BNW. We can use a different icon, obviously.

The main thing that brings me back to this ability is that I think it is a very well tuned mechanical unique and captures great flavor as well. The possession of a luxury only the Sea Folk have gives them a lot of Diplomatic leverage in a way that also plays really well into their flavor. Trading the porcelain to other civs for extortionate prices is literally what they do in the books, which this unique creates a perfect mechanical opportunity for players to do in game.

Yeah, I see that. However, it forces their successful warfare to be coastal. I have a feeling that that might be the best we'll get, without making eall their abilities water-only.

I don't think that hits the right note for the flavor though. I think the ExpShip replacement that can found cities on the coast captures a "coastal" flavor a lot better. Mechanically, this is a coastal bonus, but as a coastal bonus it doesn't offer mechanical flexibility compared to a water bonus in terms of where it's useful (which seems to be your concern here with making all of their abilities water-only?), since there being a coast necessitates a map layout where such water abilities would also be useful.

hmmm... I'm not sure if Wilder or Kin is better than the other. I think we could decide this later. I can see either working. I think what I don't like about Wilder isn't so much that the flavor will be blown early, or that the A'M will be powerful early, but that there'll be a strong naval unit at all early in the game. It seems weird - you could beeline to Wilders and totally ignore the naval techs and end up with a unit that's likely to dominate all the other naval units for the next two eras... kind of problematic.

It's true that your two WF suggestions are similar, but one is a land unit while the other is a strictly naval unit. The other viable combinations would be to swap the abilities and create an additional unit ( the land unit that makes naval units faster). The truth is, whatever UU ideas we end up not using could probably be pasted onto this unit.

Agreed, we can decide on Wilder vs Kin replacement later.

hmmm... so, I both love and dislike this ability. I think it's really cool, and could be really fun, but I also think it might send us down a dangerous path. Mostly I think that because of what I imagine to be a hard coding-road to actually get it to work. Also, I think it kind of opens up a huge can of unpredictability. I'm thinking of what happens when another civ conquers one of these cities, for instance (and don't have the UA to make that city thrive). Also, I can imagine it leading to some cheese strategies whereby, pre- ocean travel, civs are cut off from exploration in very drastic ways. I like the nuttiness of this, but I think we'd maybe be nutty to choose it.

I think all of these can be addressed though, and the value that this brings is potentially huge. I'm not sure what you mean about going down a hard coding road exactly. For other civs conquering the cities, we could make them only raze-able (flavorfully, the boats all disperse when occupied by a force that isn't going to "live" there like the Sea Folk do) and provide a lump yield bonus (of potentially new yields aside from Gold) to the capturer for plunder (a similar feedback mechanism to the Egyptian Burial Tomb).

The locking down of other civs' exploration seems totally ok to me. Civs already do that (particularly humans) with coastal cities that often reach the edge of the ocean with their culture borders. If a civ needs to get through to explore anything new, then they're forced to negotiate for open borders (which also plays well into the Sea Folk diplo strength flavor). Or attack them.

I also really like that it can force melee ships capturing cities to be something that is relevant more often. Since that was added in BNW, I feel like it's almost never as useful as it should be (land units are almost always the better choice), and this would bring that mechanic to the fore.

Also, for clarity, this wouldn't stop them from founding land cities like other civs do. (Unless we want it to, but that seems like it would be very punishing on non-water-y maps.)

Yeah, isn't this already a thing, maybe through an ideology tenet or something? If not, this could be cool, though it's a little straightforward in a way that might not be as fun.

I'm not aware of a tenet/policy that does this. There's a policy in the Patronage tree that gives bonus gold for trade routes established with CSes? I do agree that it's a bland ability though.

Isn't there a city with canals Illian or something? Ebou Dar? In any case, not really a SF city, I don't think. This is another one like the Home at Sea one, wher eI want this functionality to exist, but worry that it might not actually work, mod-wise. If so, the other issue is that it seems like it'd be used to make them powerful on land - think of bringing in a bunch of range-upgraded "frigates" into a land war. So that, with the possibility of flavor blurriness (other westlands cities with canals), makes this an axe for me.

Of the issues here, the only one that really gives me pause is the flavor blur with other cities, and on that grounds I would agree to scrap it.

I'd like to understand your other reasons though! When you worry that it might not work, what do you mean? Technically it's definitely possible, there are already mods that add canals to BNW (usually done by making Citadels act as canals, so they're more useful). It's also something that gets requested a lot.

I don't think the navy-on-land would be a problem. A canal would be built only on your own territory and it would be hugely inefficient to build enough of them to bring a navy into range of a land war in any way that was flexible enough to be very helpful. The yield differences with the improvements that haven't been built on the tiles that now have canals could likely have provided benefit enough to build/purchase extra units for that war. And with 1 unit per tile you'd need a lot of canals to gain more than one or two ranged units in a given fight, even with range boosts and particularly if there's any terrain (jungle, forest, hills) in the way (before the units have indirect fire).

"Famed Bargains" is sort of weird, I do, and can be scaled. The idea here is to try to mimic the trade realities of the SF - they trade with everyone and everyone wants to trade with them. Thus, I'm trying to incorporate the civ-to-civ trade as a part of things. The ability would likely need some checks and balances - making sure it isn't too powerful, but also perhaps providing some incentive for civs to trade with the A'M, as it'd be the worst to have players (humans, especially) simply ignore trade requests with the A'M for this reason.

I very much like this one! I like how it creates a whole new dynamic to the way they trade with other players. However, I do agree with your assessment that human players will often ignore trades from the Sea Folk unless they need to take them, which isn't great. What if the ability gave both the Sea Folk and the receiving a bonus, just the Sea Folk a greater one? So now it's a calculated risk - the Sea Folk will be gaining on you, but you'll be staying ahead of other civs.

The main risk to that approach is probably alliance stagnation throughout the game. If the Sea Folk trade with everyone, a lack of CS influence decay would lead to too-stable alliances between most civs and their favored CSes.

Blood from a Stone - perhaps not the best use of that name, since you aren't really fleecing the opponent - is kind of weird. Maybe not powerful enough. The idea, though, is to encourage trading with other civs on a far greater scope than normally one would.

I feel like this is too close to the Dutch UA. They only retain 50% of the Happiness, but have it all the time, so I see where the trade-off is that makes them comparable power-wise.

The Soarer trade unit is meant to be a kind of happiness factory, presumably to encourage wide play. To clarify, if you don't "grow" a resource at home, but trade for it, you could still get this bonus. What happens with this one when your empire is huge and you have all the resources is another matter (though that's true with other lux-related Uniques in BNW)

This seems pretty cool. I like the use of "city that is home to" rather than "civ that has" as well - it's a significant Happiness bonus that requires the player to pick their trade route endpoints by criteria aside from the usual yield output, which is cool and will lead to the Sea Folk trading with more places simultaneously, feeding into their flavor well.

The second Soarer - that number (3x) is arbitrary. Not sure what it should be.

I don't really know how much of the Gold yield usually comes from resource diversity. We could probably combine this with the boosted range suggestion. Otherwise I think just a flat yield increase could be a bit boring.


Also, you've suggested a new Windfinder UU in here. I wouldn't be inclined to put a movement boost for nearby units as an ability on a unit. (It occurs to me I may have suggested something like this earlier?) The main reason is that the effect of that is really non-obvious. Units can take part of their movement during a turn (arguably, they always take part of their movement, allowing the human to choose an endpoint for this turn is just a convenience feature of the UI), so only part of their movement may be within the sphere of influence of a given location. But if that location that gives bonus movement is moveable, then the optimal way to move your units is to crawl them one hex at a time - moving the boosting and boosted units in sequence so that the boosted unit is in range as much as possible. This creates tons of busywork for the player. If we allow the movement bonus as long as they "are within range" when they start moving, then it creates different busywork in constantly shifting the booster unit around by a couple of hexes to give the boost to as many other units as possible in a single turn. Add to that that it won't be obvious to human players which approach we've taken, I think it creates a lot of problems.

Any other creative ways to merge diplomacy-trade and trade-routes, or perhaps just other off-center ways to beef up trade?

Possibly, but I haven't had as much time to brainstorm tonight!

The second Master of Swords ability is meant as a way of dealing with the "land-agressive" problem with the amphibious thing. This way, this unit becomes their Turtle Ship, in the sense that it's designed chiefly to defend territory and such - invasion isn't really an option with these guys.

I see what you mean for this one. I think you're right with the restrictions on combat, but it feels like it will make the unit way less useful. I'd say allowing disembarking to take "normal" movement (rather than consuming all) in any location would still be useful. This unique has some of the same difficulties with making a land war better as the other Masters of Blades above.

The Raker/Skimmer unit wouldn't really need to be any stronger than the generic unit. However, it would be great at harassment and stuff, helping the A'M defend their trade routes and shores, but wouldn't really lead to naval invasion or anything.

Being able to move after attacking fits with the "fast and agile" flavor very well. I like it.

The Raker/Soarer expship idea is cooky I know - sort of adjacent to some of the ones you've proposed.

This one feels really cool.

Porcelain shop modification - too powerful? Limit to coastal cities or something?

Agreed, a restriction to coastal cities balances this one a bit. It feels really powerful (that's an enormous bonus for a coastal capital), which is cool.

The new porcelain shop - perhaps too convoluted? Am I headed towards an interesting direction?

Like some of the Aiel uniques, it feels like this fits better on the UU (Raker/Soarer) than on the UB.

Cargomaster update is rather straightforward, as is the new one.

Agreed, straightforward and encourages playing like the Sea Folk.

For the Shipyard change, I like the synergy between the cost decrease and bonus for buying ships. Do we want to give Prestige, rather than Culture?


Recap!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Home at Sea, coastal waters and ocean hexes provide +X Production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>.
• Calming Waters, +X% combat bonus and increased movement for land units when in friendly territory within 2 tiles of the coast
• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters
• Established Bargains, influence with city-states you have established sea trade routes with rises by X per turn
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Friendly to or Allied with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ)
  [*]Blood from a Stone, can trade a final copy of a luxury resource to any civ with whom you have at least one active sea trade route while still retaining the happiness from that luxury resource.
• Forceful Trade Partners, the Sea Folk may cast votes in the Compact as if they were allied with City-States that they have trade routes with.

UUs:

• Raker, replaces the trade ship, gives boosted range to trade routes
• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Soarer, replaces the trade ship, the Gold bonus due to resource diversity is multiplied by X and establishes trade routes with a boosted range
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
  [*]Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) friendly naval units gain increased movement and sight.
• Windfinder, replaces NavalMelee6, can move farther and enemy ships have -X combat strength within Y hexes of it
• Swordmaster or Master of Blades - replaces some sword unit and receives combat strength bonus when within 2 tiles of coast.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn, while in friendly coastal waters.
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking
• Raker/Soarer, replaces the Exploration Ship, can make landfall on a coastal land tile and found a city.

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and tourism to every LW housed within the city
  [*]Porcelain shop, replaces Coastal 2, +X culture for every sea trade route emerging from this city that leads to a city that controls a luxury resource not owned by you.
• Cargomaster's Hold, replaces coastal 1, +Production for every international sea trade route, more if they trade with you too.
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.
• Amayar Shrine(/Village/something?), replaces Culture3, can only be built on the coast, has an extra Craft slot

UIs:





You flagged Home at Sea for deletion, but I don't see a callout to it in your post. Any specific reasons for this one? I think it could purposefully make the Sea Folk quite powerful on the coast, and even let them have some useful cities on single-hex-islands.


Phew! Maybe we should stick to just the Aiel for a post or two if we're going to do another back and forth on them? (Unless we don't end up suggesting new stuff for them beyond here.) It's difficult to brainstorm for both civs and reply to everything!

 

[counterpoint]

I've only ever heard triumvirate used in some of Alastair Reynolds' books (very good books btw!).

but there's California!

I first encountered the term in the Neil Gaiman Sandman series. Reynolds is sci-fi?

regarding whether we continue with the Aiel only or the SF and the Aiel... I think we're mostly done with brainstorming on the Aiel. Perhaps there will be more back and forth, but I imagine it will be on a small scale.

Like some other stuff (Aridhol and Shadar Logoth etc), we could also have some Ji'e'toh-ish stuff, as long as it doesn't create obvious conflicts that we don't like. I think these are good approaches to giving them a cultural something though!

so, i was thinking about this some more, and I don't think the Fifth really has much to do with Ji'e'toh directly, so I don't think this is as bad a conflict as Gai'shain was - we could eliminate The fifth as a Path Custom and not have it feel weird (unlike Gai'shain, which is a central aspect of Ji'e'toh)

I don't think we can do the Culture from kills UA, because that's Montezuma's UA (and that one works everywhere).

I think Way of the Spear falls under a similar thing - Culture for enemy units killed, so very similar to the Aztec UA. And seeing as Montezuma gets it for all units and that's not overpowered, I don't think we want to introduce restrictions to that.

The Fifth UA could work, I quite like it. It will generate a lot of LWs, which is good.

The Wise Ones that generate Culture from Glimmers is a possibility. I think the other Wise One options are better choices though. I don't feel like this will help players as much as we'd want since Glimmer gathering is relatively infrequent (compared to killing units) and the Culture would therefore come in bursts.

I have some other options below for Culture-related uniques!

agreed on the cuts, and on the one you preserved!

Masters of the Dream lets the Aiel use their T'a'r-boosting Wise One UU (any of our options will work with it) to fuel a Culture victory. I could see two ways of deciding on the yields: the position of the Dreamward itself or the area the Dreamward covers.

For the former, it's fairly simple, whichever hex the Dreamward is on, who owns that hex determines what yield it produces.

For the latter, it might be possible to place Dreamwards so that they cover both your own and foreign territories, therefore producing both yields. (We could also restrict this to covering cities, rather than territory. This may be wiser, since only one DW can cover each city at a time.)

I think this ability is interesting and can survive into the next phase, though I'm not sure we'll actually select it. i think it's relatively synergistic with whatever we choose for the 'wise ones. I don't have a strong opinion as to which version of what you're describing we'd use. I'm thinking the position of the DW itself might be simplest to keep track of, though.

Reclaimed Possessions Stockpile (mouthful of a name - either nodding to the reclaiming of Avendoraldera from Cairhien or something vaguely associated with The Fifth, needs to be more focused) rewards the Aiel capturing cities by making them better at Culture (for clarity, like the Courthouse, can only be built in conquered cities and still provides the usual Happiness bonus), which I think is pretty cool - plays well into a "warlike Culture" kind of approach. An extra building that provides LW slots (not sure what type is best - probably a decision for later) lets the Aiel go crazy on finding/making as many as they can. This combos quite well with The Fifth UA.

Eh, I'm ok with this ability, but I also feel like it isn't all that exciting. While I see that it could synergize well with the Fifth, I also find it extremely unlikely that we'd dedicate two of our uniques to all-culture benefits (which is essentially what all this LW stuff is). I'm going to axe this, but mostly because I feel like we don't want to let this list balloon too large again. If you "pink" it, I'll likely be fine with it hanging around.

Aiel Recap!

The Aiel (Era 2-9, Wide, Dom/Cul/LB)
UAs:

• Water Oath, Production or Happiness bonuses when multiple cities work flood plains on the same river (includes international and CSs), all units receive a "Heal on Desert" promotion.
• Aversion to Swords, replace all sword units with an equivalent Aiel warrior clan unit that can move on desert as if they are roads, and receives +X% combat strength per world era while on desert.
• The Fifth, when capturing a city above X population, gain a random Legendary Work (not one that actually exists in the original city) [flavor conflict with Paths acknowledged]
• Masters of the Dream, Dreamwards over foreign territory produce +X (low) Prestige per turn and Dreamwards over your own territory produce +Y Culture turn

UUs:

• Maidens of the Spear, replaces an era 2/3 or 7/8 spear unit, is stronger and has a movement bonus on Desert
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that can create stronger Dreamwards and project into T'a'r twice
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit that harvests glimmers faster/has shorter projection cool-down
• Wise Ones, replaces the Kin, Dreaming unit whose projections deal triple damage to projects/take half damage while in T'a'r
• Brotherless, replaces an era 8 spear unit, significant combat bonuses when only adjacent to X or fewer friendly units

UBs:

• Hold, replaces XP 1 or XP 2 - +X XP to every melee unit produced in this city for every unimproved desert tile near this city.
• Desert Hold, replaces Food1, Food (Wheat), or Food (Production), +Food in city and +X (very low number) Production from Desert tiles worked by this city
• Reclaimed Possessions Stockpile, replaces the Courthouse, has 2 LW slots

UIs:

• Warriors' Hold, buildable on Desert tiles, can produce (warrior clan) units at a rate equal to X% (low, like 20-ish) of the production rate of the city working this tile.

OK, moving on to the Atha'an Miere

Trade routes that would be plundered when players declare for the Shadow are instead returned to their owners. That might be what you're thinking of?

Agreed about this as a bonus in general - it's completely useless if you're doing well. It could be seen as a comeback mechanic, but still, it's so minor compared to the civilization-wide deficit that leads to constant pillaging of your trade routes.

ah, that's it, I think. Looks like we're on the same page here, though.

There's the "CS quest" that provides a dump of influence for establishing a trade route with the CS who gives you the quest, but by default trade routes with CSes don't provide influence over time.

just looked this up. This is a level 3 Freedom tenet. (+4 per turn). I mostly like this ability more as a tenet (or a policy in a weaker state).

I've just looked up the four ships in the Companion and Raker/Skimmer/Soarer seem to be accurate, but the Companion describes the Darter as very fast and agile, usually with better than the Soarer (it is correct about the Darter being the smallest). This makes me think the Darter could be the trade vessel - but it probably depends on what we go for with the mechanics. If we boost the yield, a "bigger ship" like the Soarer makes sense. If we go for boosted range, then a faster ship like the Darter will make more sense.

for sure. agreed.

This makes me want to re-introduce Porcelain the resource into the running. I see what you said before about it looking copied from BNW, but I think this will be a very obvious case for readers of the books, where "Sea Folk Porcelain" means something very specific in the books and just happens to also be in BNW. We can use a different icon, obviously.

The main thing that brings me back to this ability is that I think it is a very well tuned mechanical unique and captures great flavor as well. The possession of a luxury only the Sea Folk have gives them a lot of Diplomatic leverage in a way that also plays really well into their flavor. Trading the porcelain to other civs for extortionate prices is literally what they do in the books, which this unique creates a perfect mechanical opportunity for players to do in game.

I'm still somewhat off-put by this ability's similarity to some things in BNW, and its direct analogue (as porcelain in BNW), but it must be admitted that it is also a somewhat "obvious" one for the A'M. I don't feel confident that it will survive this "round," but I'll leave it alone for now.

I don't think that hits the right note for the flavor though. I think the ExpShip replacement that can found cities on the coast captures a "coastal" flavor a lot better. Mechanically, this is a coastal bonus, but as a coastal bonus it doesn't offer mechanical flexibility compared to a water bonus in terms of where it's useful (which seems to be your concern here with making all of their abilities water-only?), since there being a coast necessitates a map layout where such water abilities would also be useful.

eh. Can't really argue this so much.

I think all of these can be addressed though, and the value that this brings is potentially huge. I'm not sure what you mean about going down a hard coding road exactly. For other civs conquering the cities, we could make them only raze-able (flavorfully, the boats all disperse when occupied by a force that isn't going to "live" there like the Sea Folk do) and provide a lump yield bonus (of potentially new yields aside from Gold) to the capturer for plunder (a similar feedback mechanism to the Egyptian Burial Tomb).

The locking down of other civs' exploration seems totally ok to me. Civs already do that (particularly humans) with coastal cities that often reach the edge of the ocean with their culture borders. If a civ needs to get through to explore anything new, then they're forced to negotiate for open borders (which also plays well into the Sea Folk diplo strength flavor). Or attack them.

I also really like that it can force melee ships capturing cities to be something that is relevant more often. Since that was added in BNW, I feel like it's almost never as useful as it should be (land units are almost always the better choice), and this would bring that mechanic to the fore.

Also, for clarity, this wouldn't stop them from founding land cities like other civs do. (Unless we want it to, but that seems like it would be very punishing on non-water-y maps.)

For the "hard coding," I simply mean that you insinuated that you weren't sure this was even possible. For me, that is a pretty serious strike against it.

I understand your points about other civs' exploration, but I do think this is worth - there is a kind of "golden age" in the early game wher eyou can usually swim around in a trireme before people's borders have expanded and clogged up those lanes (and obviously before Open Borders and ocean travel). This would obviously cut into that.

I don't know. I'm fine keeping this around for now, but I think next round we're going to need to do some serious fat-trimming, to get down to a more reasonable amount of ability-options. This one seems to raise a lot of questions and (potentially) create some problems, and the benefit is not especially clear. It'll be "cool" and will certainly affect the game, but I'm not sure it will necessarily *improve* the game.

Of the issues here, the only one that really gives me pause is the flavor blur with other cities, and on that grounds I would agree to scrap it.

I'd like to understand your other reasons though! When you worry that it might not work, what do you mean? Technically it's definitely possible, there are already mods that add canals to BNW (usually done by making Citadels act as canals, so they're more useful). It's also something that gets requested a lot.

I don't think the navy-on-land would be a problem. A canal would be built only on your own territory and it would be hugely inefficient to build enough of them to bring a navy into range of a land war in any way that was flexible enough to be very helpful. The yield differences with the improvements that haven't been built on the tiles that now have canals could likely have provided benefit enough to build/purchase extra units for that war. And with 1 unit per tile you'd need a lot of canals to gain more than one or two ranged units in a given fight, even with range boosts and particularly if there's any terrain (jungle, forest, hills) in the way (before the units have indirect fire).

when I say I worry it won't work, I simply mean technically - if this is actually possible in the mod, than I retract that worry.

As far as navy-on-land and such, it's hard to say. I'm not confident it would be a bad thing, it's just a concern. It could also be cool. I do feel like it's not a great fit for them - building canals and such never has seemed much of a thing they were into doing. For that reason, I still suggest witdhrawiung it. However, I do think ti's worth keeping in our minds for some westlands coastal civs.

I very much like this one! I like how it creates a whole new dynamic to the way they trade with other players. However, I do agree with your assessment that human players will often ignore trades from the Sea Folk unless they need to take them, which isn't great. What if the ability gave both the Sea Folk and the receiving a bonus, just the Sea Folk a greater one? So now it's a calculated risk - the Sea Folk will be gaining on you, but you'll be staying ahead of other civs.

The main risk to that approach is probably alliance stagnation throughout the game. If the Sea Folk trade with everyone, a lack of CS influence decay would lead to too-stable alliances between most civs and their favored CSes.

Yeah, let's give some kind of bonus for the other civs then. I'll suggest something below- thoughts?

I understand what you mean re: stagnation. This would be a lot like the Greek UA (lower influence decay). It means you can keep a healthy relationship with CSs, but it doesn't help you snipe other civs' alliances and stuff - a different kind of Diplo path. I don't think that's necessarily bad.

I feel like this is too close to the Dutch UA. They only retain 50% of the Happiness, but have it all the time, so I see where the trade-off is that makes them comparable power-wise.

fair enough.

This seems pretty cool. I like the use of "city that is home to" rather than "civ that has" as well - it's a significant Happiness bonus that requires the player to pick their trade route endpoints by criteria aside from the usual yield output, which is cool and will lead to the Sea Folk trading with more places simultaneously, feeding into their flavor well.

cool

I don't really know how much of the Gold yield usually comes from resource diversity. We could probably combine this with the boosted range suggestion. Otherwise I think just a flat yield increase could be a bit boring.

yeah, 'tis boring.

Also, you've suggested a new Windfinder UU in here. I wouldn't be inclined to put a movement boost for nearby units as an ability on a unit. (It occurs to me I may have suggested something like this earlier?) The main reason is that the effect of that is really non-obvious. Units can take part of their movement during a turn (arguably, they always take part of their movement, allowing the human to choose an endpoint for this turn is just a convenience feature of the UI), so only part of their movement may be within the sphere of influence of a given location. But if that location that gives bonus movement is moveable, then the optimal way to move your units is to crawl them one hex at a time - moving the boosting and boosted units in sequence so that the boosted unit is in range as much as possible. This creates tons of busywork for the player. If we allow the movement bonus as long as they "are within range" when they start moving, then it creates different busywork in constantly shifting the booster unit around by a couple of hexes to give the boost to as many other units as possible in a single turn. Add to that that it won't be obvious to human players which approach we've taken, I think it creates a lot of problems.

totally makes sense. what a nightmare.

I see what you mean for this one. I think you're right with the restrictions on combat, but it feels like it will make the unit way less useful. I'd say allowing disembarking to take "normal" movement (rather than consuming all) in any location would still be useful. This unique has some of the same difficulties with making a land war better as the other Masters of Blades above.

yeah, see what you mean. I accept your edit. We can keep this guy around, though I'm not sure he'll survive

Being able to move after attacking fits with the "fast and agile" flavor very well. I like it.

yeah, agreed.

This one feels really cool.

yeah, this is a cool mechanic, I think. I'm not sure it necessarily fits the SF all that well, though - they aren't exactly out colonizing everybody around. I suppose I feel similarly to Home at Sea for that reason. This can survive for now, though.

Agreed, a restriction to coastal cities balances this one a bit. It feels really powerful (that's an enormous bonus for a coastal capital), which is cool.

agreed

Like some of the Aiel uniques, it feels like this fits better on the UU (Raker/Soarer) than on the UB.

yeah, understood. This one shows up as blue on your recap, but I'm pretty sure you mean red.

Agreed, straightforward and encourages playing like the Sea Folk.

For the Shipyard change, I like the synergy between the cost decrease and bonus for buying ships. Do we want to give Prestige, rather than Culture?

re: culture/prestige. Hmmm... definitely not sure. It changes quite a bit - whether this is a late-game thing or a all-throughout thing. I think that's something we could decide later, though.

You flagged Home at Sea for deletion, but I don't see a callout to it in your post. Any specific reasons for this one? I think it could purposefully make the Sea Folk quite powerful on the coast, and even let them have some useful cities on single-hex-islands.

yeah, sorry. This was simply because this one seemed kind of boring - simply a yield boost. I know a few of those aren't bad to have, of course. But this one just feels like a super-lighthouse, to me. might as well be a UB

SF Recap!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Home at Sea, coastal waters and ocean hexes provide +X Production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>.
• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters
• Established Bargains, influence with city-states you have established sea trade routes with rises by X per turn
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Friendly to or Allied with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ). The other civ receives +Y (lower value) influence per turn with any CS you are Allied with.
• Forceful Trade Partners, the Sea Folk may cast votes in the Compact as if they were allied with City-States that they have trade routes with.

UUs:

• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Soarer/Darter, replaces the trade ship, the Gold bonus due to resource diversity is multiplied by X and establishes trade routes with a boosted range
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Windfinder, replaces NavalMelee6, can move farther and enemy ships have -X combat strength within Y hexes of it
• Swordmaster or Master of Blades - replaces some sword unit and receives combat strength bonus when within 2 tiles of coast.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking
• Raker/Soarer, replaces the Exploration Ship, can make landfall on a coastal land tile and found a city.

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and tourism to every LW housed within the city
  [*]Porcelain shop, replaces Coastal 2, +X culture for every sea trade route emerging from this city that leads to a city that controls a luxury resource not owned by you.
• Cargomaster's Hold, replaces coastal 1, +Production for every international sea trade route, more if they trade with you too.
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.
• Amayar Shrine(/Village/something?), replaces Culture3, can only be built on the coast, has an extra Craft slot

UIs:


Any other ideas for Legendary bargains?

Forceful Trade Partners... I think that one is a unique combination of super nichey and super powerful. I think too powerful. It seems to me that that'll let th eSF pretty easily dominant virtually all compact votes - *especially* pre-UN. Early in the life of the compact, 6 votes or so per civ is pretty large - trade routes would give you double that.

All others are acceptances, or otherwise noted above.

so, at this point it seems to me that we are at the "culling the herd" phase of this civ. I'm all out of ideas - and I think we have plenty of good ones. However, we also have 20 abilities here, which is far too much. So, now comes the cutting. I've been contentious about a few of them, that I have since left here. Now I'll pass it back to you to cut some of these down - perhaps some of the ones we've each been "defending" will be cut by process of elimination. Clearly we have some abilities that are quite similar to one another - still, it seems important to clarify things down to fewer abilities.

 

[S3rgeus]

but there's California!

I first encountered the term in the Neil Gaiman Sandman series. Reynolds is sci-fi?

Yeah, Reynolds is sci-fi. Revelation Space is a good place to start with his books! He's an astrophysicist as well, so he does very good sci-fi.

regarding whether we continue with the Aiel only or the SF and the Aiel... I think we're mostly done with brainstorming on the Aiel. Perhaps there will be more back and forth, but I imagine it will be on a small scale.

Agreed, it looks like the Aiel are basically in a good place for going forward now.

so, i was thinking about this some more, and I don't think the Fifth really has much to do with Ji'e'toh directly, so I don't think this is as bad a conflict as Gai'shain was - we could eliminate The fifth as a Path Custom and not have it feel weird (unlike Gai'shain, which is a central aspect of Ji'e'toh)

Agreed, if we end up with that conflict we can find some other flavor for the Path belief.

I think this ability is interesting and can survive into the next phase, though I'm not sure we'll actually select it. i think it's relatively synergistic with whatever we choose for the 'wise ones. I don't have a strong opinion as to which version of what you're describing we'd use. I'm thinking the position of the DW itself might be simplest to keep track of, though.

Cool, we can choose which mechanism determines the yields later, if we do keep the unique long enough that we need to!

Eh, I'm ok with this ability, but I also feel like it isn't all that exciting. While I see that it could synergize well with the Fifth, I also find it extremely unlikely that we'd dedicate two of our uniques to all-culture benefits (which is essentially what all this LW stuff is). I'm going to axe this, but mostly because I feel like we don't want to let this list balloon too large again. If you "pink" it, I'll likely be fine with it hanging around.

I figured this one was quite exciting really - as a player I would think so. (I think? Hard to know what I would think as just a player.) I think keeping this one for now is a good call - that way we have two major approaches to the Aiel civ preserved for the next stage, so we can either make them a very fight-y Culture civ or a military powerhouse, both of which work with the Aiel flavor.

We're also within the "set of 9" possible non-UA uniques that we ballparked as our objective earlier. (Even more so since some of these uniques are similar and therefore mutually exclusive - like the variations on Wise Ones.)



So with all of that, I've updated the Aiel's entry in the overall list!

To the Sea Folk!

just looked this up. This is a level 3 Freedom tenet. (+4 per turn). I mostly like this ability more as a tenet (or a policy in a weaker state).

Yeah, I see what you mean. Tenets are only available much later, which would make this UA much more influential, but it's not very splashy either.

I'm still somewhat off-put by this ability's similarity to some things in BNW, and its direct analogue (as porcelain in BNW), but it must be admitted that it is also a somewhat "obvious" one for the A'M. I don't feel confident that it will survive this "round," but I'll leave it alone for now.

Lives another day!

For the "hard coding," I simply mean that you insinuated that you weren't sure this was even possible. For me, that is a pretty serious strike against it.

I wouldn't be inclined to count this against it at all at this stage. If I know something's impossible then we may as well drop it now, but I have some ideas about how to make this work. I only point in out because I'm aware of a known way to achieve pretty much everything else we discuss. This has some unknowns, but they'll only be knowable when I try to put it into the game. It may be totally straightforward, so I wouldn't suggest we alter our design for an issue we don't know exists yet.

I understand your points about other civs' exploration, but I do think this is worth - there is a kind of "golden age" in the early game wher eyou can usually swim around in a trireme before people's borders have expanded and clogged up those lanes (and obviously before Open Borders and ocean travel). This would obviously cut into that.

I don't know. I'm fine keeping this around for now, but I think next round we're going to need to do some serious fat-trimming, to get down to a more reasonable amount of ability-options. This one seems to raise a lot of questions and (potentially) create some problems, and the benefit is not especially clear. It'll be "cool" and will certainly affect the game, but I'm not sure it will necessarily *improve* the game.

I can see what you mean about exploration, but I think part of that being navally boxed in in a certain direction is something players will need to address when they're near the Sea Folk, much like how other civs' traits often require foreign players to change their strategies.

Also, I don't think I mentioned this before, but presumably they could only found water-cities after they've got the tech for embarkation (so they can get the Settler out there). So they won't be able to create a blockade immediately upon starting the game.

I do think it will improve the game a lot, because it will make the Sea Folk really fun and interesting to play (and play against).

when I say I worry it won't work, I simply mean technically - if this is actually possible in the mod, than I retract that worry.

As far as navy-on-land and such, it's hard to say. I'm not confident it would be a bad thing, it's just a concern. It could also be cool. I do feel like it's not a great fit for them - building canals and such never has seemed much of a thing they were into doing. For that reason, I still suggest witdhrawiung it. However, I do think ti's worth keeping in our minds for some westlands coastal civs.

Agreed, the flavor leads me away from including this one now, and possibly looking at it again later if we've got civs that are known for making canals!

Yeah, let's give some kind of bonus for the other civs then. I'll suggest something below- thoughts?

I love it, that's an awesome trade off. It's an overall benefit for the Sea Folk, but the person on the receiving end of the trade can use it to strategic advantage against them as well. Good stuff, very good stuff!

I understand what you mean re: stagnation. This would be a lot like the Greek UA (lower influence decay). It means you can keep a healthy relationship with CSs, but it doesn't help you snipe other civs' alliances and stuff - a different kind of Diplo path. I don't think that's necessarily bad.

I think your suggestion has gotten around my concern here. I was thinking that civs would get a bonus with their own CSes as well - which would lead to a decent chunk of civs' CS relationships not degrading at all. Hence the stagnation I mentioned. But your suggestion means that that won't happen because civs are all still degrading influence normally with the CSes they are currently allied with.

yeah, this is a cool mechanic, I think. I'm not sure it necessarily fits the SF all that well, though - they aren't exactly out colonizing everybody around. I suppose I feel similarly to Home at Sea for that reason. This can survive for now, though.

Yeah, they weren't really expansionist in the flavor, but we have noted them down as Wide, so expanding is presumably part of their game plan. Unless this is one of the civs we'd prefer to leave uncommitted to Tall/Wide?

yeah, understood. This one shows up as blue on your recap, but I'm pretty sure you mean red.

Woops, yes!

re: culture/prestige. Hmmm... definitely not sure. It changes quite a bit - whether this is a late-game thing or a all-throughout thing. I think that's something we could decide later, though.

Cool, we can decide that later then.

yeah, sorry. This was simply because this one seemed kind of boring - simply a yield boost. I know a few of those aren't bad to have, of course. But this one just feels like a super-lighthouse, to me. might as well be a UB

Yeah, this one is quite straightforward. I think the main benefit are its implications, rather than just the mechanics of what it does. This bonus would make water tiles better than a lot of land tiles, which would allow the Sea Folk to settle in very different places. I think the "progression" of the ability, where it gets better when you get to a certain tech, makes it more of a UA than a UB. It also means it will apply directly to new cities when they're founded. (Single hex island cities, yay!)

I've left this UA as red below (rather than remove it now), because I think we could remove it as a part of the culling pass, but I'd be more inclined to remove one of the other UAs first (more on that below). In which case we'd have 2 left, which is below our "target" of 3. But if we're happy to stick with 2 UA possibilities going forward, I'm happy to remove this one.

Any other ideas for Legendary bargains?

I don't think so, it looks good where it is now!

Forceful Trade Partners... I think that one is a unique combination of super nichey and super powerful. I think too powerful. It seems to me that that'll let th eSF pretty easily dominant virtually all compact votes - *especially* pre-UN. Early in the life of the compact, 6 votes or so per civ is pretty large - trade routes would give you double that.

Agreed, this will swing the Compact too much.

so, at this point it seems to me that we are at the "culling the herd" phase of this civ. I'm all out of ideas - and I think we have plenty of good ones. However, we also have 20 abilities here, which is far too much. So, now comes the cutting. I've been contentious about a few of them, that I have since left here. Now I'll pass it back to you to cut some of these down - perhaps some of the ones we've each been "defending" will be cut by process of elimination. Clearly we have some abilities that are quite similar to one another - still, it seems important to clarify things down to fewer abilities.

Agreed. I've made an effort to suggest deleting as much as possible below!

Recapping!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Home at Sea, coastal waters and ocean hexes provide +X Production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>.
• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters
• Established Bargains, influence with city-states you have established sea trade routes with rises by X per turn
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Friendly to or Allied with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ). The other civ receives +Y (lower value) influence per turn with any CS you are Allied with.

UUs:

• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Soarer/Darter, replaces the trade ship, the Gold bonus due to resource diversity is multiplied by X and establishes trade routes with a boosted range
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Windfinder, replaces NavalMelee6, can move farther and enemy ships have -X combat strength within Y hexes of it
• Swordmaster or Master of Blades - replaces some sword unit and receives combat strength bonus when within 2 tiles of coast.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking
• Raker/Soarer, replaces the Exploration Ship, can make landfall on a coastal land tile and found a city.

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and tourism to every LW housed within the city
• Cargomaster's Hold, replaces coastal 1, +Production for every international sea trade route, more if they trade with you too.
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.
• Amayar Shrine(/Village/something?), replaces Culture3, can only be built on the coast, has an extra Craft slot and a unique theming bonus

UIs:




So, stuff I'm proposing to remove. I'm loosely aiming for the 3 UAs and 9 other uniques number from before, but we can try to go narrower than that if you prefer.

Home at Sea I mentioned above.

Established Bargains is the other one I touched on above. I mostly suggest removing it because it's quite straightforward. Unlike Home at Sea, I don't think this will change how the Sea Folk play as much. And compared to Life at Sea or Legendary Bargains, I don't think it will make as much of an impact.

I'm proposing removing the Soarer/Darter trade unit replacement. Even though I do quite like this one, it's one of four (4!) uses of this kind of flavor for a unique ship, and I felt like we should remove at least one at this stage. This one feels the least exciting of the four for the player.

I've gone straight to magenta instead of red for the Raker/Soarer that can establish coastal cities. We were both a bit reluctant about this being expansionist, but it is quite a new experience for the players. I was also a bit concerned it may not be too useful in-game, even if it's quite different. What do you think?

I'm suggesting removing the naval unit version of the Windfinder because I think the channeler replacement one is a better candidate.

Same with the Swordmaster/Master of Blades, I think the second Master of Blades is a better candidate.

We presumably wouldn't be able to choose both versions of the porcelain building, because of their similarities. I'm generally in favor of the resource one. Not that I don't think the LW one is good, because that's also quite strong, but I like the way the resources interacts with the rest of the game and the Sea Folk flavor. It also works very well with Legendary Bargains. I haven't suggested deleting either of them.

I've redded the CargoMaster's Hold because I think the CargoMaster's Stock is more in line with how we want the Sea Folk to play. A blanket production bonus could make give them a lot of advantages that don't play into their flavor.

Like the Porcelain stuff, I don't think we would keep (in the long run) both Cargomaster's Stock and Shipyard, because of their similarities in what they achieve. I'm not sure which of the two I prefer though. I'm leaning Shipyard, but it's not a strong lean.

I made a quick addition to the Amayar Shrine, because I've realized changing the number of LW slots in the building will affect its theming bonus in some way, so it would be good to address that as a part of the building.

If we take all of these deletions, we'll be down to 2 UAs and 9 non-UA-unique options (which is less overall than the Aiel!).

 

[counterpoint]

was literally five minutes away from finishing a response to this post (was doing my final recap editing), and someone, who will remain nameless, closed my browser window when they needed to check something. you know, instead of opening a new tab. it's gone, this computer doesn't keep any form data. No apologies or anything ("how was I supposed to know?"), so the universe is out of balance, karmically.

i mention this because unfortunately this may have been my only chance to post over the next couple of days. I could be wrong, and hopefully I am, but I wanted to let you know there may be some delay. And if my eventually response is bored and bitter, its because I don't feel like rewriting all the same stuff

 

[counterpoint]

Aha! I spoke too soon! Some free time on an iPad! Let's see if I can recreate most of that post... Please forgive typos and brevity

Yeah, Reynolds is sci-fi. Revelation Space is a good place to start with his books! He's an astrophysicist as well, so he does very good sci-fi.

cool, science science fiction!

I figured this one was quite exciting really - as a player I would think so. (I think? Hard to know what I would think as just a player.) I think keeping this one for now is a good call - that way we have two major approaches to the Aiel civ preserved for the next stage, so we can either make them a very fight-y Culture civ or a military powerhouse, both of which work with the Aiel flavor.

We're also within the "set of 9" possible non-UA uniques that we ballparked as our objective earlier. (Even more so since some of these uniques are similar and therefore mutually exclusive - like the variations on Wise Ones.)

eh, I guess I wouldn't really ever consider Lp slots to be exciting. It's only in certain tall cultural Vic runs that I really run out of slots anyways, or at least care when I do.

The other thing is that this ability is somewhat 'all culture' in that it is very linked to that vc. Obviously culture is useful to everyone, but slots for lps... Really much more tied to that vc. That might be fine in isolation, but since this ability sort of exists because of synergy with the fifth, that really means two uniques would be tied up in culture. A mistake for the aiel, IMO.

I mark it as red! But can't literally do so due to the iPad making it a pain.

I wouldn't be inclined to count this against it at all at this stage. If I know something's impossible then we may as well drop it now, but I have some ideas about how to make this work. I only point in out because I'm aware of a known way to achieve pretty much everything else we discuss. This has some unknowns, but they'll only be knowable when I try to put it into the game. It may be totally straightforward, so I wouldn't suggest we alter our design for an issue we don't know exists yet.

Ok. Trust your judgment here

I can see what you mean about exploration, but I think part of that being navally boxed in in a certain direction is something players will need to address when they're near the Sea Folk, much like how other civs' traits often require foreign players to change their strategies.

Also, I don't think I mentioned this before, but presumably they could only found water-cities after they've got the tech for embarkation (so they can get the Settler out there). So they won't be able to create a blockade immediately upon starting the game.

I do think it will improve the game a lot, because it will make the Sea Folk really fun and interesting to play (and play against).

Agreed about embarkation.

I'm fine keeping this around so we have three ua options

I still don't think this one is a great choice, though. You're right that it'd be interesting and different, and perhaps fun because of that, but I'm not sure it will be useful... How does this lead to victory? It seems to me that these cities will largely be disadvantaged when compared to land cities. True, they might be useful as war outposts or range extenders for trade, but those seem like benefits that don't directly lead to a victory advantage outside of scattered situations.

Also, I do see this causing issues with regards to other civs. We could of course provide yield bonuses to make the cities viable for the sea folk, but these bonuses will disappear for other civs. Or, as you mention, they could be raze only. I think both of these set it up such that war against the sf isn't very fun or fair feeling. Not because of the navy requirements, since that is kind of fun, but because the scope of possible rewards for such warfare is not very fun. I'm thinking very much of a human player trying to win Dom against a sea folk ai. See what I mean?

Eh,seems neat, but not necessarily good.

I love it, that's an awesome trade off. It's an overall benefit for the Sea Folk, but the person on the the receiving end of the trade can use it to strategic advantage against them as well. Good stuff, very good stuff!

cool

I think your suggestion has gotten around my concern here. I was thinking that civs would get a bonus with their own CSes as well - which would lead to a decent chunk of civs' CS relationships not degrading at all. Hence the stagnation I mentioned. But your suggestion means that that won't happen because civs are all still degrading influence normally with the CSes they are currently allied with.

im thinking actually that it's probably too powerful if these things totally offset decay, meaning no net loss at all. Certainly that would be fine for the sea folk, but for everyone? Eh, that seems too much.

We could also make this, instead, be a percentage boost to CS 'transactions', like gifts. That makes it more snipey, thoug, which isn't the same, and not always a good thing

Yeah, they weren't really expansionist in the flavor, but we have noted them down as Wide, so expanding is presumably part of their game plan. Unless this is one of the civs we'd prefer to leave

eh, I say wide, but I also don't see this one as necessary.

Yeah, this one is quite straightforward. I think the main benefit are its implications, rather than just the mechanics of what it does. This bonus would make water tiles better than a lot of land tiles, which would allow the Sea Folk to settle in very different places. I think the "progression" of the ability, where it gets better when you get to a certain tech, makes it more of a UA than a UB. It also means it will apply directly to new cities when they're founded. (Single hex island cities, yay!)

I've left this UA as red below (rather than remove it now), because I think we could remove it as a part of the culling pass, but I'd be more inclined to remove one of the other UAs first (more on that below). In which case we'd have 2 left, which is below our "target" of 3. But if we're happy to stick with 2 UA possibilities going forward, I'm happy to remove this one.

i think this is fin e to leave around, so we have three.

So, stuff I'm proposing to remove. I'm loosely aiming for the 3 UAs and 9 other uniques number from before, but we can try to go narrower than that if you prefer.

yeah, I think narrower is better if possible

Like we did with the aiel, let's consider the Locks. It seems to me that they are

Windfinder
Raker or some other ship, combat or trade

The second is possibly arguable, but I'd say we probably would find it difficult to justify its absence, given which civ this is. Also, given how rare flavor justified uu ships are in the lore, it's also possible that a Combat uu ship would be a Lock, though I won't go that far now

Of course, theoretically those pieces of flavor could be incorporated into uas or ubs, the latter being perhaps easier, especially with the trade ship. That might not be a perfect solution, though

What that leaves us with is room for one ua, plus any one of a ub, master of sword uu, and ship uu, whether a trade unit or a military unit, whichever isn't used above.

In any case, that makes me think we should feel comfortable culling our ub options a bit more

Established Bargains is the other one I touched on above. I mostly suggest removing it because it's quite straightforward. Unlike Home at Sea, I don't think this will change how the Sea Folk play as much. And compared to Life at Sea or Legendary Bargains, I don't think it will make as much of an impact.

This is fine

I'm proposing removing the Soarer/Darter trade unit replacement. Even though I do quite like this one, it's one of four (4!) uses of this kind of flavor for a unique ship, and I felt like we should remove at least one at this stage. This one feels the least exciting of the four for the player.

Agreed

I've gone straight to magenta instead of red for the Raker/Soarer that can establish coastal cities. We were both a bit reluctant about this being expansionist, but it is quite a new experience for the players. I was also a bit concerned it may not be too useful in-game, even if it's quite different. What do you think?

i think this ability is cool, but doesn't need to survive

I'm suggesting removing the naval unit version of the Windfinder because I think the channeler replacement one is a better candidate.

Same with the Swordmaster/Master of Blades, I think the second Master of Blades is a better candidate.

agree with both of these

We presumably wouldn't be able to choose both versions of the porcelain building, because of their similarities. I'm generally in favor of the resource one. Not that I don't think the LW one is good, because that's also quite strong, but I like the way the resources interacts with the rest of the game and the Sea Folk flavor. It also works very well with Legendary Bargains. I haven't suggested deleting either of them.

i think your logic above with the windfinders and sword masters would suggest we get rid of one. However, I won't mark the first one as red, since I know you'll just mark it magenta anyways. That's the one I'd cut of the pair, since as I'm not as sold on the luxury thing.

The other thing to consider is that the lux ub allows a civ to build as many copies of a lux as they want, each in different cities. This is problematic, I think. The Indonesia ua limits it to three I think... That's not so possible when this is a ub.

That said, I don't think either will survive.

I've redded the CargoMaster's Hold because I think the CargoMaster's Stock is more in line with how we want the Sea Folk to play. A blanket production bonus could make give them a lot of advantages that don't play into their flavor.

agreed

Like the Porcelain stuff, I don't think we would keep (in the long run) both Cargomaster's Stock and Shipyard, because of their similarities in what they achieve. I'm not sure which of the two I prefer though. I'm leaning Shipyard, but it's not a strong lean.

definitely won't keep both. Again, I don't know what to do here because I feel sort of the opposite, though this one is really close. I suppose the shipyard one feels weirder because we haven't necessarily created a system where the civ will have tons of gold to spend on units. That said, that one is also the ability that is likely to impact player behavior more, which is a More interesting

Not sure what to do he, but I'd consider redding shipyard

I made a quick addition to the Amayar Shrine, because I've realized changing the number of LW slots in the building will affect its theming bonus in some way, so it would be good to address that as a part of the building.

eh, this one I feel like should be red. Not Quite exciting enough, given I'm trying to remove some.

If we take all of these deletions, we'll be down to 2 UAs and 9 non-UA-unique options (which is less overall than the Aiel!).

yes, less than The aiel, but the aiel have arguably too many, and with the aiel, we have clear front runners, and many of the others are sort of in there just to represent their houses and lands honorably in the coming tourney

Recap!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Home at Sea, coastal waters and ocean hexes provide +X Production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>.
• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Friendly to or Allied with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ). The other civ receives +Y (lower value) influence per turn with any CS you are Allied with.

UUs:

• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking
• Raker/Soarer, replaces the Exploration Ship, can make landfall on a coastal land tile and found a city.

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and tourism to every LW housed within the city
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.
• Amayar Shrine(/Village/something?), replaces Culture3, can only be built on the coast, has an extra Craft slot and a unique theming bonus

UIs:

 

[S3rgeus]

Aha! I spoke too soon! Some free time on an iPad! Let's see if I can recreate most of that post... Please forgive typos and brevity

No worries, I'm glad you got back online! Hopefully the karma has balanced itself in the time since you've rewritten this!

eh, I guess I wouldn't really ever consider Lp slots to be exciting. It's only in certain tall cultural Vic runs that I really run out of slots anyways, or at least care when I do.

The other thing is that this ability is somewhat 'all culture' in that it is very linked to that vc. Obviously culture is useful to everyone, but slots for lps... Really much more tied to that vc. That might be fine in isolation, but since this ability sort of exists because of synergy with the fifth, that really means two uniques would be tied up in culture. A mistake for the aiel, IMO.

I mark it as red! But can't literally do so due to the iPad making it a pain.

I find I usually run out of slots when I'm going for the Culture victory, so I'd definitely find this very helpful. Anything that makes buildings I'm definitely going to build anyway (almost never don't build a courthouse, where you can) stands out to me.

I don't think two Culture abilities would necessarily be a bad idea for the Aiel. They're both very "fight" oriented abilities, which is consistent with them. I see this as part of a more Culture-themed approach to them. Honestly my preference is with the military approach that we went through first anyway. I wouldn't be inclined to remove this now though.

Agreed about embarkation.

I'm fine keeping this around so we have three ua options

I still don't think this one is a great choice, though. You're right that it'd be interesting and different, and perhaps fun because of that, but I'm not sure it will be useful... How does this lead to victory? It seems to me that these cities will largely be disadvantaged when compared to land cities. True, they might be useful as war outposts or range extenders for trade, but those seem like benefits that don't directly lead to a victory advantage outside of scattered situations.

Also, I do see this causing issues with regards to other civs. We could of course provide yield bonuses to make the cities viable for the sea folk, but these bonuses will disappear for other civs. Or, as you mention, they could be raze only. I think both of these set it up such that war against the sf isn't very fun or fair feeling. Not because of the navy requirements, since that is kind of fun, but because the scope of possible rewards for such warfare is not very fun. I'm thinking very much of a human player trying to win Dom against a sea folk ai. See what I mean?

Eh,seems neat, but not necessarily good.

Re your second paragraph, totally agree, and that's not a situation we want this UA to fall under. We want those cities to be useful cities in the "normal" sense, not just strange outposts in order to stand out. I'm realizing that I mentioned a yield bonus previously to make these cities more sensible, because at the moment it has the same issue as the first Aversion to Swords UA on the Aiel, in that it has a big visible effect on the civ, but doesn't yet give a mechanical advantage. Seeing as Home at Sea is right there, I'd think we could combine them.

I think raze-only is probably the way to go with other civs capturing the water cities (but I'm not 100% sure on that yet). I don't think that would cause an experience problem for a human player that was attacking them. As you've pointed out, the naval war part is quite interesting. And I think forcing them to be razed could be quite nice for human players who would otherwise hang onto such cities and live with the Happiness difficulties those cities entail. (I feel I hang onto too many cities when playing for Domination.) As long as the rewards for capturing those cities are appropriate, then the player won't feel cheated by it, it will just be a new layer of strategy.

im thinking actually that it's probably too powerful if these things totally offset decay, meaning no net loss at all. Certainly that would be fine for the sea folk, but for everyone? Eh, that seems too much.

I was talking more about alliance stagnation in general due to anyone getting any influence boosts, and that your changes resolve my previous issues with alliance stagnation. I was thinking it would work like this:

Sea Folk trade with Andor, who are allied with Far Madding: Sea Folk get +X influence per turn with Far Madding and Andor get +Y influence per turn with Far Madding (X > Y).

This would mean that if the Sea Folk trade with everyone, then everyone gets influence bonuses with their favored CSes. This would lead to alliance stagnation, since those alliances require less effort to keep going.

But your change means:

Sea Folk, allied with Kandor, trades with Andor, allied with Far Madding: Sea Folk gets +X influence per turn with Far Madding and Andor gets +Y influence per turn with Kandor. (X > Y)

This means that all allied CSes' influence are decaying at a normal rate with their current ally. So the UA actually introduces more volatility (which is good here) - so alliances change more often - because several civs are getting bonuses with several different, but not-their-ally CSes.

In terms of offsetting influence decay, natural decay is only 1 influence per turn, so we would presumably at least equalize it. I don't think that is necessarily a problem, but it's something we can decide later on when we're balancing the abilities.

We could also make this, instead, be a percentage boost to CS 'transactions', like gifts. That makes it more snipey, thoug, which isn't the same, and not always a good thing

Agreed, a possibility, but I share your sentiment that it would make it a bit snipe-y. It's something we can consider when we're looking at the balance of it though.

eh, I say wide, but I also don't see this one as necessary.

Agreed, we don't need to push the Sea Folk one way or the other.

i think this is fin e to leave around, so we have three.

And then I've gone and suggested merging it into Life at Sea, since they end up covering the same ground!

yeah, I think narrower is better if possible

Like we did with the aiel, let's consider the Locks. It seems to me that they are

Windfinder
Raker or some other ship, combat or trade

The second is possibly arguable, but I'd say we probably would find it difficult to justify its absence, given which civ this is. Also, given how rare flavor justified uu ships are in the lore, it's also possible that a Combat uu ship would be a Lock, though I won't go that far now

Of course, theoretically those pieces of flavor could be incorporated into uas or ubs, the latter being perhaps easier, especially with the trade ship. That might not be a perfect solution, though

What that leaves us with is room for one ua, plus any one of a ub, master of sword uu, and ship uu, whether a trade unit or a military unit, whichever isn't used above.

In any case, that makes me think we should feel comfortable culling our ub options a bit more

I agree on the locks - the Windfinder and at least one unique naval unit should be on there.

i think your logic above with the windfinders and sword masters would suggest we get rid of one. However, I won't mark the first one as red, since I know you'll just mark it magenta anyways. That's the one I'd cut of the pair, since as I'm not as sold on the luxury thing.

The other thing to consider is that the lux ub allows a civ to build as many copies of a lux as they want, each in different cities. This is problematic, I think. The Indonesia ua limits it to three I think... That's not so possible when this is a ub.

That said, I don't think either will survive.

Indonesia gets 6 copies (2 of each in the first 3 cities on another landmass, presumably to allow them to trade 1 of each). I think the variety there bridges the quantity gap, because that's 2 extra luxuries' worth of Happiness. (Just considering comparative power between the two.) They can trade with the same civ multiple times since they have separate luxuries, and they get the benefit of 3 even if no one is willing to trade. The Sea Folk would only get one luxury worth of Happiness without trading, and would have to trade with multiple civs (again, feeds into the diplo flavor).

Of our UB options, I'd say this is my best preference, so I wouldn't count it out yet.

definitely won't keep both. Again, I don't know what to do here because I feel sort of the opposite, though this one is really close. I suppose the shipyard one feels weirder because we haven't necessarily created a system where the civ will have tons of gold to spend on units. That said, that one is also the ability that is likely to impact player behavior more, which is a More interesting

Not sure what to do he, but I'd consider redding shipyard

Agreed, this one is really close for me as well. The main reason I went for the Shipyard was that it actively encouraged them to build a navy by purchasing ships, which we may otherwise lack. Life at Sea would encourage making a navy, but not so much Legendary Bargains. The UUs are good to make themselves, but don't necessarily push you to make more ships overall. It's not a big concern though, I don't think this building will necessarily swing the Sea Folk to make a much bigger navy.

I could see us removing it - I've marked it as red below given all of that. Depending on what you think about the navy-incentive then feel free to remove it.

eh, this one I feel like should be red. Not Quite exciting enough, given I'm trying to remove some.

Agreed, Amayar shrine isn't quite making it here, compared to the others. And particularly since we want to cull some UBs.

yes, less than The aiel, but the aiel have arguably too many, and with the aiel, we have clear front runners, and many of the others are sort of in there just to represent their houses and lands honorably in the coming tourney

I see the Aiel options as two major approaches (military or culture), and then we have many Wise One options. If we're aware of clear frontrunners though - should we just pare them down now? I figured we were keeping the "culture approach" options as viable choices for later, but there's no reason to keep them if we knowingly favor the first military set we mentioned. (I'm assuming we favor those ones?)

This has the potential to "turn into" the later stage of the process, rather than the first pass we were intending here, so I'm totally fine leaving the Aiel where they are as long as all of the options we've left there are things we might theoretically pick.


Recap!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Home at Sea, coastal waters and ocean hexes provide +X Production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>.
• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters and coastal and ocean hexes provide +X production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>.
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Friendly to or Allied with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ). The other civ receives +Y (lower value) influence per turn with any CS you are Allied with.

UUs:

• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and prestige to every LW housed within the city
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.

UIs:



If we wanted to pick an actual set of 4 here, like we did with the military Aiel approach, my choices would be:

Life at Sea
Windfinder
Raker/Skimmer (combat, extra attack)
Porcelain "forge"

I'm marginally undecided between which of the two Raker approaches I prefer (trade unit for Happiness or combat unit, as above). I could see us including both, but I'm not sure if we want 3 UUs on the Sea Folk? (Since we would probably drop the UB for the second ship, rather than the Windfinder.) Or does the Windfinder embarking into a combat ship mean we should prefer the trade version of the dedicated-naval UU?

 

[counterpoint]

I find I usually run out of slots when I'm going for the Culture victory, so I'd definitely find this very helpful. Anything that makes buildings I'm definitely going to build anyway (almost never don't build a courthouse, where you can) stands out to me.

I don't think two Culture abilities would necessarily be a bad idea for the Aiel. They're both very "fight" oriented abilities, which is consistent with them. I see this as part of a more Culture-themed approach to them. Honestly my preference is with the military approach that we went through first anyway. I wouldn't be inclined to remove this now though.

I guess I'm always building things anyways, so it doesn't affect my playstyle all that much.

In any case, fine with leaving it.

Re your second paragraph, totally agree, and that's not a situation we want this UA to fall under. We want those cities to be useful cities in the "normal" sense, not just strange outposts in order to stand out. I'm realizing that I mentioned a yield bonus previously to make these cities more sensible, because at the moment it has the same issue as the first Aversion to Swords UA on the Aiel, in that it has a big visible effect on the civ, but doesn't yet give a mechanical advantage. Seeing as Home at Sea is right there, I'd think we could combine them.

I think raze-only is probably the way to go with other civs capturing the water cities (but I'm not 100% sure on that yet). I don't think that would cause an experience problem for a human player that was attacking them. As you've pointed out, the naval war part is quite interesting. And I think forcing them to be razed could be quite nice for human players who would otherwise hang onto such cities and live with the Happiness difficulties those cities entail. (I feel I hang onto too many cities when playing for Domination.) As long as the rewards for capturing those cities are appropriate, then the player won't feel cheated by it, it will just be a new layer of strategy.

the last thing there is the key thing for me: "as long as the rewards for capturing those cities are appropriate". You mentioned before doing something like the burial tomb of egypt - I think that sort of thing, where capture of these cities provides a specific bonus to make them worthwhile, makes this theoretically viable. I still don't love the auto-raze aspect, though - it makes Wonders and LWs and such weird, since they can't change hands in the traditional ways.

In any ways, I think we can leave this, but the bonus-upon-capture should be spelled on below (though doesn't need to be decided now)

I was talking more about alliance stagnation in general due to anyone getting any influence boosts, and that your changes resolve my previous issues with alliance stagnation. I was thinking it would work like this:

Sea Folk trade with Andor, who are allied with Far Madding: Sea Folk get +X influence per turn with Far Madding and Andor get +Y influence per turn with Far Madding (X > Y).

This would mean that if the Sea Folk trade with everyone, then everyone gets influence bonuses with their favored CSes. This would lead to alliance stagnation, since those alliances require less effort to keep going.

But your change means:

Sea Folk, allied with Kandor, trades with Andor, allied with Far Madding: Sea Folk gets +X influence per turn with Far Madding and Andor gets +Y influence per turn with Kandor. (X > Y)

This means that all allied CSes' influence are decaying at a normal rate with their current ally. So the UA actually introduces more volatility (which is good here) - so alliances change more often - because several civs are getting bonuses with several different, but not-their-ally CSes.

In terms of offsetting influence decay, natural decay is only 1 influence per turn, so we would presumably at least equalize it. I don't think that is necessarily a problem, but it's something we can decide later on when we're balancing the abilities.

ok, first of all, I wasn't proposing that (what I was proposing is lost in the swirling aether). Second of all, I think that's a good change. It accomplishes exactly what you're saying, which is a worthy benefit, I think.

It's chaotic, but I like it.

The original proposal suggested Friend and Allies. I suppose this should be changed to Allies-only? It's interesting, though, in that it makes the SF UA only useful if others' have Alliances, which is somewhat lame if you have the lead and already have em all.

Should we do something where the A'M get +X for every Alliance, and +Y for every friendship, and the trading partner gets +Y for every alliance (and nothing for every friendship)?

If we do that, what happens if the A'M are allied to Far Madding, and trade with Andor, who is Friends with Far Madding - do the A'M get the +Y? This would help us still make it useful if you're in the "lead"

Also, it's listed as stacking between civs - do we want to do that? It seems like it might be too powerful. If you trade with the ally, and like four other civs are friends with that same civ... Should we cap it at one friend benefit at a time or something?

I do think Y=1 is probably smart.

Agreed, a possibility, but I share your sentiment that it would make it a bit snipe-y. It's something we can consider when we're looking at the balance of it though.

for sure

And then I've gone and suggested merging it into Life at Sea, since they end up covering the same ground!

yeah, I like that idea, though I do think a third UA - a naval one - would be useful.

Indonesia gets 6 copies (2 of each in the first 3 cities on another landmass, presumably to allow them to trade 1 of each). I think the variety there bridges the quantity gap, because that's 2 extra luxuries' worth of Happiness. (Just considering comparative power between the two.) They can trade with the same civ multiple times since they have separate luxuries, and they get the benefit of 3 even if no one is willing to trade. The Sea Folk would only get one luxury worth of Happiness without trading, and would have to trade with multiple civs (again, feeds into the diplo flavor).

Of our UB options, I'd say this is my best preference, so I wouldn't count it out yet.

Yeah, I see where you're going here.

Agreed, this one is really close for me as well. The main reason I went for the Shipyard was that it actively encouraged them to build a navy by purchasing ships, which we may otherwise lack. Life at Sea would encourage making a navy, but not so much Legendary Bargains. The UUs are good to make themselves, but don't necessarily push you to make more ships overall. It's not a big concern though, I don't think this building will necessarily swing the Sea Folk to make a much bigger navy.

I could see us removing it - I've marked it as red below given all of that. Depending on what you think about the navy-incentive then feel free to remove it.

Yeah, I think leaving the option open for this kind of naval purchasing isn't bad - let's leave it.

I see the Aiel options as two major approaches (military or culture), and then we have many Wise One options. If we're aware of clear frontrunners though - should we just pare them down now? I figured we were keeping the "culture approach" options as viable choices for later, but there's no reason to keep them if we knowingly favor the first military set we mentioned. (I'm assuming we favor those ones?)

This has the potential to "turn into" the later stage of the process, rather than the first pass we were intending here, so I'm totally fine leaving the Aiel where they are as long as all of the options we've left there are things we might theoretically pick.

I do favor the military approach, but I think we should leave the other ones intact for now. We never know where we'll end up after doing all the rest of these civs, so I'd suggest we leave the other stuff around for this phase.

If we wanted to pick an actual set of 4 here, like we did with the military Aiel approach, my choices would be:

Life at Sea
Windfinder
Raker/Skimmer (combat, extra attack)
Porcelain "forge"

I'm marginally undecided between which of the two Raker approaches I prefer (trade unit for Happiness or combat unit, as above). I could see us including both, but I'm not sure if we want 3 UUs on the Sea Folk? (Since we would probably drop the UB for the second ship, rather than the Windfinder.) Or does the Windfinder embarking into a combat ship mean we should prefer the trade version of the dedicated-naval UU?

Interesting, I'm not super different from you. It's tough, but if I had to decide now, I might go with something like:

Legendary Bargains
Windfinder
Raker/Skimmer (combat, extra attack)
Porcelain Forge

I know that might surprise you, because I've been negative about the porcelain forge (and still am, actually), but the fact is that it synergizes with Legendary Bargains pretty darn well - provides a bunch (if you build wide) of a single resource that nobody else can get - trade it away and get great CS rewards with every other civs.

to me that makes a decent pairing. I think if we went with life at Sea, I'd want the other uniques to be trade-related - the Raker trade unit, or one of the other buildings.

I'm not sure yet on any of these - the frontrunners are not as clear with this civ, which is fine IMO.

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

Recap!

UAs:

• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters and coastal and ocean hexes provide +X production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>.
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Allied to and +Y influence per turn with every CS they are Friends with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ). The other civ receives +Y (lower value) influence per turn with any CS you are Allied with.
• Sea Legs, melee and polearm units embark to become the Raker ship, with increased movement and defense. Mounted units embark to become the Darter, with greatly increased movement.
• Catch the Wind, all naval melee units receive the ability to retreat from battle, all naval ranged units receive the ability to move after attacking.

UUs:

• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and prestige to every LW housed within the city
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.

UIs:

I've resurrected the land-units-become-ships idea above, because I do think it's good for us to have a UA option that is navy-related. As is, it's all trade and such - if we go with all the trade abilities, we might need something to cover for this.

However, this doesn't stack well with the Windfinder (nor the Master of Blades), as it's a similar ability. Because of this, I've also proposed another, navy-only ability. This one might be too powerful - especially the second part of it.

I suggest we keep one, and only one of these - which one is better (and modify how you like)?

 

[S3rgeus]

the last thing there is the key thing for me: "as long as the rewards for capturing those cities are appropriate". You mentioned before doing something like the burial tomb of egypt - I think that sort of thing, where capture of these cities provides a specific bonus to make them worthwhile, makes this theoretically viable. I still don't love the auto-raze aspect, though - it makes Wonders and LWs and such weird, since they can't change hands in the traditional ways.

In any ways, I think we can leave this, but the bonus-upon-capture should be spelled on below (though doesn't need to be decided now)

Agreed, and added below.

ok, first of all, I wasn't proposing that (what I was proposing is lost in the swirling aether). Second of all, I think that's a good change. It accomplishes exactly what you're saying, which is a worthy benefit, I think.

I'm curious now though, what was your proposal? The way I read yours came across as the above to me.

It's chaotic, but I like it.

The original proposal suggested Friend and Allies. I suppose this should be changed to Allies-only? It's interesting, though, in that it makes the SF UA only useful if others' have Alliances, which is somewhat lame if you have the lead and already have em all.

Should we do something where the A'M get +X for every Alliance, and +Y for every friendship, and the trading partner gets +Y for every alliance (and nothing for every friendship)?

If we do that, what happens if the A'M are allied to Far Madding, and trade with Andor, who is Friends with Far Madding - do the A'M get the +Y? This would help us still make it useful if you're in the "lead"

Also, it's listed as stacking between civs - do we want to do that? It seems like it might be too powerful. If you trade with the ally, and like four other civs are friends with that same civ... Should we cap it at one friend benefit at a time or something?

I do think Y=1 is probably smart.

The Friends change is probably a good call when playing against the AI in general, even if you're not ahead. The AI isn't very good at maintaining CS relationships sensibly. (It will often put effort to get to ally status and then allow that to lapse almost immediately to decay.) It would suck for their badness at this to disable a portion of the Sea Folk UA.

I think the combinations of stacking bonuses is possibly something we could decide later, as a part of balancing it more precisely. I think there's a lot of room for us to keep the crux of how the UA works but tweak for balance with things like not-stacking on the same CS, or CSes the Sea Folk already have relationships with, or things like that.

Yeah, I think leaving the option open for this kind of naval purchasing isn't bad - let's leave it.

Coolio, turned it back to black.

I do favor the military approach, but I think we should leave the other ones intact for now. We never know where we'll end up after doing all the rest of these civs, so I'd suggest we leave the other stuff around for this phase.

Cool, the Aiel remain as they are!

Interesting, I'm not super different from you. It's tough, but if I had to decide now, I might go with something like:

Legendary Bargains
Windfinder
Raker/Skimmer (combat, extra attack)
Porcelain Forge

I know that might surprise you, because I've been negative about the porcelain forge (and still am, actually), but the fact is that it synergizes with Legendary Bargains pretty darn well - provides a bunch (if you build wide) of a single resource that nobody else can get - trade it away and get great CS rewards with every other civs.

to me that makes a decent pairing. I think if we went with life at Sea, I'd want the other uniques to be trade-related - the Raker trade unit, or one of the other buildings.

I'm not sure yet on any of these - the frontrunners are not as clear with this civ, which is fine IMO.

Yeah, the Porcelain Shop does work really well with Legendary Bargains.

Agreed, I'm fine with there not being clear frontrunners at this point.

Would we want to remove the Master of Blades UU at this point, seeing as we have two locked UUs in the Windfinder and the ship? And neither of us have put it forward in our first choices.

I've resurrected the land-units-become-ships idea above, because I do think it's good for us to have a UA option that is navy-related. As is, it's all trade and such - if we go with all the trade abilities, we might need something to cover for this.

However, this doesn't stack well with the Windfinder (nor the Master of Blades), as it's a similar ability. Because of this, I've also proposed another, navy-only ability. This one might be too powerful - especially the second part of it.

I suggest we keep one, and only one of these - which one is better (and modify how you like)?

I like how Catch the Wind makes the Sea Folk navy very mobile, which plays well into their flavor. But as you've mentioned it's quite powerful. And I think it's not quite as flexible as Legendary Bargains for us to adjust it for balance purposes. (Having the ability or not is binary, there aren't as many permutations that are better or worse.) If we needed to tone it down, I could see us possibly unlocking the move-after-firing promotion early, rather than giving it by default? Are there other ways to weaken it without losing the main point of the ability? It's also quite nice that this is a relatively "normal" ability that still makes the Sea Folk play quite differently.

My main concern with Sea Legs is the same one we had before. It's a super splashy ability, but it makes the Sea Folk a kind of amphibious warfare civ - are we ok with that? Presumably since these Rakers and Skimmers aren't UUs they can't be produced, and must be embarked units? (If we wanted to make them produce-able, then they'd need to replace a unit, which is weird territory for a UA.) The difficulty with not being able to produce the Rakers/Skimmers manually is that it then encourages the Sea Folk to build a big land army that can become a navy at the drop of a hat. It's good that it gives them a strong naval presence, but not so much that it pushes them toward having a big land army. It also has a similar difficulty to the original Algai'd'siswai in that players can't tell how strong a given Raker/Skimmer is at a glance, since that would presumably be based on the strength of the unit that embarked, since we're working with all melee and mounted units? (Though we could possibly use all of the ship variants to create fixed strength ships for sets of units, which would solve this problem.)

I'd be inclined to go for Catch the Wind as a naval UA, because it particularly encourages navy, whereas Sea Legs makes the Sea Folk civ able to take to the water at any time with a land army, encouraging them to build that instead.



Recap!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters and coastal and ocean hexes provide +X production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>. Cities on water captured by other civilizations must be razed and provide the capturing civ with <bonus>.
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Allied to and +Y influence per turn with every CS they are Friends with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ). The other civ receives +Y (lower value) influence per turn with any CS you are Allied with.
• Sea Legs, melee and polearm units embark to become the Raker ship, with increased movement and defense. Mounted units embark to become the Darter, with greatly increased movement.
• Catch the Wind, all naval melee units receive the ability to retreat from battle, all naval ranged units receive the ability to move after attacking.

UUs:

• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and prestige to every LW housed within the city
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.

UIs:

I feel like we're getting close!

 

[counterpoint]

I'm curious now though, what was your proposal? The way I read yours came across as the above to me.

I'm not kidding that it's lost in the aether. I can't remember

I THINK it was just a different way of framing the "first version," all concerning the same CS (the one allied with your trade partner)

EDIT - upon further reflection/looking over the thread, this (option number 2) is exactly what I meant... somehow I forgot proposing that...

The Friends change is probably a good call when playing against the AI in general, even if you're not ahead. The AI isn't very good at maintaining CS relationships sensibly. (It will often put effort to get to ally status and then allow that to lapse almost immediately to decay.) It would suck for their badness at this to disable a portion of the Sea Folk UA.

oh, wow. Yeah, a good point.

This mod would be so awesome with humans-only though...

I think the combinations of stacking bonuses is possibly something we could decide later, as a part of balancing it more precisely. I think there's a lot of room for us to keep the crux of how the UA works but tweak for balance with things like not-stacking on the same CS, or CSes the Sea Folk already have relationships with, or things like that.

yeah, agreed.

Coolio, turned it back to black.

as they say, once you go black...

Cool, the Aiel remain as they are!

as they have for 1000s of years

Yeah, the Porcelain Shop does work really well with Legendary Bargains.

Agreed, I'm fine with there not being clear frontrunners at this point.

Would we want to remove the Master of Blades UU at this point, seeing as we have two locked UUs in the Windfinder and the ship? And neither of us have put it forward in our first choices.

eh, he's not hurting anyone. It keeps the flavor in our heads. I'm fine leaving it.

I like how Catch the Wind makes the Sea Folk navy very mobile, which plays well into their flavor. But as you've mentioned it's quite powerful. And I think it's not quite as flexible as Legendary Bargains for us to adjust it for balance purposes. (Having the ability or not is binary, there aren't as many permutations that are better or worse.) If we needed to tone it down, I could see us possibly unlocking the move-after-firing promotion early, rather than giving it by default? Are there other ways to weaken it without losing the main point of the ability? It's also quite nice that this is a relatively "normal" ability that still makes the Sea Folk play quite differently.

yeah, the abilities themselves are binary. however, there are TWO abilities - we could simply include only one of them, or else include one and then a second, weaker ability (+1 sight or w/e). it could simply be changed to all getting the auto-retreat (and then maybe something else). I'm also fine leaving it alone for now.

My main concern with Sea Legs is the same one we had before. It's a super splashy ability, but it makes the Sea Folk a kind of amphibious warfare civ - are we ok with that? Presumably since these Rakers and Skimmers aren't UUs they can't be produced, and must be embarked units? (If we wanted to make them produce-able, then they'd need to replace a unit, which is weird territory for a UA.) The difficulty with not being able to produce the Rakers/Skimmers manually is that it then encourages the Sea Folk to build a big land army that can become a navy at the drop of a hat. It's good that it gives them a strong naval presence, but not so much that it pushes them toward having a big land army. It also has a similar difficulty to the original Algai'd'siswai in that players can't tell how strong a given Raker/Skimmer is at a glance, since that would presumably be based on the strength of the unit that embarked, since we're working with all melee and mounted units? (Though we could possibly use all of the ship variants to create fixed strength ships for sets of units, which would solve this problem.)

yeah, these are all fair points. i agree.

I'd be inclined to go for Catch the Wind as a naval UA, because it particularly encourages navy, whereas Sea Legs makes the Sea Folk civ able to take to the water at any time with a land army, encouraging them to build that instead.

yeah, let's do that.

(last?) Recap!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters and coastal and ocean hexes provide +X production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>. Cities on water captured by other civilizations must be razed and provide the capturing civ with <bonus>.
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Allied to and +Y influence per turn with every CS they are Friends with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ). The other civ receives +Y (lower value) influence per turn with any CS you are Allied with.
• Catch the Wind, all naval melee units receive the ability to retreat from battle, all naval ranged units receive the ability to move after attacking.

UUs:

• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and prestige to every LW housed within the city
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.

UIs:

Done? onto the Seanchan?

 

[S3rgeus]

I'm not kidding that it's lost in the aether. I can't remember

I THINK it was just a different way of framing the "first version," all concerning the same CS (the one allied with your trade partner)

EDIT - upon further reflection/looking over the thread, this (option number 2) is exactly what I meant... somehow I forgot proposing that...

Lol, well I'm glad that's sorted!

oh, wow. Yeah, a good point.

This mod would be so awesome with humans-only though...

So much stuff would be so good if the AI didn't have to understand it too!

eh, he's not hurting anyone. It keeps the flavor in our heads. I'm fine leaving it.

Sounds good.

yeah, the abilities themselves are binary. however, there are TWO abilities - we could simply include only one of them, or else include one and then a second, weaker ability (+1 sight or w/e). it could simply be changed to all getting the auto-retreat (and then maybe something else). I'm also fine leaving it alone for now.

Agreed, I'm fine with where it is for now too. My main concern with adding/removing which abilities it affects would be others might not encourage speedy naval play quite like these do. But it's something for us to consider later, anyway!

Last recap!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters and coastal and ocean hexes provide +X production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>. Cities on water captured by other civilizations must be razed and provide the capturing civ with <bonus>.
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Allied to and +Y influence per turn with every CS they are Friends with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ). The other civ receives +Y (lower value) influence per turn with any CS you are Allied with.
• Catch the Wind, all naval melee units receive the ability to retreat from battle, all naval ranged units receive the ability to move after attacking.

UUs:

• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and prestige to every LW housed within the city
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.

UIs:

Done? onto the Seanchan?

Agreed, the Sea Folk seem to be done! On to the Seanchan! However, I'm unfortunately short on time tonight. So I'll return with my Seanchan thoughts tomorrow, but as a quick recap, this was them as we last saw them:

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

• The Seanchan may not raze cities and receive diplomatic and cultural (tourism) penalties in their dealings with all other civs. In addition they cannot influence Ajahs in the Hall of the Tower. However, as long as they control the capitol of a rival civ, they gain that civ's UA and can build their UU's and UB's. (kidshowbusiness)
• Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities will periodically produce units, including Unique Units
• At the Eve of Battle - choose your side in the Last Battle after all other civs have publicly declared their allegiance
• The Conquest - +X production when building military units in the capitol for every city you have puppetted
• Voice of the Blood - each city with a governor will get a +X% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related building, this unit/building will change after a certain number of turns

UUs:

• Deathwatch Guards: Receives Elite Formation promotion for free. Gets a 10% combat bonus against other units with the Elite Formation promotion. (kidshowbusiness)
• Exotics: Since you seemed okay with Andor having more than two uniques, I can only assume that there's room for all of these for the Seanchan. There's grolm and lopar. Torm and Crolm. Plus the two flying types. You could probably get away with cutting the Torm and Crolm since they mostly seem to be used for scouting and the fliers kind of make that redundant. The ground types at least, should be pretty powerful, with bonuses against cavalry and perhaps that Terror promotion some elephant units have. But they should be limited somehow, only allowed to construct X number at once? (kidshowbusiness)
• Sul'dam: And how could we forget the foundation of the Empire's power? A special kind of channeling unit. Takes longer to construct/train and is more limited (ex. Sul'dam don't seem able to heal, or else no Seanchan will accept healing, which amounts to the same thing), but are somewhat more powerful in battle. Can't be more specific as I'm not sure how you're handling the whole channeling thing yet. (kidshowbusiness)
• Insectoid soldier (name?) (replaces era 5-9 melee or spear), unknown ability
• Deathwatch Guard, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health
• Gardener, late game melee, very powerful
• Exotics - kidshow mentioned them above - should we delve into specifics? such as...
• Fists of Heaven - UU Skimmer (a raken flier)
• Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
• Banner-General, Captain-General, Marshall-General, etc. - fancy warrior units, or even UU Great Captain

UBs:

• Seanchan Patrol Station: Replaces Courthouse. Eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +1 happiness if city has a connection to the capitol. Cost 75 (3/4 of Courthouse). Maintenance 2 Gold per turn (1/2 of Courthouse). (kidshowbusiness)
• Seeker's tower (replaced courthouse), constructed instantly
• Seeker's tower (replaces Alignment building), defense against Spies (I know, mixing things a bit here)

UIs:

 

[counterpoint]

Lol, well I'm glad that's sorted!

So much stuff would be so good if the AI didn't have to understand it too!

Sounds good.

Agreed, I'm fine with where it is for now too. My main concern with adding/removing which abilities it affects would be others might not encourage speedy naval play quite like these do. But it's something for us to consider later, anyway!

Last recap!

The Atha'an Miere (Era 1-9, Wide, Diplo/Cul)

UAs:

• Life at Sea, can found cities on coastal waters and coastal and ocean hexes provide +X production and +Y Food. Plus an additional +Z Production and +W Food at <era 4/5 tech>. Cities on water captured by other civilizations must be razed and provide the capturing civ with <bonus>.
• Legendary Bargains, when trading a luxury resource to another civ, gain +X influence per turn with every CS they are Allied to and +Y influence per turn with every CS they are Friends with (stacks between different civs, but only one effect per civ). The other civ receives +Y (lower value) influence per turn with any CS you are Allied with.
• Catch the Wind, all naval melee units receive the ability to retreat from battle, all naval ranged units receive the ability to move after attacking.

UUs:

• Raker/Soarer, replaces the trade ship, +X happiness when trading with a city that is home to a luxury resource not currently produced in your empire (once per resource)
• Windfinder, replaces Wilder/Kin, embarks into a combat ship. Nearby (within X hexes) enemy naval units have -Y% combat strength.
• Master of Blades, replaces some sword unit. Increased combat strength and gains the ability to attack while in friendly coastal waters. Embarkation and making landfall consumes movement, not a full turn
• Raker/Skimmer, replaces some Naval Ranged unit, increased movement, and can move after attacking

UBs:

• Porcelain "forge", replaces Gold2, produces "Porcelain" luxury resource and Gold yield, only buildable in Coastal cities
• Porcelain shop, replaces Gold2, can only be built on the coast, and adds +1 culture and prestige to every LW housed within the city
• Cargomaster's Stock, replaces coastal 1, +Gold and +Culture for every international sea trade in this city.
• Shipyard, replaces Coastal 2, -X% gold cost for purchasing naval units in this city. Gain Y Culture/Prestige when purchasing naval units.

UIs:


Agreed, the Sea Folk seem to be done! On to the Seanchan! However, I'm unfortunately short on time tonight. So I'll return with my Seanchan thoughts tomorrow, but as a quick recap, this was them as we last saw them:

mega-quote block!

nothing much to say here!

 

[S3rgeus]

Awesome, on to the Seanchan!

All right, there is a ton of content for these guys! And I'm going to go ahead and add a bunch more to what we're already considering.

But first, I'll comment on what we have.

I'd say kidshowbusiness's (ksb from here on) first UA has too many drawbacks. But I like the general flavor of the Seanchan assimilating the parts of other cultures/civs that they capture. I've suggested a change that I think captures the crux of this in a more "bonus-like" manner.

For Ever Victorious Army, does "including Unique Units" mean including the Seanchan's UUs, the UUs of the civ the city was captured from, or random UUs from civs in the game? This feels like similar flavor to the one above, and I generally like the approach.

At the Eve of Battle is so awesome. So, so awesome. I love this UA, it would be the coolest thing ever. But I have a couple of worries about it. One is it's only applicable very narrowly, and its utility may not be that great in a lot of games. It also makes the Seanchan a very strong LB civ, which isn't really what we're going for with them. (Though if we decide we're fine with them being very good at the LB, then this one feels much better.)

The Conquest feels a little flat. I do like the flavor of how it works the puppeted cities into the bonus though.

Voice of the Blood is cool - if I'm reading this right then the intention is for the bonus to move between several different (possibly random) units and buildings over time? It would make this a very unpredictable bonus, but it's quite cool. Captures the idea of everything being dominated by the whims of nobles quite well too.

Deathwatch Guards (ksb's version) - what's the Elite Formation promotion again? It doesn't seem to be a BNW promotion?

Ksb's exotics suggestion provides more flavor framing than specifics. But I do like his idea of a powerful s'redit unit. I've suggested one that's more specific below, based on what he said.

Ksb's sul'dam also doesn't have many specifics, mainly for the reason he mentions that we hadn't sorted how channeling would work (wow, this was a long time ago). We discussed sul'dam and damane in a bit more detail a long while back, and you've also suggested them more specifically here. We've touched on them a bit so far in the uniques section. It seems like replacing channeling units and capturing enemy female channelers is the main flavor mechanical combo that all of these revolve around, and I'm a big fan of how this will change the way the Seanchan play. I've marked ksb's as red since we only need one representation of this specific mechanic and I think your version can represent his suggestion as well.

Insectoid Soldier would probably be something like Insect-Helmed <unit>, where <unit> is the same or close to one of the actual non-unique unit types? Any variant like that. Not sure what to suggest they do.

Your Deathwatch Guard suggestion is amazing. So much definitely yes, I love this UU. It's powerful but reasonable, really splashy, and makes the unit stand out a lot. I would say it should "refresh" if the unit heals all the way back up to 100% health (otherwise you're encouraged to suicide revived ones if it can only be done once per unit). (I'm assuming it doesn't just always happen even for the revived units, which would make each unit actually unkillable.) Is there a particular flavor association that this mechanic comes from?

Gardener is good flavor. Not sure what to suggest on these guys beyond strength. Their flavor never really connected them to the Westlands Ogier and their Stedding unfortunately.

Fists of Heaven is cool, but I worry with replacing the Skimmer unit we'll need to replace all 3, otherwise the upgrade path for such a unit would be super bizarre. If there's a way we can address this, I'd be happy to have a UU flier here.

Sul'dam/damane above. I think including both as "one UU" that creates the other is a good call, rather than occupying two slots with what is essentially one ability.

Banner General etc, any specific ideas about these guys? Nothing jumps out at me.

I like ksb's Seanchan Patrol Station. We can generalize the numbers there so that we can balance it later, but it seems like a good general approach to the flavor.

I like the first Seeker's Tower, that very much encourages the Seanchan to kill everyone. Would this apply to puppeted cities? Does constructed instantly mean it's automatically there when the city is captured or annexed (depending on the answer to my previous question), or does it just always take 1 turn to build?

Seeker's Tower as an Alignment building makes sense. I feel like there should be a more interesting application of that though. Not sure what to suggest specifically as a replacement yet.

Right, now on to some new stuff and suggested changes!

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

• The Seanchan may not raze cities and receive diplomatic and cultural (tourism) penalties in their dealings with all other civs. In addition they cannot influence Ajahs in the Hall of the Tower. However, as long as they control the capitol of a rival civ, they gain that civ's UA and can build their UU's and UB's. (kidshowbusiness)Cultural Appropriation, as long as Seanchan controls the original capital of another civilization, it may build that civilization's unique units.
• Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities will periodically produce units, including Unique Units
• At the Eve of Battle - choose your side in the Last Battle after all other civs have publicly declared their allegiance
• The Conquest - +X production when building military units in the capitol for every city you have puppetted
• Voice of the Blood - each city with a governor will get a +X% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related building, this unit/building will change after a certain number of turns
• Cultural Assimilation, Annexed cities that are renamed by the Seanchan do not produce extra unhappiness
• Corenne, the Seanchan can build improvements in foreign territory. These improvements provide the host civ normal bonuses, but also give the Seanchan +X Prestige per turn, until the improvement is pillaged or removed. The host civ pillaging or removing the improvement is a declaration of war against the Seanchan.
• Indoctrination, each city produces an additional +X Culture per turn for each civilization that has each level of Prestige influence over Seanchan.
• Consolidation, original capitals captured before <date> produce +X extra Science per turn
• Disbelief in Shadow, Bubbles of Evil cannot occur in Seanchan territory and Shadowspawn cannot spawn there.
• Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.

UUs:

• Deathwatch Guards: Receives Elite Formation promotion for free. Gets a 10% combat bonus against other units with the Elite Formation promotion. (kidshowbusiness)
• Exotics: Since you seemed okay with Andor having more than two uniques, I can only assume that there's room for all of these for the Seanchan. There's grolm and lopar. Torm and Crolm. Plus the two flying types. You could probably get away with cutting the Torm and Crolm since they mostly seem to be used for scouting and the fliers kind of make that redundant. The ground types at least, should be pretty powerful, with bonuses against cavalry and perhaps that Terror promotion some elephant units have. But they should be limited somehow, only allowed to construct X number at once? (kidshowbusiness)
• Sul'dam: And how could we forget the foundation of the Empire's power? A special kind of channeling unit. Takes longer to construct/train and is more limited (ex. Sul'dam don't seem able to heal, or else no Seanchan will accept healing, which amounts to the same thing), but are somewhat more powerful in battle. Can't be more specific as I'm not sure how you're handling the whole channeling thing yet. (kidshowbusiness)
• Insectoid soldier (name?) (replaces era 5-9 melee or spear), unknown ability
• Deathwatch Guard, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health
• Gardener, late game melee, very powerful
• Exotics - kidshow mentioned them above - should we delve into specifics? such as...
• Fists of Heaven - UU Skimmer (a raken flier)
• Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
• Banner-General, Captain-General, Marshall-General, etc. - fancy warrior units, or even UU Great Captain
• Deathwatch Guard, fights better in Seanchan territory
• Torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
• S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.

UBs:

• Seanchan Patrol Station, replaces the courthouse, eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +X happiness if city has a connection to the capital. Costs Y% less production and Z% less gold maintenance than the courthouse.
• Seeker's tower (replaced courthouse), constructed instantly
• Seeker's tower (replaces Alignment building), defense against Spies (I know, mixing things a bit here)
• Seekers' Stronghold, replaces Spy1, Foreign Eyes and Ears have an X% chance of being killed every Y turns instead of only when they try to steal a technology. Foreign Diplomats have an X% chance of being killed every Z Prestige they generate in this city.
• Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.

UIs:



Right, new stuff!

Cultural Assimilation acts very mechanically similar to your first Seeker's Tower UB. I like the idea of bringing in the fact that the player needs to rename the city to get the bonus! That could be applied to a UB instead, if we wanted.

Corenne was my attempt at an "out there" ability for the Seanchan. It plays on the flavor of Seanchan sending a bunch of civilians as well as an army when they returned to the Westlands and using them to bed in their culture in a new place. It might give them access to Prestige too early as it is now though, so may need something to delay it to later in the tree. (Possibly just a simple tech requirement, somewhere around era 4/5.)

Indoctrination is a way of playing on the Seanchan's culture being very effective "defensively". So as other civs exert influence over them, the Seanchan's own culture fights back even harder. The utility of this isn't particularly broad though, since it depends on other players going for the Culture victory. Still, if calibrated correctly it could be made to always yield some culture by the latter parts of the game.

Consolidation is specifically intended to provide a Science option, and touches on the Seanchan's conquering flavor. It fairly straightforwardly rewards them for early conquests.

Disbelief in Shadow feels too narrow, but I felt like it or something like it was good to suggest.

Channeling Dogma touches on something that I'm not sure how we'll deal with for the Seanchan: Aes Sedai. The way the Tower distributes Sisters will mean the Seanchan could end up using both Aes Sedai and Sul'dam at the same time. (And presumably the Tower's Aes Sedai becoming Sul'dam or damane when given to the Seanchan is a super flavor no-no.) I think the player should be allowed to do that (since you don't have to play an Oppression Seanchan), but I think it would be cool to reward them for not using Aes Sedai somehow. And looking back at the summary, Aes Sedai are super powerful, so I figured they needed an appropriately powerful offset to make up for not using them. (Side bonus of it being a Science bonus.) I see this working where each time the Seanchan end their turn, if they have no Aes Sedai units, then it adds 1 to their "turns without Aes Sedai count", and every time they reach a multiple of X they get a tech. (Related to this ability, all civs would probably need to have the option to "refuse" when asked to pick which Ajah of Sister they want to receive, and therefore not receive a Sister - we wouldn't want a Seanchan civ intentionally suiciding their Sisters to facilitate this UA.)

Deathwatch Guard, I wrote back before you posted anything about the Seanchan, when we were brainstorming for all of the first 4 civs at once. I like your version better, so even though it's blue, if you don't like it either, then feel free to remove it.

Torm is specific exotic flavor. According to the wiki they become aggressive and lash out during battle, so I figured a "stronger as they get more damaged" ability played well into that. They're also supposed to be able to range farther than horses (hence the range boost).

On the exotics in general, I think it's good to consider them here, particularly ones that have flavor that's specific to the later parts of Seanchan military exploits that we saw in the books (like raken). We've got PC Seanchan in mind of course, which is worth considering where we use that flavor. There are enough exotics that I don't think we would run out of them for PC Seanchan no matter what we use for Seanchan.

S'redit Chargers plays on the stuff that KSB mentioned in his suggestion about exotics. They're very powerful for a UU, but a restriction based on a luxury is a serious drawback. Possibly too much of one, given how luxuries are deliberately distributed so that some civs will be more likely to have monopolies, and luxury diversity is deliberately enforced across continents, so the Seanchan may start somewhere that doesn't have any S'redit. But it is an endgame UU, so they have lots of time to find(/conquer) some.

Seekers' Stronghold is a beefed up espionage building that introduces more chances to get rid of foreign Eyes and Ears before they even try to steal your techs. It would also be a way to level up your own Eyes and Ears faster, since they would presumably level up when in the city if those foreign EaE were killed. This UB also provides a way to get rid of foreign Diplomats, which no other civ can do. (Did we ever decide on a rename for Diplomats? No need to do that now, if we haven't.)

My first thoughts for Crystal Throne originally disallowed foreign Eyes and Ears in the city, but I changed it before suggesting it here for two reasons. One is that it would make the Seanchan very good at the LB, since they could completely protect Seals in their cities with this UB (though at least it can't be spammed in all of their cities). The other is that forcing failure is much more gleefully evil to the civ who's trying to steal your techs, since they don't know for sure that that's why they failed. Allowing one instance per continent means it can be more useful, and plays into the Seanchan flavor of capturing/returning/colonizing across seas (both at the beginning of their existence and the Corenne from the books).

And that's all I've got for now! I think this is the longest post I've written in this topic that doesn't contain any quotes!



Oh, and also, I've re-exported the Editor tech tree into the DropBox folder with two changes:

• Gateway3 was incorrectly labelled Aircraft3.
• Added a functionality unlock to Treatises for the High King event.

 

[counterpoint]

Awesome, on to the Seanchan!

All right, there is a ton of content for these guys! And I'm going to go ahead and add a bunch more to what we're already considering.

But first, I'll comment on what we have.

I'd say kidshowbusiness's (ksb from here on) first UA has too many drawbacks. But I like the general flavor of the Seanchan assimilating the parts of other cultures/civs that they capture. I've suggested a change that I think captures the crux of this in a more "bonus-like" manner.

Yeah, I'd argue that his UA has too many drawbacks AND too many benefits. That's insanely powerful.

I think your change is far better, and creates an interesting strategic element for the Seanchan - decided who to conquer, when, based on when their UU's pop up. Definitely fun, though, maybe not strictly grounded in flavor. However, I also question whether it is too powerful - some civs could theoretically have 3 UUs and a UA, with all of the UU's being in the back half of the tech tree - by capturing that civ's capital in the first half of the game, the Seanchan could essentially become that civ. Given that the Seanchan will have other abilities (their own UU's), I think this goes too far. I'm not going to axe it right now, since it is interesting, but I will suggest a change below (only allowing the construction of those UU's in that captured capital (which of course means you can't puppet them if you want the bonus).

For Ever Victorious Army, does "including Unique Units" mean including the Seanchan's UUs, the UUs of the civ the city was captured from, or random UUs from civs in the game? This feels like similar flavor to the one above, and I generally like the approach.

sorry for being unclear. I definitely mean the captured civilization's UU's). I've added clarification, though it is worth mentioning that under my addition, it produces UUs from the civ that founded the city - not the civ that last held the city. So, you would thus gain access to UUs of a civ you've never been at war with. But, on the flip side, capturing a CS that was previously conquered by Andor wouldn't give you access to Andor's UU's (no UU's actually, since CSs don't have them)

I suppose it's also worth mentioning that this one is in some ways more powerful than Cultural Appropriation - it is active in *any* puppeted cities, not just the capital - but in other ways is less powerful - it can't be controlled, and probably won't spit out as many UU's as you'd like. The nice thing about it is that we can control such things (spawn rate, chance of producing a UU, etc.), while CA is more under direct player control (which is usually better, but in this case, might be too powerful, as I've said.)

This one is potentially "UB-able", as I'll try to do below.

At the Eve of Battle is so awesome. So, so awesome. I love this UA, it would be the coolest thing ever. But I have a couple of worries about it. One is it's only applicable very narrowly, and its utility may not be that great in a lot of games. It also makes the Seanchan a very strong LB civ, which isn't really what we're going for with them. (Though if we decide we're fine with them being very good at the LB, then this one feels much better.)

Yeah, I know LB isn't one of their stated VCs. I'm fine leaving this one around for now though, since it is oh-so-flavorful. Also, I love that this is an example of a wholly unbiased LB ability - them having this ability doesn't even telegraph that the LB is something they'd actively want to happen at all (since they could choose neutral). So, they wouldn't be a "strong LB civ" in the same sense as others - this doesn't provide any actually tangible benefit *within* the LB, after all.

It is truly quite narrow though. I could imagine it being one aspect of a larger UA - if the ability from the rest of the UA was quite minor.

If this eventually gets scrapped, would this be a cool benefit from a late-game wonder? Or is it too powerful?

The Conquest feels a little flat. I do like the flavor of how it works the puppeted cities into the bonus though.

yeah, agreed.

Voice of the Blood is cool - if I'm reading this right then the intention is for the bonus to move between several different (possibly random) units and buildings over time? It would make this a very unpredictable bonus, but it's quite cool. Captures the idea of everything being dominated by the whims of nobles quite well too.

Yeah, you're reading it right (I've added a few words of clarification). It would be somewhat random, but we could potentially weigh that randomness based on the kind of governor present in the city, right?

This one is also potentially UB-able.

Deathwatch Guards (ksb's version) - what's the Elite Formation promotion again? It doesn't seem to be a BNW promotion?

Elite Formation is a promotion that ksb appears to have invented, and as I recall, he placed in on a great many of his proposed UUs. Scanning the thread......:

The Companion receives the following promotions for free - Elite Formation: Any unit with Elite Formation receives a 15% combat bonus when positioned next to any other friendly unit with the Elite Formation promotion. The Companion receives this bonus immediately upon completion.

I'm going to red this one. It's an interesting bonus, certainly, but I don't feel like it fits the flavor of the Seanchan specifically enough to use here (maybe better for borderlanders or something). Also, as described it seems somewhat limiting.

Ksb's exotics suggestion provides more flavor framing than specifics. But I do like his idea of a powerful s'redit unit. I've suggested one that's more specific below, based on what he said.

agreed. red.

Ksb's sul'dam also doesn't have many specifics, mainly for the reason he mentions that we hadn't sorted how channeling would work (wow, this was a long time ago). We discussed sul'dam and damane in a bit more detail a long while back, and you've also suggested them more specifically here. We've touched on them a bit so far in the uniques section. It seems like replacing channeling units and capturing enemy female channelers is the main flavor mechanical combo that all of these revolve around, and I'm a big fan of how this will change the way the Seanchan play. I've marked ksb's as red since we only need one representation of this specific mechanic and I think your version can represent his suggestion as well.

agreed. My suggestion of sul'dam is rather bare-bones (aside from what already exists in the channeling summary)- is that fine for now, or should we flesh it out more?

Insectoid Soldier would probably be something like Insect-Helmed <unit>, where <unit> is the same or close to one of the actual non-unique unit types? Any variant like that. Not sure what to suggest they do.

Yeah, one of the problems with this one is there isn't an easy name - they'd all be lame seeming. I'm going to red this one because we have so much else going on here.

Your Deathwatch Guard suggestion is amazing. So much definitely yes, I love this UU. It's powerful but reasonable, really splashy, and makes the unit stand out a lot. I would say it should "refresh" if the unit heals all the way back up to 100% health (otherwise you're encouraged to suicide revived ones if it can only be done once per unit). (I'm assuming it doesn't just always happen even for the revived units, which would make each unit actually unkillable.) Is there a particular flavor association that this mechanic comes from?

good idea on the refresh. Added for clarity.

As far as the flavor... no, nothing specific, which kind of bums me out. I was thinking of it as a sort of counterpart to Bushido, in a sense. These guys are super dedicated, and die trying.

I guess one question we should ask, though not necessarily right now, is if there's another civ that "deserves" such a UU more (e.g. Malkier or something like that)? Doesn't mean we should axe this from the Seanchan in this phase, of course, but this is an ability that we might see pop up elsewhere on another civ in this introductory phase, if we like the ability.

Gardener is good flavor. Not sure what to suggest on these guys beyond strength. Their flavor never really connected them to the Westlands Ogier and their Stedding unfortunately.

Yeah, agreed. I think if we connected them to ogier it'd be somewhat missing the point - the Seanchan dominance is such that even the Ogier have joined their war machine.

Fists of Heaven is cool, but I worry with replacing the Skimmer unit we'll need to replace all 3, otherwise the upgrade path for such a unit would be super bizarre. If there's a way we can address this, I'd be happy to have a UU flier here.

I think the only logical answer is likely to have it be either the first or the last of the three units. I know that's weird, still, but much less weird than going Dudes-with-swords---->raken----->dudes-with-swords.

You have it colored in 'genta - are you suggesting we red this one?

Sul'dam/damane above. I think including both as "one UU" that creates the other is a good call, rather than occupying two slots with what is essentially one ability.

for sure. I imagine the sul'dam will have rudimentary fighting ability, right? Maybe the damane *won't* - perhaps really high channeling damage but absurdly low combat strength.

Banner General etc, any specific ideas about these guys? Nothing jumps out at me.

not really. I think they're only really worth keeping around if we want to do something fancy with them, like a UU LP. As a regular unit, I think we have far better option. Turning it magenta - flip it to red if you don't think it's realistic we'll do a UU G Captain or something.

I like ksb's Seanchan Patrol Station. We can generalize the numbers there so that we can balance it later, but it seems like a good general approach to the flavor.

Yeah, I think the addition is good, too.

I like the first Seeker's Tower, that very much encourages the Seanchan to kill everyone. Would this apply to puppeted cities? Does constructed instantly mean it's automatically there when the city is captured or annexed (depending on the answer to my previous question), or does it just always take 1 turn to build?

I'm very much unsure about these questions. The idea behind it is to greatly lessen, or completely remove the civil disorder time after city capture - how do you think we could best represent that?

Seeker's Tower as an Alignment building makes sense. I feel like there should be a more interesting application of that though. Not sure what to suggest specifically as a replacement yet.

Yeah. The logical thing to do would be to eliminate pressure from foreign alignments and such. But I don't see that kind of ability as really being all that applicable to the likely playstyle of the Seanchan. So I think this ability is done.

Right, new stuff!

Cultural Assimilation acts very mechanically similar to your first Seeker's Tower UB. I like the idea of bringing in the fact that the player needs to rename the city to get the bonus! That could be applied to a UB instead, if we wanted.

I think this is an interesting ability, and one that could possibly be quite powerful.

This ability absolutely makes annexation the primary thing for the Seanchan, over puppeting (puppeteering?), with the social policy cost difference being the only major remaining difference. I think now we should rehash a debate that came up a few years ago - Puppet versus Annex.

I definitely feel like flavorfully - based on the late third-age, at least - the Seanchan feel like they'd be puppeting. True, their original empire might be, and likely is, fully "annexed" (we don't know how much autonomy the regions far away from Seandar have. But their behavior in the Correne strikes me as much more puppet-like. They capture you, make you swear oaths of fealty, and let you keep your own rulers and many of your own customs.

True, their culture spreads, but that's fine, as such would likely be happening in a puppeted city in CiV too (there's no real way of measuring this). True, they conscript soldiers, but this might be something we can make a part of one of their uniques.

The main thing is that the semi-autonomy they allow Altara is a noteworthy aspect of their conquest, and actually a rather surprising and interesting one, at that.

With that in mind, I'm going to magenta this one, because I'm not sure if changing it to puppeted cities instead of annexed cities would render it pointless.

Corenne was my attempt at an "out there" ability for the Seanchan. It plays on the flavor of Seanchan sending a bunch of civilians as well as an army when they returned to the Westlands and using them to bed in their culture in a new place. It might give them access to Prestige too early as it is now though, so may need something to delay it to later in the tree. (Possibly just a simple tech requirement, somewhere around era 4/5.)

this is pretty interesting! Definitely out there, though, to be fair, many of these are kind of out there - no channelers!

I do think it's kind of too weird, though. It's not that an ability like this couldn't work. I just don't see it vibing with a Seanchan playstyle. The tactic of them running in and building mines and stuff just doesn't seem to fit with how that should all go down.

Also, this seems like it might be a more "annoying" ability than a "fun" one, *especially* for the other civs. The DoW requirement incentivizes putting a fort or some stupid improvement on a foreign resource just to screw the other civ over - the Prestige is thus not really the main goal, often.

Also, did the Seanchan bring a lot of civilians? I don't recall that being the case.

I'm going to red it.

Indoctrination is a way of playing on the Seanchan's culture being very effective "defensively". So as other civs exert influence over them, the Seanchan's own culture fights back even harder. The utility of this isn't particularly broad though, since it depends on other players going for the Culture victory. Still, if calibrated correctly it could be made to always yield some culture by the latter parts of the game.

hmmmm... quite interesting. I wonder if it doesn't directly lead to a Victory, though? Big payouts require somebody else to be really far along in culture. It's cool that this defends against that, but without providing you with any prestige, it doesn't really help you win or anything. Social policies, yes, but this is too conditional to be predictably useful for that.

I'm going to magenta this one, though I kind of want to red it. I suppose it could be modified to lead to some Prestige, that might make it viable.

Consolidation is specifically intended to provide a Science option, and touches on the Seanchan's conquering flavor. It fairly straightforwardly rewards them for early conquests.

yeah. simple, but pretty useful. a bit literal in its flavor-tie, though. Kind of like an American UA that gives you a bonus for choosing Freedom in the 18th century or something.

Disbelief in Shadow feels too narrow, but I felt like it or something like it was good to suggest.

yeah, I don't think this is strong enough to survive. That said, in some ways it might be *too* powerful. If they build on the blight during the LB, they have a huge "wall" that might seriously lower the amount of shadowspawn that spawn. Definitely suggests the creation of "junk cities" in the blight for this purpose.

I say red - it's either too lame or too awesome, depending on the game.

Channeling Dogma touches on something that I'm not sure how we'll deal with for the Seanchan: Aes Sedai. <rationale cut for character limit>

Very interesting. I think we don't *need* to reward them for not using Aes Sedai, but I think we probably *should* do so.

I agree, and mostly like this. Below, I'll also propose a cultural-version of this. Not because I don't like the science one, but because it might be nice to have a second option.

Also, yes, this would require a refusal option, which should be fine.

Deathwatch Guard, I wrote back before you posted anything about the Seanchan, when we were brainstorming for all of the first 4 civs at once. I like your version better, so even though it's blue, if you don't like it either, then feel free to remove it.

I don't think this one fits our intended 'chan playstyle. It rewards defensiveness - true, that's flavorfully good for the DWG, but not really ideal for the civ as a whole. rojo'd

Torm is specific exotic flavor. According to the wiki they become aggressive and lash out during battle, so I figured a "stronger as they get more damaged" ability played well into that. They're also supposed to be able to range farther than horses (hence the range boost).

yeah, not a bad one!

On the exotics in general, I think it's good to consider them here, particularly ones that have flavor that's specific to the later parts of Seanchan military exploits that we saw in the books (like raken). We've got PC Seanchan in mind of course, which is worth considering where we use that flavor. There are enough exotics that I don't think we would run out of them for PC Seanchan no matter what we use for Seanchan.

agreed.

S'redit Chargers plays on the stuff that KSB mentioned in his suggestion about exotics. They're very powerful for a UU, but a restriction based on a luxury is a serious drawback. Possibly too much of one, given how luxuries are deliberately distributed so that some civs will be more likely to have monopolies, and luxury diversity is deliberately enforced across continents, so the Seanchan may start somewhere that doesn't have any S'redit. But it is an endgame UU, so they have lots of time to find(/conquer) some.

yeah, I don't like that limitation. I also don't think it's needed, despite the flavor disconnect - none of the elephant units in CiV have such a requirement.

I don't know about the two abilities though - they seem like they mostly accomplish the same thing? Maybe put them together or else replace one with something quite different?

also, go Bolts!

Seekers' Stronghold is a beefed up espionage building that introduces more chances to get rid of foreign Eyes and Ears before they even try to steal your techs. It would also be a way to level up your own Eyes and Ears faster, since they would presumably level up when in the city if those foreign EaE were killed. This UB also provides a way to get rid of foreign Diplomats, which no other civ can do. (Did we ever decide on a rename for Diplomats? No need to do that now, if we haven't.)

don't think we ever named the Diplomats.

I like the diplomat-kill option. I think this makes sense as a building, though I don't think it highly likely that it'll survive.

My first thoughts for Crystal Throne originally disallowed foreign Eyes and Ears in the city, but I changed it before suggesting it here for two reasons. One is that it would make the Seanchan very good at the LB, since they could completely protect Seals in their cities with this UB (though at least it can't be spammed in all of their cities). The other is that forcing failure is much more gleefully evil to the civ who's trying to steal your techs, since they don't know for sure that that's why they failed. Allowing one instance per continent means it can be more useful, and plays into the Seanchan flavor of capturing/returning/colonizing across seas (both at the beginning of their existence and the Corenne from the books).

Hmmm.... I see the appeal of this one - just to be clear, this does NOT affect seals at all, then, right?

I think this could work, though, again, it's primarily "defensive," which might not fit the playstyle appropriately.

And that's all I've got for now! I think this is the longest post I've written in this topic that doesn't contain any quotes!

yeah, well someone hasn't written any 60,000-word framing posts, has he?

Seanchan Recap, with some new ones!

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

• Cultural Appropriation, as long as Seanchan controls the original capital of another civilization, it may build that civilization's unique units from that captured capital
• Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities will periodically produce units, including the Unique Units of the civilization that originally founded the city.
• At the Eve of Battle - choose your side in the Last Battle after all other civs have publicly declared their allegiance
• Voice of the Blood - each city with a governor will get a +X% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related building, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change after a certain number of turns
• Cultural Assimilation, Annexed cities that are renamed by the Seanchan do not produce extra unhappiness
• Corenne, the Seanchan can build improvements in foreign territory. These improvements provide the host civ normal bonuses, but also give the Seanchan +X Prestige per turn, until the improvement is pillaged or removed. The host civ pillaging or removing the improvement is a declaration of war against the Seanchan.
• Indoctrination, each city produces an additional +X Culture per turn for each civilization that has each level of Prestige influence over Seanchan.
• Consolidation, original capitals captured before <date> produce +X extra Science per turn
• Disbelief in Shadow, Bubbles of Evil cannot occur in Seanchan territory and Shadowspawn cannot spawn there.
• Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
• Insights of the Blood, puppetted and annexed cities do not increase technology costs
• Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives a free social policy every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
• Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives +X culture for every turn that they do not control any Aes Sedai, and +Y Prestige after era 6.

UUs:

• Deathwatch Guards: Receives Elite Formation promotion for free. Gets a 10% combat bonus against other units with the Elite Formation promotion. (kidshowbusiness)
• Exotics: Since you seemed okay with Andor having more than two uniques, I can only assume that there's room for all of these for the Seanchan. There's grolm and lopar. Torm and Crolm. Plus the two flying types. You could probably get away with cutting the Torm and Crolm since they mostly seem to be used for scouting and the fliers kind of make that redundant. The ground types at least, should be pretty powerful, with bonuses against cavalry and perhaps that Terror promotion some elephant units have. But they should be limited somehow, only allowed to construct X number at once? (kidshowbusiness)
• Insectoid soldier (name?) (replaces era 5-9 melee or spear), unknown ability
• Deathwatch Guard, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health. The ability becomes available again once the unit has returned to full health.
• Gardener, late game melee, very powerful
• Fists of Heaven - UU Skimmer (a raken flier)
• Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
• Banner-General, Captain-General, Marshall-General, etc. - fancy warrior units, or even UU Great Captain
• Deathwatch Guard, fights better in Seanchan territory
• Torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
• S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.
• Morat'grolm - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, mounted units have an X% chance of "wasting" their turn while within Y hexes of the unit.

UBs:

• Seanchan Patrol Station, replaces the courthouse, eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +X happiness if city has a connection to the capital. Costs Y% less production and Z% less gold maintenance than the courthouse.
• Seeker's tower (replaced courthouse), constructed instantly
• Seeker's tower (replaces Alignment building), defense against Spies (I know, mixing things a bit here)
• Seekers' Stronghold, replaces Spy1, Foreign Eyes and Ears have an X% chance of being killed every Y turns instead of only when they try to steal a technology. Foreign Diplomats have an X% chance of being killed every Z Prestige they generate in this city.
• Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.
• Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, +X culture, enables the production of the Unique Uniques of the civilization who founded the city.
• Seeker's Tower, replaces the courthouse, +X Faith, causes puppeted cities to periodically produce units, including the Unique Uniques of the civilization who first founded the city.

UIs:

Insights of the Blood (likely a better flavor trajectory out there) is self-explanatory, though it could also be puppet only (or annex only, of course)

The two Marath'damane ones are cultural spin-offs of your channeling dogma one. The first is quite powerful, so X would need to be a pretty high number of turns (thus, it is very strict in its demand to not use Aes Sedai). Also, that one notably doesn't directly help a Cultural VC - well, it does, but it helps all equally. The second is more straightforward and culture VC tied. The value would perhaps need to be scaled by era.

The Grolm unit (which could also be a part of the PC-S) is based on the fact that these guys are supposed to be fast and great against cavalry - they spook the horses (thus they're also a spear rather than mounted). Also considered making them resistant to melee, and possibly susceptible to range (supposedly arrows-to-the-eye are the main way to kill them)

Tower of the Blood is simply a UB version of the Cultural Appropriation UA. The +X Culture (likely very small) was added to make it so it wasn't totally useless in puppeted cities or cities who's UUs are in past eras. Notable in that this one encourages annexing.

Seeker's tower is a UB version of Ever Victorious Army. The +Faith was added to fit the flavor and to make it worth building in annexed cities.

That's what I got. Longest post in a while!

Oh, and also, I've re-exported the Editor tech tree into the DropBox folder with two changes:

• Gateway3 was incorrectly labelled Aircraft3.
• Added a functionality unlock to Treatises for the High King event.

cool. I went back and forth about updating the excel and the tech summary. I ultimately decided not to, as this isn't really an "unlock" like the other things on the tree, but a "trigger," much like the start of the LB and the birth of the dragon and other such things (none of which are on the tree in the summary/excel)

 

[S3rgeus]

I'm going to be away this weekend, back on Sunday evening, so my next post will probably be on Monday!

Yeah, I'd argue that his UA has too many drawbacks AND too many benefits. That's insanely powerful.

I think your change is far better, and creates an interesting strategic element for the Seanchan - decided who to conquer, when, based on when their UU's pop up. Definitely fun, though, maybe not strictly grounded in flavor. However, I also question whether it is too powerful - some civs could theoretically have 3 UUs and a UA, with all of the UU's being in the back half of the tech tree - by capturing that civ's capital in the first half of the game, the Seanchan could essentially become that civ. Given that the Seanchan will have other abilities (their own UU's), I think this goes too far. I'm not going to axe it right now, since it is interesting, but I will suggest a change below (only allowing the construction of those UU's in that captured capital (which of course means you can't puppet them if you want the bonus).

I think the flavor of the Seanchan "stealing" uniques from other civs is grounded well in the books. They use the local folk in their armies after they've established a foothold in the Westlands, so I think this nods to that.

However, regarding this specific UA, I prefer your UB approach to capturing this flavor, so I'm going to mark it red.

sorry for being unclear. I definitely mean the captured civilization's UU's). I've added clarification, though it is worth mentioning that under my addition, it produces UUs from the civ that founded the city - not the civ that last held the city. So, you would thus gain access to UUs of a civ you've never been at war with. But, on the flip side, capturing a CS that was previously conquered by Andor wouldn't give you access to Andor's UU's (no UU's actually, since CSs don't have them)

I suppose it's also worth mentioning that this one is in some ways more powerful than Cultural Appropriation - it is active in *any* puppeted cities, not just the capital - but in other ways is less powerful - it can't be controlled, and probably won't spit out as many UU's as you'd like. The nice thing about it is that we can control such things (spawn rate, chance of producing a UU, etc.), while CA is more under direct player control (which is usually better, but in this case, might be too powerful, as I've said.)

This one is potentially "UB-able", as I'll try to do below.

Agreed, this one has the potential to be stronger than Cultural Appropriation, though since they're spawned we can control it, as you say. I think that makes it much less interesting though. Like Cultural Appropriation, I prefer the UB approach, so I'll red this one.

Yeah, I know LB isn't one of their stated VCs. I'm fine leaving this one around for now though, since it is oh-so-flavorful. Also, I love that this is an example of a wholly unbiased LB ability - them having this ability doesn't even telegraph that the LB is something they'd actively want to happen at all (since they could choose neutral). So, they wouldn't be a "strong LB civ" in the same sense as others - this doesn't provide any actually tangible benefit *within* the LB, after all.

It is truly quite narrow though. I could imagine it being one aspect of a larger UA - if the ability from the rest of the UA was quite minor.

I totally agree that this is an unbiased LB ability - even Neutral is an option, as you've said. But I do think it gives them a huge advantage during the LB, because they'll never be on the "wrong" side. I'd say quite a few games will end up with imbalanced sides and that's likely to tip the chances of victory strongly in the favor of the more numerous players, so the Seanchan will just pick whichever side works better for them.

You're right that it doesn't give them actual bonuses during the LB, but I think the positioning itself is a huge LB bonus. I do agree that it should be part of a larger UA though, if we do it.

If this eventually gets scrapped, would this be a cool benefit from a late-game wonder? Or is it too powerful?

Mmm, that would be a tasty wonder. Yes, I'd say let's keep that in mind. In fact, I'm sort of tempted to say I prefer the wonder idea to making it a Seanchan unique. But it is something the Seanchan very obviously did in the books, so let's keep it running here.

Yeah, you're reading it right (I've added a few words of clarification). It would be somewhat random, but we could potentially weigh that randomness based on the kind of governor present in the city, right?

This one is also potentially UB-able.

Yep, we could do that weighting based on Governor type. I've made a quick edit to this one to "parameterize" the schedule that the bonus changes.

Elite Formation is a promotion that ksb appears to have invented, and as I recall, he placed in on a great many of his proposed UUs. Scanning the thread......:



I'm going to red this one. It's an interesting bonus, certainly, but I don't feel like it fits the flavor of the Seanchan specifically enough to use here (maybe better for borderlanders or something). Also, as described it seems somewhat limiting.

Agreed.

agreed. My suggestion of sul'dam is rather bare-bones (aside from what already exists in the channeling summary)- is that fine for now, or should we flesh it out more?

I think it's worth fleshing it out a bit more, like we did with the Wise Ones. We have an idea about how it could work, but it will help to find the tweak points, where we have options to adjust them for balance later.

So, as a first pass at this, I've taken a look back through the topic a bit about where we discussed damane before. (Pro-tip, we say the word damane a lot.)

I think a good way to do this would be something like:

Sul'dam replaces the Wilder and upgrades like other channelers. Seanchan can't build the Kinswoman, but the Sul'dam gets stronger on the tech that unlocks Kin (High Chant) in addition to the other channeler upgrade points (so they won't be significantly worse off than we intend them to be, power-wise, when everyone else gets better channelers).

Sul'dam are melee attackers with low combat strength (compared to the units of the current era, as they upgrade). They have an X% (quite large) combat strength bonus against female channelers.

Female channelers killed by Sul'dam (have a Y% chance?) of becoming a damane linked to that Sul'dam.

Damane cannot attack (and take Z damage per turn? or instead?) when more than W hexes away from their linked Sul'dam.

Damane are a ranged female channeling units (upgrade with all the others) that have high ranged combat strength and low melee combat strength.

And if we're looking for a quick byline that describes the Sul'dam functionality to players, then something like: "Is a melee unit, unlike the Wilder it replaces, and captures enemy female channelers it kills as damane." (I mainly mention this because the above is a decent chunk of text that may at first glance make them seem overcomplicated, but the crux of it that we need to communicate to players is quite simple.)

A couple of other addendums:

We suggested a different system for moving sul'dam and damane to force them to always be close to each other before, but decided that would be too much pain both for us to implement and the player to use. So we generally preferred the idea of disadvantaging damane that were "out of range" of their sul'dam.

I feel like turning any Aes Sedai into a damane (no matter who controls the Aes Sedai unit) should come with a Tower influence penalty. I think if someone wants to play a Tower-friendly Seanchan (which should totally be possible), they shouldn't be able to run around capturing Aes Sedai left and right at the same time.

I don't think we particularly want to go for sul'dam capturing male channelers as damane, since there was only one Domination Band in the books, and no one was ever made into a permanent slave with it.

There are several areas where this can be tweaked for balance, which is quite nice. (Combat strength of both units. How that combat strength changes at the channeler upgrade techs. Range of sul'dam to damane link. Chance of capturing a killed female channeler. Extent, if any, of Tower influence bonus when capturing Aes Sedai. Extent of sul'dam combat bonus against female channelers.)

Yeah, one of the problems with this one is there isn't an easy name - they'd all be lame seeming. I'm going to red this one because we have so much else going on here.

Agreed, plenty of good options and we can come back to this one if we feel we need it.

good idea on the refresh. Added for clarity.

As far as the flavor... no, nothing specific, which kind of bums me out. I was thinking of it as a sort of counterpart to Bushido, in a sense. These guys are super dedicated, and die trying.

I guess one question we should ask, though not necessarily right now, is if there's another civ that "deserves" such a UU more (e.g. Malkier or something like that)? Doesn't mean we should axe this from the Seanchan in this phase, of course, but this is an ability that we might see pop up elsewhere on another civ in this introductory phase, if we like the ability.

Coolio, that sounds good to me. Agreed that it's something we can consider for other civs if it fits better elsewhere.

I think the only logical answer is likely to have it be either the first or the last of the three units. I know that's weird, still, but much less weird than going Dudes-with-swords---->raken----->dudes-with-swords.

You have it colored in 'genta - are you suggesting we red this one?

Yeah, I didn't go straight to red because I like the general idea of it, but I don't see us being able to do it well within the structure of the non-unique units. I think having the raken at the beginning or end of the Gateway unit upgrade path would be just as weird.

At the beginning, you've got all this cool Seanchan flavor that then totally goes away in the endgame. At the end, it's completely bizarre that raken are an upgrade on Gateways, since Gateways would be faster and more strategically powerful. In the middle, I agree that it just looks like we kind of missed something.

The beginning is probably the least flavor weirdness, but none of them strike me as desirable.

For that reason, I've marked it red.

not really. I think they're only really worth keeping around if we want to do something fancy with them, like a UU LP. As a regular unit, I think we have far better option. Turning it magenta - flip it to red if you don't think it's realistic we'll do a UU G Captain or something.

I think we may come up with one, and keep this flavor in mind if we do, but until then let's remove this entry.

I'm very much unsure about these questions. The idea behind it is to greatly lessen, or completely remove the civil disorder time after city capture - how do you think we could best represent that?

I think building it instantly when the city is puppeted will be too powerful. One of the main reasons to annex cities if you're a warmonger is to be able to build courthouses and offset the boosted unhappiness occupied folk generate, at the cost of the Policy cost increase. If the Seanchan didn't have to do that then they'd be able to manage Happiness from war way too easily.

Building instantly when the city is annexed at least forces the Seanchan to take the Policy hit to offset the Happiness. I think either being built instantly upon annexation or being produceable in a single turn is something we can tweak for balance.

We could also reduce the duration of Resistance, but that would hinge on being able to build the building very instantly (limits the amount we can make it cost actual hammers) otherwise Resistance will always end before it's built.

I think this is an interesting ability, and one that could possibly be quite powerful.

This ability absolutely makes annexation the primary thing for the Seanchan, over puppeting (puppeteering?), with the social policy cost difference being the only major remaining difference. I think now we should rehash a debate that came up a few years ago - Puppet versus Annex.

I definitely feel like flavorfully - based on the late third-age, at least - the Seanchan feel like they'd be puppeting. True, their original empire might be, and likely is, fully "annexed" (we don't know how much autonomy the regions far away from Seandar have. But their behavior in the Correne strikes me as much more puppet-like. They capture you, make you swear oaths of fealty, and let you keep your own rulers and many of your own customs.

True, their culture spreads, but that's fine, as such would likely be happening in a puppeted city in CiV too (there's no real way of measuring this). True, they conscript soldiers, but this might be something we can make a part of one of their uniques.

The main thing is that the semi-autonomy they allow Altara is a noteworthy aspect of their conquest, and actually a rather surprising and interesting one, at that.

With that in mind, I'm going to magenta this one, because I'm not sure if changing it to puppeted cities instead of annexed cities would render it pointless.

I do agree with what you're saying from a flavor perspective, Beslan is a prime example of a "puppet" ruler who doesn't actually have any power and is just forced to do what the Seanchan say, even though it looks like "he's in charge".

However, I think that mechanically a lot of the bonuses that operate on puppeted cities (like producing units over time) are quite uninteresting for the player. Venice's UA is a great puppet-related UA because it gives the player greater control over puppeted cities. Otherwise the UA is just a thing that "happens" rather than that the player "uses".

I think there are versions of uniques that work well with puppets, but I think the mechanics of this one won't. The courthouse replacement UB that can be constructed instantly achieves the same mechanical objective as this UA though, and I think does it better.

Though the risk here is that this ability is suddenly becoming scarce, since I'm suggesting we remove it from UAs and go with the UB, but I actually prefer the Tower of Blood UB, and they can't both replace the Courthouse!

this is pretty interesting! Definitely out there, though, to be fair, many of these are kind of out there - no channelers!

I do think it's kind of too weird, though. It's not that an ability like this couldn't work. I just don't see it vibing with a Seanchan playstyle. The tactic of them running in and building mines and stuff just doesn't seem to fit with how that should all go down.

Also, this seems like it might be a more "annoying" ability than a "fun" one, *especially* for the other civs. The DoW requirement incentivizes putting a fort or some stupid improvement on a foreign resource just to screw the other civ over - the Prestige is thus not really the main goal, often.

Also, did the Seanchan bring a lot of civilians? I don't recall that being the case.

I'm going to red it.

Yeah, looking at this ability from the other player's perspective it would be a massive pain in the face.

Flavor wise, yeah, it came up a few times in the books that the Seanchan had sent farmers and families and such on the Corenne to colonize the new land as they captured it, to help cement their place there. I remember thinking it was a very sinister way of taking over!

hmmmm... quite interesting. I wonder if it doesn't directly lead to a Victory, though? Big payouts require somebody else to be really far along in culture. It's cool that this defends against that, but without providing you with any prestige, it doesn't really help you win or anything. Social policies, yes, but this is too conditional to be predictably useful for that.

I'm going to magenta this one, though I kind of want to red it. I suppose it could be modified to lead to some Prestige, that might make it viable.

Yeah, its dependence on other players being good makes me think it's not a good idea.

yeah. simple, but pretty useful. a bit literal in its flavor-tie, though. Kind of like an American UA that gives you a bonus for choosing Freedom in the 18th century or something.

I don't think it's too literal, flavor-wise. My main problem with that American UA would be that it's too narrow, rather than it's too flavor-specific.

yeah, I don't think this is strong enough to survive. That said, in some ways it might be *too* powerful. If they build on the blight during the LB, they have a huge "wall" that might seriously lower the amount of shadowspawn that spawn. Definitely suggests the creation of "junk cities" in the blight for this purpose.

I say red - it's either too lame or too awesome, depending on the game.

Yeah, this is way too abusable.

Very interesting. I think we don't *need* to reward them for not using Aes Sedai, but I think we probably *should* do so.

I agree, and mostly like this. Below, I'll also propose a cultural-version of this. Not because I don't like the science one, but because it might be nice to have a second option.

Also, yes, this would require a refusal option, which should be fine.

Totally, I think we should somehow because otherwise Seanchan players who play like the actual Seanchan will be suffering a significant disadvantage, which is something I think we should avoid on any civ in general.

yeah, I don't like that limitation. I also don't think it's needed, despite the flavor disconnect - none of the elephant units in CiV have such a requirement.

I don't know about the two abilities though - they seem like they mostly accomplish the same thing? Maybe put them together or else replace one with something quite different?

I don't think BNW not doing it means it's a bad idea, it's just something they chose not to do.

I don't think the two abilities are redundant. I see two factors involved, the first is if they're going to require a specific luxury, then they need to be quite powerful since there will be very few. The boosted combat strength makes them formidable fighters. And the enemy combat penalty aura means that if you throw them into the middle of a big fight then they can give you an advantage in all of the fights nearby. This means that a small number of them can have a bigger effect than one unit usually would. It's more of a double-whammy than unnecessary overlap.

I like the idea of having a UU that's quite different in that it's very rare but immediately changes the battlefield around it.

also, go Bolts!

Googling "elephant Bolts" didn't get me anywhere. And "Bolts sports team" got me a very long list of different teams.

don't think we ever named the Diplomats.

That's fine, we can do that later then!

I like the diplomat-kill option. I think this makes sense as a building, though I don't think it highly likely that it'll survive.

Agreed, it's a bit defensive, and the AI never really use diplomats correctly. Of course, we can fix that, but still.

Hmmm.... I see the appeal of this one - just to be clear, this does NOT affect seals at all, then, right?

I think this could work, though, again, it's primarily "defensive," which might not fit the playstyle appropriately.

Yeah, only stealing techs is affected. Given the restriction to one city per continent, we could probably merge this one with Seekers' Stronghold's capacity to kill Diplomats, if we think that's an interesting thing to keep. (And as a palace replacement, it will always be there where the Diplomats are!)

yeah, well someone hasn't written any 60,000-word framing posts, has he?

Oh, good point, one of the framing posts I did was probably longer!

Insights of the Blood (likely a better flavor trajectory out there) is self-explanatory, though it could also be puppet only (or annex only, of course)

This one is interesting. I wondered how significant this would be, but after some searching, it seems it would be a pretty big deal. And it would encourage a very conquer-happy, high-tech Seanchan.

The two Marath'damane ones are cultural spin-offs of your channeling dogma one. The first is quite powerful, so X would need to be a pretty high number of turns (thus, it is very strict in its demand to not use Aes Sedai). Also, that one notably doesn't directly help a Cultural VC - well, it does, but it helps all equally. The second is more straightforward and culture VC tied. The value would perhaps need to be scaled by era.

I think I prefer the Policy one, because it gives the players something more tangible and immediate, which I think more people will take to as compensation for not having Aes Sedai.

Poland's UA provides us a good ballpark for the value of X. They get a free policy every era, so we'd want to calibrate X to be, on average, more frequent than once per era. (More frequent since this UA has a disadvantaging requirement - no Aes Sedai.)

I'd be inclined to hang onto just the policy one.

The Grolm unit (which could also be a part of the PC-S) is based on the fact that these guys are supposed to be fast and great against cavalry - they spook the horses (thus they're also a spear rather than mounted). Also considered making them resistant to melee, and possibly susceptible to range (supposedly arrows-to-the-eye are the main way to kill them)

I think the % chance of making enemy mounted units do nothing will be weirdly random and punishing for other players. I'd be more inclined to give them a significant combat bonus against mounted units, or give them an "aura" that affects the strength of nearby mounted units.

Tower of the Blood is simply a UB version of the Cultural Appropriation UA. The +X Culture (likely very small) was added to make it so it wasn't totally useless in puppeted cities or cities who's UUs are in past eras. Notable in that this one encourages annexing.

I think even without the Culture, as long as we keep the Courthouse's Happiness bonus, then the ability to produce other civs' UUs will make this UB quite strong and fun to play. As mentioned above, I think this is my preferred way of capturing this particular "steal others' uniques" mechanic.

Seeker's tower is a UB version of Ever Victorious Army. The +Faith was added to fit the flavor and to make it worth building in annexed cities.

There needs to be some mechanic that allows them to build this, because they can't build the building in a puppeted city, which is where its effect works. (They could rely on the puppet AI choosing to build it, but that would be the most frustrating thing in the universe.) Otherwise if it affects other cities it could be some kind of national building?

I've marked it as magenta until we sort out how it's intended to work!

That's what I got. Longest post in a while!

Definitely! I've held off on proposing new stuff until we pare this down a bit more. (I'll probably have more in my next post.)

cool. I went back and forth about updating the excel and the tech summary. I ultimately decided not to, as this isn't really an "unlock" like the other things on the tree, but a "trigger," much like the start of the LB and the birth of the dragon and other such things (none of which are on the tree in the summary/excel)

I would say it's an unlock like the others. I think it would be best to keep the three in sync. The main difference I see for the Dragon and the start of the LB is that they're not attached to specific techs, but instead world eras. This is more like the WC being on Printing Press in BNW, which is listed there.



Recap!

Seanchan (Era 4-9, Wide, Dom/Sci/Cul, no bias)

UAs:

• Cultural Appropriation, as long as Seanchan controls the original capital of another civilization, it may build that civilization's unique units from that captured capital
• Ever Victorious Army, puppeted cities will periodically produce units, including the Unique Units of the civilization that originally founded the city.
• At the Eve of Battle - choose your side in the Last Battle after all other civs have publicly declared their allegiance
• Voice of the Blood - each city with a governor will get a +X% bonus towards the creation of some unit or military-related building, the unit/building receiving the bonus will change every Y turns
• Cultural Assimilation, Annexed cities that are renamed by the Seanchan do not produce extra unhappiness
• Indoctrination, each city produces an additional +X Culture per turn for each civilization that has each level of Prestige influence over Seanchan.
• Consolidation, original capitals captured before <date> produce +X extra Science per turn
• Channeling Dogma, Seanchan receives a free technology every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
• Insights of the Blood, puppetted and annexed cities do not increase technology costs
• Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives a free social policy every X turns that they do not control any Aes Sedai.
• Hatred of Marath'damane, Seanchan receives +X culture for every turn that they do not control any Aes Sedai, and +Y Prestige after era 6.

UUs:

• Deathwatch Guard, late game melee, when killed, is brought back instantly with 20% health. The ability becomes available again once the unit has returned to full health.
• Gardener, late game melee, very powerful
• Fists of Heaven - UU Skimmer (a raken flier)
• Suldam/Damane - replace all female channelers. Suldam converts enemy channelers into Damane.
• Banner-General, Captain-General, Marshall-General, etc. - fancy warrior units, or even UU Great Captain
• Deathwatch Guard, fights better in Seanchan territory
• Torm, replaces Mounted 3/4, has more movement but lower combat strength. Gains bonus combat strength while damaged (proportional to damage).
• S'redit Chargers, replaces mounted 6/7, greatly increased combat strength enemy land units have -X% combat strength while within Y hexes. Limited to the number of S'redit resources controlled by the Seanchan.
• Morat'grolm - replaces Polearm 3/4, additional movement, mounted units have an X% chance of "wasting" their turn -X% combat strength while within Y hexes of the unit.

UBs:

• Seanchan Patrol Station, replaces the courthouse, eliminates extra unhappiness from occupied cities. +X happiness if city has a connection to the capital. Costs Y% less production and Z% less gold maintenance than the courthouse.
• Seeker's tower (replaced courthouse), constructed instantly
• Seekers' Stronghold, replaces Spy1, Foreign Eyes and Ears have an X% chance of being killed every Y turns instead of only when they try to steal a technology. Foreign Diplomats have an X% chance of being killed every Z Prestige they generate in this city.
• Crystal Throne, replaces the Palace. Foreign spies always fail to steal technology in this city. Foreign units have -X% combat strength when within Y hexes of his city. One can be built per continent.
• Tower of the Blood, replaces the courthouse, +X culture, enables the production of the Unique Uniques of the civilization who founded the city.
• Seeker's Tower, replaces the courthouse, +X Faith, causes puppeted cities to periodically produce units, including the Unique Uniques of the civilization who first founded the city.

UIs: