S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

[counterpoint]

And just as I was going to sleep yesterday, I realized how we can get the flavor back to where it should be with this! Change proposed below. (Not everything that's highlighted in green is new, but I had to rephrase enough of it that it was easier to highlight the whole thing.)

I quite like this change because it's exactly the same functionality as last time, mechanically, but gives the player a much clearer idea of the flavor.

yeah, not perfect, but much better, for sure!

I love this achievement, but unfortunately our mechanics don't really work that way. Once an Accepted becomes a Sister then we lose track of her, I believe. And we don't want to restrict the Amyrlin elections based on the players' use of Novices and the randomness that decided which Ajahs they joined. I figure flavor wise there are a ton more Sisters than the ones represented by our mechanics, so there's no reliable way to connect them to the Novices stuff.

darn....

But Sisters don't cost Spark. This discourages the use of Wilders, Kin, Male Channelers, and Asha'men, which I think all make a lot of sense for Fear. Tear would be free to use Aes Sedai like any other civ. I think that dichotomy meshes well with their flavor of Authority-but-distrustful.

Do we have other mechanics that manifest the Fear/Acceptance choice? It would be good to have more variety when designing mechanics to go with that flavor.

OHHH, right, Sisters don't cause Spark. Right, that's why Lib grants you Spark, but Auth grants you quota, but not spark.

In any case, yeah, that makes sense.

The other thing we have noted as relying on Fear/Acceptance is False Dragon spawn rate. I'm not sure what else we'd use. I'm sure something else will pop up, when we do the policies. I'd say it's likely that there will be stuff that provides bonuses associated with your channeler use, or how you deal with MCs, and stuff, without necessarily providing or removing spark.

Yeah, other people having Diplomats in Tear (the city) doesn't help Tear without some other mechanic that gives them advantage for it.

I agree that Housed in Stone might not be strong enough alone, but I do like how it solves the Culture/Prestige game timing issue (can't let players have Prestige too early) with the presence of Diplomats, rather than needing a tech gate to do it.

what would you say to combining some of the functionality of Housed in the Stone into the other UAs, like, say, Hard as Stone?[/quote]

I don't think a new Specialist type needs to be a big deal here. I think it makes the building more interesting, even for players who autopilot their Specialists (I do this too). All of the existing Specialists explicitly contribute toward a certain LP type, so if we use a Builder or something we would be contributing to the Ogier Stonemason, rather than the Great Captain (we could have it do both, but that's quite strong and a bit weird). We could make that Builder Specialist not produce Ogier Stonemason points, but by that point we might as well make the new Specialist type.

The combo of a Specialist that produces GCs is that it's a Tall-favoring mechanic that encourages Domination, which plays well into Tear's flavor.

and

Yeah, that's good flavor for this Specialist. Would we be fine with that co-existing with a Defender UU, since Defenders were both guardsmen and military units in the canon?

In fact, I prefer your version of this, so I'll propose axing mine.

and

I don't think we'll have a problem with contributing to GCs from a city, rather than EXP. We discussed this a long time ago and found some other sources in BNW that already do this.

ok, I think I'm ok with it. I think the specialist is still a little weird, but it's not necessarily terrible.

Funny, I was going to suggest this one for a set! I think it's a good strong, Tall encouraging UA that sets Tear's focus quite well. The roundabout-ness of the non-channeler bonus is also something that I particularly like about it. It, like the other UA discussed above, lets Tear use Aes Sedai as normal, but discourages them from producing their own channeler units, which fits very well with the type of gameplay encouraged by the Fear tree choice. It also doesn't make it a huge part of the mechanics, it just subtly pushes players away from training channelers, which is more in line with Tear's flavor of distrust, but not outright opposition.

yeah, but I don't think we can pretend that the "feel" of this is "discourages building channelers." The "feel" of this is most definitely "profound bonus to building normal ol' units." It's true that, mechanically this discourages building channelers, but only in the sense that Game of Thrones being on TV discourages you from watching the local news (discounting DVR and netflix, etc.). The operative thing here is the awesomeness of GoT, not the relative lameness of local news. If my human UA was "can watch Game of Thrones a month before everybody else," nobody would come away feeling like I was the "anti-news guy".

In the same way, I don't feel like this really captures that flavor so well. It props up flavor that suggest that Tear is a big unit-producing machine. This isn't terribly out of line with Tear, but it's certainly not particularly *in*line with Tear either.

I've proposed a sort of composite that removes this aspect below, and replaces it with a more clear flavor-link, I think.

I like this version, it gives them a lot of flexibility and also provides us with something we can easily tweak for balance. It's a bit of an arbitrary cap, but still works. I don't think we want to force them to go through all of the LP types they don't care about.

I've magenta'd one part you marked as Red "of the type of their choice". I think we still need that phrasing otherwise it's unclear that Tear does get to pick (as opposed to random or some other method), it's just the next sentence places a restriction on that choice.

agreed

I think this is a good unit, but it accomplishes a similar goal to the Reaver Sail, which I now think is much better, so I'd go ahead with removing the Coastal Defender.

cheers

I love it. This is awesome - refreshing their movement when they pillage a trade route should make using this unit a ton of fun, since it requires short term strategic thinking but without any of the busywork from before.

I've magenta'd adding the +X Movement and removal of the movement bonus when following trade routes. I think the latter was really interesting, and since the movement bonus doesn't overlap with the trade routes the unit can pillage, I don't think it causes a problem. Was there another reason you suggested swapping this out?

eh, I figured the +X movement was simpler, and the following thing was weirder. If you think the following thing works, let's keep it, since it's certainly more unique.

I think we should axe one, because they're achieving very similar goals both in the UB slot. I'm totally not sure which to remove though. I like HotS because it's a National Wonder and so plays well with Tall. I also really like the custom theming bonus in Great Holding.

We could go with your merge suggestion and combine those two elements into one UB? Is there another particular part of them you think is important?

Yeah, I try to combine them below. I think the most important element of HotS is the National Wonderness, while the GHolding has a nice effect with the custom theming bonus. Let me know how you like the combination.

I prefer the latter approach, though I don't think I would pick either over our existing UB candidates. I do like that the "out of range" is implicitly Tall-favoring without making that too obvious, which is quite nice. The only difficulty here is we'd need to use "city ownership" of hexes (to deal with overlapping cities and define a maximum bound for the ability to take effect), which isn't exposed to players as it is. Are we ok with that?

I would be ok with that change, but if the UB is a clear loser, it's not worth it. I do think the fisherman flavor of things is kind of cool for Tear, though. I try the modification below, but we can certainly cut it.

Some more removals to get us down closer to making some sets.

With the UA competition as it is, I've marked Port of Storms as red since we can use the Guarded Trader UU to fulfill that part of the Tairen flavor if we want.

I actually think we might want to keep this one around, because, while the UA competition is steep, the UB competition is far steeper, IMO. I know you're suggesting a UU replace it, not a UB, but the UU is only sort of a UU, in that its a trade unit. In other words, there's lots of competition for the 3 slots other than the UA.

Despite Defenders being a lock, I've suggested removing Defenders (spy). I think Defenders (wonderful) is a much stronger candidate, and (spy) encourages a a playstyle that gives the player less agency (sit back with the unit garrisoned in your cities). With this removal we'd either need to take Defenders (wonderful) or use the Defender flavor on the Specialist in Defender's Fortress (or both). Or come up with a new UU. But I'm quite happy with Defenders (wonderful) as the frontrunner for that flavor.

agreed


Recap!

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

UAs:

• Hard as Stone (non-channeling), Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts (hidden artifacts), Tairen Historians have the "Hide Relic" mission, which causes them to be expended when used on Sites of Power in Tairen territory and instantly creates a Portal Stone. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Fear of Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, Tear can elect to instead receive a Legendary Person of the type of their choice. Tear may not select the same Legendary Person more than X times in the game.
  [*]Housed in the Stone, Every foreign embassy in the Tairen capital provides +X Culture in the capital. Every foreign diplomat in the capital generates +Y Prestige in the capital.
• Hard as Stone (embassies), Tear's capital city has an additional X HP (high, like 50), and all Tairen cities receive +Y combat strength for every one unused Spark. Every foreign embassy in the Tairen capital provides +Z culture (low) in the capital, and every foreign diplomat generates +W Prestige in the capital.

UUs:

• Defenders (wonderful), replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission in addition to the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Tear can found only X Developed Cities in a single game.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. +X Movement. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route. +Y movement when following a non-enemy trade route. Has its full Movement restored when pillaging a sea trade route or killing a Lawless or Dragonsworn naval unit.

UBs:

• Heart of the Stone, replaces XP National Wonder, receives one Legendary Craft or Relic Slot. If the slot is filled, the artifact generates (instead of culture and prestige) +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +Y (lower) Faith.
• Great Holding (building), replaces Culture 4, receives an extra Legendary Craft and Relic slot. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Relics from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.
• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each luxury resource worked by this city also produces a derived luxury resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.
• Taxation Office, replaces Coastal2, international sea trade routes established by other civilizations that pass within X hexes of this city contribute Y% of their value to Tear in addition to what they give to the civilizations at either end of the route.
• Artifact Hoard, replaces Culture5, provides a number of Culture Specialist slots equal to Tear's unused Spark.[/COLOR]
• Defender's Fortress, replaces Defense3/4, provides city strength. Has a Specialist slot for a new Specialist type, the Defender, that provides X Happiness, and one additional city attack per turn. The Defender provides points towards generating Great Captains.
• Fishmonger's Wharf, replaces Food (Coastal), in addition to its normal benefits, produces +X Gold for each sea resource owned by this city but outside of the city radius. each sea bonus resource produces +X Gold (low) when worked, and each sea luxury resource produces +Y Culture (low) when worked.
• Great Holding (wonder), replaces Culture National Wonder, +50% culture in the city (original effect). Has three slots for Legendary Crafts (original) or Relics. In addition to normal yields, Legendary Works housed within the Great Holding produce +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +X Faith. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Relics from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.

UIs:

• Lords' Shipyard, can be constructed only on coastal flatland. Produces an amount of Production equal to the Population of the city working this tile.

UGs:

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

The new Hard as Stone is trying to be a catch-all - buff combat capital that directly encourages low channeler use, while doing the embassy thing. I could understand altering either the embassy or the diplomats to provide Gold instead of the culture-related yields, depending on what other Uniques we choose. Might all be too massive. The big flaw here is that it only is worth not using channelers during wartime - maybe we can shift the bonus so it's more worth it during peacetime as well.

rebranded Artifacts as Relics, which they are now called

Great Holding (Wonder) tries to merge the two cultureish buildings. I mostly like it. It's noteworthy in that it's not necessarily pro culture victory, in that it replaces the prestige/culture theming bonus with gold faith. I'm mostly ok with this.

The new Fishmonger's Wharf attempts to adapt the other method.

So, as far as sets... hmmm. Tough, especially given all the UB stuff. I'm definitely going for something that reinforces tallness, includes the Defender, and has something to do with Trade. Channeling is somewhat less important. strong defense is nice too, but both that and channeling are something I'm hoping we don't double dip into with too many uniques. I think, for example, it would be overkill to go with one of the Hard as Stones AND the Defender (wonderful), perhaps. (could create another Defender UU though)

OK, actually, I'm out of time for tonight! no sets for you!

EDIT

OK, so apparently I may have posted late enough yesterday that you didn't get a chance to respond, so, here are some sets!

UA: Hard as Stone (embassies)
UU: Defenders
UU: Reaver Sail
UB: Great Holding (Wonder)

What I don't love about this is that it's kind of a defensive overload. Not terrible, but I'm not sure the bonuses from the UA stack well with the Defender UU. Nonetheless, here it is. But this one covers most of the flavor and mechanical angles

UA: Port of Storms
UU: Defenders
UB: Processing Workshop
UB: Defender's Fortress OR UU: Conscripted Peasants

This one is a bit more clearly Trade+Defense. no channeling flavor really

UA: Hard as Stone (embassies)
UU: Guarded Trader
UB: Defender's Fortress
UB: Great Holding (wonder)

This one's tough, but I tried to capture all the flavor elements in some capacity.

UA: Fear of Channeling
UU: Defender
UB: Processing Workshop OR Taxation Office
UB: Great Holding (wonder) OR UU: Reaver Sail

Not much to say about this one. Seems a little scatter-shot

So, the moral of the story is that sets are hard with Tear!

 

[counterpoint]

OK, so I have a little time here. I know we aren't done with Tear yet, but we're getting close, and I'm not sure how easy it'll be for me to have a big chunk of time for a full civ over the next couple days.

Please feel free to ignore this til Tear is done. But, in any case... here's Illian

The Dom/Cul thing still feels pretty fitting, I'd say. That said, it's another Tall civ, which is tricky to do with Dom. So, my angle is pretty much giving a bunch of food bonuses, which will help with Tall and also specialists/LPs for culture, but give really powerful UUs that help with Dom. Consequently, the UAs and UBs I have are rather non-combaty.

Illian (Era 5-9, Tall, Domination/Culture)

UAs:

• The Council of Nine, the effects of governors in cities are increased by X%. Illian receives all the bonuses granted by the Great Square of Tammaz wonder (stacks if Illian constructs the Wonder) (kidshowbusiness)
• Oaths of Tammaz, Completing a survey of a Mythic Site yields +X Culture. Each time the Heroes of the Horn are summoned, Illian gains Y Prestige and a Z-turn Golden Age.
• Crown, Crowd, and Council, For point of population in a city, +Y% production on military units and +Z% to Governor yields. The Capital produces +Z% food.
• Bustling Port, Citizens working ocean or coastal tiles do not consume food. Every sea trade route leaving from the Capital provides +X food in addition to its normal yields.

UUs:

• Companion (ksb), replaces Melee 3 (incongruous with civ's eras), has lower production cost and combat strength. Can be upgraded into a Hunter for the Horn once Illian completes the Great Hunt civ project and has received seven promotions. Receives +X% combat strength when adjacent to another Companion. Once the Companion receives its fourth promotion, it gains an additional +Y combat strength. (kidshowbusiness)
• Companion (shock), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +X Movement. Deals +Y% (high, like 100%) damage when attacking or being attacked by units with full health.
• Companion (splash), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, When the Companion kills a unit, all adjacent (to the killed unit) enemy units suffer X% damage.
• Companion (amphibious), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +X Movement and +Y% combat strength. Receives the Amphibious promotion for free.
• Hunter of Tammaz (combat), replaces Era 6-8 Melee or Ranged unit, Can explore Mythic Sites, X% slower than Hunters for the Horn, but without being consumed.
• Hunter of Tammaz (civilian), replaces Hunter for the Horn, fights as a Combat unit of moderate ability. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.
• City Watch, replaces Era 5-7 Melee or Polearm unit, increased combat strength. When garrisoned in a city, raises the local happiness cap by X. When adjacent to an enemy city, lowers the local happiness cap by Y (does not stack).
• Levied Warship (gold), replaces Era 5-8 ship, or Anti-Naval 1, can only be purchased with gold, and costs much less than its analogous unit.

UBs:

• Illianer Lagoon, replaces Coastal 1, +X production to coastal and ocean tiles, and +Y gold to river tiles (kidshowbusiness)
• Hall of the Assemblage (wonder), replaces Spy National Wonder, the unhappiness caused by population in this city is halved. +X% defense against Eyes and Ears in this city for every Y population
• Hall of the Assemblage (building), replaces Culture 3, +X% food production. Each luxury resource worked by this city produces +Y culture for every Z points of population in the city
• Great Square of Tammaz, replaces Culture National Wonder. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Culture and +Y Prestige in this city. The Square's Theming Bonus is doubled for 5 turns after the Horn of Valere is discovered or captured.
• Canal Lock, replaces Production (river), can be built in any city. In addition to its normal effects, provides +X% food production in the city if the city is on a river or lake.
• Guild of Bookers, replaces Gold 3, Whenever a unit is produced (not purchased) in this city, X% of its gold cost is generated.

UIs:

• Canal, built on flood plains, makes all adjacent plains, desert, and grassland tiles also flood plains. Cannot be built adjacent to another Canal.

UGs:

• Councilor, spawned from the Ambassador, Yield is Food and Gold. Upgrade 2 ability is "International trade routes leaving from this city generate +X Prestige against major civilizations and +Y Food for the home city when trading with a City-State.

on KSB's items:

The council of Nine starts off with a relatively neat and flavorful idea. The Tammaz wonder ability, though, is not a mechanic I like. Cheapens the wonder, IMO, assuming this is a wonder and not just morphed into an Illian UB. I say red, though the gov idea could be put elsewhere in this civ.

ksb's companion is obsolete, most especially because of the whole upgrades-to-hunter stuff. Also, while the promotions upon promotions is cool, it's a little over the top - *seven* promotion. Also, I think he was obsessed with the "Elite Formation" promotion, as it seems every one of his UUs has it.

ksb's lagoon is fine. Not splashly, but also not problematic.

Alright, my UAs: It was hard to come up with tons of these! I wante dto make one called the "Council of Nine" but I'm running out of ideas and time for now!

Oaths of Tammaz is strange, I know. The idea is not to make Illian better and finding the horn, but to incentivize their looking for it. I'm a bit unsure about the bit about "whenever the heroes are summoned." I wanted illian to get some glory if the horn is found, even if they didn't find it, since that felt flavorful. However, I'd worry that somebody turtling with the horn would be a lame but appropriate way to deal with illian in your game, especially if you aren't a warmonger. Considered making it "whenever the horn is found," but that has a similar problem, and, more to the point, also would encourage illian to *lose* the horn and then find it again, should they be the one to get it in the first place. Suggestions?

Crowd, Crown, and Council is based on the triumvirate of Illianer politics: the king, the assemblage, and the council of nine. These bonuses are meant to approximate that. Lots of tweaking, this one might need.

Bustling Port is based on the fact that illian is, apparently, the largest port in the world. Encouarages going rather huge (with the capital city, especially).

OK, my UUs:

So, companion (shock) is meant to get some decisive early hits. Might be too strong in some situations, too weak in others. Could do like +90% health instead of full health, if we're worried people will deliberately keep units semi-injured to kill the ability

(splash) is kind of flavor-crazy, but is another way of getting across the shock-troops thing

(amphibious) might be too boring and similar to Denmark, but it's a way to make illian a naval power without needing to give them uu ships

I'm not sure about HoT (combat) - I don't know how helpful it'd be to have this as an option

HoT (civilian) might be too simple (the +Prestige), but certainly encourages Illian to *try* to find the horn. I don't know if Hunters are civilians or not - if not, this one can have higher strength.

City Watch is kind of weird, I know!

Levied Warship is a kind of instant-cheap navy. I also considered giving it some other ability, or also considered having it be produceable for cheap too. Also considered making a UA that lets you kill on population for a free ship, but figured that was too extreme for Illian.

UBs:

The Hall of the Assemblage (wonder) is sort of like a mini-Gandhi. Doesn't need to be the spy wonder - could be earlier

The HotA (building) is meant to help you build quite tall and reward you for it.

Great Square national wonder is a version of all this Mythic Sites stuff. Again, tough to balance.

Illian is apparently a city of canals and channels. The Canal Lock helps with food production (though only if on wateR), and is also buildable in any city (even if you aren't on water)

The Guild of Bookers are apparently insurance brokers. I figured this ability might capture that flavor, and helps with domination. Could be Gold National Wonder 2, if we want to tall-align it and make it powerful.

The Canal UI is another way to majorly up food production. The no-adjacency thing is bad flavor I know, but I figured we had to make it so they can't just terraform everything.

Illian apparently has lots of olive grows, marshes, and other cool features, so there's probably room for more UIs here.

The Councilor UG is strange, of course. Supposed to help you build tall and reward you with prestige for it.

 

[S3rgeus]

OHHH, right, Sisters don't cause Spark. Right, that's why Lib grants you Spark, but Auth grants you quota, but not spark.

In any case, yeah, that makes sense.

Awesome, sounds good.

The other thing we have noted as relying on Fear/Acceptance is False Dragon spawn rate. I'm not sure what else we'd use. I'm sure something else will pop up, when we do the policies. I'd say it's likely that there will be stuff that provides bonuses associated with your channeler use, or how you deal with MCs, and stuff, without necessarily providing or removing spark.

Sounds good, though if we do all of these uniques before Policies, then those mechanics will be left out of the uniques. I don't think we want to sidetrack onto Policies now though.

what would you say to combining some of the functionality of Housed in the Stone into the other UAs, like, say, Hard as Stone?

Yeah, stacking it with another UA is a good call. Since we won't take this one alone, I've marked the Housed in Stone UA itself red.

yeah, but I don't think we can pretend that the "feel" of this is "discourages building channelers." The "feel" of this is most definitely "profound bonus to building normal ol' units." It's true that, mechanically this discourages building channelers, but only in the sense that Game of Thrones being on TV discourages you from watching the local news (discounting DVR and netflix, etc.). The operative thing here is the awesomeness of GoT, not the relative lameness of local news. If my human UA was "can watch Game of Thrones a month before everybody else," nobody would come away feeling like I was the "anti-news guy".

In the same way, I don't feel like this really captures that flavor so well. It props up flavor that suggest that Tear is a big unit-producing machine. This isn't terribly out of line with Tear, but it's certainly not particularly *in*line with Tear either.

I've proposed a sort of composite that removes this aspect below, and replaces it with a more clear flavor-link, I think.

That analogy doesn't really line up, because the only reason people don't consider that anti-news is because there are so many things on TV, so the discouragement from watching Game of Thrones over anything else is much broader than the news. In this case, if you need to build a unit, you either build a channeling unit or a non-channeling unit. In the case of the analogy where there are only two TV channels, the awesomeness of one is most definitely visible as a direct discouragement to watch the other.

But that's all in abstract and about the analogy. If we're happy with the characterization of Tear as a military civ, then for all of those reasons, this bonus represents exactly that. It hits the notes on flavor for channelers by encouraging Tear to use other non-channeling units because they're faster to produce (which goes well with our general ethos of trying to entice players to do things, rather than penalize them away from other stuff) and makes them more likely to be a military power.

This bonus is the reason why I think this UA is a good candidate. It has a big impact on the player experience and makes players play differently. It's splashy and powerful, and players get an immediate feeling of the strength of it, so they are more enthused about playing with the civ. It encourages Tall, which is an objective for Tear, without restricting the player from expanding Wide if they wish to do so. It subtly complements a Fear approach to the game, which is rewarding the player for playing like Tear's flavor suggests, without it needing to be a big flavor focus of a single unique (which we see makes things difficult below). It has easily tweakable parameters for if we need to balance it later on. It ticks tons of boxes for us.

eh, I figured the +X movement was simpler, and the following thing was weirder. If you think the following thing works, let's keep it, since it's certainly more unique.

Yeah, let's see how this goes.

Yeah, I try to combine them below. I think the most important element of HotS is the National Wonderness, while the GHolding has a nice effect with the custom theming bonus. Let me know how you like the combination.

At first I was thinking the new combo had a lot of effects to it, but most of the text is actually the original effects (including them is a good call, because closeness with the additive effects could make it ambiguous about whether they were being replaced). And the custom theming bonus is awesome, but isn't a straight bonus, since it's replacing a feature that this building had before (which is fine).

I like the new one, so let's get rid of the old two!

I would be ok with that change, but if the UB is a clear loser, it's not worth it. I do think the fisherman flavor of things is kind of cool for Tear, though. I try the modification below, but we can certainly cut it.

I like that this one encourages Tallness without being so straightforward about it, but I'm finding that the other UB options are drawing me in more. I'd be inclined to leave it in for now though, see if we feel differently when we come back around.

I actually think we might want to keep this one around, because, while the UA competition is steep, the UB competition is far steeper, IMO. I know you're suggesting a UU replace it, not a UB, but the UU is only sort of a UU, in that its a trade unit. In other words, there's lots of competition for the 3 slots other than the UA.

Looking at what we've got below (writing this out of order), I think the UA competition is super steep here. After my suggestions below, we've suggested 6 sets between us and 6 separate UAs. I think we've also done a good job of paring down the non-UA part of the list so that all of the options there are flexible and provide multiple wins for us. We've potentially got non-UA competition down to 10-12 candidates for 3 slots, but we've still got 4-6 potential UAs for 1 slot.

The new Hard as Stone is trying to be a catch-all - buff combat capital that directly encourages low channeler use, while doing the embassy thing. I could understand altering either the embassy or the diplomats to provide Gold instead of the culture-related yields, depending on what other Uniques we choose. Might all be too massive. The big flaw here is that it only is worth not using channelers during wartime - maybe we can shift the bonus so it's more worth it during peacetime as well.

I'm realizing now that even though I said before I like how the Diplomats distinction solves the Prestige problem without needing a tech gate, a problem with this mechanic is that it's entirely dependent on the actions of your opponents. Tear can't entice players to keep Diplomats in their capital (trading votes with Tear, if absolutely essential - which isn't often the case - is now a case of sending a Diplomat, trading, and then immediately moving away). The only real case for leaving a Diplomat in the Tairen capital is if a player is going for the Culture victory and Tear is producing too much Culture, so the Culture player needs the Prestige bonus. And even that is only useful when losing.

I do like the Culture from Embassies part, because that's quite a unique thing. I feel like the first section of this UA takes the weaker part of Hard as Stone (non-channeler) though, and I would want to try to stack the Culture bonus with (non-channeler) in some way instead. (Which would also mean (non-channeler) would hit even more notes for us, since it has a Culture element.) My concern there would be that that would become a very strong UA in the early game, with early Policy grabbing and the unit production bonus.

rebranded Artifacts as Relics, which they are now called

Good call!

Great Holding (Wonder) tries to merge the two cultureish buildings. I mostly like it. It's noteworthy in that it's not necessarily pro culture victory, in that it replaces the prestige/culture theming bonus with gold faith. I'm mostly ok with this.

Yep, sounds good!

The new Fishmonger's Wharf attempts to adapt the other method.

I'm finding I don't feel like picking this UB over some of the others, but I'd like to leave it in the running to see how it looks when we come back. It's very good flavor and I like subtle Tallness to it.

So, as far as sets... hmmm. Tough, especially given all the UB stuff. I'm definitely going for something that reinforces tallness, includes the Defender, and has something to do with Trade. Channeling is somewhat less important. strong defense is nice too, but both that and channeling are something I'm hoping we don't double dip into with too many uniques. I think, for example, it would be overkill to go with one of the Hard as Stones AND the Defender (wonderful), perhaps. (could create another Defender UU though)

OK, actually, I'm out of time for tonight! no sets for you!

All sound like good flavor and mechanics to include!

EDIT

OK, so apparently I may have posted late enough yesterday that you didn't get a chance to respond, so, here are some sets!

Sorry, yep! It was 10:30 my time when you posted yesterday.

UA: Hard as Stone (embassies)
UU: Defenders
UU: Reaver Sail
UB: Great Holding (Wonder)

What I don't love about this is that it's kind of a defensive overload. Not terrible, but I'm not sure the bonuses from the UA stack well with the Defender UU. Nonetheless, here it is. But this one covers most of the flavor and mechanical angles

UA: Port of Storms
UU: Defenders
UB: Processing Workshop
UB: Defender's Fortress OR UU: Conscripted Peasants

This one is a bit more clearly Trade+Defense. no channeling flavor really

UA: Hard as Stone (embassies)
UU: Guarded Trader
UB: Defender's Fortress
UB: Great Holding (wonder)

This one's tough, but I tried to capture all the flavor elements in some capacity.

UA: Fear of Channeling
UU: Defender
UB: Processing Workshop OR Taxation Office
UB: Great Holding (wonder) OR UU: Reaver Sail

Not much to say about this one. Seems a little scatter-shot

So, the moral of the story is that sets are hard with Tear!

Yeah, they're tough! I'd be inclined to go with something like:

UA: Hard as Stone (non-channeling)
UU: Defenders
UU: Guarded Trader
UG: High Lord

We've got a significant military presence in the first two. We also get a lot of trading power from the third and fourth ones, plus Guarded Trader + High Lord work together quite well (CS trade range boost combined with specific cities providing trade benefits with CSes works very well). I specifically chose the Guarded Trader over Reaver Sail for slot 3 (even though I really like Reaver Sail!) because of that synergy. And we get Tallness from Hard as Stone. (And less major Tallness push from High Lord, since Governor use is generally more Tall.) We get the Fear undercurrent from Hard as Stone. It doesn't have much to push for Culture though.

Another one I quite like is:

UA: Ambitions for Vassals
UU: Defenders OR UB: Defender's Fortress
UU: Reaver Sail
UB: Great Holding (wonder)

Without choosing Defender's Fortress, this one is a bit light on Tallness. But it does hit the Culture aspect and some Tallness with Great Holding (wonder). I considered adding OR Processing Workshop to the last slot, since it also has Tallness, but I feel like Great Holding accomplishes more than Processing Workshop with Culture + Tallness in this set.

I considered a set quite like the first one above, but with Ambitions for Vassals as the UA, but that was a bit too CS focused. Though Tear's flavor with disputes with Mayene were very prominent in the books, so players would know what that was based on.

It's interesting that we've come up with such different sets! I am finding that the two trading UUs (Guarded Trader and Reaver Sail) are my favored ways of touching on the trading flavor. That's reducing my usefulness for Port of Storms, Processing Workshop, and Taxation Office.




Recap!

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

UAs:

• Hard as Stone (non-channeling), Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts, Tairen Historians have the "Hide Relic" mission, which causes them to be expended when used on Sites of Power in Tairen territory and instantly creates a Portal Stone. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Fear of Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, Tear can elect to instead receive a Legendary Person of the type of their choice. Tear may not select the same Legendary Person more than X times in the game.
• Housed in the Stone, Every foreign embassy in the Tairen capital provides +X Culture in the capital. Every foreign diplomat in the capital generates +Y Prestige in the capital.
• Hard as Stone (embassies), Tear's capital city has an additional X HP (high, like 50), and all Tairen cities receive +Y combat strength for every one unused Spark. Every foreign embassy in the Tairen capital provides +Z culture (low) in the capital, and every foreign diplomat generates +W Prestige in the capital.

UUs:

• Defenders, replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission in addition to the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Tear can found only X Developed Cities in a single game.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route. +Y movement when following a non-enemy trade route. Has its full Movement restored when pillaging a sea trade route or killing a Lawless or Dragonsworn naval unit.

UBs:

• Heart of the Stone, replaces XP National Wonder, receives one Legendary Craft or Relic Slot. If the slot is filled, the artifact generates (instead of culture and prestige) +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +Y (lower) Faith.
• Great Holding (building), replaces Culture 4, receives an extra Legendary Craft and Relic slot. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Relics from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.
• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each luxury resource worked by this city also produces a derived luxury resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.
• Taxation Office, replaces Coastal2, international sea trade routes established by other civilizations that pass within X hexes of this city contribute Y% of their value to Tear in addition to what they give to the civilizations at either end of the route.
• Artifact Hoard, replaces Culture5, provides a number of Culture Specialist slots equal to Tear's unused Spark.[/COLOR]
• Defender's Fortress, replaces Defense3/4, provides city strength. Has a Specialist slot for a new Specialist type, the Defender, that provides X Happiness, and one additional city attack per turn. The Defender provides points towards generating Great Captains.
• Fishmonger's Wharf, replaces Food (Coastal), in addition to its normal benefits, produces +X Gold for each sea resource owned by this city but outside of the city radius.
• Great Holding (wonder), replaces Culture National Wonder, +50% culture in the city (original effect). Has three slots for Legendary Crafts (original) or Relics. In addition to normal yields, Legendary Works housed within the Great Holding produce +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +X Faith. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Relics from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.

UIs:

• Lords' Shipyard, can be constructed only on coastal flatland. Produces an amount of Production equal to the Population of the city working this tile.

UGs:

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

Also a quick aside on Illian, thanks for starting us off on them! I'll leave them where they are for now until we're a little farther with Tear.

 

[counterpoint]

4
Sounds good, though if we do all of these uniques before Policies, then those mechanics will be left out of the uniques. I don't think we want to sidetrack onto Policies now though.

no, no sidetrack to policies now.
But that's not necessarily necessary! Just note whether there are other dimensions of play that we'll be covering in the Fear/Acceptance trees. Remember, that's all they are - trees - not philosophies or anything like that. We won't be having any uniques that are just bonuses to various policies you take - that would be lame - so the only issue here is if there are other Fear-related mechanics that we'd want to play off of with Tear. Just roughly. The policies are irrelevant right now. It may be that we've already hit at the majority of it.

Yeah, stacking it with another UA is a good call. Since we won't take this one alone, I've marked the Housed in Stone UA itself red.

That analogy doesn't really line up, because the only reason people don't consider that anti-news is because there are so many things on TV, so the discouragement from watching Game of Thrones over anything else is much broader than the news. In this case, if you need to build a unit, you either build a channeling unit or a non-channeling unit. In the case of the analogy where there are only two TV channels, the awesomeness of one is most definitely visible as a direct discouragement to watch the other.

But that's all in abstract and about the analogy. If we're happy with the characterization of Tear as a military civ, then for all of those reasons, this bonus represents exactly that. It hits the notes on flavor for channelers by encouraging Tear to use other non-channeling units because they're faster to produce (which goes well with our general ethos of trying to entice players to do things, rather than penalize them away from other stuff) and makes them more likely to be a military power.

This bonus is the reason why I think this UA is a good candidate. It has a big impact on the player experience and makes players play differently. It's splashy and powerful, and players get an immediate feeling of the strength of it, so they are more enthused about playing with the civ. It encourages Tall, which is an objective for Tear, without restricting the player from expanding Wide if they wish to do so. It subtly complements a Fear approach to the game, which is rewarding the player for playing like Tear's flavor suggests, without it needing to be a big flavor focus of a single unique (which we see makes things difficult below). It has easily tweakable parameters for if we need to balance it later on. It ticks tons of boxes for us.

ok, ok. Look, if you love the mechanic, that's a different issue in and of itself. I'm contesting how much it lines up with the non-channeler flavor. That said, it doesn't have to, if you want Tear as a big-military civ (I'm not sure I totally do).

I'm meh on this one, overall, as I don't see Tear really as a unit factory. Also, I don't really see how this one is actually Tall-related. It concerns a powerful capital, but that would be just as useful in a Wide civ.

Leaving this magenta.

At first I was thinking the new combo had a lot of effects to it, but most of the text is actually the original effects (including them is a good call, because closeness with the additive effects could make it ambiguous about whether they were being replaced). And the custom theming bonus is awesome, but isn't a straight bonus, since it's replacing a feature that this building had before (which is fine).

I like the new one, so let's get rid of the old two!

cool!

I like that this one encourages Tallness without being so straightforward about it, but I'm finding that the other UB options are drawing me in more. I'd be inclined to leave it in for now though, see if we feel differently when we come back around.

that's fine.

Looking at what we've got below (writing this out of order), I think the UA competition is super steep here. After my suggestions below, we've suggested 6 sets between us and 6 separate UAs. I think we've also done a good job of paring down the non-UA part of the list so that all of the options there are flexible and provide multiple wins for us. We've potentially got non-UA competition down to 10-12 candidates for 3 slots, but we've still got 4-6 potential UAs for 1 slot.

OK, I can get behind cutting PoS (not that I think it's a total PoS).

I'm realizing now that even though I said before I like how the Diplomats distinction solves the Prestige problem without needing a tech gate, a problem with this mechanic is that it's entirely dependent on the actions of your opponents. Tear can't entice players to keep Diplomats in their capital (trading votes with Tear, if absolutely essential - which isn't often the case - is now a case of sending a Diplomat, trading, and then immediately moving away). The only real case for leaving a Diplomat in the Tairen capital is if a player is going for the Culture victory and Tear is producing too much Culture, so the Culture player needs the Prestige bonus. And even that is only useful when losing.

I do like the Culture from Embassies part, because that's quite a unique thing. I feel like the first section of this UA takes the weaker part of Hard as Stone (non-channeler) though, and I would want to try to stack the Culture bonus with (non-channeler) in some way instead. (Which would also mean (non-channeler) would hit even more notes for us, since it has a Culture element.) My concern there would be that that would become a very strong UA in the early game, with early Policy grabbing and the unit production bonus.

Redding this feels a little extreme to me.

I've adjusted this to incorporate a pared-down version of the chief bonus of non-channeling hard as stone, and eliminated the sketchy Diplomat thing. I tink I like this version better than the first one on the list.


Recap!

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

UAs:

• Hard as Stone (non-channeling), Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts, Tairen Historians have the "Hide Relic" mission, which causes them to be expended when used on Sites of Power in Tairen territory and instantly creates a Portal Stone. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Port of Storms, Tairen naval trading vessels cannot be plundered. Naval trade units can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Tairen naval trade unit's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Fear of Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, Tear can elect to instead receive a Legendary Person of the type of their choice. Tear may not select the same Legendary Person more than X times in the game.
• Hard as Stone (embassies), Tear's capital city has an additional X HP (high, like 50) and all Tairen cities receive +Y combat strength for every one unused Spark and receives +Y% production towards non-channeling military units for each of Tear's unused Spark. Every foreign embassy in the Tairen capital provides +Z culture (low) in the capital and +W Prestige after researching Rediscovery.

UUs:

• Defenders, replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission in addition to the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Tear can found only X Developed Cities in a single game.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route. +Y movement when following a non-enemy trade route. Has its full Movement restored when pillaging a sea trade route or killing a Lawless or Dragonsworn naval unit.

UBs:

• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each luxury resource worked by this city also produces a derived luxury resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.
• Taxation Office, replaces Coastal2, international sea trade routes established by other civilizations that pass within X hexes of this city contribute Y% of their value to Tear in addition to what they give to the civilizations at either end of the route.
• Artifact Hoard, replaces Culture5, provides a number of Culture Specialist slots equal to Tear's unused Spark.
• Defender's Fortress, replaces Defense3/4, provides city strength. Has a Specialist slot for a new Specialist type, the Defender, that provides X Happiness, and one additional city attack per turn. The Defender provides points towards generating Great Captains.
• Fishmonger's Wharf, replaces Food (Coastal), in addition to its normal benefits, produces +X Gold for each sea resource owned by this city but outside of the city radius.
• Great Holding (wonder), replaces Culture National Wonder, +50% culture in the city (original effect). Has three slots for Legendary Crafts (original) or Relics. In addition to normal yields, Legendary Works housed within the Great Holding produce +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +X Faith. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Relics from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.

UIs:

• Lords' Shipyard, can be constructed only on coastal flatland. Produces an amount of Production equal to the Population of the city working this tile.

UGs:

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

What's the deal with Artifact Hoard? It'sbeen there magenta forever but we never talk about it...

OK, the new Hard as F*#k (embassies) is a sort of compromise between all this. It provides a strong bonus to military production, like you wanted, but makes it dependent on Spark. I'm thinking, on average, this would probably end up a smaller bonus (tweakable) than double was. This one is unfortunately still not explicitly tall-favoring, so we'll probably want to pair it with somethign that is. Do you like this version, or something close to it? If you do, I suggest we go with it and cut the other.

Yeah, they're tough! I'd be inclined to go with something like:

UA: Hard as Stone (non-channeling)
UU: Defenders
UU: Guarded Trader
UG: High Lord

We've got a significant military presence in the first two. We also get a lot of trading power from the third and fourth ones, plus Guarded Trader + High Lord work together quite well (CS trade range boost combined with specific cities providing trade benefits with CSes works very well). I specifically chose the Guarded Trader over Reaver Sail for slot 3 (even though I really like Reaver Sail!) because of that synergy. And we get Tallness from Hard as Stone. (And less major Tallness push from High Lord, since Governor use is generally more Tall.) We get the Fear undercurrent from Hard as Stone. It doesn't have much to push for Culture though.

Obviously I'm more down with the newer HaS. I can see going with Guarded Trader, but I'm not totally sold on High Lord. I think this set needs an alternate to a UG - I think, in general we may only want one, maybe two, UGs in the game, so we'll want to make sure it doesn't *have* to be this one. So, something like:

UA: Hard as Stone (embassies)
UU: Defender
UU: Guarded Trader
UG: High Lord OR UI: Lord's Shipyard OR Processing Workshop

The last two options reinforce Height much more clearly than the UA does. That said, we do lose direct CS-ness by taking out the Hight Lord - probably fine, given the Guarded trader.

I think this is mostly ok, perhaps a little more combat happy, at the expense of Goldy, than I'd like. But I do like the culture options to.

Another one I quite like is:

UA: Ambitions for Vassals
UU: Defenders OR UB: Defender's Fortress
UU: Reaver Sail
UB: Great Holding (wonder)

Without choosing Defender's Fortress, this one is a bit light on Tallness. But it does hit the Culture aspect and some Tallness with Great Holding (wonder). I considered adding OR Processing Workshop to the last slot, since it also has Tallness, but I feel like Great Holding accomplishes more than Processing Workshop with Culture + Tallness in this set.

I considered a set quite like the first one above, but with Ambitions for Vassals as the UA, but that was a bit too CS focused. Though Tear's flavor with disputes with Mayene were very prominent in the books, so players would know what that was based on.

Pretty much ok with this one, though I'm not 100% on the UA. I don't know, just never spoke to me much. Of course, that's the case with most of the UA options on this civ. PRetty good set, though.

It's interesting that we've come up with such different sets! I am finding that the two trading UUs (Guarded Trader and Reaver Sail) are my favored ways of touching on the trading flavor. That's reducing my usefulness for Port of Storms, Processing Workshop, and Taxation Office.

Yeah, I know what you mean, though I will say I do like those UBs quite a bit.

I wouldn't read into our different sets too much - for a few of them I was kind of throwing darts at the board, checking boxes, mixing metaphors, so to speak.

so where does that leave us?

 

[S3rgeus]

no, no sidetrack to policies now.
But that's not necessarily necessary! Just note whether there are other dimensions of play that we'll be covering in the Fear/Acceptance trees. Remember, that's all they are - trees - not philosophies or anything like that. We won't be having any uniques that are just bonuses to various policies you take - that would be lame - so the only issue here is if there are other Fear-related mechanics that we'd want to play off of with Tear. Just roughly. The policies are irrelevant right now. It may be that we've already hit at the majority of it.

Yeah, it's not so much the Policies themselves, but more if we find that we add/change any of the mechanics that we consider to be associated with Fear/Acceptance. Still, the sidetrack would cost us a lot, so let's not do that!

ok, ok. Look, if you love the mechanic, that's a different issue in and of itself. I'm contesting how much it lines up with the non-channeler flavor. That said, it doesn't have to, if you want Tear as a big-military civ (I'm not sure I totally do).

I'm meh on this one, overall, as I don't see Tear really as a unit factory. Also, I don't really see how this one is actually Tall-related. It concerns a powerful capital, but that would be just as useful in a Wide civ.

Leaving this magenta.

Yeah, and I'm saying it does line up with the non-channeler flavor. We reward players for using fewer non-Aes-Sedai channelers, which will work well with the flavor of Tear's attitude towards channelers discouraging that usage. The flavor of the bonus is clearly non-channeler, it even uses that word to describe what units get the bonus.

It's Tall favoring because capital bonuses favor Tall civs in general, particularly when they become more useful the stronger that capital is. A Wide civ can't afford to have their capital grow to be enormous (creates too much Unhappiness when they've got to deal with the per-city stuff too), so the ceiling for the ability's usefulness is lower for them. It's certainly still helpful, but Tall civs with higher Population capitals are getting a larger bonus to unit production.

Redding this feels a little extreme to me.

I've adjusted this to incorporate a pared-down version of the chief bonus of non-channeling hard as stone, and eliminated the sketchy Diplomat thing. I tink I like this version better than the first one on the list.

Sounds good, I'll comment on this below.


Recap!

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

UAs:

• Hard as Stone (non-channeling), Tear's capital city has double combat strength, an additional X HP (high, like 50), and produces non-channeling units twice as fast.
• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts, Tairen Historians have the "Hide Relic" mission, which causes them to be expended when used on Sites of Power in Tairen territory and instantly creates a Portal Stone. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Fear of Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, Tear can elect to instead receive a Legendary Person of the type of their choice. Tear may not select the same Legendary Person more than X times in the game.
• Hard as Stone (embassies), Tear's capital city has an additional X HP (high, like 50) and receives +Y% production towards non-channeling military units for each of Tear's unused Spark. Every foreign embassy in the Tairen capital provides +Z culture (low) in the capital and +W Prestige after researching Rediscovery.

UUs:

• Defenders, replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission in addition to the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Tear can found only X Developed Cities in a single game.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route. +Y movement when following a non-enemy trade route. Has its full Movement restored when pillaging a sea trade route or killing a Lawless or Dragonsworn naval unit.

UBs:

• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each luxury resource worked by this city also produces a derived luxury resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.
• Taxation Office, replaces Coastal2, international sea trade routes established by other civilizations that pass within X hexes of this city contribute Y% of their value to Tear in addition to what they give to the civilizations at either end of the route.
• Artifact Hoard, replaces Culture5, provides a number of Culture Specialist slots equal to Tear's unused Spark.
• Defender's Fortress, replaces Defense3/4, provides city strength. Has a Specialist slot for a new Specialist type, the Defender, that provides X Happiness, and one additional city attack per turn. The Defender provides points towards generating Great Captains.
• Fishmonger's Wharf, replaces Food (Coastal), in addition to its normal benefits, produces +X Gold for each sea resource owned by this city but outside of the city radius.
• Great Holding (wonder), replaces Culture National Wonder, +50% culture in the city (original effect). Has three slots for Legendary Crafts (original) or Relics. In addition to normal yields, Legendary Works housed within the Great Holding produce +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +X Faith. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Relics from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.

UIs:

• Lords' Shipyard, can be constructed only on coastal flatland. Produces an amount of Production equal to the Population of the city working this tile.

UGs:

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

What's the deal with Artifact Hoard? It'sbeen there magenta forever but we never talk about it...

Yeah, I'm not sure! I like the ability, but I think the other UBs are better options, so I'd say we can remove it.

OK, the new Hard as F*#k (embassies) is a sort of compromise between all this. It provides a strong bonus to military production, like you wanted, but makes it dependent on Spark. I'm thinking, on average, this would probably end up a smaller bonus (tweakable) than double was. This one is unfortunately still not explicitly tall-favoring, so we'll probably want to pair it with somethign that is. Do you like this version, or something close to it? If you do, I suggest we go with it and cut the other.

Yeah, I like the new version! Let's cut the first one. I think this is Tall-favoring, as explained above, but it's not so strongly that it forces a Tall civ if the other uniques don't help. So pairing it with another Tall-favoring unique sounds good too.

Obviously I'm more down with the newer HaS. I can see going with Guarded Trader, but I'm not totally sold on High Lord. I think this set needs an alternate to a UG - I think, in general we may only want one, maybe two, UGs in the game, so we'll want to make sure it doesn't *have* to be this one. So, something like:

UA: Hard as Stone (embassies)
UU: Defender
UU: Guarded Trader
UG: High Lord OR UI: Lord's Shipyard OR Processing Workshop

The last two options reinforce Height much more clearly than the UA does. That said, we do lose direct CS-ness by taking out the Hight Lord - probably fine, given the Guarded trader.

I think this is mostly ok, perhaps a little more combat happy, at the expense of Goldy, than I'd like. But I do like the culture options to.

I think the Guarded Trader + High Lord is a really nice synergy. It is also a trade synergy, if we're concerned about the set feeling more about combat. The Guarded Trader also doesn't really encourage CS-ness when it stands alone, since its primary utility then would be plundering other players' trade routes by trading with major civs. I think the synergy with High Lord makes that choice (trade with a CS or a major civ) much more of a strategic decision, where one will be better in some cases and the other in others.

I did regret not getting Lord's Shipyard into the running anywhere though. However, it does feed well into a combat approach, if that's a concern.

Still, Domination is one of our chosen victory paths, so I wouldn't be worried about having the sets encourage it.

Pretty much ok with this one, though I'm not 100% on the UA. I don't know, just never spoke to me much. Of course, that's the case with most of the UA options on this civ. PRetty good set, though.

That might be if you don't demand tribute from CSes much. I think our friend who wrote that post about Gunboat Diplomacy (and his friends) would be quite enthused about this UA. I'd certainly find it quite exciting - it would make CS diplomacy very different and provide Tear a way of focusing on Diplomacy that wasn't a Gold-fest like everyone else, which has always been a bit of a weirdness about the Diplo victory.

Yeah, I know what you mean, though I will say I do like those UBs quite a bit.

I wouldn't read into our different sets too much - for a few of them I was kind of throwing darts at the board, checking boxes, mixing metaphors, so to speak.

so where does that leave us?

Are you happy with the latest two sets then, after your last post? I'm good with those, so if you are I can edit Tear into the design list and we can go on to Illian!

 

[counterpoint]

Yeah, it's not so much the Policies themselves, but more if we find that we add/change any of the mechanics that we consider to be associated with Fear/Acceptance. Still, the sidetrack would cost us a lot, so let's not do that!

ok, well simple question:

Do you, right now, have suggestions or thoughts on how we're treating Fear/Acc? If so, I think they're worth sharing now, detour or not.

I don't, for what it's worth.

Yeah, and I'm saying it does line up with the non-channeler flavor. We reward players for using fewer non-Aes-Sedai channelers, which will work well with the flavor of Tear's attitude towards channelers discouraging that usage. The flavor of the bonus is clearly non-channeler, it even uses that word to describe what units get the bonus.

It's Tall favoring because capital bonuses favor Tall civs in general, particularly when they become more useful the stronger that capital is. A Wide civ can't afford to have their capital grow to be enormous (creates too much Unhappiness when they've got to deal with the per-city stuff too), so the ceiling for the ability's usefulness is lower for them. It's certainly still helpful, but Tall civs with higher Population capitals are getting a larger bonus to unit production.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. I think I'm fine with this ability as it currently stands.

Yeah, I'm not sure! I like the ability, but I think the other UBs are better options, so I'd say we can remove it.

it's gone.

Yeah, I like the new version! Let's cut the first one. I think this is Tall-favoring, as explained above, but it's not so strongly that it forces a Tall civ if the other uniques don't help. So pairing it with another Tall-favoring unique sounds good too.

cool. well done - that one took a lot of back and forth!

I think the Guarded Trader + High Lord is a really nice synergy. It is also a trade synergy, if we're concerned about the set feeling more about combat. The Guarded Trader also doesn't really encourage CS-ness when it stands alone, since its primary utility then would be plundering other players' trade routes by trading with major civs. I think the synergy with High Lord makes that choice (trade with a CS or a major civ) much more of a strategic decision, where one will be better in some cases and the other in others.

I think the distinction between CS trade and civ trade is worth mentioning, for sure, and goes a long way to making this palatable, IMO.

I did regret not getting Lord's Shipyard into the running anywhere though. However, it does feed well into a combat approach, if that's a concern.

Still, Domination is one of our chosen victory paths, so I wouldn't be worried about having the sets encourage it.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's fine with the various options.

That might be if you don't demand tribute from CSes much. I think our friend who wrote that post about Gunboat Diplomacy (and his friends) would be quite enthused about this UA. I'd certainly find it quite exciting - it would make CS diplomacy very different and provide Tear a way of focusing on Diplomacy that wasn't a Gold-fest like everyone else, which has always been a bit of a weirdness about the Diplo victory.

yeah, clearly others are more into this than I am.

One thing I will say about these sets, is each of them has, at least, one or two abilities that seem legitimately fun. I think my earlier hesitation has mostly to do with some of our UA options being a bit stale. But that's fine. Some civs are more about the UU or UB. (and the UAs we settled on aren't stale, anyways).

Recap!

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

UAs:

• Ambitions for Vassals, Tear gains influence with City-States when it intimidates them, instead of losing it. City-States that have a trade route established by Tear or are connected to the Tairen capital by Roads are intimidated more easily by Tear.
• Hoarding Artifacts, Tairen Historians have the "Hide Relic" mission, which causes them to be expended when used on Sites of Power in Tairen territory and instantly creates a Portal Stone. Foreign Historians take twice as long to explore Sites of Power in Tairen territory. Tairen Portal Stones produce an amount of Prestige equal to their Culture output.
• Fear of Channeling (LP), whenever Tear would receive a Sister unit from the Tower, Tear can elect to instead receive a Legendary Person of the type of their choice. Tear may not select the same Legendary Person more than X times in the game.
• Hard as Stone, Tear's capital city has an additional X HP (high, like 50) and receives +Y% production towards non-channeling military units for each of Tear's unused Spark. Every foreign embassy in the Tairen capital provides +Z culture (low) in the capital and +W Prestige after researching Rediscovery.

UUs:

• Defenders, replaces era 5/6 melee unit. Higher combat strength and double fortification bonus. +X% combat strength when attacking into or out of cities that have any world wonders.
• Conscripted Peasants, replaces the Settler. Has the "Found Developed City" mission in addition to the Found mission. Developed Cities start with Y Population and Z additional hexes of territory. Tear can found only X Developed Cities in a single game.
• Guarded Trader, replaces Sea Trade Unit, Cannot be pillaged. Can trade with City-States X% further away. At the end of a Guarded Trader's route with a major civilization's city, one other civilization's trade route to that city will be plundered, providing the typical Gold yield to Tear.
• Reaver Sail, replaces the ExpShp or Naval Melee 4-5. Receives triple Gold when pillaging a sea trade route. +Y movement when following a non-enemy trade route. Has its full Movement restored when pillaging a sea trade route or killing a Lawless or Dragonsworn naval unit.

UBs:

• Processing Workshop, replaces Gold National Wonder 1 or 2 or Trade National Wonder) each luxury resource worked by this city also produces a derived luxury resource that provides 50% happiness for Tear if kept, but can be traded as normal.
• Taxation Office, replaces Coastal2, international sea trade routes established by other civilizations that pass within X hexes of this city contribute Y% of their value to Tear in addition to what they give to the civilizations at either end of the route.
• Defender's Fortress, replaces Defense3/4, provides city strength. Has a Specialist slot for a new Specialist type, the Defender, that provides X Happiness, and one additional city attack per turn. The Defender provides points towards generating Great Captains.
• Fishmonger's Wharf, replaces Food (Coastal), in addition to its normal benefits, produces +X Gold for each sea resource owned by this city but outside of the city radius.
• Great Holding (wonder), replaces Culture National Wonder, +50% culture in the city (original effect). Has three slots for Legendary Crafts (original) or Relics. In addition to normal yields, Legendary Works housed within the Great Holding produce +X of the yield type associated with the Governor currently stationed in the city, or, if no Governor is present, +X Faith. Has a custom theming bonus: +X Faith (high) and +Y Gold (high) when filled with Relics from civilizations other than the city owner, and from Eras earlier than the Era of New Beginnings.

UIs:

• Lords' Shipyard, can be constructed only on coastal flatland. Produces an amount of Production equal to the Population of the city working this tile.

UGs:

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

Are you happy with the latest two sets then, after your last post? I'm good with those, so if you are I can edit Tear into the design list and we can go on to Illian!

OK, so just being clear, we're talking about:

UA: Hard as Stone
UU: Defender
UU: Guarded Trader
UG: High Lord OR UI: Lord's Shipyard OR Processing Workshop

or

UA: Ambitions for Vassals
UU: Defenders OR UB: Defender's Fortress
UU: Reaver Sail
UB: Great Holding

Cool, looks solid!

Illian it is! So very glad I already did the intro post!

 

[S3rgeus]

Sorry for the delay, I was out later than expected yesterday! And I've had a selection of technical problems with my home server that I've been solving today, which has sucked up all my Illian brainstorming time! Those are mostly fixed now though, so I'll be back with a full post tomorrow!

ok, well simple question:

Do you, right now, have suggestions or thoughts on how we're treating Fear/Acc? If so, I think they're worth sharing now, detour or not.

I don't, for what it's worth.

I don't have any in mind at the moment, but I can see us coming up with one or two when we do the Policies in full. They would need to be fairly lightweight, but could be useful in uniques. Something to consider then though, I'd need to switch over to trying to design the Policies to do a full brainstorm on that.

cool. well done - that one took a lot of back and forth!

That it did!

yeah, clearly others are more into this than I am.

One thing I will say about these sets, is each of them has, at least, one or two abilities that seem legitimately fun. I think my earlier hesitation has mostly to do with some of our UA options being a bit stale. But that's fine. Some civs are more about the UU or UB. (and the UAs we settled on aren't stale, anyways).

Awesome, sounds good!

OK, so just being clear, we're talking about:

UA: Hard as Stone
UU: Defender
UU: Guarded Trader
UG: High Lord OR UI: Lord's Shipyard OR Processing Workshop

or

UA: Ambitions for Vassals
UU: Defenders OR UB: Defender's Fortress
UU: Reaver Sail
UB: Great Holding

Cool, looks solid!

Yep, those are the ones!

I've added Tear to the design list (on page 58)!

Illian it is! So very glad I already did the intro post!

I'll be back with Illian content tomorrow!

 

[S3rgeus]

Returned for Illian! With a proper brainstorming session and everything!

The Dom/Cul thing still feels pretty fitting, I'd say. That said, it's another Tall civ, which is tricky to do with Dom. So, my angle is pretty much giving a bunch of food bonuses, which will help with Tall and also specialists/LPs for culture, but give really powerful UUs that help with Dom. Consequently, the UAs and UBs I have are rather non-combaty.

Domination and Culture both seem to fit well. I think given the trading port flavor, we could possibly allow Diplo as an approach? Or we could just have some abilities that are trading focused, without them particularly contributing towards the Diplo victory. The latter would give them some incidental Diplo strength, since lots of Gold buys lots of CS relationships, but their uniques wouldn't be geared towards CSes or votes specifically.

Do you have a preference?



Related to Illian in general, I've found a few things to call out about our existing summaries/material!

We don't seem to have picked a tech for revealing Mythic Sites, unless I'm missing that information somewhere. Or did we decide this is the same as Sites of Power? (Which would be Bookbinding.) It seems like Mythic Sites should pop up later than that. This affects the kinds of things we can do with interacting with the Horn, so it would be good to decide this. (Also affects how the LB works, since it determines how early players can begin finding Seals.)

The Misc summary still has the following line in it:

Sites of Seals are revealed by a technology in the Era of Encroaching Blight and can be investigated by Hunters for the Horn.

This is outdated and can be removed, right? A few lines above it is what I believe to be the correct version:

The Horn of Valere is a mystical item that can be discovered in a Mythic Sites (along with Seals of the Dark One's prison). When the Horn is discovered, the nearest military unit controlled by the same player becomes a Hornblower (which is a promotion that allows that unit to blow the Horn).

Also, is there more detail on the Hunter unit in one of the summaries? I'm unsure whether the Hunter is Recon2 or some other unit entirely. It doesn't seem to be explicitly on the Editor tech tree or Technology summary, that I can find. Nor is it defined in the LB summary (where it's mentioned for its ability to explore Mythic Sites) or in the Misc summary (where it's mentioned for its ability to find the Horn of Valere). I seem to remember us deciding on it being civilian vs military at some point? Does exploring a Mythic Site consume a Hunter?

Coming back to this out of order, I see that below you've asked a similar question. I've been thinking the Hunter would make a good Recon2 unit, but I haven't really put that idea under any scrutiny. Some options could be:

1. Recon2 is the Hunter
2. Separate military unit (not part of an existing upgrade path)
3. Replaces an existing military unit (part of an existing upgrade path)
4. Separate civilian unit

#3 seems fundamentally problematic in that the Hunter would obsolete, which doesn't seem to line up with what we want them to do. The others seem vaguely possible and probably have their own pros and cons though.

The council of Nine starts off with a relatively neat and flavorful idea. The Tammaz wonder ability, though, is not a mechanic I like. Cheapens the wonder, IMO, assuming this is a wonder and not just morphed into an Illian UB. I say red, though the gov idea could be put elsewhere in this civ.

Agreed, I'm fine with removing this.

Also thanks for finding ksb's suggestions again!

ksb's companion is obsolete, most especially because of the whole upgrades-to-hunter stuff. Also, while the promotions upon promotions is cool, it's a little over the top - *seven* promotion. Also, I think he was obsessed with the "Elite Formation" promotion, as it seems every one of his UUs has it.

Agreed, I'm fine with removing this.

ksb's lagoon is fine. Not splashly, but also not problematic.

Sounds good.

Alright, my UAs: It was hard to come up with tons of these! I wante dto make one called the "Council of Nine" but I'm running out of ideas and time for now!

I've got a couple that should help with diversity here!

Oaths of Tammaz is strange, I know. The idea is not to make Illian better and finding the horn, but to incentivize their looking for it. I'm a bit unsure about the bit about "whenever the heroes are summoned." I wanted illian to get some glory if the horn is found, even if they didn't find it, since that felt flavorful. However, I'd worry that somebody turtling with the horn would be a lame but appropriate way to deal with illian in your game, especially if you aren't a warmonger. Considered making it "whenever the horn is found," but that has a similar problem, and, more to the point, also would encourage illian to *lose* the horn and then find it again, should they be the one to get it in the first place. Suggestions?

I think we could make it "whenever the Horn is found" in addition to what it does now. Since dropping the Horn is risky (based on how it works from the Misc summary), Illian would be much more likely to summon the heroes as often as possible, rather than try to intentionally drop it to use this UA, which addresses your last concern here.

I really like this one, because it nods really well the Illian Horn flavor without being dependent on them actually finding it, which is quite unlikely in a given game.

Crowd, Crown, and Council is based on the triumvirate of Illianer politics: the king, the assemblage, and the council of nine. These bonuses are meant to approximate that. Lots of tweaking, this one might need.

Should this say "For each point of Population"? (or arguably, "For each Population")

Governors produce relatively small amounts of yield (in terms of the number per turn), which may make Z a bit difficult to calibrate (there will be a large range of values of Z that round to 0, but it quickly becomes way powerful as Population increases). Still, it's not an existential problem for this UA.

This is nicely Tall encouraging without focusing directly on the capital, which is pretty cool. Fighting Unhappiness will be hard for the player with this, since Governors reduce the Happiness cap and cities produce extra Food, but it's a fight that pushes them steadily ahead if they keep up, which is certainly a bonus.

Bustling Port is based on the fact that illian is, apparently, the largest port in the world. Encouarages going rather huge (with the capital city, especially).

Makes a very strong Tall coastal empire, which lines up with the flavor.

So, companion (shock) is meant to get some decisive early hits. Might be too strong in some situations, too weak in others. Could do like +90% health instead of full health, if we're worried people will deliberately keep units semi-injured to kill the ability

Yeah, 90%+ Health sounds good, otherwise the optimal combat strategy would be to meander defending troops around to avoid healing, which is super annoying busywork for a defending player (fighting against Illian). Lower than 90% and the usefulness of the unit starts to suffer enough that it's less obvious which is better, so players will feel better about taking the less laborious approach!

(splash) is kind of flavor-crazy, but is another way of getting across the shock-troops thing

I feel like this should impose a combat strength penalty on those units, rather than damage. It's more of a morale blow, rather than the Companions fanning out and damaging them too, right?

(amphibious) might be too boring and similar to Denmark, but it's a way to make illian a naval power without needing to give them uu ships

It does feel a bit close to Denmark. I don't feel like their flavor pushes us to make them a generic naval power (rather than just trading-related naval strength) to use a UU like this. I've marked this one as red.

I'm not sure about HoT (combat) - I don't know how helpful it'd be to have this as an option

I don't think this will be very helpful for the Illian player. The main reason it works for Sisters is that they're limited (the player can't build however many they want) and using them for exploring stuff like this has a big opportunity cost (Sister units have a lot of powerful uses elsewhere). I think this will just end up superseding the Hunter, which is a bit backwards for the Illian flavor.

HoT (civilian) might be too simple (the +Prestige), but certainly encourages Illian to *try* to find the horn. I don't know if Hunters are civilians or not - if not, this one can have higher strength.

I like this version of the Hunter replacement. More discussion about Hunters in general above.

City Watch is kind of weird, I know!

It's pretty cool though! I like it has usefulness both offensively and defensively.

Levied Warship is a kind of instant-cheap navy. I also considered giving it some other ability, or also considered having it be produceable for cheap too. Also considered making a UA that lets you kill on population for a free ship, but figured that was too extreme for Illian.

Agreed on the killing Population UA.

I really like this unit! Like, very much so. It hits the flavor really well and is really well focused on what it does. It stands out as really different for the player but is also really easy to understand. Good stuff.

The Hall of the Assemblage (wonder) is sort of like a mini-Gandhi. Doesn't need to be the spy wonder - could be earlier

We could reduce the Unhappiness it reduces (err, make it reduce Unhappiness less than suggested first) and replace the normal Spy building, rather than the National Wonder? Since it's reducing Unhappiness per Population, that already makes it Tall-favoring, so I don't think we need to use the National Wonder.

I've suggested an edit below to do this. We could adjust the value of X if we wanted to bring it up to the full "halved" from your original suggestion if we found we wanted to.

The HotA (building) is meant to help you build quite tall and reward you for it.

I like this one.

Great Square national wonder is a version of all this Mythic Sites stuff. Again, tough to balance.

I would be inclined to keep the Great Square of Tammaz flavor as a wonder, since it's a recognizable single-instance structure from the canon that seems like it was built after the Breaking. We're short on those guys!

I like the mechanics of this building though.

Illian is apparently a city of canals and channels. The Canal Lock helps with food production (though only if on wateR), and is also buildable in any city (even if you aren't on water)

This took me a minute to get my head around - the bonus of being able to build it on cities that don't have water is the original output of the building. That's quite elegant.

The Guild of Bookers are apparently insurance brokers. I figured this ability might capture that flavor, and helps with domination. Could be Gold National Wonder 2, if we want to tall-align it and make it powerful.

I like this one. It fits the flavor of insurance very well and does encourage Domination quite well.

The Canal UI is another way to majorly up food production. The no-adjacency thing is bad flavor I know, but I figured we had to make it so they can't just terraform everything.

I think if we call an Improvement Canal, we'd need to allow naval units to move through it. The use of cities as canals is well established in the CiV metagame's vocabulary, so we'd be fighting against that expectation. I'm not sure what to call it instead though. Canal Network suffers from a similar problem.

I would love to add an Improvement that does let naval units travel over land by connecting them together, but that doesn't seem to line up with the flavor of the way Illian use their canals, does it?

This is a nice Improvement mechanically, the spreading of fresh water availability is strong. Rather than not allow them be built next to each other, we could restrict them to tiles that have fresh water that isn't provided by another Canal?

Also, Flood Plains only appear on Desert by default, which doesn't really line up with Illian's flavor. Do we want to make the requirement fresh water access (which lines up with my suggestion above as well)?

Also, we could restrict the "spread" to flatland tiles adjacent to the Canal, rather than any tile, to reduce the chance of Illian terraforming an area.

I'm also not sure if we can add Flood Plains midway through a game (that may be one of the things that are impossible to update visually without reloading the game - Flood Plains is a Feature). If that's the case, we'd probably be best going with a Food bonus to those tiles instead, though that is slightly different in terms of other Improvements/abilities caring about the tile's Feature.

The Councilor UG is strange, of course. Supposed to help you build tall and reward you with prestige for it.

The relevant LP for this UG is presumably the Ambassador?

Looking at the flavor of the Council of the Nine, I can see the connection to Ambassador. That's quite Diplo-victory-focused though, could we use one of the Culture LPs?




Recap!

Illian (Era 5-9, Tall, Domination/Culture/Diplo)

UAs:

• The Council of Nine, the effects of governors in cities are increased by X%. Illian receives all the bonuses granted by the Great Square of Tammaz wonder (stacks if Illian constructs the Wonder) (kidshowbusiness)
• Oaths of Tammaz, Completing a survey of a Mythic Site yields +X Culture. Each time the Heroes of the Horn are summoned, Illian gains Y Prestige and a Z-turn Golden Age.
• Crown, Crowd, and Council, For point of population in a city, +Y% production on military units and +Z% to Governor yields. The Capital produces +Z% food.
• Bustling Port, Citizens working ocean or coastal tiles do not consume food. Every sea trade route leaving from the Capital provides +X food in addition to its normal yields.
• Port of Storms, sea resources worked by Illianer cities cannot be pillaged. Illian has an extra trade route for every X Population in its capital.
• Marshland Defenses, Marsh hexes worked by Illianer cities provide that city with +X Defense and +Y (low) Culture. Illianer units do not suffer combat penalties in Marshes in Illianer territory. Foreign units take twice as much damage as usual in Marshes in Illianer territory.
• Companion Recruitment, units gifted to Illian by Militaristic City-States start with a bonus +X EXP. Illian's capital gains +Z strength and +W% toward military unit production for each Militaristic City-States Illian is allies with.
• King, Assemblage, and Council, every X turns, power shifts between the King, the Assemblage, or the Council of the Nine. Power shifts to the King if Happiness is over 10, the Council if Happiness is between 0 and 10, and the Assemblage if Illian is unhappy. When power lies with the King, Golden Age points are accrued twice as fast and military units have +Y% combat strength. When power lies with the Council, cities produce Legendary People Z% faster and Specialists consumes W% less Food. When power lies with the Assemblage, international trade routes give Illian +U% Gold and yields from tiles with luxury resources are doubled.
• Home of the Hunt, when a Mythic Site is explored in Illianer territory, or optionally when an Illianer Blue Sister or Hunter explores a Mythic Site, a Portal Stone is left in its place.

UUs:

• Companion (ksb), replaces Melee 3 (incongruous with civ's eras), has lower production cost and combat strength. Can be upgraded into a Hunter for the Horn once Illian completes the Great Hunt civ project and has received seven promotions. Receives +X% combat strength when adjacent to another Companion. Once the Companion receives its fourth promotion, it gains an additional +Y combat strength. (kidshowbusiness)
• Companion (shock), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +X Movement. Deals +Y% (high, like 100%) damage when attacking or being attacked by units with full90%+ health.
• Companion (splash), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, When the Companion kills a unit, all adjacent (to the killed unit) enemy units suffer X% damage.
• Companion (amphibious), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +X Movement and +Y% combat strength. Receives the Amphibious promotion for free.
• Hunter of Tammaz (combat), replaces Era 6-8 Melee or Ranged unit, Can explore Mythic Sites, X% slower than Hunters for the Horn, but without being consumed.
• Hunter of Tammaz (civilian), replaces Hunter for the Horn, fights as a Combat unit of moderate ability. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.
• City Watch, replaces Era 5-7 Melee or Polearm unit, increased combat strength. When garrisoned in a city, raises the local happiness cap by X. When adjacent to an enemy city, lowers the local happiness cap by Y (does not stack).
• Levied Warship (gold), replaces Era 5-8 ship, or Anti-Naval 1, can only be purchased with gold, and costs much less than its analogous unit.
• Companion (recruit), replaces era 5-6 mounted unit, slightly increased combat strength. Has an X% chance of spawning another Companion on an empty adjacent hex when it pillages a tile being worked by an enemy city.
• Worker Sail, replaces the Work Boat, takes slightly longer to build, can construct three sea Improvements before being expended, instead of just one.

UBs:

• Illianer Lagoon, replaces Coastal 1, +X production to coastal and ocean tiles, and +Y gold to river tiles (kidshowbusiness)
• Hall of the Assemblage (wonder), replaces Spy2 National Wonder, the unhappiness caused by population in this city is halved reduced by X%. +Y% defense against Eyes and Ears in this city for every Z population
• Hall of the Assemblage (building), replaces Culture 3, +X% food production. Each luxury resource worked by this city produces +Y culture for every Z points of population in the city
• Great Square of Tammaz, replaces Culture National Wonder. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Culture and +Y Prestige in this city. The Square's Theming Bonus is doubled for 5 turns after the Horn of Valere is discovered or captured.
• Canal Lock, replaces Production (river), can be built in any city. In addition to its normal effects, provides +X% food production in the city if the city is on a river or lake.
• Guild of Bookers, replaces Gold 3, Whenever a unit is produced (not purchased) in this city, X% of its gold cost is generated.
• Intra-City Canals, replaces Gold3, in addition to its usual effects, city connections produce +X% Gold and +Y Culture.
• Marsh Outposts, replaces Defense3, can only be built in a city within X hexes of a Marsh. Enemy units move as if through Marshes when within X hexes of this city.

UIs:

• Canal, built on flood plainstiles with access to fresh water that is not provided by another Canal, makes all adjacent flatland plains, desert, and grassland tiles also flood plains and grants them fresh water access. Cannot be built adjacent to another Canal.

UGs:

• Councilor, spawned from the Ambassador, Yield is Food and Gold. Upgrade 2 ability is "International trade routes leaving from this city generate +X Prestige against major civilizations and +Y Food for the home city when trading with a City-State." Relevant LP for Upgrade 3 is the Ambassador.

New additions!

Port of Storms (flavor stolen from your suggestion for Tear - was that Tear-specific in some way I'm not aware of?) is Tall, trade-focused UA.

Marshland Defenses is a bit specific, but calls out to Illian's use of Marshes to defend the city, rather than walls.

Companion Recruitment is a nod to the flavor that the Illianer Companions are like the Frenxch Foreign Legion (the real one, not the unit), in that they recruit from abroad. This is a Dom-focused CS ability, that is also quite nice in that it makes Militaristic CSes more useful.

King, Assemblage, and Council is flavorfully like your Crown, Crowd, and Council (the alliteration in yours is nicer to say). Like the other "new concept" uniques we've discussed on other civs (Honor for Shienar, Favor for Andor), this could be represented really simply as appropriate to the player. A countdown to the next power shift and an icon showing who power currently lies with, with a tooltip that describes the current bonus in full on mouseover. Or something to that effect.

The mechanical idea behind this one is that all 3 abilities should be positive, but the Council effect (0-10 Happiness) should be the strongest. CiV's optimal strategy is most often just-positive-enough-Happiness, since lots of positive Happiness is low on benefits (but requires effort to achieve), and Unhappiness obviously has significant disadvantages, so we want to play into that.

With Happiness controlling the power shifts, it was important that none of the effects directly change Happiness, to avoid their own affects causing the player to oscillate between them. (But the King and Assemblage parts do deliberately boost aspects of the civ that encourage actions which move Happiness toward the Council section of the Happiness scale, which is the idea of the UA helping the player do well.)

It's notable that "yields from luxury tiles" does not include Happiness, since Happiness from luxuries is civ-wide, not produced by any one tile. The power shift happens only on fixed intervals to avoid the player abusing it by moving between them within a single turn, which would probably have some benefits for them, but is super busywork-y. And fixed intervals is much easier for the player to keep track of.

The Council bonus is Tall-favoring since LPs and Specialists are Tall's mechanics. The Assemblage bonus could possibly do with being more Tall-focused though. The King bonus doesn't need to so much, since Wide Illians are unlikely to get into the King range often.

Home of the Hunt lets Illian make different use of the Mythic Sites, therefore encouraging them to search for the Horn. The use of "optionally" means the Illian player can choose whether or not to make a Portal Stone when their unit explores a Mythic Site. This is to encourage them to do it early in unclaimed land and then expand into it, rather than requiring Illian to expand there first, which would make this quite clunky. (I imagine if you, as Illian, made a Portal Stone in another civ's territory, they should appreciate it in the form of some kind of Diplo bonus as well.)

Companion (recruit) also uses the recruitment flavor from the Campanions, though a bit more aggressively. It's "worked tiles" rather than any tile so that the Companion can't farm tiles far from enemy cities.

Worker Sail is a simple Work Boat upgrade that would let Illian develop sea resources much more quickly. Plus the Work Boat always seems really bad value to me.

Intra-City Canals uses the canals flavor, but makes it about Culture and Gold. This one is actually a bit Wide-favoring (city connections), so possibly not on point mechanically.

Marsh Outposts is a similar flavor to the Marshland Defense UA. It would provide the normal bonus of Defense3 as well. I'm not sure about Defense4 in this case though, since some cities would be unable to construct Illian's Defense3 replacement. We might get around that by allowing such cities to construct Defense4 once its tech is researched, or just let them not be able to build it.

 

[counterpoint]

Returned for Illian! With a proper brainstorming session and everything!

cool. gonna see how far I can get right now!

Domination and Culture both seem to fit well. I think given the trading port flavor, we could possibly allow Diplo as an approach? Or we could just have some abilities that are trading focused, without them particularly contributing towards the Diplo victory. The latter would give them some incidental Diplo strength, since lots of Gold buys lots of CS relationships, but their uniques wouldn't be geared towards CSes or votes specifically.

Do you have a preference?

Hmmm, I think I like their trade/gold stuff being steered mostly towards these other victories, but I don't have a problem with Illian become diplomatic to a certain extent as well.

Related to Illian in general, I've found a few things to call out about our existing summaries/material!

We don't seem to have picked a tech for revealing Mythic Sites, unless I'm missing that information somewhere. Or did we decide this is the same as Sites of Power? (Which would be Bookbinding.) It seems like Mythic Sites should pop up later than that. This affects the kinds of things we can do with interacting with the Horn, so it would be good to decide this. (Also affects how the LB works, since it determines how early players can begin finding Seals.)

The Misc summary still has the following line in it:


This is outdated and can be removed, right? A few lines above it is what I believe to be the correct version:

Hmmm... I do think that the Mythic Sites thing should likely unlock quite a bit later than SoP, as you've stated. We could do it via tech, or we could also do it via World Era. I think, though, we would want to reward people who get far ahead by letting them get to seals early, right?

Also, don't forget the third thing found in MS's - Waygate keys.

....and looking at the Tech Tree, I think we actually very much did figure this out already - They unlock on "Rediscovery" - Era 7 Column One. Sounds good to me. Misc summary shoudl be updated - what else needs an update?

Also, is there more detail on the Hunter unit in one of the summaries? I'm unsure whether the Hunter is Recon2 or some other unit entirely. It doesn't seem to be explicitly on the Editor tech tree or Technology summary, that I can find. Nor is it defined in the LB summary (where it's mentioned for its ability to explore Mythic Sites) or in the Misc summary (where it's mentioned for its ability to find the Horn of Valere). I seem to remember us deciding on it being civilian vs military at some point? Does exploring a Mythic Site consume a Hunter?

Coming back to this out of order, I see that below you've asked a similar question. I've been thinking the Hunter would make a good Recon2 unit, but I haven't really put that idea under any scrutiny. Some options could be:

1. Recon2 is the Hunter
2. Separate military unit (not part of an existing upgrade path)
3. Replaces an existing military unit (part of an existing upgrade path)
4. Separate civilian unit

#3 seems fundamentally problematic in that the Hunter would obsolete, which doesn't seem to line up with what we want them to do. The others seem vaguely possible and probably have their own pros and cons though.

OK, I agree that #3 above is problematic.

I feel like Hunter-as-Recon2 probably makes the most intuitive sense. However, are we ok with the fact that there's quite a wide span of time in between when the Recon2 unit unlocks (Era 4.2, Sailcloth) and when MSs unlock (era 7.1)? Presumably, Rec2 will hve other benefits - better movement, whatever - but its main purpose won't really be realized until many turns later. That could be fine, but it's certainly not a normal way of things for CiV.

We could also add a Rcn3, I suppose, though that's perhaps a bit much. We could of course move Rcn 2 way back to era 7, though I think part of the idea was that the recon upgrade was happening in era four to accompany all the increased exploration potential in that era.

Other than that, I suppose the non-upgrade-path military option might be my favorite. I could be fine with a civilian, but in the flavor the Hunters all seem somewhat martial, so that feels a little lame (though, so does a Great General being a civilian)

Agreed, I'm fine with removing this.

Also thanks for finding ksb's suggestions again!

Pretty sure ksb has some suggestions for Cairhien, and then that might be it.

Also, I suspect a few others may have dropped by with Unique suggestions elsewher, but they've been sort of lost in the aether....

I think we could make it "whenever the Horn is found" in addition to what it does now. Since dropping the Horn is risky (based on how it works from the Misc summary), Illian would be much more likely to summon the heroes as often as possible, rather than try to intentionally drop it to use this UA, which addresses your last concern here.

I really like this one, because it nods really well the Illian Horn flavor without being dependent on them actually finding it, which is quite unlikely in a given game.

While I do see that Illian wouldn't likely sabotage their own horn-holding and drop it on purpose, so they can find it again, nonetheless it's still set up in a way such that if Illian is doing things "right" - finding the horn and never dropping it - they aren't getting much out of their UA. That's not awesome.

Should this say "For each point of Population"? (or arguably, "For each Population")

yes.

Governors produce relatively small amounts of yield (in terms of the number per turn), which may make Z a bit difficult to calibrate (there will be a large range of values of Z that round to 0, but it quickly becomes way powerful as Population increases). Still, it's not an existential problem for this UA.

yeah, it might need to end up a table of values we draw on, instead. +X Science. +Y Culture, etc. based on the govs.

This is nicely Tall encouraging without focusing directly on the capital, which is pretty cool. Fighting Unhappiness will be hard for the player with this, since Governors reduce the Happiness cap and cities produce extra Food, but it's a fight that pushes them steadily ahead if they keep up, which is certainly a bonus.

Do you think it needs a happiness benefit as well?

Yeah, 90%+ Health sounds good, otherwise the optimal combat strategy would be to meander defending troops around to avoid healing, which is super annoying busywork for a defending player (fighting against Illian). Lower than 90% and the usefulness of the unit starts to suffer enough that it's less obvious which is better, so players will feel better about taking the less laborious approach!

yeah, even 90% seems exploitable by the dedicated, though!

I feel like this should impose a combat strength penalty on those units, rather than damage. It's more of a morale blow, rather than the Companions fanning out and damaging them too, right?

eh, the truth is, I suggested this ability because it was mechanically interesting. Another combat-strength modifer feels a little bland to me. Not sure that's a good reason though.

It does feel a bit close to Denmark. I don't feel like their flavor pushes us to make them a generic naval power (rather than just trading-related naval strength) to use a UU like this. I've marked this one as red.

sure.

I don't think this will be very helpful for the Illian player. The main reason it works for Sisters is that they're limited (the player can't build however many they want) and using them for exploring stuff like this has a big opportunity cost (Sister units have a lot of powerful uses elsewhere). I think this will just end up superseding the Hunter, which is a bit backwards for the Illian flavor.

good points.

Agreed on the killing Population UA.

I really like this unit! Like, very much so. It hits the flavor really well and is really well focused on what it does. It stands out as really different for the player but is also really easy to understand. Good stuff.

good!

We could reduce the Unhappiness it reduces (err, make it reduce Unhappiness less than suggested first) and replace the normal Spy building, rather than the National Wonder? Since it's reducing Unhappiness per Population, that already makes it Tall-favoring, so I don't think we need to use the National Wonder.

I've suggested an edit below to do this. We could adjust the value of X if we wanted to bring it up to the full "halved" from your original suggestion if we found we wanted to.

yeah, probably all good changes!

I would be inclined to keep the Great Square of Tammaz flavor as a wonder, since it's a recognizable single-instance structure from the canon that seems like it was built after the Breaking. We're short on those guys!

I like the mechanics of this building though.

any tentative flavor-suggestions, then?

I think if we call an Improvement Canal, we'd need to allow naval units to move through it. The use of cities as canals is well established in the CiV metagame's vocabulary, so we'd be fighting against that expectation. I'm not sure what to call it instead though. Canal Network suffers from a similar problem.

I would love to add an Improvement that does let naval units travel over land by connecting them together, but that doesn't seem to line up with the flavor of the way Illian use their canals, does it?

This is a nice Improvement mechanically, the spreading of fresh water availability is strong. Rather than not allow them be built next to each other, we could restrict them to tiles that have fresh water that isn't provided by another Canal?

Also, Flood Plains only appear on Desert by default, which doesn't really line up with Illian's flavor. Do we want to make the requirement fresh water access (which lines up with my suggestion above as well)?

Also, we could restrict the "spread" to flatland tiles adjacent to the Canal, rather than any tile, to reduce the chance of Illian terraforming an area.

I'm also not sure if we can add Flood Plains midway through a game (that may be one of the things that are impossible to update visually without reloading the game - Flood Plains is a Feature). If that's the case, we'd probably be best going with a Food bonus to those tiles instead, though that is slightly different in terms of other Improvements/abilities caring about the tile's Feature.

oh, right. flood plains are only in desert....

OK, so I think maybe making them into actual flood plains isn't the way to go. I think most of your suggestions are good, but do you want to just swap it into a food bonus instead (whatever the equivalent bonus for floodpla

Yeah, I think the naval-unit-travel thing doesn't really make sense for this flavor, unfortunately.

I understand your concern about the name, but if we don't call it a canal, the flavor doenst make much sense....

The relevant LP for this UG is presumably the Ambassador?

Looking at the flavor of the Council of the Nine, I can see the connection to Ambassador. That's quite Diplo-victory-focused though, could we use one of the Culture LPs?

hmmm, good point. Yes, the LP is the Amb, but that is diplo-ey. I'm not sure the culture stuff makes sense, though...... is the Merchant Lord too diploey?

New additions!

Port of Storms (flavor stolen from your suggestion for Tear - was that Tear-specific in some way I'm not aware of?) is Tall, trade-focused UA.

Yeah, the PoS is an actual nickname of Tear. I've put this in as another busting port. Fine with this one, though the no-pillage thing is pretty minor.

Marshland Defenses is a bit specific, but calls out to Illian's use of Marshes to defend the city, rather than walls.

yeah, fine, but perhaps too specific to ultimately win. Might be better as attached to a UU... but that said, a Companion with marsh bonuses as the main game feels a little lame. Should we add that aspect to one of the existing companions?

Companion Recruitment is a nod to the flavor that the Illianer Companions are like the Frenxch Foreign Legion (the real one, not the unit), in that they recruit from abroad. This is a Dom-focused CS ability, that is also quite nice in that it makes Militaristic CSes more useful.

Interesting. I wonder if it leaves too much up to how close you are to which CS-type, though. I've found it pretty hard to "target" CSs based on which type they are. You kinda just get the alliances of those who have quests you can win, and who's close to you. This puts a lot of pressure on finding those specific CSs. I like the ability though.

King, Assemblage, and Council is flavorfully like your Crown, Crowd, and Council (the alliteration in yours is nicer to say). Like the other "new concept" uniques we've discussed on other civs (Honor for Shienar, Favor for Andor), this could be represented really simply as appropriate to the player. A countdown to the next power shift and an icon showing who power currently lies with, with a tooltip that describes the current bonus in full on mouseover. Or something to that effect.

The mechanical idea behind this one is that all 3 abilities should be positive, but the Council effect (0-10 Happiness) should be the strongest. CiV's optimal strategy is most often just-positive-enough-Happiness, since lots of positive Happiness is low on benefits (but requires effort to achieve), and Unhappiness obviously has significant disadvantages, so we want to play into that.

With Happiness controlling the power shifts, it was important that none of the effects directly change Happiness, to avoid their own affects causing the player to oscillate between them. (But the King and Assemblage parts do deliberately boost aspects of the civ that encourage actions which move Happiness toward the Council section of the Happiness scale, which is the idea of the UA helping the player do well.)

It's notable that "yields from luxury tiles" does not include Happiness, since Happiness from luxuries is civ-wide, not produced by any one tile. The power shift happens only on fixed intervals to avoid the player abusing it by moving between them within a single turn, which would probably have some benefits for them, but is super busywork-y. And fixed intervals is much easier for the player to keep track of.

The Council bonus is Tall-favoring since LPs and Specialists are Tall's mechanics. The Assemblage bonus could possibly do with being more Tall-focused though. The King bonus doesn't need to so much, since Wide Illians are unlikely to get into the King range often.

OK, mostly this is a pretty cool idea! I like how weird it is, and mostly sort of unpredictable, but rather predictable if you really want to tightly control your civ.

I think the GUI representation shouldn't be too weird. Your idea is fine, I think.

I think it's a little weird that, theoretically, there might be times when you want to be unhappy to get extra gold, but I doubt that would happen much. Mostly its a kind of consolation to help keep you afloat.

Also, this might be kind of picky, but isn't the Council bonus kind of Wide-favoring, in some weird way? Sort of like the free GP you get after finishing Liberty is Wide favoring - it compensates for a *lack* in wide play. This kind of does that. Of course, I see that, on the whole, a Tall civ would majorly take advantage of the food thing - but wide civs would definitely enjoy the LP % increase.

Home of the Hunt lets Illian make different use of the Mythic Sites, therefore encouraging them to search for the Horn. The use of "optionally" means the Illian player can choose whether or not to make a Portal Stone when their unit explores a Mythic Site. This is to encourage them to do it early in unclaimed land and then expand into it, rather than requiring Illian to expand there first, which would make this quite clunky. (I imagine if you, as Illian, made a Portal Stone in another civ's territory, they should appreciate it in the form of some kind of Diplo bonus as well.)

yeah, before you explained it, I didn't quite get the optional part.

Um, I think this could be ok. It's a little weird, though - the Portal Stone thing - flavorfully. I'll let it lie now, but I'm not sure I buy it.

Companion (recruit) also uses the recruitment flavor from the Campanions, though a bit more aggressively. It's "worked tiles" rather than any tile so that the Companion can't farm tiles far from enemy cities.

Yeah, the worked tile thing also makes it unclear which ones will yield results - on a small city, many tiles won't have this bonus chance. Is there a way the defender could exploit this somehow?

I wonder if pillaging a tile is too easy, also. Obviously we could make this a really low chance to compensate, but it's still turns these units into swarming pillaging raiders. More like a Ghealdan, quasi-dragonsworn-civ ability then Elite special units. Might be better as a unit-killed thing or something like that. What do you think?

Worker Sail is a simple Work Boat upgrade that would let Illian develop sea resources much more quickly. Plus the Work Boat always seems really bad value to me.

Yeah, I like the idea of this, but I also think it's unlikely to win. IT's just not a very fun ability. Yes, it removes an annoyance, but it's still doesnt *feel* very powerful). red

Intra-City Canals uses the canals flavor, but makes it about Culture and Gold. This one is actually a bit Wide-favoring (city connections), so possibly not on point mechanically.

hmmm, yeah, definitely Wide favoring. I think that probably disqualifies if its necessarily so. I don't know the mechanics of connections well enough. Is it based on city size and such, in addition to city number? It is, right? So, mathematically, which is preferable, connections with a bunch of cities or a few cities? We could adjust that balance, instead of just giving +Gold and culture. Could base it off of population or something ("+X Gold and +Y Culture for every Z population in the connecting city") in order to make it Tall favoring. Thoughts?

Marsh Outposts is a similar flavor to the Marshland Defense UA. It would provide the normal bonus of Defense3 as well. I'm not sure about Defense4 in this case though, since some cities would be unable to construct Illian's Defense3 replacement. We might get around that by allowing such cities to construct Defense4 once its tech is researched, or just let them not be able to build it.

oh, yeah, that defense 4 thing is a weird situation. To me that makes this a bit too clunky. Red?

OK, managed to finish! But no time to add anything or brainstorm more...

Recap!

Illian (Era 5-9, Tall, Domination/Culture/Diplo)

UAs:

• Oaths of Tammaz, Completing a survey of a Mythic Site yields +X Culture. Each time the Heroes of the Horn are summoned, Illian gains Y Prestige and a Z-turn Golden Age.
• Crown, Crowd, and Council, For each point of population in a city, +Y% production on military units and +Z% to Governor yields. The Capital produces +Z% food.
• Bustling Port (food), Citizens working ocean or coastal tiles do not consume food. Every sea trade route leaving from the Capital provides +X food in addition to its normal yields.
• Bustling Port (extra trade), sea resources worked by Illianer cities cannot be pillaged. Illian has an extra trade route for every X Population in its capital.
• Marshland Defenses, Marsh hexes worked by Illianer cities provide that city with +X Defense and +Y (low) Culture. Illianer units do not suffer combat penalties in Marshes in Illianer territory. Foreign units take twice as much damage as usual in Marshes in Illianer territory.
• Companion Recruitment, units gifted to Illian by Militaristic City-States start with a bonus +X EXP. Illian's capital gains +Z strength and +W% toward military unit production for each Militaristic City-States Illian is allies with.
• King, Assemblage, and Council, every X turns, power shifts between the King, the Assemblage, or the Council of the Nine. Power shifts to the King if Happiness is over 10, the Council if Happiness is between 0 and 10, and the Assemblage if Illian is unhappy. When power lies with the King, Golden Age points are accrued twice as fast and military units have +Y% combat strength. When power lies with the Council, cities produce Legendary People Z% faster and Specialists consumes W% less Food. When power lies with the Assemblage, international trade routes give Illian +U% Gold and yields from tiles with luxury resources are doubled.
• Home of the Hunt, when a Mythic Site is explored in Illianer territory, or optionally when an Illianer Blue Sister or Hunter explores a Mythic Site, a Portal Stone is left in its place.

UUs:

• Companion (shock), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +X Movement. Deals +Y% (high, like 100%) damage when attacking or being attacked by units with 90%+ health.
• Companion (splash), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, When the Companion kills a unit, all adjacent (to the killed unit) enemy units suffer X% damage.
• Hunter of Tammaz (civilian), replaces Hunter for the Horn, fights as a Combat unit of moderate ability. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.
• City Watch, replaces Era 5-7 Melee or Polearm unit, increased combat strength. When garrisoned in a city, raises the local happiness cap by X. When adjacent to an enemy city, lowers the local happiness cap by Y (does not stack).
• Levied Warship (gold), replaces Era 5-8 ship, or Anti-Naval 1, can only be purchased with gold, and costs much less than its analogous unit.
• Companion (recruit), replaces era 5-6 mounted unit, slightly increased combat strength. Has an X% chance of spawning another Companion on an empty adjacent hex when it pillages a tile being worked by an enemy city.
• Worker Sail, replaces the Work Boat, takes slightly longer to build, can construct three sea Improvements before being expended, instead of just one.
• Companion (city), replaces era 5-8 mounted unit, does not incur a penalty when attacking cities, and heals on turns that it attacks a city. X% chance of spawning a Companion in an adjacent hex when attacking or being attacked by an enemy city.

UBs:

• Illianer Lagoon, replaces Coastal 1, +X production to coastal and ocean tiles, and +Y gold to river tiles (kidshowbusiness)
• Hall of the Assemblage (wonder), replaces Spy2, the unhappiness caused by population in this city is reduced by X%. +Y% defense against Eyes and Ears in this city for every Z population
• Hall of the Assemblage (building), replaces Culture 3, +X% food production. Each luxury resource worked by this city produces +Y culture for every Z points of population in the city
• Great Square of Tammaz, replaces Culture National Wonder. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Culture and +Y Prestige in this city. The Square's Theming Bonus is doubled for 5 turns after the Horn of Valere is discovered or captured.
• Canal Lock, replaces Production (river), can be built in any city. In addition to its normal effects, provides +X% food production in the city if the city is on a river or lake.
• Guild of Bookers, replaces Gold 3, Whenever a unit is produced (not purchased) in this city, X% of its gold cost is generated.
• Intra-City Canals, replaces Gold3, in addition to its usual effects, city connections produce +X% Gold and +Y Culture.
• Marsh Outposts, replaces Defense3, can only be built in a city within X hexes of a Marsh. Enemy units move as if through Marshes when within X hexes of this city.
• Riverboat Port, replaces production (river), produces X food for every land trade route originating in this city. When a land trade originating in this city completes its route, produces Y culture. Seals can be moved between cities with Riverboat Ports without the use of an Eyes and Ears.

UIs:

• Canal, built on tiles with access to fresh water that is not provided by another Canal[, makes all adjacent flatland plains, desert, and grassland tiles flood plains and grants them fresh water access.

UGs:

• Councilor, spawned from the Ambassador, Yield is Food and Gold. Upgrade 2 ability is "International trade routes leaving from this city generate +X Prestige against major civilizations and +Y Food for the home city when trading with a City-State.Relevant LP for Upgrade 3 is the Ambassador.

EDIT
A little time for some ideas!

The new Companion is a spin-off of your recruitment idea, which is nice flavor, but with a little more pointed strategic element to it. I figure making the Companions be city-attackers changes the whole way you use cavalry, which is kind of cool. And the shooting-them-spawns-more-of-them thing also changes how you defend against them. Possibly all these bonuses together are too awesome, though.

Riverboat Port is a Bayle Doman unique. I wanted to actually replace a trade unit with a riverboat, but couldn't figure out how to do such, as it'd be replacing only *some* of the units, and all UUs replace instead of add a unit. Any way around this? In any case, could also have gone with a sea trade relevance instead of land, of course, but that also seemed strangely unflavorful, given the whole following-rivers thing. What do you think? In any case, another food bonus, but also a little culture, and of course, the flavor nod to Doman dumping the Seal for Rand in the later books. Not sure how exactly the timing and mechanics of that should work.

That's all I have for now. I wonder if there's a way to work in the laurel crown-also being a crown-of-swords thing. You know, the Iron Throne pricking you thing. Like some bonus that shifts to something weirder after era 8 or something.

 

[S3rgeus]

cool. gonna see how far I can get right now!

Same here, short on time, so I'll go through in order!

Hmmm, I think I like their trade/gold stuff being steered mostly towards these other victories, but I don't have a problem with Illian become diplomatic to a certain extent as well.

I think I'm also leaning towards using trade-y flavor/mechanics to facilitate the other victories, rather than make them explicitly a Diplo civ. Doesn't feel like the flavor makes them very Diplomatic, they're just overbearing.

Hmmm... I do think that the Mythic Sites thing should likely unlock quite a bit later than SoP, as you've stated. We could do it via tech, or we could also do it via World Era. I think, though, we would want to reward people who get far ahead by letting them get to seals early, right?

Also, don't forget the third thing found in MS's - Waygate keys.

....and looking at the Tech Tree, I think we actually very much did figure this out already - They unlock on "Rediscovery" - Era 7 Column One. Sounds good to me. Misc summary shoudl be updated - what else needs an update?

Aha, we did decide this! Good!

Does Era 7 Column 1 seem late for this? I suppose it's determined mostly by the timing of the Last Battle. Waygate Keys certainly seem like it would be quite a rush to get them after this stage, which I don't quite like. Should Waygate Keys from Ogier Quests possibly unlock earlier, like somewhere in Era 4/5?

Yes, I think tech is a good unlock point, so that players who pull ahead will be able to take advantage of Mythic Sites sooner. This is also similar to how other resources and Artifacts work.

I've removed the outdated entry from the Misc summary.

I think the LB summary needs to be updated - the first point in the "Seals" section says "mid-late game tech" which we can now specify as Rediscovery.

OK, I agree that #3 above is problematic.

I feel like Hunter-as-Recon2 probably makes the most intuitive sense. However, are we ok with the fact that there's quite a wide span of time in between when the Recon2 unit unlocks (Era 4.2, Sailcloth) and when MSs unlock (era 7.1)? Presumably, Rec2 will hve other benefits - better movement, whatever - but its main purpose won't really be realized until many turns later. That could be fine, but it's certainly not a normal way of things for CiV.

We could also add a Rcn3, I suppose, though that's perhaps a bit much. We could of course move Rcn 2 way back to era 7, though I think part of the idea was that the recon upgrade was happening in era four to accompany all the increased exploration potential in that era.

Other than that, I suppose the non-upgrade-path military option might be my favorite. I could be fine with a civilian, but in the flavor the Hunters all seem somewhat martial, so that feels a little lame (though, so does a Great General being a civilian)

Yeah, the distance between Rediscovery and Recon2 is a bit of a problem. Those two things (searching for the Horn in Mythic Sites and people who are explicitly Hunters for the Horn) are quite closely related, so it's strange for them to be unlocked that far apart, when the Hunter doesn't have another "primary" purpose. I think we could find a flavor justification (there's no actual chance of finding the Horn earlier, so they're just searching but can't be successful yet) but it will still seem strange at first glance.

The separate military unit sounds like a good plan then. I agree that Hunters seem quite martial, so a civilian wouldn't quite do them justice. Shall we unlock this new Hunter military unit on the Rediscovery tech?

Does exploring a Mythic Site consume the Hunter? It seems a bit lame if it does when they find the Horn, since it would make conceptual sense for them to be the new hornblower. But in the case of Seals, I think we do want it to consume the unit. Would we be ok with those two outcomes resulting in a difference? The Horn is quite a special event, since there's only ever 1.

Pretty sure ksb has some suggestions for Cairhien, and then that might be it.

Awesome!

Also, I suspect a few others may have dropped by with Unique suggestions elsewher, but they've been sort of lost in the aether....

If I had more time tonight I'd go back through the first few pages, but it'll have to wait until another night!

While I do see that Illian wouldn't likely sabotage their own horn-holding and drop it on purpose, so they can find it again, nonetheless it's still set up in a way such that if Illian is doing things "right" - finding the horn and never dropping it - they aren't getting much out of their UA. That's not awesome.

Since the Horn being blown also gives them a bonus, the correct way of playing it still benefits them through their UA. (Find the Horn, hang onto it, and kill loads of enemies with the Heroes.) If anything, it helps them more than when other players have it, since they'll be more Horn-happy than other civs, since each use gives them a bunch of yields. So I think that's fine.

yeah, it might need to end up a table of values we draw on, instead. +X Science. +Y Culture, etc. based on the govs.

Do you think it needs a happiness benefit as well?

No, I think a Happiness bonus would make it too all-encompassing. It already lets the player grow much faster, so they need to compensate for that in their play style. If it's got a Happiness bonus as well then its bonus also overcomes its own challenges. I think we have a non-UA unique that provides Happiness in some way that wouldn't usually be available though, they would do well in a set together.

yeah, even 90% seems exploitable by the dedicated, though!

Sort of, but by that stage it's a bit of a trade off - the unit is noticeably less powerful at 89% and less HP than at full. I think the fact that it needs to be considered as a trade off will prevent 99% of players from going with the really busywork intensive option, since it has a lot of risks as well. We can let the remaining people be crazy, they probably would have done so anyway!

eh, the truth is, I suggested this ability because it was mechanically interesting. Another combat-strength modifer feels a little bland to me. Not sure that's a good reason though.

With Saidin units giving all players access to splash damage, I think that won't be a particularly special mechanic overall, but I can see what you mean. I think we could make the combat penalty work really well though - if it's really big (75%) but lasts for just a single turn then it encourages using the Companions like shock troops, which is pretty awesome. Lay into one unit with the Companions, drastically weakening the units nearby, making your other units' attacks on them that much better.

I've suggested an edit for this.

With my edit, we could also consider it lasting until Illian's next turn, rather than the defender's next turn. This would mean the defending player would be much more likely to pull back their units, since they're weaker on their own turn. That kind of retreat fits well with the flavor, but it might be frustrating to play against?

any tentative flavor-suggestions, then?

"Monument to the Hunt"?

oh, right. flood plains are only in desert....

OK, so I think maybe making them into actual flood plains isn't the way to go. I think most of your suggestions are good, but do you want to just swap it into a food bonus instead (whatever the equivalent bonus for floodpla

Yeah, we can go with just fresh water access. That provides a Food bonus to the tile and to any Farm on the tile as well.

Yeah, I think the naval-unit-travel thing doesn't really make sense for this flavor, unfortunately.

I understand your concern about the name, but if we don't call it a canal, the flavor doenst make much sense....

Could we call it Waterways or something like that?

hmmm, good point. Yes, the LP is the Amb, but that is diplo-ey. I'm not sure the culture stuff makes sense, though...... is the Merchant Lord too diploey?

Merchant Lord is probably a good call, because it occurs to me that the mechanisms that generate Ambassadors don't seem to particularly favor Tall? I think we want to favor Tall with Illian!

Yeah, the PoS is an actual nickname of Tear. I've put this in as another busting port. Fine with this one, though the no-pillage thing is pretty minor.

Works for me. Yeah, the trade route is the majority of the bonus.

yeah, fine, but perhaps too specific to ultimately win. Might be better as attached to a UU... but that said, a Companion with marsh bonuses as the main game feels a little lame. Should we add that aspect to one of the existing companions?

Yeah, I see what you mean. I agree that as an ability alone on a UU, it's not too great. And I think on the existing Companions it feels a bit scattershot, because it's not really related to their existing abilities.

Then again, the Dutch Polder managed to make Marshes + Flood Plains quite significant with a UI - maybe there's another aspect of the Marsh-ness we could use for a UA? Or a UI that makes the city more defensible when worked?

Interesting. I wonder if it leaves too much up to how close you are to which CS-type, though. I've found it pretty hard to "target" CSs based on which type they are. You kinda just get the alliances of those who have quests you can win, and who's close to you. This puts a lot of pressure on finding those specific CSs. I like the ability though.

Yeah, it does put pressure on finding Militaristic CSes. In small games that may be difficult, but I think once you've found them you can target becoming allies with them. There are often quests that are a bit more trouble because they're far away but would be much more worth it for a civ with a UA like this.

OK, mostly this is a pretty cool idea! I like how weird it is, and mostly sort of unpredictable, but rather predictable if you really want to tightly control your civ.

I think the GUI representation shouldn't be too weird. Your idea is fine, I think.

I think it's a little weird that, theoretically, there might be times when you want to be unhappy to get extra gold, but I doubt that would happen much. Mostly its a kind of consolation to help keep you afloat.

Also, this might be kind of picky, but isn't the Council bonus kind of Wide-favoring, in some weird way? Sort of like the free GP you get after finishing Liberty is Wide favoring - it compensates for a *lack* in wide play. This kind of does that. Of course, I see that, on the whole, a Tall civ would majorly take advantage of the food thing - but wide civs would definitely enjoy the LP % increase.

Agreed about the consolation on Gold when Unhappy. I also saw it as giving the Illian player more Gold to trade with other civs in exchange for Luxuries they don't have access to at the moment, helping them get back up into the Council zone.

Wide civs would enjoy the LP increase, but it doesn't affect Wide civs as much as a free LP does. Only Specialists produce LP points, so if you're playing Wide, often only your biggest cities will produce non-zero LP points, and much less than a Tall civ would. We could make this a modifier to Specialist-LP-point-production specifically, which may exclude some other LP point yield sources Wide would have access to, which makes the Council ability "compensate for a lack" less. I'm not sure what those sources are, off the top of my head, that would make a difference there though!

yeah, before you explained it, I didn't quite get the optional part.

Um, I think this could be ok. It's a little weird, though - the Portal Stone thing - flavorfully. I'll let it lie now, but I'm not sure I buy it.

I see it as pretty similar to the Sites of Power flavor - how do those create Portal Stones? I figure the Portal Stone was already there, and exploring the Site revealed it. The same thing could be true of a Mythic Site.

Yeah, the worked tile thing also makes it unclear which ones will yield results - on a small city, many tiles won't have this bonus chance. Is there a way the defender could exploit this somehow?

I wonder if pillaging a tile is too easy, also. Obviously we could make this a really low chance to compensate, but it's still turns these units into swarming pillaging raiders. More like a Ghealdan, quasi-dragonsworn-civ ability then Elite special units. Might be better as a unit-killed thing or something like that. What do you think?

I think your version of this is better. The flavor of recruiting these guys when attacking is a bit weird (in all cases, pillaging or attacking cities, or killing units), but still. I've proposed removing this one below.

Yeah, I like the idea of this, but I also think it's unlikely to win. IT's just not a very fun ability. Yes, it removes an annoyance, but it's still doesnt *feel* very powerful). red

Yeah, fine with removing this.

hmmm, yeah, definitely Wide favoring. I think that probably disqualifies if its necessarily so. I don't know the mechanics of connections well enough. Is it based on city size and such, in addition to city number? It is, right? So, mathematically, which is preferable, connections with a bunch of cities or a few cities? We could adjust that balance, instead of just giving +Gold and culture. Could base it off of population or something ("+X Gold and +Y Culture for every Z population in the connecting city") in order to make it Tall favoring. Thoughts?

According to the wiki, the Gold output of a city connection is:

Gold output = (City population * 1.1) + (Capital population * 0.15) - 1

So actually yes, it does favor larger cities, which is pretty cool and makes this a bit more Tall-possible. Perhaps we could make it change the formula a bit, increasing the multiplier on the city populations, rather than straight up modifying the total Gold output, which makes it favor Tall more? We could also make the Culture a proportion of the resulting Gold output, so it's not a flat bonus that helps Wide more either.

I've suggested some edits to achieve this below.

oh, yeah, that defense 4 thing is a weird situation. To me that makes this a bit too clunky. Red?

Yes, this is probably better as a UI. New addition proposed below.

The new Companion is a spin-off of your recruitment idea, which is nice flavor, but with a little more pointed strategic element to it. I figure making the Companions be city-attackers changes the whole way you use cavalry, which is kind of cool. And the shooting-them-spawns-more-of-them thing also changes how you defend against them. Possibly all these bonuses together are too awesome, though.

I prefer this version, as mentioned above. We could possibly drop the Heal if it turns out too strong, but this looks like a good place to start with.

Riverboat Port is a Bayle Doman unique. I wanted to actually replace a trade unit with a riverboat, but couldn't figure out how to do such, as it'd be replacing only *some* of the units, and all UUs replace instead of add a unit. Any way around this? In any case, could also have gone with a sea trade relevance instead of land, of course, but that also seemed strangely unflavorful, given the whole following-rivers thing. What do you think? In any case, another food bonus, but also a little culture, and of course, the flavor nod to Doman dumping the Seal for Rand in the later books. Not sure how exactly the timing and mechanics of that should work.

This should be without the use of Sealbearers, right? Moving Seals between allies doesn't use EaE - they're used to steal Seals from enemies.

I think this will be way too strong without some kind of cooldown, because it makes it easy to shuffle Seals around constantly. When I read this first, it struck me that it feels like the trading unit should interface with the Seal movement stuff somehow. We could allow free movement of Seals from the establishing city to the target one (assuming the players at both ends could normally give each other a Seal with a Sealbearer, if it's an international trade route). This creates an indirect cooldown since it's a one-way trip based on the lifetime of the trade routes involved.

Illian could still make an internal trade route loop that makes stealing their Seals impossible though. Could restrict it to once per trade route, since that would only affect players making a loop, in 99% of cases?

Even though Domon did spend so much time on land with river trading, I think as a naval trading, sea trade routes fits that flavor better. It also works well mechanically with Illian's coastal placement flavor.

That's all I have for now. I wonder if there's a way to work in the laurel crown-also being a crown-of-swords thing. You know, the Iron Throne pricking you thing. Like some bonus that shifts to something weirder after era 8 or something.

I'll try to consider this in my next brainstorming session! I feel like the flavor of this would make it quite an LB-relevant ability after it changes in era 8. Once era 8 roles around, it can nod to the Dragon ruling Illian flavor if the player chooses Light or Sammael controlling the Council if the player chooses Shadow.


Recap!

Illian (Era 5-9, Tall, Domination/Culture/Diplo)

UAs:

• Oaths of Tammaz, Completing a survey of a Mythic Site yields +X Culture. Each time the Heroes of the Horn are summoned, Illian gains Y Prestige and a Z-turn Golden Age.
• Crown, Crowd, and Council, For each point of Population in a city, +Y% production on military units and +Z% to Governor yields. The Capital produces +Z% food.
• Bustling Port (food), Citizens working ocean or coastal tiles do not consume food. Every sea trade route leaving from the Capital provides +X food in addition to its normal yields.
• Bustling Port (extra trade), sea resources worked by Illianer cities cannot be pillaged. Illian has an extra trade route for every X Population in its capital.
• Marshland Defenses, Marsh hexes worked by Illianer cities provide that city with +X Defense and +Y (low) Culture. Illianer units do not suffer combat penalties in Marshes in Illianer territory. Foreign units take twice as much damage as usual in Marshes in Illianer territory.
• Companion Recruitment, units gifted to Illian by Militaristic City-States start with a bonus +X EXP. Illian's capital gains +Z strength and +W% toward military unit production for each Militaristic City-States Illian is allies with.
• King, Assemblage, and Council, every X turns, power shifts between the King, the Assemblage, or the Council of the Nine. Power shifts to the King if Happiness is over 10, the Council if Happiness is between 0 and 10, and the Assemblage if Illian is unhappy. When power lies with the King, Golden Age points are accrued twice as fast and military units have +Y% combat strength. When power lies with the Council, cities produce Legendary People Z% faster and Specialists consumes W% less Food. When power lies with the Assemblage, international trade routes give Illian +U% Gold and yields from tiles with luxury resources are doubled.
• Home of the Hunt, when a Mythic Site is explored in Illianer territory, or optionally when an Illianer Blue Sister or Hunter explores a Mythic Site, a Portal Stone is left in its place.

UUs:

• Companion (shock), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +X Movement. Deals +Y% (high, like 100%) damage when attacking or being attacked by units with 90%+ health.
• Companion (splash), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, When the Companion kills a unit, all adjacent (to the killed unit) enemy units suffer X% damage have -X% (large) combat strength until their next turn.
• Hunter of Tammaz (civilian), replaces Hunter for the Horn, fights as a Combat unit of moderate ability. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.
• City Watch, replaces Era 5-7 Melee or Polearm unit, increased combat strength. When garrisoned in a city, raises the local happiness cap by X. When adjacent to an enemy city, lowers the local happiness cap by Y (does not stack).
• Levied Warship, replaces Era 5-8 ship, or Anti-Naval 1, can only be purchased with gold, and costs much less than its analogous unit.
• Companion (recruit), replaces era 5-6 mounted unit, slightly increased combat strength. Has an X% chance of spawning another Companion on an empty adjacent hex when it pillages a tile being worked by an enemy city.
• Companion (city), replaces era 5-8 mounted unit, does not incur a penalty when attacking cities, and heals on turns that it attacks a city. X% chance of spawning a Companion in an adjacent hex when attacking or being attacked by an enemy city.

UBs:

• Illianer Lagoon, replaces Coastal 1, +X production to coastal and ocean tiles, and +Y gold to river tiles (kidshowbusiness)
• Hall of the Assemblage (wonder), replaces Spy2, the unhappiness caused by population in this city is reduced by X%. +Y% defense against Eyes and Ears in this city for every Z population
• Hall of the Assemblage (building), replaces Culture 3, +X% food production. Each luxury resource worked by this city produces +Y culture for every Z points of population in the city
• Great Square of Tammaz, replaces Culture National Wonder. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Culture and +Y Prestige in this city. The Square's Theming Bonus is doubled for 5 turns after the Horn of Valere is discovered or captured.
• Canal Lock, replaces Production (river), can be built in any city. In addition to its normal effects, provides +X% food production in the city if the city is on a river or lake.
• Guild of Bookers, replaces Gold 3, Whenever a unit is produced (not purchased) in this city, X% of its gold cost is generated.
• Intra-City Canals, replaces Gold3, in addition to its usual effects, the effect of Population on city connections Gold production is increased by X% Gold and produces Culture equal to Y% of the Gold produced by city connections in this city.
• Riverboat Port, replaces production (river), produces X food for every land trade route originating in this city. When a land trade originating in this city completes its route, produces Y culture. Seals can be moved between cities with Riverboat Ports without the use of an Eyes and EarsSealbearer.

UIs:

• Canal, built on tiles with access to fresh water that is not provided by another Canal, makes grants all adjacent flatland plains, desert, and grassland tiles flood plains and grants them fresh water access.
• Marsh Outpost, can only be built on Marsh tiles. Eliminates the Food penalty from the Marsh and provides +X (low) Culture, +Y HP, and +Z combat strength to the city when worked.

UGs:

• Councilor, spawned from the AmbassadorMerchant Lord, Yield is Food and Gold. Upgrade 2 ability is "International trade routes leaving from this city generate +X Prestige against major civilizations and +Y Food for the home city when trading with a City-State.Relevant LP for Upgrade 3 is the Ambassador Merchant Lord.

Phew, got to the end! Just one new suggestion based on the Marsh Outpost stuff we discussed for the UB.

 

[counterpoint]

s
Aha, we did decide this! Good!

Does Era 7 Column 1 seem late for this? I suppose it's determined mostly by the timing of the Last Battle. Waygate Keys certainly seem like it would be quite a rush to get them after this stage, which I don't quite like. Should Waygate Keys from Ogier Quests possibly unlock earlier, like somewhere in Era 4/5?

Yes, I think tech is a good unlock point, so that players who pull ahead will be able to take advantage of Mythic Sites sooner. This is also similar to how other resources and Artifacts work.

I've removed the outdated entry from the Misc summary.

I think the LB summary needs to be updated - the first point in the "Seals" section says "mid-late game tech" which we can now specify as Rediscovery.

LB summary updated.

I think Era 7.1 is probably fine, given how much the Horn could potentially upset the balance of things.

I could see the ogier quests unlocking keys earlier, and that's probably enough, since the locking mechanics are truly designed to have significant impact in the LB, primarily.

Yeah, the distance between Rediscovery and Recon2 is a bit of a problem. Those two things (searching for the Horn in Mythic Sites and people who are explicitly Hunters for the Horn) are quite closely related, so it's strange for them to be unlocked that far apart, when the Hunter doesn't have another "primary" purpose. I think we could find a flavor justification (there's no actual chance of finding the Horn earlier, so they're just searching but can't be successful yet) but it will still seem strange at first glance.

The separate military unit sounds like a good plan then. I agree that Hunters seem quite martial, so a civilian wouldn't quite do them justice. Shall we unlock this new Hunter military unit on the Rediscovery tech?

Does exploring a Mythic Site consume the Hunter? It seems a bit lame if it does when they find the Horn, since it would make conceptual sense for them to be the new hornblower. But in the case of Seals, I think we do want it to consume the unit. Would we be ok with those two outcomes resulting in a difference? The Horn is quite a special event, since there's only ever 1.

Yeah, let's unlock the Hunter on Rediscovery, too. We can add it to the three tech trees (editor, excel, and summary) once it's settled.

Are we sure we might as well not just make it a Recon 3, though? It seems like a good way to make use of expired Rcn2s, though of course that was our justification for adding Rc2 in the first place.... I'd say the key thing is: do we want these units to be the same units that are able to explore the Ways?
[/quote]I actually think we do want the exploration of an MS to consume the hunter. Yes, intuitively they should become the hornblower, but I think it messes up the mechanics, doesn't it? The Hunter isn't going to be a particularly effective military unit, is he? He might be fine in era 7, but certainly not by era 9. The summary states that the "nearest military unit controlled by the same player becomes a Hornblower," which means we'll have a variety of units as Hornblowers. Thus, opposing civs won't always easily be able to tell which unit they need to kill. We want it to be kind of a secret and surprsing thing, right? Otherwise, anytime you see military units around a Hunter unit, and you suspect the Horn has been found, you'll simply always kill the Hunter, since people will rarely be fighting with Hunters around their main armies. Seems perhaps like too easy a way to find the hornblower, right? If it's always a different unit, this is less obvious.... or is that not a good thing?

I will also suggest that we make the hornblower stay close to the Heroes. Otherwise you'd just keep him far, far away from danger, and never have a risk of losing him.

Since the Horn being blown also gives them a bonus, the correct way of playing it still benefits them through their UA. (Find the Horn, hang onto it, and kill loads of enemies with the Heroes.) If anything, it helps them more than when other players have it, since they'll be more Horn-happy than other civs, since each use gives them a bunch of yields. So I think that's fine.

ok, adjusted.

No, I think a Happiness bonus would make it too all-encompassing. It already lets the player grow much faster, so they need to compensate for that in their play style. If it's got a Happiness bonus as well then its bonus also overcomes its own challenges. I think we have a non-UA unique that provides Happiness in some way that wouldn't usually be available though, they would do well in a set together.

ok. agreed.

With Saidin units giving all players access to splash damage, I think that won't be a particularly special mechanic overall, but I can see what you mean.

it's way more special than "better combat strength"

I think we could make the combat penalty work really well though - if it's really big (75%) but lasts for just a single turn then it encourages using the Companions like shock troops, which is pretty awesome. Lay into one unit with the Companions, drastically weakening the units nearby, making your other units' attacks on them that much better.

I've suggested an edit for this.

With my edit, we could also consider it lasting until Illian's next turn, rather than the defender's next turn. This would mean the defending player would be much more likely to pull back their units, since they're weaker on their own turn. That kind of retreat fits well with the flavor, but it might be frustrating to play against?

Yeah, this works fine, I think. Illian's turn is hardcore, and thus fine for now. I suspect it might be frustrating for the defender, but we can leave it for now.

"Monument to the Hunt"?

sure. fine as a placeholder

Yeah, we can go with just fresh water access. That provides a Food bonus to the tile and to any Farm on the tile as well.

k

Could we call it Waterways or something like that?

yup.

Merchant Lord is probably a good call, because it occurs to me that the mechanisms that generate Ambassadors don't seem to particularly favor Tall? I think we want to favor Tall with Illian!

yeah, agreed. ML's are typically "diplo" LPs, but this gives them a use that isn't specifically diplo-related, thus offering another means for Illian to be cash-centric without having to lean diplo, turning an ML into a culture force

Yeah, I see what you mean. I agree that as an ability alone on a UU, it's not too great. And I think on the existing Companions it feels a bit scattershot, because it's not really related to their existing abilities.

Then again, the Dutch Polder managed to make Marshes + Flood Plains quite significant with a UI - maybe there's another aspect of the Marsh-ness we could use for a UA? Or a UI that makes the city more defensible when worked?

Yeah, haven't really played as Dutchland yet (though I have played as Deutschland)

We could also consider if some element of the Marsh stuff is fitting as attached to one of the other UAs that isn't encessary specifically related. Like Bustling Port(s) or one of the triumvirate ones. Would you rather do that, or keep it as a stand-alone UA? I do like the idea of incorporating this element somehow, especially since we won't have lots of opportunities to do so (Mayene?)

Agreed about the consolation on Gold when Unhappy. I also saw it as giving the Illian player more Gold to trade with other civs in exchange for Luxuries they don't have access to at the moment, helping them get back up into the Council zone.

Do you suspect it's likely that there would be many situations where a player was positive gold when at negative happiness, and then negative when they finally get back up? If that's a really common thing, that might be a problem because of the science hits and stuff.

Wide civs would enjoy the LP increase, but it doesn't affect Wide civs as much as a free LP does. Only Specialists produce LP points, so if you're playing Wide, often only your biggest cities will produce non-zero LP points, and much less than a Tall civ would. We could make this a modifier to Specialist-LP-point-production specifically, which may exclude some other LP point yield sources Wide would have access to, which makes the Council ability "compensate for a lack" less. I'm not sure what those sources are, off the top of my head, that would make a difference there though!

might be a good idea, but on the other hand... are we then been too picky, and potentially harming even Tall players that use these other, mysterious sources of LP points (Threads, etc.)?

I see it as pretty similar to the Sites of Power flavor - how do those create Portal Stones? I figure the Portal Stone was already there, and exploring the Site revealed it. The same thing could be true of a Mythic Site.

yeah, my issue is more with Illian doing it, and how random that feels. I'm actually going to Red this because of that.

I think your version of this is better. The flavor of recruiting these guys when attacking is a bit weird (in all cases, pillaging or attacking cities, or killing units), but still. I've proposed removing this one below.

agreed

According to the wiki, the Gold output of a city connection is:

Gold output = (City population * 1.1) + (Capital population * 0.15) - 1

So actually yes, it does favor larger cities, which is pretty cool and makes this a bit more Tall-possible. Perhaps we could make it change the formula a bit, increasing the multiplier on the city populations, rather than straight up modifying the total Gold output, which makes it favor Tall more? We could also make the Culture a proportion of the resulting Gold output, so it's not a flat bonus that helps Wide more either.

I've suggested some edits to achieve this below.

Yeah, I think both of those are good ideas. Hopefully it doesn't feel opaque to the player.

I like this mechanic, but I will say that I don't think this is a thing, flavorwise. I think the canals are more like a Venice situation - not waterways connecting the various Illianer cities. We can leave it for now, but I expect this one will be culled for that reason.

I prefer this version, as mentioned above. We could possibly drop the Heal if it turns out too strong, but this looks like a good place to start with.

cool. sounds good.

This should be without the use of Sealbearers, right? Moving Seals between allies doesn't use EaE - they're used to steal Seals from enemies.

oh, right. Sorry, the mechanics weren't fresh on my mind, and I was too rushed to look em up...

I think this will be way too strong without some kind of cooldown, because it makes it easy to shuffle Seals around constantly. When I read this first, it struck me that it feels like the trading unit should interface with the Seal movement stuff somehow. We could allow free movement of Seals from the establishing city to the target one (assuming the players at both ends could normally give each other a Seal with a Sealbearer, if it's an international trade route). This creates an indirect cooldown since it's a one-way trip based on the lifetime of the trade routes involved.

Illian could still make an internal trade route loop that makes stealing their Seals impossible though. Could restrict it to once per trade route, since that would only affect players making a loop, in 99% of cases?

Even though Domon did spend so much time on land with river trading, I think as a naval trading, sea trade routes fits that flavor better. It also works well mechanically with Illian's coastal placement flavor.

OK, thinking about all of this more, I think we should just Red the whole Seal thing. Your points are all good points, and perhaps this could be adjusted to be made to work, but then I find myself questioning the point. It's a flavor *nod* and nothing more - and not a good one, since Domon tossed a seal into the sea, it's not like he moved it between cities. Also, it does make Illian an LB-related civ, which it doesn't need to be.

I've adjusted this so it affects all trade units. Is this ability good enough anymore?

I'll try to consider this in my next brainstorming session! I feel like the flavor of this would make it quite an LB-relevant ability after it changes in era 8. Once era 8 roles around, it can nod to the Dragon ruling Illian flavor if the player chooses Light or Sammael controlling the Council if the player chooses Shadow.

riiight, interesting with the whole Sammael/Rand switch. Kind of like the Gaebril thing we ignored with Andor.... I don't suspect we need to bring that in (it's very "book continuity"), but there could be something there.

Phew, got to the end! Just one new suggestion based on the Marsh Outpost stuff we discussed for the UB.

Yeah, I think this could work! It is possible to have a UI grant city defense as a yield?

I've added a UB version of this as well, though I don't love it, necessarily.


Recap!

Illian (Era 5-9, Tall, Domination/Culture)

UAs:

• Oaths of Tammaz, Completing a survey of a Mythic Site yields +X Culture. Each time the Heroes of the Horn are summonedHorn of Valere is found, Illian gains Y Prestige and a Z-turn Golden Age.
• Crown, Crowd, and Council, For each point of Population in a city, +Y% production on military units and +Z% to Governor yields. The Capital produces +Z% food.
• Bustling Port (food), Citizens working ocean or coastal tiles do not consume food. Every sea trade route leaving from the Capital provides +X food in addition to its normal yields.
• Bustling Port (extra trade), sea resources worked by Illianer cities cannot be pillaged. Illian has an extra trade route for every X Population in its capital.
• Marshland Defenses, Marsh hexes worked by Illianer cities provide that city with +X Defense and +Y (low) Culture. Illianer units do not suffer combat penalties in Marshes in Illianer territory. Foreign units take twice as much damage as usual in Marshes in Illianer territory.
• Companion Recruitment, units gifted to Illian by Militaristic City-States start with a bonus +X EXP. Illian's capital gains +Z strength and +W% toward military unit production for each Militaristic City-States Illian is allies with.
• King, Assemblage, and Council, every X turns, power shifts between the King, the Assemblage, or the Council of the Nine. Power shifts to the King if Happiness is over 10, the Council if Happiness is between 0 and 10, and the Assemblage if Illian is unhappy. When power lies with the King, Golden Age points are accrued twice as fast and military units have +Y% combat strength. When power lies with the Council, cities produce Legendary People Z% faster and Specialists consumes W% less Food. When power lies with the Assemblage, international trade routes give Illian +U% Gold and yields from tiles with luxury resources are doubled.
• Home of the Hunt, when a Mythic Site is explored in Illianer territory, or optionally when an Illianer Blue Sister or Hunter explores a Mythic Site, a Portal Stone is left in its place.

UUs:

• Companion (shock), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +X Movement. Deals +Y% (high, like 100%) damage when attacking or being attacked by units with 90%+ health.
• Companion (cripple), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, When the Companion kills a unit, all adjacent (to the killed unit) enemy units have -X% (large) combat strength until Illian's next turn.
• Hunter of Tammaz (civilian), replaces Hunter for the Horn, fights as a Combat unit of moderate ability. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.
• City Watch, replaces Era 5-7 Melee or Polearm unit, increased combat strength. When garrisoned in a city, raises the local happiness cap by X. When adjacent to an enemy city, lowers the local happiness cap by Y (does not stack).
• Levied Warship, replaces Era 5-8 ship, or Anti-Naval 1, can only be purchased with gold, and costs much less than its analogous unit.
• Companion (city), replaces era 5-8 mounted unit, does not incur a penalty when attacking cities, and heals on turns that it attacks a city. X% chance of spawning a Companion in an adjacent hex when attacking or being attacked by an enemy city.

UBs:

• Illianer Lagoon, replaces Coastal 1, +X production to coastal and ocean tiles, and +Y gold to river tiles (kidshowbusiness)
• Hall of the Assemblage (wonder), replaces Spy2, the unhappiness caused by population in this city is reduced by X%. +Y% defense against Eyes and Ears in this city for every Z population
• Hall of the Assemblage (building), replaces Culture 3, +X% food production. Each luxury resource worked by this city produces +Y culture for every Z points of population in the city
• Monument to the Hunt, replaces Culture National Wonder. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Culture and +Y Prestige in this city. The Square's Theming Bonus is doubled for 5 turns after the Horn of Valere is discovered or captured.
• Canal Lock, replaces Production (river), can be built in any city. In addition to its normal effects, provides +X% food production in the city if the city is on a river or lake.
• Guild of Bookers, replaces Gold 3, Whenever a unit is produced (not purchased) in this city, X% of its gold cost is generated.
• Intra-City Canals, replaces Gold3, in addition to its usual effects, the effect of Population on city connections Gold production is increased by X% Gold and produces Culture equal to Y% of the Gold produced by city connections in this city.
• Riverboat Port, replaces production (river), produces X food for every land or sea trade route originating in this city. When a land trade originating in this city completes its route, produces Y culture. Seals can be moved between cities with Riverboat Ports without the use of a Sealbearer.
• Levee, replaces Defense2, in addition to its normal effects, eliminates the food penalty from the Marsh tiles and provides +X Culture and +Y HP to the city for each Marsh tile worked.

UIs:

• Waterway, built on tiles with access to fresh water that is not provided by another Waterway, grants all adjacent flatland plains, desert, and grassland tiles fresh water access.
• Marsh Outpost, can only be built on Marsh tiles. Eliminates the Food penalty from the Marsh and provides +X (low) Culture, +Y HP, and +Z combat strength to the city when worked.

UGs:

• Councilor, spawned from the Merchant Lord, Yield is Food and Gold. Upgrade 2 ability is "International trade routes leaving from this city generate +X Prestige against major civilizations and +Y Food for the home city when trading with a City-State.Relevant LP for Upgrade 3 is the Merchant Lord.

 

[S3rgeus]

Advance warning, I'm going to be out tomorrow night (not D&D this time), so I won't be able to post tomorrow!

LB summary updated.

I think Era 7.1 is probably fine, given how much the Horn could potentially upset the balance of things.

I could see the ogier quests unlocking keys earlier, and that's probably enough, since the locking mechanics are truly designed to have significant impact in the LB, primarily.

Which tech do we want the Ogier quests to start giving out Waygate keys? I assume we still want to stick with a tech for that?

None of the techs around the era 5/6 mark seem to jump out at me as good flavor candidates for this. Skimming seems relatively well placed, mechanical pacing wise? Seeing as the LB final tech is along the bottom of the tree and we consider this a relatively LB-relevant mechanic, I wouldn't want to put it at the top of tree (Bookbinding, for example, would be bad for this), where it wouldn't be a part of the beeline to Inverted Weaves.

Yeah, let's unlock the Hunter on Rediscovery, too. We can add it to the three tech trees (editor, excel, and summary) once it's settled.

Are we sure we might as well not just make it a Recon 3, though? It seems like a good way to make use of expired Rcn2s, though of course that was our justification for adding Rc2 in the first place.... I'd say the key thing is: do we want these units to be the same units that are able to explore the Ways?

There doesn't seem to be any particular flavor basis for having Hunters exploring the Ways, but it's not something I'm specifically against. Making them the end of an upgrade path has a certain elegance to it. We have precedent for standalone units in Archaeologists, but they're civilian units, which don't usually upgrade anyway.

Yeah, I think Hunter being Recon3 sounds good then! We might find we don't need Recon2 anymore after we play it, but that's an easy change to make if we need to.

I actually think we do want the exploration of an MS to consume the hunter. Yes, intuitively they should become the hornblower, but I think it messes up the mechanics, doesn't it? The Hunter isn't going to be a particularly effective military unit, is he? He might be fine in era 7, but certainly not by era 9. The summary states that the "nearest military unit controlled by the same player becomes a Hornblower," which means we'll have a variety of units as Hornblowers. Thus, opposing civs won't always easily be able to tell which unit they need to kill. We want it to be kind of a secret and surprsing thing, right? Otherwise, anytime you see military units around a Hunter unit, and you suspect the Horn has been found, you'll simply always kill the Hunter, since people will rarely be fighting with Hunters around their main armies. Seems perhaps like too easy a way to find the hornblower, right? If it's always a different unit, this is less obvious.... or is that not a good thing?

Yeah, I think you're right. I think the consistency of what "exploring a Mythic Site" does is a positive toward it always consuming the Hunter. And being able to disguise the hornblower (for a time) is another good reason to do it that way.

I would say that *blowing* the horn should alert any players that have active vision on the hornblower that that unit in particular is the hornblower.

I will also suggest that we make the hornblower stay close to the Heroes. Otherwise you'd just keep him far, far away from danger, and never have a risk of losing him.

I think the mechanics of how the Heroes work will do this for us. (Have we discussed this before?) Based on how the Horn worked in the books, I figure the Heroes appear and then slowly disappear over the course of a number of turns. Since they start next to the hornblower, keeping the hornblower close to the battlefield means you get more value out of the Heroes. I don't think we need to do anything like the Linking mechanics or sul'dam mechanics for the hornblower-Heroes relationship.

ok, adjusted

This is about Oaths of Tammaz. I'm not suggesting we remove the trigger on Heroes being summoned, otherwise we would have the problem you mentioned last time. I think it can trigger on both the Heroes being summoned and when the Horn is found. There's no risk of those events stacking and happening all at once too much (since that's impossible), but still continues to reward Illian when the Horn is actively being used somehow, regardless of the strategy of the person trying to use it. (Unless they've specifically locked it away on a unit and not let anyone near it, probably to deal with Illian's ability, which seems fine - that's only a useful strategy if Illian is in a dominant position and can probably stretch to involve that hornblower unit in a fight somehow.)

yeah, agreed. ML's are typically "diplo" LPs, but this gives them a use that isn't specifically diplo-related, thus offering another means for Illian to be cash-centric without having to lean diplo, turning an ML into a culture force

Are Merchant Lords usually diplo LPs anymore? Gold is a good way to pursue the Diplo victory, but I think since we moved the CS influence dump to the Ambassador (and made the Ambassador a much more Diplo-mechanics focused LP), the Merchant Lord is less Diplo-related than the Great Merchant was in BNW.

Yeah, haven't really played as Dutchland yet (though I have played as Deutschland)

We could also consider if some element of the Marsh stuff is fitting as attached to one of the other UAs that isn't encessary specifically related. Like Bustling Port(s) or one of the triumvirate ones. Would you rather do that, or keep it as a stand-alone UA? I do like the idea of incorporating this element somehow, especially since we won't have lots of opportunities to do so (Mayene?)

Hmmm, I think we're better off covering the Marshes stuff with the UI option than this UA, and the other UAs feel like they stand alone well already. I'm marking this one as red.

Do you suspect it's likely that there would be many situations where a player was positive gold when at negative happiness, and then negative when they finally get back up? If that's a really common thing, that might be a problem because of the science hits and stuff.

There will certainly be some, but if it's leading to Science penalties (they have no Gold left) then that player is already doing really badly already, so I wouldn't expect the UA to pull them out of it alone. It also won't oscillate so much for the player, since power only shifts every 10 turns, not every turn, so they can plan for the change.

might be a good idea, but on the other hand... are we then been too picky, and potentially harming even Tall players that use these other, mysterious sources of LP points (Threads, etc.)?

Possibly. I'd say let's leave it as an overall LP bonus and see how that works out. If it encourages too many Wide Illians we can recalibrate.

yeah, my issue is more with Illian doing it, and how random that feels. I'm actually going to Red this because of that.

Yeah, it doesn't really connect much to their flavor. Something about prolific Hunters. Eh, other UAs work better.

Yeah, I think both of those are good ideas. Hopefully it doesn't feel opaque to the player.

I like this mechanic, but I will say that I don't think this is a thing, flavorwise. I think the canals are more like a Venice situation - not waterways connecting the various Illianer cities. We can leave it for now, but I expect this one will be culled for that reason.

The flavor for this one isn't that the canals connect the cities to each other, I'm thinking it's that the cities are getting added benefit from goods brought in from other Illianer cities, due to the canals within each city. (Those would be Inter-City Canals.)

OK, thinking about all of this more, I think we should just Red the whole Seal thing. Your points are all good points, and perhaps this could be adjusted to be made to work, but then I find myself questioning the point. It's a flavor *nod* and nothing more - and not a good one, since Domon tossed a seal into the sea, it's not like he moved it between cities. Also, it does make Illian an LB-related civ, which it doesn't need to be.

I've adjusted this so it affects all trade units. Is this ability good enough anymore?

Yeah, this is probably a good call.

riiight, interesting with the whole Sammael/Rand switch. Kind of like the Gaebril thing we ignored with Andor.... I don't suspect we need to bring that in (it's very "book continuity"), but there could be something there.

Possibly a bit books timeline, but I'd say we mainly ignored Gaebril because Andor has so much other flavor that's obviously non-books-timeline-specific.

New suggestion for this one below.

Yeah, I think this could work! It is possible to have a UI grant city defense as a yield?

We can make it possible!

I've added a UB version of this as well, though I don't love it, necessarily.

Yeah, this could work. I think we would usually go for the UI though, since UBs and UIs tend to fulfill a relatively similar role in terms of filling slots in sets, and I feel like the UI makes it more interesting for the player.



Recap!

Illian (Era 5-9, Tall, Domination/Culture)

UAs:

• Oaths of Tammaz, Completing a survey of a Mythic Site yields +X Culture. Each time the Horn of Valere is found or blown, Illian gains Y Prestige and a Z-turn Golden Age.
• Crown, Crowd, and Council, For each point of Population in a city, +Y% production on military units and +Z% to Governor yields. The Capital produces +Z% food.
• Bustling Port (food), Citizens working ocean or coastal tiles do not consume food. Every sea trade route leaving from the Capital provides +X food in addition to its normal yields.
• Bustling Port (extra trade), sea resources worked by Illianer cities cannot be pillaged. Illian has an extra trade route for every X Population in its capital.
• Marshland Defenses, Marsh hexes worked by Illianer cities provide that city with +X Defense and +Y (low) Culture. Illianer units do not suffer combat penalties in Marshes in Illianer territory. Foreign units take twice as much damage as usual in Marshes in Illianer territory.
• Companion Recruitment, units gifted to Illian by Militaristic City-States start with a bonus +X EXP. Illian's capital gains +Z strength and +W% toward military unit production for each Militaristic City-States Illian is allies with.
• King, Assemblage, and Council, every X turns, power shifts between the King, the Assemblage, or the Council of the Nine. Power shifts to the King if Happiness is over 10, the Council if Happiness is between 0 and 10, and the Assemblage if Illian is unhappy. When power lies with the King, Golden Age points are accrued twice as fast and military units have +Y% combat strength. When power lies with the Council, cities produce Legendary People Z% faster and Specialists consumes W% less Food. When power lies with the Assemblage, international trade routes give Illian +U% Gold and yields from tiles with luxury resources are doubled.
• Crown of Swords, until the Last Battle starts, Illianer trade routes produce an amount of Alignment that corresponds to the Darkfriend citizen breakdown of Illian's capital. Once the Last Battle begins, if Illian declares for the Shadow, they gain control of a male Forsaken unit. If Illian declares for the Light, they can choose to summon the Dragon unit in place of the Dragon spy during their turns controlling the Dragon.

UUs:

• Companion (shock), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +X Movement. Deals +Y% (high, like 100%) damage when attacking or being attacked by units with 90%+ health.
• Companion (cripple), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, When the Companion kills a unit, all adjacent (to the killed unit) enemy units have -X% (large) combat strength until Illian's next turn.
• Hunter of Tammaz (civilian), replaces Hunter for the Horn, fights as a Combat unit of moderate ability. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.
• City Watch, replaces Era 5-7 Melee or Polearm unit, increased combat strength. When garrisoned in a city, raises the local happiness cap by X. When adjacent to an enemy city, lowers the local happiness cap by Y (does not stack).
• Levied Warship, replaces Era 5-8 ship, or Anti-Naval 1, can only be purchased with gold, and costs much less than its analogous unit.
• Companion (city), replaces era 5-8 mounted unit, does not incur a penalty when attacking cities, and heals on turns that it attacks a city. X% chance of spawning a Companion in an adjacent hex when attacking or being attacked by an enemy city.

UBs:

• Illianer Lagoon, replaces Coastal 1, +X production to coastal and ocean tiles, and +Y gold to river tiles (kidshowbusiness)
• Hall of the Assemblage (wonder), replaces Spy2, the unhappiness caused by population in this city is reduced by X%. +Y% defense against Eyes and Ears in this city for every Z population
• Hall of the Assemblage (building), replaces Culture 3, +X% food production. Each luxury resource worked by this city produces +Y culture for every Z points of population in the city
• Monument to the Hunt, replaces Culture National Wonder. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Culture and +Y Prestige in this city. The Square's Theming Bonus is doubled for 5 turns after the Horn of Valere is discovered or captured.
• Canal Lock, replaces Production (river), can be built in any city. In addition to its normal effects, provides +X% food production in the city if the city is on a river or lake.
• Guild of Bookers, replaces Gold 3, Whenever a unit is produced (not purchased) in this city, X% of its gold cost is generated.
• Intra-City Canals, replaces Gold3, in addition to its usual effects, the effect of Population on city connections Gold production is increased by X% Gold and produces Culture equal to Y% of the Gold produced by city connections in this city.
• Riverboat Port, replaces production (river), produces X food for every land or sea trade route originating in this city. When a land trade originating in this city completes its route, produces Y culture.
• Levee, replaces Defense2, in addition to its normal effects, eliminates the food penalty from the Marsh tiles and provides +X Culture and +Y HP to the city for each Marsh tile worked.

UIs:

• Waterway, built on tiles with access to fresh water that is not provided by another Waterway, grants all adjacent flatland plains, desert, and grassland tiles fresh water access.
• Marsh Outpost, can only be built on Marsh tiles. Eliminates the Food penalty from the Marsh and provides +X (low) Culture, +Y HP, and +Z combat strength to the city when worked.

UGs:

• Councilor, spawned from the Merchant Lord, Yield is Food and Gold. Upgrade 2 ability is "International trade routes leaving from this city generate +X Prestige against major civilizations and +Y Food for the home city when trading with a City-State." Relevant LP for Upgrade 3 is the Merchant Lord.

Crown of Swords is to nod the crown flavor (and also lets us use the name of one of the books) we discussed above. By "corresponds to the breakdown" - that means if Illian's capital has three Darkfriend citizens and five non-Darkfriend citizens, each of their trade routes produces +3 Shadow and +5 Light. This lets them control the Alignment output by changing the Alignment layout of their capital (which should roughly approximate their overall leaning) without needing to present the player with a "Do you want Light or Shadow yield?" choice, which would be weird. The during-LB bonuses are nicely symmetrical, and I think the Dragon unit one could be really cool. The male Forsaken represents Sammael, but wouldn't always be him. (Could even go with any random Forsaken.) We could also make the trade route Alignment yields continue after the LB starts.


It looks like overall we're getting to a more stable place? It's probably worth culling some of our options as well, but I'll just do locks here.

The only lock I'm seeing is the Companion, as the recognizable flavor unit that fans will know from the books? I would think we'd definitely want to make them a Tall civ somehow, but that's not really an individual lock, since we can achieve that in a whole bunch of unrelated ways.

 

[counterpoint]

Which tech do we want the Ogier quests to start giving out Waygate keys? I assume we still want to stick with a tech for that?

None of the techs around the era 5/6 mark seem to jump out at me as good flavor candidates for this. Skimming seems relatively well placed, mechanical pacing wise? Seeing as the LB final tech is along the bottom of the tree and we consider this a relatively LB-relevant mechanic, I wouldn't want to put it at the top of tree (Bookbinding, for example, would be bad for this), where it wouldn't be a part of the beeline to Inverted Weaves.

Well, since it's Ogier-related, bookbinding makes thematic sense (sort of), but it obviously isn't very bottom-of-the-tree!

Candidates in eras 5-6 that I could stomach flavor-wise

Channeling Circles (5.1)
Skimming (6.1)
Infrastructure (6.1)

Which of those is best, in your opinion?

This wouldn't be listed as an unlock on the tech tree for players, would it? It'd just be a thing that happens once they reach that point?

There doesn't seem to be any particular flavor basis for having Hunters exploring the Ways, but it's not something I'm specifically against. Making them the end of an upgrade path has a certain elegance to it. We have precedent for standalone units in Archaeologists, but they're civilian units, which don't usually upgrade anyway.

Yeah, I think Hunter being Recon3 sounds good then! We might find we don't need Recon2 anymore after we play it, but that's an easy change to make if we need to.

There also doesn't appear to be a flavor basis for scout units exploring the ways either...

agreed, though, that this might make the current placement of Rcn 2 sort of pointless.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think the consistency of what "exploring a Mythic Site" does is a positive toward it always consuming the Hunter. And being able to disguise the hornblower (for a time) is another good reason to do it that way.

I would say that *blowing* the horn should alert any players that have active vision on the hornblower that that unit in particular is the hornblower.

yes, that last bit is an excellent idea! I'd say its summaryable

I think the mechanics of how the Heroes work will do this for us. (Have we discussed this before?) Based on how the Horn worked in the books, I figure the Heroes appear and then slowly disappear over the course of a number of turns. Since they start next to the hornblower, keeping the hornblower close to the battlefield means you get more value out of the Heroes. I don't think we need to do anything like the Linking mechanics or sul'dam mechanics for the hornblower-Heroes relationship.

I still think from a cost/risk perspective, it encourages "turtling." Thing about it this way. Let's say the Heroes last for 5 turns, which is probably a lower limit that's still reasonable. You either:

1) Bring your Hornblower as close to the action as possible, getting a full 5 turns of combat out of the heroes, and also the element of surprise - however, you expose your hornblower to possible death, or, at the very least, based on what you've described above, expose him as the hornblower. As such, this is possibly your last time being able to summon the heroes due to these risks

2) Keep your hornblower back in home, or reasonably safe territory away, say, 2 turns. You only get 3 turns of use out of the Heroes, but it's pretty reasonably assured that you'll not lose your HB

To me, 2 seems much more logical, outside of real dire situations. This is especially true if you discover it early, like in Era 7. Controlling it over the course of the next three eras would add up to many, many more turns of Heroes than you'd get by exposing your HB to much risk.

So, maybe it doesn't need to be like the Warders or Sul'dam, but maybe something that makes it so they deteriorate faster if further away from the HB or something? They are supposed to rally to the HB, flavorwise - not travel what amounts to hundreds of miles away from him...

This is about Oaths of Tammaz. I'm not suggesting we remove the trigger on Heroes being summoned, otherwise we would have the problem you mentioned last time. I think it can trigger on both the Heroes being summoned and when the Horn is found. There's no risk of those events stacking and happening all at once too much (since that's impossible), but still continues to reward Illian when the Horn is actively being used somehow, regardless of the strategy of the person trying to use it. (Unless they've specifically locked it away on a unit and not let anyone near it, probably to deal with Illian's ability, which seems fine - that's only a useful strategy if Illian is in a dominant position and can probably stretch to involve that hornblower unit in a fight somehow.)

OK, I'd misunderstood the previous edits. Agreed.

Are Merchant Lords usually diplo LPs anymore? Gold is a good way to pursue the Diplo victory, but I think since we moved the CS influence dump to the Ambassador (and made the Ambassador a much more Diplo-mechanics focused LP), the Merchant Lord is less Diplo-related than the Great Merchant was in BNW.

right! I'd forgotten we'd removed the influence boost from the trade mission! It's still diplo in that its gold, but not nearly as focused as such.

Hmmm, I think we're better off covering the Marshes stuff with the UI option than this UA, and the other UAs feel like they stand alone well already. I'm marking this one as red.

There will certainly be some, but if it's leading to Science penalties (they have no Gold left) then that player is already doing really badly already, so I wouldn't expect the UA to pull them out of it alone. It also won't oscillate so much for the player, since power only shifts every 10 turns, not every turn, so they can plan for the change.

yeah, good point that it only shifts every 10 turns. And yeah, if you are that low on gold, your cash flow problem is larger a bigger problem anyways......

Possibly. I'd say let's leave it as an overall LP bonus and see how that works out. If it encourages too many Wide Illians we can recalibrate.

ok.

The flavor for this one isn't that the canals connect the cities to each other, I'm thinking it's that the cities are getting added benefit from goods brought in from other Illianer cities, due to the canals within each city. (Those would be Inter-City Canals.)

oh, right, intra-city. Still a bit of a stretch of sorts, but I get it.

Yeah, this could work. I think we would usually go for the UI though, since UBs and UIs tend to fulfill a relatively similar role in terms of filling slots in sets, and I feel like the UI makes it more interesting for the player.

true, but ultimately we're proposing a bunch more UIs than are likely to make it into the game, if we follow the relative rarity of them as established in BNW. So things like this might end up B's instead of I's just to preserve that.

Crown of Swords is to nod the crown flavor (and also lets us use the name of one of the books) we discussed above. By "corresponds to the breakdown" - that means if Illian's capital has three Darkfriend citizens and five non-Darkfriend citizens, each of their trade routes produces +3 Shadow and +5 Light. This lets them control the Alignment output by changing the Alignment layout of their capital (which should roughly approximate their overall leaning) without needing to present the player with a "Do you want Light or Shadow yield?" choice, which would be weird. The during-LB bonuses are nicely symmetrical, and I think the Dragon unit one could be really cool. The male Forsaken represents Sammael, but wouldn't always be him. (Could even go with any random Forsaken.) We could also make the trade route Alignment yields continue after the LB starts.

interesting! Not sure if I want Illian to be this LB-heavy, but it's certainly a cool idea.

As far as the "correspondence", I think that setup could work, though it's possible that it'll produce way too much alignment over the course of the game. We could consider the possibility that it might only payout alignment at the route's completion - that way it'd be a lump sum we could more tightly control. Not sure if they should continue after the LB or not. Leaving it alone for now. I don't suppose I'll advocate for the selection of this ability, but it's nice to have around as an option.

As far as the units... so that means you'd be getting the Dragon unit for only one turn at a time, right (or however long one players Dragon turn is)? Do you suppose that's of equivalent balance to a 'saken unit?

It looks like overall we're getting to a more stable place? It's probably worth culling some of our options as well, but I'll just do locks here.

yeah, I *try* some below.

The only lock I'm seeing is the Companion, as the recognizable flavor unit that fans will know from the books? I would think we'd definitely want to make them a Tall civ somehow, but that's not really an individual lock, since we can achieve that in a whole bunch of unrelated ways.

hmmm... I mostly agree, though I think arguably "something about the Horn" might also be a lock. Not quite, but darnn close.


Recap!

Illian (Era 5-9, Tall, Domination/Culture)

UAs:

• Oaths of Tammaz, Completing a survey of a Mythic Site yields +X Culture. Each time the Horn of Valere is found or blown, Illian gains Y Prestige and a Z-turn Golden Age.
• Crown, Crowd, and Council, For each point of Population in a city, +Y% production on military units and +Z% to Governor yields. The Capital produces +Z% food.
• Bustling Port (food), Citizens working ocean or coastal tiles do not consume food. Every sea trade route leaving from the Capital provides +X food in addition to its normal yields.
• Bustling Port (extra trade), sea resources worked by Illianer cities cannot be pillaged. Illian has an extra trade route for every X Population in its capital.
• Companion Recruitment, units gifted to Illian by Militaristic City-States start with a bonus +X EXP. Illian's capital gains +Z strength and +W% toward military unit production for each Militaristic City-States Illian is allies with.
• King, Assemblage, and Council, every X turns, power shifts between the King, the Assemblage, or the Council of the Nine. Power shifts to the King if Happiness is over 10, the Council if Happiness is between 0 and 10, and the Assemblage if Illian is unhappy. When power lies with the King, Golden Age points are accrued twice as fast and military units have +Y% combat strength. When power lies with the Council, cities produce Legendary People Z% faster and Specialists consumes W% less Food. When power lies with the Assemblage, international trade routes give Illian +U% Gold and yields from tiles with luxury resources are doubled.
• Crown of Swords, until the Last Battle starts, Illianer trade routes produce an amount of Alignment that corresponds to the Darkfriend citizen breakdown of Illian's capital. Once the Last Battle begins, if Illian declares for the Shadow, they gain control of a male Forsaken unit. If Illian declares for the Light, they can choose to summon the Dragon unit in place of the Dragon spy during their turns controlling the Dragon.

UUs:

• Companion (shock), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +X Movement. Deals +Y% (high, like 100%) damage when attacking or being attacked by units with 90%+ health.
• Companion (cripple), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, When the Companion kills a unit, all adjacent (to the killed unit) enemy units have -X% (large) combat strength until Illian's next turn.
• Hunter of Tammaz, replaces Hunter for the Horn, fights as a Combat unit of moderate abilityHas increased combat strength. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.
• City Watch, replaces Era 5-7 Melee or Polearm unit, increased combat strength. When garrisoned in a city, raises the local happiness cap by X. When adjacent to an enemy city, lowers the local happiness cap by Y (does not stack).
• Levied Warship, replaces Era 5-8 ship, or Anti-Naval 1, can only be purchased with gold, and costs much less than its analogous unit.
• Companion (city), replaces era 5-8 mounted unit, does not incur a penalty when attacking cities, and heals on turns that it attacks a city. X% chance of spawning a Companion in an adjacent hex when attacking or being attacked by an enemy city.

UBs:

• Illianer Lagoon, replaces Coastal 1, +X production to coastal and ocean tiles, and +Y gold to river tiles (kidshowbusiness)
• Hall of the Assemblage (wonder), replaces Spy2, the unhappiness caused by population in this city is reduced by X%. +Y% defense against Eyes and Ears in this city for every Z population
• Hall of the Assemblage (building), replaces Culture 3, +X% food production. Each luxury resource worked by this city produces +Y culture for every Z points of population in the city
• Monument to the Hunt, replaces Culture National Wonder. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Culture and +Y Prestige in this city. The Square's Theming Bonus is doubled for 5 turns after the Horn of Valere is discovered or captured.
• Canal Lock, replaces Production (river), can be built in any city. In addition to its normal effects, provides +X% food production in the city if the city is on a river or lake.
• Guild of Bookers, replaces Gold 3, Whenever a unit is produced (not purchased) in this city, X% of its gold cost is generated.
• Intra-City Canals, replaces Gold3, in addition to its usual effects, the effect of Population on city connections Gold production is increased by X% Gold and produces Culture equal to Y% of the Gold produced by city connections in this city.
• Riverboat Port, replaces production (river), produces X food for every land or sea trade route originating in this city. When a land trade originating in this city completes its route, produces Y culture.
• Levee, replaces Defense2, in addition to its normal effects, eliminates the food penalty from the Marsh tiles and provides +X Culture and +Y HP to the city for each Marsh tile worked.

UIs:

• Waterway, built on tiles with access to fresh water that is not provided by another Waterway, grants all adjacent flatland plains, desert, and grassland tiles fresh water access.
• Marsh Outpost, can only be built on Marsh tiles. Eliminates the Food penalty from the Marsh and provides +X (low) Culture, +Y HP, and +Z combat strength to the city when worked.

UGs:

• Councilor, spawned from the Merchant Lord, Yield is Food and Gold. Upgrade 2 ability is "International trade routes leaving from this city generate +X Prestige against major civilizations and +Y Food for the home city when trading with a City-State." Relevant LP for Upgrade 3 is the Merchant Lord.

So, trying some cutting, but having some major problems deciding, so not really Redding anything specifically, but starting the discussion.... leaving first blood to you...

So I tried cutting more of the UAs, and I found that I kind of couldn't! I don't love them all, but I feel like most of them occupy a pretty specific place. The two Bustling port options, for example, are sort of in each others' way, but they're really quite different mechanically. Same with the two "X, Y, and Z" government ones. Not sure where to go with these! Part of me feels like Companion REcruitment, and maybe CoS, get left holding the bag...

Looking at the UUs.... clearly at least one of the companions needs to go. I'm not sure which I like the least. It might be (shock)

I feel like the Hunter of Tammaz is a little weak, but might serve a key flavorneed if we make a set that doesn't have any other horn thing...

I mostly like the City Watch and Levied Warship mechanically. Not sure how they fit into the big picture, though.

As far as the UBs, also lots of incompatable-but-quite-different options. I'd say we can probably axe the Lagoon. It's simple and fine, but not serving a key need, I think.

The two HallotA buildings serve very different purposes. I think I like the (building) one more.

The Monument to the Hunt could be axed if we keep the cultural HotA around, I suppose.

Canal Lock is fine, but maybe not splashy enough.

I think the Guild of Bookers is mechanically nice, and pretty unique. Not sure its flavor-deserving though.

The last three are all similar in that they are random and not flavor-essential, but flavor-based and also quite mechanically fun and unique. Not sure what to do, at all....

Waterway and Marsh Outpost are sort of similar, in that they are good for food - any preference?

Sorry, that was pretty useless, actually. I'm surprised this happened. I feel like Illian came out pretty easy in the brainstorm phase, but is quite tough at this point.

Your turn!

 

[S3rgeus]

Well, since it's Ogier-related, bookbinding makes thematic sense (sort of), but it obviously isn't very bottom-of-the-tree!

Candidates in eras 5-6 that I could stomach flavor-wise

Channeling Circles (5.1)
Skimming (6.1)
Infrastructure (6.1)

Which of those is best, in your opinion?

I think Skimming, that's at least semi-related to the Ways in a sort-of-kind-of-no-one-really-understands kind of way.

This wouldn't be listed as an unlock on the tech tree for players, would it? It'd just be a thing that happens once they reach that point?

I think we'd want to list it as a starburst unlock thing, like the channeler power upgrades, extra trade routes, etc. Otherwise players won't have any good way of knowing how they can get Waygate Keys before Mythic Sites show up.

There also doesn't appear to be a flavor basis for scout units exploring the ways either...

agreed, though, that this might make the current placement of Rcn 2 sort of pointless.

Agreed on the scout flavor. I figure as a generic "explorer" unit players will have less of a problem with us associating the Waygate exploration with them, since there isn't really a category of people who explore the Ways in the books. But with the Hunters, there's specific flavor about them in the books, and Waygate exploration never comes into the picture with them. I think we can do it, but it'll be a bit weird.

yes, that last bit is an excellent idea! I'd say its summaryable

Summary-ized!

I still think from a cost/risk perspective, it encourages "turtling." Thing about it this way. Let's say the Heroes last for 5 turns, which is probably a lower limit that's still reasonable. You either:

1) Bring your Hornblower as close to the action as possible, getting a full 5 turns of combat out of the heroes, and also the element of surprise - however, you expose your hornblower to possible death, or, at the very least, based on what you've described above, expose him as the hornblower. As such, this is possibly your last time being able to summon the heroes due to these risks

2) Keep your hornblower back in home, or reasonably safe territory away, say, 2 turns. You only get 3 turns of use out of the Heroes, but it's pretty reasonably assured that you'll not lose your HB

To me, 2 seems much more logical, outside of real dire situations. This is especially true if you discover it early, like in Era 7. Controlling it over the course of the next three eras would add up to many, many more turns of Heroes than you'd get by exposing your HB to much risk.

So, maybe it doesn't need to be like the Warders or Sul'dam, but maybe something that makes it so they deteriorate faster if further away from the HB or something? They are supposed to rally to the HB, flavorwise - not travel what amounts to hundreds of miles away from him...

Very true. What if their combat strength was related to how close they were to the Hornblower? We can calibrate that so that more than a couple of hexes away, the Heroes will actually be weaker than most late game units. That should force the player to move the Hornblower onto the field. We could also introduce the faster-fading-at-a-distance on top of that if we find the combat strength isn't enough.

Also, small flavor-ish mechanic - can the Heroes capture civilian units?

true, but ultimately we're proposing a bunch more UIs than are likely to make it into the game, if we follow the relative rarity of them as established in BNW. So things like this might end up B's instead of I's just to preserve that.

Possibly, but I think if we end up UI heavy at the end in specific places, we'll want to consider which of those UIs turn into UBs best, rather than necessarily having similar-ish UB ready in the wings.

interesting! Not sure if I want Illian to be this LB-heavy, but it's certainly a cool idea.

As far as the "correspondence", I think that setup could work, though it's possible that it'll produce way too much alignment over the course of the game. We could consider the possibility that it might only payout alignment at the route's completion - that way it'd be a lump sum we could more tightly control. Not sure if they should continue after the LB or not. Leaving it alone for now. I don't suppose I'll advocate for the selection of this ability, but it's nice to have around as an option.

As far as the units... so that means you'd be getting the Dragon unit for only one turn at a time, right (or however long one players Dragon turn is)? Do you suppose that's of equivalent balance to a 'saken unit?

Yeah, a direct relationship to citizen count will probably produce too much Alignment. We could make it fractional (half, third, quarter, whatever, of citizen count in the capital). This would also push this ability as much more Tall-focused, since it requires a large capital to even produce an appreciable yield.

However, since Darkfriend citizens are lower in number (they just produce more yield) than non-Darkfriend citizens, using the citizen count actually favors Light. We might want different modifiers (in any system - turn by turn or dump at the end) for each Alignment.

I think a Dragon turn is about 10 turns long. I don't think we ever chose a number, but I would imagine that's the right ballpark. The Dragon moves when he changes control (when in spy mode), so a Dragon turn needs to be several turns so that the Shadow have at least a chance of catching him. So Illian would control the Dragon unit for that long (if they chose to).

I figure it will balance out by relative power - because of scarcity we'll probably want to make the Dragon noticeably stronger than any of the individual Forsaken units. We could also allow the Dragon unit to use his spy-abilities while controlled by Illian, if we wanted to make that more comparable.

hmmm... I mostly agree, though I think arguably "something about the Horn" might also be a lock. Not quite, but darnn close.

Agreed, that's a close one too!

So, trying some cutting, but having some major problems deciding, so not really Redding anything specifically, but starting the discussion.... leaving first blood to you...

So I tried cutting more of the UAs, and I found that I kind of couldn't! I don't love them all, but I feel like most of them occupy a pretty specific place. The two Bustling port options, for example, are sort of in each others' way, but they're really quite different mechanically. Same with the two "X, Y, and Z" government ones. Not sure where to go with these! Part of me feels like Companion REcruitment, and maybe CoS, get left holding the bag...

Looking at the UUs.... clearly at least one of the companions needs to go. I'm not sure which I like the least. It might be (shock)

I feel like the Hunter of Tammaz is a little weak, but might serve a key flavorneed if we make a set that doesn't have any other horn thing...

I mostly like the City Watch and Levied Warship mechanically. Not sure how they fit into the big picture, though.

As far as the UBs, also lots of incompatable-but-quite-different options. I'd say we can probably axe the Lagoon. It's simple and fine, but not serving a key need, I think.

The two HallotA buildings serve very different purposes. I think I like the (building) one more.

The Monument to the Hunt could be axed if we keep the cultural HotA around, I suppose.

Canal Lock is fine, but maybe not splashy enough.

I think the Guild of Bookers is mechanically nice, and pretty unique. Not sure its flavor-deserving though.

The last three are all similar in that they are random and not flavor-essential, but flavor-based and also quite mechanically fun and unique. Not sure what to do, at all....

Waterway and Marsh Outpost are sort of similar, in that they are good for food - any preference?

All very good points! I'll call back to a lot of these individually below, when explaining my proposals for tearing everything apart.

Sorry, that was pretty useless, actually. I'm surprised this happened. I feel like Illian came out pretty easy in the brainstorm phase, but is quite tough at this point.

No worries! The two are probably related - brainstorm was easy because we both came up with a bunch of good and diverse ideas, but now we've got a ton of good and diverse ideas so it's hard to get rid of some of them!


So, I'll make my attempt at a hatchet job below! As you've called out, all of these uniques are pretty competitive, so most of my removals are comparison-based, related to how they stack up to other options.

Also, can you imagine how much harder this would be if we only had two non-UA slots?



Recap!

Illian (Era 5-9, Tall, Domination/Culture)

UAs:

• Oaths of Tammaz, Completing a survey of a Mythic Site yields +X Culture. Each time the Horn of Valere is found or blown, Illian gains Y Prestige and a Z-turn Golden Age.
• Crown, Crowd, and Council, For each point of Population in a city, +Y% production on military units and +Z% to Governor yields. The Capital produces +Z% food.
• Bustling Port (food), Citizens working ocean or coastal tiles do not consume food. Every sea trade route leaving from the Capital provides +X food in addition to its normal yields.
• Bustling Port (extra trade), sea resources worked by Illianer cities cannot be pillaged. Illian has an extra trade route for every X Population in its capital.
• Companion Recruitment, units gifted to Illian by Militaristic City-States start with a bonus +X EXP. Illian's capital gains +Z strength and +W% toward military unit production for each Militaristic City-States Illian is allies with.
• King, Assemblage, and Council, every X turns, power shifts between the King, the Assemblage, or the Council of the Nine. Power shifts to the King if Happiness is over 10, the Council if Happiness is between 0 and 10, and the Assemblage if Illian is unhappy. When power lies with the King, Golden Age points are accrued twice as fast and military units have +Y% combat strength. When power lies with the Council, cities produce Legendary People Z% faster and Specialists consumes W% less Food. When power lies with the Assemblage, international trade routes give Illian +U% Gold and yields from tiles with luxury resources are doubled.
• Crown of Swords, until the Last Battle starts, Illianer trade routes produce an amount of Alignment that corresponds to the Darkfriend citizen breakdown of Illian's capital. Once the Last Battle begins, if Illian declares for the Shadow, they gain control of a male Forsaken unit. If Illian declares for the Light, they can choose to summon the Dragon unit in place of the Dragon spy during their turns controlling the Dragon.

UUs:

• Companion (shock), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, +X Movement. Deals +Y% (high, like 100%) damage when attacking or being attacked by units with 90%+ health.
• Companion (cripple), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, When the Companion kills a unit, all adjacent (to the killed unit) enemy units have -X% (large) combat strength until Illian's next turn.
• Hunter of Tammaz, replaces Hunter for the Horn, has increased combat strength. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.
• City Watch, replaces Era 5-7 Melee or Polearm unit, increased combat strength. When garrisoned in a city, raises the local happiness cap by X. When adjacent to an enemy city, lowers the local happiness cap by Y (does not stack).
• Levied Warship, replaces Era 5-8 ship, or Anti-Naval 1, can only be purchased with gold, and costs much less than its analogous unit.
• Companion (city), replaces era 5-8 mounted unit, does not incur a penalty when attacking cities, and heals on turns that it attacks a city. X% chance of spawning a Companion in an adjacent hex when attacking or being attacked by an enemy city.

UBs:

• Illianer Lagoon, replaces Coastal 1, +X production to coastal and ocean tiles, and +Y gold to river tiles (kidshowbusiness)
• Hall of the Assemblage (wonder), replaces Spy2, the unhappiness caused by population in this city is reduced by X%. +Y% defense against Eyes and Ears in this city for every Z population
• Hall of the Assemblage (building), replaces Culture 3, +X% food production. Each luxury resource worked by this city produces +Y culture for every Z points of population in the city
• Monument to the Hunt, replaces Culture National Wonder. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Culture and +Y Prestige in this city. The Square's Theming Bonus is doubled for 5 turns after the Horn of Valere is discovered or captured.
• Canal Lock, replaces Production (river), can be built in any city. In addition to its normal effects, provides +X% food production in the city if the city is on a river or lake.
• Guild of Bookers, replaces Gold 3, Whenever a unit is produced (not purchased) in this city, X% of its gold cost is generated.
• Intra-City Canals, replaces Gold3, in addition to its usual effects, the effect of Population on city connections Gold production is increased by X% Gold and produces Culture equal to Y% of the Gold produced by city connections in this city.
• Riverboat Port, replaces production (river), produces X food for every land or sea trade route originating in this city. When a land trade originating in this city completes its route, produces Y culture.
• Levee, replaces Defense2, in addition to its normal effects, eliminates the food penalty from the Marsh tiles and provides +X Culture and +Y HP to the city for each Marsh tile worked.

UIs:

• Waterway, built on tiles with access to fresh water that is not provided by another Waterway, grants all adjacent flatland plains, desert, and grassland tiles fresh water access.
• Marsh Outpost, can only be built on Marsh tiles. Eliminates the Food penalty from the Marsh and provides +X (low) Culture, +Y HP, and +Z combat strength to the city when worked.

UGs:

• Councilor, spawned from the Merchant Lord, Yield is Food and Gold. Upgrade 2 ability is "International trade routes leaving from this city generate +X Prestige against major civilizations and +Y Food for the home city when trading with a City-State." Relevant LP for Upgrade 3 is the Merchant Lord.

Ruthless


So my first step in removing some stuff was to try to come up with sets. When attempting to find pieces that I think make good sets, I could see which options I wasn't considering nearly as strongly as others. And even coming up with the sets was super difficult. The sets I made for this process are:

UA: King, Assemblage, and Council
UU: Companion (cripple)
UU: Hunter of Tammaz
UB: Hall of the Assemblage (Wonder) OR UB: Guild of Bookers

UA: Bustling Port (Food)
UU: Companion (city)
UU: Levied Warship
UI: Marsh Outpost OR UB: Monument to the Hunt

Both sets cover Tallness quite well, I'd say, which is good.

I realized Guild of Bookers and Levied Warship is a nonbo after almost putting them in the same set.

King, Assemblage, and Council was an easy first-pick UA for me, because it does things that are very mechanically interesting, very well aligned with Illian's flavor, mechanically helpful for imitating Illian's flavor, and makes the civ stand out a lot, while still giving us loads of tweakable balance points.

Second UA was harder, but Bustling Port outranks the main competitors I had in Crown, Crowd, and Council and Companion Recruitment.

Set 1 I think hits a lot of the right notes. It grabs all of the flavor while keeping the mechanics unique. The choice on the final slot is tough - Hall of the Assemblage has a much more recognizable flavor basis, but I really like the Guild of Bookers mechanics, and it is actual flavor.

So, for stuff I've proposed to remove:

I realized when looking at this that Oaths of Tammaz does nothing until Rediscovery, all the way in era 7, which doesn't seem like something we'd want to do with a UA. Given the late-gameness of the Horn mechanics, I figure the non-UA uniques, which are placed in progression on the tree, can address it better.

Bustling Port (extra trade) doesn't do as well as (Food), IMO, and comparisons to Venice's extra trade routes are inevitable and make it difficult to find the right sweet spot.

Crown of Swords is awesome flavor and fun mechanics, but I don't see Illian as a very deliberate LB civ. And while the during-LB abilities are awesome, the pre-LB (majority of the game) ability is just Alignment from trade routes, which I think players wouldn't find very interesting.

Agreed with your assessment of which is the best Companion.

Nothing wrong with City Watch, I just like all of the other choices more, and I never felt compelled to try to include it in the sets.

Agreed with you on Illianer Lagoon.

I like the elegance of how Canal Lock works, but with the UU competition making me use 2 slots on UUs most of the time, I found I wasn't considering this one often because its competitors ticked more boxes at once.

Intra-City Canals is too much of a flavor stretch, compared to the others.

Riverboat Port, like Canal Lock, I wasn't considering as often as other UBs.

Levee, I think the Marsh Outpost UI accomplishes this better.

Waterway, I think is a similar flavor stretch to Intra-City Canals, since the Illianer canals are supposed to be in the city, and Illian wasn't otherwise known for irrigation. I also think it will be a much more terraform-y UI than others we've considered, and like you mentioned, the Marsh Outpost UI also fulfills a food-based role.

I also didn't feel very compelled to try to include the Councilor UG. I haven't marked him as red, but I could see us removing him now.


And there we go! If we take all those removals, the list of options looks much more manageable for adding to the design list.

 

[counterpoint]

Looks like we're just about wrapped up with Illian!

I think Skimming, that's at least semi-related to the Ways in a sort-of-kind-of-no-one-really-understands kind of way.

ok, skimming it is.

I think we'd want to list it as a starburst unlock thing, like the channeler power upgrades, extra trade routes, etc. Otherwise players won't have any good way of knowing how they can get Waygate Keys before Mythic Sites show up.

alright, agreed.

I've updated the tech summary and the excel file (uploaded it). the Editor wouldn't open because I need to update something, and I can't bother with it now. So the editor in the dbox and the summary is out of date.

Agreed on the scout flavor. I figure as a generic "explorer" unit players will have less of a problem with us associating the Waygate exploration with them, since there isn't really a category of people who explore the Ways in the books. But with the Hunters, there's specific flavor about them in the books, and Waygate exploration never comes into the picture with them. I think we can do it, but it'll be a bit weird.

we'll see how this all feels when we actually make units.

Very true. What if their combat strength was related to how close they were to the Hornblower? We can calibrate that so that more than a couple of hexes away, the Heroes will actually be weaker than most late game units. That should force the player to move the Hornblower onto the field. We could also introduce the faster-fading-at-a-distance on top of that if we find the combat strength isn't enough.

This sounds reasonable to me. Let's do it!

Also, small flavor-ish mechanic - can the Heroes capture civilian units?

Why couldn't they? Also, what's the flavor of this? I don't get the reference

Yeah, a direct relationship to citizen count will probably produce too much Alignment. We could make it fractional (half, third, quarter, whatever, of citizen count in the capital). This would also push this ability as much more Tall-focused, since it requires a large capital to even produce an appreciable yield.

However, since Darkfriend citizens are lower in number (they just produce more yield) than non-Darkfriend citizens, using the citizen count actually favors Light. We might want different modifiers (in any system - turn by turn or dump at the end) for each Alignment.

I think a Dragon turn is about 10 turns long. I don't think we ever chose a number, but I would imagine that's the right ballpark. The Dragon moves when he changes control (when in spy mode), so a Dragon turn needs to be several turns so that the Shadow have at least a chance of catching him. So Illian would control the Dragon unit for that long (if they chose to).

I figure it will balance out by relative power - because of scarcity we'll probably want to make the Dragon noticeably stronger than any of the individual Forsaken units. We could also allow the Dragon unit to use his spy-abilities while controlled by Illian, if we wanted to make that more comparable.

oh, I didn't remember the D-Turn being that long. For some reason I thought it was like one turn at a time or something.

In any case, you've redded this below, and I agree, I think, so the D-friend stuff doesn't need to be tweaked now.

Also, can you imagine how much harder this would be if we only had two non-UA slots?

no kidding! Though, I bet we'd be brainstorming less.

So, for stuff I've proposed to remove:

I realized when looking at this that Oaths of Tammaz does nothing until Rediscovery, all the way in era 7, which doesn't seem like something we'd want to do with a UA. Given the late-gameness of the Horn mechanics, I figure the non-UA uniques, which are placed in progression on the tree, can address it better.

First off, thanks for pulling the trigger on these. I found myself incapable of doing so, yet I agree with virtually all your cuts. Crippling Indecision apparently didn't have any oomph behind it...

In any case, excellent point. The timing thing basically dooms any Horn-related options as UAs. Convenient!

Bustling Port (extra trade) doesn't do as well as (Food), IMO, and comparisons to Venice's extra trade routes are inevitable and make it difficult to find the right sweet spot.

agreed. I also do like the +food emphasis as a more unique variant to the "lots of gold" thing Tear does.

Crown of Swords is awesome flavor and fun mechanics, but I don't see Illian as a very deliberate LB civ. And while the during-LB abilities are awesome, the pre-LB (majority of the game) ability is just Alignment from trade routes, which I think players wouldn't find very interesting.

agreed. I think Alignment mechanics as a UA might always be up against that issue.

Nothing wrong with City Watch, I just like all of the other choices more, and I never felt compelled to try to include it in the sets.

yeah, maybe we can remember this mechanic and find it a home elsewhere.

I like the elegance of how Canal Lock works, but with the UU competition making me use 2 slots on UUs most of the time, I found I wasn't considering this one often because its competitors ticked more boxes at once.

yeah, kind of elegant but maybe not as on-point as the others.

Intra-City Canals is too much of a flavor stretch, compared to the others.

agreed.

Riverboat Port, like Canal Lock, I wasn't considering as often as other UBs.

Hmmm... This one I could be ok with keeping. Flavor nod is nice, and it gives us food and culture, which isn't a bad thing. True, doesn't deserve to be in a set right now, but not every ability has to be. Magenta leaning, I am.

Levee, I think the Marsh Outpost UI accomplishes this better.

sure.

Waterway, I think is a similar flavor stretch to Intra-City Canals, since the Illianer canals are supposed to be in the city, and Illian wasn't otherwise known for irrigation. I also think it will be a much more terraform-y UI than others we've considered, and like you mentioned, the Marsh Outpost UI also fulfills a food-based role.

agreed. Not sure I'm going to advocate we *choose* the Marsh UI though... sort of feels like "WotMod's version of the Polder"

I also didn't feel very compelled to try to include the Councilor UG. I haven't marked him as red, but I could see us removing him now.

Yeah, I think the UGs and UIs can survive with less expectations than the UAs, UUs, and UBs. I think it's somewhat handy to keep them around to remind us of mechanical possibilities and such.

And there we go! If we take all those removals, the list of options looks much more manageable for adding to the design list.

it does!

Recap!

Illian (Era 5-9, Tall, Domination/Culture)

UAs:

• Crown, Crowd, and Council, For each point of Population in a city, +Y% production on military units and +Z% to Governor yields. The Capital produces +Z% food.
• Bustling Port (food), Citizens working ocean or coastal tiles do not consume food. Every sea trade route leaving from the Capital provides +X food in addition to its normal yields.
• Companion Recruitment, units gifted to Illian by Militaristic City-States start with a bonus +X EXP. Illian's capital gains +Z strength and +W% toward military unit production for each Militaristic City-States Illian is allies with.
• King, Assemblage, and Council, every X turns, power shifts between the King, the Assemblage, or the Council of the Nine. Power shifts to the King if Happiness is over 10, the Council if Happiness is between 0 and 10, and the Assemblage if Illian is unhappy. When power lies with the King, Golden Age points are accrued twice as fast and military units have +Y% combat strength. When power lies with the Council, cities produce Legendary People Z% faster and Specialists consumes W% less Food. When power lies with the Assemblage, international trade routes give Illian +U% Gold and yields from tiles with luxury resources are doubled.

UUs:

• Companion (cripple), replaces era 5-8 Mounted unit, When the Companion kills a unit, all adjacent (to the killed unit) enemy units have -X% (large) combat strength until Illian's next turn.
• Hunter of Tammaz, replaces Hunter for the Horn, has increased combat strength. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.
• Levied Warship, replaces Era 5-8 ship, or Anti-Naval 1, can only be purchased with gold, and costs much less than its analogous unit.
• Companion (city), replaces era 5-8 mounted unit, does not incur a penalty when attacking cities, and heals on turns that it attacks a city. X% chance of spawning a Companion in an adjacent hex when attacking or being attacked by an enemy city.

UBs:

• Hall of the Assemblage (wonder), replaces Spy2, the unhappiness caused by population in this city is reduced by X%. +Y% defense against Eyes and Ears in this city for every Z population
• Hall of the Assemblage (building), replaces Culture 3, +X% food production. Each luxury resource worked by this city produces +Y culture for every Z points of population in the city
• Monument to the Hunt, replaces Culture National Wonder. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Culture and +Y Prestige in this city. The Square's Theming Bonus is doubled for 5 turns after the Horn of Valere is discovered or captured.
• Guild of Bookers, replaces Gold 3, Whenever a unit is produced (not purchased) in this city, X% of its gold cost is generated.
• Riverboat Port, replaces production (river), produces X food for every land or sea trade route originating in this city. When a land trade originating in this city completes its route, produces Y culture.

UIs:

• Marsh Outpost, can only be built on Marsh tiles. Eliminates the Food penalty from the Marsh and provides +X (low) Culture, +Y HP, and +Z combat strength to the city when worked.

UGs:

• Councilor, spawned from the Merchant Lord, Yield is Food and Gold. Upgrade 2 ability is "International trade routes leaving from this city generate +X Prestige against major civilizations and +Y Food for the home city when trading with a City-State." Relevant LP for Upgrade 3 is the Merchant Lord.

UA: King, Assemblage, and Council
UU: Companion (cripple)
UU: Hunter of Tammaz
UB: Hall of the Assemblage (Wonder) OR UB: Guild of Bookers

UA: Bustling Port (Food)
UU: Companion (city)
UU: Levied Warship
UI: Marsh Outpost OR UB: Monument to the Hunt

Both sets cover Tallness quite well, I'd say, which is good.

Yeah, though the first less-so than the second. I'd maybe put in Crowd, C, and C as another alternate to K, A, and C. The accomplish different things, but if we decided we wanted to lean on population much more (especially if we choose GoB as the UB), we'd have that as an option.

I realized Guild of Bookers and Levied Warship is a nonbo after almost putting them in the same set.

yeah no kidding

King, Assemblage, and Council was an easy first-pick UA for me, because it does things that are very mechanically interesting, very well aligned with Illian's flavor, mechanically helpful for imitating Illian's flavor, and makes the civ stand out a lot, while still giving us loads of tweakable balance points.

yeah, I definitely like this UA. It's an interesting mix of something that could be rather passive, but could interface with playstyle a great deal in certain situations.

Second UA was harder, but Bustling Port outranks the main competitors I had in Crown, Crowd, and Council and Companion Recruitment.

Yeah, I think Bustling port is fine.

Set 1 I think hits a lot of the right notes. It grabs all of the flavor while keeping the mechanics unique. The choice on the final slot is tough - Hall of the Assemblage has a much more recognizable flavor basis, but I really like the Guild of Bookers mechanics, and it is actual flavor.

Well, true that the HotA is more recognizable, but we're actually already using that flavor for the two UA options (two with the one I proposed) already. I wish the Hunter of Tammaz was a little more compelling. It's fine, I guess, but doesn't *pop* as much as the other uniques - any way to make it a little cooler? Would be good to get the horn flavor in there somehow. For now, I'm actually putting in Monument ttH as an alternate for that slot. Though, if we did do it, we shouldn't do HotA (W) in slot four, since two National Wonder uniques would be weird.

So I land with:

UA: King, Assemblage, and Council OR Crowd, Crown, and Council
UU: Companion (cripple)
UU: Hunter of Tammaz OR Monument to the Hunt
UB: Hall of the Assemblage (Wonder) OR UB: Guild of Bookers

UA: Bustling Port (Food)
UU: Companion (city)
UU: Levied Warship
UI: Marsh Outpost OR UB: Monument to the Hunt

I like em!

OK, I know we're not totally done here, but we're close, and I have a little time - going to start on Cairhien, though it's not likely to have tons of stuff at start.

 

[counterpoint]

Cairhien (Era 5-9, Tall, Science/Diplomatic)

UAs:

• Daes Dae'mar (production), Each city receives +15% production towards buildings. Can build <Happiness (horse)> in all cities (kidshowbusiness)
• Better Production, +25% building construction if building is already in the capital (Calavente)
• Daes Dae'mar (theft), +X% to capturing foreign Eyes and Ears. If a foreign Eyes and Ears is captured, Cairhien may steal a technology from that civilization, or, if no such technologies are available, +Y Science.
• Daes Dae'mar (Gold), Cairhienin Eyes and Ears stationed in Cairhienin cities generate +X Gold and +Y Science per turn.
• Daes Dae'mar (CS balance), Completing quests and giving gifts to City-States produces X% (high, like 200%) more influence, but causes Cairhien to lose Y Influence with all other City-States.
• Daes Dae'mar (specialist), All Cairhienin buildings have an additional slot for a Noble specialist. Filling the slot increases yield production of all other Specialists of that type in the city by X, but lowers Happiness by Y (both stacking).
• Keepers of the Silk Path, Land trade routes have X% increased range. If the destination city has a resource not currently produced by Cairhien or gained through another Silk Path trade route, Cairhien gains a copy of that resource.
• King's Gift, every time a new technology is acquired, gain X Food in all cities, Y Gold, and +Z Influence with all known Maritime and Mercantile City-States.

UUs:

• Con Bannerman, replaces era 5-8 unit, Increased combat strength. When earning a promotion, gains a yield of X Gold (high).
• Noble Cavalry, replaces era 5-8 Mounted, +X% (high) combat strength against Melee units. Pillaging worked enemy tiles produces Y Food in the Cairhienin capital.
• Master of the Lances, replaces Great Captain. +X Movement. Mounted units within 2 hexes of the Master of the Lances can pillage without consuming movement, ignore enemy zone of control, and gain +X% combat strength against Melee units (all units gain the standard Great Captain bonus)
• Academic (unit), replaces the Historian, When exploring a Site of Power, has the option of Studying the Relic, which destroys the Site (and its relic), but produces +X Science (very high).

UBs:

• Foregate (gold), replaces Gold 1, +25% gold, +1 Gold, +2 Gold per incoming trade route (+1 Gold for the owner of the trade route), +1 food, +1 happiness. (kidshowbusiness)
• Illuminator's Guild Chapterhouse, replaces Happiness 2, +3 Happiness, +1 science (kidshowbusiness
• Foregate (big pop), replaces <building>, The city gains 2 population points each time it gains population.
• School of Cairhien, replaces Science National Wonder 2, Each time Cairhien acquires a new technology, +X Gold (high) and +Y Food (high) in this city.
• Topless Tower, replaces Happiness 2, Trade routes from this city to City-States produce +X Science and +Y Influence for every Z points of population in this city.
• Dragonwall Gate, replaces Defense 2, Each trade routes based in this city produce +X additional Gold, and raises the city's HP by Y and combat Strength by Z.
• Foregate (population), replaces Gold National Wonder, every point of population above X generates +Y Food. Every point of population above Z (higher) generates +W Gold and -V Production (low). A population greater than U (highest) provides +T% to science, but -S Happiness.
• Illuminator's HQ, replaces <Illuminator Nat. Wonder>, +X Science. +Y Gold for each worked Sulfur tile.
• Royal Library, replaces Science 3, X% of the Science produced in this city is provided as Gold.

UIs:

UGs:

• Academic (Governor), spawned from the Scholar, Yield is Science, Upgrade 2 ability is "Whenever a technology is acquired, this city gains one population point." Relevant LP for Upgrade 3 is the Scholar.

OK, KSB first.

ksb's D D'm I think kind of missed the mark. He argues that its because the nobles are constantly striving to show off and outdo each other, so build stuff. To me I feel like it might actually lead to *less* efficient production. Also, not a very fun ability. The reference to Luca is ok, I guess. Don't think we need it for a civ, though

Foregate (gold) is brokenly powerful, probably. Also, I don't really get the foregate providing gold. Isn't it kind of a slum?

KSB's Illuminator, mechanically, might be fine. Simple science and hap bonus. I don't think we'll want this flavor used this way, though. Assuming we actually want the illuminator's guild's to have any civ-specific ties (we know they're going to be generic, but we could have theoretically a "special" one in one of the two cities that have them in the lore [was the other Tanchico?]), we definitely don't want it to be a random building. It'd need to be a replacement of the Nat Wonder we already know we want (Factory replacement).

Calavente's UA (which he didn't name) is a duplication of Rome, so we won't want that. Put here for posterity.

Your old Foregate is kind of nuts. No idea what building it replaces. Not sure if we want something this big, but it is a mechanical dimension we could consider.

OK, my stuff now. I found coming up with UUs to be very very difficult. There isn't much flavor there. I think this might be a civ where a UU we use might be more "generic," sort of just a different kind of footman or something, without much direct reference. That's not terrible. For me these first-round passes are mostly about flavor capturing, so there are certainly more UU options, mechanically, that could be suitable, that are simply not here now.

Also, UAs were tricky!

Daes Dae'mar (theft) is meant to change the way you play with spies. The idea is that, if we set Cairhien up to have a tech lead, people won't be able to resist spying on them. Cairhien then can gain science from that. I can't figure out how to balance the % capture thing, though. I don't *want* to boost the kill chance, since then people won't spy on you, but I want a way to make this pay off often. Probably not a good ability since it relies on other civs' actions too much.

D D'm (Gold) is also probably not a good ability. The idea is that you're spying on yourself instead of others. Not a very compelling mechanic, but I put it here in case it inspires something else.

D D'm (CS Balance) is weird and probably bad. Tries to approximate the whole piss-off-one-person while you make someone else happy thing. Maybe an idea there....

Daes Dae'mar (specialist) might not be possible. Meant to reward really huge cities with big yield payouts, but majorly cut into your happiness. Not sure how to make this one work.

I actually really struggled with D D'm stuff that felt flavorful and *not* a huge penalty. There's probably a better diplo answer somewhere...

can't figure out the Silk Path one. It's either too good or kind of lame...

Note that I also considered a "Class Divisions" UA, but decided against it because it was likely to yield similar mechanics to the D D'm stuff. The flavor's there, though.

King's Gift is weird. Would need to be paired with something that fuels science... Another "build big" ability (funny how we're doing all the tall civs back-to-back)

The Con is the little square banners the 'hien use to state which house they are with. My unit is pretty lousy, I know. Not a lot to go on, here.

Noble Cavalry is a super weird bonus... Not sure how to balance this...

for Master of the Lances, (apparently a flavor thing), I decided to go with the GC thing. I think it's somewhat problematic, though, in that it's probably hard to keep these guys close enough to the GC to make it work. Also, it encourages horse carpeting.

Academic (historian) is a way to turn what would be a Culture process into a science one.

School of Cairhien might be a Wonder, but we could reframe it to work this way as well. Meant to add onto the free tech you already get with that wonder.

the Topless Tower is another likely wonder - we could frame it appropriately. This one is designed to encourage tall, but im' not sure how to make it useful in non-trading cities (maybe it isn't). This would be in addition to normal happiness bonuses, though.

DW Gate is another trade-route-does-something-else building.

Foregate (population) is kind of complicated. The idea is you'd build the city really huge, and get benefits, but also get some drawbacks. Not sure if it'd work.

For the illumination one (obviously not a real name), I've lost track of *which* nat wonder the chapterhouses are. I sort of thought it was associated with Sulfer. But I see that "Gold (Nat)" is the one on Fireworks. Is that right? I had an idea of a third component to add to this that would add some depth (and happiness), but then completely forgot the mechanic. Oh well.

Royal Library might be flavorfully weak, but it's an interesting fusion of money and knowledge

The academic provides a kind of weird bonus, turning science into population, which presumably leads to more science. Definitely not mutually exclusive to the Philosopher (the other science gov).

Oy, too long! That's all I got!

 

[S3rgeus]

More advance warning, I'm going to be away tomorrow, but just for tomorrow, so I'll be back on Sunday!

Looks like we're just about wrapped up with Illian!

Indeed!

ok, skimming it is.

alright, agreed.

I've updated the tech summary and the excel file (uploaded it). the Editor wouldn't open because I need to update something, and I can't bother with it now. So the editor in the dbox and the summary is out of date.

I've updated the Editor tree!

You need to update something? The Editor should be fairly standalone, unless your CiV install is missing or something?

we'll see how this all feels when we actually make units.

This sounds reasonable to me. Let's do it!

Summary-ized

Why couldn't they? Also, what's the flavor of this? I don't get the reference

It isn't something that Heroes seem to be geared for, capturing enemy non-military units for the civilization that summoned them. However, thinking this through, this would allow players to block the Heroes with civilian units (since stacking them would be uber bizarre), which is crappy, so let's not do that.

First off, thanks for pulling the trigger on these. I found myself incapable of doing so, yet I agree with virtually all your cuts. Crippling Indecision apparently didn't have any oomph behind it...

No problem, we seem to have gotten down to a design list-able civ very quickly now!

Hmmm... This one I could be ok with keeping. Flavor nod is nice, and it gives us food and culture, which isn't a bad thing. True, doesn't deserve to be in a set right now, but not every ability has to be. Magenta leaning, I am.

Yeah, I'm fine with keeping this one.

agreed. Not sure I'm going to advocate we *choose* the Marsh UI though... sort of feels like "WotMod's version of the Polder"

Hmmm, I see what you mean. The Polder applies to more than Marsh, but that's what it's known for. Still, this one is quite military, which the Polder definitely isn't. I think if we aren't going to choose something though, we should cut it now, because it saves us considering it later.

Well, true that the HotA is more recognizable, but we're actually already using that flavor for the two UA options (two with the one I proposed) already. I wish the Hunter of Tammaz was a little more compelling. It's fine, I guess, but doesn't *pop* as much as the other uniques - any way to make it a little cooler? Would be good to get the horn flavor in there somehow. For now, I'm actually putting in Monument ttH as an alternate for that slot. Though, if we did do it, we shouldn't do HotA (W) in slot four, since two National Wonder uniques would be weird.

True, the Hall of the Assemblage does share flavor with Set 1's UA, but given what that flavor is (the existence of this governing body, and a building that is built for their grandeur) I think it's complementary overlap.

I do agree about the Hunter. Currently he does this:

Hunter of Tammaz, replaces Hunter for the Horn, has increased combat strength. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.

What if he did this?

Hunter of Tammaz, replaces the Hunter for the Horn, has combat strength increased by X times the number of Mythic Sites Illian has explored. Exploring a Mythic Site with a Hunter of Tammaz generates +X Prestige. If a Hunter of Tammaz is the Hornblower, the Horn's cooldown is halved.

More complicated, but more room to be interesting?

So I land with:

UA: King, Assemblage, and Council OR Crowd, Crown, and Council
UU: Companion (cripple)
UU: Hunter of Tammaz OR Monument to the Hunt
UB: Hall of the Assemblage (Wonder) OR UB: Guild of Bookers

UA: Bustling Port (Food)
UU: Companion (city)
UU: Levied Warship
UI: Marsh Outpost OR UB: Monument to the Hunt

I like em!

Awesome, so do I!

OK, I know we're not totally done here, but we're close, and I have a little time - going to start on Cairhien, though it's not likely to have tons of stuff at start.

I've added Illian to the design list now. Thanks for starting on Cairhien!

Cairhien is the last civ before we evaluate whether to continue designing civs, right? I realize now that we haven't done either of the Faith civs (Ghealdan or Amadicia) which might leave a hole. Could be worth doing one of them after. I'd say Ghealdan, of the two, given the rankings. I also already have some notes for Ghealdan!

Unfortunately I don't have enough time for a brainstorming session to respond to Cairhien tonight, but I'll ruminate until Sunday!

 

[counterpoint]

I've updated the Editor tree!

You need to update something? The Editor should be fairly standalone, unless your CiV install is missing or something?

we'll see how this all feels when we actually make units.

I've updated the summary.

But yeah, it's a Microsoft Visual Studio problem. "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required." weird.

It isn't something that Heroes seem to be geared for, capturing enemy non-military units for the civilization that summoned them. However, thinking this through, this would allow players to block the Heroes with civilian units (since stacking them would be uber bizarre), which is crappy, so let's not do that.

wow, talk about cheese strategy...

Hmmm, I see what you mean. The Polder applies to more than Marsh, but that's what it's known for. Still, this one is quite military, which the Polder definitely isn't. I think if we aren't going to choose something though, we should cut it now, because it saves us considering it later.

I think we could leave it around.

True, the Hall of the Assemblage does share flavor with Set 1's UA, but given what that flavor is (the existence of this governing body, and a building that is built for their grandeur) I think it's complementary overlap.

right. I'm not saying it's problematic in the sense that it feels inorganic or anything. It's just less economical than how we've been handling uniques in most cases, where we pretty much go "and you, and you, and you, and you", with each one capturing a distinct flavor element.

I do agree about the Hunter. Currently he does this:

Hunter of Tammaz, replaces Hunter for the Horn, has increased combat strength. Completing a survey of a Mythic Site generates +X Prestige.

What if he did this?

Hunter of Tammaz, replaces the Hunter for the Horn, has combat strength increased by X times the number of Mythic Sites Illian has explored. Exploring a Mythic Site with a Hunter of Tammaz generates +X Prestige. If a Hunter of Tammaz is the Hornblower, the Horn's cooldown is halved.

More complicated, but more room to be interesting?

OK, I really like the whole combat boost based on MS's. We could make it so he could theoretically keep pace and end up a pretty cool combat unit. We could also have him spawn with additional EXP based on this, instead of boosting his strength.

I don't think the hornblower aspect will work, though. He's consumed after exploration, so the way to make him the horn blower, reliably, would be to have them all travel in pairs. One to explore the site, and one to be the "Closest Military Unit" to become the hornblower. That's quite lame. Unless we made them not get consumed, as a special ability, but I'm not sure we need that.

I've added Illian to the design list now. Thanks for starting on Cairhien!

Cairhien is the last civ before we evaluate whether to continue designing civs, right? I realize now that we haven't done either of the Faith civs (Ghealdan or Amadicia) which might leave a hole. Could be worth doing one of them after. I'd say Ghealdan, of the two, given the rankings. I also already have some notes for Ghealdan!

Ah. Well, how many civs do we have left, anyway?

Ghealdan
Mayene
Amadicia
Tarabon
Aridhol
Aramaelle
Altara
Arad Doman
Saldaea
Aldeshar

So, ten. A hefty amount. So far, we've done 12, and have started 13 (Cairhien).

I feel like we could push through them. We don't have to, though. I will say, those on the list I'm specifically looking forward to working on, though, are: Ghealdan, Amadicia, Mayene, and, to an extent, Altara. The others I'm less committed to, though some of them scored higher than those I listed.

How are you feeling about it? Part of me is definitely getting a little fatigued on this, but on the other hand, I feel like we've become relatively efficient at it. And what's become clear (I'd say) is that the thing that makes them take forever is a surplus of flavor. True, coming up with ideas for Andor and Seanchan was easy, and fun, but it took forever, because there were so many things to consider. Aramaelle will not have that problem. We haven't really had an issue coming up with some mechanical stuff that fits.We just might be struck by seeing a civ with, say, only 8 Uniques on the list. That's probably fine though. So, I don't think the last ten would take anywhere close to the time it took for the first 12. Thoughts?

Unfortunately I don't have enough time for a brainstorming session to respond to Cairhien tonight, but I'll ruminate until Sunday!

right!

 

[S3rgeus]

I've updated the summary.

Awesome, thanks!

But yeah, it's a Microsoft Visual Studio problem. "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required." weird.

You shouldn't need Visual Studio to run the Editor though - only to rebuild it from source. The Editor works standalone as a normal application you can double click on.

right. I'm not saying it's problematic in the sense that it feels inorganic or anything. It's just less economical than how we've been handling uniques in most cases, where we pretty much go "and you, and you, and you, and you", with each one capturing a distinct flavor element.

Yeah, but I don't feel like we have to do that all the time. It's ok to cover some flavor more thoroughly on some civs.

OK, I really like the whole combat boost based on MS's. We could make it so he could theoretically keep pace and end up a pretty cool combat unit. We could also have him spawn with additional EXP based on this, instead of boosting his strength.

I don't think the hornblower aspect will work, though. He's consumed after exploration, so the way to make him the horn blower, reliably, would be to have them all travel in pairs. One to explore the site, and one to be the "Closest Military Unit" to become the hornblower. That's quite lame. Unless we made them not get consumed, as a special ability, but I'm not sure we need that.

I think strength will be more visible for the players in how it impacts the Hunter's effectiveness - the EXP could make a good component if we needed to tune him up stronger though.

You're right about the pairs for the hornblower. I figure the Horn will often be discovered farther away from Illian's territory, so other scouting units are the most likely to be nearby. It would encourage them to use Hunters to scout specifically, rather than whatever unit they have free. But it's a niche use. However, I think finding the Horn being a part of how they are unique would make the unit really pop. It can't be their primary focus, because finding the Horn is so rare, but it also needs to be an ability contained within the unit, rather than something global (which is the difficulty we hit here).

Maybe the answer is just make them not be consumed by finding the Horn? (The Hunter of Tammaz, not Hunters in general.) The scaling strength negates one of our major difficulties with the Hunter for the Horn becoming the hornblower (being outclassed on the battlefield) and it fits really nicely with their flavor. The two abilities do work together well in that way, and it's not something we'd ever want in a standalone ability.

Ah. Well, how many civs do we have left, anyway?

Ghealdan
Mayene
Amadicia
Tarabon
Aridhol
Aramaelle
Altara
Arad Doman
Saldaea
Aldeshar

So, ten. A hefty amount. So far, we've done 12, and have started 13 (Cairhien).

I feel like we could push through them. We don't have to, though. I will say, those on the list I'm specifically looking forward to working on, though, are: Ghealdan, Amadicia, Mayene, and, to an extent, Altara. The others I'm less committed to, though some of them scored higher than those I listed.

How are you feeling about it? Part of me is definitely getting a little fatigued on this, but on the other hand, I feel like we've become relatively efficient at it. And what's become clear (I'd say) is that the thing that makes them take forever is a surplus of flavor. True, coming up with ideas for Andor and Seanchan was easy, and fun, but it took forever, because there were so many things to consider. Aramaelle will not have that problem. We haven't really had an issue coming up with some mechanical stuff that fits.We just might be struck by seeing a civ with, say, only 8 Uniques on the list. That's probably fine though. So, I don't think the last ten would take anywhere close to the time it took for the first 12. Thoughts?

That seems like a lot to keep going with - we started the individual civ designs so far on the 11th of May, which is a bit over 3 months ago. Even if we're faster now, it's at least a couple of months' work to go through all of those civs, and I'd be inclined to get us on to the implementation phase sooner. I'm also conscious of the Civ6 release and how that might affect us - Firaxis may actually pull the rug out from under us if they make significant strides with supporting modded art assets. That's a big pain in CiV and if CiVI makes it easier enough and grabs most of the good artists then we're in a bit of a bind.

That aside, looking at these civs, I think Ghealdan fulfills a good role as I mentioned before, so that we have one Faith-oriented civ in the first release. All of the others seem unlikely to make it though. Mayene would be the only one I'd really strongly consider at this stage, but I'd be fine leaving even them out now. And that couple of months is a lot of effort on those civs, which I think would be better placed getting us going on something playable.

I'd also like to know what else we have left after we finish uniques before we start up on implementation. To my knowledge, Policies and Tenets, and the flavor pass over the tech tree are still left to do. Do we want to do those before implementation, or stagger them into the process? Policies and Tenets can be easily left the same as BNW and our other systems worked on to begin with. The flavor pass can also be left, if we're happy with the default abilities to start with. (Not changing the Granary equivalent to generate Food in some other way, in other words - if we're even going to do things like that.)

It's also worth calling out that, like what happened with the LB, when we go to actually put something into the game, we'll probably end up doing a lot more honing of the design. Decisions we hadn't realized were left unmade thus far, specifics and edge cases we hadn't considered in the summaries, or places where the summaries and our previous discussions are vague. I doubt it would be as big an overhaul as the LB was when we revisited it, since that was one of our very early attempts to codify designs, but there will still be things.

What do you think? Are those remaining civs essential? (Is even Ghealdan essential?) What about remaining topics after uniques?

And obviously we'll need an implementation plan, since I'm not just going to disappear off and start building things for months on end until all of the content of all of the summaries are in there! We'll want some kind of lightweight progress report system and the making available of bootable (rather than playable) builds of the mod so that at least you can try out some of our changes first hand!




Also, I'm part of the way through a response to starting Cairhien, but unfortunately I've run out of time for tonight! I'll be back tomorrow with a full response on that.

 

[counterpoint]

You shouldn't need Visual Studio to run the Editor though - only to rebuild it from source. The Editor works standalone as a normal application you can double click on.

Duh. I was launching the file called "IndieStoneTechEditor.exe" thinking it was, you know, an exe, when in fact that was the XML (file extensions are hidden in explorer for me). i'm lame.

I think strength will be more visible for the players in how it impacts the Hunter's effectiveness - the EXP could make a good component if we needed to tune him up stronger though.

ok. we can go with the strength-increases-based-on-MS-exploration thing.

You're right about the pairs for the hornblower. I figure the Horn will often be discovered farther away from Illian's territory, so other scouting units are the most likely to be nearby. It would encourage them to use Hunters to scout specifically, rather than whatever unit they have free. But it's a niche use. However, I think finding the Horn being a part of how they are unique would make the unit really pop. It can't be their primary focus, because finding the Horn is so rare, but it also needs to be an ability contained within the unit, rather than something global (which is the difficulty we hit here).

Maybe the answer is just make them not be consumed by finding the Horn? (The Hunter of Tammaz, not Hunters in general.) The scaling strength negates one of our major difficulties with the Hunter for the Horn becoming the hornblower (being outclassed on the battlefield) and it fits really nicely with their flavor. The two abilities do work together well in that way, and it's not something we'd ever want in a standalone ability.

yeah, though it might be a niche use, it's still a niche use that promotes really weird behavior (traveling around with two hunters doing explorations).

I think the problem with the *not* consuming thing is that then it *forces* you to have the Hunter be the hornblower, which is good if he gets bonuses, but bad if you want to disguise your intentions from the enemy. I fear it might make them too obvious, as previously discussed.

Should it be an option? Maybe Illian would have the option of sending the horn to the nearest unit or the nearest Hunter unit? (or, this could be merged with the no-consumption such that you had the choice of "this unit" or "nearest unit").

I should remind us, though, that there isn't a lot of flavor basis for illian being better *with* the horn. I find I quite like rewarding them for searching for it - or for its existence like that UA did - but rewarding a specific unit for being the hornblower isn't really grounded in flavor. I suppose the combat bonus for Hunters could be amplified if Illian controls the horn at all - then it coiuld be like a "morale" boost or something.

That seems like a lot to keep going with - we started the individual civ designs so far on the 11th of May, which is a bit over 3 months ago. Even if we're faster now, it's at least a couple of months' work to go through all of those civs, and I'd be inclined to get us on to the implementation phase sooner. I'm also conscious of the Civ6 release and how that might affect us - Firaxis may actually pull the rug out from under us if they make significant strides with supporting modded art assets. That's a big pain in CiV and if CiVI makes it easier enough and grabs most of the good artists then we're in a bit of a bind.

these are valid points!

That aside, looking at these civs, I think Ghealdan fulfills a good role as I mentioned before, so that we have one Faith-oriented civ in the first release. All of the others seem unlikely to make it though. Mayene would be the only one I'd really strongly consider at this stage, but I'd be fine leaving even them out now. And that couple of months is a lot of effort on those civs, which I think would be better placed getting us going on something playable.

I dunno. The issue I have witth this is that it kind of limtis our options somewhat with the launch civs. All the logic that led us to decide to do the 21 or so of them is still there, I'd say. The new data doesn't remove that, it just makes it more of a pain. I still don't want to feel stuck with the ones we have, and would appreciate a few options.

Honestly, for me, I look at it a bit like "which civs would people expect to see"? To me, I'd say Amadicia and Altara might make that cut. I think Ghealdan is good for our previously mentioned reasons. I think we both want Mayene, but I think people would accept that as a CS. Tarabon is arguable.

So, part of me thinks we should consider maybe doing Ghealdan, Amadicia, and Altara, and stop for there?

... but we could also just stop.

I'd also like to know what else we have left after we finish uniques before we start up on implementation. To my knowledge, Policies and Tenets, and the flavor pass over the tech tree are still left to do. Do we want to do those before implementation, or stagger them into the process? Policies and Tenets can be easily left the same as BNW and our other systems worked on to begin with. The flavor pass can also be left, if we're happy with the default abilities to start with. (Not changing the Granary equivalent to generate Food in some other way, in other words - if we're even going to do things like that.)

It's also worth calling out that, like what happened with the LB, when we go to actually put something into the game, we'll probably end up doing a lot more honing of the design. Decisions we hadn't realized were left unmade thus far, specifics and edge cases we hadn't considered in the summaries, or places where the summaries and our previous discussions are vague. I doubt it would be as big an overhaul as the LB was when we revisited it, since that was one of our very early attempts to codify designs, but there will still be things.

What do you think? Are those remaining civs essential? (Is even Ghealdan essential?) What about remaining topics after uniques?

And obviously we'll need an implementation plan, since I'm not just going to disappear off and start building things for months on end until all of the content of all of the summaries are in there! We'll want some kind of lightweight progress report system and the making available of bootable (rather than playable) builds of the mod so that at least you can try out some of our changes first hand!

ok, cool.

So, what's next? Yeah, Policies and Tenets, actual decisions on civs and uniques, and flavor for the techs, units, etc.. After that, I think it's all tweaking and uber-specific flavor.

I'd say a good deal of these things can happen whilst you're implementing. I think the question is how much you want to split your work. While you're doing the main programming, I can make myself useful with other things. So, I suppose the question is: which things would be good for counterpoint to do while S3rgeus implements? In other words, what things are important enough to do soon (e.g., probably not compose music and such), but not important enough that I need to pretty much "work it out" with you in real time (i.e. "post time"). Obviously, there's a whole lot of "flavor text" that needs to be done (not even counting the civilopedia), but that kind of thing isn't super useful at this point, right?

I think the answer to that question helps us decide when you should start on implementation.

As far as the specific things you've called out as next:

1) final civ decisions and uniques: This one needs to absolutely be done together, I'd say. Should probably be done pre-implementation. However:
1a) flavor of the civs - leaders, city names, etc., I could probably make proposals more or less on my own. Can be done while doing implementation
2) Policies and Tenets. I think the Tenets might largely remain unchanged, and might need some new flavor, and other tweaking, plus additions from our new mechanics. I can probably handle leading this on my own, and can thus probably be done while you're implementationing. But...
2a) Policies, specifically, is trickier. We spoke about maybe launching it vanilla-style (i.e. BNW-style) and tweaking later, but given the split paths and such, that's a little complex and might be good to have in place at launch. However, we could assign this to me, and leave me to come up with a proposal of sorts, that I build while you're doing other implementation.
3) Tech flavor,a s well as units, buildings, etc. - This doesn't need to be done pre-implementation. As far as who does it, based on how the tech tree went, it probably would end up of the highest quality if we do it in tandem, but in the interest of efficiency, it might be best if I take the lead here, and come up with proposals, not unlike what I did for a few of the early tech tree eras

As far as the other stuff - strengh of units, etc., I figure we'll hold off on that stuff, and deal with that as things actually come together big-picture. And then there's the more specific "Flavor" stuff - art, music, text. I'm good with all of it except the art.