Sumer - CBP Compatable Custom Civs

Well you're probably right, but I still want to try it out. I think early game before you improve your tiles, working specialists could be useful to outproduce working tiles, and then later in the game when founding cities your extra pop wont immediately starve. I've upped the settle rate in the eras with pioneers (I think Sumer Pioneers give 6 pop (3 from pioneer and 3 from Ua) and then 7 two eras later) so if you settle near a mountain or desert you would immediately lose some of your UA from starving. The labourers giving food will stabalise that, if nothing else.
A 6 pop city require 12 food, that really shouldn't be a problem, especially since pioneer cites start with a lighthouse. Either way I've never ran into that situation (but then again the extra pop did not work for me with pioneers so I couldn't run into that :D)


Again, I'm not sure the free workers are pushing things over the top and causing AI gilgamesh to almost double everyones score, but I've done some testing and it's on average brought his power down a lot. we're still in alpha so we have to play around woth things
If the workers is the main problem (which I honestly doubt) then we get rid of the workers.
About bringing his average down, if you removed the extra pop and the production from specialists, and kept the workers it would also bring down his average a lot. The issue here is probably that it all works too well together early on.

Here's how it looked in my head:

Population and Worker bonus, powerful early on, falls off greatly around the midgame because you just stop settling.

Specialist bonus, (which by the time we designed it were based around keeping at least one specialist in each city for bonus) weaker early on because of limited access to specialists, strongest around the mid-game when you have your specialist buildings up and the bonus have doubled or tripled in power.

This seems balanced to me, the problem here being that we changed the specialist bonus to:

Specialist bonus, strongest right around when you get access to your first specialist buildings, snowballing your infrastructure allowing you to get more specialist-buildings, snowballing you further.
The +2 production bonus, just like the Korean UA is just way too much early on. It got some scaling in the way that you get access to more specialist slots later on, but it is going to be the strongest right when you land your first specialists, kickstarting your infrastructure.


See, the problem here is that we exchanged a mid-game scaling ability for an early-game powerhouse. I was under the impression that we were going to change the specialist bonus at some point as well, we just didn't have time to talk about it and I suggested keeping it around a bit for testing.


Good idea on Erish, could work. As for happiness, I thought we were gonna stay away from that?
I'm talking about flat +happiness, I'm completely fine with that. I was worried about adding those percentage unhappiness reduction modifiers, because I believe they could interact with the rest of the game in a negative way.
As mentioned, the Satrap's court does exist, and as long as you make it kinda like the Satrap's court but a bit weaker, it should be fine. At least I think so.



Yeah, perhaps +1 paper for papsukkal, or a %production on diplo units. As for the scout god, I'm just throwing ideas out there for one
Not a fan of adding paper, it's just too valuable. Not sure if we should mess with the production-bonus towards diplo-units either.

What yields do we have left?
Food
Tourism
Golden Age Points
Faith
Some kind of combination (+1 of 3/4 different ones or +2 of 2 different ones)
 
For your Goddess of the Underworld, you could get culture in the city whenever a unit takes damage; a fresh take on the (yield)/victory building type.
 
A 6 pop city require 12 food, that really shouldn't be a problem, especially since pioneer cites start with a lighthouse. Either way I've never ran into that situation (but then again the extra pop did not work for me with pioneers so I couldn't run into that :D)

Well, if you have your city with 6 tiles and any of them are unworkable/dont provide food, chances are you're going to be starving out the gate. I'm not saying that it will happen a lot, but I don't want it to happen at all. its just counter-intuitive

If the workers is the main problem (which I honestly doubt) then we get rid of the workers.
About bringing his average down, if you removed the extra pop and the production from specialists, and kept the workers it would also bring down his average a lot. The issue here is probably that it all works too well together early on.

Here's how it looked in my head:

Population and Worker bonus, powerful early on, falls off greatly around the midgame because you just stop settling.

Specialist bonus, (which by the time we designed it were based around keeping at least one specialist in each city for bonus) weaker early on because of limited access to specialists, strongest around the mid-game when you have your specialist buildings up and the bonus have doubled or tripled in power.

This seems balanced to me, the problem here being that we changed the specialist bonus to:

Specialist bonus, strongest right around when you get access to your first specialist buildings, snowballing your infrastructure allowing you to get more specialist-buildings, snowballing you further.
The +2 production bonus, just like the Korean UA is just way too much early on. It got some scaling in the way that you get access to more specialist slots later on, but it is going to be the strongest right when you land your first specialists, kickstarting your infrastructure.


See, the problem here is that we exchanged a mid-game scaling ability for an early-game powerhouse. I was under the impression that we were going to change the specialist bonus at some point as well, we just didn't have time to talk about it and I suggested keeping it around a bit for testing.

Good points. I am already writing a lua for changing the specialist bonus as the game goes on, but lets see how this works for now. It may take me a while to finish it, so for the time being the worker part of the UA will just be an early game free unit and I may change it back to on each city in Beta



I'm talking about flat +happiness, I'm completely fine with that. I was worried about adding those percentage unhappiness reduction modifiers, because I believe they could interact with the rest of the game in a negative way.
As mentioned, the Satrap's court does exist, and as long as you make it kinda like the Satrap's court but a bit weaker, it should be fine. At least I think so.

Ah, I see. Okay, I'll try to work in a god with some happiness, but there just might not be room.


Not a fan of adding paper, it's just too valuable. Not sure if we should mess with the production-bonus towards diplo-units either.

What yields do we have left?
Food
Tourism
Golden Age Points
Faith
Some kind of combination (+1 of 3/4 different ones or +2 of 2 different ones)

I see how adding one paper is a bad idea, because if you made like 7 cities with papsukkal you'd be unstoppable. I'm not sure the %production on Diplo units is bad though, if it were 10-15% it wouldn't be too OP, especially since you can't spam them without paper. We COULD have it give an upgrade to diplo units, like +10 influence or something small. It just feels empty without a yield besides the specialist. Golden Age, Toursism, food, and faith don't really make sense. Maybe +2g/+1S could work, since in Civ5 the messenger god is related to science (I guess messages == information?) and the +2G to help pay maintenance of diplo units.
 
Well, if you have your city with 6 tiles and any of them are unworkable/dont provide food, chances are you're going to be starving out the gate. I'm not saying that it will happen a lot, but I don't want it to happen at all. its just counter-intuitive
Pioneer city starts with 9 tiles, 4 workable coast-tiles and you're good to go in fact you probably only need 3 considering there are buildings with +food on that you start with.


Good points. I am already writing a lua for changing the specialist bonus as the game goes on, but lets see how this works for now. It may take me a while to finish it, so for the time being the worker part of the UA will just be an early game free unit and I may change it back to on each city in Beta
Again the specialist thing was just intended as a placeholder, if you have a better idea for something that kicks in mid-game, by all means, go ahead and share it :D


Ah, I see. Okay, I'll try to work in a god with some happiness, but there just might not be room.
I'm just saying that the option exists. As they are the +2 yield to resources are definitely going to underperform compared to +4 yield and a specialist. Even in extremely rare situation like if you have 4 sources of wine within range of the city that patron is only going to provide +4 C and +4 G, hardly as good as +4 C and an artist for example.



I see how adding one paper is a bad idea, because if you made like 7 cities with papsukkal you'd be unstoppable. I'm not sure the %production on Diplo units is bad though, if it were 10-15% it wouldn't be too OP, especially since you can't spam them without paper. We COULD have it give an upgrade to diplo units, like +10 influence or something small. It just feels empty without a yield besides the specialist. Golden Age, Toursism, food, and faith don't really make sense. Maybe +2g/+1S could work, since in Civ5 the messenger god is related to science (I guess messages == information?) and the +2G to help pay maintenance of diplo units.
Adding a bonus to production of specific units could work, but diplo-units are so rare that you can probably get away with building all of them in the same city and at that point the +15% is going to overperform.
It would probably also make this patron really weak to have in multiple cities if you're only using the production in one city. Don't get me wrong, a civil servant slot is fairly good, but so are the alternatives.
 
Specialist Zigs:
You could keep the gold on the civil servant and add food to the merchant.
I would tone them down to +3 given the UA boost to specialists.
There is no tourism option, you could add that to the scouting one.

Underworld: +yield on unit kill or death.

Labourers giving two food is important so you never "lose" the UA, as you describe. Point is not to make them competitive with other specialists or tiles.

On the UU: Minutemen are better than pikemen, sure. But they unlock 'two' techs later?
 
Labourers giving two food is important so you never "lose" the UA, as you describe. Point is not to make them competitive with other specialists or tiles.
You can't have a UA based around things you partially can't control and which only punishes you if you're severely messing up.

On the UU: Minutemen are better than pikemen, sure. But they unlock 'two' techs later?

A lot more than that actually, Pikemen are early medieval era, Minute men are late renaissance, basically 2 eras apart.
 
Yeah, the resource gods are really weak right now, but lets fix those after this version, after we play around with the other gods

Why food on merchant? Is it because of how towns work now? just curious.

Oh damn, youre right about minutemen. Bad example haha.

I didn't know pioneers started with extra land, is that new? Because I've used them before and never noticed...and thats a hard thing to miss. So maybe the labourers wont really work put, but I've already put them in the code. I can take it out after this version

For the UA midgame thingy we need to come up with, I personally dont have a replacement for the specialists. I'm just holding out in case one of us does come up with a good idea that kicks in mid-lategame to use.
 
Yeah, the resource gods are really weak right now, but lets fix those after this version, after we play around with the other gods
It was kinda clear, at least to me that's how they would turn out.

I kinda thought we were going the whole Improvement route eventually anyways. (One buffing Plantations, one Camps, one mines(on resources of course) and so on). But even at that point you would probably need some adjustment, maybe just base yields on the building.

Why food on merchant? Is it because of how towns work now? just curious.
I'm guessing that was his reasoning for it, merchant is considered one of the weaker specialists and civil servant one of the stronger, so he probably thought it would be better to stick a weaker(ish) yield on the stronger specialist.

Oh damn, youre right about minutemen. Bad example haha.
They are also ranged, meaning they're not even in the same ballpark :D

I didn't know pioneers started with extra land, is that new? Because I've used them before and never noticed...and thats a hard thing to miss. So maybe the labourers wont really work put, but I've already put them in the code. I can take it out after this version
They have always started with 3 extra tiles, Colonists start with 6 extra I think, might be more, I can't even remember the last time I actually used a colonist.

For the UA midgame thingy we need to come up with, I personally dont have a replacement for the specialists. I'm just holding out in case one of us does come up with a good idea that kick in mid-lategame to use.
The only few ideas I have would make no sense on Sumeria, so I'm holding them for later rework discussions. And when I say make no sense I mean they are even worse than this random specialist bonus.

Could throw in some kind of bonus during golden ages or WLTKD I suppose, but the current kit have zero synergy with golden ages.

Could have something based around their weird socialism system, but the only thing I can really translate that into is specialists.

Could have something based on great works of writing or possibly something else writing based (to symbolize the epic of Gilgamesh) but that honestly just feels cheap.
 
The only few ideas I have would make no sense on Sumeria, so I'm holding them for later rework discussions. And when I say make no sense I mean they are even worse than this random specialist bonus.

Could throw in some kind of bonus during golden ages or WLTKD I suppose, but the current kit have zero synergy with golden ages.

Could have something based around their weird socialism system, but the only thing I can really translate that into is specialists.

Could have something based on great works of writing or possibly something else writing based (to symbolize the epic of Gilgamesh) but that honestly just feels cheap.

Yeah honestly it's just hard to come up with mid-late history things for Sumer because of how much the world changes from quite literally the dawn of mankind to the modern day. Maybe we can just do something that fits with their kit (High pop):

X = Once an ideology is adopted, gain tourism based on population (or SOMETHING like that.)

So maybe our UA will look like this: Cities start with extra pop and a worker. X.
 
Yeah honestly it's just hard to come up with mid-late history things for Sumer because of how much the world changes from quite literally the dawn of mankind to the modern day. Maybe we can just do something that fits with their kit (High pop):
Their kit won't give them bigger cities really, their kit gives them a kickstart towards their infrastructure. An extra population or two really isn't going to come anywhere near close to matching up civs with actual growthbonuses, like China India and to some lesser extent the aztecs.

X = Once an ideology is adopted, gain tourism based on population (or SOMETHING like that.)
Ideology to me is lategame, when I'm talking mid-game I mean medieval era :D



So maybe our UA will look like this: Cities start with extra pop and a worker. X.
Well, solving for X is the hard part.
 
Alright, lets do some algebra training to find our X.

1. What are some historical things about Sumer we can incorporate?

2. What game mechanics become really important midgame, and how can we tie them in to infrastructure?

3. IF we were to incorporate another aspect to Sumer's UA (I.E. Tourism, War, Diplo etc) what would you like to see?


My answers:

1. According to Sumerian mythology, humans were created to do manual labour for the Gods, which included the King. This can be tied to production pretty easily.

Like funak said, they had a socialist style of government, or an almost Stalinist style of communism even. Not sure how to tie this in tbh, but if someone has an idea I'll hear it out




2. Religion and wars become more important around the medieval era. We agreed that Sumer shouldn't be religion based, so that's out. We kind of agreed that being warlike isn't such a a bad direction to go, so lets see if we can work it in. I see a few immediate options to go off of that:

a. We could give them some growth bonuses triggered by wars but I think China, India, etc has growth booming covered pretty well

b. Perhaps instead, the UA could trigger WLTKD in the capital when capturing a city, and WLTKDs could boost production? (Fits in with people live to do manual labour thing)

c. Capturing a city boosts production in the capital (a lump sum, kinda like a GE hammer boost)

The problem with this is that wars pre-medieval are still common, so it's not really a midgame buff, but it does matter throughout the game and doesn't ever really fall off. (Well, maybe later on it loses some steam, but wars are always relevant in most of the games I play, whether defensive or ones I start to end an AI who gets ahead)



3. I would probably go with domination. They already have a generic, early game infrastructure head start that can go in any direction, and if we are going to promote a certain direction, Tourism, Science, and Diplomacy don't make a lot of sense. My second choice would be culture, though, simply because most of the Zig's already boost culture production. Plus, Culture doesn't necessarily mean tourism victory anyway, it just means policies and defense against tourism.
 
I'm guessing that was his reasoning for it, merchant is considered one of the weaker specialists and civil servant one of the stronger, so he probably thought it would be better to stick a weaker(ish) yield on the stronger specialist.
Yeah that was my thinking

You can't have a UA based around things you partially can't control and which only punishes you if you're severely messing up.
I think of it more like the Incan UA, where Mountains give a small amount of food and gold.

Solve for X:
WLTKD is quite a well supported thing in CBP. You have several wonders, policies and beliefs that buff WLTKD. So I think it could be a viable thing to do.

Another thing that comes to mind are historical events. Arabia has that jazzy culture, science, GPP from historical events. It would be interesting to see another civ go off that somehow.

You could try to do something like, "Historical events trigger 5 turns of WLTKD and permenantly increase food by 2 in the capital."

Winning a war is of course a way to get such an event. OT slightly, what do people think about that? Doesn't trigger very much, could be cool if it could somehow be made to trigger the first time you take a city.
 
Solve for X:
WLTKD is quite a well supported thing in CBP. You have several wonders, policies and beliefs that buff WLTKD. So I think it could be a viable thing to do.

Another thing that comes to mind are historical events. Arabia has that jazzy culture, science, GPP from historical events. It would be interesting to see another civ go off that somehow.

You could try to do something like, "Historical events trigger 5 turns of WLTKD and permenantly increase food by 2 in the capital."

Winning a war is of course a way to get such an event. OT slightly, what do people think about that? Doesn't trigger very much, could be cool if it could somehow be made to trigger the first time you take a city.

Pretty good ideas. I like WLTKD as an idea, but Historical Events could work too. (It's just that Arabia gets EVERYTHING from them it seems, not leaving any options for other guys) Not a fan of adding permanent food in the capital, as it can get WAY out of hand under the right circumstances.

Winning a war is another good option too, plus the trigger for it to happen is already written (Aztecs) so it would save me some time.

If we do something like this, here are our current 3 basic options (more exist obviously, but this is what we have right now):

Boost production in WLTKD. Win a war: Big WLTKD (15ish turns standard)
Boost production in WLTKD. Capture city: Medium WLTKD (same as normal WLTKD)
Boost production in WLTKD. Historic Event: Small WLTKD (5ish turns standard)
 
Alrb. Perhaps instead, the UA could trigger WLTKD in the capital when capturing a city, and WLTKDs could boost production? (Fits in with people live to do manual labour thing)
Production from WLTKD and some form of trigger for WLTKD would make sense.
Could even do (smaller) bonuses to multiple yields from WLTKD along with some trigger if we don't want to throw everything into the production basket.
Makes sense to me at least, technically China is already based around WLTKD, but we're not competing with China here, we're creating a civ.


I think of it more like the Incan UA, where Mountains give a small amount of food and gold.
Unlike the Incan kit which pretty much forces you to settle mountainous areas, this really shouldn't be a problem here.

I'm also not exactly sold on the Inca situation either, but that's kinda off topic.


Solve for X:
WLTKD is quite a well supported thing in CBP. You have several wonders, policies and beliefs that buff WLTKD. So I think it could be a viable thing to do.

Another thing that comes to mind are historical events. Arabia has that jazzy culture, science, GPP from historical events. It would be interesting to see another civ go off that somehow.

You could try to do something like, "Historical events trigger 5 turns of WLTKD and permenantly increase food by 2 in the capital."

Winning a war is of course a way to get such an event. OT slightly, what do people think about that? Doesn't trigger very much, could be cool if it could somehow be made to trigger the first time you take a city.
My main issue with historical events is that they really favor going tradition into aesthetics, and I honestly don't want to force a strict policy-path on a civ unless there is no other way.


If we do something like this, here are our current 3 basic options (more exist obviously, but this is what we have right now):

Boost production in WLTKD. Win a war: Big WLTKD (15ish turns standard)
Boost production in WLTKD. Capture city: Medium WLTKD (same as normal WLTKD)
Boost production in WLTKD. Historic Event: Small WLTKD (5ish turns standard)
Not a fan, I think the trigger should be something simple, this is both way to complicated and won't fit in the UA box :D
 
Production from WLTKD and some form of trigger for WLTKD would make sense.
Could even do (smaller) bonuses to multiple yields from WLTKD along with some trigger if we don't want to throw everything into the production basket.

Not a fan, I think the trigger should be something simple, this is both way to complicated and won't fit in the UA box :D

So...the triggers are too complicated? What form of trigger for WLTKD would be simple enough in your opinion?


I can make any of the ones I listed fit into the UA box btw, don't worry about that being an issue.

EX:
Sumer
Settled cities start with extra population scaling with era and a free worker. Cities have extra production during We Love the King Day, and winning a war starts a We Love the King Day in the Capital.


Germany
Receive +3 Golden Age Points and +3 Culture in the Capital for every City-State you are allied with. Bonus scales with era. For every 2 City-State alliances, receive 1 additional Delegate in the World Congress.



EDIT: I would also like to mention that with CBP growing to include Events, there will likely be some discussion in the future for unique Sumerian Events. Too soon to start that, but perhaps keep some ideas in the back of your head (or a .txt file)
 
So...the triggers are too complicated? What form of trigger for WLTKD would be simple enough in your opinion?


I can make any of the ones I listed fit into the UA box btw, don't worry about that being an issue.

EX:
Sumer
Settled cities start with extra population scaling with era and a free worker. Cities have extra production during We Love the King Day, and winning a war starts a We Love the King Day in the Capital.

I did think you were planning on fitting all those 3 triggers into the box, which would not have been possible.

Not sure if I like winning a war as a trigger, Aztecs already does that. Then again the same goes for conquering cities.
I guess we could go for winning a war until I can think of something better. I do think the WLTKD from winning a war should be global however, and possibly last longer, I mean wars aren't that common, and comparing it to the Aztecs, they get a slightly longer (as far as I remember) golden age compared to what popping a great artist would. Makes sense that this WLTKD would be comparable to that of a Great Merchant pop (20 turns in all cities on standard speed)
 
I did think you were planning on fitting all those 3 triggers into the box, which would not have been possible.

Not sure if I like winning a war as a trigger, Aztecs already does that. Then again the same goes for conquering cities.
I guess we could go for winning a war until I can think of something better. I do think the WLTKD from winning a war should be global however, and possibly last longer, I mean wars aren't that common, and comparing it to the Aztecs, they get a slightly longer (as far as I remember) golden age compared to what popping a great artist would. Makes sense that this WLTKD would be comparable to that of a Great Merchant pop (20 turns in all cities on standard speed)

Oh, hahaha no I meant those are three to choose from. Not all of them.

I see. Yeah, triggering it in all cities just makes sense with the winning a war trigger. I'll get on it.

I also fixed the worker script to spawn the unit in a city rather than in the capital. I'm thinking that instead of making another trash alpha on Wednesday, we can hold out til Monday and I'll have the first beta ready. That way, we can talk more about what's gonna go into it, especially since we seem to be getting somewhere with this WLTKD boost. Then the beta can be devoted to actually balancing what we have instead of figuring out what we want :D
 
Oh, hahaha no I meant those are three to choose from. Not all of them.

I see. Yeah, triggering it in all cities just makes sense with the winning a war trigger. I'll get on it.

I also fixed the worker script to spawn the unit in a city rather than in the capital. I'm thinking that instead of making another trash alpha on Wednesday, we can hold out til Monday and I'll have the first beta ready. That way, we can talk more about what's gonna go into it, especially since we seem to be getting somewhere with this WLTKD boost. Then the beta can be devoted to actually balancing what we have instead of figuring out what we want :D

Sounds good, but I'd probably keep it as an Alpha until we can actually figure out how we want the UA to look :D
 
Yeah of course. I'm hoping that we actually stick with this UA and get it ironed out soon

Well, if it doesn't work in practice or end up being insanely boring, we'll have to do something about it. Yeah I know I should try to be optimistic, but honestly I'd rather be ready for anything.
 
Top Bottom