The Goths for VP

[pineappledan]

We could name them Hansa Gadrauht (Soldier Cohort) for the ones with Iron (more professionnal), and Lething Gadraught (Soldier Band) for the ones with Loot. If that helps people distinguish between them, then it's for the best, don't your think, @pineappledan ?

That doesn't actually clarify anything unless people look up some sort of naming schema in the civilopedia or something. It also means 1 of them is going to be in the civ select screen as "iron gadraught" while the other is hidden. This doesn't fix anything, it just adds confusion elsewhere

 

[looorg]

Could one of them, say the loot one, be given a loot'n'pillage promotion that sort of doesn't do anything (or does something if one wish) that indicate it's the loot Gad? Perhaps they can gain a few extra gold from pillage and looting or something like that.

 

[pineappledan]

yeah a free promotion that doesn't do anything is less intrusive. Could do that.

But how is the xp per Gulda stored now then if it is not 100+ different buildings as it is from what I gather not a common xp pool shared among all Guldas

They are added via dummy buildings that add +1 XP per unit each, which are added to a city every time a unit is killed. So unless you want to make 20+ of these dummies visible inside the city list, and clog up the cityview screen, there's no fix there. The advantage of stacking multiple dummies is they only add 1 building type to the database, not 100, and I can easilly tell code to just add 1 more of a building to a city, rather than check a list of 100 buildings to swap out and which one to replace what with.

 

[looorg]

So what happens if the Gulthsmitha is destroyed due to some event (flood, famine, hurricane, act of God ..)? Does the counter get reset or is it just paused until it's rebuilt? What if you capture a forge in another city that then gets transformed into a Gulth? What if it goes back and forth a few times swapping owner/hands?

 

[pineappledan]

The counter is separate from the building, so in the event that the building was destroyed, you would still get the stored XP, but it would no longer get bigger.

if the city were captured, the whole counter would be reset to 0

 

[pineappledan]

Thusundi (replaces Crossbowman)
Unlocked at Steel (instead of Machinery)
130 Production cost
11 CS / 15 RCS (-4 CS / RCS)

Cannot melee attack
Naval malus
Cover I
Adoption by Arms - Gain +1 CS / RCS per level. At level 5, gains the Stalwart promotion. Lost with upgrade.

The idea is to have a unit that scales in power with conquest, is reliable (with potentially a very good defense for a ranged unit) and synergizes well with the Gulthsmitha, since it can acquire the necessary power to be usefull immediatly from it. At the same time, it wouldn't be the core unit of the civ (the Gadraugth already does the job), but would show its ability to take grindy fights better than most other conquerors.

I would note that "Millenarius" referring to a Gothic fighting cohort is not disputed, but what that name means is a matter of some disagreement amongst historians. The Millenarius might mean a contingent of a thousand soldiers, but another line of interpretation suggests that the Millenarius were called that because their wage as a standing army was a Millena, which was a unit of land tax assessed by the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy against its Roman/Italian landowners. If so, then simply translating the work into gothic isn't a clean replacement, because it has a specific monetary and institutional context.
Source: https://600transformer.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-ostrogothic-military.html

From this, you can see why JFD chose the bonuses that he did in the original Ostrogothic mod

 

[pineappledan]

• Makes the comparison with France even stronger (French UA in Goths UA + French CS bonus in Goths UU2)

I think we both agree that this is more of a France problem. If we ever manage to get that France UA rework off the ground, having a UU that has the same bonus as a global UA from another civ is totally legitimate. No one accuses the Tlingit Xaa of ripping off Denmark for this.

• No true synergie with the rest of the kit. It is just an attack-focused Knight.

I disagree. You said yourself, the Goths do everything. With 4UC and the Gulthsmitha, they benefit more from kills, and the Groethungi pairs well with the other extra component in that it is kill-centric, while the main kit is more city-focused

• Its performance as a UU isn't very impressive, especially for a Militarist civ like the Goths, who needs to have something reliable to establish their domination

I've never had a problem with the unit's performance. chalk this up to different tastes, I suppose

• It is a Knight replacement, even though the events it represents happened during the 4th century AD (so a big anachronism), but we can't make it a Horseman (too big of a powerspike in the early game, for a civ that is meant to scale) nor an early Knight (that would be too powerful for the Classical Era).

I wanted something later to pull the Goths into the early medieval era at least, since the Visigothic and Ostrogothic kingdoms continued well into the medieval era. It's not totally clean, but I can find almost no names or unit information for Gothic military organization outside the Roman era, though we can be well-assured that the Groethungi and the institution of cavalry both survived into the medieval era as well. As for anachronism, there are far worse culprits than a mounted melee unit existing during the migration era being called "medieval".

I'm reticent to throw away the unit, perhaps selfishly, because I spent a lot of my own time modifying the unit textures and icon in order to make this unit. The Groethungi wasn't simply lifted from somewhere else. I also think that the presence of a Gothic cavalry unit is better than an archer unit, and even the Gadraught infantry, because mounted units were the mainstay of the Gothic militaries both before and after the Roman period. When they were incorporated as Auxilia and Foederati, they were horsemen. When they made kingdoms of their own, the cavalry were the core of the Visigothic and Ostrogothic military power as well. It's an important unit type to have as a UU because it gets something correct about the centrality of this unit type to the wider culture.

Hell. We could just call the Groethungi unit I made for this "Millenarius", change the civilopedia text, and call that a day.

 

[KlHannibal2]

.

I disagree. You said yourself, the Goths do everything. With 4UC and the Gulthsmitha, they benefit more from kills, and the Groethungi pairs well with the other extra component in that it is kill-centric, while the main kit is more city-focused

I've never had a problem with the unit's performance.

After 2 games with the Goths, I would also favor keeping the cav UU instead of changing to an archer. And in addition what you said, the cav can do insane damage to cities after you do a couple of attacks with siege and infantry. They should also be very powerful once they reach the tank+blitz stage of the game, with plane attacks ramping up their bonus.

 

[MilkyP]

Hi Guys,
Brilliant job with all these mods. Just about to start trying a few of the additional leaders in VP and will eventually try 3/4 UC. I’ve just noticed that the 3/4UC components always seem to be activated for the The Goths and The Chola even when Im not using that mod. Don’t seem to have this issue with any other of the other additional civs.
Any help?

 

[pineappledan]

I recommend playing with 4UC, then you won't have to disable them
You can disable the extra components for the goths and Chola by deleting the relevant bits of code that add them to the civ.

For the Chola:
Go into Chola_GameDefines.sql and delete lines 91-180, and lines 538-540

For the Goths:
delete or rename VPCompatibility/Groethungi/Groethungi.sql
delete or rename VPCompatibility/Gulthsmitha/Gulthsmitha.sql

 

[MilkyP]

Thanks for that. I’ve gone straight into using 4UC . Enjoying it so far.

 

[pineappledan]

Update posted for 2.2 compatibility. Just removes the TopPanel.lua, apparently that isn't needed anymore.

Thanks again to @balparmak and @HungryForFood

 

[pineappledan]

New update posted, updating the Gadraught for v2.6:

Gadraught stay at 17CS, no longer matching the base sword at 16CS
Now have Discipline instead of Cover

 

[MassFantasy]

Hi, I've got probably a syntax error. It's the same in game, civilopedia, loading screen. I redownloaded twice, didn't help. Do I do something, can you fix this?

 

[pineappledan]

I'm not seeing that issue with my version:

You say you have tried re-downloading this? There might be something wrong with the uploaded version

 

[MassFantasy]

I'm not seeing that issue with my version:
View attachment 639854
You say you have tried re-downloading this? There might be something wrong with the uploaded version

Yeah, I redownloaded. Will try again today. Do you know which files are at fault here - is it just one or two files? Maybe I can fix it.

 

[pineappledan]

It’s definitely in the text .xml file.
The problem with xml is that the error could be anywhere and it will break the whole file.

 

[Hokiefan00]

Everything looks fine on my end

 

[MassFantasy]

Could you send me your XML/Text file?

 

[TakkuPanda]

Hi, I've got probably a syntax error. It's the same in game, civilopedia, loading screen. I redownloaded twice, didn't help. Do I do something, can you fix this?

View attachment 639811

I have the same error even after redownloading and maybe I can help shed some further light on why.
While all of the other Goth related descriptions are just txt keys, the description for Groethungi is visible. However, that description seems different from the one in the main text .XML file.
It reads "Heavy Gothic Mounted Unit, available at Metal Casting instead of Chivalry." Whereas, in prerequisite techs, it shows 'Chivalry'.

Also, I don't know if this is related and/or intentional, but in the Civilopedia entry for Goths, Gadraught appears twice.

Hope this helps you figure out where the issue might be.