The Iroquois

[Funak]

I just don't see the need for the suggestion's change, to be honest. If the AI is acting up, which your anecdote alludes to (one case doesn't make a bug, but it is something), I'd rather not band-aid it with a UA change.

Well, the tiles counts as city-connections anyways, what difference does it make if roads on those tiles are also free?
I mean sure, maybe the strange roads all over the place issue could be solved, but it doesn't really change the fact that the AI can't handle the non-road tiles connecting cities very well.
Ancient example, if you have two Iroquois cities that are almost connected (forest all tiles between them except for 1), the AI can't figure out to place a road on that one open tile, but instead builds a full road between the cities. There probably isn't a reasonable way to fix that behavior, but if the roads on the forest-tiles didn't actually cost maintenance the AI wouldn't suffer that much from it.


I mean essentially all this does is slightly buffing automation for those two civs (and neither of them have extremely amazing UAs), as well as helping the AI out a bit. I see no real good reason not to add it, unless it is a ton of work for you I guess.


EDIT: Also I'm not sure if I was unclear or something like that, but I did not mean this as a change, I meant this as an addition.

 

[notque]

Compared to the rest of the civs, the Iroquois still feel pretty weak. Do others feel the same way, or is the one UB improvement enough to make them as powerful as the rest?

One of the very distinct quality of the Iroquois was their taking of the young and women and having them replace the dead, adopoted by the families to be raised entirely as Iroquois.

Perhaps as they kill units they get growth points for their nearest city. That would be interesting, and relevant.

Otherwise they just seem rather boring and weak overall.

 

[Atlas627]

Compared to the rest of the civs, the Iroquois still feel pretty weak. Do others feel the same way, or is the one UB improvement enough to make them as powerful as the rest?

One of the very distinct quality of the Iroquois was their taking of the young and women and having them replace the dead, adopoted by the families to be raised entirely as Iroquois.

Perhaps as they kill units they get growth points for their nearest city. That would be interesting, and relevant.

Otherwise they just seem rather boring and weak overall.

I just played an Iroquois game and I would say they are fine. Their UA is helpful but doesn't feel super powerful on its own. The UU gives you a very flexible and powerful start, since you can either use it to rush someone or defend while you expand rapidly. The UB is just plain fantastic, especially with a forest start bias. Assuming you don't get screwed over with start bias, which can happen to ANY civ, they are just fine.

 

[Funak]

I just played an Iroquois game and I would say they are fine. Their UA is helpful but doesn't feel super powerful on its own. The UU gives you a very flexible and powerful start, since you can either use it to rush someone or defend while you expand rapidly. The UB is just plain fantastic, especially with a forest start bias. Assuming you don't get screwed over with start bias, which can happen to ANY civ, they are just fine.

Agreed, now that they get road-movement outside of friendly territory they are borderline overpowered, great place to be actually.

 

[notque]

Agreed, now that they get road-movement outside of friendly territory they are borderline overpowered, great place to be actually.

They do? The leader text in game says inside friendly territory. Okay, I'll give them a shot now then.

 

[Atlas627]

Agreed, now that they get road-movement outside of friendly territory they are borderline overpowered, great place to be actually.

You mean the military units have move through Forest/Jungle like Scouts? Yeah, its pretty good.

 

[Funak]

You mean the military units have move through Forest/Jungle like Scouts? Yeah, its pretty good.

No? Last time I played Iroquois my warriors had like 3 or 4 movements per turn in forest.

 

[Atlas627]

No? Last time I played Iroquois my warriors had like 3 or 4 movements per turn in forest.

Oh right its double movement, not act as scouts. The woodsmen promotion is excellent.

 

[Funak]

Oh right its double movement, not act as scouts. The woodsmen promotion is excellent.

In that case it's double movement plus ignoring the terrain penalty.

 

[void_genesis]

I just played most of a Iroquois game and managed to grab four well spaced cities in a big stretch of forest very rapidly. The UB is amazing in the right location, but kind of pointless otherwise. Like wise the rapid forest movement allowed me to explore that stretch of forest very quickly and grab more ruins than usual. My neighbours were unusually peaceful so I managed to not make a single mohawk warrior. What bothered me was how boring the late game was going to be with nothing to look forward to and no special incentive to keep expanding or go to war, only the possibility of a fun defensive war in my forest kingdom.
What I would love is some way for Iroquois to grow their own forests in the late game. Either make it active (via workers or mohawk warriors even) or if training the AI is too difficult then just do it randomly (maybe after ecology is studied) and if it is too overpowered then make it only happen during golden ages or one tile when a policy or tech is unlocked. Another option would be to make great person tile improvements count as forested, that way the AI already knows how to make GP improvements and the player has a greater incentive to keep planting them later in the game.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

The UB is amazing early on, somehow. I had an Iroquois game where I stopped playing by the late Medieval because I took out my neighbors too easily.

It's nice knowing you won't need to worry about Tile Improvements for a while. And if you have Resources like Cocoa, not improving them will still get you forested tiles.

Of course most of this relies on having a nice large Forest nearby.

 

[Funak]

Of course most of this relies on having a nice large Forest nearby.

Yeah, if you don't have enough forest for like 3 cities nearby you're going to suffer, a lot. That's the nature of the civ however, at least in CPP they do just as well in forest.

 

[a1nosweat]

Events might be an easy way for forest to grow

 

[infidel88]

I've been playing Iroquois recently and they don't feel top tier, in fact it's quite opposite in my opinion. They suffer from the similar problem Brazil does - in order to use game features (plantations), you have to greatly cripple yourself. To get all resources that need plantation (cocoa, dyes, silk etc), you are actually losing your UA. How about giving Iroq UA more flavor that he can build plantations that don't provide extra yields, but connect resource underneath while not destroying forest/jungle?

This would make Iroq stay in jungles/forests until very late in the game, making them way harder to conquer in forest terrains and at the same time still pretty crappy on plains/grasslands.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

Japan got yanked out of being an RNG civ. Are the foliage-dependent civs next?

 

[Gazebo]

Japan got yanked out of being an RNG civ. Are the foliage-dependent civs next?

Nope. Features != sea resources.

G

 

[Gothic_Empire]

Nope. Features != sea resources.

G

Features that happen to form a completely string to create a road, though, (and that you'll never chop to clear a resource!) strike me as somewhat rarer than fish. Also, the whole act of dropping one tile of road to connect two patches of forest is a weird eyesore that doesn't even make sense.

At least with the river version of this UA aspect on Songhoi, both ends of the river are likely to be somewhere interesting.

 

[tu_79]

Features that happen to form a completely string to create a road, though, (and that you'll never chop to clear a resource!) strike me as somewhat rarer than fish. Also, the whole act of dropping one tile of road to connect two patches of forest is a weird eyesore that doesn't even make sense.

At least with the river version of this UA aspect on Songhoi, both ends of the river are likely to be somewhere interesting.

It would be much different with the ability to grow forests from Civ III. What I find disturbing is that without these patches of roads, you don't travel much faster unless everything is forested. I don't know if it has been modified since last time I tried that, but going from a flat tile to a forest tile expended 2 movement points, and then going from a forest tile to a flat one expended 0.5 movement points, making it only slightly better to pass over a single forest tile compared to other civs, but not faster than just traveling by flat lands.
A unit that simply ignores forest movement penalty won't have this problem and sounds more logical. It only gets weird with the ability to connect cities by forest trails.

 

[Funak]

How hard would it be to teach the AI to plant forests?

That's the question that should be asked before we even go into the subject.

 

[tu_79]

How hard would it be to teach the AI to plant forests?

That's the question that should be asked before we even go into the subject.

Not only that. In Civ III you could plant forest very late game. It would be useless for the matter. Just saying is not easy to shape forests.