The Mazatl

[Sephi]

great work

 

[graywarden]

Still testing the Mazatl (and the Grigori) in the two person hot seat game started this past sunday. Something needs to be noted that in this case the Mazatl are NOT as dominating as in the earlier test/game on saturday. I think the reason for this is that they do not have the same access to Marshes as they did in the first test. The jungle/marsh/swamp lands are contained to a strip of land on a coast with a mountain range keeping them hemmed in (sort of like the Andees in S. America), whereas on the last test it was a subcontinent amount of terrain to exploit.
So this appears to be the big determining factor in their swing from powerhouse to marginal, and maybe it doesnt need as much tweaking as I originally thought.

 

[graywarden]

I forgot to mention a HUD bug, none of the Mazatl unit graphics can be rotated so that you can see the combat odds displayed next to them. I value the combat odds much more then the visual blowup of the unit, so the ability to rotate or move the graphic was a nice compromise.

 

[Hellsau]

The Mazatl are insane in the late game. I just finished a game where I was getting 4500 beakers per turn, 400 gpt, and hundreds of hammers in each mature city at turn 250, and every newly conquered city matured (every building built) in 20 turns. I was outproducing anything that I've ever accomplished with the Khazad, and they're a top class civ. Lost Lands is ridiculous when every city gets 7 free trade routes. This was using a Theocracy economy, anyone who wants to be abusive should try out the Mazatl.

Unfortunately, there's just not anything interesting to do with all this power. Winning is easy, but without any siege, good disciple units, or really anything interesting to build it's just a matter of spamming whatever and rolling over opponents. The civilopedia on the Priests make them sound like they have special abilities, but Kalshekks are worthless and Omarrs are equivalent to religious priests that can't upgrade. At the very least, the priests should be able to upgrade into Paladins/Druids/Eidolons.

Their world spell is just pitiful. Required to spend 120 hammers on at least one Wyvern Monument, 1440 on the guardians, and all you get is free Monuments? It makes me wonder if the Order of the Wyvern was supposed to give 100% golden age length. Can the Righteousness requirement be dropped from Coatlann, and the world spell become a requirement instead?

Bugs:

Captured workers without a race default to lizardman graphics. Captured workers build roads instead of trails, so shapers and workers can't work together on connecting resources.

Can't build over swamps, requiring extreme micromanagement to clear swamp, build, create swamp each turn.

 

[Till]

Till,

this is not a NEW unit, this is an existing unit, that must have had a bug or two.
while testing yesterday and today, the unit was graphically displayed as a giant lizard (no rider), yet its title was the generic horseman. I assumed it was an unfinished unit to the module that is still currently under construction, so after some determination with my son (who happens to be very lizard friendly), we decided to update it.

Once I made the necessary file changes, i then reloaded, and whoa and behold now it was a properly mounted dino as was originally expected. I did modify it so that it did not require the horse resource, but otherwise it really isnt anything more then what it was.

The module as a whole is really still being tested, and there are a lot of things to be considered. I started this thread simply to state my observations. Anytime I see one civ that has a TREND, I tend to pay attention, because that is usually a good sign of something out of balance.

Ah, i see. Good work! But the mounted dino is also what you get when you upgrade elephants, so i assume both units now share the same graphic? That could be a bit confusing.

I emphatically agree with a_civilian (except for his view on the lost lands civic) and hellsau. If you manage to hold on until you get lost lands and happiness/health boosters, you can easily get ten times the population of your nearest rival, and comfortably outproduce anyone on Emperor level.

At this point, it doesn't even matter if your cities are in the jungle. Conquered cities on chopped grasslands become frontline assemblies in 10-20 turns.

The +50% food/shields bonus for each traderoute just is too much. With the extra food, you can easily compensate the commerce loss by running an extra specialist, making this civic a win/win. You could probably chop the boni in half and it would still be overpowered.

Edit:


Picture to illustrate just how powerful Lost Lands is, once you are able to push the happiness limit up. Note the average performance until the late game.

 

[graywarden]

Ah, i see. Good work! But the mounted dino is also what you get when you upgrade elephants, so i assume both units now share the same graphic? That could be a bit confusing.

I will have to look into that. I believe the file links may have been jumbled a bit because I have no idea why the unmounted unit dissapeared, and the mounted unit appeared. The link I copied was suppose to have been the unmounted unit, which was what I was going by when I decided to make the modifications. When i reloaded the files, the mounted unit appeared. I am assuming that when I adjusted a couple of other things in the xml file, or when i created the tag files, that it allowed the link to work. and that possibly the unmounted file was unintended all along, but was being loaded by the system because there was something missing in the linking.

There are a number of other graphic units that need to be added to complete the module. Once those are produced, I am sure we will get all the units fleshed out as to what should be what. It could be that the unmounted unit graphic was intended to replace the elephant unit in some way.

 

[a_civilian]

The +50% food/shields bonus for each traderoute just is too much. With the extra food, you can easily compensate the commerce loss by running an extra specialist, making this civic a win/win. You could probably chop the boni in half and it would still be overpowered.

Keep in mind you also lose the bonuses for having foreign trade routes, so it's much more than a 50% loss in trade route commerce. But yes, I may have been wrong about Lost Lands in the late game - I didn't play that far due to boredom. I still think it's unimpressive in the midgame (assuming you haven't been served a large jungle) and would be wary of making changes that weaken it in the midgame for that reason.

Another thing to note is that you can reproduce the trade route economy using any leader with the Trader trait. It's 28% instead of 50%, but this is more than compensated for by the ability to get the foreign trade route bonus. A friend who was trying to figure out why an AI civilization was so strong found that they were getting 35 food/production from 14 trade routes per city (with Trader trait in late game). Perhaps the concept of food and production from trade routes needs some rethinking in general due to how the trade route yield balloons in the late game.

---

On another note, some ideas for making Mazatl more interesting militarily in the mid-late game.
1) Obviously, give priest of Kalshekk a spell, hopefully a useful one.
2) Add a high priest with a combat spell. Seems appropriate for a religion focused civilization to have powerful high priests. Also, currently you have to research Theology to get the hero and you get nothing else from the tech.
3) Worldspell removes Defensive trait and replaces it with Aggressive or Charismatic? Seems appropriate given the civilopedia flavor text and would make the worldspell useful.

 

[Till]

These are all good suggestions. I think a weaker version of the hero's spell would work nicely for the priests of Kashekk.

Having an easy way to deal collateral damage would make up for the lack of catapults and useful palace mana.

I would also prefer to have the hero available sooner, even if that would require him to lose some strength points. He always comes too late to have much of an impact in my games. And he isn't strong enough to justify a quasi beeline.

Maybe the worldspell could summon him at 12 strength or so?

 

[Valkrionn]

These are all good suggestions. I think a weaker version of the hero's spell would work nicely for the priests of Kashekk.

Having an easy way to deal collateral damage would make up for the lack of catapults and useful palace mana.

I would also prefer to have the hero available sooner, even if that would require him to lose some strength points. He always comes too late to have much of an impact in my games. And he isn't strong enough to justify a quasi beeline.

Maybe the worldspell could summon him at 12 strength or so?

Or just allow them regular religions, because Kalshekk and Omorr are their names for Kilmorph and Oghma...

 

[Sephi]

did some changes to the Priest of Kalshekk.

• Mazatl: Priest of Kalshekk is a tier4 unit (national limit 4 and theology prereq). Can cast "Wrath of Kashekk", medium area damage spell.
• Mazatl: Worldspell also creates one Priest of Kalshekk

 

[Sephi]

Sephi,

I uploaded the updated Mazatl files late last evening, should be revision 157.

I forgot to mention they will break saves.

is there a difference between a horseman and a saurian rider other than art?

 

[Earthling]

I agree that they can build up a huge economy, but that's one of their only advantages (being hard to invade jungles is an advantage I guess, could turn the edge against a human opponent). Overall I like the balance - really slow workers and getting started in jungles and having to turtle is a slow start, so this is balanced by late game potential.

The lack of religion + magic + offensive military really hurts though - you don't have an easy time early or midgame at all. Plus, the Mazatl have almost no way to meaningfully affect the Armeggedon Counter, or counter with religious units of their own, unlike other good-aligned civs, so if it starts going up to the advantage of an evil civ they have to basically start conquering them immediately.

 

[graywarden]

is there a difference between a horseman and a saurian rider other than art?

Sephi,

I cant take credit for the art work itself, somehow when I worked the files, it triggered the mounted dino instead of the large lizard. All I did was allow it to be trained with the building of a stable (no horse resource required). Everything else is what it was before which appeared to be the default horseman.

 

[graywarden]

I thought I had mentioned this in a post, or I meant to (my DSL was down all weekend at home). I finished the test with the Mazatl and came to the conclusion that the power level was directly related to the amount of jungle/swamp/marsh was available.
The second test had marginal amount of natural habitat, and the score and power levels were reflective of that.

 

[Till]

Thanks sephi, these changes look like a good start. Do you still need to spend all those shields on wyren guardians to cast the spell, though? I would hope not.

Sephi,

I cant take credit for the art work itself, somehow when I worked the files, it triggered the mounted dino instead of the large lizard. All I did was allow it to be trained with the building of a stable (no horse resource required). Everything else is what it was before which appeared to be the default horseman.

Just to be clear, it's not this mounted dino, right?

 

[Sephi]

Sephi,

I cant take credit for the art work itself, somehow when I worked the files, it triggered the mounted dino instead of the large lizard. All I did was allow it to be trained with the building of a stable (no horse resource required). Everything else is what it was before which appeared to be the default horseman.

great, thanks. I guess the artwork has been done by the FF team, or maybe the warhammer mod, don't know if they have a jungle civ.

 

[Valkrionn]

It was done by Warhammer; The lizard civ there is jungle dwelling, and has quite a few saurian units.

 

[graywarden]

Thanks sephi, these changes look like a good start. Do you still need to spend all those shields on wyren guardians to cast the spell, though? I would hope not.



Just to be clear, it's not this mounted dino, right?

Till,

no that is not the unit I renamed Saurian Rider.
the mount is two legged (with two shorter arms)
more like an allosaurus type of dino

 

[Valkrionn]

Loaded it up in nifskope real quick so this isn't animated, but here's what it looks like.

 

[graywarden]

Loaded it up in nifskope real quick so this isn't animated, but here's what it looks like.

Valkrion,

thanks for the upload, im at the day job and was unable to.

that is the critter of which we speak