Tomatekh's Timurids for VP

There is a pop message. A single one that pops up if anything was built in your capital, and it includes ALL infrastructure built. It also indicates that your palace got stronger. It appears only once and is easy to ignore/overlook, but it’s there.

I was taking a test-drive with the new Khmer civ, and I had Persia, Timurids, and Inuit on my continent with me. Persia proceeded to wipe the floor with both the Inuit and the Timurids simultaneously. Timur has no bonuses prior to medieval unless he is winning wars, and Inuit’s star had them pinned on a tundra against a much stronger Persian starting position, so no real surprises, necessarily, but it was a pretty rapid and dramatic beat down. It makes me suspect that my custom civs are on the weak side in general.
 
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I'll try to pay more attention next time. I did get a bit too big for my britches and try to leverage what I thought was a strong military against my neighboring Shoshone... and I had to roll back the save on that one. That was a terrible idea. I'm thinking you either end up going Authority pre-wall rushing super nearby neighbors, or you play opportunistic wars but mostly peaceful, get Registan stuff going, then use your dual Renaissance UUs to steamroll.
 
Getting a 5 move lancer on chemistry is gross. Chemistry only has 1 prerequisite tech, so it’s extremely rushable. I guess people already know that from Naga Mallas though. I may have held back on the registan’s power a bit too much, for fear of that big power spike in renaissance, but I’m not sure. It’s hard to gauge balance right now, since the AI has improved so much recently.
 
I'm going to have to do a new playthrough for a few reasons, but I did make it to Renaissance just to see how everything felt. China was snowballing absolutely out of control (going to bring that up in 4UC directly), and Shoshone's UI and defensive bonus was pretty annoying, since even a single 5 damage hit from their UI stops movement of Farsakhs. But I do appreciate how Tradition allows you to play Tall until your UCs come online, or you can try your hand at warmongering as a vanilla civ.

Anyway, my initial feelings are:

Registan - Feels good. I'm not sure if it is or isn't perfectly balanced, but the general idea I've found is that you have so much effective extra production from the UA that you can pretty easily just build them all, and those are effectively 3 extra buildings for "free". It also gives you a good outlet to swap to tourism at some point in the game with Autocracy probably. By the time you hit this tech you probably already have fullish supply anyway, so you need something to do and your main goal at this point in the game is to build your policy wonder and then build these.

Tumen - I need to play with without EE because EE pushes Chemistry to a 2 requirement tech which slows the ability to rush Chemistry, get Tumen, and use them to bully your neighbor while you get Farsakh. But with EE they felt a bit bland. Not terrible or anything, but I didn't feel they were particularly amazing either, they're slightly more mobile, slightly cheaper Lancers that give you gold. So you have a relatively small window to make those advantages work before they're just not substantial enough to really roll over enemies, especially if they also have UUs.

Deh - Unique Villages are bueno, especially with being able to build them adjacent to enemy villages. Not much to say here, better yields are nice.

Farsakh - Holy crappoli these more than exceeded expectation. Honestly I expect them to carry the entire civ even if some other things are a bit weak, and I would caution any significant boosts to the rest of the civ. Even with Shoshone's strength in my game, just two of these, neither of them with Volley yet, walked up to a city and in two turns obliterated the defenses, including nearly one-shotting a Pikeman that couldn't run fast enough. I'm not 100% sure how the modifiers all work together, but that's 42 CS with +200% vs cities, +20% vs cities with Siege I, and then another 2 promotions on building (+10% or 40% vs city) and another +50% on volley once you get a single promotion from combat. Not sure exactly how the CS maths out on paper, but in reality they'll punch a city for about half of its HP without a unit there, and any units that have been doomed to sit in that city are not going to have a fun time.

I'll give a better update once I get to play the civ in a game that doesn't involve China out-policy-ing 2nd place Poland, with somehow 3 times my points and 4 extra policies above every non-Poland civ in the game.
 
Just noticed that I'experiencing Deh being built in CS territory. I'm playing with all your custom civs to VP ports and more UC, if that matters.
Spoiler :
20190511133121_1.jpg
 
Update: okay, CS don't actually build them. They build normal villages. It's when I purchase a CS with a Merchant of Venice, those villages get upgraded to Dehs. Weird.
 
How are you doing that?
Code:
function CityTimDehReplace(iOldOwner, bIsCapital, iX, iY, iNewOwner, iPop, bConquest)
    local nPlayer = Players[iNewOwner]
    if not nPlayer:GetCivilizationType() == TimuridsID then return end

    local nCity = Map.GetPlot(iX, iY):GetPlotCity()
    for cityPlot = 0, nCity:GetNumCityPlots() - 1, 1 do
        local plot = nCity:GetCityIndexPlot(cityPlot)
        if plot:GetImprovementType() == GameInfoTypes.IMPROVEMENT_TRADING_POST then
            plot:SetImprovementType(GameInfoTypes.IMPROVEMENT_CL_KALLE)
        end
    end
end
 
How are you doing that?
Code:
function CityTimDehReplace(iOldOwner, bIsCapital, iX, iY, iNewOwner, iPop, bConquest)
    local nPlayer = Players[iNewOwner]
    if not nPlayer:GetCivilizationType() == TimuridsID then return end

    local nCity = Map.GetPlot(iX, iY):GetPlotCity()
    for cityPlot = 0, nCity:GetNumCityPlots() - 1, 1 do
        local plot = nCity:GetCityIndexPlot(cityPlot)
        if plot:GetImprovementType() == GameInfoTypes.IMPROVEMENT_TRADING_POST then
            plot:SetImprovementType(GameInfoTypes.IMPROVEMENT_CL_KALLE)
        end
    end
end
I was playing as Venice and that happened whenever I simply used the CS purchasing ability of the MoV on city states that already had villages, so those villages turned into Dehs. Should be easy to reproduce, I think. Perhaps it's even somehow connected to the cultural diversity soundtrack bug (post #98), iunno.
 
I've tried Timurids another couple of times, having to restart due to Ethiopia having an insane lead, and in my most recent game I just got unbelievably far behind and couldn't get back. I was more than 5 techs behind anyone else, 3-4 policies behind, and just had no hope of conquering enough to catch up.

It seems like a significant problem is that since none of your stronger uniques come online until Renaissance, you are almost a completely vanilla civ. Dehs are nice but nothing exceptional, Registan is good but it doesn't really shine until you've conquered your capital's infrastructure to make it a net benefit and have a couple cities for the per-city bonuses. But since neither of your UUs come until Renaissance you can't really leverage your uniques.

My most successful attempts have been going Tradition and building everything needed for National Wonders with the spare time used to build up a military that I plan to upgrade into a fighting force immediately once I hit Renaissance. But this has consistently ended up with me attacking a nearby neighbor, gaining a couple of mediocre buildings, and then getting crushed by someone with a massive lead. I'm not sure if anyone has any ideas or their own thoughts, but I just can't get the kit to work properly.

Edit: Another thing I thought of: it feels like a lot of the strength of the UA is tied to gaining buildings in your capital when you conquer, but this ends up requiring you to always be behind in infrastructure to matter. While it is nice that you can free up your capital to build units, once you hit the mid game and your supply cap is full most of the time, you're basically stuck building Wonders (not possible if you're always a bit behind), or you just end up building a lot of buildings anyway.
 
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After reading Bhawb's report above, I tried out Timur with an aggressive Authority early-rush gameplay. The result was pretty neat. (Setting: immortal, standard, communitas, with other mods including 3/4UC, Enginseer's Civic and Reform, Bare Necessity and a bunch of other UI improvements)

I started on a continent with five other AIs. The continent was divided like a three leaf clover, with Austria and I on one corner, Babylon and Songhai the second, and Byzantium and Greece the third. My start was alright - not many food in capital due to tundra start, but I got the 6-faith mountain wonder nearby, so that allowed me to found a religion. After researching pottery to build a second city grabbing the 6-faith wonder, I researched iron working and immediately rushed Austria. I was quite fortunate to be able to capture an unguarded Salzburg within two turns (I razed it and built Merv directly on top of its former site). The yields from the UA is fantastic: you get four of almost every yields from capturing and razing a city (to put it into perspective, Morocco's UA only gives you one of everything), which really helped me with the city development and catching up with culture, science and founding religion when you only have ~5 culture or ~10 science. Kudos to pineappledan for increasing the yields from UA: now I can definitely feel its impact.

Austria offered little resistance afterwards, so after capturing Vienna, I captured a city state next to Songhai's border as an invasion point. This is where I encountered the greatest difficulty: even though Songhai's technologically lagging behind due to a lost war with Babylon, his UA, combined with the river-heavy Communitas map really made him a terrifying opponent. I actually had to restart once because I was not aggressive enough and let him tech to chivalry to get his too UUs (in 4UC mandekaly cavalry is moved to chivalry). But between a citadel and my powerhouse capital, I was manage to vassalize him before he reaches medieval era.

Afterwards, since Greece has settled onto my third of continent and got DoW'ed by Byzantium, I DoW'ed on him too and captured two cities (razed one and puppeted another), and by beelining chemistry, my tumehy marched to his cities, who offered little resistance since apparently he has no mobile units and did not research military techs. Now I am marching to the Holy City of Athens with the nice Great Lighthouse.

My religion includes the tundra pantheon, Hero Worship, Orders (for more faith), Mosque, Iconography and Crusader Spirit, so I can pursue a heavy GA-focused strategy to give me a lead in culture and economy.

Now concerning the power of the UA, my capital is allowed to develop to something almost like a tradition capital. I captured/razed around 10 cities in total, so that's about 40 yields of everything in renaissance. This is massive: in my capital, my palace alone contributed to around one-fifth of my production, one-fourth of my culture, and one-third of my science. I guess this also gave me many surplus happiness in my capital, allowing it to grow really large, and to wonder-whore a bit.

As for the buildings from captured cities, here's what I get in chronological order: market (Salzburg), library (Vienna), water mill (Gao), writer's guild and chancery (Corinth). Pretty decent, I guess. They do allow my capital to build wonders and military units and ignore some infrastructure buildings for a while, since you can use the yields from UA to compensate.

Overall, the gameplay reminds me a bit of France or Assyria - a tall-ish warmonger with not many direct bonus to fighting but great bonus from fighting, but unstoppable once it gets the gear running. I'll argue that you need authority to utilize the great yields from your UA.

Spoiler Look at the yields from conquering cities! :


Spoiler The jewel of the East - and I am not even in Golden Age now :


Spoiler My empire :
 

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Interesting, thanks for the 2nd take on it. I'll try a super early rush and see if I can make that work, since the early bonuses would make up for the issues I had.
 
I agree that the Authority tree makes more sense to me. That's what I did in my own games when trying them, but I was playing on Prince, so I could make sure I wouldn't have to bail out before Renaissance (I'm not very good).

Thanks for the writeup, @H0dgvikin!
 
After reading Bhawb's report above, I tried out Timur with an aggressive Authority early-rush gameplay. The result was pretty neat. (Setting: immortal, standard, communitas, with other mods including 3/4UC, Enginseer's Civic and Reform, Bare Necessity and a bunch of other UI improvements)

I started on a continent with five other AIs. The continent was divided like a three leaf clover, with Austria and I on one corner, Babylon and Songhai the second, and Byzantium and Greece the third. My start was alright - not many food in capital due to tundra start, but I got the 6-faith mountain wonder nearby, so that allowed me to found a religion. After researching pottery to build a second city grabbing the 6-faith wonder, I researched iron working and immediately rushed Austria. I was quite fortunate to be able to capture an unguarded Salzburg within two turns (I razed it and built Merv directly on top of its former site). The yields from the UA is fantastic: you get four of almost every yields from capturing and razing a city (to put it into perspective, Morocco's UA only gives you one of everything), which really helped me with the city development and catching up with culture, science and founding religion when you only have ~5 culture or ~10 science. Kudos to pineappledan for increasing the yields from UA: now I can definitely feel its impact.

Austria offered little resistance afterwards, so after capturing Vienna, I captured a city state next to Songhai's border as an invasion point. This is where I encountered the greatest difficulty: even though Songhai's technologically lagging behind due to a lost war with Babylon, his UA, combined with the river-heavy Communitas map really made him a terrifying opponent. I actually had to restart once because I was not aggressive enough and let him tech to chivalry to get his too UUs (in 4UC mandekaly cavalry is moved to chivalry). But between a citadel and my powerhouse capital, I was manage to vassalize him before he reaches medieval era.

Afterwards, since Greece has settled onto my third of continent and got DoW'ed by Byzantium, I DoW'ed on him too and captured two cities (razed one and puppeted another), and by beelining chemistry, my tumehy marched to his cities, who offered little resistance since apparently he has no mobile units and did not research military techs. Now I am marching to the Holy City of Athens with the nice Great Lighthouse.

My religion includes the tundra pantheon, Hero Worship, Orders (for more faith), Mosque, Iconography and Crusader Spirit, so I can pursue a heavy GA-focused strategy to give me a lead in culture and economy.

Now concerning the power of the UA, my capital is allowed to develop to something almost like a tradition capital. I captured/razed around 10 cities in total, so that's about 40 yields of everything in renaissance. This is massive: in my capital, my palace alone contributed to around one-fifth of my production, one-fourth of my culture, and one-third of my science. I guess this also gave me many surplus happiness in my capital, allowing it to grow really large, and to wonder-whore a bit.

As for the buildings from captured cities, here's what I get in chronological order: market (Salzburg), library (Vienna), water mill (Gao), writer's guild and chancery (Corinth). Pretty decent, I guess. They do allow my capital to build wonders and military units and ignore some infrastructure buildings for a while, since you can use the yields from UA to compensate.

Overall, the gameplay reminds me a bit of France or Assyria - a tall-ish warmonger with not many direct bonus to fighting but great bonus from fighting, but unstoppable once it gets the gear running. I'll argue that you need authority to utilize the great yields from your UA.

Spoiler Look at the yields from conquering cities! :


Spoiler The jewel of the East - and I am not even in Golden Age now :


Spoiler My empire :


Finally finished the game. I used my renaissance-era UU to rush through Greece, Byzantium and Babylon, and by the time I united my continent, I was about 10 techs and a few policies ahead of the next competitor (Carthage). I got almost every wonder starting from Renaissance era in my capital Sea dominance was not an issue when I sweep through Carthage's half-upgraded Corvettes with my armada of Ironclads.

My capital grew really really strong and this propelled me through the whole game. But like I said, I got pretty fortunate with my start (faith natural wonder, pacifist neighbor, the only warmonger AI got technologically behind...), so the overall balance seems fair.

A few more comments about Timurid:

Tumen: when I beelined Chemistry to obtain access to it, I was among the technologically leading countries and all my neighbors focused on the top half of the tech tree. Having an early lancer is great when your enemy had no crossbowman, let alone tercios, and the extra mobility helps you crush through the enemy's frontline or snipe those ranged units (even better if you have blitz + authority healing on kill or march + medic crossbowman behind to heal).

Farsakh cannon: @Bhawb summarized it quite well. When you had your tumen to secure your frontline, these hardhitters can bombard the cities with no impunity and whittle their health down within a moment's notice. And they even have Siege 1, so you can upgrade them to have range very quickly. The move only in full health isn't a great problem since you aren't supposed to let your cannons get damaged anyway. It seems strange that the move in full health promotion stays on upgrade though. IMO not a great issue balance-wise when you are going offensive, but letting a purely detrimental promotion stay on upgrade feels not that fun. Is this intended?

Combined, these two things combined can help you rush through the more pacifistic AIs as long as you manage to stay technologically afloat.

One final thing: I was not sure why Byzantium and Carthage got my Dehs, but since I was using way too much mods let's just ignore that :crazyeye:
 
Thanks for the report!

If you play with multiple civs that disable improvements (ie macedon) can cause an issue where other AI can build the Deh. I haven’t found any way to fix this problem, and it has been a known issue since before I made the compatibility mod.

I think I will reduce the RCS on the Farrakhan’s to 40, sounds like it’s just a bit too dominant. I didn’t realize that the can’t move while damaged promotion stays on upgrade; I will change that in an update.
 
I'm considering tweaking the Timurids a bit... I'm not totally happy with their UA. What do people think of this?

Jewel of the East:
+1 to all Yields ( :c5food::c5production::c5gold::c5science::c5culture::c5faith::c5goldenage::tourism:) in :c5capital:Capital permanently whenever you reduce the :c5citizen: population of a City by :c5razing: Razing it. Buildings from captured cities are immediately constructed in your :c5capital:Capital.

That would scale naturally by era as cities get bigger, and reward capturing smaller cities less than capturing bigger cities. It would also give a small reward for having more :tourism:influence over a civ, because less population is lost by conquest, which means more yields for the capital while razing. You could also capture a city, puppet it, let it grow a little, then burn it down. The description is also much shorter and easier to understand than the current bonus. I'm wondering if there are any dangerous, exploitable edge cases to a mechanic like this though?

Thoughts?
 
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So its +1 yields for each pop you raze? It needs to only work when you raze immediately after capturing. You can raze your own cities in a super gimmicky way.

This sounds like a fun to play civ.
 
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Yeah I've never actually tried it before, but you can totally just raze a city, grow it back up and raze it again... If there is a way I can disable adding yields if the city is stopped and restarted for razing then I'd like to try giving it a go, but I might have to throw out the idea if I can't find a way to flag a city if you stop razing it.
 
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