This must be a part of the stated UA. It's too strong to be a hidden bonus. Hidden bonuses are bad anyway, and Timid would be forced to try to add it to the UA text.
Current Greek UA: Influence degrades at half and recovers at twice the normal rate. +5% Combat Strength of owned and Allied Units for each City-State alliance (up to +25%). Treat neutral City-State territory as friendly territory.
New Greek UA:
Pledges of Protection grant -50% Influence decay, and +4% Combat Strength to all owned and Allied Units (up to +40%). Treat neutral City-State territory as friendly territory.
Rationale:
Mechanical diversity:
We don't have a civ that manipulates PoPs yet, but we have 3 different civs that do things based on Allied status
Better theme
The Hellenic League was a pact of mutual defense against the Persians. PoPs make more sense than allies.
As the most explicit Diplomatic/Militaristic hybrid civ, Greece is the best candidate for a PoP mechanic without having to add more military flavor.
Nerf Needed
Greece is a top 6 S-tier civ right now, and needs to be weakened somehow. CS decay has been made faster and more punishing at higher levels of influence, and all of these global nerfs have made Greece -- who is only half-affected by all these decay increases -- relatively stronger.
locking the half CS decay bonus behind a PoP is weaker than now, where it is unconditional
The current +25%CS, capped at 5 CS is too easy to do. The cap is too low. maintaining 10 PoPs is much harder and so it makes the combat bonus more interactive, rather than feeling automatic
SpoilerGermany UB nerf :
Current Hanse:
53
1 merchant specialist
-1poverty
+2 for TRs to and from this city
Gain 5% in this city for all TRs targeting city-states on empire
10% of Gold in this city is converted to Science
Proposal:
Remove the Gold to Science converter
Rationale
Austria also has a yield converter, and we need to try to make the 2 German civs more different
Germany needs to be nerfed and this is the least interesting bonus he has. Hitting any part of his UA or his big global %production modifier would hurt his uniqueness.
SpoilerOttoman UA nerf :
Current UA:
Completing a Trade Route grants +150 Science and Food to the origin City if International, or Culture and Gold if Internal. Bonuses scale with Era.
Proposal:
Reduce the instant yield on TR end from 150 to 100
Rationale
Conventional numbers nerf
compared to Portugal and Morocco's yields on TRs from their UA, the current Ottoman UA gives roughly 1.5 to 2 times as many yields per turn, depending on how fast the TRs complete
In addition to this the Ottomans have a positively beastly UB and UU, which also contribute to their power.
1) For Greece I can see the idea (I do think having a civ focused on PoP makes sense). It would probably need some mechanic where your military score counts higher for PoP, I think its still a bit hard to trigger for the human in many games.
2) Germany: Ultimately I do think a nerf to the Hanse is the right approach, and I can see two ways to do it.
a) We can nerf the science as was noted here. This would leave Germany basically 100% focused on DV and maybe DomV play, more pigeonholed but still focused on the things its always been good at with a solid nerf.
b) Nerf the prod bonus. Would make Germany have slightly less push for trade slots (though still pretty useful). A little more well rounded but ultimately not as much as the raw production powerhouse it is now.
I'm pretty open to either one myself.
3) Ottomans: Yeah I think a nice simple nerf to the Ua is the right approach.
Cities always claim the best tile and all adjacent unowned land tiles of the same type.
All Land Units can claim Ancient Ruins and receive a +20% Combat Strength bonus when fighting in friendly territory. (if 5-18a passes)
For Arabia, ultimately we would likely see several options here for voting. I think PDans swap idea will be interesting to some and too much change for others, but should go in so we can see the community desires.
On the simplier idea front, I do think nerfing the Bazaar is the right approach. Personally I would rather leave the yields intact and just remove historical event bonus from trade entirely. This is actually a very strong nerf, as it removes a source of HEs which drives the entire rest of Arabia's kit. In fact, it could be such a strong nerf that we could actually buff the bazaar in other areas and it would still be a nerf overall to the civ....its a little hard to say at the moment.
On the simplier idea front, I do think nerfing the Bazaar is the right approach. Personally I would rather leave the yields intact and just remove historical event bonus from trade entirely. This is actually a very strong nerf, as it removes a source of HEs which drives the entire rest of Arabia's kit. In fact, it could be such a strong nerf that we could actually buff the bazaar in other areas and it would still be a nerf overall to the civ....its a little hard to say at the moment.
It's too strong, and will banish Bazaar right into Stele's tier of uniqueness (just base yields and nothing else) (no, I consider the +faith% in GA a part of the UA). Early source of Historic Event is very unique.
I don't think we can use PoPs as a mechanic until we change the spatial mechanics for the requirements. Currently, it's binary. If you can pledge one CS, you can pledge everything within trade route range (which quickly becomes a majority, and eventually becomes all of them).
Anything numeric based on the number of pledges becomes a binary bonus limited only by range of your trade routes.
On the new Minuteman concept. I think the idea likely works the best if the new screening promotion is passed. You could give the unit that ability as a permanent bonus. This would boost American paratroopers and especially special forces (which seems thematically appropriate as the US does use a lot of special forces in its modern campaigns). This gives the remainder of the skirmisher path more longevity, which I think is the main concern with a recon line UU...how to ensure that building a lot of them doesn't feel "wasted" once you upgrade out. But if I have an army of units that can all double flank with each other, I mean hot damn that gets pretty damn good.
I do think nerfing the Bazaar is the right approach. Personally I would rather leave the yields intact and just remove historical event bonus from trade entirely. This is actually a very strong nerf, as it removes a source of HEs which drives the entire rest of Arabia's kit. In fact, it could be such a strong nerf that we could actually buff the bazaar in other areas and it would still be a nerf overall to the civ....its a little hard to say at the moment.
The same guy who criticizes the stele for just being base yields wants to cut the Bazaar UB's yields in half and eviscerate the HE trade trigger.
The problem is the 15% Great Person completion. Without it, we would have enough room in the civ's power budget to do all sorts of other things. With it, the UB can only be a handful of base yields and a slightly earlier HE trigger, the rest of the UA is choked out by how much space the GP birth trigger consumes.
It's not even a good bonus. It's a self-triggering ouroboros of GPs triggering more GPs. It would be like if Ethiopia got to pick free techs after he had researched X techs, and that free tech contributed to the X techs total that got you the next free tech. It's just a no-good ability that brazenly violates a basic understanding of how a bonus should work, and I'm bemused as I watch other community members pantomime a desire to make Arabia balanced and unique while they deflect criticism away from this part of the kit. The GP completion is obviously the part of the kit from which all of the civ's balance problems stem, and we won’t be able to make Arabia both balanced and unique by cutting everything else down to the bone.
Or maybe this really is where we’re headed?:
SpoilerArabia (balanced and super-special edition) :
UA: Literary Reference
15% Progress towards a random Great Person in your capital.
UB: Bazaar
Replaces the Market. Does everything a Market does.... Yup, that’s it!
It has a pretty icon. Look!
UU: Djinn
Is another fictional literary reference.
Like the UA, it is not history and therefore doesn't exist.
If it did exist, I'm sure the icon would be very nice.
If people want a PoP civ then I guess that's a discussion this workshop thread is designed to have.
At minimum, locking the half influence decay behind a PoP is at least more of a condition than being totally unconditional as it is now.
You still have to have enough military and maintain it, and keep civs from tributing or intimidating your city-states, which revokes the PoP.
On the new Minuteman concept. I think the idea likely works the best if the new screening promotion is passed. You could give the unit that ability as a permanent bonus.
Good idea. I will swap that for the GAP on kills if it passes.
Also changing the Siam proposal to this:
Yields from Friendly and Allied City-States increased by 100% City-States Unit gift frequency doubled.
+10 Influence from Diplomatic Missions.
Based on the multiple counterproposals that want to drop the bonus to CS unit gifts, it looks like the XP is unpopular. I think something needs to augment CS unit gifts though, because that is part of doubling the bonus from Militaristic CS. Without it, militaristic CS are just worse for Siam than the other types of CS. With everything else doubled, CS could gift 2x as many units, either by increasing the frequency of gifts or by giving 2 units whenever they would normally give 1. CS unit gift rate is already found on an ideology tenet (Autocracy: United Front), so that seems the most doable.
Also changing the Siam proposal to this:
Yields from Friendly and Allied City-States increased by 100% City-States Unit gift frequency doubled.
+10 Influence from Diplomatic Missions.
Based on the multiple counterproposals that want to drop the bonus to CS unit gifts, it looks like the XP is unpopular. I think something needs to augment CS unit gifts though, because that is part of doubling the bonus from Militaristic CS. Without it, militaristic CS are just worse for Siam than the other types of CS. With everything else doubled, CS could gift 2x as many units, either by increasing the frequency of gifts or by giving 2 units whenever they would normally give 1. CS unit gift rate is already found on an ideology tenet (Autocracy: United Front), so that seems the most doable.
Funny you're considering CS unit gifts to be part of the bonus from Militaristic CS, but not the happiness and luxury from Mercantile CS. If you truly want them to get +100% of everything, you should double the happiness and luxury amount too.
It would be like if Ethiopia got to pick free techs after he had researched X techs, and that free tech contributed to the X techs total that got you the next free tech.
No, it would be like if Ethiopia gets to pick a free tech after picking any belief, completing any policy tree, or researching every 15th tech. There are more "other HE triggers" than "GP birth HE triggers" in a game playing as Arabia.
Bazaar granting a much earlier Historic Event trigger should be the entire point of the building, not its high base yields nor high Tourism from each Historic Event. If it's possible to make it trigger a 0 Tourism Historic Event I'd do it.
If Great People are truly the best part of its kit, they shouldn't be winning every game with CV. SV and DV should be equally possible with a Great Person focus.
Good idea, yeah. City-state luxury quantity is only relevant with that one statecraft policy that makes them contribute to monopolies though, so that’s a bit thorny.
No, it would be like if Ethiopia gets to pick a free tech after picking any belief, completing any policy tree, or researching every 15th tech. There are more "other HE triggers" than "GP birth HE triggers" in a game playing as Arabia
Semantics, still tech for tech, and maybe some other stuff too, funneling further into tech. My point is made. The Arabian GP completion bonus self triggers and is therefore incestuous and bad.
Bazaar granting a much earlier Historic Event trigger should be the entire point of the building, not its high base yields nor high Tourism from each Historic Event. If it's possible to make it trigger a 0 Tourism Historic Event I'd do it.
oh wow, a UB that obsoletes in classical era with caravansaries. What a joke.
So eager to minimize the impact of the HE trigger’s bonuses, yet willing to design a UA that offers literally zero bonuses outside of them. Simultaneously arguing that Arabia’s UA trigger doesn’t matter while also arguing it is the only thing that matters.
If Great People are truly the best part of its kit, they shouldn't be winning every game with CV. SV and DV should be equally possible with a Great Person focus.
No, because there are 3 cultural GP types for every 1 scientific or diplomatic one, and that ignores Arabia’s CV flavours and the entire existence of HEs.
Remove the GP completion bonus if you seriously want to balance Arabia. Otherwise your wasting everyone’s time with non-fixes.
New Greek UA:
Pledges of Protection grant -50% Influence decay, and +4% Combat Strength to all owned and Allied Units (up to +40%). Treat neutral City-State territory as friendly territory.
To address the difficulty in fulfilling Pledges of Protection, and their binary nature: something a little more variable needs to factor in. Maybe nearby army that counts for Tribute could also count for making PoP easier (count nearby units as double strength, for example). Or just a finer-tuned accounting of TR distance. Those seem like the obvious approaches to making Pledging more accessible and interesting.
This wouldn't even need to be a Greece-only change, making PoP easier to pick up for nearby cities but harder for far-flung cities makes a lot of sense. And you wouldn't get huge "Civ A now protecting ... everyone" notifications as much.
I'm very interested in the idea of making PoPs work off the Heavy Tribute threshold. That just makes intuitive sense to me, that if you have enough power to bully them, you have enough power to protect them from bullies. It means PoP calculation uses existing code and doesn't introduce more complex systems for players to learn as well.
However, that has a few weird effects:
Zulu have +50% better military score calculation for bullying, so that would also make them really good at PoPs. Intended?
How do you keep a PoP once you have it? Are you unable to move your forces away from that city-state now, because the proximity score from your bully threshold is the only thing keeping it up? If you move your forces your PoP gets revoked? What does the threshold become?
I'm not very well-versed in the bully threshold logic, but how to maintain PoPs after you've made them is something that needs to be resolved. Maybe City-States under your PoP revoke your PoP status only if you cease to be able to take regular tribute from them? Or maybe they only look at your global military score calc and ignore your local military score once the PoP has been made, and will revoke that once global military score reaches some threshold?
When you move out, they threaten to revoke your PoP after 20 turns (as normal) until you visit them again with your main battle group for regularly scheduled combat exercises.
Jokes aside, I think a system where you're moving your army around to keep up PoPs actually makes a lot of sense. Either that or you station permanent units in defense of the location. Both seem appropriately thematic and realistic to me. The drawback is that it's a lot of clicking to actually pull it off. Which might be what sinks it as a good idea.
Would it? Making the Zulu’s intimidation bonus only work on tribute action while PoP uses the same base calculation sounds confusing and inconsistent. Why would you make it work that way?
Would it? Making the Zulu’s intimidation bonus only work on tribute action while PoP uses the same base calculation sounds confusing and inconsistent. Why would you make it work that way?
Because the bonus is for Bullying, not Pledges of Protection.
Combat Strength when attacking is calculated exactly the same way as Combat Strength when defending, and yet we have bonuses specifically for attacking that do not apply when defending.
Signing PoP needs a threshold improved by number of units nearby, distance from closest city and distance from capital.
Maintaining PoP require a lower threshold, and might account more for proximity from cities and capital.
Distance from city/capital could also factor road, meaning that a good road network connecting your CS improve ability to pledge (which make sense, it allow for quicker reinforcement in case of war).
Maintaining pledges should not require micromanagement. Using tribute score also doesn't make much sense, as the CS having more units or an ally lowers that score.
To make it not binary, we can just make use of existing mechanics:
1. Get the player's nearest city from the CS, and the plot distance
2. Divide military score by some function of the plot distance (can be sqrt, linear or even quadratic)
3. Sort the results of every player, and top X% can pledge (and keep pledge)
Then having a big army doesn't mean you can automatically pledge everything. You need to settle a city nearby too, which naturally requires you sending an army to defend it.
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Combat Strength bonus when fighting in friendly territory.
Great Person completion. Without it, we would have enough room in the civ's power budget to do all sorts of other things. With it, the UB can only be a handful of base yields and a slightly earlier HE trigger, the rest of the UA is choked out by how much space the GP birth trigger consumes.
City-States increased by 100%
Influence from Diplomatic Missions.
3
poverty
in this city for all TRs targeting city-states on empire
Science
Trade Route grants +150 
Food to the origin City if International, or 
