[NFP] What Civs could be adjusted?

[Jewelrunna]

I think they could really spice up egypt with all the new systems we have now. I would actually really like the sphinx to either become something that must be next to a wonder (and in exchange, is much more powerful); OR (what I would prefer) make the sphinx a unique WONDER that only egypt can make, conditioned that it must sit next to another wonder. To compensate, give them a UB "Obelisk" that's just a slightly jazzier monument.
I also think the nile aspect of the civ and flooding should be a central feature of cleo's UA rather than the trade thing. Like + a yield to any improved tile that has flooded at least once, or something, and immune to flood damage.
I rarely play egypt even though they have a great UU and a sick floodplains bias. I just want "PHARAOH STRONK," is that really too much to ask for?

I think Egypt's design is fine, honestly. I mean yeah, they're simple, but what's wrong with that? I think there should be a few straightforward Civs in the game for new players to learn with. And simple doesn't necessarily mean weak, just look at Rome as an example.

If there's anything I'd change about Egypt, it'd be their leader ability. I'd love an alternate leader that either leaned more into the building aspect or had a neat warring bonus. Or both!

 

[slavaskii]

To hop on the ‘religion weak’ bandwagon, Poland is definitely in need of a rework. There’s a lot of things going for them (I stand by the sukiennice being a great UB), but a lot of other abilities just don’t synergize well together. Extra adjacency bonuses for the Holy Sites is just so bad, it’s never impactful in any serious way.

But the worst part of Poland, imo, is the focus on relics. If it wasn’t for Mont St Michel, this would be a totally worthless bonus. A Poland player is automatically forced into going towards a religious victory which is fine, but they find themselves constantly chasing gimmicks which do very little. Either relics as a whole are reworked, or Poland should get some intrinsic faith generation bonuses that doesn’t tie them down to the Holy Sites, like Indonesia. Ironic to compare Poland to Indonesia, because Indonesia also gets (minor) adjacency bonuses from coast, and this applies to three districts.

 

[bengalryan9]

I agree that getting relics as anyone outside of the Khmer is too much of a toss-up unless Kandy is in the game.

Maybe we need some type of mechanic where you could choose to spend faith to buy a relic? Some type of unit that costs a bunch of faith that you could send on some type of pilgrimage? "Unit X had a vision saying he should travel to an undiscovered City Y. Get him there within Z turns to receive a reward." I think something like that could be fun.

 

[acluewithout]

I really don’t think many Civs need adjustments. A few could certainly be fine differently, particularly eg Khmer, but that’s what the Persona packs might do.

In my perfect world, I’d like to see England’s Pax B Free Melee Unit reworked a little. One Melee unit per continent is pretty useless. But it’s also fine as is, and is perhaps better seen as just flavour at this point, a bit like Russian and Japan disaster immunity or Phoenicia’s writing boost. (Hmm. Actually , maybe I am okay with Pax B as is...)

I think Cree should get a Free Starting Scout. I honestly can’t get how that’s not already a thing.

Canada need a rework. They are too meme.

But really, that’s about it.

 

[Jewelrunna]

I really don’t think many Civs need adjustments. A few could certainly be fine differently, particularly eg Khmer, but that’s what the Persona packs might do.

In my perfect world, I’d like to see England’s Pax B Free Melee Unit reworked a little. One Melee unit per continent is pretty useless. But it’s also fine as is, and is perhaps better seen as just flavour at this point, a bit like Russian and Japan disaster immunity or Phoenicia’s writing boost. (Hmm. Actually , maybe I am okay with Pax B as is...)

I think Cree should get a Free Starting Scout. I honestly can’t get how that’s not already a thing.

Canada need a rework. They are too meme.

But really, that’s about it.

Canada being a meme has become a meme in and of itself. Since getting buffed, they're really not that bad.

 

[Aurelesk]

If you have a 100HP/10ATK unit facing off against an endless stream of identical units, he would end up dishing out 100 dmg before dying (10 damage 10 times, since he takes 10 damage himself each tick.)
If you send a 150HP/15ATK corps against a stream of the single units, he will deal 225 damage during his life (15 damage 15 times, since he's taking 10 damage every tick.)

I do not disagree with you. But having twice as much units do not simply you will do twice as much damage: it also means you will take twice as less casualties. Let's say you have an army with 1000 people and the enemy arm has 500 people, and each people in either army are equally effective. At the end, you win with 750 people left and not 500. Why? If you finished the war with 500 people, that means the enemy's people kill 1 each, but yours kill 0.5 each, meaning the people in the enemy army is twice more effective.

This is basicly the same reasoning of you: you told me that an Army with twice as much HP twice as much damage leading to 4 times more powerful than the regular unit. But 3 units has three times as much HP and three times as much damage, so 3 units is 9 times more powerful than the regular unit!

Of course, what I just wrote is misleading: once you take out 1 unit, the damage output drop and do not stay constant (contrary to a Corps / Army), meaning that 3 units is less than 9 times as effective. As you said, the map design give an edge to more powerful unit: you can only circle an enemy with 6 units at most, because hexagonal shapes have 6 edges. But quality isnt necessarly better than quantity. You could see that when taking down a city with 4 units with barely any HP left, but when you do it with 6 units it goes very smoothly, and you are ready to go take the next city.

It translates in the game: sure an Army is more powerful. It might be 4 times more powerful than the regular unit, but not as powerful than 4 regular units. but as powerful than 2 regular units (without focus fire).

 

[UWHabs]

I would consider monumentality to be an edge case. Everything is better with monumentality, but as soon as you step outside it, suddenly the value of faith drops massively. Yes, we all know that the best strategies are built around it, but I don't know if the design of the game is such that players are supposed to plan particular golden/dark ages ahead of time.

And yes, the religion system, especially beliefs, usually end up making religion perpendicular to everything else. I don't care if you have missionary zeal and Mosques, because I'm not playing religious. If all religions had a belief as impactful as choral music, suddenly, holy cow do I care what foreign faith I have. It should not live in its own bubble so much - even if that means religion morphs into essentially a 'booster' like in civ5. I'm not even sure holy sites should be the singular expression of religion. Why can't the religious building belief go into the city center? Then pick some other thing for t3 that morphs holy sites into a district that people trying to win religiously use.

That's really the biggest flaw with religion/faith, in that it's a little of a high risk/high reward type of game. I mean, if you get the monumentality golden age then a +3 holy site can absolutely rocket you forward, since the double-adjacency card comes early, and then that saves your cash for everything else.

But if you don't have that golden age, then there's not really anything you can do to spend your faith on until mid-game. And really, for most of the game unless if you're going for a religious victory, spending your faith on religious units is actually a pretty horrible use.

I mean, I spend 300-400 faith on one apostle, who can convert maybe 3-4 cities if I get lucky with the right promotions, and what does that give me? Yeah, as mentioned Choral Music can be a useful bonus, but even something like Jesuit education only gives me the ability to spend my faith on something else.

In my last game, one of the golden ages I decided to experiment with picking the religious golden age instead of monumentality, and it really was useless. Basically, I probably bought like 45 apostles in the golden age, but to be honest, I probably could have done a better religious game going monumentality, since I would have saved on builders and settlers, which might have let me buy even more apostles. And all of that effort to spread my religion and it barely made a dent in anything I was doing.

It wouldn't be a problem, except that holy sites take crucial time and effort away that can be put to other uses. If you commit to it, a faith economy can be very strong. But it would certainly be nice if there was a more reliable way to have faith and holy sites truly impact parts of your game. For example, if you had beliefs like Choral Music but for production and science, then suddenly you can potentially use holy sites instead of other districts in the game. Or perhaps you have a belief where shrines give trade routes like markets do, and suddenly you can use holy sites as your pseudo-commerce hubs. Give me a few options like that, or maybe move the faith-buying of units as the warlord's throne bonus instead of the production boost, and suddenly you see faith economies in a whole new light.

 

[The Highwayman]

Well without monumentality the value of faith is pretty much zero unless you have the correct wonders or CS. But then again you can get 2 or 3 monumentalities in most games so that's kind of moot I think. I guess it allows only for very narrow strategies, but even with monumentality there are a lot of different ways to use it.

I think faith still has value beyond Monumentality. Sure GPs costs go through the roof, but it can still allow for something like buying Gustave Eiffel without the need for projects for a free wonder, or an alternative to buying a spaceport as we discussed in another thread. In a culture game the rock band spam is very powerful endgame. And it's great for domination games once you have Grand Master's Chapel.

I'd like to see Canada buffed. It's totally fine that war isn't their thing, but not much else is either. Faithless national parks would be okay, but the number of spots for such locations can be limited and it's at the cost of having a bad UU. I typically don't have a problem getting my parks down before invading others with music. The dream of surrounding a stadium with late game hockey rinks in terrible terrain seems like a meme, provided you have enough tundra to begin with. The map generator is all over the place with tundra generation in my games. So that's a big if from the get go. Extra iron would be nice to sell, if I can get iron to spawn at all.

Spain getting a starting bias near geothermal fissures to increase the likelihood of starting near a continent split would iron out some of their mess. The coastal thing doesn't work for them and treasure fleet is too dependent on the splits. They have interesting abilities but the RNG just kills it.

 

[Sostratus]

But 3 units has three times as much HP and three times as much damage, so 3 units is 9 times more powerful than the regular unit!

This is the flaw: adding more units is a linear increase in power, if power is defined as "damage dealt during its lifetime." If 1 unit does X damage/lifetime, then 3 units would total 3X.
This is constrained to imagine we have two armies, with identical units, all attacking the guy straight across from him on a long front line. Imagine we take one unit and double his damage. He will deal twice as much damage during his life (2X,) surely - he lives just as long, but hits twice as hard. (Let's just pretend there are infinite enemy reserves, so when one dies it is replaced right away.)
If we double his health instead, he would deal the same amount of damage per hit, but lives twice as long. So over his lifetime, we would also expect him to deal 2X damage.
If we double both his attack and health, he deals twice as much damage for twice as long, for 4X during his life.

But why don't the 3 units deal 9x???
There are three of them, so suppose they all attack in parallel. They deal triple the damage every hit of a lone unit, but they all live the standard lifetime.
Instead, imagine these 3 line up one behind another of our infinite battlefield. When one unit dies, the guy behind him will move up. They deal the normal amount of damage, but have essentially 3 lives. By the time they all die, 3X.
In other words, because one of them dies when it takes 100Hp of damage. The Super unit can maintain his damage output right up until he hits 0HP.

 

[acluewithout]

Canada being a meme has become a meme in and of itself. Since getting buffed, they're really not that bad.

Not saying they are bad in terms of power.

I’m just saying that Tundra Farms and Mounties are really silly, and make the Civ feel like a joke. No Surprise War is also too gimmicky.

It’s a question of taste or feel, but Canada just seem really silly - ie they seem like a Canada meme. All they’re missing are beavers, moose and maple syrup.

 

[bbbt]

In my opinion, Phoenicia is fine. They're a generalist Civ with a very specific niche, which is that they settler spam better than anyone else in the game. That to me gives them more than enough of a niche, and they can be pretty powerful. Egypt is also actually pretty powerful, but I wouldn't mind an uptick for their numbers either.

I'd also add the Mapuche to this list. In my opinion, they're the worst Civ in the game, barely edging out the Khmer. The Chemamull is actually pretty strong, but everything else feels really inconsequential. And Swift Hawk is the only ability in the game that can actually be a hinderance.

Yeah Phoenicia doesn't necessarily need the boost, especially with the boost to harbors and coastal cities, but they aren't necessarily OP either.

Boosting Egypts % next to rivers might not actually be that helpful now that I think about it - with the bonuses from floods (and Egypt's immunity to them), I'm often working those tiles instead of building on them.

I think they could really spice up egypt with all the new systems we have now. I would actually really like the sphinx to either become something that must be next to a wonder (and in exchange, is much more powerful); OR (what I would prefer) make the sphinx a unique WONDER that only egypt can make, conditioned that it must sit next to another wonder. To compensate, give them a UB "Obelisk" that's just a slightly jazzier monument.
I also think the nile aspect of the civ and flooding should be a central feature of cleo's UA rather than the trade thing. Like + a yield to any improved tile that has flooded at least once, or something, and immune to flood damage.
I rarely play egypt even though they have a great UU and a sick floodplains bias. I just want "PHARAOH STRONK," is that really too much to ask for?

The Sphinx is great as is, imho: The key is to snag the 'earth goddess' pantheon. The sphinx boosts appeal (and comes super early). You can be rolling in faith, and are pretty much guaranteed an early golden age for monumentality with your uniques. Have them on some flood plains with some flood boosts, and you can get some solid tiles.

Adding some additional yields via the UA would be cool though. Cleo's LUA isn't horrible, especially if you start near a CS, but it isn't that exciting.

 

[bengalryan9]

The Sphinx is great as is, imho: The key is to snag the 'earth goddess' pantheon. The sphinx boosts appeal (and comes super early). You can be rolling in faith, and are pretty much guaranteed an early golden age for monumentality with your uniques. Have them on some flood plains with some flood boosts, and you can get some solid tiles.

The appeal from sphinxes tends to be offset by all the flood plains Egypt tends to have, though. I don't know if the Earth Goddess pantheon pairs with Egypt all that well, TBH. It would take a lot of work to get breathtaking tiles.

 

[Ticio]

I do not know if the thread is only for changing the low tier civs but I would love to add "Gran Colombia".

I really think they need a little change, as I find them very strong. I never played with them as I have not the DLC, but yesterday we played a multiplayer game (4 friends), and the player with Gran Colombia destroyed us.

At some points, the other 3, we were on alliances to try to stop him... he did a great start and none of us has a warmongering approach to the game (except the guy that played gran colombia).

But he managed to have Kabul bonus, and he destroyed us! he also was able to raid everything better that the vikings XD it was like the plague.

So maybe to change a little the hability to fight after promotion or make that the Comandante General bonus do not stack with the Great General one...

I don't know them from the inside, other people that know better could disagree, but is my perception after this game.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Phoenicia having a boost to Writing is just offensive to me. It ****** me off. How could anyone have let this through? Tell me this: Have you ever, in a single game, not gotten the Eurekah for Writing?

Even when I spawn alone on my continent, I usually get a ship out early enough to find an AI before researching the tech. Campi have low priority for Phoenicia anyway compared to Harbors so no one would ever rush them.. It's just such horrible design. Like they thought about it for 5 seconds and then said "yup, great idea, it's in the game."

It's like when you get a ruin with the Craftsmanship Inspiration even though your builder was about to have his 3rd improvement done next turn. It's like a kick in the nuts.

 

[The Highwayman]

I don't know if they expected people to gravitate towards island plates with Phoenicia and beeline writing, but yeah that's a complete waste of an ability in about 99.9% of all games.

 

[bengalryan9]

Phoenicia having a boost to Writing is just offensive to me. It ****** me off. How could anyone have let this through? Tell me this: Have you ever, in a single game, not gotten the Eurekah for Writing?

Even when I spawn alone on my continent, I usually get a ship out early enough to find an AI before researching the tech. Campi have low priority for Phoenicia anyway compared to Harbors so no one would ever rush them.. It's just such horrible design. Like they thought about it for 5 seconds and then said "yup, great idea, it's in the game."

It's like when you get a ruin with the Craftsmanship Inspiration even though your builder was about to have his 3rd improvement done next turn. It's like a kick in the nuts.

It's just there for flavor. It's not like it's all they get in their civ ability...

 

[Sostratus]

Canada need a rework. They are too meme.

I think the absolute word salad of LBW could be rethought to give a similar effect (viable tundra) in a much shorter package. I want canada to be elegant because I live next to it and go there all the time.
It's currently:

Can build Farms on Tundra tiles, and on Tundra Hills tiles with Civil Engineering. Snow, Snow Hills, Tundra Hills, and Tundra tiles cost 50% less Gold to purchase. On those tiles, resources accumulate twice as fast, Mines and Lumber Mills receive +1 Production and Camps receive +1 Food.

If it was something like

+1 food on tundra tiles. Can build farms on tundra tiles.
All snow and tundra tiles cost 50% less gold to purchase, and resources on them accumulate twice as fast.

It would probably play better too, because then all tundra functions like grassland, meaning players would actually want to farm and settle the darn stuff. Farming a 1 food tile is much less appealing when you could go farm a grassland or plains. I'd also take a food on all tundra over slightly more production tundra mines and lumbermills, again, because then I can have self sufficient, non coastal tundra cities.

I'm ambivalent on the mountie. I don't particularly like how the post colonials have turned out, but I would let others come up with suitably Canadian UUs. Best I can come up with is maybe a unique trader unit, the Coureur Du Bois? Not sure what it would do though (have automatic defense based on era? Path through forests as if they are roads for setting up routes?)

The hockey Rink is too meme as an improvement. If it was a unique zoo or stadium with an interesting effect, that might work better. Maybe with +1 food on tundra it wouldn't be so bad, but i don't want to have to settle bad tiles just to build an improvement that comes quite late. It's only one civic from zoos!
As an example, suppose the Ice Rink zoo replacement gave +2 amenities to nearby cities, and +1 culture to all tundra or snow tiles (instead of the science from jungle and marsh.)
True North, eh?!

 

[bengalryan9]

I'm ambivalent on the mountie. I don't particularly like how the post colonials have turned out, but I would let others come up with suitably Canadian UUs. Best I can come up with is maybe a unique trader unit, the Coureur Du Bois? Not sure what it would do though (have automatic defense based on era? Path through forests as if they are roads for setting up routes?)

I love the mountie! Canada can do some really fun things with national parks... but I know you're Mr. Industrial Zone, so I can see why they might not be as impactful for you.

 

[PhilBowles]

The issue with Korea is that their Seowons are so good that everything else has to be tempered otherwise the civ becomes OP. Korea is very good exactly as they are... if you make their leader ability any better than what it already is, they become way too strong IMO.

This is the main reason I think Korea won't be getting a second leader as part of the Frontier Pass.

Everyone seems to have interpreted the comment about tweaking civs as buffing weaker civs - but toning down civs like Korea or Nubia would also be a case of making adjustments, so suggestions about how best to do that might warrant more attention than they're getting.

 

[Sostratus]

Everyone seems to have interpreted the comment about tweaking civs as buffing weaker civs - but toning down civs like Korea or Nubia would also be a case of making adjustments, so suggestions about how best to do that might warrant more attention than they're getting.

Three kingdoms is the bonus that makes Seowons shine. I think if I were to adjust korea, it would be changing 3K instead of the seowon. Should a Seowon really give you +6 yield if you improve the surrounding tiles, particularly 1 science to mines? On top of all the other stuff they get?
Without it I think they lose a significant amount of early power.

I love the mountie! Canada can do some really fun things with national parks... but I know you're Mr. Industrial Zone, so I can see why they might not be as impactful for you.

I don't mind mounties, and I know they are amazing national park creators. Some people dislike that they are canada's UU, though. It's sort of interesting design, though, since they have negligible military value in most cases. It's almost a unique unit used as an ability (that being cheaper naturalists.)