EitB v12 Wishlist/Progress

[Dreylin]

Well it's mostly curiosity about whether it's something that I'll discover through the general course of the game, or if I really need to dig in to find it...

Although the fact that you're flagging both Tasunke and I means that it's across versions, so has always been there.

[Aurorarcher]

Spoiler for Calabim. Current Calabim players, please do not read! Tasunke, this means you!!

(Q presumably has to read it, but don't share with Dreylin in 43!)

1. Units with Burning Blood promotion will never turn barbarian if they have the Loyalty promotion.
2. Loyalty is the Law I spell.
3. Calabim start with Law mana.
4. Research Bronze Working and KotE, and all your axemen can be +1 move, +20% strength, and blitz until someone else gets Metamagic II.
5. Profit?

No Calabim players.

Holy cow! That's damn powerful - should definitely be fixed later IMO. I feel like that could be considered abusing something that you shouldn't be able to do. What's your thought on this, Dave?

[DaveV]

@Dreylin - it's pretty obscure. I noticed it while source diving for a different question.

@Aurorarcher (Calabim spoilers) -

Yes, I think it's a little too good, that's why I'm bringing it up here. Not sure I'd ban it as an abuse of game mechanics when people commonly do stuff like taking a Mobility promotion and/or casting Haste so they can attack after debarking from a ship. But I don't think the Calabim need any extra help.

[Bobchillingworth]

Holy shoot. Can't believe I never heard of that until now. That makes them so much better as units... it should def. be patched.

[Qgqqqqq]

Thanks guys.

So...is it too powerful? I mean, mechanistically it kinda makes sense for it to work that way to some extent, and it unites the law theme for them more than is otherwise the case. But against that there's two points:
1. It's too powerful
2. The "theme" for Calabim is already set too much on Moroi over Vampires than is, imo, desirable

Any thoughts on how to keep some element of it around? Maybe make it able to "wash off" the BB promotion - though that still leaves it quite powerful as it can be used on one turn and washed off after being used. Maybe it can't be both taken and applied on the same turn (probably using the Has Already Casted This Turn tag)? Or would everyone prefer it to be straight removed?

Also, I'm on break for the next few weeks, and I intend to output v12 at the end of it :D Most of the work will be done on already determined things (UI, DLL hacking, and so on) but it would still be good to get a better consensus on those items proposed earlier. (Like I said to Jojo, that's a bad combination, whipped up in a small amount of time on my phone, and the context is important. At the same time, though, most of the most recent changes had no one or almost no one giving feedback on, and I'd prefer more discussion before implementing changes - though Krill's method does get more attractive each iteration )

[Dreylin]

I have some feedback coming on a few things (mostly Naval) once I catch up on reporting post-vacation; hopefully that will be before PB28 starts.

Also:

Not sure if this is a known issue, but contents of Spoiler tags are spelled out in the thread notification e-mails if right at the start of the thread. Fortunately I did not notice this until Q's reply, so saw a question about whether "it" was too powerful or would fit thematically and that's where the preview stopped. I don't typically open those e-mails, but do sometimes if I can't be bothered navigaing to the thread and want to launch it into a new tab; I'll stop doing that with this thread for a while...

(Spoilered so I feel less left out... )

[Dreylin]

5. Galleys lose 1 move (to 2 moves base, 3 with longshoreman)

6. Naval promotions are switched up. Longshoreman now loses 1 combat, Buccaneers now loses 1 cargo, and Skeleton Crew loses 1 combat, gains two cargo.

So these changes are OK I guess, but they don't solve the fundamental problem with Triremes - that is they cost 50% more than a Galley, but aren't 50% any better. The lack of a Cargo slot still means that Triremes only have access to 2/3 options, and the missing option is the one that gives Strength. So you can have a 6Str, 3Move, 3Cargo Galley verses a 7/2/0 or 6/3/0 Trireme.

Even switching the naval promos up further won't solve the problem because the Trireme's Move is too low and Cargo is absent, so it can't ever gain strength where the Galley always can. Making the Trireme useful would take reducing the cost, increasing the stats (Str, move or both), giving it a Cargo slot to trade for Str, or just giving it the base BTS bonus verses Galleys. Personally, the last seems easiest.

Also wanted to revisit ideas about the circumnav bonus; basically my 2 thoughts are that Lanun + Circumnav is ridiculously overpowered. Second is that the Clan have it far too easy to score it with their Worldspell. Simplest solution is of course to remove the bonus entirely, but that doesn't seem to be in favour.

I propose that Lanun can't gain any benefit from Circumnav, but if they claim it then no-one else can get it. Clan is a bit more problematic; my current idea is that the Barbarian Trait gives -1move to ships (poorly constructed) so when Clan score it they go back up to regular move. This does blow back against the non-Clan Barb leaders, so is not ideal. a 1move Trireme would also be useless, but if we implement the +bonus vs Galleys, then they can always take the new Longshoreman promo.

I also wanted to bring up starting techs; Lanun excepted, it seems like there's very few situations where Agriculture-first is not the right answer if the civ doesn't start with it. If Agri is the starting tech then often Calendar-first is the right answer. The jump to Calendar can give the Agri civ an early tech lead if there's a Dye or Incense nearby, which will tend to snowball them ahead of a non-Agri civ.

Propose we give everyone Agriculture as an additional starting tech (sole for Barb civs) and distribute the current Agri civs between Crafting and Ancient Chants as deemed "thematically appropriate". That removes the "one right choice" opening research, giving some variety in opening gambits, and as a by-product will speed up the early game somewhat.

[Aurorarcher]

I like Dreylin's idea of giving Triremes bonus against Galleys. Maybe make +50% vs. Galleys ( don't remember what it is in BtS). This could make it worth to build Triremes to guard against Galleys. Slow and strong also suit Triremes perfectly IMO.

[DaveV]

I like the idea of a 50% bonus against Galleys for Triremes. I wouldn't want to raise their base strength because that would mean they could stop worrying about sea monsters and griffons. Would also help against those annoying barb galleys.

I'm not so enthusiastic about free Agriculture for everyone. I like the way the early game plays out, with lots of competing priorities. Agriculture is almost certainly the best starting tech, but starting tech is a pretty small piece of what makes up a civ. We could shuffle around the starting techs to use them as a balancing measure rather than being thematic.

With respect to circumnavigation: it usually does take some investment to get it. If it's an indirect buff to Barbarian civs and the Clan, maybe that's not a bad thing. +2 move ships are pretty frustrating to face, but the Lanun have to work as hard as anyone else to score circumnav.

Calabim spoiler:

@Q: maybe make the Loyalty promotion halve the probability of defecting to the barbs, instead of driving it to zero? That way there's still some benefit to it, but you can't just automatically spam Burning Blood everywhere.

Aside: what started me down this path was that it seemed to me that the odds of defecting to the barbs were worse than stated in the manual (20%, 10% chance of Burning Blood wearing off with no ill effect). In fact, there's a check for defecting (at 20% odds), then a check for the promotion wearing off (10%). The problem is that the check for the promotion wearing off will only happen in those 80% of cases where the defection check fails, so the odds are really 8%.

So even if you halve the odds of defecting, the units would still be slightly more likely to defect than to lose the promotion without defecting.

[Qgqqqqq]

Huh, I thought I posted this last night:

That's a known issue, btw. Generally not a problem, as the conclusion is that if you're subscribed to a thread you're normally cleared to read all of it. Runs into issues in cases like this and (say) the Perpy game, but yeah.

Yeah, Triremes could do with a bonus vs. galleys. In general, galleys could do with a nerf, really, as they can dominate many aspects of naval warfare for far too long, IMO.


Suggestions on circumnavigation: no. I don't want to balance a game-wide boost differently for different civs, the same way that I don't want to change the dungeon results for different civs, and so on. If I was going to make galleys worse for Clan (and is that really necessary?) I would give them a UU version. But, honestly, I don't think that's justified - it's not even a bonus that is available on many-most of the maps we play.

Same for Lanun. If I wanted to nerf them, I'd hit them directly, not go after something that is inconsistent and not always available.


As to starting techs, they're part of what distinguishes different civilizations, and I don't think the right move is to cut them.