Some bonuses for Carthaginians?

[Seleucids]

Carthaginians lack bonuses and they are quite a weak civ right now, compared to the others. They are too dependent on metal and mercenary. They are an archer civ but don't have the archer upgrades...

Some ideas:

• At least give them the archer techs?
• Numidian skirmisher cavalry run 10% faster than other civs, because they were known for speed and agility?
• Metal mining bonus, because they are a merc civ?
• Trading / barter / eco bonus, because they were the richest civilisation around the entire Mediterranean sea?
• A tech which increases the speed of units but reduces armour or something - new hit and run strategy. 

 

 

[Arup]

add the hans to the list of "need bonus" as well lol what is +30% trade bonus

[Player of 0AD]

- allow Carthaginians to train Champions in stables again. What is a stable which can train only skirm cav?
- maybe allow them to train infantry Champs in barracks as well.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 hours ago, Seleucids said:

Numidian skirmisher cavalry run 10% faster than other civs, because they were known for speed and agility?

I like this, with all the melee mercs and champs, the ranged cav gets very overlooked.

29 minutes ago, Player of 0AD said:

- allow Carthaginians to train Champions in stables again. What is a stable which can train only skirm cav?
- maybe allow them to train infantry Champs in barracks as well.

I set it up so they train from the temple for civ differentiation purposes. They were originally trained from the temple. While you can get them faster since temples may be built in p2, there doesn't seem to be much benefit at all to doing this.

Perhaps some way to make building temples less taxing economically would be good. I notice they take a very long time to build.

[chrstgtr]

11 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Perhaps some way to make building temples less taxing economically would be good. I notice they take a very long time to build.

I haven’t played carth in a bit. But didn’t we implement some tech that makes them cheaper and quicker to build? Maybe we revisit that if it isn’t working (not sure anyone has really tested it enough to see if a good build order is possible with it).

Couple ideas: Could also make temples build able in p1. Or give temples pop cap bonus like a23. Or make carth temples cheaper in res/build time  

 

[chrstgtr]

Also, the biggest problem with Carth’s bonuses is the lack of a real team bonus. If anyone has good ideas that would help 

[Seleucids]

54 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

They were originally trained from the temple.

I think we should follow weirdJokes' idea and move the champs to barracks and stables, because that is the standard of most A27 civs. Only training champs from temples nerfs the civ too much. 

The temples can be differentiated in other ways. For example, Carthaginian temples have faster healing rates or greater area of influence, for some rituals they practised. 

Carthage is already unique enough, no need for more weirdness. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

25 minutes ago, Seleucids said:

I think we should follow weirdJokes' idea and move the champs to barracks and stables, because that is the standard of most A27 civs. Only training champs from temples nerfs the civ too much. 

The temples can be differentiated in other ways. For example, Carthaginian temples have faster healing rates or greater area of influence, for some rituals they practised. 

Carthage is already unique enough, no need for more weirdness. 

A commit before a27 made it so that champs trained from non-barracks buildings train 25% faster. I think it has helped justify making things like fanatics and spartiates, but not so much for carthage champs.

[Feldfeld]

I'm against moving champs back to barracks / stable. There can be so many ideas compared to just going back and uniformizing things. For example, decreasing the batch training time of champions (an underrated bonus by the way, large batches can train very quickly with such a reduction), having mines last longer (for example, getting 6K metal out of a 5K mine, however I was thinking of giving that bonus to Kushite Pyramid complementing the gather rate), better exchange rate on the market (but better handled than previously), cheaper market, making the unlock champion technology more expensive...

And remember at least one temple can be useful as healing so it is in a way better than other champion-training buildings. Healers can also be improved a bit, I have ideas for them.

[Feldfeld]

1 minute ago, Emacz said:

already have 6k metal in hisotircal. Great minds think a like!

Do you have it as a civ-specific bonus? I probably didn't explain properly, I imagine it would take some code to implement.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

a better civ bonus for carth could be good. Maybe something stone-focused to help with the cost of apartments, temples, and the more expensive stone walls.

4 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Also, the biggest problem with Carth’s bonuses is the lack of a real team bonus. If anyone has good ideas that would help 

mm I think the infantry merc train time is pretty substantial, but its true that it really only helps merc civs.

[chrstgtr]

13 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

mm I think the infantry merc train time is pretty substantial, but its true that it really only helps merc civs.

Sure. But it is only as good as it is used. Merc inf is probably the least commonly trained class of unit and, as you say, only available to civs to begin with. 

[chrstgtr]

16 minutes ago, Emacz said:

think more civs used merc than are included in game....  almost all civs could have some form of merc which would make the cart bonus a little more useful.

Of course. The dirty secret that all “history” focused users don’t want to talk about is how all the civs share most of their “distinguishing” features. These civs shared their technological and social developments. Gauls had archers. Romans had slings. Athenians used mercenaries. Etc. 

But a game where all the civs look and play the same is boring. So there is a lot of generalization, reductionism, and abstraction that occurs to make the game more interesting. 

[Genava55]

Carthage deserves a rework, based on sources that are a little more researched than the usual superficial summaries.

I don't really understand what the Numidians are doing in the civic center. These were not Carthaginian citizens, but allied troops - in other words, auxiliaries - who fought for Carthage under political agreements. Several Numidian peoples were direct clients of Carthage, so I can see why they're part of the standard roster. But not in the civic center.

Slightly problematic are the Libyan lancers, who aren't necessarily at their best in the civic center. Carthage may have massively recruited Libyans into its armies, but the status of citizens for these troops was not systematic. In fact, Carthage mainly enlisted peasants from subjugated states. These peasants also worked in the fields of Carthaginian estates. Their status as peasants argues for integration into the civic center, but their status as foreign citizens argues for the opposite.

I find that it also lacks mention of Libyphoenicians. They made up an important part of the Carthaginian troops and were Phoenician citizens in the other North African colonies. Libyphoenicians were known for their cavalry. In this case they could be recruited in the civic center.

Edited February 22, 2025 by Genava55

[Dakara]

Hello,

Frustrating aspect: The feeling of being forced to play cavalry or mercenaries to stay competitive.
Gameplay experience: When playing randomly, getting Carthage can sometimes be frustrating, even though I recognize the civilization’s potential. For example, playing with archers is not very effective.

Current situation:

• Carthaginian House:
  • Maritime and land trade bonus (not very useful in many games)
  • Reduced mercenary training time: This bonus can already be very interesting, as 6 civilizations have access to mercenaries.
  • Naval town center
  • Interesting heroes and competitive bonuses

Improvement proposals:

• New team bonus:

  • Skirmisher cavalry +1 speed

• Personal bonus:

  • Traders: +50% HP
  • Decreasing temple costs: 300 → 250 → 200 stone
  • Removal of rare resource bonus (low impact)

Replacing the market with a "Phoenician Trading Post" (200 wood, 100 stone, 1 building limit):

This build have feature, pick one

• Option 1: Passively generates gold.
• Option 2: Applies a tax on all market trades by team players. Need determine the amount of balance good
• Option 3: Generates 1 metal per active merchant in the team every 60 seconds.

Skirmisher cavalry differentiation:

• Nerf attack speed: 2 sec
• Increased damage: 24
• -4 -meter range
  → Boost hit-and-run tactics

New unit: Liby-Phoenician Lancer

• +10% gathering speed but -20% HP

Various ideas:

• Similar to Immortals, champion units could transform into monks (monks champions), either mounted or unmounted./Temple champion unit transformation into monks/Mounted champions reduce damage taken by 5% in a small area around them (simulating a morale system)

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Just throwing one idea out there: free and instant stone mining tech upon phase up.

The civ is quite stone heavy, so this could be nice. Also it could help justify going for late game compositions and not being forced to make mercs to feel competitive.

[chrstgtr]

41 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Just throwing one idea out there: free and instant stone mining tech upon phase up.

The civ is quite stone heavy, so this could be nice. Also it could help justify going for late game compositions and not being forced to make mercs to feel competitive.

Sounds like it would be easy to forget about and wouldn’t drive gameplay. I would go bigger (eg, do it for metal and wood too but maybe that is too similar to Mace)

Edited March 13, 2025 by chrstgtr

[real_tabasco_sauce]

8 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

I would go bigger (eg, do it for metal and wood too but maybe that is too similar to Mace)

That would be wayyyy better than mace. You still have to pay for the mace techs.

[chrstgtr]

7 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

That would be wayyyy better than mace. You still have to pay for the mace techs.

Sure. Also balance concerns. Just saying that I don’t think an auto upgrade for stone is going to make any one phase any faster, which kind of defeats the purpose of the bonus. 

[LienRag]

On 21/02/2025 at 1:49 PM, Seleucids said:

• Numidian skirmisher cavalry run 10% faster than other civs, because they were known for speed and agility?

 

+1

[LienRag]

On 13/03/2025 at 3:12 PM, Emacz said:

 carths strenghs and weakness were due to their reliance on mercanaries.  Mercanaries had no loyalty to carth it self, so if they weren't geting paid or felt things were going horrible wrong in battle they would jsut desert.

Brett Devereaux (the acoup guy, aka the Orcs Logistics Guy) says that this idea comes from a bad translation from Polybius (I think ?) who meant that the carthaginians soldiers were paid instead of being citizens.

But that most of them were levies, not mercenaries.

[Seleucids]

I made a pull request to give the Numidian Skirmisher cav 10% walk speed bonus without changing anything else. This raises their walk speed from 16.2m/s to 17.8m/s, but no change to running speed or any other UnitMotion components.  I haven't seen much opposition to the idea here and testing the change, I found:

• - Increase in speed is good for hunting and scouting. 
• - If you are in an outnumbered jav cav vs jav cav fight, you can escape while loosing less, but still taking some damage.
• - You are still slower than spear cav but only slightly - your jav cav can still be chased down by spear cav but they take a bit longer to catch up to you - easier to flee from spear cav spammers. 
• - I knew you'd try to formation dance so I made no change to the run speed  

 

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7961

Edited May 22, 2025 by Seleucids