Differentiating Civilizations: Sparta

[Fabius]

50 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Assuming we make a version of the community mod for a27, I will request to merge a branch for @borg-'s sparta ideas. I left out the two kings idea because of regicide issues and also 1 hero seems like a good thing to hold constant across civs.

As for the champions, I think access to spartan hoplites in p1 is a must as this seems like part of the spartan identity. The current model implemented as a civ bonus is the following:

Champion hoplites may be trained in p1 from the syssition, cost double population and half resources.

This is a nice idea but my concerns are that they will become unhelpful later in the game by taking up lots of population, and that deviating from the 1 pop per soldier is introducing too great of an inconsistency. So, I thought of an alternative to the current model that would allow hoplites to be trained in p1, but retain their usefulness over time:

Champion hoplites may be trained in p1 from the syssition with a universal -25% discount of all resources and costing 1 pop. However, their train time compensates for this discount: +50% train time.

Note that a train time of 30 seconds means it will take almost a minute to train a batch of 2. Importantly, the +50% train time becomes less of an issue in the late game as the spartan player may build more syssitions. It may also be necessary then to add a limit to the number of syssitions available, perhaps 5.

why not instead add a bonus for phasing to second and third age that reduces the training time of Spartan Hoplites back to their normal time of 20s, or even make them train faster in third phase?

[Fabius]

1 minute ago, Fabius said:

why not instead add a bonus for phasing to second and third age that reduces the training time of Spartan Hoplites back to their normal time of 20s, or even make them train faster in third phase?

so phase 1 would be 30s 

Phase 2 could be 20s

Phase 3 could be 15s

[real_tabasco_sauce]

39 minutes ago, Fabius said:

Hoplites back to their normal time of 20s

I considered this, but I decided on the flat +50% train time because this would be a flat upgrade compared to normal champions. Too many strengths without tradeoffs will be OP. Remember that these units promote to olympic champions (even stronger unit) with xp from fighting, so allowing them to be cheaper and train faster in the late game would be OP for sure.

The nice thing is that if they prove to be weak, this civ bonus can be easily fine tuned between community mod releases.

Edited February 19, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[Fabius]

14 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I considered this, but I decided on the flat +50% train time because this would be a flat upgrade compared to normal champions. Too many strengths without tradeoffs will be OP. Remember that these units promote to olympic champions (even stronger unit) with xp from fighting, so allowing them to be cheaper and train faster in the late game would be OP for sure.

The nice thing is that if they prove to be weak, this civ bonus can be easily fine tuned between community mod releases.

Ah I see, well one can only test and see how things play out