The Swahilis are not meant to be good on land maps, since historically they were dependent on maritime trade. However, with their market bonus and wood savings I don’t think they’ll be too weak since this will allow them to have a great fast Castle timing, although not as fast as the Saracens. They also have a good monk play and have diverse military options.
Why not?
Fervor is needed for their relic control, especially on Arena. With sanctity, yes it might be too much. So I have chosen Theocracy for strong monk play from Castle to early Imp.
Yes probably too similar. Building them 3x faster is intentional for them to have a deadly timings with Monk rush and Trade Cart rush. I can probably change it to:
-Markets, Blacksmiths, Monasteries, and Universities -50% cost and built 3x faster
Wood trickle bonus is a good civ bonus suggestion, but historically they are good traders not gatherers because they even had to trade lumber from the inland Bantu peoples. This bonus could be used by other civs though.
Designwise I feel the civ feels too close to the Saracens. The naval and religious focus is already a thing there. I’d probably focus less on the religious spread, particularly since islam didn’t quite originate here anyways, and more about them being a bridge between the African interior and the Indian Ocean trade routes.
Having a UU that’s a hybrid between trade cogs and fishing ships is really neat, maybe that should be emphasized, an economic naval focus to contrast with the sarracen more military naval focus.
At any rate, I’d move away from Monastery/Market things and try to find something else to not make this civ just… the Sarracens again-sans camels.
Oh yeah, and spawning Relics outta nowhere probably would break the game mechanically as it’d mess with relic victory.
Eh theres a limit to how much overlap there can be and I believe your bonuses are just too close. My rules for civ design is that no bonus should be an straight up better version of another. Bonuses should be either broader and weaker or specifoc and stronger
Instwad of those two bonus I think they should have:
“Guilds and caravan free starting on feudal age” and “economic buildings support 10 population”. You can keep the monastery bonus but alm the others have to go
I disagree that the design of this civ is just another Saracens. The Saracens have a naval military bonus, the Swahilis don’t, and rely on discount and eco bonuses, so there is already that contrast you are looking for. In land maps, the Saracens are best played aggressively with deadly fast castle into archers/cav archers because of them dealing bonus damage to buildings; while the Swahilis is better into fast castle monk rush and relic control.
Also, I think you missed the part where Swahilis don’t get bloodlines and final cav armor, making cavalry, especially camels not viable (there is a historical reason for this, cavalry was barely used in East Africa because of tsetse flies). Without camels to effectively counter cavalry, they on the other hand, get Assegais and good Monks. In late game, Saracens would focus on cavalry and siege, while the Swahilis, mostly infantry and siege.
The only similarity they have is the Market civ bonuses, and still it is not the same bonus since it functions differently from the Saracen’s commodity trading fee of 5%. In practice, this means the Saracens can buy 100 food for 105 gold, and sell it for 95, whereas the Swahilis will still buy at 130 gold but get 120 in return, and sell back at 70g. Therefore, the buy and sell timings will be different. I also disagree dropping the Market bonuses of this civ because again, historically that is their identity, and it would be good to have another civ with a playstyle involving the Market, not just the Saracens.
That’s true, it could be solved by coding the spawned relics into a different unit class.
Yes in the game, the limit is not making it exactly the same, but essentially provide the same benefit but with nuanced differences. Example: Slavs: Farmers work 10% faster- Khmer: Farmers don’t need drop off points, Celts: Lumberjacks work 15% faster - Burmese: Free wood upgrades, etc. This is the same when you compare Swahili and Saracen market bonus, except for the Market wood discount. Therefore I would most likely apply your suggestion because it is a good idea:
Free guilds is making it more identical to Saracen market bonus, free guilds just means reducing the commodity trading fee to 15%. Free caravan might be too strong considering people only start to trade when gold is about to run out by late Imp and by then, your free trade cart + free caravan could give you a big gold advantage. Markets and monasteries supporting 10 pop instead of wood discount is a great idea because it is essentially a wood discount, and solves the similarity problem. Thanks for this and I am most likely using your suggestion to revise it
Heres the thing: Mali as a civ was so wealthy. Oh so wealthy. Mansa Musa alone had so much money it will take a long time for someone to compare when inflation is considered and yet… the civ only has one gold based bonus.
Now you’re trying to go gungho on monk and relic control and I get it! Problem is, what happens when the enemy has eagles? I guess swordsmen can work but in most situations you need either skirms to beat archer play or spears for cavalry since you wont have gold to mix too many mangonels or camels in alongside them.
Its a bit awkward which is fine I guess but most players wont like feeling forced to go monk play
I just think that it is by nature a hard bonus to balance, not that it is necessarily too powerful. It does not explicitly matter if your bonus is weaker or more powerful than the Saracen one so long as it fits your civilization’s design without harming the integrity of the Saracen design. It may matter when the bigger picture is taken into account.
Well. I guess it’s all too easy to criticize. So let’s try and build an alternative design for the Swahili.
Naval and tower civilization
Civilization Bonuses:
Market techs free
Trade Carts can gather resources, ignoring drop-off points.
Towers shoot 20% faster. Heated Shot free.
Fishing Boats produce gold while fishing.
Team Bonus
Trade units generate 10% more stone in addition to gold.
Castle Unique Unit:
Mbeba Ngao: Ranged melee unit with high pierce armor. Good at countering siege and other ranged units.
Castle Unique Tech - Stone Towns: Houses gain +500 Hit Points and +2/+2 armor.
Imperial Unique Tech - Zanj Warriors: Doubles the bonus damage of Barrack & Archery Range units.
So the difficult part about researching this civ is that there’s little written about their military history. Even though they definitely waged wars and commited raids into the african interior.
What the chronicles say is that they did establish dominance by a system of creating defensive towers along the coast to protect their possessions, so economic and tower focus felt like a natural fit. Problem was that it’d kinda overlap with Zimbabwe if that ever gets made, but we’ll get to that when we get to that.
I don’t think they should be missing the Stable, although it’s debatable, On one hand, yeah, the lower half of Africa wasn’t really favorable to horses up to the late 19th century. On the other hand, the Swahili Coast extended all the way up to Somalia, and people there did have horses and, especially, camels. Something funny would be for this civ to also have Camel Scouts rather than horses. But maybe that should just be a Gurjara bonus.
Kilwa was a trading empire first and foremost, and rarely had to engage in war with peers, so it was extremely difficult to give a direction to their army, so they should have a rather open tech tree, maybe heavily coin focused like ottomans, without really pointing towards any direction in specific. The Zanj Warriors tech was mostly because I wanted a strong, expensive tech to invest into late game to cash in your economic advantage.
Would trade carts be worth the investment?
Probs not, but it’d be fun to see them go around in 1v1s.
This bonus is one I came up for the Khazars, but here it has the same problem as it did for mine: free Coinage and Banking would make slinging teammates too easy. I ended up modifying it to free Caravan and Guilds instead. Weaker, but the idea is still there.
Yes, and that one powerful gold bonus is enough to make them a top tier civ.
Monk and relic control is one of their strong suits as a civ, when facing eagles or scouts, then it is going to be a problem so yes, you adapt your strategy accordingly. This civ does not force you into monk play, since you also have a market bonus too and access to different military units. As a player, you play into your civ’s strengths; if you are playing an archer civ, then archers would be your primary strategy, but it’s not exactly “forcing” you into that strat alone. So if your enemy counters with skirms, then bring in some cav or mangos. So I’m not sure what you are trying to say.
Yes smush, trush, archer rush, are strategies that different civs can play. And Smush is a strategy that Swahilis can do well with their own set of bonuses, much like other monk civs. Where did I say that the Swahilis are breaking new ground with their smush?
And yes the Saracen market enables them to fast castle better than any civ. That video is old and with the new Saracens, the meta is going aggressive with cav archers or xbows since they can melt buildings and palisades now with their buffed team bonus. They are more like an aggressive archer civ early now, and camel-siege civ in late game.
It’s good you acknowledged that designing a civ is tricky, since you have to consider a lot of factors. So I am going to comment on your version.
Free Market techs won’t give an early eco boost. Free Caravan is only useful if you have trade carts and it only good to start investing them by Imp when gold is about to run out. Free Coinage/Banking encourages lame sling strats, that is why in tournaments slinging is only allowed in Imp Age. Free guilds is only useable in Castle Age and the -15% commodity fee it gives is more similar to the Saracen bonus.
Using trade carts as drop off points is also not an early eco boost. You have to invest 150 resources buying a piece, and payout is saving on wood later on by not having to construct camps or mills when the walking gets too far.
Free Heated shot works well for protecting your fishing eco. Towers attacking 20% faster looks quite too strong for trushes, and can be scrapped by the devs since that happened to the Incas.
Your version limits it to only fishing ships, mine includes fishermen. So you are taking out Morass and Sacred Springs out of the Swahili strong map pool.
This one is a Kongolose unit. The club throwing Rungu Warrior is more unique and appealing.
This one I believe is intended to function like walls? It’s a defense tech which I believe is not quite impactful.
This one is strong and unique, but since it is a military buff, doesn’t fit too well thematically to Swahili’s identity.
This is similar to Bengali team bonus right? If that is the case, it would be broken to have your team generate stone infinitely.
So for my final thoughts for your Swahili version, it lacks a good Feudal or early Castle eco bonus, so it will be worse on 1v1 land maps. The only one working in Feudal is the strong tower bonus, and by design it looks like it is the only good strat in the early game, making them more one-dimensional. Without a market bonus, or any early eco savings that will help you diversify your army options early, this civ is actually even more predictable.
My Swahili civ design has access to cavalry, although subpar because they lack bloodlines, and lmp upgrades. Historically, they were still able to trade in horses or camels from the nearby Somalis and ###### ### #### of their army were mercenaries from inland Bantus who were mostly infantry.
Yes, that is why I didn’t give them any military buffs. Also, the Portuguese easily conquered them, so giving them defensive bonuses also wouldn’t justify. Historically, it is really not in their cards to shine in 1v1s, that is why I designed them to be naval and trade/team play focused, with strategic options with monks and a good UU for raiding enemy eco.
No, it’s not even remotely Kongolese, lmao. Where did you even get that idea from? The unit is essencially the same as yours, except I gave it a name in the proper language rather than just weapon + carrier. I don’t even think Rungu were actually war things?
At the very least they seem to be more Maasai than actually Swahili.
This one I believe is intended to function like walls? It’s a defense tech which I believe is not quite impactful.
I mean, yeah. Have you never walled with houses? It’s not a huge impactful tech, but that’s kinda how Castle Age techs are.
This one is strong and unique, but since it is a military buff, doesn’t fit too well thematically to Swahili’s identity.
I explicitly mentioned I put it there so the Swahili would have something to close out the game with. Otherwise they wouldn’t really have much appeal militarily, beyond tower rush cheese, which is kinda the idea, but wouldn’t provide much variety.
The only one working in Feudal is the strong tower bonus, and by design it looks like it is the only good strat in the early game, making them more one-dimensional. Without a market bonus, or any early eco savings that will help you diversify your army options early, this civ is actually even more predictable.
Yeah it’s rather awkward that market techs aren’t really useful in 1v1. Fishermen earning coin is most definitely something needed. Beyond that, free market techs either don’t do anything or are busted, so there’s got to be something more interesting to do tradewise.
Yes, that is why I didn’t give them any military buffs. Also, the Portuguese easily conquered them, so giving them defensive bonuses also wouldn’t justify.
This is like saying the Byzantines shouldn’t have defensive bonuses because the Ottomans easily conquered them. Portuguese didn’t show up until the 16th century and basically abused the fact that they had ships with cannons. You’re pretty much ignoring centuries of them expanding their control over the coast through a network of defensive emplacements.
The thing is, the unit will still be used mainly for that charged attack. First do all the damage with the charge reducing enemy numbers and then will be pulled away if numbers still seem insufficient but take the fight otherwise. That’s why I said its still functionally going to be very similar to Coustillier with extra benefit of range on the charge attack.
I get that but its not good to have a design like that. We’ve seen from so many civs in the past how its incorrect to have a civ with zero land economy bonus just because it has something for water. Its important to balance between the two even for a naval civ.
You can have the build speed on Monasteries but cost being too low just makes them broken on Arena with the all-in monk potential. Other civs can’t match their monk numbers especially in the early stages. If you want them to win relic war, you can do that through a different bonus instead of trying to make monasteries cheap like this.
And -100 wood or -50% is almost a negligible change. Its like 12 extra wood I suppose not that much of an adjustment. You can have either on blacksmith, market. But monasteries should be full price for balance.
I play Civ and it is a unique unit of the Kongolese. Funny enough, when I googled the meaning, it is actually Swahili for “shield-bearer?” Ugh annoying how historical inaccuracies of some “history games” is misleading haha sorry. The rungu was used as a weapon, and other forms of clubs, and throwing clubs are used by other East African Bantu civilizations. The Swahili will represent the other inland Bantu peoples of present-day Kenya and Tanzania, much like how the Malians civ also represent the Dahomean Amazons.
Not really, some civs have weak Castle Age UTs because they were already a well balanced civ even before Castle Age UTs were introduced.
I can probably change it to: