Influence is far too scarce to allow all the features of African civs to be properly utilized. Having natives, mercenaries, artillery, and militias, all cost 100% influence means you have to choose between which one you want to the detriment of all the rest. If these types of units had their cost split between other resources, there would actually be enough influence to go around to make two or more of these unit types. These costs should be primarily split with wood and coin since there are no units in the main roster that cost wood and coin and that’s what you get from selling cows.
Natives
Native units should have ~20% of their influence cost changed to wood. This would allow you to stretch your influence far enough to actually make use of natives on the map instead of just ignoring them because you can’t afford them.
Militias
Levied Bowmen should cost 50% coin and Levied Spearman should cost 50% food. They’re currently too expensive to use in an emergency.
Artillery
Cannons should be trained/shipped in the manner of the Italian Basilica and available by default. This would eliminate the expensive upfront tech but have the drawback of taking up bandwidth in the shipment queue. Cost should still be 500 influence, and the batch size should be limited to one. A European Advisors upgrade would enable normal batch training and change 20% or their cost to wood or coin.
Mercenaries
In general, mercenaries should retain a 100% influence cost, but specific mercenaries enabled by age ups and cards could have their cost split with coin. For example, Zouaves and Cannoneers could be given a ~20-25% coin cost through appropriate age ups. The Arab alliance or Zinder Kanuris card would still have their current effect.
Upgrades and Shipments
These should retain their pure influence costs.
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is not a bad idea to split the cost of influence, but training mechanics similar to Basilica is the worst idea i’ve ever read in the forums.
I feel honoured to have the worst idea in the forum. There are some real gems posted.
The Basilica style training would only be until the European Advisors tech is researched. Right now you can’t train anything until you research European Cannons so. It is purposefully bad, but still better than nothing at all like we have now.
i actually dont think you go far enough here. whether a unit is 100 influence or 80 influence isn’t really much difference at all. I think its intended to be the tradeoff for shadowtech nats but its really quite excessive and makes the units inaccessible in age 2. Since both African civs lack an entire unit class in age 2 initially, you can find yourself wishing for nats to fill the void. i wouldn’t mind seeing it about 1/3 wood and 2/3 influence.
these units to me represent one part of the african civs I find terribly overdesigned. they could have just had one kind of emergency unit for foos coin like everyone else and no one would have even thought twice. Not sure the best solution, your suggestion is reasonable but definitely not the only approach to fixing those units.
agreed except the bastion tech, like why on earth is it 1000 influence for this tech? it is terribly expensive and nearly impossible to obtain. Note: if this was changed the hausa card that instantly researches it will need a buff also.
so many times late game where I’ll look at my 30 cows and goats and think, i could make so many resources by selling these but i have no need for coin or wood, i want food… but if i eat them I’ll have to babysit my eco because the vills wont stop when I want them too otherwise.
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tbf many techs have been made cheap. european cannons are now very cheap. fast age up is cheaper than before. even the tc build limit is much cheaper than before.
if you want to mass artillery or nats in age3, you need to use the sell all cow for influence tech at market. most probably you will instantly get 2k -3k influence. and both african civs can mass influence fairly quickly.
only thing i would agree on is militia. right now they are too expensive to waste influence on.
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I’m fine with how influence is and the costs. It’s a fourth resource to manage sure.
Should I mention that most civs can only call minutemen once per town centre, them costing influence is a small price to pay in comparison
But we’re not paying for unit upgrades for artillery and natives so a split cost is not needed.
And I don’t think you fully appreciate nationalised units
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Fast age up and extra TCs are ones you generally need to research in age 2 so they need to be cheap enough to use as intended. European Cannons still makes your first cannon cost 650 resources which is a very bad design in my opinion. I’d much rather cannons be available by default in a limited way and then a more expensive tech to make them more easily accessible.
- That’s only potentially viable in 1v1 supremacy. A one off tech that sabotages your economy is not useable in any other mode.
- Doesn’t at all address the issue of using natives in age 2 which is when you have huge gaps in your standard roster and are incentivized to use them to plug those gaps.
i think this is to emulate the cost of an artillery foundry, since arguably the first euro cannon trained costs 250w extra
But Euros rarely actually build a foundry, they just ship the two falcs. Africans not only have to train them with a rare resource, but also have to pay a premium for the first one.
And this is only really a fair comparison if you’re playing Hausa and have a Palace anyways. For Ethiopia there’s not much benefit to building a Palace other than to get artillery.
The trade off is that they are terrible units. And none of that matters because you can’t afford them in the first place.
This is an equally awful design that’s only balanced by the fact that you can’t afford the units. In my opinion, they should not shadow tech. Natives should be upgraded by the general upgrades in the War Camp and Artillery should be upgraded by a tech that makes them accessable. That way you could actually afford them but they wouldn’t be so OP from free upgrades.
Actually, it is even easier in other game modes. In team games, you most probably won’t be the one to mass cannons anyway, but if you do, you should have enough eco to buy 5 more cows if needed. For treaty, that tech is necessary for your first push.
And this is just for an emergency tech, if you need units quick for age3 push. For more boomy style you can just get the fast influence tech at market. With 2 full markets+ 2 uni, you will have more influence than you can spend.
I don’t see any gap in age roster of both african civs tbh. Specially ethiopia, they are like india and have access to most unit types age 2. For Hausa, only musk type is missing by default, and you can get them by shipping gaananci. Which then won’t cost influence anyway.