The last DLC added a potentially very interesting card to Russia and Sweden, which, unfortunately, is extremely weak in its current state. For context, Sami Noaidi are the new Sami native Settler Wagons, which cost 150 resources and gather faster than Settlers, though not as fast as actual Settler Wagons, while also being able to heal units. The card in questions ships 4 of them, so 600 resources total, while costing 500 gold AND being available only in Age 3.
Just as a comparison point, and I know this is an entirely different faction and so on, the Maltese German Tongue card provides them with 2 Settler Wagons, a Commandery and the ability to train more for 425 wood in Age 1, which is extremely strong, of course, and definitely not what should be the goal in terms of the Sami card’s power level, but I think matching about half of its power should be appropriate.
This leads me to a couple of suggestions:
- Move the card to Age 2 and reduce its cost to 300g. The value it offers is too little to be competitive with other Age 3 cards, as even with the higher gather rates of the Noaidi, they are still equivalent to about 6 Settlers for 500g, which is not good at all, even for Age 2.
- Buff the Noaidi to be equal to Settler Wagons (while also increasing their cost) in terms of gather rate and make the card enable them to be trained from somewhere. This would increase the value of the card and make it act as a more permanent buff to your economy, in case you lose some of your Noaidi.
- Any combination of the changes above or whatever else you can think of. The card could also increase their limit from 5 to 10, or increase their gather rates, so as not to mess with the balance of the native itself, anything goes.
That aside, this is probably the closest Russia will ever get to having a settler shipment, so I’d love for it to actually be usable. Happy to hear your thoughts on this!
You do have to note that its a 1 pop unit so you are getting 7-8 vils for the pop space of 4 which is pretty high value and basically gives them potential for a 106-107 pop eco while only costing 103 overall pop.
If it was any stronger this card will probably be busted
Like i think its better to think of it as a CBD more then anything consider its 1 pop. They gather 44% faster then a CDB so its effectively a 6 CDB shipment that only cost 4 pop. which is very good.
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If the card was free I would agree with you, but why would you ever spend 500g on a shipment of 7 settlers/6 CDBs? With no way to retrain them, either. Your example also covers only the very late game, at which point it’s more worth it to send something like a farming shipment for +15% or Economic theory for what’s basically 10 extra villagers worth of gather rate (both of these are also free).
for comparison right aztec also have card that sends 10 vils for 500 gold and its still a pretty god card to play.
Its not going to be a tempo card to play where you play it as fast as possible but any greed situation you can send it
the timing here is key cause like you say if you are already finished your mill transition then gather rates card are better but any time in between that when you are say vil booming then you are trading gold which you cant use for vils for a higher value vill unit.
its also like you say going to civs that dont have vil cards so it bring extra boom value, espeically with swede who tends to have excess gold
The card you are talking about, Temple of Xolotl, ships 8 villagers AND increases their gather rate from Farms and Estates by 10% for 500g - that gather rate increase alone is worth almost 500 resources, so the 8 villagers are basically free. Also, the card can be made 50% cheaper through the Religious Unity card.
Which is basically my main point - I struggle to find a settler shipment with such a low return on investment as this one.
right but if you think about it when you are sending that Temple of Xolotl, you are almost never in a situation that you are actually gathering from farms and estates yet, it comes up later but is essentially a delayed effect that gets you 0 value in the short term.
if you are actually transitioning to farms already you almost never send this card for a particular reason in that you are most likely at the vil limit and cant send it.
you send it if you are in the middle of vil booming in order to help speed up getting to max vil and then after you drain the map you go to farms and get the secondary benefit
similar with the Sami, your short term benefit is the however much extra vils you are getting and the longer term benefit is the higher eco ceiling with highher pop efficiency
and as for religious unity you would also never send that card for that kind of booming build so i dont think it should count
up to you how much you value it but I do think that it has a clear value prop especially for the civs (swedes also have a lower vil cap so there is that)
The Sami Noaidi shipment is mostly for treaty matches and the developers know it, since they added it to the default treaty deck for the Danes.