Usac’s Civ Crafting Brainstorms Part 12 - Ghanese

Ghana fills out the Sahara, giving the Sonninke and also the Soso that the Malian campaign centers around clobbering a true home. Before that downfall, there was no economic gold and salt powerhouse the way Ghana was. An empire on salt, and an edge over their enemies with the arrival of camels, playing a game of money and a very meticulous caste system.

Ghanese

A Camel civ

  • Starts with/can train Camel Scout
  • Camel line 5% faster, 10% starting Feudal

As stated, camels were a big thing. Interaction with Moorish and Egyptians brought these creatures to their furthest reaches at the edge of the Sahel and in turn they turned their trade of gold into further wealth.

  • Salt Works replaces Mining Camp

Also Salt. So Salt = Stone and Gold so it (Salt) works.

  • Blacksmith/University 2.5x HP and research rate.

With inpouring wealth came the ability to trade for and learn many new technologies at rapid speed. That’s the logic we’re going for for this, let’s go with it!

Team Bonus: Minerals lasts 3% longer

mine it up. Salt has preservatives .

Missing Techs:

  • Barracks: Eagle Scout, Champion
  • Archery Range: Elephant Archer, Thumb Ring, Hand Cannoneer
  • Stable: Battle Elephant, Steppe Lancer, Paladin
  • Siege Workshop: Armored Elephant
  • Dock: Fast Fire Ship, Dry Dock
  • Blacksmith: /
  • Economy: Crop Rotation, Guilds
  • University: /
  • Monastery: Redemption, Heresy
  • Castle: Sappers

UU: Kuralemme - Frenzied glass cannon camel who rises back as a durable infantry tank when ‘killed’. The unmounted version can cause nearby allies to take 33% less from missiles.

Kuralemme (Camel) Stats Elite
Health 65 80
Attack 10 (+13 vs cavalry, +11 vs camels) 12 (+16 vs cavalry, +13 vs camel)
Range melee melee
Accuracy 100
RoF 2 2
LoS 6 6
Movespeed 1.45 1.45
Armor(Camel/UU) 0/1 0/1
Cost 65f/75g
Train Time 24 24
To Elite 900f/650g 60s
Kuralemme (Unmounted) Stats Elite
Health 60 75
Attack 11 (+4 vs eagles, +3 vs standard buildings) 14 (+5 vs Eagles, +4 vs standard building)
Range melee melee
Accuracy 100
RoF 2 2
LoS 6 6
Movespeed .8 .8
Armor(Infantry/UU) 3/1 5/2
To Elite 900f/650g 60s

The Kuralemme were a warrior class of the Soninke people who tended to be guardians, but there’s just something about riding a camel that can whip one into a craven frenzy!

Salt Works - 150w. A special Mining Camp. Gathers gold/stone at about 1/8th the speed of a mining villager from all mines within 6 range. Villagers can garrison inside for very fast healing. Multiple Salt Works can gather the same mines, no limitation beyond tile space within range of the rocky nodes.

Castle UT: Wangara Traders - Saltworks gather range and rate 2.5x. Garrisoned villagers generate gold/stone if they are at full HP. The gather speed of garrison vils is to be determined.

Cost: 300s/300g 45s

Imperial UT: Wagadu Elite - Knight, Archer/crossbow/arbalest train 100% faster

Cost: 500g/800f 75s

So how do you play this civ? Well you remember that for 50w extra, your ‘Mining Camp’ actually does some mining. So in a sense, if you have some wood to spare, your villagers can set up a Salt Works or two, and avoid mining for a little while and focus your villagers on wood/food. On maps like Gold Rush/Pit spamming the map with Salt Works can be profitable if you can keep them alive. If your villagers are gathering the mines, they can hop in the Salt Works for very fast healing.

And when the gold and stone starts to run out? Have villagers work the salt itself! Its like a baby Feitoria but it disrupts your Idle Villager hotkey zen.

The other eco bonus is a faster Camel Scout. But it swiftly becomes a military bonus. With good camels and full Halb, you can deny horses and with the Wagadou elite, you can swiftly get many fine horses of your own! And Arbs, even though they lack Thumb Ring. So your army is nice, but lacks bonuses to their might. But they should be able to make an impact!

Is it imbalanced? Not sure, will need lots of feedback for workshopping.

I don’t like how you’ve taken the Gurjara thing,

The HP bonus is basically irrelevant, and the speed bonuses are already TBs, albeit weaker.

This is just a really weak Aztec thing that applies to the team.

The second ability would be enough, don’t take the Konnik thing as well.

My concern. In my quest to help add as many civs as possible, some times similar bonuses will need to be reused. But if I failed enough to angry the community then much apologies, I only wanted to entertain and help create civs for the programmer types to use.

I could make it faster? Would that make you happy?

Is that truly broken? Similarities do exist. Maybe 10g/10s? That make you feel happy?

It’s kinda like an Inverse Konnik. You cant just see a good idea and use it only ONCE when I need to make sure I have ideas for decades to come!

In any case I cant give up! I must prove my worth

I think I wrote that in a way that makes it ambiguous. The TBs are weaker, your bonus is about twice as strong I think. My issue is kind of more that it’s the combo of two things.

It’s not broken. It’s almost useless. The fact that it’s both weak and a toned down actual civ bonus means I would recommend straight up replacing it.

Sure you can just use it once, it makes it more of a unique unit, having a unique ability. Besides, just use the aura affect, that’s new and unique.

I’m not sure that this is such a good mindset to have, it seems like something that could be quite stress inducing. Who are you trying to prove your worth to anyway?

Change log ahoy!

Team bonus is 3% longer mines.

The UU will be stronger but only one unit but I can’t give up on the idea of more units with resurrect powers. Question is which version fits better?

I don’t see this as a problem at all, if anything I think more civs should have the camel scout, especially Camel-dominant civs like Berbers, Saracens, and Hindustanis. It’s not a traditional UU at all (and Gurjaras already have 2 others) so I see it more as a Regional Unit that currently only happens to belong to 1 civ, like Eagle Scout/Warrior would be if they had only added 1 New World civ. And it’s even far less unique than those because it upgrades to a fully generic unit used by many civs. IIRC even the Eagle Warrior used to be framed as a “civ bonus” but is now just accepted as part of the tech tree for those civs, and I think the same could happen with camel scout.

Way too weak to be impactful, even for a team bonus. At least 5%, and I don’t even think 10 would be nearly OP. Gold is already not really a constraint in TGs, so lasting 5-10% longer isn’t super strong, and the current 3% only gives 95 extra stone per player for the standard 9 piles, so not even a free tower’s worth after you’ve mined 3K+ stone.

Now this I agree, is not needed. I think some people try to “unique-max” too much by trying to make sure that a mechanic is only ever used by 1 civ, which I don’t agree with generally, because not every UU/civ/UT needs to employ a totally novel mechanic. But I don’t think “Camel version of konnik” is sufficiently differentiated to justify reusing this mechanic here, even if the unit has other twists. TBH this is one of the few mechanics that I don’t think has a strong case for reuse overall. The best case I can make for it would be something like a weaker Hussite-Wagon esque unit that spawns a hand cannoneer when it dies, since that would at least have a very different role than the Konnik.

I actually think the Salt Works is a pretty interesting idea, although I don’t like that afterwards it can generate gold/stone despite costing neither.

Technically to unlock the trickle you pay a stone and gold for the tech and stone for the castle. Then you have1 pop slot less than relic villagers to generate it and they need to be at full HP to count.

Sure, but the tech costs little more than 1 Feitoria, and then there’s no limit on how many of these things you can spam as long as you have villagers to man them. It also benefits from being more specific than the Feitoria in terms of scarce resources, and you have the flexibility to task your villagers elsewhere at any time. So I don’t have a problem with another building that generates res, but after the UT this just seems better than Feitoria in every way.

I don’t know what this means. I think you’re referring to the pop slot being used by villagers but them generating less than a relic? Even so that doesn’t stop this from being significantly better than a Feitoria unless the specific gold/stone gen rate is significantly lower.

Should be a non-issue given that it heals them very quickly, no?

I can see your point. A few alternatives: generate stone only, increase cost of UT or maybe unlocks garrison relics in Saltwork to generate stone at relic rate so there’s a real trade off.

Keep in mind if this was a gather rate bonus ONLY it would fall off a cliff hard if there are no minerals left on the map. And how can you feel good about a UT when it has no purpose at one point. Unlike wood which is abundant or farms which are often the only option.

Its listed as uu for them so why make it a generic unit? Also what is stopping anyone from making the imperial camel a standard unit then?

Eagles were never a uu just a replacement for civis without cavalry.i wont be surprised if a none meso civi gets them down the line.

Only none problematic units as I see are the units that can be trained by the allies becoming shared units.

The relic-to-stone idea I think is okay. I don’t think there’s a good way to fix it just by increasing the UT cost, as I think it’s a pretty fundamental design principle that gold/stone generating buildings should cost gold/stone and pop, and trying to get around that via UT cost either makes for a prohibitively expensive UT, or one that is underpriced for the utility of generating infinite gold/stone without spending any after the tech.
One other option would be to not have the Salt Works have any function after the stone/gold was gone, (okay since they’re just 50w more than a Mining Camp), but have the tech provide a trickle of stone and gold that’s not attached to anything else. TBH that’s probably my favored solution, but it’s your party.

I’m not particularly bothered by the idea of techs that become irrelevant in a 4 hour game. IMO techs that have a strong effect but don’t last all game are an underdeveloped theme. People will say stuff like “the community doesn’t like them!” but it’s hard to tell if that’s really true independent of the fact that the two main ones (First Crusade and Flemish Rev) are just badly designed.

I’ve already made the case for why I think having it as a semi-regional scout is viable, similar to how the Eagle line works. TBH the devs went all-in on making Gurjaras so Extra that even if other civs come to share the camel scout, they’ll still be possibly the most unique civ design in the game.

Them not being the devs, nothing more or less.

Honestly I don’t have a problem with this either, and I would hardly be the first one to ask for it to be given to another civ. Although I think it would be used in far fewer cases than a hypothetical camel scout, given how many civs already have strong camel bonuses. It could play out like the Winged Hussar, which isn’t a UU, just a regional upgrade of a generic unit line that’s only available to 2 civs. Even the game doesn’t really see Imp Camel as a UU (no bonus damage from Samurai), so apart from balance considerations I see no essential difference between this and the Winged Hussar. I think it also fits in with peoples’ general desire for increased visual/gameplay differentiation of civs via more regional units.

Yes, so while the eagle is more of a necessity, camel scout would still do a good job of representing the strengths of camel civs, and would provide for more early game variety.

I would be. Like if you’re thinking an African civ with no/bad cav orr something, it’s worth making an African variant that’s somewhat similar in function, but has it’s own unique look and attributes. TBH a copy-paste eagle for a non American civ would be terrible, and I would prefer they even make an Eagle variant for South American civs.

Its listed as a UU in the civilization selector right?

Not everything listed as an UU needs to stay as an UU. Take the Elephant Archer, when the Indian civs got split they were demoted from UU to Regional Unit, granted that’s because the civ itself was canned but it translated into more civs using them in a more accessible capacity that actually works in their favor. I feel like the Camel Scout being used for Camel-dominant civs would actually be very viable and would serve the same role as eagle scouts for the American civs. Plus, the bonuses Gurjaras have for their camels easily puts them apart from other potential users of the unit. You wouldn’t have much of an overlap with other civs beyond access to the unit and its strategies used. You could also use their automatic upgrade to camel rider as a civ bonus vs the other civs that could use it.

I mean, they technically did what you ask for with the Ghulam, what with it being a differently-decorated but still copied model from the eagle with different attributes, so your suggestion is already possible.

I don’t think the Eagle variant for SA is really necessary though. They technically Incanized the Eagle warrior in the last event with a mod, so you could just use that and headcanon it as a chasqui or something. Imo the eagle line works fine as-is for them, even if it is still kind of anachronistic. I just don’t see how you could develop a unit so similar to Eagles, have them serve the exact same role, and still have more than a very slight difference in stats from them personally.

1 Like

The basic idea for the Kuraleme is that it gets in close with its great mobility and bad durability as sort of a way to bring the otherwise slow and defensive infantry version in so it can do its job effectively.

This may use the same mechanic as the Konnik but the konnik would prefer to stay mounted while this boy would rather dismount and actually do its job. Granted after it does its stuck at .88 speed at most.

Im thinking extending the UT bonus to increase the train speed of maybe swordsmen as well despite how non Champion they are. Give em some Gambesons too.

I also think the team bonus could probably be upgraded to 10%.

I hope this works better. This is granted a fairly simple design as far as military makeup. But the idea is that this is a civ built to outlast with extra cash and avoid the trash wars where they actually do quite well.

I also like the concept of the saltworks as it promotes forward mining without wasting villagers beyond the initial construction time.

All it needs to do is function. Mechanic and uniqueness overload is a bad idea for a game that may hsve many years to go.

1 Like

Fair enough I suppose. The issue you run into then with this approach is readability though; too many similar-roled units that have different effects would be harder to judge on the fly.

But as with any approach, it’s gonna have its issues. I’m not against either personally.

Readability is why a slightly reskinned and renamed Eagle for Southern African civs would be fine to me.