Usac’s Civ Crafting Brainstorms Part 14 - Mossi

Im back again! Miss me?! MThe Mossi are an empire south of Songhai and east of Mali. See map. The Fuso and Mossi peoples define their cultural lineage different from the Songhai Gao or the Malians. Aggressive raiders, they were oin the hunt often… and they outlasted both of them as an empire.

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Mossi (1000-1896)

A Cavalry civ

  • Building any economic tab building grants 8f/g. Houses only 2.
  • Can train and starts with camel scout
  • All units 3% faster

While not the most historical of bonuses, this sort of shows their aggressive play. Turning economy into a source of gold which they save on technologies. You were expecting another Sahara salt and gold civ? Not so buster! The movespeed is to show how far their aggression could go and is also an eco bonus. Maybe it’s too many early bonuses but the camel scout is bad for aggression. As in it does 1 damage to a villager even after hitting Feudal.

Team Bonus: Heavy Cavalry* (not elephants) +2 dmg vs standard buildings.

Knights, Keshiks, Cataphracts, Leitis, Tarkan, Monaspa, Boyar, Ratha even in ranged form. TLDR any unit not elephant that isn’t covered by Gujara light cavalry!

This bonus is pretty straightforward I hope and not too good. Most civs, at least half the civs can put this to use in some way.

Missing Techs:

  • Barracks: Eagle Scout, Supplies, Gambesons
  • Archery Range: Elephant Archer, Arbalest
  • Stable: Steppe Lancer, Battle Elephant, Heavy Camel
  • Siege Workshop: Armored Elephant, Heavy Scorpion
  • Dock: Fast Fire Ship, Dry Dock, Elite Cannon Galley
  • Blacksmith: /
  • Economy: Stone Shaft Mining, Two Man Saw, Guilds
  • University: Keep, Heated Shot, Fortified Wall
  • Monastery: Sanctity, Theocracy, Redemption
  • Castle: /

Wait this desert civ with a UU camel is missing heavy camel?! WUT!

UU: Nakomsi - Camel Unit with a bonus damage damage for each armor type the unit or building has! Each swing also generates .5 food for every armor type the unit or building possesses. And for non-wall buildings, .3 wood instead per armor type.

For buildings this bonus is reduced

Nakomsi Stats Elite
Health 85 100
Attack 4 (+4 armor type) 5 (+6 per armor type)
Range melee
Accuracy 100
RoF 2.2 2.2
LoS 6 6
Movespeed 1.4 1.4
Armor(Camel/UU) 1/0 1/0
Cost 50f/70g
Train Time 19 19
To Elite 700f/750g 60s

Basically a plundering unit. Use to supplement farm woes. About the mechanic it doesn’t actually add bonus damage vs every single armor type in rudimentary non coder code talk it works like this:

IF Nakomse strikes unit, THEN count arnmor types. IF unit, then add x damage to target and .5 food per armor type. IF buillding type except walls, then add x damage to target and .3 wood per armor type.

Confused?! Hope not. But this ignores bonus damage armor so a Cataphract wont reduce the damage vs its cavalry armor and will therefore take 12 bonus (16) damage due to its two armor types.

Counter with Halbs despite them having 2 armor types or and unit with only 1 armor type: knights, swords, archer, and other camels.

They are also great anti-building but compared to Tarkans just have more pierce defenses more HP and melt castles.

To quote wiki which was good enough research for official civs:

When horsemen invaded from the south they created a political or ruling class, called Nakomse (sing. Nakoambga), and a spiritual class called Tengabisi. Speaking of Tengabisi

The answer to why both of these effect camels is because Mameluks throw scimitars.

Castle UT: Tengabisi - Camels 90% less gold, half of which becomes food cost and do slightly more bonus damage.

The price change is -54 gold, +27 food ending cost of 82f/6g.

Cost: 500f/300g 45s

So now you get why you don’t get Heavy camel. Whether this is worth taking is… its hard to say. They’re moving at neat Cuman speed but…

Imperial UT: Volta Raids - Scout Line, Rams train 100% faster and all techs that effect them are half cost/research time
Cost: 500g/250f 75s

Basically raiding from the Volta River area was common as it was one of the ,m,ost northern areas bordering Songhai, so make rams and flood in with Hussars!

Techs affected are: Blacksmith attack and horse armor, conversion based techs at monastery, Conscription, Husbandry, Bloodlines, Siege Engineers, the direct upgrades for both unit lines! Doesnt sound like a lot and I almost want this to be a Castle Age tech so you can get more techages abuse.

Strategy: Well this civ starts aggressive, stays aggressive and kinda has a spear shaped weakness that never goes away! Yea sure you can go Skirmisher but that’s a whole line of techs you gotta go out of your way for.

If numbers too good I can rework but… scouts are your play. You can drush well with the free food/gold you get from town building, and the very minor speed boost.

In feudal the speed boost is only 3%. It helps but if it wins the game for you then I gotta say… Scouts can still catch your non-scouts.

You pivot hard into Knights in Age 3 and keep hard aggression as they break buildings with the Team Bonus. It doesn’t sound like much but if you get a bunch of knights on that TC… well if you do they’re gonna lose anyway. You may want to go for Camels but no Heavy rider sucks since the game tries to encourage with access to the scout.

In Imp Age you probably use Paladins backed by siege. You can use full cav archer which I might change. Hussar and Ram flood can be scary and Nakomse can keep your armies fed!

Anyway I’m a tad rusty and apologize if I’m not doing this correctly. Remember numbers arent final

4 Likes

Some of the ideas on this civilization aren’t bad, but three core tenets are so overblown that I must disagree wholeheartedly with your words that they don’t sound too bad; the opposite, in fact: they’re so broken I feel like I’m reading the text form of a city that’s just been ripped in half by an earthquake.

Approved. It could be problematic since the gold bonus synergizes so well with the tech discount, but I’m not knowledgable enough to see that far ahead. The Wonder should give far more than just eight food & gold.

Approved. I don’t see a reason why Gurjaras should be the only civilization with Camel Scouts.

This wouldn’t be too offensive if it gets a slight nerf: I could be alone on this, but I don’t think Villagers should be affected. However, speed is a major stat in Age of Empires II, so I would restrict this bonus until Castle Age.

This needs to be dropped MASSIVELY in my eyes. This civilization has access to some very costly techs, including Paladin, Hussar, Halberdier, Siege Onager, Heresy, Faith, Spies & everything in the Blacksmith, in addition to every single unit moving faster than normal, means tech switching and diversifying your army is on a similar level to Chinese, if not even higher. In addition, the discount applying to Loom & Man-at-Arms potentially gives Mossi a high-tier M@A rush since you can add two extra Militia without needing to put Villagers on gold, combined with the resource bonus from economic structures alleviating the food issue somewhat.

This is a bit complex. Not only are Knights given extra damage versus buildings - which is fine if the bonus was simply this - but a whole bunch of specific UUs (plus a couple that have sadly been axed by the forums’ stupid censoring) and even possibly Camel Riders, which are already affected by the Hindustani Team Bonus? Like I said, I would limit it to just Knights and the bonus would be more than acceptable.

This whole thing is a can of worms.
It’s too gimmicky for my liking. It should have either the attack bonus (and most certainly not the bonus armour ignoring effect), or the Keshik-esque resource generation (and without giving extra res based on armour type amount), not both.

I’m also concerned that it sounds like a strictly better Samurai/Mamluk/Imperial Camel that utterly eviscerates not just Unique Units, but Cavalry Archers, Skirmishers, Spearmen, Eagles, Rams and all Elephants & Gunpowder; not to mention that despite their low base attack, they naturally have an attack bonus against everything except Villagers & Trade Carts. Nakomsi move really quickly, too, so they can actively choose what they want to fight.

vs Halberdiers

(please correct me if my math is wrong)
Assuming both civilizations are post-Imperial, and the opposition is using generic Halberdiers…
Halbs will kill Elite Nakomsi in five hits, while Elite Nakomsi kill Halbs in three.

With this, the quote about Halberdiers remaining as the suggested counter to Nakomsi does not hold much merit, since Nakomsi kill them two hits faster than Paladins. The attack bonus is nice on paper, but the numbers are too high for comfort, and really should not be placed on a unit that’s almost as fast as a Hussar; its only saving grace is that Elite Nakomsi are, effectively, less defensive Paladins against primary gold units.

That’s not all. When I was looking at the various armour classes everything has, I had a horrifying discovery:
Nakomsi will reduce buildings to rubble so fast that the Tarkan over there just burned himself alive out of shame & humiliation. Because every single building has two armour classes (Building & Standard Building, the latter of which is used for infantry, and the former for everything else), Nakomsi will always deal as much damage to buildings as it would versus Skirmishers, Cavalry Archers, Spearmen etc. The only reason I can see Mossi players making Rams is because they were able to research Volta Raids before they lost their Castle; two Nakomsi can whittle down buildings and make an easy escape when facing resistance. You can forget about those poor, poor Stone Walls, too. They have FOUR armour classes, so the high base armour and extra Building armour (because Nakomsi ignore bonus armour???) means fuck all; those innocent little fellas are DEAD. FYI, Castles have three armour classes, so not even the definitive defensive structure is safe from what’s essentially a far more versatile Tarkan.

This is interesting because of the deliberate lack of Heavy Camel Rider, but with such a massive gold drop and, again, the tech discount that may or may not be applied to the listed costs of the UTs (including, by extension, the cost of Elite Nakomsi), I reckon it would be better to amplify the gold drop by 100%, thus fully making Camel Riders trash.

I like this, but only for the third of the tech that affects Ram training time. The reduced training time applying to Scout Cavalry overlaps rather harshly with Cumans’ Steppe Husbandry, and if I’m interpreting this correctly, then the listed techs affected by the discount will not only cost -50% food or wood, but thanks to the civilization bonus, no gold whatsoever. This means you can get Heresy for free, and Faith would only cost 375 food. These two techs affect every unit in the game! Just by waiting 'til Imperial and by spending what sounds like a pittance in comparison, you can completely shut down enemy Monks and make tech switching to non-Scout cavalry & non-Ram siege so, so much easier.

2 Likes

Keep in mind the numbers arent super final. Also a few things:

You are correct about the gold discount probably being too much. Hence removing it seems okay to enable a generic movespeed boost.

As for the UU sure it kills the halberdier but… so do Paladins anyway but at what cost?

And it kills buildings effectively sure but again the Tarkan had more HP and more missile armor, a lot more missile armor. If the Nakomse kills castles effectively then so too do castles kill them way faster which thry also get a camel bonus vs.

As for counters, most civs have Cavalier, Championor Arbalest anyway.

I suppose I could reduce the bonus to 5/7 if that seems more fair and reduce their base attack by 1 or two for both stages and reduce rhe bonus by an additional one or two for buildings if that makes you no longer angry at me. This is hard to test because its hard to code to even test since its not a simple.

Again if you are mad at me its fine Ill get this job right one day and again Im so so so so sorry if I angered you with incorrectness.

So lets see if these numbers are more fair.

4 +5 per armor type on living units or +3 for buildings and 5 +6 for living units per armor type and +4 for buildings in addition they now cost 10 more gold.

It does seem unfair that certain UUs get a TB to boost their anti building while others dont.

Anyway nerfs all around to every stat and bonus. Even attackspeed is down!

2 Likes

This is good. More civs, new and old could use this.

This idea is kind of clever, yet not great IMO. In the same vein as something like “deals bonus damage equal to the cube root of the total resource cost of enemy units.” Clever, but not good or intuitive. Like the number of armor classes a unit has is fairly arbitrary, and to the extent that there is any kind of pattern or cohesion, it’s to make the unit counterable by a large number of units. So the UU’s schtick is along the lines of “counters units that [already] have many counters,” which I don’t think is a good gimmick. Plus as @FranksAreLame points out, apart from villagers, it’s a “bonus vs. everything” unit. Not to mention being overpowered vs. units with a lot of armor classes. Like War Wagons have archer, cav, UU, and cav archer armor, so elite will do 6(4) = 24 bonus damage against them. Also very unintuitive how much damage it will actually do in most cases since bonus damage/armor classes are not displayed and this thing will do from 2-4x its displayed damage against most units. It’s best if units don’t have that much “fine print” attached, and everything special this unit does is in a very long paragraph of fine print.

I also don’t like that it does this on top of a plunder mechanic (where that is the sole unique attribute of other UUs like the Keshik) that scales in the same way. I’d prefer to pick a lane between plunder unit (perhaps fast attacking so that it gets its plunders in quickly), or a reworked version of its bonus damage that’s more intuitive.

I don’t mind a tech that decreases the cost of other techs, but IMO it should be a castle UT at latest.

I definitely don’t think this is too strong. Speed is a key stat, but tiny amounts like this don’t move the needle very much. Anything lower than 2% faster per age I consider useless and I think even 3-5% faster per age is doable if they miss squires, husbandry, and dry dock. Applying only to military units is also a way to make a larger value more palatable.

The units are changed.

The gold discount is gone.

The UU is nerfed into the dirt on every stat!

I hope this civ isnt too weak now and the speed buff is a flat 3%

The tech discount passive bonus is gone

Nah. I know I was a bit harsh but I was only a little bit exasperated at some of the boni. No hatred was intended, so I’ll apologize if you assumed I was too rough on ya.

The stats are much more appealing, but I retain my concern that it combines the strengths of a lot of UUs into one whole beast.

Great change. Personally I would’ve been fine if the number was a simple tweak down to, like, 20% but outright removing it is the safer path.

You can make great civilizations, so I don’t wanna tell you to stop. Just keep practicing, ay?

It’s my thread so Im bringing it back and I bet you’re all excited to see me crafting again… right?

I do feel like the biggest issue in design culminates from the UU as it certainly has a unique set of counters and checks. The numbers can be tweaked but the idea of doing so with simple one armor type units or spears is just something unique for sure

This is totally not a bump to revive my civ crafting frenzy! And you’re all gonna engage I know you will!

The rest of the civ I feel works well in design concept

Eventually Ill bring others back but mark my word Ill earn my engagement and stripes yet!

Please don’t necro threads, make a new topic if you want to talk about it.

Fine Ill remake all these. When Im not at work mind you but mark my words, if you all still are crazy for my thoughts I… Am… BACK! Hype train?