AU mod: The Jaguar Warrior

[Theseus]

Yeah, I understand that, but by having a number of experienced players on the same course / map, we would more easily see how unbalanced a cost of 15g might be in reviewing the resulting contrasts. Make sense?

[Dominae]

If we compare 10 Shields to 15 Shields, we're not going to figure out anything we're not already aware of: one is 5 Shields better than the other. If we only look at the 15 Shields version, we'll have a better body of data to judge whether or not the 15 Shields version is playable or not.

Maybe I'm not getting what you're getting at...


Dominae

[nbarclay]

A civ with no UU at all would be "playable." When we decided to boost the power of the Conquistador, our criterion was not whether the Spanish are "playable" with the Conquistador as defined in the standard rules, but rather that the usefulness of the Conquistador as originally defined was very limited. The situations are not that far from parallel: both the Conquistador and the Jag under the standard C3C rules can be useful for certain types of special operations but are a horrible investement for use in conventional combat.

I'm going to post my 4000 BC autosave from my test game in another thread in case anyone wants to give it a go. The challenge: how much value can you get out of your Jags, and at what cost to your own REXing? I'll be interested to see whether, if several people try this, it works consistently well or whether some players end up having their attempt to use their Jags backfire.

[Dominae]

The Conquistador is barely playable in stock. Similarly for the Chasqui Scout. You're arguing that the 15-Shield Jag is in same boat as these two; alexman and I (among others) are arguing that it's not.

Edit: Let me elaborate. At 20 Shields, it's pretty clear (to me anyways) that the Chasqui Scout is no better than 2 Scouts. Actually, it's worse; the only thing it has going for it is that it can trigger your GA. For the Conquistador, you can get pretty creative with the 6 MPs, but most of the time it's just better to have an extra Knight. But this is not the right thread to discuss such things.

Like I said, comparing the 10-Shield variant to the 15-Shield one will only show us that 10 Shields is better. But we know that. What we want to figure out first is whether or not the 15-Shield version is playable or not.


Dominae

[alexman]

Time to vote. We have 48 hours:

Yes/No: Reduce cost of Jaguar Warrior to 10 shields.

My vote: No (big surprise).

We already have 3 'yes' votes cast before the official voting began (Theseus, Dominae, Stuie). Please vote again if you have changed your mind since the proposal was put under consideration.

[Dominae]

I've changed my mind (Fried is going to kill me if he reads that...).

No.

[lockstep]

Sort of a borderline case, therefore:

NO.

[ZargonX]

I haven't really been convinced:

No

[Theseus]

Yes.

Although Aeson's example was a stunning use of playing to a UU's strengths, the more basic strat of flooding the field with JW's during a GA should be available as well.

[alexman]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I'm playing a test game with 1.05 now, and have the Aztecs on my continent. We're around 1300BC, and I already had a war with them (I decided to warmonger in this game, well, it's Conquests after all). How comes I have seen plenty of Aztec warriors and Archers, but not a single Jaguar warrior yet? They've been the teeth of the Aztecs in Civ3 and PtW and it was a real challenge to attack them in the early game, because their capital was able to spit out 1-turn Jags. Why are they crippled like this in Conquests?

[alexman]

The reason is probably because they no longer replace the Warrior in the upgrade chain. I have seen the Aztecs build Jaguar Warriors as soon as they have already built a Warrior for garrison. That's a smart move IMO, because Warriors are cheaper. However, it's possible that the Aztecs stop building Jags after they have triggered their GA. Anyone else with experience in playing against the Aztecs?

[Harovan]

In my game, I (random, drew the Celts) have the Aztecs and the Americans on my continent. I had war with both, and can almost for sure say they haven't been at war with each other (unless they had one in the 3000BC's) and thus, the Aztecs didn't have their GA yet. What disturbed me most was, that they even used Warriors for exploraton, which doesn't make any sense.

[alexman]

Perhaps another debug game is in order to see what's going on. From what you say it sounds like a pretty good reason to put the Jaguar Warrior back into the Warrior upgrade chain...

[Harovan]

Update, ~900BC. Just finished the 2nd Aztec war. Killed ~6 Aztec warriors, 3 Aztec archers and ONE Jaguar Warrior, yet before he could trigger the Aztec GA. So you are right, it builds them. Not nearly enough to be of any significance, though.

[alexman]

I played a bit with the Aztecs and Incas in debug, and here's what happens.

They both build their UU (as well as Archers) when they need an offensive unit. When they need a defensive unit, they build Spearmen instead (or Warriors if they don't know Bronze, or if they need a unit immediately).

The problem is that at higher levels the AI starts with many offensive units already, so there is no hurry to build more. As a result, they can spend their entire expansion phase building nothing but Spearmen and Settlers.

When the expansion phase ends, both these civilizations start building their UU (intermixed with other offensive units), but then it's too late to make a difference.

In PTW the Aztecs started with a bunch of Jaguar Warriors, so that's why you saw them more often. They also built Jags for defense until they discovered Bronze Working.