In lore, do ships sometimes get destroyed by their own cannons? How often do they explode? I'm glad this isn't a thing in gameplay.
Not very often. The water-borne platform of a ship can support large, overengineered cannons that can be properly reinforced.
Of course, it makes them slow, but hey, better than nothing.
What about cities? Do they defend themselves with stationary cannons? They wouldn't need to move very far from the smithery. No army can lug around giant cannons with them, but cities don't move, and if Polytopians can transport them onto ships, they can transport them a short distance away to the edges of the city.
So, we've established that the Ragoo cannons are pretty much a danger to everyone, even the crew.
Thats why, despite using gunpowder, they're just as effective as Catapults. They're large, clunky, hard to reposition, cumbersome, loud, and always at risk of exploding, and thus, aren't much better than a catapult.
City defenses don't really have them because they'd be too big for city walls, most likely, and there's too big of risk of collateral damage.
We don't want to add common gunpowder-based units, such as a cannon on land. The Ragoo get away with it because of the pirate theme and nothing else.
I get that! I prefer the medieval/ancient world theme, too. I don't want to see guns in this game (unless a second version set in the modern world is made). It's just that gunpowder cannons on the ships always seemed anachronistic.
That explanation makes enough sense for me. I still wonder why they can't make them smaller, but I'll just accept the primitive technology explanation. After all, the first computers were giant, the size of a room, before people figured out how to miniaturize them. A cannon isn't a computer (their size was developed in reverse order, and the first were much smaller), but I'll still go with it because Polytopia isn't the real world.
Yeah, in the world of Polytopia, cannons wouldn't have enough power unless there was a lot of gunpowder, but more powder means more reinforcement is needed, so they needed to be bigger/over-engineered.
But now they're too bulky for practical use on land, when a catapult would do the trick far simpler.
I'm glad to see some official explanation for this discrepancy, but it doesn't work because naval cannons weren't anything special. They were just cannons that happened to be moved onto ships. They weren't specially modified or designed for naval combat or ships; nothing prevented them from working the same on land. Bomber cannons are also very high-tech given their range of 3 squares.
The lore answer is:
The cannons on the boats are large, clunky, and a danger to pretty much everyone, and require a sea-based platform to move them in a way that makes them useful. So, they're too cumbersome and impractical on land right now, until Polytopians can work on the designs. They're very primitive, despite the firepower/range.
The dev answer is:
We don't want to add common gunpowder-based units, such as a cannon on land. The Ragoo get away with it because of the pirate theme and nothing else.
The cannons on the Bombers are still heavily primitive, and not able to be used on land.
The only Polytopians who have figured out cannons are the Ragoo Pirates (Kickoo skin), but even those are super primitive/unreliable
Right click Polytopia > Properties > Betas > use the code "polytopiabetatesters"
Spoken like a true Luxidoor
This game may be inspired by Civ, but it is not Civ. :)
Any chance for a buff, they could start with trade? I always thought this made sense because it goes along with their lore of being rich.
Right now, they are kind of poor due to lack of workshop, so the current setup doesn't quite fit them.
I can say that starting with any tech is off the table.
We're not opposed to buffing them somehow, but we'd like to stay away from giving them a tech or +4 stars
Interesting, so this specifically didn't play into the decision?
It makes a lot of sense that the fish people should be better on water than land, so I really like that y'all are going that direction. I've not encountered them in the beta yet to fully understand how they interact with the new navy.
The changes to Aquarion in this beta were because of 2 reasons:
To get them in line with the new mechanics and philosophy around naval
To "put them on track" as a water-focused tribe.
We're going to properly deep dive into them with a rework (just like the others), but this was a first step to get them "ready" for it.
Read moreI'm saying that if a game variant exists where winning is a forgone conclusion for a particular tribe/class/race in any game, there is a broken game mechanic that should be fixed or that variant should be removed. And that (pre-nerf) a competent (or at least similarly skilled) Aquarian player cannot be beaten on 1v1 massive drylands, and maybe Archipelago although I am less certain there. Midjiwan isn't going to remove massive drylands or archipelago, so changing Aquarian is the only other option. I would LOVE to hear u/Zoythrus comment on their logic for nerfing them, but I wager this is a big reason for it.
You have it a little backwards with them though. Aquarian is not very good on water world or continents. They are much, much better on drylands because of roads. They are also very good on archipelago because they can cross land and water, but waterworld/continents don't have the maze of shallow/deep water to screw with other tribes' nav...
Well, as we said in the blog post, "nerfing" isn't the right word for what we did to the Specials.
"Nerfing" implies that we made negative changes for the sake of balance. But, these changes were to get them in line with the update, not to explicitly "nerf them".
Also, we'd like Aquarion to be better on water than on land. I mean, they're fish people, so it makes sense. Any bonuses on Drylands or whatever is a fluke and not in line with our wants.
Why nerf what doesn’t need to be nerfed
Luxidoor was the best tribe for the longest time.
Much Bardur now, something had to be done.
A nerf was in order.
Navalon was one of my favorite units! 😢😢😢
Please don’t remove, just give capabilities to starfish 🙏
We plan to rework Elyrion, just like the other Specials. They'll get new stuff, don't worry, even if that stuff isn't a Navalon replacement
Part of the nerf that we gave them was to intentionally prevent them from starting with an income of +4
I agree
We do plan to release a skin for all tribes, even the Specials and Ai-Mo.
When? That remains to be seen.
Do you have the latest version?
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