ujtcelvn
commented
1 month ago There's also the issue of China. The Qing managed to bluff Russia out of occupying Xinjiang in 1881, tied with France on land in the Sino-French War (1884-85) and told Italy to fuck off when they demanded a treaty port in 1899. However, even with all the military reforms, unciv armies still vaporize on contact at that time! If we fit the real life to in-game events the Qing is supposed to westernize between 1901 (end of the Boxer Rebellion) and 1911 (Xinhai Revolution), so Qing armies should still be unciv at that time.
Xylephony
The changes for P&E 4.2 actually made me think of this. While I think all the tags that started with Order were bugged, there definitely were nations and tribes which had a reputation for being disproportionately martial, and some of that wasn't just European mythologizing but more-or-less well-earned. As things stand these tags are usually trivial to overpower and defeat, but realistically many of them, including Afghanistan and the Zulu, bloodied the noses of the Great Powers.
I think certain tags should start the game with one of two modifiers: Martial Tribe or Martial State, depending upon their level of centralization. Once they reach 50% civilization progress and pick their national focus they would lose this modifier, both to represent how their martial traditions are losing their edge as technological progress outpaces the capacity of what good morale and leadership can achieve and, in the case of tribes, to simulate that they are settling down and becoming sedentary, losing their capacity to rapidly mobilize a large percentage of their population.
Martial Tribe would represent nomadic or semi-nomadic groups which have a high manpower capacity (that is, a large portion of the tribe can be mobilized to fight at any given time) but, due to their tribal nature, are not particularly well-organized. I would recommend that their modifiers should be:
I realize that 10% mobilization size might seem unreasonably high, but just for comparison Prussia's is 11% between its Order NV and Service by Requirement draft reform and Russia's is 10.5%. Bearing that in mind, I don't think it's actually disproportionate. It is reasonable for a tribe to be able to gather together a large part of their people and deploy them for war, and this is also a backhanded nerf: while these tribes can now raise a much higher percentage of their population, they are also now at risk of losing a large part of their population base if they suffer catastrophic defeats, which is very historical for tribes like the Xhosa and Zulu
Martial State, inversely, is a relatively well-centralized polity which, either by virtue of its own martial traditions or through a combination of militarism and geography, has a significant advantage against opponents. This modifier would focus much more significantly on leadership and quality over quantity, although it, unlike other uncivs, would still have some mobilization capacity. I recommend the modifiers here be:
I am not an expert on every unciv at game start, so I am unfortunately not in a position to make good recommendations on everything. But I do have some suggestions, and other tags can be given the modifiers later if it's found that they warrant it.
For the tribal modifier: Circassia & Caucasian Imamate (historically extremely difficult to suppress, excellent fighters with good knowledge of the terrain, start in war with Russia); Xhosa, Zulu, & Gaza (all warrior-tribes, especially in the case of Zulu and Gaza); Ha'il & Nejd (Wahhabism and the lack of trade opportunities so far into the Arabian peninsula make these groups much more militant); Bitlis, Bohtan, Hakkari, Baban, Mukriyan & Ardalan (Kurdish tribes were highly autonomous, good fighters, punched above their weight for their small population size and necessitated military campaigns to put them down).
For the state modifier: Sokoto (large, hegemonic state which had just come off of a long period of massive conquests and founded on Jihadi principles); Afghanistan & the Sikh Empire (plus tags recommended in #29 if that's implemented; both the Sikhs and Afghans had tremendous benefits against opponents due to terrain and a long martial tradition); Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Jaipur, & Mewar (martial Rajput states - in their case not as deserved, but as this modifier is mostly related to elite troops and the British did use them in that capacity, I feel it's fitting).
There are many tags I'm not at all familiar with and thus don't know whether any martial tradition applies (primarily in West Africa, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia), but there are a few tags that I'm familiar with but am up in the air on: Futa Tooru, Futa Jallon and Massina as Jihadi states, and Khiva, Bukhara and Kokand and steppe nomads. I feel like the Jihadi states other than Sokoto should probably be given the Martial Tribe modifiers, but I'm entirely unsure about what to do with Bukhara, Khiva and Kokand. I'm not familiar enough with their early-modern history to know the extent to which martial traditions played a role in their affairs, while I'm also reluctant to strengthen them too much as Russia already typically fails to take one or more of them over in every game. At the same time, I'm tired of Persia annexing half of Khiva almost every game, but I am completely on the fence so if you decide to implement this suggestion, I'll leave what to do with them up to you.