[PATCH] Fix mauryan pillar of Ashoka

[Xav]

Bonjour,

Au passage merci et bravo pour ce jeu !

Lors de ma dernière partie avec le peuple Maurya j'ai tenté de construire un pilier (la bâtiment inutile) mais impossible, un message d'erreur annonce que la limite de 0 a été atteinte (j'imagine que c'est la fait que le nombre de piliers que l'on peut construire est marqué infini dans le descriptif du bâtiment), et rien ne se créé.

Pouvez-vous y jeter un œil ? J'ai du coup hâte de voir ce que c'est que ce bâtiment inutile en bon geek... :-)

Cordialement.

[Karamel]

Rough translation of the interesting part:

When trying to build a pillar of Ashoka there was an error saying that the limit of 0 was reached (while this limit is marked as infinite in the building description) and it cannot be built.

[elexis]

Thanks for the translation karamel.

• The pillar of Ashoka can only be placed while that hero exists.
• It is indeed a bug that the mauryan pillar is selectable from the structure panel, but not actually placable. It should not be selectable if you can't build it.
• The tooltip is also wrong, as it states that it is limited to infinity, while it should be zero. Fixing this also fixes the building selection.
• The tooltip says that it is a useless structure. Thus I added the attack bonus aura for all units in range (identical aura as the iberian pillar has).
• Also added to the tooltips that buildings connected to the territory will not decay.

[elexis]

We should check the history of ashoka.

As mentioned by leper it might not be historically accurate to add an attack bonus. Maybe more armor, healing, capturing?

[sushant verma]

In ashoka kingdom , the Silk Route was one of the most crucial routes for conducting trade and exchanging culture.Buddhism flourished in Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam via the Silk Road. The Silk Road was the gate exporting Buddhism into Chinese culture and helping it expand over Northeast Asian countries and Vietnam. Buddhism was one of the most essential reasons which contributed to the development of the Silk Road. Still silk and other trading products were transported to Europe and the road helped Islam's spread over Central Asia.

[elexis]

In 17577:

Fix mauryan pillar of ashoka GUI panel bug. Refs #3639.

It can only be built while ashoka is alive.
Previously the structure was selectable from the panel but not placable while he was absent.

[elexis]

Giving the pillar a trade bonus seems to be a nice way to both balance the game and be somewhat historically accurate. I asked an indian player from the lobby (hunt, who added comment:4) for advice and he seems to be fine with that.

Historical accuracy: As I'm new to the mauryan history, I might be wrong (and even mainstream sources are often wrong on historical things). Looking at wikipedia ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Ashoka it also seems to be coherent:

These pillars were placed in strategic sites near border cities and trade routes.

So the impression is that they built it near populated places to promote buddhism.

Gameplay balance: It would be a nice change. Currently mauryans are a quite strong civilization since they have all kinds of champions (sword infantry, warriors, archers and chariots) and other advantages.

Currently everyone builds the hero elephant, as only that one can produce the champion archers. By giving ashoka pillars a use, people would be incentivized to not create the hero elephant, presenting the player a real choice.

Here the proposed distance (75m):

A specific icon for speed increase would be good (the patch use the gather-bonus icon meanwhile). Also it might make sense to let pillars decay once the hero dies (so that the hero won't be deleted after building the pillars).

[elexis]

In 17799:

Give the mauryan pillar of ashoka a trade speed bonus, fixes #3639.