We are trying to get the Armageddon Counter tuned appropriatly. In 0.20 it was a fixed amount, in 0.21 it is a scale based on the amount of players in the game. Obviously the AC tends to rise more slowly in the big games most players play. My question is, is it to slow now? Still to fast? Or just right?

Please fill out the poll for any map sizes you typically play on.

I am playing on a huge map right now at normal speed, started with 16 players basium and hyborem have not entered the game in the year 250 and AC is at 3. before that played on a huge map with normal speed, started with 16 civs, hyborem enetred in year 267, basium in year 269. AC is at 20 in year 300. Last weekend on a huge map on normal speed in a hotseat game with 16 starting civs the AC is at 6 in the year 250 and again hyborem has not made his appearance. It definately seems to pick up steam once Hyborem enters the game, but he is coming in much later now and the AC crawls very slowly before he enters.

My first, only, and current game with the AC: huge map, 16 civs to start, and epic speed. And I think I'm closing in on turn 1000.

In my novice AC opinion, the counter is going just fine. However, if I wasn't playing the Clan, I think it might go up too slow (then again, I haven't even gotten to the point where Ashen Veil is discovered yet - I'm expecting it soon, though).

Just a quick comment: I'm a neurotic builder and terraformer, but I was quite pleased with the Blight affect at AC40. I had never experienced that before.

- Niilo

My experience is somewhat limited with this but here is what I found so far. (I am assuming the counter goes up to 100?) I am assuming that if I am a good civ I should feel threatened by it and have to do something to stop it.

I only play on small and standard maps and it seems like the the 'geddon counter rises too slowly,

the highest I've seen it was in a .20 game where I was playing as Hyborem and all evil civs excepts for Cassiel and Morgoth were in the game, at the end hell terrain covered 95% of the world and every city was ahsen veil but the counter was only at 47. (briefly at 52 before decreasing more).

It seems like it should be very hard to increase it very high when the AI has that wonder that gives the prophecy marks. You get one point for each city raised and each city with the veil. On a small map there are maybe only ~30-40 cities in the game, maybe it there should be more prophecy mark making wonders or buildings to get the AI making the counter more dangerous?

Although I voted that the counter seemed to slow on large, now it almost seems to fast. I'm playing the Shiem and it took 500 years to get the counter to 40. I am the Shiem however, and also have the prophecy of Roanok, so I am probably much better at raising the AC then the AI.

Some notes about it: Up until it hit 40 the AC seemed pointless. There was no satisfaction from raising cities and building the eulogies just to see the counter go from 15 to 35. However, as soon as the counter hit 40 it only took another 50 turns to get to 70. Right then the counter seemed very bad (for everybody else) it has now stalled again, but I'm not worried, the next war should tip it over 100.

Right now the raise of the counter doesn't seem foreboding enough, it happens, but it doesn't happen easily and it could be put down quickly enough if the AI knew what it was doing. Personally I think the counter should go up once every X turns when Hyborem enters the game. That would probably give it a more foreboding and inevitable feel.

Is there any way you could add little things to happen when the AC is between 0 and 40? maybe something like a volcano or two, possible have some angels and infernals appear next to each other and fight it out, nothing terribly bad, but enough to get the idea that the AC is for real.

Anyway, overall the mod is great and the AC is one of its best parts, keep up the good work :goodjob:

Yeah, effects that happen on the way to 40 would be really nice.

Although I voted that the counter seemed to slow on large, now it almost seems to fast. I'm playing the Shiem and it took 500 years to get the counter to 40. I am the Shiem however, and also have the prophecy of Roanok, so I am probably much better at raising the AC then the AI.

Some notes about it: Up until it hit 40 the AC seemed pointless. There was no satisfaction from raising cities and building the eulogies just to see the counter go from 15 to 35. However, as soon as the counter hit 40 it only took another 50 turns to get to 70. Right then the counter seemed very bad (for everybody else) it has now stalled again, but I'm not worried, the next war should tip it over 100.

Right now the raise of the counter doesn't seem foreboding enough, it happens, but it doesn't happen easily and it could be put down quickly enough if the AI knew what it was doing. Personally I think the counter should go up once every X turns when Hyborem enters the game. That would probably give it a more foreboding and inevitable feel.

Is there any way you could add little things to happen when the AC is between 0 and 40? maybe something like a volcano or two, possible have some angels and infernals appear next to each other and fight it out, nothing terribly bad, but enough to get the idea that the AC is for real.

Anyway, overall the mod is great and the AC is one of its best parts, keep up the good work :goodjob:

There are some numeric things that occur before 40, but its intended to be pretty quiet from a "armageddon" perspective until 40 is hit. Its not intended to be a linear progress but a exponencial effect.

ps. Are you 6283184's half-brother?

Throwing my two cents in -- without voting -- My experience with the AC is similar to those above -- I play pretty much only on Standard maps at Standard speed with 9 civs; and usually Hyborem enters the world sometime between 150 and 250 depending on the number of evil civs. Like I said - I didn't vote because my tech tree is much different, so when basium/Hyborem enter the world in my game may not be relevant.

With that being said - I find that the Arm Counters progression goes something like this:
0-1: very slow, which completely makes sense.
1-10: usually quicker than I would have expected. Probably because the counter doesn't move until either Prophecy or a city is raised, if prophecy then it just keeps going up, if city on fire - then probably a war which continues the escalation.
10-30ish: slows back down. I would expect it accelerate during this period - but I usually find that it doesn't. Maybe the Elohims are using the ritual? I can't think of any other dampening effect prior to the founding of AV.
30-40: quick, I expect that the AC is now causing AI's to go to war with each other, having the dual effect of additional cities on fire + less of a chance for the Elohim to use the ritual because they are likely in a fight.
40-60: Varies. Usuallly AV has been founded by this point, and lots of battles are taking place.. but if it is a "gang-up-on-me" day, then it is likely that I'm just sitting in my cities and having my land destroyed while I wait for the opportunity to get peace so I can go back to my building.
60-X: usually very quick, I've only actually seen the counter reach 100, one time, as very often I am either so far ahead of the AI's, or so far behind, that I just start a new game; or if it is close to completion - then I just finish the game (altar). Not to mention that my system usually crashes at this point because of the number of things it needs to load and my laptop isn't really cut out for this mod.. having only 128MB video RAM.

I accidently clicked the wrong button, and (forgot) until after I clicked the button that I had changed my vote for the small/standard category, so if you could lower the value of On normal maps (small, standard) it rises just right by one, then it'd correctly represent the votes I meant to give. Thanks.

ps. Are you 6283184's half-brother?
Actually, he's my double. :D

Personally I think the counter should go up once every X turns when Hyborem enters the game. That would probably give it a more foreboding and inevitable feel.

:agree:


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I play only on huge land maps, usually fantasy realm and I think the counter is about right, BUT...

Do you play on taking a look at how the counter moves with respect to game speed and if you select raging barbs/aggressive AI?

IMO Fire is unplayable on a large/huge map at Marathon and/or with the raging barb/aggressive ai option.

Right now I am playing at Epic with aggressive ai and having great games.:goodjob:

But, sure miss the loooong game with those lovable raging barbs!

I play mainly multiplayer games on quick speed due to time restrictions. If i'm not personally raising the counter I find it barely budges at all. Out of the 5-6 games i've played so far not a single AI has founded the veil, hyborem has never come through (unless I was veil) and if I was neutral or good or even just octopus overlords, the counter would never reach above 10 or so. ATM i'm playing a multiplayer game with 6 AI and one human. I'm Elohim and it's remained 0 for the entire game. The 4 evil civs on the map are either leaves or octopus overlords.

I play mainly multiplayer games on quick speed due to time restrictions. If i'm not personally raising the counter I find it barely budges at all. Out of the 5-6 games i've played so far not a single AI has founded the veil, hyborem has never come through (unless I was veil) and if I was neutral or good or even just octopus overlords, the counter would never reach above 10 or so. ATM i'm playing a multiplayer game with 6 AI and one human. I'm Elohim and it's remained 0 for the entire game. The 4 evil civs on the map are either leaves or octopus overlords.

I rarely if ever summon Hyborem, and as such the counter never goes up. The evil civs either
a. are afraid of Hyborem, rightly so, and/or
b. they realise they wont live anymore after every other civ ont he map gangs up on them because they converted to the Ashen Veil.

Perhaps the AV needs to be powered up a tad more?

10-30ish: slows back down. I would expect it accelerate during this period - but I usually find that it doesn't. Maybe the Elohims are using the ritual? I can't think of any other dampening effect prior to the founding of AV.The dampening effect is robably that by this point most cities are large enough for people to keep rather than to raze, and there are few areas for barbarians cities to pop up.

I've only had one long game on v.21; I founded the AV spread it to the other civ and summoned Infernals. Standard map, 7+1 civs (no Basium, which was strange). I think it rose a little slow considering there was a lengthy war (100 years or so) facilitated by my Patriarch.

I only play on Huge Maps and it crawls. I may as well be playing Light again , because the Armageddan Counter has become meaningless.

ok , i thougth i shoudl add my 2cp in since it seems none of those speaking up are avid ashen players. for me it seems the large the map the easier it is to end the world and i mean WAY easier. on a huge map you can easily get 3x the number of cities as a small map before your even contested. as a sign , i can often found the viel before turn 150 on a quick game and bust the counter wide open by turn 200 if i try.

can the armeggedon counter be used as decimals and displayed truncated? and if so can we use a simple multiply based on land size and number of opponents? the larger the land size would give multiplier smaller then 1 and the more opponents give multipliers greater then 1. say using the baseline small map as a centerpoint for this map.

In my last game (0.21b, huge map, 12 civs, prince level) I've got to year 500 with AC still at 19. And I was forced to research Ashen Veil myself, because no one else wished to do it.

On the counter to Daladinns point, on a tiny map it takes forever for AV to get the AC up. I had half of the map taken over and the AC was up to 15.

The dampening effect is robably that by this point most cities are large enough for people to keep rather than to raze, and there are few areas for barbarians cities to pop up.

:hmm: Maybe the AC should go up whenever population points are lost to a city capture, whether the city is razed or not?

can we use a simple multiply based on land size and number of opponents?This is in, hence Kael's question.

I think the Armageddon counter is currently a little slow, but if the AI warred amongst themselves a little more often it would go up faster. Hyborem/Basium/Ashen Veil are good features for increasing war declarations but normally all that happens is a little pillaging then an embaressed peace. The AI has no clue how to take cities.

I think this is something Blake and co. are working on currently.

But of course, theres not much point in upgrading the AI before the game is complete, right? It would be like doing the work twice as it would need adjusting again.

In my last game, v.21(b) the Armegeddon counter seemed to be rising within acceptable limits. This was with three evil (four counting the Hyb) and three neutral civs and no "good" civs at all. But, with all those evils, I would have thought it would rise faster. The fact that it seemed acceptable and even, in light of no goods, a little slow is probably more due to the AI than any fault with the counter system itself.

Some questions:

1) At what point in a normal game should the Armageddon counter be maxxed if there are no player/AI actions purposefully taken which act as triggers to counteract it? (ie: Normal growth of actions within the game by civs.)

2) What role does the AI play in current growth effects? ie: Is it "aware" of the AC and does it take it into account when considering actions?

3) How important is the AI in affecting changes in the AC counter?

On the counter to Daladinns point, on a tiny map it takes forever for AV to get the AC up. I had half of the map taken over and the AC was up to 15.

its not really a counter to my point, its agreeign to it , i am asking that it move faster on smaller maps and slower on larger maps

faster with more players , slower with fewer

I don't really see how the number of players really would affect the AC nearly as much as the size of the map. For all intents and purposes, I see the Ashen viel and raising cities being the big pull for AC. Sure elegy of shiem and the prophecy of ragnorok also add in as well as other things but the meat and potatoes are the first two (unless you orchestrate things differently). So a bigger map means more cities which means more to destroy and more to raze, more civs I guess increase the chance the AC goes up since its more likely the barbs will be in the game, and wars might be more common. In summary I think the AC should be based on map size alone.

heres the thing , you have to look at it as if a player is playing the shiam.

1 - larger maps allow for more cities per player
2 - more cities for shiam = more ashen veil cities
3 - mroe ashen veil cities = higher counter
4 - more AV cities = mroe cities with gates
5 - more cities with gates = more desire for higher counter
6 - more desire for higher counter = more effegy to shiam
7 - mroe cities (above) + more effegy to shiam = much higher counter

adding more players to a larger map reduces the number of cities any player can have to manipulate this.

The counter actually raises slower in many cases with no good civs. That is because when you raze a city with The Order in it the counter goes up by more then normal, and when you raise a veil city the counter goes down. So, if a bunch of "The Order" civs fought it out the AC would rise much faster then if a bunch of evil civs fought it out (in fact, when ashen veil civs fight, the AC goes down).

I think this could be cured by having the scale go up or down depending on who razes a city. If a good civ razes a city the counter would go up by less then if a evil civ razes a city.

i think it needs to raise a little faster so it feels like its going be incredibly hard to stop it. one time playing as the elohim the arm counter never ever got higher than 10

also i think there shoudl be more higher level armageddon effects so you dont have time to recover from one before the next one hits unless you strive to slow it down or stop it

For my games it's either been rising too slowly or "okay". It's never advanced too fast for my liking, so something to speed it up in some way would help.

I think all wars should be considered evil and cause some AC rise - what mechanism I don't know. Perhaps even capturing a city should add +1 to AC?

I'm playing with the Clan on Marathon with 17 opponents. Evil and neutral civs are much stronger momentally then the good ones because of me. :)
It's about year 600. The AV is not founded yet but some civs, especially the damn elves, are very forward in techs. And now im making the timer rise over 40 and im getting -11: you are destroying the world to every other civ. My orcs dont make any money at all now because everyone refuses to have open borders with me :( . Does this malus eventually disappear after some time? There are still 12 civs alive and its immortal difficulty, there is no way to win by domination when everyone hates me.

Seems you are a bit stuck...only way to clean it up is to go straight isn't it?

That just reinforces the need for an evil civ victory condition! :(

That just reinforces the need for an evil civ victory condition! :(

Evil victory condition: Kill them all and let their gods sort them out!

survey is a little misleading, as i find the single biggest factor in how fast it rises is which civ i play myself (playing vs the AI)

in terms of how fast the AI moves the meter alone, id say way too slowly, but its quite easy to spam it high urself using prophecy mark units.

reducing the effect of prophecy mark units but increasing the effects of razing cities/religious triggers would be a good way to help balance the human vs AI AC speeds.

I'd also like the overall speed it increases to go up. Even in a game with a relatively low counter, i think it should still reach around 30-40 (before anything major is triggered).

Actually an Evil Victory would be interesting, but what could it possibly be? Maybe to sacrifice enough lives to produce some monsterous creation?

reaching 100 AC is usually a win for any demonic/undead based civs, since the good civs are pushovers by then.

one thing that i think would make sense is to have the AC counter prevent a good civ victory, i.e. make it so that you can't win the Altar victory unless the AC is below some number, maybe 20.

reaching 100 AC is usually a win for any demonic/undead based civs, since the good civs are pushovers by then.

one thing that i think would make sense is to have the AC counter prevent a good civ victory, i.e. make it so that you can't win the Altar victory unless the AC is below some number, maybe 20.

How about 50 instead? It's a little too extreme to say that at 20+ Altar victory is impossible since Blight doesn't even occur yet and Svartalfar vs. Ljosalfar war hardly seems world changing in most games because they both actually have to be in the game. Also maybe the Bane Divine ritual that is available when the AC reaches 70 should downgrade or destroy every Altar in existence.

As for whether or not the AC is rising too quickly or slowly, I am not willing to answer that question until the AI researching AV is fixed and after I played a few games with that.

Oh, and I'd like to add that I noticed that when you start destroying the world, EVERYONE seems to hate you, even other civs who are destroying the world seem to hate you as much as the civs that are not destroying the world.

Oh, and I'd like to add that I noticed that when you start destroying the world, EVERYONE seems to hate you, even other civs who are destroying the world seem to hate you as much as the civs that are not destroying the world.

"You are want to destroy the world, so we can't"
Jelaousy is the strongest passion ;)

Maybe with a high enough AC evil civs should be able to build the Final altar. Evil civs (or at least The Sheaim) want The One to return, because with the world so corrupt it would destroy everything.

Do the Sheaim like you more based on how much you destroy the world? They should.

one thing that i think would make sense is to have the AC counter prevent a good civ victory, i.e. make it so that you can't win the Altar victory unless the AC is below some number, maybe 20.

I like that idea!:) I think it would add a new dimension to the altar victory other than GPP building and production building.

What if players can still finish the altar at higher levels, but would REALLY NOT WANT TO. Flavorwise, this would be causing The One to return to a far too corrupted creation, destroying it. This could be an evil victory condition, or a defeat condition for eveyone except maybe the Sheaim and/or Infernal.

Alternately, it could cause the AC to immediately reach 100%, causing whatever event happens then (I think I read that they added an event here since the last time I got it up that high. I know I've seen complaints about the game crashing at AC 100).

It might be an amususingly frustrating twist if the Elegy of the Sheaim were completed right before the final Altar, reversing its effects entirely.

i think that the elohim and sheiam need to build their rituals more often. ive almost never seen them build it. pretty much the way the armageddon counter goes is it goes whitchever way the player wants it to