I figured it doesn't have to be Kael that starts these threads.

Ok. I know this was done quite a while ago, but, by removing Act as City from Castles and Citadels the City Defense bonus of archers no longer works in them. This is a problem cause it makes Melee units even more the defenders of choice. I mean why go for archers/lonbows when my Iron or Mithril Champions does a good enough job?

I think we should just block naval units from entering tiles with a castle or citadel instead (this was the reason for removing act as a city, no?) and bring back Act as a City for at least citadels.

The various events that require the specific religions have been occuring but the religions haven't been founded yet. Could these events only fire when the religions are founded?

The various events that require the specific religions have been occuring but the religions haven't been founded yet. Could these events only fire when the religions are founded?

This should go in the bugs thread though, it seems to be more than a balance issue.

Well you can always choose the "ignore these signs" option...

How about making buildings which civilizations don't need to build for their units give a +X% faster training of that unit combat type?

Example: Kuriotates and Stables, they don't need the stable for many of their Centaur units.

To compensate these types of units could be more expensive without the required building.

I think we should just block naval units from entering tiles with a castle or citadel instead (this was the reason for removing act as a city, no?)

No.

It was because the AI was using forts to try to harvest raw mana.

I've captured a few Beasts of Agares in the in my past game (Keelyn, Balseraphs, FoL). I'm thinking that these units should abandon non-AV civs.

First impression of the Kuriotates changes: I'm really pleased with how things work at the moment.

I got off to a running start by putting my second city within reach of 8 or so floodplains and a couple of gold mines (on one of the continents/islands mixed maps, Large size). Was able to grow my capitol to size 10 pretty much without trying (I built 3 farms) and ran over Faeryl with hunters and centaurs for safety's sake. Even with 4 actual cities, if I'd left her alive or the AI knew how to play Sheaim, my next-nearest neighbor, I would have been in trouble. I suspect that the changes won't be overwhelmingly helpful in MP, though I wouldn't want to be Cardith's neighbor after his first Adaptive change.

The only AI that did terribly well for itself, so far as I could tell, was Varn, however. My founding Empyrean, FoL (adopted it), and OO may have had a lot to do with that, though. I never actually made contact with Valledia, and she had enough available land (judging from the revealed map) to do all right. Founded Esus, too, unless I'm mistaken.

I ran out an Altar win at around turn 275 on Quick, including a diversion to get Eurabatres since I've never had him before. When I try them again I'll see if Aggressive AI makes things less of a cakewalk, or just give myself neighbors that are Evil; the only non-absurd war other than my extermination of the Svartalfar was one between the Khazad and Varn near the end of the game.

I don't know how Faeryl did it, incidentally, but she had a level 8 or so scout fairly early on. Farming bears, maybe.

could be related to a previous reported issue of AI receiving not only a barbarian bonus, but an additional animal bonus which could result in +80% or more vs barb animals.

How often are the constellation events supposed to occur? In a normal/standard/double events OFF game, 5 constellation events had occurred by turn 30. Only one of them was for me. I see that they have 80 gamesactive value and 400 weight. For 6 players it makes sense that they'd be that frequent. Should they be?

No.

It was because the AI was using forts to try to harvest raw mana.
Wouldn't the solution then be to prevent the unit from building a fort over a mana node in the dll? I do wish forts could act as cities for defensive purposes of archers again.

How often are the constellation events supposed to occur? In a normal/standard/double events OFF game, 5 constellation events had occurred by turn 30. Only one of them was for me. I see that they have 80 gamesactive value and 400 weight. For 6 players it makes sense that they'd be that frequent. Should they be?

Even with Living World on they do seem to kind of choke the other events out a tad.

In our game const events ocurred alot. However AI Kurios seems be so insanely powerfull.

Anyone else thinks that khazad's battering rams are almost worthless?
They take too long to build, in which time you either could have moved trebuchets/cannons to the city or your stack in front of the city will be damaged and killed.

War Weariness seems really high. Defensive wars shouldn't cause that much unhappiness.

My first thoughts on these two.

Hyborem: He started out slow but was strong enough to stand his ground against a powerful Elohim empire. He never got to the point of being able to effectively attack them though.

Basium was hampered because he was summoned very late in the game, too late to be of any use. Was quickly dispatched by an army of angry AV dwarfs. Was a sad situation. He still turtled in his city.

My conclusion: The changes are good and they are a little more aggressive, but they need more troops. Especially Basium, his basic angles are just too weak against troops in the later game. Hyborem enters the game with enough room to expand having at least 3 cities on a large map. Basium was summoned when the entire map (except some areas to the south that had a few barbarian cities and the dragon guarding his horde) was full of cities. The taint had already spread to about 1/3rd of the map and the AC was at 80. I had already dispatched Ars. One of the other three was killed by them same angry Dwarves and the other two were making havoc on the elven kingdom. After seeing Basium spanked by them Dwarves and Hyborem fighting a standstill with the Elohim I went ahead and went for a domination victory as the Shiem... (one final note I had to spank Hyborem around some cause he took my only coastal city with his world spell)

Why isnt Basium Immortal like Hyborem are they not the same rank? Or is it because he left the service of Arawn* and lost that gift?


*(correct from Junil to keep this thread from being hijack by everyone correcting my oversite) :D

You are forgetting that Basium has a permanent Ally, Hyborem does not. Even if he is probably good friends with the Ashen Veil civs and especially the founder.

Yea I know that, but to summon him and he does nothing but turtle in his city? Thats not the point of him, he is supposed to go and wage war with ashen viel civs. He just gets his AI ally in trouble. A human player can always use him to much advantage, but his angles can not stand up to what they have to fight when he is summoned. Maybe if he was summoned MUCH earlier then he could gain a foot hold and build some better units (though I am not sure what if any he can build I have seen him build crusaders in .31 but thats it) other than basic angles that are almost impossible for the AI to upgrade.

maybe the angels should get weapons upgrades?

maybe the angels should get weapons upgrades?


I would have to agree I think this could be what they need... I will edit them myself and see if this works..... Thanks I hadnt though of that...

Why isnt Basium Immortal like Hyborem are they not the same rank? Or is it because he left the service of Junil and lost that gift?

Lore Nazi:

Yes they are the same rank, but Basium is the archangel of Arawn (IIRC) sabathiel is Junil's

All the archangels in the game are immortal, so i don't see why Basium isn't...

I've finished my first 0.32 game yesterday, and I won my first ever victory with Kuriotates :dance:. It's my second ever Altar Victory. Those changes does make them more playable.

Ok, so here the real issue, mainly I wanna comment on two issues. The first one is about enclave. My first impression is it's an improvement that take forever to be built. I waited eagerly for it to mature only to found that my first ever enclave came on around turns ~200. It was a little too long, so, I took the liberty to check out the FFH2-o-pedia and calculated the total amount of turns required to build them. Here what I found,

Cottage-->Hamlet = 10 turns
Hamlet-->Village = 20 turns
Village-->Town = 40 turns
Town-->Enclave = 60 turns
Total = 130 turns:eek:

130 turns? Isn't that a little too much? Normally, I play a standard size, standard speed map, and most of my games ended around turns 400~500. So, 130 turns is about a quarter of my game turns. This makes enclave a major weakness for the Kuriotates instead of enhancing them, since a few pillage will undone most of their hard work. Is there any we can tone it down? Or perhaps, we can make the growth to become doubled after a certain tech has been researched (Kuriotates only)?


The second thing that I wanna comment is Minister Koun. In my game, Minister Koun is an ally of the Lanun, and we all are members of Overcouncil. We voted to declare war on the Svartalfar and so, the Lanun use their worldspell. I noticed that the bubbles that shows the damages are unusually more than normal, and so I checked out the event log. The Lanun casted their worldspell twice!

I wondered if the AI has been improved that they know how to build the Birthright Regained ritual, and then cast their worldspell on the same turn. Well, they were not as no Ritual has been built at all (and not that they can anyway) . It is only then that I realized that Minister Koun are the same civ as their original civ, the Lanun. So, great, they are working as intended. But, no, it's not great, a double worldspell is definitely too strong. Can Minister Koun worldspell be replaced by a weaker version, or can it be disabled at all? A "twincast" worldspell is a little too much to take.


*They killed a few of my lvl 6 stonewarden waiting to be upgraded, destroyed more than a dozen of my enclaves/towns (so, they proved my theory above about enclave true, thank you:mad:), destroyed nearly half of my armies, and killed my Great Prophet. I was researching Omniscience then and going to build my lvl 6 Altar. Aaargh, it was so painful.:cry:*

Lore Nazi:

Yes they are the same rank, but Basium is the archangel of Arawn (IIRC) sabathiel is Junil's

All the archangels in the game are immortal, so i don't see why Basium isn't...



OOPS thanks for the correction I should know this :blush:

Ok I loaded a save game and allowed the angles to get weapons upgrades. They upgraded to Iron from the start made them an 8 str (4 base 2 holy 2 Iron). They survived the attack from the angry Dwarfs, but got locked in a standstill, much like Hyborem and the Elohim. I recon this is a good sign seeing that in any other game they may actually be strong enough to fight on the front lines.

(I didnt give them time to upgrade, but I would assume that the stronger angle units would still have the weapons, and making any natural builds weaker because they dont get the upgrades. Why would Basium start with Iron if he is the only one who can use it?)

.....:*

The Minister Koun cast his world spell with the Lunan because he is his own civ now just a perm ally with the Lunan. In my game he was a Bannor civ.


Was he Agnostic in your game?

Yep, he is Agnostic. But that does not stops him from casting the worldspell.

And I think his civ is follow whichever civ owner that "spawn" him (is spawn the correct word?). But, whatever civ he is, a double worldspell on the same turn is definitely too strong, except, maybe the Ljosalfar? No more trees for them:lol:

Yep, he is Agnostic. But that does not stops him from casting the worldspell.


Yea It was just an unrealated question....

He doesnt have the trait Agnostic, instead he is like Auric Ulvin with -100 weight on all religions.

He doesnt have the trait Agnostic, instead he is like Auric Ulvin with -100 weight on all religions.


Well what ever you call it he shows up as Philosophical, Agnostic when you click over his name... A rose by any other name still stinks...

Why isnt Basium Immortal like Hyborem are they not the same rank? Or is it because he left the service of Junil and lost that gift?

Basium never was a servant of Junil. He was the Archangel of Life, under Arawn. (While Arawn was the God of Both Life and Death, he Created Basium and his twin sister Gyra, the Archangel of Death.) Basium, like Cassiel, refuse to agree to the compact or to keep serving their gods, choosing instead to fall; they, like Sphener, chose to become mortal in order to not be bound by the Compact. If you read Basium's entry, you'll see it refers to his now mortal hands.

Hyborem did not fall (in the sense of willingly becoming mortal, not in the sense of being a corrupted form of Cernunnos), so he did not sacrifice his immortality. He is not acting on the orders of his god Agares and so not under his divine protection, but Agares did agree to secretly support his venture into creation.



Minister Koun is agnostic. Also, he doesn't seem to be in a permanent alliance (or any other sort of diplomatic agreement) with the civ from which he broke away.

Basium never was a servant of Junil. He was the Archangel of Life, under Arawn. (While Arawn was the God of Both Life and Death, he Created Basium and his twin sister Gyra, the Archangel of Death.) Basium, like Cassiel, refuse to agree to the compact or to keep serving their gods, choosing instead to fall; they, like Sphener, chose to become mortal in order to not be bound by the Compact. If you read Basium's entry, you'll see it refers to his now mortal hands.



See other post please....

Kinda ironic though that the angle of life can die so easily =)

Ok, I was mistaken :P

Btw, I think each civ should have their own ministers or something else, to be used when making Colonies. The colonies should also get a nerfed palace with no manas.

Using colonies with real palaces is not excusable with making Tower of Mastery easier anymore since we got Metamagic.

On moderately related note, it's always bothered me as a lawyer that under the Mercurian pedia entry it says that "Basium broke the compact," but then goes on to say that "when the Compact was signed, he refused to give up direct battle with demons." If he wasn't a signatory to the compact, then it seems odd to say that he broke it. Perhaps Arawn broke the Compact by not reigning in his (her?) subordinate, or perhaps the term "the Compact" is a misnomer, and it was in fact intended as a law enacted by a (or multiple) governing body (/ies) intended to apply all subjects of the signatories, not just the signatories themselves. In this case Basium broke Arawn's law, which may have had an impact on Arawn's own adherence to the Compact he (she) signed (I'm guessing that the Compact is probably most analogous to a treaty between states).

This is a similar problem to the statement that, “Dick Cheney broke the Geneva convention.” Dick Cheney wasn’t a signatory of the Geneva Convention; the United States broke the Geneva, because Dick Cheney, acting as an agent of the United States violated the terms of the treat.

Hummm… the more I write, the more I get the impression that I’m the only person this bothers…

On moderately related note, it's always bothered me as a lawyer that under the Mercurian pedia entry it says that "Basium broke the compact," but then goes on to say that "when the Compact was signed, he refused to give up direct battle with demons." If he wasn't a signatory to the compact, then it seems odd to say that he broke it. Perhaps Arawn broke the Compact by not reigning in his (her?) subordinate, or perhaps the term "the Compact" is a misnomer, and it was in fact intended as a law enacted by a (or multiple) governing body (/ies) intended to apply all subjects of the signatories, not just the signatories themselves. In this case Basium broke Arawn's law, which may have had an impact on Arawn's own adherence to the Compact he (she) signed (I'm guessing that the Compact is probably most analogous to a treaty between states).

This is a similar problem to the statement that, “Dick Cheney broke the Geneva convention.” Dick Cheney wasn’t a signatory of the Geneva Convention; the United States broke the Geneva, because Dick Cheney, acting as an agent of the United States violated the terms of the treat.

Hummm… the more I write, the more I get the impression that I’m the only person this bothers…

my head hurts now... :crazyeye:

Cottage-->Hamlet = 10 turns
Hamlet-->Village = 20 turns
Village-->Town = 40 turns
Town-->Enclave = 60 turns
Total = 130 turns:eek:


In FFH, the cottage line improves twice as fast as in vanilla. For example, cottage->hamlet is listed as taking 10 turns, but it actually only takes 5. So total time required is 65 turns at normal speed, not 130.

In FFH, the cottage line improves twice as fast as in vanilla. For example, cottage->hamlet is listed as taking 10 turns, but it actually only takes 5. So total time required is 65 turns at normal speed, not 130.

Actually, I think the double cottage speed bug was fixed in a recent version. I thought I saw cottages now upgrading at the normal speed.

Nope, they still have doubled growth.

Judging by the fact that cottages used to grow at the normal rate if not being worked, and both that bug and the double worked growth rate were mentioned a lot, and only the former was fixed, I have to believe that the double worked growth rate isn't a bug. It's gotta be intentional to have lasted this long despite drawing all that attention.

Minister Koun is agnostic. Also, he doesn't seem to be in a permanent alliance (or any other sort of diplomatic agreement) with the civ from which he broke away.


I fear this will be a FAR too frequent mistake/debate. So I want to try and clear it up as soon as possible to get people to understand how he works.


There are 2 Ways to have Minister Koun enter the game. One of them is Sovereign City, and he will be Teamed with the Civ he breaks from. The other is City Split, and he will go off on his own.

In each case, the text which you recieve will be exactly the same, so you don't have any way of knowing which one you have actually triggered. There is a 20% Chance for each event to be in the game, thus it could be possible for BOTH to be in the game, but the event is blocked from triggering if Koun is already a player (even if he was already wiped out), so only whichever version triggers first will happen.

Oh. Thats good to know, I guess.

How about making a third apparently identical event that makes him your vassal?

Well, I've got a pretty big gripe here. While being attacked by barbarians around turn 100, when they actually attack, one of my cities was beset upon by a good dozen units. I start building additional warriors to defend it. (Had 2, but I could build another warrior per turn for the next few turns, so I'd likely be okay).

Next turn, I found FoL in the city, and also apparantly trigger the city split event, in that city. So either 6 turns of anarchy, which would kill the city since it couldn't defend against barbarians, or lose the holy city and hope the AI knows to defend against the barbarians.

I try it both ways via save loading, and the city is captured either way.

Even worse, I'm playing the Kuriotates. I've spent a lot of effort on this city.

So my big beef is with the Event. Just in general, this 'split' city event seems like it shouldn't occur until much later in the game. In general, It'd be killer to lose a city in the first 100 turns, and have it be taken over by a potentially rival AI. I only HAD two cities at this point, so I either lost half my empire, or lose a precious 6 turns of output of the city.

Just seems like an overly harsh thing to have happen.

I must say that I find most magics to be too good in FfH2, and has almost always been. But might be time to do something about that.

Most spells that damage all units in a stack, need to get an upper limit in how many units they damage (just like catapults can only damage 6 units). Spells that can be used by an infinite number of units, like Maelstrom or Tsunami needs to be toned down by a lot. So you need more units or more turns to turn the defenders into mushy goo just ready to be stomped on.

Many spells might need a max threshold in damage. No not what they have now, where they can do between 20-40% damage per cast, I mean like catapults where they can't damage below 25% of the units hp. (This might already be in I am not 100% sure)

How to handle summons I am not sure. The illusions not able to kill is good.

I'd honestly be in favor of totally removing stack busting spells for mass producable units like mages and mid-tier priests. I think they're okay as they are on units that require investment and nurturing to raise, and can only be built in limited quantities (Chalid, Hemah, Corlindale, normal archmages, high priests, dwarven druids, etc.) It helps that all of them except normal archmages have a racial or religious requirement.

Spells like that don't belong on units like Cultists and Ritualists (no restriction other than religion) or Mages (no restrictions other than 8 XP gain) though.

Fireball should stay in and keep its bombardment ability though. Being able to bombard with a spell is cool and useful, but not overly powerful like heavy damage to a stack or multiple stacks is. (In case I'm not clear, I think bombarding is all fireballs should be able to do.)

Summons are nowhere near comparable to anti-stack spells. They can only hit one person per turn. I think most of them are underpowered, with the exception of Death 2 (early and strong), Law/Chaos 3 (can be both permanent and summoned in multiple numbers per archamge) and Air 3 (spawns new summons by fighting.)

Actually I guess fireball is technically a summon, only with a useful secondary (collateral) instead of raw strength. Forget what I said about reducing it to just being able to bombard.

I actually like that the Mages are now much more useful as they were back in 0.30. Apart from Casting Fireballs they were just sitting around until they were eligible for the Archmage Upgrade. I agree with Grey Fox on one point though - there are some spells that are incredibly powerful that simply make some roads a best path. OO is very poweful because they open up High Priests with the Tsunami spell - and that spell simply grinds everything to cannonfodder in a coastal city (especially if you have 2 or more High Priests). Chalid's Pillar of Fire is equally good and useable on land cities too. So it's either balancing the spells better and giving such strong spells to every religion or toning them down. Toning them down certainly makes the game harder.

One idea about Hemah though - he used to be my favourite hero back in 0.30 because he came way earlier than any Archmage and yet had all their powerful spells. Now he's just plain useless in most cases (except you give him Law III and the ability to summon Hosts of the Einjehar). Hastur's Razor is a useless spell compared to Chalid's Pillar of Fire. I'd like to see an equipment on Hemah (if it can be coded that way):

Staff of Bizzare Dreams (+2 affinity for Mind Mana, can cast "Hallucination", targeted units lose the ability to defend for 1 turn, can target up to 8 units, can be resisted with 40% chance, if successful caster loses 1XP per hit unit)

Anyway balancing the spells more would be a good improvement.

Imhotep

I'd honestly be in favor of totally removing stack busting spells for mass producable units like mages and mid-tier priests. I think they're okay as they are on units that require investment and nurturing to raise, and can only be built in limited quantities (Chalid, Hemah, Corlindale, normal archmages, high priests, dwarven druids, etc.) It helps that all of them except normal archmages have a racial or religious requirement.

Spells like that don't belong on units like Cultists and Ritualists (no restriction other than religion) or Mages (no restrictions other than 8 XP gain) though.

Fireball should stay in and keep its bombardment ability though. Being able to bombard with a spell is cool and useful, but not overly powerful like heavy damage to a stack or multiple stacks is. (In case I'm not clear, I think bombarding is all fireballs should be able to do.)

Summons are nowhere near comparable to anti-stack spells. They can only hit one person per turn. I think most of them are underpowered, with the exception of Death 2 (early and strong), Law/Chaos 3 (can be both permanent and summoned in multiple numbers per archamge) and Air 3 (spawns new summons by fighting.)

Actually I guess fireball is technically a summon, only with a useful secondary (collateral) instead of raw strength. Forget what I said about reducing it to just being able to bombard.

I totally agree. I'd only add that Air II malstrom is probably the most overpowered example of this, with some metamagic and/or combat promotions it can devistate every enemy within two tiles while avoiding friendlies completely. I think it would be nice if this spell (and similar channneling 2 stack killing spells like ring of fire, etc) had a limit to the number of units it can damage similar to seige weapons.

I also don't have a problem with fireball, and maybe that could be a model for future spells. It can do some reasonable damage to a few units, but can't cause 20%+ damage to three stacks of thirty units. Perhaps Malstrom could summon a hand full of very weak little lightning bolts.

I do like that mages are "stack killing" units, but their effectiveness at this job needs to be better balanced between spheres, and better blanced in general (against say seige weapons).

Are Mobius Witches a touch overpowered now? Being able to get second- and higher-level spells so quickly - ages before mages are available - seems a bit generous.

Ages? Arent Planar Gates a bit expensive to build? And their summon rate is dependant on Armageddon Counter, so they will have low spawn rate at first. Though I have no practical experience.

Are Mobius Witches a touch overpowered now? Being able to get second- and higher-level spells so quickly - ages before mages are available - seems a bit generous.

Maybe. Also, they get both the promotions randomly given to them and the free promotions from the mana you own. Still, they sometimes get no free promotions but always start at level 4. I don't like that, as it encourages you to get just 2 combat promotions and upgrade them to Eaters of Dreams (hopefully having gotten enough mana to get more free sphere promotions in the process)

In my version, I don't make the witches start with any levels. Instead I make all planar ate units start with xp based on the AC. In preious versions it has been AC/4, rounded down, but in the next version I'll probably make it more random. I'm also thinking I'll add tech requirements for some planar gate units (Sorcery for mobius witches), and might make the witches unable to upgrade.

Mobius Witches are not overpowered. Mine usually pop out at level 4 with 14/17 exp and no promotions. So they're quite inferior to a normal mage but not completely useless since you can get them before sorcery.

new events feedback:

Constellation events are way too frequent. A free golden age from constellation, vs nothing if you have the wrong religion, is completely out of line with other random events power-wise and just makes the game more luck based for no good reason.

Also random negative events like the goblin waste dumping (which seems to be frequent too) need some alternative to make them feel less annoying, possibly give the option to attack the goblin tribe instead and spawn hostile goblins.

I would agree with the constellation events being too frequent. In my first game they were the only events that I saw, and i saw a lot of them. in my second game i lowered the iweight of all the constellation events from 400 to 200 and i still saw quite a few constellation events but a few other events did manage to sneak in (sob, goblin waste,truffles)

On the note of frequency...
It seems like there's way more than ever before, and I used to play with Living World. Worst yet, most of these events don't offer much for you to do. Constellations are the worst offenders, as they seem to happen near constantly and you rarely get a choice in what's going on.
Speaking of choices, there are too many choices occurring that no player could conceivably take advantage of early game. I don't know when people usually get stuff, but how many out there have the Ashen Veil or the Order by turn 100? Is there a way to add some turn number checks for certain events?

Just my 2 cents on that...

I'd honestly be in favor of totally removing stack busting spells for mass producable units like mages and mid-tier priests.
Agree.
Fireball should stay in and keep its bombardment ability though. Being able to bombard with a spell is cool and useful, but not overly powerful like heavy damage to a stack or multiple stacks is. (In case I'm not clear, I think bombarding is all fireballs should be able to do.)
Fireball can keep its 4str collateral. Who cares? Do you ever promote fireball instead of maelstrom?? Not me. Not unless I have a ton of mages and an extra node. Of course, if your initial proposal is made reality, then I agree... bombard only.
Summons are nowhere near comparable to anti-stack spells. They can only hit one person per turn. I think most of them are underpowered, with the exception of Death 2 (early and strong), Law/Chaos 3 (can be both permanent and summoned in multiple numbers per archamge) and Air 3 (spawns new summons by fighting.)
So I thought, till Netcortex hit me with twincast spellstaff grigori fire elemental (does collateral?) summoners. It's almost the same thing as mets.

In addition to death 2 (cause fear), Law 3/Chaos 3 (stays with kill). I would add, to the list of formidable tier 3 summons:

Shadow 3, HN invis move4 pillager.

Fire 3, collateral?

And note, Air 3, sentry2 (put one on a peak).
Actually I guess fireball is technically a summon, only with a useful secondary (collateral) instead of raw strength. Forget what I said about reducing it to just being able to bombard.
Instead of raw strength? It is a 4. Hardly weak for a tier 2 summon. Secondary function of collateral? That's the third function I think: 1) kill units 2) bombard 3) collateral

If area damage was removed from common tier2 casters (mage/priest), then I think bombard only is fine for fire, perhaps keeping it's 4str and ability to attack (but not collateral).

-----

Clan needs a special fire causing spell. Blaze takes about 10,000 turns before a fire starts and by that time wolf riders are long obsolete. If clan had a spell that could cause early/instant fires, they might be fun to play. Warrior replacement: tree hater: moves 2, casts super_blaze, 2str.

Are these collateral causing fire elementals a recent addition? Because I'm in a .30 SG, and the fire elementals in that are just generic hitters.

Are these collateral causing fire elementals a recent addition? Because I'm in a .30 SG, and the fire elementals in that are just generic hitters.

Pretty sure they did it in .31 too.

Pretty sure they did it in .31 too.

Fire elementals definately did collateral in .31, I used them often with the Chirp.

Boar Riders are the Luichirp & Khazad replacement for Horsemen, but they have the same Tech requirements as Horse Archers.

This was actually true before actually. Rarely use Boar riders, since they are only strength 5, and 'basically' replace horse archers. Why they say they replace horsemen I don't get.

I had assumed, possibly incorrectly, that the lack of horsemen was a purposeful weakness. You'll also notice that the Hornguards are weaker than the unit they replace as well.

As for the actual issue though, it does look like it needs an at least a cosmetic touch up.

Boar riders already have a weakness in that they require pigs, which always seem to be harder to find (I think on some maps they only exist on one continent, etc).

I partly disagree with removing the stack-buster spells completely.

Lowering the damage-cap to 25 % (or even as low as 20%?) for Maelstorm and 40% or 50% for Tsunami whould be sufficient i think (higher Tier busters could be allright with higher cap.). Still a tangiable benefit but not as devastating as it is now. (Tsunami a bit higher since its area of usage is limited and you can protect most of your units from it most of the time by moving them one tile. Exept Naval where its really fitting.) and whould encourage usage / combination of more different spheres as well. Like summons and stackbusters or buffs and stackbusters.
(though i whould rather see Tsunami in the mage branch and relocation of Mutation back to OO Priests. Whould fit better that way around imo and make the later Tiers of Water more useful.)

I completely agree on limit for the number of units effeted by collateral damage on fierball (and other unlimited sources of collateral? Should they exist.) though.

I enjoyed the constellations, but I agree they were hogging all the special events. Maybe tie them to a second counter, and have them change every five, maybe ten turns?

Secondly, in my game as Cardith Lorda blight bumped all my cities down by a third and kept them there for the rest of the game, greatly weakening my nation. There needs to be some more late game health boosting buildings, or a way to weaken the blight. Or maybe have blight only last for a limited number of turns, or weaken in strength over time.

Enclaves are nice, because by the time you get them and start growing again your city has most of the improvements to support the larger population.

Blight indeed does go away with time (and pestilence which can happen multiple times depending on counter uses the same mechanics albeit a bit lower in effect. So that may be what caused to make it happen "again"). One unhealth a turn and is tied to city-size (so bigger cities like a Kuoritates Metropolis = much bigger unhealth.)
So working as designed (and much better than the Version pre BtS. That one really sucked in a very unfun way.).

There is a way to prevent or delay blight though: Work to actively lower the armageddon counter (sanctifying ruins and finishing of evil civs.). Blight is meant to suck. (And Cardith is Good so you should try that flavorwise as well. That civ really has to lose alot by Armageddon. playwise and lorewise.)

The only real problem seems to be that blight can happen again if you lower the AC below 40 and it then goes above 40 again. Don't know if that has allready been fixed / is easiely fixable.

Is it intended that the Lightning Elementals spawned by Air Elementals are permanent? I ran a test with both .32a and .31e thinking that I had caused it myself in my MODCOMP, but every Lightning Elemental I spawned was without duration.

It would be pretty lame if they wernt permanent.

I think that they should not be permanent, but should start with all the promotions of the Air elemental that spawned it (at least the empower and mobility promotions, if not sentry and flying)

I think they should have air affinity (and maybe no base strength)

Duration from combat could also be nice.

Not sure exactly how much balancing this needs, but since constellations are the most common event so far, the Grigori are quite badly hit by this. They never get anything from them, as they are Neutral, and can't adopt a religion.

Is it intentional that Nox Noctis makes units so completely hidden that not even Hawks and other "Can see Invisible_Land" units can see anything outside of the cities?

EDIT: I played with it some more and it is even worse: Not even Revelation can reveal the units, nor can it even be cast when they are in range.

As an added bonus, I found that Revelation is not set to force the game to refresh the screen, so when you cast it to reveal an invisible unit you will be able to mouseover the tile and see the data on the unit, but their model will not show up on the screen until something else causes a refresh.

ok ,

i have not tried it yet , but does this mean we are back to having fire ball throwing invisible workers again?

Sounds fun. :D :p

Perhaps should rather give the Hidden promotion instead with a duration of a turn or until the beginning of next turn (if thats not the same) to all your units in your borders and reapply every of your turns?

Otherwise workers and other noncombats should be excluded perhaps?

I don't remember the discussion about this before it made it into the new version, but is the 90% damage limit on illusions supposed to mitigate Gibbon as well as Alazkan?

Gibbon's summons will be non-lethal, but that makes it easier for him to kill off enemies himself, for free xp.

It's very much a nerf for Alazkan, though I think a reasonable one.

Gibbon seems sorta like he got caught in the path of it though, since I didn't find him particularly unbalanced.

It's very much a nerf for Alazkan, though I think a reasonable one.

Gibbon seems sorta like he got caught in the path of it though, since I didn't find him particularly unbalanced.

He's able to summon before most other units, but once you get Archmages he loses some effectiveness. I suggest removing Illusionist from him.

Sorry if I'm repeating someone: I don't like Loki having the Mutate Spell. It takes away the fun of the Freaks, which is some of the game's best art and a yummy mechanic for the Balseraphs. Now I'm better off mutating an entire stack of swordsmen or warriors when I'm taking them to war. I liked the inherent risk of having Crazed freaks in my cities.

One other things, if it weren't for Inspiration I would suggest that Vampires have Mind magic rather than Death. The new Death II makes them even more powerful (needlessly). Charm and Domination, however, are very suitable for them.

Sure, gibbon can summon earlier, but you have to be CoE. It's a macro balance thing that works out nicely I'd say.

And while Loki can mutate, you generally have him off in other civ's causing trouble, not near your cities. I think the greatest strength of freaks is that you can build 'em, and then throw useless ones into the arena, until they are either not useless, or dead. Ones you like, you upgrade to swordsmen.

Is it intentional that Nox Noctis makes units so completely hidden that not even Hawks and other "Can see Invisible_Land" units can see anything outside of the cities?

Huh? You mean CoE shrine makes units invisible or something?

Edit: nvm, just read the in-game description.

Sorry if I'm repeating someone: I don't like Loki having the Mutate Spell. It takes away the fun of the Freaks, which is some of the game's best art and a yummy mechanic for the Balseraphs. Now I'm better off mutating an entire stack of swordsmen or warriors when I'm taking them to war. I liked the inherent risk of having Crazed freaks in my cities.


This is something that really bugs me too. The Freaks are totally cool, but there's never any reason you'd want to build them.
The other aspect of this (even without Loki's spell) is their high cost; 60 hammers is a lot for a unit that is rarely as good as a swordsman (especially when you factor in the cost of the Freak Show and the tech cost). It also means that it only costs 5 gold to upgrade to swordsmen, so there's never any reason to keep the unit itself (and its incredible art) around.
I've been playing with Mutate-less Loki and 30-hammer freaks and it works really nicely. Freaks are worthwhile as an early alternative to the bronze working path, without being overpowered; and the flipside to their cheap cost is a 65-gold cost to upgrade, which is a serious investment to reserve only for the very best. And you get heaps of cool mutant units around with cool art, and it just feels a lot more flavourful to me.

Loki having mutate is fine, remember he costs 180h which is a lot early game and I like the choice we have right now between whether to keep him at home to mutate/buff our own units, or to send him out to try and cause revolts in other civs' cities.

I agree that freaks should cost 30h though. I'd actually like to see their art stolen for the balseraph swordsman, call it a Mutant or something.

I'm sure the reason Freaks are so expensive is for post-Bronze Working, so you can't have 30h + 5g swordsmen with random promotions.

I personally don't like the mutate spell at all. There shouldn't be spells that have the same effect as their mana's passive effect. It takes away from the passive effect, and from Freaks. I still think that Chaos 2 should be summon Chaos Marauder. (In my version, I added this spell, and made the marauders start mutated. Summons also start enraged, and enraged is not removed by combat in my version.

And I still want a boost for Hemah as I posted on the previous page :)

In my version I'll probably give HEmah Barrage 1, and made the other barrage promotions available to arcane units (although they can't get the prereq), and also give him Divine so he can also cast OO (high) priest spells. (Actually, I split divine promotion up into divine 1 and 2, to avoid Amurite Archmage-High Priests, and am undecided as to whether I should give him only divine 1 or both).

Once I'm accustomed to event modding, I'll probably add some Hemah's Nightmare events.

I'll probably make Hastur's Razor a spell available to any unit with Mind III and the OO religion (both unit and religion). I'll add other religion specific non-divine spells too, at least one per religion.


I'm also removing Pillar of Fire from Chalid. He is strong enough with just Empyrean High Priest spells plus Law and Sun 1-3. Especially since I'm boosting the summons. Dragon's Breath Fire ability will work like Pillar of Fire in my version, and Pillar of Fire will probably be available to Seraphim, Brigit, Profanes, and/or Priors.


I'll probably make Gibbon Invisible. I may also change his name to Kael Colbane, and give him vampirism (The Kael character was an elven vampire. only the Calabim could actually use his vampirism now anyway, so its just for flavor)


I'm giving Sphener the Arma Justitiae equipment (the sword and shield of Junil that he used to kill the Svartalfar at the Twelve Pines), which provides Law affinity and a combat bonus versus the HN promotion (probably also versus the chaos, entropy, and death spell spheres after some one changes the schema to allow this). Sphenor will also have Law 1, and thus the ability to gain law 2 (Valor) and 3 (Einherjar). He can also fly

Mardero will have extension 1 (and maybe 2), Divine (1 and 2, allowing all AV high priest spells), fire1, entropy1, chaos1, cannibalism , and Flying. (Balors will also be able to cast ritualist spells, and will have both fire and entropy affinity)

Yvain will have Subdue Beasts, woodsman 1, 2, and 3 (if I add such a promotion), Forest Stealth (Ditto). I may let his bloom spell work over improvements, even if not an elven civ. He'll have all FoL high priests and druid spells. (Summon tiger will be replaced with a spell that summons a random animal)


Saverous will have Water Walking (no entering oceans, until Malevolent Designs) and maybe cannibalism.


Kithra will probably have subdue animal and Orc Slaying (I'm adding the anti-racial promotions back, but you can normally only get them through events)

All the mounted heroes will require horse/nightmare resources, so they can get the nightmare promotion.

Bambur (like most RoK units) will be able to carry a siege unit as cargo and to pass though peaks.


I probably won't boost Arthendain, but he will be able to heal like he is supposed to instead of having destroy undead (or maybe additionally). Like all archers, he will be able to attack from 1 tile away.

The Mithril Golem will have Mithril, Earth, and enchantment affinity, and 2 movement instead of 1. I'll probably replace the ability to summon earth elementals with the ability to cast earthquake.

Meshabber will have Fire and Entropy affinity, all Profane spells, and extension 1.

City States is STILL overpowered.
I almost never use any other.

Fend for themself have no real disadvantage and cost almost(?) nothing. I use it even with good civs. It sould require neutral/evil and basic care should not be so mutch more expensive.

Loki having mutate is fine, remember he costs 180h which is a lot early game and I like the choice we have right now between whether to keep him at home to mutate/buff our own units, or to send him out to try and cause revolts in other civs' cities.
Realistically, though, he can pretty easily do both. I'm not terribly opposed to giving him some alternate spell (though I do think he's by far the most powerful hero even without it), it's just that Mutate defeats the purpose of one of the cooler units in the game. There's no reason to build freaks instead of warriors or swordsmen if you can just mutate anyone you like right from the start, for the same price or cheaper.

I agree that freaks should cost 30h though. I'd actually like to see their art stolen for the balseraph swordsman, call it a Mutant or something.[/QUOTE]
But the Balseraph swordsmen already have such cool art as well!

I'm sure the reason Freaks are so expensive is for post-Bronze Working, so you can't have 30h + 5g swordsmen with random promotions.
Upgrade cost is done automatically, and it's something like (the difference in hammer costs between the units)+5. Anyway, the upgrade cost is 65 gold, much like upgrading a warrior, and that's a hefty sum of gold.

I think building requirements should be removed from the basic military lines. This would help the AI without having to give them a cheat of their own (the option to remove AI building requirements). The lines that would not have to have building requirements would the the Basic Archer/Slinger Lines, Axe-men/Sword-men Lines, and the basic Horsemen Lines. Other more advance units would require them to be built. Units such as Horse Archers, Champions, etc. Set up the building so that if they are built they can grant 2 additional XP. So if AI one builds an Archer with an Archery Range they would get an additional 2 xp over AI two that did not. This is also more in line with history. The Native Americans learned Archery from hunting and surviving not from an official sanctioned building. Many of the Gaelic tribes leaned from practice not some expensive training yard, though the lack of official tactics is one reason the romans defeated them (granted this is WAY over simplifying this). As technology advanced each was required to adapt to learn new strategies or be left in the dust bin of history. As such as more advanced weapons were brought against them, they had to organize and become a more effective fighting force... So building requirements for champions, long-bowmen etc would IMNSHO be logical in a game sense.

I wouldn't mind removing the building requirements from archers an maybe horsemen, but I'd leave them on axemen. The first unit in their line is the warrior (Yes, I know warriors can also upgrade to archers, and scouts to horsemen, but still. The Doviello need some advantage)

I still think all unit-enabling buildings should have other benefits too.

Edit: I think that I misread it the fist time, and agree with you more than I thought.

I wouldn't mind removing the building requirements from archers an maybe horsemen, but I'd leave them on axemen. The first unit in their line is the warrior (Yes, I know warriors can also upgrade to archers, and scouts to horsemen, but still. The Doviello need some advantage)

I still think all unit-enabling buildings should have other benefits too.


True I can agree with this(first unit in the line)...

Could Barbarian World option be changes so that the cities are a little more spread out (i.e., not all restricted to the same landmass)? It doesn't seem fair that one player can be stuck facing so many more barbarians than other player, or (on the flip side) for a single player to get an early game advantage by capturing these cities.




I also still think that the Free promotions from buildings (Horselord, Guardsman, Sinister, Dexterous, ect.) should really either (a.) be applied also upon upgrading a unit in the city (radius) to a unit of the appropriate unitcombat, or (b.) be applied on Move, but only to units of your civ/team. (The later could make permanent alliances more fun.)

Is there really any reason to keep giving promotions from buildings with <bApplyFreePromotionOnMove>1 to rival units that move though the city anyway? Adding this one if statement in the SDK and changing this one boolean for the buildings might be the easiest solution.

I wouldn't mind removing the building requirements from archers an maybe horsemen, but I'd leave them on axemen. The first unit in their line is the warrior (Yes, I know warriors can also upgrade to archers, and scouts to horsemen, but still. The Doviello need some advantage)

I still think all unit-enabling buildings should have other benefits too.

Edit: I think that I misread it the fist time, and agree with you more than I thought.


I think the doviello need some kind of extra advantages anyway.

Clan of embers and the Arcos(sp?) from fall further are much better, and those aren't exactly top level civs themselves.

Maybe if they got a bit of a boost to their melee units (say +1 str, or shock free).

They take a big penalty and don't really get much for it over other civs.

Well, I know I'm planning of giving their leaders a new Trait: Scavenger. The trait also grants the Scavenger promotion to melee units (I'm undecided about giving it to recon and mounted units too, but I might)


This will give units commerces/yields from units they kill. (Animals in general will provide a little food to nearby cities when killed, but more than usual for scavenger trait civs. The promotion will give gold, hammers, and maybe culture from defeating normal units as well)

In addition, the promotion will have a <PythonPostCombatWon> function that will give the unit the weapon promotion of the unit it defeated (if better than its current weapons)

(The second part will mean more when I give weapons promotions tech requirements. I might add building requirements too.)


This only works in conjunction with changes from xienwolf's xml modcomp and other changes I got Grey Fox to add to Broader Alignments.





Their palace will also grant free global xp.This is mostly to compensate for the fact that they can't build several buildings that I'm making grant free xp. I might limit this by unitcombat, when xienwolf gives me the ability

Any chance of moving the modmod stuff to a separate thread? It is getting a little confusing.

I kinda wouldn't mind a 'squelch' option that just removes posts by Magister, when he just goes off talking about his modmod. (For me personally, that is. They don't often add much to discussion, and I'd rather just stay on track in the thread).

Religion of Leaves, priests: they summon a permanent tiger, strength:4, speed:2.
It seems to be a bit too much at the beginning, then not enough later on... but always powerful in cities as it had cultural bonus with huge impact on the game!

I would rather prefer to summon a baby spider that start weak, but can grow stronger if it wins combats.
... or summon a wolf with Nature affinity
... or allow the summoned animal spell to grow/change with the priest and his level (which would also help for the Great Menagery, especially with desert lands)

example:
1-2: Wolf
3: Baby spider
4: Lion
5: Gorilla
6: Tiger
7: Bear
8: Spider
>=9: Elephant

Honestly, the FoL are pretty darn good. Also, the utility of the Tiger is rather surprising.

First of all, you can add it to carnivals, meaning +1 Happiness in most of your cities (Since it's pretty rare to capture tigers).

Secondly, it gets empowered promotions from the caster. This is a 'no duh' thing for the most part except for...

Thirdly, the Tiger gains experience and promotions like normal. Combined with empowered promotions, they vary quite largely in their actual strength.

Lastly: These are permanent Summons. Compare them, for example, to Skeletons. Their about 10 times stronger. They also let your priest have an effect on combat, while he's otherwise blooming about in your borders.

... forgot the +1 happiness
However, it is nice to have a bit of added strength: elves are not that strong especially with new setup for other civs

It's very much a nerf for Alazkan, though I think a reasonable one.

It its current form, it is not a nerf. It is an exploit-level boost to power. Why?

Because illusion attacks that result in a withdrawl due to winning do not cost a movement point. Therefor, a blitzing Alazkan illusion can "prep" a kill not only for Alazkan himself - but for EVERY SINGLE assassin in your stack. I do not think this is intended, for Alazkan Illusion to provide for 20+ kills per turn if you have enough assassins in your stack; thus, I only bring enough assassins to get kills as he has moves - I don't exploit it (well, maybe a test or 2 ;). Yes, I posted this in bug thread several days ago.

With the exploit (A_illusion attacks not costing movement) and a couple extra blitzing assassins... this is how it works...

Illusion preps 4-5 kills for Alaz.
Illusion preps 4 kills for blitzing assassin.
Illusion preps 4 kills for blitzing assassin 2.
Illusion preps 5 kills for the other 5 assassins (or 10, or 20!)

The attack order looks like this:

Illusion, Alazkan, Illusion, Alazkan, Illusion, Alazkan, Illusion, Alazkan, Illusion, Assassin, Illusion, Assassin, Illusion, Assassin, Illusion, Assassin, Illusion, Assassin, Illusion, Assassin, Illusion, Assassin, Illusion, Assassin, Illusion, Assassin... ad naus.


Even without that exploit:

Now, even after a successful attack by an illusion costs a movement (I assume the team intends it to)... I still like Alazkan Illusion more now. Alazkan never needs to hit something under 99.9%, because the illusion preps any target below those odds - and the illusion will no longer steal the xp. You see, before he used to get as much xp as Alazkan himself and WAY more than the 2-3 assassins I bring in my attack-group. My assassins (I bring 3-4, one for each of A_Illusion attacks, assuming he uses 1 or 2 to prep for Alaz himself - 1 more if I have haste) get all the xp. I actually get additional assassins with blitz because of his inability to get kills. :woohoo:

If I don't found Aerons with a hunter upgraded to assassin (is this intended to be possible), Alazkan Illusion makes sure I do real quick.

Add to all this the fact that they get the best palace mana in the game (in my humble opinion):

Shadow
Blur (immunity to first strikes), Shadow Walk (ignore defensive bonuses - this makes forest promos uber_powerful and home defense among ancients very easy), MISTFORMS
Nature
Treetop Defense (instant full fortify in forest for entire group), Poison Blade (+1 str all recon units), VITALIZE
Mind
Charm (best anti-AI spell except maybe blind - works pretty well again humans too), Inspiration (+4 research... same as alchemy lab), DOMINATION

And they start with agriculture, the best starting tech.

And FANTASTIC traits (raider for xp/pillaging/movement on enemy roads and arcane so you can make your adepts late).

Add to that forest improvements...

I fear this civ is going to get a smack-down. :(

Perhaps it is just my playstyle, this civ is so uber I cannot even describe how uber it is - but here I've tried.

6. Combat limited units (catapults, illusions) can no longer attack indefintly.

That was fixed several hours ago in patch b (which caused one serious problem, and so was followed quickly by patch c)

Even with illusions fixed, I don't think it is a nerf. I was sick of the illusion getting all that nice xp. Now my extra assassins get buff.

I personally don't think it was necessarily a nerf either, but I do wish that illusions were immune to fear (since they can't get courage; well, except through Alazkan's Mirror)

I personally don't think it was necessarily a nerf either, but I do wish that illusions were immune to fear (since they can't get courage; well, except through Alazkan's Mirror)

I think they ARE immune to fear. I've used the Mirror to weaken Acheron before, and Alazkan didn't have courage. This is from a full strength acheron too.

Maybe there was something I was missing at the time however.

And yes, this was a necessary weakening in Alazkan's strength. A borderline-early-game hero that can single handedly win you the game was too much.

Now he's limited to only 4 kills per turn.

I agree with Ecofarm that I'd rather have my real units get XP than the illusions which are going to disappear anyway. However I also think it was pretty overpowered that the previous version of Alakzan could send a high powered illusion to kill 3 units per turn in deep exposed enemy territory with no risk.

I would rather prefer to summon a baby spider that start weak, but can grow stronger if it wins combats.
... or summon a wolf with Nature affinity
... or allow the summoned animal spell to grow/change with the priest and his level (which would also help for the Great Menagery, especially with desert lands)

Could you tie it to alignment (since FOL is the only religion to allow all three...) so that:
good -> tiger
neutral -> wolf pack
evil -> baby/giant spider
doviello -> polar bear :lol:
I don't remember the :strength:s off the top of my head, but I think they're comparable.

Dance of Blades (level 1 chaos spell, +1 first strike, 100% chance wears off at end of turn) seems completely worthless to me. Compare it to Enchant Blade (+20% str for melee units permanent) plus Enchantment mana gives you +1 happiness per. Maybe we can buff this spell a bit? Make it a 25% chance to wear off or something.

Chaos sphere in general seems a bit weak. Mutation isn't a reliable enough spell by any stretch of the imagination, and neither is dance of blades. Pit Beast is an okay summon I guess but...

I'd absolutely love if we could switch around the spell order here. Make mutation a level 1 spell, and give them some kind of summon at 2 (I don't remember the name of the old summon that was there, chaos marauder or something) and then something different at level 3.

This'd make the tree in general a bit more desireable, and more specifically would give Keelyn a starting sphere summon she could use.

Cultist's Tsunami spell seems way overpowered. Combined with the fact they have water walking makes them able to decimate coastal cities with the spell, then following it up with an attack with very little danger of taking any losses. I would keep the range, but probably reduce the damage threshold from 75% to less than 50%, say 35-40. That way you don't just build a stack of cultists and take every coastal city with ease (and easily getting some highly promoted Speakers).

Well, Tsunami does only work near coasts at least. I don't think it should ebb nerfed that much, but a little weaker would be good. I'd probably say you should decrease the average damage instead of the damage limit. Or, you could make it a Speaker spell and give cultists something else.


I personally think that Priest spells should all require not unit the unit religion but also state religion. It seems like an exploit that you can keep converting to get all the priests and keep using their spells. I'd also rather the unit not require state religion, but only have the Cure disease and Heal spells without their state religion. (It might be appropriate for priests to have alignment requirements/restrictions too.)

If you could build prists without their state religion though, it might be best to go back to having water walking be a spell instead of a free promotion for cultists. I'm thinking that in my modmod I'll make the spell grant a temporary version of water walking, and not effect only the caster. It would probably be limited to living unitcombat_melee/disciple units (maybe archer and adept too, but definitely not mounted, beat, or animal). However, I'm waiting until someone (xienwolf) adds the ability to make promotions deny access to certain terrains (ocean) and allow it again after certain techs (probably Malevolent Designs).

reducing the average damage will only require you to bring along 2 or 3 more cultists. The issue the way I see it is the damage limit.

EDIT: Maybe there can be a mechanic that increases the damage the more water mana you have.

Resist Lightning: I wish it were useful. Am I right that Lightning Elementals are the only units, spells, or equipment that deal this sort of damage? I think it's thematically relevant, so what I'm asking is that lightning damage be further implemented.

I'm guessing it's hard to make resistance promotions protect against affinities, yeah?

This is far-fetched and wouldn't be frequent enough to be worth adding, but lightning damage should damage an entire stack of Drowns.

Affinities provide strength of different types (defined in the bonus's xml). Air Affinity gives Lightning Damage. Resistances do protect against strength from affinity.

Oh, I thought affinities just added to the strength and weren't protected from, because the unit's window in the lower left just shows one maximum value. That's without research though, so, I feel better now.

I think the spell Maelstrom deals lightning damage too, so Resist Lightning should lower average damage from that spell. Don't quote me on that though.

I think it would be great if magic resistances not only lowered the average damage from spells, but the maximum damage too. Like, a unit with 75% lightning resistance would have a damage cap of 10% from maelstrom (one quarter of the normal 40% damage cap). That would provide a counter to the stack destroying spells that yet persist beyond the merge. Potentially some of the old spells could be brought back, too...

I think the spell Maelstrom deals lightning damage too, so Resist Lightning should lower average damage from that spell. Don't quote me on that though.

So quoted. It's true that it does. I stand corrected all over.

Dance of Blades (level 1 chaos spell, +1 first strike, 100% chance wears off at end of turn) seems completely worthless to me. Compare it to Enchant Blade (+20% str for melee units permanent) plus Enchantment mana gives you +1 happiness per. Maybe we can buff this spell a bit? Make it a 25% chance to wear off or something.

I agree completely ... maybe dance of blades could give the recipient an extra attack that turn ... ???

I agree completely ... maybe dance of blades could give the recipient an extra attack that turn ... ???

Would withdrawal chance fit?

would it fit the bill?

yeah ... I'm imagining the spell turning the recipient into a master of his weapon ... extra attack, small chance of withdrawal, maybe make it a level 2 and add the +1 strike too ...

would it fit the code? ... I have no idea ...

Not really a balance issue as a request. Can we please have an anti recon unit promotion to go along with shock, formation, cover, etc?

The AI regularly attacks me with stacks of Hunters or later Rangers which I can't help but think shouldn't be nearly as effective en mass as they are. It is frustrating when he is only using one unit type and the counter promotion is missing. Thanks.

Kael has consistently resisted this when it has been suggested in the past. I used to really think there should be one, but I don't really care anymore. The Empyrean mounted UUs, Rathas, have an inherent +40% vs. Recon.

I'm pretty sure that that kael said the no promotions against the recon line is a purposeful bonus to that line.

The recon line gets a city attack penalty and can't use metal weapons, that's why it doesn't need a specific counter-promotion

Agree with Uberfish, it makes complete sense.

Couple balance issues about some events

Constellation event for evil civs that can give them 100+ beakers or for a mere 50 gold a great prophet, feels overpowered to be able to get that on turn 1.

Graveyard event where you have the choice to spend gold to build a graveyard be evil or don't have either and get +1 sickness in every city for the rest of the game, it really should be limited to a duration instead of permanent, I had the event two times in a row and if I didn't have the gold I would of had -2 health for the whole game.

I was looking at the unitinfos and I noticed that both adepts and mages have a workrate of 300 while archmages have a workrate of 400. I think there should be a difference between the workrate of an adept and a mage. My suggestion is to set the workrates to 200, 400, and 600 respectively. as the cost of a node is 1200 it will work out nicely this way.

After playing some games in 0.32 i have to say im disappointed a bit by the new implementation of the circle of gaelan.

Sorcery seems so late (also many other events can trigger at that time so the chance also seems smaller) and even though i clearly reached it first it never triggered for me (in about 5 or 6 Games where i was first to sorcery.) :(. Once it even triggered at about 200 Turns (about Turn 450 normal Speed) after me researching sorcery for one of my vassals.
And the whole thing was with living world turned on most of the time so the chance for it occuring should have even been higher than usual i reckon.

Also while i can understand KoE seems to early (especially for advanced Start) i have to say putting gaelan to socery robs him of anything really special (since wizzards will be without big effort then).

Perhaps the circle + Gaelan himself should be 1.) put down to Alteration or Necromancy / another of the sphere-techs (whichever seems most fitting for Gaelan and most in need of a plus.) and 2.) also increase his chance to trigger the event.

That might help to see the circle more constantly which it clearly should as well as make Gaelan himself a bit more special + help the guild make more of an impact and as an added plus beef up one of the sphere-techs.

Also the guilds gained from Catacomb Libralus perhaps should be fixed to allow the event.

Perhaps also give him one or two spells which are special just to him, in line with Tier 2 mage-power-level? (That last thing seems to be the least needed of the lot though.)

@Blackmantle
I had Circle of Gaelan as Khazad, and I don't think I'd researched sorcery (why would I?).

Then it should be buggy for you or you are playing an older version. ;)

To back it up here an exerpt from the changelog for 0.32.a

Patch "a":
4. Circle of Gaelen events now require you to have the Sorcery tech before they will trigger.

Pre 0.32.a it required just KoE which might indeed have been a bit early.

0.32E. Maybe I got it via trade or something and forgot.

Or (wild guess): It only requires anyone in the game to have researched sorcery and you to have a mage guild. Which whould be a clear bug. (Whouldn't change anything in regards to my request though. Although it might explain me not getting it, should it indeed be that way.)

Otherwise: What you said.

What I would suggest is that only the second and third events have Tech Requirements.

First Event: Random chance, can happen anytime after you get a Mage Guild. Locks you in as the player who shall get Gaelan events, and lets you know that there is now extra incentive to get Sorcery researched.


Second Event: Happens the turn after you get Alteration/Divination/Elementalism/Necromancy, as long as the first event has been cleared properly. (Multiple OR requirement Techs is easily done with current Schema).

Third Event: Happens the turn after you get Sorcery, as long as the second event was cleared properly.


As long as the weight is set to -1 on the second and third events, they will work properly. This method has the potential to break them up so that you do not see all 3 events immediately back-to-back (you would see that if you had already researched Sorcery by the time you got the first event though).

What I would suggest is that only the second and third events have Tech Requirements.

First Event: Random chance, can happen anytime after you get a Mage Guild. Locks you in as the player who shall get Gaelan events, and lets you know that there is now extra incentive to get Sorcery researched.


Second Event: Happens the turn after you get Alteration/Divination/Elementalism/Necromancy, as long as the first event has been cleared properly. (Multiple OR requirement Techs is easily done with current Schema).

Third Event: Happens the turn after you get Sorcery, as long as the second event was cleared properly.


As long as the weight is set to -1 on the second and third events, they will work properly. This method has the potential to break them up so that you do not see all 3 events immediately back-to-back (you would see that if you had already researched Sorcery by the time you got the first event though).

This is exactly how I set it up in my game. And I gave gaelan chaneling 3 to make him worth getting.

I prefer just letting you upgrade Gaelen to an archmage. Or having him rely on my Tower of Mastery change. Giving him a unit specific spell could be nice too.

I am really liking making The Tower of Mastery grant Channeling 3 (<bApplyFreePromotionOnMove>1) to arcane units, and think it should be like this in the main game. I don't like the Tower as a victory condition, but I want a reason to build it anyway. Allowing all your mages to learn archmage spells (but not giving this ability to mere adepts) is quite fun. Upgrading to archmages still isn't pointless though, since it gives free promotions

give Gaelan channeling 3, add more of a cost when his guild is founded

Out-of-balance event:

5 unhappy (as per whip... dozens of turns until the last wears off) and -1 population.

It happened to my capital twice in ~10 turns.

Spare me the agony of watching my cap starve and just make the event -50% population instead, or nerf it.

Is it possible to make worker actions available earlier? I was playing on monarch/ normal speed and an AI hadn't built a gold mine on turn 200. Right next to its capital...

If this is not desirable, could an advanced start be added where everyone starts with the early worker techs (farming, mining, plantations and chopping for example)? As it is, the first advanced start option gives you 3 whole tiers of the tech tree. Perhaps make it so it's just one tier? (What is a tier anyway?)

It would make for funner games if all these capitals weren't still completely surrounded by forest when my hippus horsemen come galloping in...

Just a thought, or two. :)

I think high priests need to be able to promote at level 4 or 5 instead of level 6, by the time I managed to farm enough experience with a confessor to upgrade him to a high priest (26 exp), I won the game from domination 10 turns later.

And if you somehow manage to get the high priest killed, your not likely going to find any replacements compared to a archmage and the tons of mages waiting for a promote.

Yeah, I've never understood why High Priests are so hard to get. Normal priests are anything but combat units, yet they need to go from 0 to 26 in order to get their upgrade... and those upgrades aren't exactly archmages.

Maybe make the spiritual trait give bonus xp to their divine units?

Yeah, I've never understood why High Priests are so hard to get. Normal priests are anything but combat units, yet they need to go from 0 to 26 in order to get their upgrade... and those upgrades aren't exactly archmages.

Maybe make the spiritual trait give bonus xp to their divine units?

I like this idea, particularly if a Clan-friendly religion gets implemented at some point, because it'll make Jonas more interesting.

On a related note, does Rantine really need to cost 180 hammers on Standard speed? I know he's pretty handy if you know what to do with him (I pretty much don't), but geez.

An exploit?

An event allowed me to build a graveyard next to my capital. I raided it and received a free tech.

On another note is there a constellation event favorable to the Bannor or Order? If so, I haven't seen one yet.

An exploit?

An event allowed me to build a graveyard next to my capital. I raided it and received a free tech.

On another note is there a constellation event favorable to the Bannor or Order? If so, I haven't seen one yet.

Not an exploit; it might have been spectres instead.

There's definitely an Order event, but I haven't seen a Bannor one. Probably it's in there somewhere.

An exploit?

An event allowed me to build a graveyard next to my capital. I raided it and received a free tech.

On another note is there a constellation event favorable to the Bannor or Order? If so, I haven't seen one yet.

Yeah, I understand getting a free tech from someone else's graveyard, but digging up your own decaying citizens and suddenly realizing you knew how to smelt iron all along seems a bit funny.

I think the graveyard event may need a revisiting. Maybe create a graveyard building in the city that gives +1:) per spirit mana, but have the Sheaim worldspell destroy all graveyards and turn them into a pyre zombie stack (maybe with [armageddon counter/10] zombies)?

I really think that you shouldn't be allowed to loot a Grave inside your own Territory, but as a bonus they should grant a considerable (5?) health bonus to a city if found in the BFC of them.

Ressurect, Sanctify and Raise Skeleton should all still be allowed while in your territory though.


It is just VERY unfitting for people to complain about bodies, force you to start up a Graveyard, then run out and pick the pockets of the people they JUST BURIED. Especially if they find new technology in the process...

"Oh look guys... Timmy invented some dangling thingies attached to your Saddle to put your feet in. I guess we can make better mounted units now. Isn't it great that the stuck up bastige died so we could finally recieve the fruits of his labors?"

It is just VERY unfitting for people to complain about bodies, force you to start up a Graveyard, then run out and pick the pockets of the people they JUST BURIED. Especially if they find new technology in the process...

I don't think its unfitting per se - just abit... evil :devil:
So how about modifying your alignment towards evil if you (let ppl) rob your own graveyards ?
Or is this only implementable with a broader alignment system ? *hint,hint*

"Oh look guys... Timmy invented some dangling thingies attached to your Saddle to put your feet in. I guess we can make better mounted units now. Isn't it great that the stuck up bastige died so we could finally recieve the fruits of his labors?"
"Greedy ol' bastard, I'll tell ya"

Yeah, I've never understood why High Priests are so hard to get. Normal priests are anything but combat units, yet they need to go from 0 to 26 in order to get their upgrade... and those upgrades aren't exactly archmages.

Maybe make the spiritual trait give bonus xp to their divine units?

I like this idea. Im going to play with it and if it works out I'll add it in 0.33.

Minor balance problem with the Muirin clan goblin event, it can trigger on top of a city and cause it to permanently have -1 food for the rest of the game, and the only way to prevent it is to have nature mana, really should be a check to make sure it can't happen on a city tile, and maybe add some other ways to prevent the outcome.

The only thing that bothers me really about the Muris clan goblin event is like many others once you get it once you can assume you'll see it again.

As an aside for some reason I've noticed that the tiles affected by the goblins usually get penguins later. So for me it's all good but it really is one of my least favorite events to get, maybe add an option for water mana as well (spring washes away the waste) to make a bit less of a pain.

The only time I had significant numbers of high priests was playing Varn Gosam on Nikis-Knight's super-huge map. Malakim expanded in all directions and spread Empyrean to each city until I had cultural borders on all sides (no more easy cities) in the middle of all that, switched to Charismatic. After worldspell I had great number of priests 3-4 xp away from Luridus promotion. So in a few turns, I not only have the 4 Luridus but around 12 others just waiting to be promoted. That many units casting Crown of Brilliance is pure deadly. It was awesome.

It is just VERY unfitting for people to complain about bodies, force you to start up a Graveyard, then run out and pick the pockets of the people they JUST BURIED. Especially if they find new technology in the process...[/I]

The complaining citizens didn't loot the graves, the army did. Discovering technology from your own graveyards certainly is weird though.

actually there's another idea for an event: "A military unit was caught grave robbing..."

Perhaps flesh golem should be limited in number. At least if they can cast spells. (every one of this golem has move 4, flying, and can cast Body 3, Mind 3 and min 1 levl. 3 Spell)

Perhaps flesh golem should be limited in number. At least if they can cast spells. (every one of this golem has move 4, flying, and can cast Body 3, Mind 3 and min 1 levl. 3 Spell)

I'm pretty sure they are not supposed to be able to cast spells. The code removes Channeling 1-3 and Divine (it used to remove Sorcery and Summoning too, before they are removed from the game), which before the lines were removed would have made casting impossible. I really think that all the spell sphere promotions should be removed too.

Also, they are supposed to be limited by the number of potential casters. Letting them get Body III really breaks this.

I also still think that it is wrong for Mokka's cauldron to create flesh golems. This detracts from the spell. It would be quite simple to make it create Skeletons (with appropriately modified strength) instead.

They where cast by archmages, with get crafted into them, to make room for more archmages.
I agree, that a Fleshgolem should be a physikal Force, and not a magical one. But the fastes way to limit this break is to limit the number of fleshgolems to 4 like national units.

I wouldn't mind seeing high priests being made more accessible, and stop priests from upgrading to druids, making super druid highpriests, sure you need to be neutral, but a extra 4 units that can use rank 3 divine spells like crown of brilliance and cure? yes please.

My main balance issues (mostly obvious ones that have been suggested many times)
a) Hippus horse mercenaries, way too strong. Fix with some combination of: no more metals bonus, drop strength by 1, double cost, limit generation to one per turn.
b) Insanity of elves with ancient forests. A partial solution is a *big* nerf in the time that it takes for forests to spawn into ancient forests. Forests mean that health is irrelevant and give big production bonuses, ancient forests provide crazy food and mean that you can cottage everything and have high food, gold and hammeres, and then the GoN civic makes happiness irrelevant too.

c) Many useless civics, partly because civics upkeep costs are so high that its almost never worth using anything with high upkeep. Positive health upgrades are also pretty useless considering their upgrades.
d) Weakness of archery line. Either give them bombardment, give them a free shock promotion or give them a couple of free first strikes. Or try something like attacks of opportunity from civ3, let them take a free shot at anything attacking their tile (so massed archers are very hard to break)
e) Weakness of drill promotion line. Add 5% strength bonus at each level.
f) OPness of stack effect spells. Chalid is insane and is available way too early for his power, maelstrom and tsunami are also very OP.
g) war weariness seems broken. why do I get very high war weariness from capturing enemy cities, and from my summoned units dying (could be imagining this). don't know if 3.17 changes have many any difference here. As long as my soldiers are doing fine and not suffering casualties, I shouldn't be suffering war weariness. Think c19 British empire jingoism - no-one in London is unhappy as soldiers are off conquering Africa and India without losing significant soldiers.
Also, war weariness needs to wear off faster.
h) very very high costs for some high end techs, like the tech for phalanxes (after mithril working, dont even remember the name) or the tech for immortals, or similar. Also; marksmen need mithril?
i) some underpowered buildings. weaponsmith, for eg. Often insufficient reward for investing in infrastructure, and hammer costs for buildings are very high given how few boosters for hammers there are (and how unavailable engineers are - no equivalents to levee, railroaded mines, industrial park, factory with power, etc.).


I also think that the single biggest AI weaknesses comes from a) their inability to prioritize education to get some cottages up early -> very behind in tech.
b) Inability to abuse Agriculture civic by farming grasslands and cottaging plains c) overexpansion leading to high maintenance costs and armies of warriors paying upkeep d) willingness to throw huge stacks of units at well-defended cities with walls. AI should evaluate the cumulative probability of victory before such a frontal assault, and if there isn't a good chance of taking the city it should just pillage instead - I hardly ever see AI pillaging effectively, especially with horseman type units (move, pillage, move back to stack). AI needs to learn to bombard with catapults better, mostly it just throws them into the meatgrinder with little effect.
It seems like the AI makes a decision about sending a stack to a city and starts moving the stack towards the city, and then doens't re-evaluate if the city is reinforced before the stack gets there in such a way that the assault would be futile.

I agree the amount of war weariness is a bit out of control. One game as the Bannor I had a defensive war with the Doviello (little losses on my side, many on thiers.) By the time the war ended i had eleven war weariness unhappines in my capitol. Just a little over ten turns later he delcared war on me again, and on the next turn i automatically get eleven war weariness in my capital. Luckily i was able to use the Crusade civic. This presents another problem, as eliminating the amout of war weariness in the game eliminates the importance and usefullnes of this civic.

This has been on my mind since the port over to BtS but i've not mentioned it. BtS considerably upped the expense of cities not connected by land, ie overseas or just offshore. While this theoretically effects all civs equally depending on the map it probably tends to hurt the Laun more as they are designed to thrive on water and probably have a greater tendency to settle islands.

A possible counter to this could be eliminating the "colonial" maintenance adjustment through the Seafaring tech.

Guild of hammers and GE - as soon as you research engineering you get a very nice wonder and means to insta-build it. I'd suggest to move the GE a little farther down the line, Machinery maybe.

This has been on my mind since the port over to BtS but i've not mentioned it. BtS considerably upped the expense of cities not connected by land, ie overseas or just offshore. While this theoretically effects all civs equally depending on the map it probably tends to hurt the Laun more as they are designed to thrive on water and probably have a greater tendency to settle islands.

A possible counter to this could be eliminating the "colonial" maintenance adjustment through the Seafaring tech.

Just wanted to second this. I'm not too happy with the colonial expenses to begin with and would like to see them dropped if not lowered. Barring that, have it be a unique Lanun thing to not have would be good and certainly encourage more island populating by them. Would also allow them to more easily consider transcontinental conquest.
My personal dream would be something like no colonial expenses whatsoever for anyone (makes it too annoying to take over the world properly) and make all Lanun cities that are on the coast significantly lowered in distance-from-palace costs, maybe even by 100%. If they're connected to the ocean, the distance doesn't matter.
Let's take it a step further. All Lanun cities not connected by to the coast have their distance cost doubled. Connected via a rivet would result in a "normal" distance cost. Would certainly shape the way the Lanun cities are placed.

Guild of hammers and GE - as soon as you research engineering you get a very nice wonder and means to insta-build it. I'd suggest to move the GE a little farther down the line, Machinery maybe.

Oh, yeah, I meant to add this to my list. Engineering is far too strong. The AI doens't prioritize it, so its very easy to beeline for the guild of hammer and free great engineer -> instant 25% empirewide production bonus. Its normally gg for the poor AI at that point. Its so strong I do this every game. I'd take away the free great engineer; push that back a tech, make the guild have to be built the slow way.

I suppose that was discussed already, but don't you think Tsunami is really causing havoc on AI's? [I don't know if the AI uses it on higher levels than Warlord more often to cause havoc on the human too, though]. On the other hand, OO seems a bit weak (alas: to me. so if I miss an important part of this religion, just tell me ;) ) compared to the other religions (especially since Empyrian makes a culture boost too), so maybe Tsunami's strength is kind of balancing that. Even though the question: Are cultists maybe to early for that spell?

This is another, fairly 'little' thing, that does get to me sometimes.

The Cult of the Dragon is potentially a really awesome thing in the late game, for the Kurio's to have gotten going. But a lot of games I play with them, it never founds, or if it does, it never goes outside my empire.

I'm wondering if we could maybe have the event a little more common, and perhaps make some kind of strategy for them to attempt to spread it. Maybe a Dragon Priest that can build a Dragon Shrine in a city (Like normal priests build temples). Except instead of it automatically spreading the religion (Since that'd be too strong I think) it simply increases the chance the city will get Dragon Cult spread to it.

yea, I've seen the cult of the dragon in a few screenshots, but I've NEVER seen it come up in a game, ever, since I started playing FFH2.

Then again, I haven't played that many games as the Kuriotates or Sheaim (I've had games with either one in the game). But seeing how it's an important late game strategy and a piece of lore for both the Kuriotates and Sheaim, it's incredibly rare.

It isn't that rare, but only if the Kuriotates or SHeaim are in the game, and choose to let the guild be founded. I'm not sure that they should really get a choice.


I;m thinking that in my version I'll add a Dragon cultist that spreads the cult like a normal executive (FfH doesn't have any of those) instead of through a spell. Thus it could have a cost and could fail. I'll probably let these units move through rival territory without open borders, and might make them start crazed. Any civ with a city with the normally harmful cult could purposefully spread it to their rivals.

I agree with almost all of Ahrimans points, Mithril weapons could use it's cost cut in half, and the stack damage spells really need a limit to how many units it can damage at once or tighter damage limits, you use just afew ritualists on a stack that would have 99.9% odds killing you, and suddenly its down to 8.2% odds, and tsunami is way to much for every cultist to use, and even destroying improvements along the coast.

A limit of 3-6 units damaged per caster, 15-30% cap or made less spammable would be good, catapults are balanced because you need to risk losing them if you want to -try- and do collateral damage and possibly lose the catapult and then need to wait for the catapult to heal up before attempting again, but with a spell you can just hit the button and use it nonestop.

One way to reduce the power of it is a % chance for the caster to become fatiqued after using the spell often, and while fatiqued it can't cast the spell until it wears off, good way to balance the insanely powerful spells like ring of flame and tsunami.

Tsunami might be balanced if it kept the improvement destroying, and had a damage bonus against units on water, but low damage on land.

The "frostlings have been spotted..." event needs to be prevented from triggering very early, or kept from spawning on tiles turned to tundra by the constellation event. I just lost a game on turn 5 because the Bear made my city a tundra, then frostlings spawned and insta-razed it.:mad:

It isn't that rare, but only if the Kuriotates or SHeaim are in the game, and choose to let the guild be founded. I'm not sure that they should really get a choice.

Well, I played two full games as the Kurios most recently, and didn't get the Cult. Previously as them, I think I've only seen it really spring up once or twice, and never really spread.

The "frostlings have been spotted..." event needs to be prevented from triggering very early, or kept from spawning on tiles turned to tundra by the constellation event. I just lost a game on turn 5 because the Bear made my city a tundra, then frostlings spawned and insta-razed it.:mad:

If you had your warrior IN the city, your city wouldn't have been lost.

The "frostlings have been spotted..." event needs to be prevented from triggering very early, or kept from spawning on tiles turned to tundra by the constellation event. I just lost a game on turn 5 because the Bear made my city a tundra, then frostlings spawned and insta-razed it.:mad:

Thats kinda funny. It like Mulcarn is still breaking the compact, even in death.


Seriously though, I don't think that events should be able to create barbarian units in non-barb cities.

I'v seen plenty of frostlings take out players early on, pretty annoying.

If you had your warrior IN the city, your city wouldn't have been lost.

Yeah, I agree with smjjames. Frostlings wont spawn in any tiles with units in them, so if you leave a city open...

Its really no different than if if they spawned beside the city and moved into it.

I think tribal huts could use some rebalancing, I think it's fine to get free hunting or mining or mythicism from a hut, but free alteration astronomy mathematics and drama?

One game by turn 9, I got knowledge of the ether alteration and sorcery as amurites, seems abit much.

Picture 1 & 2 show an exploit to generate massive amounts of gold from kurio settlements (with runes). Stonwarden -> Temple -> Merchant. I guess it would be better to have net income and research multiplied with 0 rather than commerce.

3rd file shows that it's impossible to build the holy city buildings in settlements. Why can priest build temples and great prophets can't build their buildings?

4th shows that you again need all the mana sources for building the lesser towers. I guess the change that you need all but one got lost during transport to BtS...

Recently while playing Elohim i realized that devouts could upgrade to Priests of Leaves, Kilmorph and Order which are all more or less "good" religions pre-shadow (which is a very nice feature after all). But they cant seem to upgrade to priests of the Empyrean according to the pedia (and they cant seem to upgrade to "evil" priests but that seems allright given the flavor of the Elohim.).

That seems to have been forgotten to be updated on implementation of the Empyrean / CoE. Whould be surely nice and thematically correct if they could. (Empyrean is one of the most fitting religions for them after all...)

Slave trade resolution for Undercouncil is crazy as brings gold-hammer ratio down to 1:1. Which means that mines are only as productive as hamlets and vastly inferior when compared to towns with Taxation. It gets even worse with elves for obvious reasons (yeah, I play Svartalfar a lot so I know it very well). It makes gold-rush property of certain civics totally useless.

I consider soldier of Kilmorph to be a very fair and balanced way to boost production of a smaller cities or wonders, but slave trade blows it out of the water. With 2:1 ratio it would still be *very* strong but not as crazy as it is now.

I think tribal huts could use some rebalancing, I think it's fine to get free hunting or mining or mythicism from a hut, but free alteration astronomy mathematics and drama?

One game by turn 9, I got knowledge of the ether alteration and sorcery as amurites, seems abit much.

Yes, and on the other hand, some of the useless effects should be buffed/removed.
I'm perfectly fine with barbarians spawning if you are crazy enough to not use a scout on high difficulties, but getting maps is simply frustrating because it's completely useless whereas getting techs is vastly overpowered. Also, the +5 experience effect was left unchanged from vanilla Civ4, where 5 experience means a lot more than in FFH where it's a totally negligible amount.
Getting a Warrior, Scout, Gold or Tech are the only really worthwhile effects. In about that order.
I think I'll never understand why gold gives ~50 gold at max and techs easily equal 300+ beakers on normal speed...
Perhaps a few FFH only/civ specific effects would be possible, too?
And as has been said, huts (and graveyards) need a cap to the granted techs. You could probably even get Strength of Will or