Open letter to Tholal: please unfix Luchuirp worldspell

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Dear Tholal,

the Luchuirp people are slow to get going ( mud golems is a misnomer, gold golems would better fit how expensive they are ) , and remain slow everafter ( Golems share #1 place in "Most annoyingly slow unit in Erebus" alongside with the shunned catapults year after year ) .

As such, they are rarely picked by wannabe immortal leaders as their nation of choice to lead to greatness. But the Luchirp people used to have a reedeming feature: an excellent worldspell that, thanx to the selfless sacrifice of some brave dwarven warriors and/or scouts, would allow them to stack their glorious golden hammers in the future engineering capital of Erebus. It was ultimately their prime asset, and what a fun one it was!

But then something changed. The beloved golden hammers got cursed with some kind of magnetic force that would not allow two hammers to sit comfortably in the same city. This led the chosen Luchuirp engineers to feel lonely, which impacted their productivity badly. Whereas once the Luchuirp nation would witness a constant influx of great minds allowing them to excel into their specialty, nowadays a slow trickle of genious kids would be all they could aspire to.

Oh Great Tholal, we the players trust that in your infinite wisdom you will heed our plea to restore the Luchuirp people to their olden birthright. Let the engineers once again flood the halls of Ithralia!

Sincerely signed,

The Players

 

[Qgqqqqq]

This should be unfixed.

 

[Yudishtira]

Whereas once the Luchuirp nation would witness a constant influx of great minds allowing them to excel into their specialty, nowadays a slow trickle of genious kids would be all they could aspire to.

Yeah now most of the genius Luchuirp kids beg/borrow/steal axes and become ... hackers...

 

[akatosh]

I cast my vote in support of this as well. Luchuirp seem pretty bad to me..

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

where's Tasunke when you need him...

 

[doktarr]

I have to assume that the reason hammers were made un-droppable in Base FFH was so that you wouldn't collect hammers. Disbanding units was a work-around to do something that, I imagine, was not intended.

That said, I've got no problem with Luchuirp hammer collection. But if we want to enable it, we should probably just make the hammers droppable, too. Disbanding warriors to move the hammers around has always been silly.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I think disbanding units is a good tradeoff for the trick, not sure if the AI can learn it though. honestly since it would have been possible to block it I had always thought it was a feature.. I'm pretty sure Kael knew about it and left it in intentionally as one of those cool ffh finesses

 

[Calavente]

methinks same as Gekko.

further, Hammers where made un-droppable so that you couldn't swap them from units to other units: the unit with the hammer sticks with it.


regarding all equipements (Orthus axe....etc)... why not impose the same restriction as for hammers :
no passing the equipement unless you kill the unit ?
would limit the abusing of the system a lot.
(you would further be left with many interesting choices...)

 

[Terkhen]

methinks same as Gekko.

further, Hammers where made un-droppable so that you couldn't swap them from units to other units: the unit with the hammer sticks with it.


regarding all equipements (Orthus axe....etc)... why not impose the same restriction as for hammers :
no passing the equipement unless you kill the unit ?
would limit the abusing of the system a lot.
(you would further be left with many interesting choices...)

If the equipment system is broken it should be fixed, not restricted. If the problem is that you can use the same piece of equipment to attack with multiple units, the "take equipment" spells should have an additional prerrequisite: it is only possible to take equipment if the unit currently holding that equipment has not attacked, casted or moved this turn.

 

[lfgr]

If the equipment system is broken it should be fixed, not restricted. If the problem is that you can use the same piece of equipment to attack with multiple units, the "take equipment" spells should have an additional prerrequisite: it is only possible to take equipment if the unit currently holding that equipment has not attacked, casted or moved this turn.

I believe it works this way already. As far as I know, the only "exploit" is that you can pick up equipment from a unit that died (since the equipment was dropped). So you can use an equipment multiple times in one turn, as long as the holder dies when he attacks.
A fix could be that "take equipment" (which consists of 2 spells, one for picking dropped eq. and one for picking eq. equipped to another unit) is restricted to be casted only one time per turn (like great commanders).

 

[Horatius]

I cast my vote in support of this as well. Luchuirp seem pretty bad to me..

What are the problems with Luchuirp?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

expensive workers and slow units mostly

 

[Horatius]

expensive workers and slow units mostly

But golems fire a 2 move fireball...

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it's good, but elementalism takes a long while to get to. limited mobility is not a huge issue in single player, but in MP very much so.

 

[doktarr]

it's good, but elementalism takes a long while to get to.

You actually need sorcery before you can build the blasting workshops that give your golems fireball.

limited mobility is not a huge issue in single player, but in MP very much so.

Well, it's a big disadvantage in SP, too.

 

[Horatius]

What do you guys mean? You can start producing golems with fireballs easily around turn 150 at normal speed.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

and you'll still get owned by a similarly skilled player playing any decent civ, because they'll set up equally powerful strategies and still have a mobility advantage.

 

[Horatius]

Well,

- Mud Golems are expensive - They do seem that way early on, but nevertheless the city can still keep on growing and the first one can serve the first two cities, no problem, while with the other civilizations you may want a second worker with your second city. Indeed you only need one mud golem per city whereas with other average civs you will need about two workers. Later on you build them on your high production city and that's it. Eventually you will build them in 3 to 5 turns, faster than a normal worker. As a bonus, occasionally these workers will win the lucky fight in defensive terrain (with empower) against a sneaky horseman coming from the fog and may even be able to cast fireball. Their price is almost right for the long run (its hard to balace all of this stuff).

- Traits - Financial. Enough said.

- Vulnerabilities early on - They are not the Amurites. Double movement on the hills means that you have the mobility advantage. A free golden hammer is nice if needed. 10% more strength inside borders and fast archery range is not terrible (you are only playing Garrim in MP right? Defender is not the best but as old posts in this forum say another strong trait would make this leader overpowered maybe (I don't say that)). Enchanted blade is also not bad and KoE is a stronger priority than construction because of it.
It's just a matter of having the copper - but it is always a matter of having the copper! Slighty boosted bronze warriors for defense are nice. Anyway, starting position and resources are always really important in MP (we want that river as well don't we?).

- Wood Golems are expensive early on and always slow - I could not agree more. Why would you want to build them early on? People that think that this civilization is bad are trying to build armies of Wood Golems and catapults. That simply doesn't really work against a smart opponent while playing quick speed. Early on you're thinking of bronze warriors and boar riders (not bad units) and archers (if we don't have copper or pig, good luck to us). One only wants to build Golems when they can use fireballs.

- That takes forever man! - it's a misconception that sorcery is really an expensive technology and that a great sage should have a bigger priority for bulbing it. Here's a screenshot:

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I didn't get any free technologies from villages and I do already have construction there also (normal speed with just two cities; notice that my first golden age just started, lol). Not bad. But then again this game is easy, so whatever. Of course that is against the silly AI on Noble, against a human I would have to get more warriors and other stuff but even if I had to spend 30 or 40 more turns getting to sorcery I would still be in good shape despite others strategies.
Can T2 units with the exception of Pyre Zombies handle an army of fireballing Wood Golems? Tough work for them. Can you get a decent army of fireballing Wood Golems before an opponent gathers a big enough army of T3 units or other special stuff? Well, you can. If you can that means that those units are actually useful.
And so you gather an army that doesn't really need to attack directly, that it is always marching on despite the slowness, that is always getting repaired on the move, that gets empower promos without much risk, that is always growing and can split into cost effective groups while the opponent is taking its losses and taking time to heal.
Look!, a few Stygian guards are gathering there: let's see how they can handle 20 fireballs to the face for a few turns...

- Are Wood Golems (now with fireballs) expensive and not cost effective? - Well, my capital in the screenshot above never went further than 8 population and with eventually the command post and the heroic epic it continued to produce one example of those units every single turn. So, well... Maybe.

Wood Golems are not vampires. but they are not bad at all for sure. If they had mobility or a cheaper price then they would be better than vampires. Something has to balance the freaking thing.
Luchuirp are not balanced with the fact that their higher units are not worth teching to. You want more and more fireballs quicker: who cares about iron Golems?

Consider this game with MNAI played in your PangeaPlus map (Diety). I made the mistake of settling my second site towards the calabim which means handling more early psycho pressure than any human can ever make early on. My solution: rush to HB and sacrifice tons of scouts to get War Elephants (common solution of mine against the psycho AIs if there are enough elephants close by). 14 bloodpets come along and no dice against 2 WE with a gold hammer and the orthus axe (of course, orthus had to spawn close to the underdefended city meanwhile...). Too bad. Eventually I get no less than 5 WE (lucky!). I conquer a city and get tons of "free" exp. They want peace. Thank the Lord. The Balseraphs immediately declare after. Curse the Heavens. I conquer a city, raze another, kill a lot and choke them. They want peace. Fantastic guilty pleasure against Tholal psycho AIs that rarely want to settle things. I go and finish the Calabim then:

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Early tech setback is nothing when you are financial:

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I didn't start building WG right after. I added Sanitation, Trade, Currency, Archery, Fishing, Cartography and something else. I was having fun with my super WE (imagine if they had 50% against melee instead of against horses...):

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Eventually I spam WG from 6 cities, eventually 7:

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I just automated the conquered cities. Finished the game playing sloppy at around turn 250. 177 WG built. It's nice to have 177 fireballs per turn:

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So the Luchuirp are not the Calabim. They are not perfect for sure but calling them bad is just not right. Mass fireballing WG are dangerous stuff. And it's not incredibly hard to get there while handling pressure. It's doable.

Anyway, there's a problem with settling several golden hammers in the same city. GP points. Golden age after golden age. It would even make the industrious trait useless (GEs all around for wonders...).

Have fun.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

You can't post a T121 sorcery pick for justification if that game was played on noble.

Yeah, fireball tokens are good, but there's much better setups out there.

 

[Terkhen]

If GPP points are the problem, they could settle as Great Engineers, which do not provide Engineer GPP. If great engineers provide too much hammers, they could settle as an special building that produces the amount of production required instead. What's wrong with playing as noble?