ExtraModMod

Hello. Excellent mod (even if there are yet very very big unbalanced things in multiplayer in every aspects of the picture), thank you for your work ! We play it in multiplayer.


I met two bugs I don't know if they are specific to EMM 4.0 or not. I have no save for the first bug :


- In one game (in multiplayer) : one, then 40 turns after, two, of my cityes, begun to have negative hammer production per turn. Something as -130 hammer per turns. So they could produce nothing per turn even if I slaved it.

In game there were the Illians which used their production blocking spell. And I was Calabim, with calabim mannor in each of these city. Maybe the bug come from the Calabim mannor.


- The second bug occurs always, in solo or in multi, with Sidars : Any invocated soul by recon units persist to increase the logistic upkeep per turn even if I delete it or if I let it die itself. So now any sidar strategy founded on the using of their main force (recon unit with spells) became quickly unpossible and your empire collapse.

I'm sorry about taking so long to answer... It's been a long month

[to_xp]Gekko;13060382 said:

on second thought the snowball effect might not be as severe as I wrote, after all you need to tech masonry which competes with other useful early techs and warrens require quite some hammers early game, they're more of a midgame thing.

I tend to agree with you, making the bonus multiplicative might be lots of work for little reward, especially considering how easy it is to tweak the production bonus let's try it out with +100% production and see how it feels

Click to expand...

True, let's see how it goes

Blakmane said:

I just did some playtesting of settler build speed as jonas in SP (prince difficulty, quick speed, small map with AIs). The results were extremely underwhelming. My three largest cities could produce a settler every three turns. Sounds impressive, until I removed the warrens in world builder to find I could produce a settler every..... four or five turns. This makes the warrens change a nerf to a super-REX strategy if anything: I SAVE two turns with the old warrens compared to the new, in terms of efficiency. The lack of food multiplier in the production bonus really hits worker/settler production very hard as it often contributes more than 50% to the production of the unit.

Click to expand...

Yes, it should really affect food "production" too, as we mentioned in earlier posts. Most of the discussions about early game have been theorycrafting what would happen if the Warrens bonus already affected production with food (or at least I understood them as such). Thanks for testing

Tholal said:

The Warrens change fundamentally alters the purpose of the building. Increasing production is a significantly different from doubling units. IMO, this change is un-needed and a bit complex. If the main goal is to make the building more AI-friendly, then the change should be adding a new XML tag that the AI can understand. Otherwise you're really mucking with the way the Clan plays.

Click to expand...

Well, the code was already there because a EMM specific "spell building" uses it (creation III) so adapting the same mechanic for the Warrens (which also affect how living units are produced) was a natural step. This solution has a lot other benefits that a simple tag wouldn't provide, though. It allows to display clearly what is happening in all production related tooltips, and it also allows modders to define a conditional % increase instead of just a duplication.

As I already mentioned, I wouldn't mind altering the effect to make it work exactly as the old Warrens effect (if the related tag is set to a 100% increase) as long as that's considered the best solution.

Jojo_Fr said:

- In one game (in multiplayer) : one, then 40 turns after, two, of my cityes, begun to have negative hammer production per turn. Something as -130 hammer per turns. So they could produce nothing per turn even if I slaved it.

In game there were the Illians which used their production blocking spell. And I was Calabim, with calabim mannor in each of these city. Maybe the bug come from the Calabim mannor.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the reports. A savegame is really helpful in this kind of cases. I'll try to reproduce this one myself.

Jojo_Fr said:

- The second bug occurs always, in solo or in multi, with Sidars : Any invocated soul by recon units persist to increase the logistic upkeep per turn even if I delete it or if I let it die itself. So now any sidar strategy founded on the using of their main force (recon unit with spells) became quickly unpossible and your empire collapse.

Click to expand...

This issue has been reported in the past and I don't remember being able to reproduce it. Can you tell me what I would need to do in order to reproduce it?

I also checked the unit tags used by the severed soul in order to try to find what is wrong, but I did not find anything that would be different than what happens with other summoned units (which should also be causing issues then). Does anyone has any clue about what could be causing this?

Hello. Great mod, lots of sophisticated and creative stuff. Almost everyday we play it in multiplayer.

With the v0.4.0 a lot of bugs are fixed, so thank you for that.

But i think there are lots and lots of problems about balance right now. Some of them can be ignored, but some are really massive and imho ruins a lot.

For example; from my point of view Fol is way way stronger than any other religions and this situation should be fixed.

- It is one of the earliest religions, very easy to reach. It gives unmatched growth for cities, with ancient forest, extra health and happiness with gon. Fawns are really strong at that age, some upgraded fawn kill squads can hurt a lot. And when they become satyrs (which is also really easy to reach imho), they become better that most of the heroes at that age. Fols growth, early aggression, early defense cannot be compared to Rok or Oo. And also its hero, Kithra Kyrael is too easy to reach, it comes with gon. There are 3 heroes which are similar to each other which comes with religions; kithra, valin, rosier. Valin and rosier are way to hard to reach than kithra, imho also this is not nice.

Well maybe this is meant to be like this and i should not ask for balance or i cannot see the balance in this, but lately my playmates abuse Fol a lot (almost everygame)(my concerns are especially about fawns).

I hope you do sth about this or at least reply me about how it's not imba. Thank you again for this great mod.

So played some 7-10 games with two friends of mine, each varying between 3 to 15 hours on marathon, tectonics running lakes, prince.

Seems really stable. Encountered a few bugs here and there, but they were small enough for me not to remember them.

The good:

• I really like the change to the Illians world spell. 60 turns is a huge pain in the ass, whereas 30 turns is more bearable.
• The AI has gotten really good compared to base FFH, and improved slightly over MNAI (could just be me). They are aggressive and will exploit weakness, but only if you are weak. One of my buddies (new to FFH) didn't really understand how power rating worked and relations, so he kept getting gang banged by the AI, with organised armies showing up regularly to pillage all his sh*t and assault his cities, destroying his game even if they couldn't take his capital. I had Auric Aulvin rush me with 25 warriors in one game.

What I think isn't optimal:

• Vassals: they won't give you open borders, for example. They also don't want to give you resources, if I remember correctly. Now from the way I understand vassalage, the vassal better give his lord whatever the f**k he wants or prepare to face the consequences. If the vassal is unhappy with the arrangement, he can rebel.
• Barbarians: Hot damn, they come in droves and droves and droves. I'm thinking that it either needs to be tuned down a little or they should come a little later. The barbarians are really good at pillaging, which is both a positive and a negative. It means that every turn I must look through my borders to check if about my improvements are about to be pillaged, and this can be a tedious problem mid to late game when you have 20 or more cities. That or barbarians need to get less severe as time goes on, at least in well developed areas. Maybe introduce an automate-anti-pillage option or something? That way you can set a highly promoted unit to always head out of the city and attack any pillaging unit before it destroys a tile.
• MURIS CLAN GOBLINS: Either remove this event or make it non-permanent. We've had to restart a game because one player's capital got screwed over with 4 consecutive events in the early game.
• Marshland: Can't seem to remember if this was in base FFH, but what's the point of this tile other than being useless? (edit: never mind, Clan of Embers get a bonus to it.)

OOS:

• Only one OOS issue encountered so far and it occured when using Hyborem's Whisper.

Your mod is very enjoyable all around and I hope you keep improving it/adding features.

I agree with Xel'Naga, hidden paths gives too much right now and beaker cost should be increased, or the hero be moved back to feral bond. otoh, I dislike that way of the forests needs hunting, as it kinda defeats the point of fawns ( fawns, kilmorph soldiers and drowns are supposed to be a substitute for t2 military if you rush for your religious tech. fawns run counter to this as you already have hunters ) . same old suggestion, split hunting in two: tracking gives camps and unlocks camp resources, hunting gives hunters and the lodge. way of the forests requires tracking and mysticism, beaker cost boosted to compensate. other suggestions to increase early game flexibility: fishing does not require exploration ( messages from the deep cost boosted to compensate ) , animal husbandry does not require agriculture.

Hi Xelnaga, would you mind giving a bunch more info on your games with your friends? I've also been playing steadily and we've never had much trouble with FoL - in fact, I have been under the impression that FoL is a reasonably lacklustre religion if you aren't elves. We have a Ljos FoL player in our group, so we do come across this a bit. For some context, traditionally, Runes of Kilmorph is considered the best early game religion and FoL the worst - but EMM does shift the balance around a little so we shouldn't take that as gospel.

I wonder whether it is partially a factor of game options too -- what mapscript are you using, with what settings? How many AIs and what difficulty? What are the races are you playing? Are the FoL players dominating other players, or dominating the AI and then using that lead to dominate players? Are they... playing Elves?

Anyway, on to the meat:

1) Fawns are barely better than hunters for the same hammer cost. If you are getting destroyed by Fawn spam, hunter spam will probably do you in anyway. The 4 power 2 move and lack of anti-recon is just brutal. Fawns were actually buffed, both recently and back ages ago by Kael, because they were so lacklustre compared to just hunter spam. I agree that fawns should probably have a large penalty to city attack (-50%) at this point though, because the +forest attack buff is very significant. They aren't supposed to be city busters. In essence, hunters are an extremely powerful and versatile tier 2 unit. EMM lessens the gap somewhat, but doesn't close it. Fawns are just slightly better hunters, so it stands to reason they'd be unpleasant, but FoL is so godawful economically it evens out (see 2. below).

Satyrs are fantastic, but come at tier 3 when there are just as brutal units abound. Actually wait... they only need hidden paths now. Yeah, that's probably a bit much. They should require some heavier beaker investment I agree. Satyrs are a very snowball unit: either you get a bunch of high level fawns (probably from fighting stupid AI warrior spam, thus my comment above) and they go out of control or.... you don't. Highly promoted units in PvP doesn't happen as often in my experience because players don't throw waves of useless units against each other like the AI does. Things are much more decisive.

As an aside to Gekko: fawns differ from hunters in EMM because they don't require a hunting lodge and the +25% forest attack means they have a net *bonus* when attacking into forests, so you use them very differently. Remember that one of the FFH design team mottos was 'no unnecessary symmetry'. The Ljos player in my games relies on them to defend himself early, because the FoL rush leaves him open to predatory players/AIs and he basically can't afford to spend the hammers to get hunting lodges out. That said, I totally agree with your proposed tech split, although for unrelated reasons: I hate how being near early hunting resources (especially a big pile of fur) basically forces you down a single earlygame tech and unit route. I'm ambivalent about moving husbandry and fishing. I tend to think tweaking for the sake of tweaking is a bad thing.

2) More importantly, GoN has anti-synergy if you are any race but elves. The extra health and happiness is fantastic, but forests are effectively dead tiles productively - even ancient forests are quite lacklusture when it comes down to it (no commerce). It also gives little offensively, other than the extra happy faces. The FoL races are effectively sacrificing early economy for strong defensive power. This is the worst possible tradeoff. Defensive power exists only to keep you in the game long enough to get vital techs and/or a tech lead, at which point you need to go offensive. You have just sacrificed the ability to gain a tech lead... in order to get the ability to defend yourself to get an early tech lead. Seeing the issue? Compare this to arete, which gives you more production without sacrificing anything, access to iron and access to gold rushing. Compare the heroes: the FoL hero is strong, but bambur gives early enchanted blade and repair, which can be game-changing in an axeman/cata megastack.

In terms of lategame religions, yes, the early game ones have always been better. This is because, ultimately, TBS games like civ4 rely on small victories in the early game to fuel success in the late game. However, keep in mind that Order gives *unlimited* happiness without need for useless forest tiles and veil gives free collateral damage without needing mages.... so they aren't totally useless.


3) Unless they sink a lot of beakers and hammers into priests, FoL limits expansion because it only provides bonuses in wooded areas. Limiting expansion is very bad. It's hard to defend non-forested areas as FoL, but these are often the best economically (river grassland farms for aristo). See above for why this is a problem.

Counter Tactics:

If you suspect an early FoL fawn rush, tech early mining and cut down all trees within 1 tile of your cities at the very least. Fawns are 1105 beakers, compared to Axemen or Archers which are 620 beakers, so you'll have a head start. Fawns are better than Axemen (especially without bronze), but Axemen are 45 hammers so you can outproduce him (plus you have mines while he doesn't and you get tree chop hammers), so go crazy and take the fight back to him. Normally I would never recommend Archers as they suck (unless Amus or Illians), but because Fawns can't pillage a valid tactic is just turtling in your cities with a moderate stack of them. Fawns will not penetrate an archer stack in a city even 1/3 their size, and archers are also only 45 hammers, so you can defend sizeable empire from early recon aggression without needing to go into the field if you are careful to maintain constant archer production. When moving out of your city, try to move on hills and avoid forests entirely. Alternatively, if you are a race like hippus or an AGG or RAI leader, tech horseman (660 beakers) and do an early timing attack to mess him up before he gets to FoL: in one of our games a friend as Bannor (Tethira) utterly destroyed a Ljos player rushing FoL with a timed horseman attack, because the Ljos player foolishly challenged the Svart player to a religion race over VOIP. The Ljos player got FoL and had 2-3 fawns out when he got hit with 10+ horseman. Eventually they called peace after the bannor couldn't penetrate his final city, but he was basically out of the game at that point.

Because your opponent teched up a useless path economically and you are 400 beakers ahead, you will get aristofarms before him. If he is sitting big stacks in your territory trying to be menacing, he is costing himself a bunch of gold he can't afford due to his relatively low commerce cities. Because you went early mining, you'll have catas before him if you are going that path. If you have access to fire mana tech straight for mages - fireballs and blaze are very very painful for FoL players. If he is a lategame race and you aren't, you probably aren't ahead per se. That's basically the point of Fawns: gives breathing room in earlygame. If he is an earlygame race who tried to win with fawns then and there, you are on the winning stretch.

Finally, I suspect your opponents are using this fawn rush to get fat on AIs, which is half of your problem. Unfortunately, computer AI will never be able to fully understand a game as complex as civIV, let alone the extra complexity in FFH2. Fawns just destroy AIs who automatically assume forests are safe tiles to defend in and don't understand the need to forest chop and tech tier 2 early. Any kind of rush is a free win against the AI. They are also terrible at exploiting economic advantage gained from surviving early rush. Not to say you can't play with AIs: we do (on prince even)! However, you can't really balance with AI as the focal point or you'll end up with a strategically flat game.

That isn't to say you can't do something about it! The biggest counter to early aggression in FFA multiplayer games (which is usually what people play) is politics. In the game I am currently playing with my friends, I am Clan of Embers. I rushed axemen and put a lot of early pressure on the illians AI above me, hoping to snowball out of control on the AIs. However, when I moved large stacks to the north and DoWed, the (human) Khazad player below me moved HIS axemen stack directly to my southern border. I pointed it out and he said 'oh, y'know, just being opportunistic'. I was forced to move some of my units back and didn't have enough to take the Illian cities. I ended up being only able to expand on the Khazad's terms: he later declared war on the Ljos AI giving me breathing room to take the Illians, but by that point I was past my prime (I guess I could've done the same thing to him, but Khazad benefit more from that kind of stalemate than I could ever hope to). I'm not out of the game (still ongoing) but it stopped that early AI snowball very effectively. Of course, you can't always do this due to positioning etc, but such is FFH - it'll never be a perfectly balanced game due to the large random factor involved.

Anyway, hope all that helps! I'm also interested in various balance tweaks but I feel like the smaller changes the better when it comes to balance. I actually have a balance modmodmodmod I was going to discuss in this thread, but I'm waiting to finish my current game to discuss changes and maybe suggest some new ones in an open forum. I could see a city attack malus to fawns being suitable. The hunting split I think is something that needs to happen too, I totally agree with gecko: in addition you could move Satyrs back to requiring the hunting component as well in order to reduce their synergy and set them back beaker wise slightly.

Thank you Blakmane for your detailed answer. I think first i should give some more info about our games. We are usually 3 people, somethimes more. We play standard or large sized pangaea maps with quick speed at prince or monarch. I think everybody has a favorite race or playstyle but we change races at almost each different game. But most importantly, we always start at classical age.

From what you wrote and what i saw from our games maybe starting at the classical age is our problem, because Fol is only one tech away this way. And satyrs only 2 tech away.

-Comparing to hunters, fawns' forest power and defense are making a significant difference. You can collect each animal, defend against almost any kind of early barbarians and by doing so fawns get experince real easy. And with 3 upgrades and 2 techs you got satyrs.

- About the anti-synergy you mentioned, i disagree, because usually while civs with other races have 8-10 happy faces, civs with Fol has 15-20. And not always but usually bigger is better, you can have the needed commerce from non forest tiles, and get real juicy production and food from forests. An ancient forest with a lumbermill has 3,2 or 1,4 or 1,3 and i think this is more than enough. Maybe at late game you can feel the commerce problem, but at early and mid game phases extra growth will compansate this.

- I love to play order, empy or veil but their benefits are coming at a different age and i think its not right to compare them with Fol, Rok or Oo.

- Bambur and Saverous are great heroes, but Kithra is different from them. With early mobility and power getting exp is much more easier with him. All i am asking why among three horseman heroes, all of them 8 power/3mobility with slight differences, Kithra is 2 techs away from the start and the others not. Imo Kithra should be at a later tech.

My main point is;

It is not like i get crushed at every game to Fol, but lately my friends at almost everygame with every civ and with most of the starting locations choose Fol. And as you feel, also i feel that this game is full of interesting and creative stuff, and i want to see more outcomes at games.

Terkhen,

This issue has been reported in the past and I don't remember being able to reproduce it. Can you tell me what I would need to do in order to reproduce it?

I also checked the unit tags used by the severed soul in order to try to find what is wrong, but I did not find anything that would be different than what happens with other summoned units (which should also be causing issues then). Does anyone has any clue about what could be causing this?

Click to expand...

The bug always occurs you can reproduce it yourself. It is obvious you just need to spawn souls. It totally break any sidar tactics with souls.

As I have said, all summons should have zero upkeep, and channel 1 skeletons be permanent summuns (contrary to spectres for exemple).

To All,

You complain about multiplayer unbalanced things. I have doing it too in few topic on this forum and outside.

As nothing really changed, I tryed others mods as Master of Mana or Erebus in the Balance. It was very different and good experience, but they were still largely unbalanced and cheated in some tactics.

I abandonned any hope of changement because I think no one really want to play FFH2 in a competitive multiplayer. Modder just want to a good sole playing.


Here are the main absurds and total unbalanced things in multiplayer :

- Raider trait give commando promotion to all units => It means total rape in multiplayer, you can fast move or not, and kill back city, cut road etc. and it works as hell with cavalery (movement 3, or more with mobility promotion or hippus etc.) Absolutely unpossible to defend, totally unbalanced. Commando in Civ is just reserved to general unit with combat 5, which is very very rare.

This trait should be replaced by +100 % gold by pillaging, and +20 % health healed by pillage, for exemple.

- Mobility promotion (1 and 2) to all units permit to any to be fast as cavalery. Too strong in multiplayer with fastmove. And works for cavalery and recon unit too, absurd.

- Cavalery with movemement 3 means easy fast move to back city, or hit and run. In Civ IV BtS there is no land unit with movement 3 speed, it is not for nothing.

- Cavalery and recon unit without anti unit counter means totaly domination of these fast units on battlefield. Why making slow units which will slowly move, not defend cityes easitly, not be able to retreat fast, if you can have movement 2 or 3 units for the same cost, without any anti unit versus them, and even more cheated, defense bonus as the recon units have ? That is why every logical player nearly always aim for chariots/cavalery/hunters etc.

- Too fast centaurs and hippus units centaurs can access speed 4 without promotion, and keep their defense bonus as an infantery, including the centaurs archers. Nonsense and totally unbalanced off course. Globally, a unit should never, never be able to be faster than movement 2 (and hast spell should juste work for the adept/mage). Only Ingeenering, and hippus warcary, should give access to movement 3.

- Copper, Iron and Mithril work for chariot unit so for exemple with iron you can have a unit +7/+5. Again another reason to only make fast units.

- Insane and ridiculous powerfull satyrs with 9/4 str. With that you can roll over any A.I pretty early or mid game. When as human player you see satyrs in your territory, unless they are unprotected by archers or you have no fast unit, you can gg the game now. 9/4 str could feat for orcs berserkers units, demons or creatures like that, but not a satyre, a forest defender creature wich should only stay in forest and be very weak outisde. A kind of aztec jaguar as in BtS.

- Insane fireball wood golems with elementalism and sorcellery you can make those special buildings wich transform any golems including wood golem (the lowest in hammer) in very strong mage. You can too grab the perfect sight promotion and hidden promotion with adequate sorcery bulding...

- Insane golems with luchuirp with barnaxus with combat V, you just let him repose in your capital, and you have an army with +50 % strenght. So for exemple the wood golem with str 6 with +50 % barnaxus = Str 9, more than champion. What else ?. Luchuirp are one the strongest race in multiplayer.

- Very unbalanced regims as someone has said it, Fist of Leaves give extraordinary bonus compared to the others regims. It is obvisous that the elves are laaaargely the strongest civs, with +1 hammer per forest, super health and super free happyness bonus (+20 bonus at max) and super units (fawyn then satyrs). The designer of elves was very partial for sure.

Gardien of nature should just be removed, or only give access to few features, as more treants, and better camp (+1 in food +1 hammer +2 commerce). But farms, mines and workshop -1 food and +1 unhappyness. Something like that (gardians of Nature).

- Too strong heroes for certain civs as the Svartalfar hero, easy to have fast and quicky unkillable fast when he grow up and took first attack and promotions. Things which should be done ? Add an option in game to desactive all hero, or simpler, make them largely weaker but with more spells or special promotion, as raider, immortal hero. As it, hero can be usefull but tend to stay in defense, no more massive destruction weapon.

- Invisible and hidden units are overpowered off course. Invisible units are unseeable so you can scout and spy all what you want for no risk. And hidden units nead perfect sight promotion (very hard to have unless you are empyrean) or I guess, hawk or invisible eye spell to been seeable. And in normal games you have others things to do that to check every turn your land with hawyk.

In my opinion invisible units should be removed, and hidden units should only work as spell (without noise because in FFH2 you can heard the spell of your ennemy wich is absurd) in forest/fortress/city, and be removed if any spell of movement done. Like it you could hide assassins or strong reco units for interesting tactics. But only perfect sight should be able to see these units, no hawys or invisible eye.

- Too efficiants hawks and invisible eye you can too easily scout land with them especially the invisible eye. To me it should just be good to scout with a range of one square and a view of land unit. No more. If not you can too easily anticpate ennemy move, for no cost or risk.

- Too strong assassins who are too efficiant to kill adept, mages, priest. All civs should have a guardman unit with promotion, takable with bronze working, strong as axe but -1 attack. Assassin should be rare and usefull only in rares situations, I think.

- Too strong cannibalize promotion wich can transform any defender unit in immortal defender, especially with some first attack promotions. Cannibalise should only work in attack.

- Too strong siege units with 80 % luck to still leaving after attack. Just be made as in Civ IV, or as in MoM, which is long distance (1 or 2 square) bombarders and small reduced of health (as their name say, siege unit are mainly made for make siege).

- Insane strong priest of veil which you can use for one or two units to totally weakened a full army. No, their spell should only touch 3 units at max, 8 for the last priest unit in technological choice. Priest are now the stronger mages of all.

- Unbalanced spells of mages as the spell which give Ignore terrain defense, or all mass spells should be removed. In my opinion there should not be any mass spell, only spell for 3 (+1 the adept) 6 (for mages) or 10 units (for archmage). If not, it is too easty to have free immunity to first attack, +1 first attack for all army, then immunity to terrain defense, regeneration for all army etc.

All this is too strong, and cost nothing (In Master of Mana spells cost mana but in FFH2 you can abuse them).



I have finished with the unbalanced things I would like to be changed for a descent multiplayer game without rules everywhere as no elves no orcs no hidding no satyrs no centaurs etc.

Cordially.

Bold suggestions Joff, i agree with most of them.

-Raider trait and related mobility issues : I think you're right, it's too much, such a promotion should not be given free. Knights and Shadowriders can easily snipe cities at late game and horse archers and chariots dominate mid game.

- Insane and ridiculous powerfull satyrs, Very unbalanced regims : We are on the same page, i cannot agree more

- Luchuirp Production and golems: Luchuirp's early production from their world spell , free engineers are really too much. Very easy to abuse this towards mercurian gate or trolling other players wonder focused play. (For example, fast second city and one shot, heron throne when someone took lanun.) About the golems, i think it may be unfair to build %50 powerful golems, but receiving this towards Barnaxus is a flavor of the game and can be ignored. And also fireball golems may be strong, but they lack mobility, so they got pros and cons and imo they are balanced.

-Issue with Alazkan : I agree, if a player rush towards poisons and make him aeron's chosen (which i think is not that hard), he is a terminator, killing machine.

-Invisibility, cannibalize, siege weapons : I disagree, the mechanics and counter mechanics are just fine.

Mages vs Priests: Well i expect mages to be much more stronger than priests, because they are harder to build, need nodes, they have lower starting power, 1st lvl spell are much weaker than priest abilities. (For example, 5 powered Pol can summon 4 power tiger, build forests, heal and can build temples if needed, but adepts have 1 lvl petty spells..)

Phew! I was about to post some changes and discussion here after our latest MP game but I think I'll wait a bit for this discussion to blow over.

JoJo, I just got out of a set of MP games where some of these issues were touched on. There was a lurichuirp, a hippus, FoL ljos and a mage amurite, which ticks most of your boxes. I was Clan, and ended up winning alongside the Infernals. I've also played a small game against kurios.

I've addressed all of your points below, but because that's a huge read I've spoilered. The conclusion after the spoiler is much more succinct.



The general conclusion is:

You make some really good points, but I have a big issue with the fact that you've stated that:

Recon is OP
Mounted is OP
Priests with collateral are OP
Mages are OP
Siege is OP
FoL is OP
Veil is OP
Octopus overlords is OP
CoE holy city is OP

You've listed more than half of the unit types and religions in the game as OP. Addressing them all gets tedious and you are very unlikely to get consensus. Why not save us both time and go with the things that AREN'T broken and need help? Looking at the unit types, that's a much more manageable list:

Melee line
Archer line

Which incidentally, are the two things most people agree need buffing. I've already started work helping out the melee line, which I'll address later. So I actually agree with you, in a roundabout way, I just think you are going about the subject totally wrong.

There are two golden rules when it comes to balance:

Balance tweaking should always be parsimonious: that is, the simplest change necessary to have the intended effect is the best change.

Balance tweaking should always consider a whole entity and not individual components of that entity. In this case, this applies to nerfing already weak civs like the lurichuirp or raiders mahala.

I think these often get forgotten in the heat of the moment.

CurseUppl said:

• Barbarians: Hot damn, they come in droves and droves and droves. I'm thinking that it either needs to be tuned down a little or they should come a little later. The barbarians are really good at pillaging, which is both a positive and a negative. It means that every turn I must look through my borders to check if about my improvements are about to be pillaged, and this can be a tedious problem mid to late game when you have 20 or more cities. That or barbarians need to get less severe as time goes on, at least in well developed areas. Maybe introduce an automate-anti-pillage option or something? That way you can set a highly promoted unit to always head out of the city and attack any pillaging unit before it destroys a tile.

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Barbarians are now mostly handled by my BarbsPlus modcomp. It's in development and therefore far from being perfectly balanced.
The goal is to have about the same level of barbarian strength as in vanilla FfH with the raging barbarians option turned off. For raging barbs on, strength will be maybe increased a bit.

If you want, you can play around with the spawning speed factors (and I encourage everyone to do so!): in your extramodmod directory, search in /Assets/XML/GlobalDefinesAlt.xml for BARBARIAN_SPAWNING_SPEED. You can also change animal spawning there. Lower values cause barbarians to (re)spawn slower.
Maybe that helps.

There also may be a problem with wide unsettled areas, as I suspect that the many barbs that spawn there beeline a player. But I'm not sure about that.

Also, as Terkhen already mentioned, the barbs in deserts are sometimes especially annoying. This will be probably be fixed soon.

What blackmane says make sense although I strongly disagree that Luchuirp is generally considered low tier. While their wood golem and barnaxus takes the heat from early and mid game along with the Bambur their world spell gives great engineers for free. How can you call such a civ low tier? well I also happen to think that FOL is stronger then most religions because of the reasons Xelnaga mentioned above (extra health and happiness, satyrs and very good hero) and raiders is a lethal trait in the hands of a civ like Hippus who can have 5 moving knights which can move 15 squares with engineering. Basically u need to have either choke points for entering your lands or an army at every city.

PS: I also know that Jojo is an experienced MP gamer and I'm one of Xelnaga's friends who abuse FOL almost every game

Xelnaga,

- Luchuirp Production and golems: Luchuirp's early production from their world spell , free engineers are really too much. Very easy to abuse this towards mercurian gate or trolling other players wonder focused play. (For example, fast second city and one shot, heron throne when someone took lanun.)

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It is clear that certain worldspell are stronger than others. Illians, with golden age for 9 turns + frozing of any production and science/fold for ennemy, are lethal in attack. Or Elohims (30 turns of total immunity to invasion) spell, which is very strong compared to Calabim bloodsucking. But in another hand, Calabim rox and Elohim sux.

About Luchuirp their worldspell is strong but it is typicelly an Okay world spell because it does not unbalance totally a situation, or give immunity as the elohim. There are very larger unbalanced things so I don't focus on the worldspell balance. Any changements about them should be done after all the big picture.

About the golems, i think it may be unfair to build %50 powerful golems, but receiving this towards Barnaxus is a flavor of the game and can be ignored.

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Generally, there are barbarians and animals in game. If there is, you reach easily the level 6 to have combat V.

And if there is no barbarian or animals, you can always make your experience versus an A.I.

It is only in games without any A.I or wildland than pexing Barnaxus is not acquiered.

And also fireball golems may be strong, but they lack mobility, so they got pros and cons and imo they are balanced.

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I think you should not make comparaison beetween infantery units and cavalery/recon unit in term of power. The fact is that for none augmentation of hammer cost, you can have fireball mage incorporated in all golems built. This is overpowered and an easty reachable technology.

I think any champion army with iron is defeated largely by the same cost hammer army of wood fire golem (and wood golem wich drop fireball is a bit unlogical ^^).

My proposition about luchuirp workshop would be like :

- Fire workshop give "fireball siege", name like that, to all siege units built in the city. It makes that : each time a siege unit use Bombard on a city, it creats a fireball for free. So, it makes luchuirp very strong in siege (as dwarves are strong with their trebuchet).

- Shadow workshop give access to the hiddable "spell" to all gargouille golem recon (they ll can hidd in city fortress or forest, as I proposed).

- Light workship give free perfect sight to gargouille golem and iron golems (not wood or others).

I disagree, the mechanics and counter mechanics are just fine.

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It is normal to dont be able to defeat a defensor with hords of units. Strong str units are enough strong by nature, they dont need a promotion which make them unkillable in defense (so that is why I suggested this promotion only worked when attacking).

Mages vs Priests: Well i expect mages to be much more stronger than priests, because they are harder to build, need nodes, they have lower starting power, 1st lvl spell are much weaker than priest abilities. (For example, 5 powered Pol can summon 4 power tiger, build forests, heal and can build temples if needed, but adepts have 1 lvl petty spells..)

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That is why I proposed to nerf the veil priest by reducing his spell to only 3 units at each adjacent square. They are still very strong like that, a kind of mobile artillery.



Blackmane,

Blakmane said:

Phew! I was about to post some changes and discussion here after our latest MP game but I think I'll wait a bit for this discussion to blow over.

JoJo, I just got out of a set of MP games where some of these issues were touched on. There was a lurichuirp, a hippus, FoL ljos and a mage amurite, which ticks most of your boxes. I was Clan, and ended up winning alongside the Infernals. I've also played a small game against kurios.

I've addressed all of your points below, but because that's a huge read I've spoilered. The conclusion after the spoiler is much more succinct.

Spoiler :

Raider trait

I agree, this is a fantastic trait. However, there's been a lot of discussion on this in the past, and I get the impression people generally agreed proper road management largely negates the power of raiders civs. Certainly there are raider leaders such as Mahala and Decius (Bannor) who are considered low-tier, which makes me hesitant to think this trait is an absolute game changer. I've faced svarts and hippus in PvP before and, although they are scary, I never felt raiders was the sole reason - rather, it is their synergy. I don't think it needs changing yet.

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Years and years of discussion and still people have the most varied opinions about such an unbalanced game. And we still get nowhere!!

"Luchuirp are one the strongest race in multiplayer"

If you know what you're doing. Most players will not agree with you in the slightest.

I'm sorry, I have no time to write one of my usual detailed quoted responses to all posts right now (I'll write a proper post at a later time, don't worry), but I wanted to say something before the current discussion derails the thread completely.

Horatius said:

Years and years of discussion and still people have the most varied opinions about such an unbalanced game. And we still get nowhere!!

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This.

As I have mentioned many times before, ExtraModMod's changes to balance after the inclusion of Erebus in the Balance changes are meant to be minor tweaks, or specific to EMM new features. Complete balance is not one of the goals of the mod (I don't believe it is even attainable in FFH without making changes to it that I wouldn't like) and my lack of time means that I wouldn't be able to code them even if I wanted to. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that ExtraModMod is already balanced (it clearly isn't), that discussions about a full rebalance of the game are wrong, or that the proposal is wrong.

Because of these reasons, I'm afraid that the current discussion about huge rebalances is out of topic in this thread. I'm sorry to be blunt, but I would prefer if it were continued in a separate thread. That way, the discussion about balance changes will be more fruitful, and it won't monopolize the thread of a modmod which will not able to implement them anyways.

Thanks!

Ok Terkhen, you have right.
I'll no more discuss of it here.
Thanks you for your work.

Terkhen said:

I'm sorry, I have no time to write one of my usual detailed quoted responses to all posts right now (I'll write a proper post at a later time, don't worry), but I wanted to say something before the current discussion derails the thread completely.



This.

As I have mentioned many times before, ExtraModMod's changes to balance after the inclusion of Erebus in the Balance changes are meant to be minor tweaks, or specific to EMM new features. Complete balance is not one of the goals of the mod (I don't believe it is even attainable in FFH without making changes to it that I wouldn't like) and my lack of time means that I wouldn't be able to code them even if I wanted to. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that ExtraModMod is already balanced (it clearly isn't), that discussions about a full rebalance of the game are wrong, or that the proposal is wrong.

Because of these reasons, I'm afraid that the current discussion about huge rebalances is out of topic in this thread. I'm sorry to be blunt, but I would prefer if it were continued in a separate thread. That way, the discussion about balance changes will be more fruitful, and it won't monopolize the thread of a modmod which will not able to implement them anyways.

Thanks!

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Hi Terkhen,

I agree with you completely. Sorry for derailing - I did try to spoiler things so it wasn't too huge.Do you still want me to post a report on the latest game which tried out some of the changes -warrens etc-, as discussed previously? There was an OOS and a few obvious bugs as well as general feedback.

Others: I'm happy to continue discussion in another thread. I have a mergemod I am happy to add things to if people have minor changes (-50 fawn city attack etc) they want to try out. Otherwise I heartly encourage you to go in an create your own minor branches for your groups - XML editing is extremely simple and most things mentioned here are easily done.

Terkhen said:

I'm sorry, I have no time to write one of my usual detailed quoted responses to all posts right now (I'll write a proper post at a later time, don't worry), but I wanted to say something before the current discussion derails the thread completely.



This.

As I have mentioned many times before, ExtraModMod's changes to balance after the inclusion of Erebus in the Balance changes are meant to be minor tweaks, or specific to EMM new features. Complete balance is not one of the goals of the mod (I don't believe it is even attainable in FFH without making changes to it that I wouldn't like) and my lack of time means that I wouldn't be able to code them even if I wanted to. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that ExtraModMod is already balanced (it clearly isn't), that discussions about a full rebalance of the game are wrong, or that the proposal is wrong.

Because of these reasons, I'm afraid that the current discussion about huge rebalances is out of topic in this thread. I'm sorry to be blunt, but I would prefer if it were continued in a separate thread. That way, the discussion about balance changes will be more fruitful, and it won't monopolize the thread of a modmod which will not able to implement them anyways.

Thanks!

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Thanks Terkhen.

Regardless of strength and output, I think the idea of a warrens that doubles the units produced is far more fun and thematic then one offering +100% production, even with the Multiple Production Modcomp.

Hi Terkhen,

I'm assuming you are busy so I'll keep it to bugfixes and warrens:

Due to version differences you may need the modmod we're using. I uploaded it to my dropbox here. It contains only some XML changes (no more from last time) so it *should* be possible to play and get the OOS without it.

1) We haven't seen Acheron spawn once after the Barbsplus change. I assume he has been set to only spawn in high wilderness, but the value is probably too high. We had a lot of barb cities last game in relatively remote areas: it didn't help.

2) A few OOS related to incorrect installs still (some people didn't do a completely fresh install - copying files over the top causes eventual OOS). I won't upload saves, there's no point.

3) OOS every turn when a player who didn't summon Hyborem leaves and rejoins as Infernals. Saving and rehosting fixed this. Attached as Infernal OOS 1.

4) OOS at the end of the game when infernals cast Hyborem's Whisper on Clan capital. Hopefully reproducable. Attached as Infernal OOS 2.

5) Hippus AI repeatedly triggered Palus boss barbarians at the start of the game and ended up killing themselves to werewolves (you can still see their cities west of clan lands in both of those OOS saves). AI needs to leave these places alone - I understand the intent (Palus was closer to the lurichuirp, who they DoW) but the AI is not smart enough to use this kind of strategy.

6) New warrens do make a very different feel for the Clan. No food to warrens production means they have actually lost their rapid expand (I know this isn't intentional). Instead producing multiple units, I used it mostly to enable quicker high-tier units. I also found in multiplayer, being forced to go into city screens to queue multiple units was a huge micromanagement nightmare in lategame. I was usually last to end my turn. Sorry, I think I am on the 'prefer the old warren mechanic' bandwagon now.

7) Related to the above, the AI does not understand that food is not added to production modifiers. When building settlers or workers I would have to manually reassign tiles in the city screen to get optimal build times. This bug has probably been around since forever, just unnoticed: I'll report it in MNAI too.

8) Multiple production mod allows some emergent prophecy of ragnarok behaviour. Even in my non-production-optimised city I could pump the AC at an uncounterable rate (5+ a turn from that alone). Testing in SP I managed 10-11 AC a turn in a more optimised city (heroic epic etc). Prophecy of Ragnarok might need some extra code to make sure it is applied only once per turn.

And that's it! I hope the OOS saves are useful for you. I don't know where the Barbsplus changes are but if someone can point me to them I can look at the Acheron issue at the very least.

Suggestion: Make the Prophecy of Ragnorak effect on the AC based on the base strength of the units (and possibly gives a benefit to units built in the city, so as to fit with the theme of selling ones soul? Maybe the Morale promotion, to symbolize their haste to act before the world is undone?).
I apologise if these or other changes are already in place or planned as I sometimes find it difficult to work out where the mod development is up to given the format used.