Can something be done about dungeon spawns?

You're still making the same arguement of "its in the game so its in the game" instead of saying why its good. Its impossible to defend against a human messing with your dungeons/lairs on a Small map and not much easier on a densely populated Standard.

Its a dumb dice roll using a 25hammer/free unit for a chance at an unstoppable instant win. If this happens in a 4 player game it turns it into a 3 player game, which is the worst type of game.

Yes, its a feature of the game but so what? Boss spawns pre turn-80 are a bad feature. Goodie huts, worker theft and simple reconaissance are reward enough for early, aggressive map exploration and control.
 
I think it is lost on you becouse you newer played travian. It is realy my fault on using it. In travian, the entire game is created around completely crushing the other player. So seing it as a bug would be like seeing an internal combustion engine as the bug in a car.
The same thing I think works for CIV or FFH/FF. The object of the game is to win, and win as spectaculary as possible. If that meens you have to finde holes in someones defenses, than it is called strategy and not bug obuse.
No, it really was lost on you. I'm reasonably certain the poster wasn't saying this is a bug; He was analogizing your statement to similar ones that are based on "It's in the game, therefore even if it's a bug it should stay in".

Well, if you are playing a small map, I can see the problem, but on a large map by the time someone gets to your land, you will have defenses. If you wanted to find someone specific on a huge map with no idea where to look for him and with only that 1 starting scout, you will need more than 30 turns to do so unless you have silly luck in spawning next to him.
Um, no? We were playing on Large/Continents/9 Civs, which should be more squares per civ then your suggested Huge/12 split. The exact turn my friend was wiped out on was turn 38. Optimistically, if you produced ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for all that time but Warriors, you should have about 7 or 8 of them, except you will have (And should have) produced other things, since spamming warriors won't let you scout, and will keep you from developing land.

It's also /boring/. Keep in mind that although a competitive one, it is still a /game/, and is supposed to be fun. FFH2 has enough problems with early game consisting of "Hit enter repeatedly" without adding arbitrary low-odds high-risk factors that force you to churn out 8 warriors for the first 30 minutes of play.

And rushing scouts, scouting half of the map to find an enemy city that actualy has a dungeon nearby, and than hoping that the said dungeon actualy spawns high level units is not a valid strategy?
I did not say it was a necessarily invalid strategy. I said it was an incredibly low risk way to potentially knock someone out. If you make it hte cornerstone of your strategy, I suppose it bears significant risk, but unlike the chariot rush, it does not require significant investment to score a rather ridiculously sized return. They are /very/ different things.


See above, there is no counter, but it is not easy to do unless you have insane luck with conditions so that everything fits into place like a milion peace puzle.
So... why are you defending it so aggressively?

The benifit is to promote agresive playing, fast expansion and most importmantly, not eliminating the barbs. If you can keep them out of your lands but on (and close to) those dungeons it adds a completely new layer of strategy.
But FFH2 has so many things specifically to discourage Rapid Expansion, up to and including Godless Killing MAchines and Ninja Spiders, as well as your only opening civic increasing maintenance costs. Is it supposed to be REX or the somewhat more sedate pace FFH2 as a whole encourages in its early game? Also, what is supposed to be the benefit of pushing the Barbarians near those dungeons? As near as I can tell, Dungeons spawn nothing except from poor results.


There is also substantial risk invaulved for the user. In order to acheave the imposible (a 30 turn takedown using this tehnique on a large or huge map) the player needs to lieraly churn out scouts and send them scouring the map hoping he can get a lucky break and find a city with a dungeon near it. If not, the entire trouble is wasted.
I'm telling you right now and with possible access to the save, it is not impossible to die on turn 38 to this. It is probably /nigh/ impossible to orchestrate, though. Your posts indicate this, as does common sense. Bear in mind that I am trying to approach this from both angles; Both that of the aggressor and the defender. As it stands, this is a fairly unsatisfying result for both. Unless I am absolutely only playing to win, this is by far the most boring way to knock someone out, because of the sheer lack of involvement by the aggressor. For the defender, it's incredibly frustrating to die with no effective chance to stop it.



Again, my bad. I used the term lair instead of dungeon in a few places.
Not really a values judgement. It's just a clarification I was making since I'm reasonably sure I've been loose with the terms as well.

@^: What a much less winded way of saying what I was thinking. Yeah, basically. Good recon is its own reward, no need to add in possible unstoppable nukes.

I don't know when it's appropriate to allow single, levelled T4 units, but Turn 40 is not that time.
 
I would've thought that an easy way to prevent players trying to produce the unstopable enemy civ killer would be to rule that the enemy created comes after those that spawned it, or even more evilly if it is created close to an enemy civ then there is a % chance of it joining that team, sort sees through your evil tactic sorta thing.

Both would make that tactic rather less palatable. (I personally favour the second)
 
Had to do some work, back now so I can reply:

You're still making the same arguement of "its in the game so its in the game" instead of saying why its good. Its impossible to defend against a human messing with your dungeons/lairs on a Small map and not much easier on a densely populated Standard.

Its a dumb dice roll using a 25hammer/free unit for a chance at an unstoppable instant win. If this happens in a 4 player game it turns it into a 3 player game, which is the worst type of game.

Yes, its a feature of the game but so what? Boss spawns pre turn-80 are a bad feature. Goodie huts, worker theft and simple reconaissance are reward enough for early, aggressive map exploration and control.

I already agreed that for a small or medium map it is bad. But I am also saying that for a Large or Huge map it is OK completely. We are not contradicting each other, simply dancing around each other.

Um, no? We were playing on Large/Continents/9 Civs, which should be more squares per civ then your suggested Huge/12 split. The exact turn my friend was wiped out on was turn 38. Optimistically, if you produced ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for all that time but Warriors, you should have about 7 or 8 of them, except you will have (And should have) produced other things, since spamming warriors won't let you scout, and will keep you from developing land.
Optimisticly you would hope to find a city with a dungeon close enough to it and to have it spawn a bad event... these two together are uncomon enough alone, even if you disreguard finding your partner/target.

It's also /boring/. Keep in mind that although a competitive one, it is still a /game/, and is supposed to be fun. FFH2 has enough problems with early game consisting of "Hit enter repeatedly" without adding arbitrary low-odds high-risk factors that force you to churn out 8 warriors for the first 30 minutes of play.
I can only advise you to newer play vanila civ vs me. I tend to go for a warrior rush on smaller maps and chariot rush on larger ones to kill as many human co players as I can before turn 100. So my playing style would probably rate as: "Extremely unfun" by your standards.

I did not say it was a necessarily invalid strategy. I said it was an incredibly low risk way to potentially knock someone out. If you make it hte cornerstone of your strategy, I suppose it bears significant risk, but unlike the chariot rush, it does not require significant investment to score a rather ridiculously sized return. They are /very/ different things.
It requires you to invest a lot of in the early game to make scouts. Than you have to find your oponent, navigate arround other civs and hope that there is a lair. The risks to your economy and growth are perfectly balanced with the outcome if all things fall into place.

So... why are you defending it so aggressively?
Becouse I see nothing bugged with a perfectly balanced early kill strategy.


But FFH2 has so many things specifically to discourage Rapid Expansion, up to and including Godless Killing MAchines and Ninja Spiders, as well as your only opening civic increasing maintenance costs. Is it supposed to be REX or the somewhat more sedate pace FFH2 as a whole encourages in its early game?
Exacly, there are so many things specifically to discourage Rapid Expansion that we need something to actualy encourage it. Othervise we will see turtling as the only strategy.

Also, what is supposed to be the benefit of pushing the Barbarians near those dungeons? As near as I can tell, Dungeons spawn nothing except from poor results.
:Facepalm: Well to have said barbarians kill enemy scouts trying to explore said dungeons.

I'm telling you right now and with possible access to the save, it is not impossible to die on turn 38 to this. It is probably /nigh/ impossible to orchestrate, though. Your posts indicate this, as does common sense. Bear in mind that I am trying to approach this from both angles; Both that of the aggressor and the defender. As it stands, this is a fairly unsatisfying result for both. Unless I am absolutely only playing to win, this is by far the most boring way to knock someone out, because of the sheer lack of involvement by the aggressor. For the defender, it's incredibly frustrating to die with no effective chance to stop it.
Actualy, it is not a boring way to cnock someone out. It is a high risk/high reward way. I see it as weary fun if you can pull it off.

That is at least what I think of it. I have seen to many things in to many games get nerfed becouse players dislike high risk/high reward situations in favor of low risk/safe game ones.


My point:
...Unless I am absolutely only playing to win...
Err... why else would you be playing? :confused:
The most fun in games is when two or more equal players play only to win. Than the challenge level and the fun level are the greatest.
 
Another thought. If the lair would have spawned a very high level enemy, and it is early in the game (maybe less than turn 80, or maybe link it to era?) then the unit simply dies.

I know we removed instant death on lair discovery, but still.

An alternate option (possibly in addition) would be to hold the high level unit in the dungeon square for 25 turns (or maybe until turn XXX). That is, let the player figure out how to react.
 
I think a preferable thing would be to scale the chances of it happening based on map size and number of players.
 
Optimisticly you would hope to find a city with a dungeon close enough to it and to have it spawn a bad event... these two together are uncomon enough alone, even if you disreguard finding your partner/target.
Oh god. You're actually weighing this as one's Early Game Strategy, their modus operandi, aren't you? You don't seem to understand. This isn't necessary for you to be killed. Allt hat has to happen is that somebody gets sufficiently lucky exploring a dungeon near someone else's territory.

I can only advise you to newer play vanila civ vs me. I tend to go for a warrior rush on smaller maps and chariot rush on larger ones to kill as many human co players as I can before turn 100. So my playing style would probably rate as: "Extremely unfun" by your standards.
Um, yeah, it pretty much is. Not because you're winning, but because the early game is just so much warrior spam and rushes. There's no 'english' to it, as it were. I'm not playing Civilization, or any derivative thereof, to early game rush. If I want quick tactical play I'll break out mythic. I play a 4X to have a long term game.

It requires you to invest a lot of in the early game to make scouts.
As a strategy, yes, it requires a lot of hammers. The thing you keep missing is that this doesn't require a concerted strategy to do, merely luck.

Becouse I see nothing bugged with a perfectly balanced early kill strategy
It isn't bugged. It's stupid to make possible. They're very different things.

Exacly, there are so many things specifically to discourage Rapid Expansion that we need something to actualy encourage it. Othervise we will see turtling as the only strategy.
Um, I don't think anyone turtles. Not REXing isn't turtling. It's not Rapid Expansion. They're different things. And uh, I don't think you get it.

If one took the steps you suggest to prevent this strategy, you are probably being objectively suboptimal and inviting yourself to a guaranteed mid game kill. The odds of ti successfully being pulled off on you, without any actual interference from you whatsoever, are incredibly low, because T3/4 spawns from lairs are very unlikely, as near as I can tell. You put yourself at risk from Barbs spawning warriors and just destroying your expy, killing you by destroying 220 early game hammers.



:Facepalm: Well to have said barbarians kill enemy scouts trying to explore said dungeons.
...What? No, that's not going to be what happens. If you push the spawn point near the dungeon, it's more likely to walk up to your LoSer, unless you get incredibly lucky and the barb spawn comes just as the enemy scout does.
Actualy, it is not a boring way to cnock someone out. It is a high risk/high reward way. I see it as weary fun if you can pull it off.
I see it as incredibly boring and uninvolving, as well as ridiculously unbalanced because there are so few counters. You haven't actually listed many counters, you've listed logistical problems. That is to say, constraints on the enemy that keep them from doing this, not actions I take to actually stop it.

That is at least what I think of it. I have seen to many things in to many games get nerfed becouse players dislike high risk/high reward situations in favor of low risk/safe game ones.
Well, that's sort of the option that should be favored here as a rule. It's Civilization, albeit a derivative. If this played to anyone's strengths I could maybe see the argument. I understand that Doviello and CoE need to decisively win in the early game, but even that is with massive brute force, not a lucky break with a scout..

And yeah, it's pretty . .. .. .. .ing boring dude. You did standard recon + pressed a button for the kill. That is incredibly little involvement on your part.
 
I don't recall: is there an option to keep lairs/dungeons out of the game entirely? See, I don't pay too much attention to lairs: they don't seem common enough to affect my games esp. as I now know to leave 'em alone if I don't want some tough undead hombres attacking my cities.

But, if your hero ever rescues an adventurer as Gilden Silveric does on occasion - heroes can sometimes do that - then we Ljos will go to town. I'm with those who find the occasional good thing amusing enough to keep, and the bad? Free XPs - but if the worst should happen, then we've learned a valuable lesson: to fear the hand of Kael.
 
Oh god. You're actually weighing this as one's Early Game Strategy, their modus operandi, aren't you? You don't seem to understand. This isn't necessary for you to be killed. Allt hat has to happen is that somebody gets sufficiently lucky exploring a dungeon near someone else's territory.
Well, that is the only possible way of doing it. If you rely on luck alone for it to happen, than you are better off trying to take on Archeron in FF with a single warrior.


Um, yeah, it pretty much is. Not because you're winning, but because the early game is just so much warrior spam and rushes. There's no 'english' to it, as it were. I'm not playing Civilization, or any derivative thereof, to early game rush. If I want quick tactical play I'll break out mythic. I play a 4X to have a long term game.
Huge map + many oponents + early rushing + mid game rushing + late game rushing (the first to the tech = the first to the swarm) is the most fun ever.
The entire point is to be in a constant strugle, othervise it is about as fun as playing in a sandbox.

As a strategy, yes, it requires a lot of hammers. The thing you keep missing is that this doesn't require a concerted strategy to do, merely luck.
Well, it is a concentrated strategy to actively explore the map. It also requires a hell lot of luck. But that is the fun, it's sort of a silver bullet that is there if you can get it. Like that epic thing just around the corner. Something every scout dreams about betwen two anima atacks.

Um, I don't think anyone turtles. Not REXing isn't turtling. It's not Rapid Expansion. They're different things. And uh, I don't think you get it.
There are weary few reasons in FFH, even less in FF to expand early on. And without early expansion or early wars the early ages are realy dull. I love the recent adition in FF to turn off inflation so that people can expand more rapidly.

If one took the steps you suggest to prevent this strategy, you are probably being objectively suboptimal and inviting yourself to a guaranteed mid game kill. The odds of ti successfully being pulled off on you, without any actual interference from you whatsoever, are incredibly low, because T3/4 spawns from lairs are very unlikely, as near as I can tell. You put yourself at risk from Barbs spawning warriors and just destroying your expy, killing you by destroying 220 early game hammers.
...What? No, that's not going to be what happens. If you push the spawn point near the dungeon, it's more likely to walk up to your LoSer, unless you get incredibly lucky and the barb spawn comes just as the enemy scout does.
What is the fun if there is no risk. Again, you sound like someone who likes playing on setler where the game is a sandbox.

I see it as incredibly boring and uninvolving, as well as ridiculously unbalanced because there are so few counters. You haven't actually listed many counters, you've listed logistical problems. That is to say, constraints on the enemy that keep them from doing this, not actions I take to actually stop it.
But the logistical problems are the counter.
The counter is <drumroll please> that some barely competent player, barbarians or some ******ed AI will roll over you while you are sufering from the effects of said logistical problems. If you can't defeat your oponent on a large/huge map before he does such a thing to you. Than you deserve to die.

Well, that's sort of the option that should be favored here as a rule. It's Civilization, albeit a derivative. If this played to anyone's strengths I could maybe see the argument. I understand that Doviello and CoE need to decisively win in the early game, but even that is with massive brute force, not a lucky break with a scout..
But that is the entire point of FFH and FF. The game is not balanced, it is not suposed to be balanced. It is not suposed to be played like a sandbox where everything is safe and secure.
If they had wanted it to be balanced, they would not have made Doviello and CoE as they are. They would have allowed all civs to get canons and muskets, they would have allowed all civs to be roughly equal. But they are not.
This is not like regular civ where the only destinguishing feature are a building and a unit. There is no balance in the normal sense here.

If you don't play to crush, burn and destroy as much as you can, than you are a sandbox player in my book. And sandbox players deserve to be crushed. No offense.
 
To clarify, I never meant to refer to this issue as a bug. As Monkeyfinger was too, I was talking about games in general, which should have been pretty obvious reading the rest of the sentences quoted. And PPQPurple was also bringing up other games, like Travian, to prove his point; I have nothing to say about that but again I was talking about design in general. Things like Infinite Chain Grabs in various fighter games are examples of what people insist should still be in the game when they are obvious bugs.

As for this situation, I also still believe it's an uncounterable strategy and shouldn't be in there. Even on Huge maps you can still get to your enemy very quickly so that point is plain wrong; the only scenario that would give the defender enough time would be a Huge map but on like Quick gamespeed, or say a 1v1 on a Huge map, and I wonder why you would play those settings. PPQPurple seems to be ignoring the fact that ANY civ can do this - it's not one civ that has to build all the scouts; everyone who starts with one has a chance to find one of their neighbors, meaning that someone is likely to get killed. And I also don't like the solution of civs "reserving" lairs or dungeons for themselves; the best answer seems to be extending the grace period for extreme spawns.

The problem with the above argument is that straight out warrior spam and essentially always war isn't how many people want to play the game - other aspects exist for a reason. There are already plenty of options if someone and their friends want to play a straight out elimination match; you can turn on raging barbs, turn off all victories except Conquest, turn off tech trading, set Always War, etc... I'd wager you would be ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED by plenty of other players around here on other reasonable settings if you just use those strategies. So the thing is for everyone else these lair spawns detract from both human play and single player since the AI can't really handle them either; they are worthy of a change.
 
If you don't play to crush, burn and destroy as much as you can, than you are a sandbox player in my book. And sandbox players deserve to be crushed. No offense.

So if I'm not playing aggressively competitive and exclusively to win no matter the method then I'm not playing it right? I'm sorry but where does it say that there is only one "true" way to play FfH2, and that's being aggressively competitive?
 
Well, that is the only possible way of doing it. If you rely on luck alone for it to happen, than you are better off trying to take on Archeron in FF with a single warrior.

It is the low risk/high reward that people are complaining about. Id est, when a random scout randomly gets close to a civ early and spawns an unstoppable force.

One could link high level spawn to amount of map explored by the exploring civ. That way it's still possible to use it as part of a dedicated strategy, but won't happen accidentally.

And let's add a new event to the game:

The Gods return, and declare a winner!
Only active in 1/100 games. The civ it triggers for is immediately declared the winner, all other civs are destroyed.

That should capture all the fun of randomly triggering high level spawns near an enemy.
 
Well, that is the only possible way of doing it. If you rely on luck alone for it to happen, than you are better off trying to take on Archeron in FF with a single warrior.

You seem to not understand what the poor fellow is trying to say. Forgive me if I'm wrong, as I'm not a high level player, but wouldn't it generally be a far safer option to rush using your own units as opposed to betting on an opponent having a suitably leathal dungeon spawn on their doorstop? Thus, high-level spawns aren't going to benefit people trying to play a new and interesting strategy anywhere near as often as they will benefit the guy who sends a unit exploring and discovers that a rival has a dungeon next to his borders. The guy's entire complaint is that it IS possible to get this to happen without the spawner expending resources, something you seem to fail to grasp.

It would of course be a possible counter to say that civ has a high element of luck anyway, but that's not what you're saying. You seem to be labouring under the delusion that the guy is out to screw players who incorporate dungeons into their deliberate strategies,which is not what he is saying.

Also, I believe that its simply not sensible of you to act like your way of playing is the only valid way and SHOULD be the only way is small minded and smug. To say so while lambasting another player for wanting the game changed to accomodate a different playstyle is outright hypocrisy.
 
My two cents, no big bad before turn 100 (scales on speed), and no normal bad before turn 20. You won't have to worry about some T4 monster coming to end civilization, and you can actually enjoy popping lairs near your borders.
 
As you wish. Seeing that I am surounded by builders and farms I have to retreat.

turn off all victories except Conquest, turn off tech trading, set Always War, etc...
My usual settings are Erebus, Huge, Conquest, Altar, TOM, raging barbs, double spawning of everything.

That is what I usualy play.
I am by no meens a emperor/diety player but I find that the game would be boring without those 1/1000 gods come and end the world type events.
 
If "A powerful enemy emerges to defend the lair," (or it's haunted) it seems reasonable to expect that the powerful enemy would stay there and actually defend the lair, and not beeline for the nearest city (because one would also expect that such a lair contains something of value :hint:hint: ). These kinds of events should throw enemy units off the tile (probably with chance to damage or destroy before they flee) and then root the spawned units, be they gargoyles, ogres, or haunting specters. This way, not only will these big nasties not ruin some unlucky civ, but those lairs will also be around for some later exploration.

On a somewhat unrelated note, how come all my units keep finding this damn red sword that drives them mad, yet none of them ever seem to actually pickup the sword... :hammer2:

I generally find lair exploration to be more risk than reward. And I swear the AI is peaking at the random number generator before it pops one. (I really should try some multiplayer.)
 
Somehow I like the idea of whatever spawns from the dungeon to land on the borders of whoever spawned it.



Ah, I played an emperor game recently and killed the hippus AI by doing this scout pops lair thing.
An then tho, the orc's world spell converted that unit o.O

It was approaching my civ and I though he was gonna dow me. Kinda a weak move to NOT dow me at that point imo, thats like a rare UBERyahtzee or something. But I still agree that the exploration should be dangerous for the person exploring.

I definitely like the idea of the powerful defender to ... DEFEND the Lair, hahaha
 
I definitely like the idea of the powerful defender to ... DEFEND the Lair, hahaha

Than there better be some strong artifact in it for the one that takes it down.
Not just the old enchanted blade. I have a dozen of these lying arround my barn already.
 
The current mechanic is as follows:

There is a 14% chance that a 0 level explorer will spawn a boss (the higher level the explorer the lower this chance gets).

There is a "grace" period where you dont get the worst results. The grace period is determined by ow many turns you are into the game (modified by the game speed), the handicap level, and a little random factor so we dont have a hard line. The following is the code for it:

Code:
                iGrace = 20 * (int(CyGame().getGameSpeedType()) + 1)

		iDiff = gc.getNumHandicapInfos() + 1 - int(gc.getGame().getHandicapType())

		iGrace = iGrace * iDiff

		iGrace = CyGame().getSorenRandNum(iGrace, "grace") + iGrace

		if iGrace > CyGame().getGameTurn():

			return True

		return False

So we do have a protection mechanic to keep to positive or negative dungeon results form ruining a game (Marnok had already thought of all of this and had it in his original version).

But, that doesn't mean that it cant be improved by some tuning. But I need specific examples of spawns that wipe games. There may be cases of results that should be protected by the grace limit that arent. Or the grace limit may need to be moved back in some situations.

To help me tune it correctly I need to know the following specifics:

1. What result ruined your game?
2. What turn was it?
3. What game speed were you playing on (quick, normal, etc)?
4. What difficulty level were you playing?
 
1. What result ruined your game?
2. What turn was it?
3. What game speed were you playing on (quick, normal, etc)?
4. What difficulty level were you playing?

1. I've had this happen twice, but only came to post due to this most recent. The first was.. I don't know if this is possible, but it's what happened; Spectres spawn on Doviello Scout. Spectre eats Doviello Scout. Spectre upgrades to Wraith and eats my cities. The other, after looting the save off my friend, was apparently 'just' an Ogre with Blitz that happened to eat his capitol.

I will admit the Ogre got lucky, but still, a T3 unit.
2. The Spectre Evolving into a Wraith was relatively late, at turn 60, the OGre popped turn 37, and ate the on turn 38.
3. Normal
4. Noble in both instances.
 
Top Bottom