Hinterlands

There's been some talk of it before, but what kind of ideas do people have about a large, unsettleable region in FfH maps?

One problem I find in my games is that the entire map gets colonized by the middle of the game, and then barbarians, animals, and beasts are simply gone.

With a largish region that can not be settled, these aspects of gameplay could last for much longer. Recon units of exploring these regions and spotting enemy forces slogging their way through the jungles/frozen-waste/whatever, more chances for great monsters to rise up and to send heroes out to slay them, and so on. Trade networks wouldn't necessarily be complete, different groups of civs would have only each other to trade with. Mortal enemies might not be able to get to each other, being forced to engage in cold wars while they use diplomacy to seduce their enemy's neighbours into signing open borders agreements...

Which version of Civilization was it which had that cool mod with four different worlds? I'd be surprised if the Civ4 engine can swing that, but damn was it ever cool. Of course, in that mod, there was a believable reason to be unable to enter those regions -- they were completely different worlds.

The question would be, why can't these areas be settled (at least not at first)? Are they covered with some terrain that is simply too inhospitable? Would cities on those tiles be so short on food that they could never grow past a size of 1 or they would be stuck with 0 production or something? This is where cool ideas are needed, to provide compelling reasons for such a mechanic that would fit into the FfH lore.

Well, if you could massively overhaul the graphics for terrain types, you could split the map 4 ways.

You all start in one corner of the map, the "normal" world.

With advanced knowledge of OO religious specialties, or some other water related magic, you can go to another corner of the map, "underwater"

With advanced knowledge of some Air related magics, or RoK and some mechanical wonders, you can access another corner of the world that is "Floating Isles"

With REALLY advanced metamagical knowledge, you can access the final corner of the map, the Metaplanes.


Each would of course be a completely seperate branch of the tech tree, so you have to select which of the areas you will access (Metamagic is kitty-corner to the real world, requiring you to pass through one of the other 2, or use a special portal to jump units over through some special features that are semi-common, or possibly through Meta-Magical nodes).


Of course, you are essentially talking about a mod-mod for FfH that is as radical of a change as FfH was from Civ.

I don't think anything so elaborate is needed: the survival phase of the game is only supposed to last so long.

Playing a larger map with less than the standard number of players creates a similar effect to a hinterland. Try doing this and turning on the Labruscum and Wildlands options when creating a custom game... That'll create extra barb cities and extra animals that have plenty of room to move and expand.

Edit: Or you could also try that option that starts with the world frozen and slowly thaws it.

I often play with no settlers and advanced start to have that very experience

I think there was discussion about making an area for Hyborem to spawn at. With demonic barbarians I guess.

Atm, try starting with No Settlers, that will prolong the expansion phase.

Grey Fox said:

I think there was discussion about making an area for Hyborem to spawn at. With demonic barbarians I guess.

Atm, try starting with No Settlers, that will prolong the expansion phase.

Click to expand...

I've never tried the No Settlers option; do barbarians still create cities when that option is selected?

mdfairch said:

I've never tried the No Settlers option; do barbarians still create cities when that option is selected?

Click to expand...

Yeah I think so, and especially if you start with Barbarian world.

Still, some initially inaccesible random - generated areas (again, I say this without ever looking at what functions are available) coupled with quests would be awesome. Imagine, a different AoI everytime. Of course, ICE and scenarios might do the trick too.

There's a few mapscripts out there that create a so-called 'new world', ie. a continent where no Civilizations start. You're probably better off looking for a solution that way.

There's a few mapscripts out there that create a so-called 'new world', ie. a continent where no Civilizations start. You're probably better off looking for a solution that way.

Click to expand...

The only problem with that is the AI seems to be very poor at settling new continents, so you`d probably just end up with another whole land-mass to yourself.

Isn't that how "Terra" maps work? All civs start in the so-called Old World?

I've found it that way at least... often whoever races to the New World first finds it inhabited by huge amounts of barbarian cities, least when playing Labruscum / Raging. Nice to find what amounts to a pre-made empire, so long as your troops can hold a nice beachhead.

I'm trying out a large fantasy map with no settlers, and indeed, it does take much longer to for players and AI to colonize it. But barbarian cities still appear so fast that there aren't a whole of empty regions.

Is there any way to increase the cost of distance maintenance, to encourage the razing of these tremendous numbers of barbarian cities -- rather than conquest?

You get pretty much the desired effect on maps with a higher than normal percentage of Tundra.

mdfairch said:

Is there any way to increase the cost of distance maintenance, to encourage the razing of these tremendous numbers of barbarian cities -- rather than conquest?

Click to expand...

That would probably just cripple the AI more.

I'd just like to be able to play on a map larger than the default Huge without the game crashing all the time.

On a map twice as large as Huge with extra barbarians and animals and with Winter still in effect on Marathon speed.... the survival stage lasts a lot longer than normal. So fun. Until the game crashes. And then crashes 20 turns later. And then crashes again. And so on and so forth.

How about having the Jungle canopy essentially unsettleable by everyone in the early game save for the Clan of Embers, who are then handicapped by the chance for their units to become barbarian if at peace with the barbs?

Same for tundra and Doviello.

Not bad, except that the Illians should definately also be able to build cities on tundras as easily as the Doviello, and the Barbarian State should be able to have cities in jungles too. It might also be right for only the Illians to be able to settle on Ice, only the Infernals could on Hell terrain, and only the Malakim in deserts without a source of fresh water. Hmm..would it be overpowered if only the 2 elven civs could settle on a forested tile before they have the tech to clear forests, and if perhaps the forest wasn't removed when they founded a city? (I was also thinking it might be nice for the Lanun to only be able to setle on the coast or at least rivers early on, but limiting their settling could be tricky and would almost certsinly be crippling in AI hands and/or on certain types of maps)

Techs would open up the abilities to settle on all such terrains later on (although in the case of jungles it might just be better to burn them down). It might be appripriate for these civs to start with unresearchable techs (similar to seafaring) that allows settling these terrains and makes them more profitable.

In addition to extening the expansion phase (The team disagrees with Thennorin, as do I, about not needing to extend the survival/expansion phase. Kael and many others have complained about how formulaicly games always grind down to the point where all the world is owned, and very little can be done. That may be how the real world is, but it doesn't fit his image of Erebus), this would make civs more likely to build in thematically, and perhaps also stategically, appropriate locations.


I don't like the idea of making barb-trait leaders' units have a chance to turn barbarian, unless it were really rare. If several civs have their own special native terrains, then I don't think giving the Clan this ability would . I still think it would be nice for the barbarian trait to allow for a common "brawl" random event which I proposed a couple days ago (in which 2 of their units fight eachother, with a chance to injure or kill one of both but also a chance for them to gain the xp that they couldn't get from barb-farming. It might be appropriate for heroes and maybe national unit to be immune from this, or else always win the brawl)

Heh heh. Could also make it so you have to complete a quest in order to settle anything out of your own cultural borders, to simulate the "fear of the unknown/wild" aspect of a primitive setting where there should always be some wilderness. But if that was the case it would be best to have cultural borders spread a little bit faster in at least the capitol to allow for SOME building of new cities without crippling yourself too much with tile overlap.

MayNilad Man said:

How about having the Jungle canopy essentially unsettleable by everyone in the early game save for the Clan of Embers, who are then handicapped by the chance for their units to become barbarian if at peace with the barbs?

Same for tundra and Doviello.

Click to expand...

I think that if civs were simply unable to produce any food from certain kinds of tiles (without the appropriate technology or civ-trait), that would be enough to limit growth. After all, founding a whole bunch of cities that stay at size 1 until turn 400 is ... not wise.

Of course, the presence of one or two food-generating resources would allow the cities to grow larger -- but then, that's quite realistic; think of the settling of, say, Canada, initially based entirely on the presence of furs.

Nevertheless, if only the barbarians and clan of embers are able to produce food from jungle initially, no one other than the AI is going to be silly enough to found a bunch of cities in the middle of them. Likewise for Tundra. Of course, ice is already that way.

This would work best with mapscripts that tend to produce large patches of similar terrain; for maps like Fantasy, it would be a complete waste of time.

I don't like that idea at all. The point is that we want to prevent the map from getting filled up, leaving more wilderness, not to fill the map with almost worthless cities. This wouldn't really solev the problem, and would make the early game even slower and more tedious; that is the exact opposite of what the game needs. I think that growth and production should be better in the early game, letting you establish an early base but not to quickly expand and dominate the whole map.

Also, I think this would really hurt the AI. Actually making them unable to build cities here early in the game would improve the AI, since it couldn't make so many dumb choices as to where to place its first cities.