FfH2 0.31 Balance Feedback

Im playing a lot of 0.31 games and Im really enjoying them. But even at quick speed I can only get through so many games, so I need to hear about balance issues from you guys as well.

Im especially interested in the new spell layout and the defensive changes in regards to city defense. But in truth every aspects rolls into every other (which is what makes it so hard). So don' hesitate to give feedback about under or overpowered civis, units, traits, anything.

The war elephants might be a little too powerfull right now. Well, really just because they keep the hiden nationality when upgraded. Having an str 8, 2 move, hiden nationality unit squishing your "friends" warriors is a bit much.

Catacomb Libralus ought to be double production speed with Metamagic Mana.

vivictius said:

The war elephants might be a little too powerfull right now. Well, really just because they keep the hiden nationality when upgraded. Having an str 8, 2 move, hiden nationality unit squishing your "friends" warriors is a bit much.

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I haven't found that to be the case. As I mentioned in the bugs thread, it appears that recon units are maintaining their bonus against the Elephants when they upgrade to War Elephants. Both of mine were killed by barb Lizardmen with no promotions. They seemed to take damage easily. Also, if you keep them as HN units (I did not because I wasn't sure if they could attack like the Elephants), they will take forever to heal unless you have an early Medic unit.

Also, I don't think you are going to spam War Elephants because of the cost (they were 273 Gold for me to upgrade in my game) and them not being that prolific on the map.

I already mentioned these in the changelog, but I'll repeat them here:

The command promotions and inquisitor promotion really seem to powerful as they are; they need tech and probably promotion prereqs.


The Stonewarden's spell (shield of faith) is nowhere near as powerful as the spells of the other religions' priests' spells.



I don't think that Mokka's cauldron should create Flesh Golems. This makes the Body III spell weaker, since these are permanent summons and would count against the number you can summon. You should not be able to graft living units to the reanimated corpses of those who dies in the city radius to make them stronger. Flesh golems never fit well thematically; it should really create undead units, probably just skeletons (although they too are permanent summons, so making a new unit might be good) with their strength appropriately adjusted the same way the flesh golem have their adjusted.


Oh yeah, I still really think that the weapons promotions need tech prereqs.

I still think that warriors with bronze, and especially iron, weapons are a big balance issue. They basically keep being better bang for bucks than both swords-/axe-men and archers. The fact that they don't require a building makes them even better.

My suggestion is to remove the ability for these unit to use metal weapons (which would be in sync with their 'wooden club graphics'.

Cheers and keep up the good work,

Sandro

I'm regret the disapearance of the Poisonous Vine summon (or whatever his name), it allowed an amusing tactic (one of the good thing of FFH is its richness, a bit like MoM), where you could create a wall of plants for one of your friend or vassal, giving them each time so that you can create another. I found this was fun

Sandro said:

I still think that warriors with bronze, and especially iron, weapons are a big balance issue. They basically keep being better bang for bucks than both swords-/axe-men and archers. The fact that they don't require a building makes them even better.

My suggestion is to remove the ability for these unit to use metal weapons (which would be in sync with their 'wooden club graphics'.

Cheers and keep up the good work,

Sandro

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My thoughts exactly.

I am currently playing the sheaïm, and I wonder what unit I would have used if warriors couldn't take bronze weapons anymore.
I do agree that they shouldn't be able to take iron or mithril weapons

Humakty said:

I am currently playing the sheaïm, and I wonder what unit I would have used if warriors couldn't take bronze weapons anymore.
I do agree that they shouldn't be able to take iron or mithril weapons

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Pyre zombies. Diseased corpses. Ok, maybe those are an AV unit, but come on, you ARE trying to destroy the world. Chaos marauders. Lots of adepts.

Note: This is taken from Kol.7's thread about nagging issues... it's more pertinent here.

Kol.7 said:

The inquisition is way too powerful for the religious victory. In an amurite game I was the only civ with RoK, the others were FoL Arendel and Flauros and agnostic Illians. I destroyed the Illians and capitulated the Calabim. I payed them some money to convert to rok (you know, the tempary 10 turn conversion) and inquisitioned all their cities - wiping out OO and a chunk of FOL. The elves had about 20 cities - I converted all of them to RoK, transported a load of priests to all theiur cities, paid ~500g for them to switch religion and inquisitioned all their cities. Before I started going for religious victory FoL was 1 72% and RoK was at about 20%, at the end RoK was 88% and FOL was 8%. I think inquisition promo needs a higher pre-req.

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It seems to me you put a lot of effort and coordination bringing this religious victory, and inquisition is only part of it.

I heard someone around here proposing a tech requisite for the inquisition. I'd rather have the skill a bit less reliable. Just making it work a bit more randomly. For a touch of flavor we could have its efficiency affected by law and chaos mana:

100% remove one religion (+3%/law mana -3%/chaos mana)
75% remove a second religion (+3%/law mana -3%/chaos mana)
50% remove the third and all other religion than your state one (+3%/law mana -3%/chaos mana)
3% remove your state one (-3%/law mana +3%/chaos mana)

That would slow down the inquisitor a bit, keep its usefullness and add a bit of risk. It would also allow for a UU inquisitor with 100% efficiency (Bannor comes to mind.)

Would that be possible to implement?

MagisterCultuum said:

The Stonewarden's spell (shield of faith) is nowhere near as powerful as the spells of the other religions' priests' spells.

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One interesting point about balance in FfH. We balance at the macro, not the micro level. So the question isnt, is the RoK priest spell equal to the other religions priest spells. But is the RoK religion approx equal to the other religions? The same goes for civs and magic spheres.

Oh yeah, I still really think that the weapons promotions need tech prereqs.

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Functionally they do have tech prereqs (otherwise you could get them at the begining of the game).

Could you set the bNeverObsolete tag for all civ and religious unique units with normally unreachable promotions? I usually change this myself, as it is quite troublesome when you lose the ability to build Radiant Guards or Firebows when you research a more advanced unit.

(Warning, this might have to do with issues not related to .31 and rather FFH as a whole)

Playing the Amurites, on a Archipelego map. ANyway, to help compensate for my miniscule production, I adopted Slavery. After I got Govannon (and Hemah, OO rocks!) I went on a conquering spree of my unfortunate neighbors, the Balseraphs. Anyway, after a quarter of my victories, I get slaves, and then Govannon can teach them to raise skeletons, which means I can garrison my gains quite easily.............


I know that the smith is all about equity and teaching the gifts of magic to all, but it seems weird that he would teach enslaved warriors of a nation that you're currently at war with to summon dangerous monsters.......

The stonewarden's spell is still better then the vicar's (or whatever the empyrium's priest is called) spell. I have yet to see a situation where removing hidden nationality and stealth would help. Maybe if you are playing with at least 2 other human players.

Sandro said:

I still think that warriors with bronze, and especially iron, weapons are a big balance issue. They basically keep being better bang for bucks than both swords-/axe-men and archers. The fact that they don't require a building makes them even better.

My suggestion is to remove the ability for these unit to use metal weapons (which would be in sync with their 'wooden club graphics'.

Cheers and keep up the good work,

Sandro

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I (still) agree.

If the AI declares war vs me, i'm getting insane high war weariness after the first turn.
Well, i'm still not sure how war weariness works exactly, but getting 5 - 10 unhappiness (in my biggest city with about 15 pop), with a neutral civ and wisely chosen civics, the first turn after declared without any fighting, doesn't really look ok for me.
Shouldn't AI get it instead?
And another thing, but i'm not sure about that... i think summoned units, like elementals, fireballs etc also count to war weariness if you lose some of them?

Further, i don't like the fact you can build priests only with incense and gems etc. Well... incense seems to be plenty on a random map, but gems not, even with extra res, and if you get them they're in a jungle. Imo everyone should have access to priests by default or to be able to get them easier, perhaps with reagents OR incense for all priest types?

Another thing is that the Runes Religion, and perhaps Esus, haven't got the advantage any other one has imo. Not only for happiness, but e.g the Priests/Hero for Runes and some bonus buildings for Esus (like asylum for oo).

Sandro said:

I still think that warriors with bronze, and especially iron, weapons are a big balance issue. They basically keep being better bang for bucks than both swords-/axe-men and archers. The fact that they don't require a building makes them even better.

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The metal weapon upgrade is a fun part of FFH. I wouldn't cut it for warriors. What I would do is give them 2 strength, give them a small bonus against melee make them just a bit cheaper than scouts and voilà. You got your club wielding thugs. They would keep their general usefulness without being too much unbalanced by metal upgrades. And scouts would be better against animal from the start, but warrior would be better against barbarians.

Kael said:

One interesting point about balance in FfH. We balance at the macro, not the micro level. So the question isnt, is the RoK priest spell equal to the other religions priest spells. But is the RoK religion approx equal to the other religions? The same goes for civs and magic spheres.


Functionally they do have tech prereqs (otherwise you could get them at the begining of the game).

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I wouldn't have brought it up if I considered RoK to otherwise be one of the stronger religions, but I'd probably have to say that the opposite is true. The gold from the temples is nice, but you don't need to have it as state religion to get that. The mobile production of Soldiers of Kilmorph can be useful, but can't compare to the slave trade. (I still think that the amount of production they provide should be based on the units level or xp, probably requiring it be made a spell rather than just a sacrifice ability like great engineers/slaves). Arete is nice, but there are much better choices in that category. Its heroes don't have access to spells anywhere close to those of the other religions (although it is the only religion where both have spellcasting ability). The biggest advantage I see from this religion is thr Mines of Galdur, which of course only one player can get. And of course, the advantage is that it lets you get around the "functional tech prereqs," which I don;t think is fair/makes sense.

The stonewarden's spell is still better then the vicar's (or whatever the empyrium's priest is called) spell. I have yet to see a situation where removing hidden nationality and stealth would help. Maybe if you are playing with at least 2 other human players.

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Revelation is far better than Shield of Faith. If you are facing The Svartalfar, a Council of Esus civ, Pirates/Privateers, the Three Stooges, animals, or War Elephants (which currently keep HN from when they were ordinary animal elephants) it is quite useful, especially if these are owned by friendly civs that you don;t want to war with. (If I get around to implanting espionage in my modmod like I want to then it may just be one of the best spells in the game.) It is also much more thematic than the Shield of Faith.

^
Yes but Magister you do not need Esus for slave trade so the temple logic does not hold. And at a macroscopic level as Kael said, they are pretty even, perhaps a little in favour of RoK.

As for inquisition, although a tech requirement might be good I think the % idea above is kind of ridiculous.

"Inquistors, go and purge the heretics!"
"Sorry sir we accidently purged our state religion"
"Quick build law mana!"
Plus it complicates what does not need to be complex.