FfH2 0.33 Changelog

Kael said:

There were a few reasons the gypsy wagons were cut. In order of importance:

1. With the addition of puppets and freaks the balseraphs are doing fine on mechanics.

2. The AI didnt understand gypsy wagons, either in protecting from them or using them.

3. They were a performance hog. In order to have wagons in the game I needed to check every unit in every city every turn to see if it was a gypsy wagon. If it was then I ran the gypsy wagon code. If you assume a map with 40 cities and 4 unis per city thats 160 python checks each turn so that we can have one unit that may or may not even be in the game. In 0.33 I went through all the python checks looking for places to improve performance and gypsy wagons were a big sore thumb.

4. Im not convinced they were ever worth the production it cost to make them (would an efficient human player ever spend hammers making wagons?). Note: this isnt a huge concern, especially in the balseraph, I dont mind giving fun options that some players can enjoy and other can skip if they want.

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Thanks for the explanation. I know you have sound reasons for the changes you make , so it's helpful to see them laid out. The performance issue alone sounds like a good reason to make the cut, although the AI's not understanding them is significant, too.

Could now every civ get unique Pagan temple ?

Two things I'd really like:

Make it so that completely destroyed civs' culture doesn't go away when entire civilization falls, so that you have to deal with 'we yearn to join our motherland' unhappy even if you make a complete conquest.

Make nationhood double 'we yearn to join our motherland' unhappiness, to compensate add additional WW reduction.

I would agree with The Jopa, doing this would allow each civ to have a minor temple to the god that they are related to. For example the Clan can have a minor temple to Bhaal, etc...

Another one could be for the Shades: A temple to Arawn that would actually be weaker than the basic pagan temple giving only half the culture to reflect Arawn's disconnect with Erabus.

The Hippus would have one for Tali

Basium would get one for Sucellus (<------ before MC slams me with lore this one is a joke....)

Gregori could get one for the One....

If their are no good matches / or its already a major relition, then a basic pagan one might be ok. IE Basium....

Let the Elohim build vampires and whatnot if they capture it. It is not exactly hard to get them to adopt the veil and there is nothing wrong with them being evil/aggressive to get terrain features. It is certainly a little stranger and dark (Order Calabim) but this is FFH.

I love the idea for the Elohim. I mentioned a similar idea about the Kuriotates (having the option of building any race in the supercities), and I'm glad to hear it was originally intended for them. Too bad it cannot be implemented effectively with the Kurios, though. This certainly makes the Elohim a major competitor for the Tower victory without even requiring vassals.

One question about Tolerant: is there something in the code to prevent the Elohim from capturing an early barbarian city and being able to build Acheron and/or the Dragon's Hoard?

Regarding Gypsy wagons, they were fun units but certainly not worth the issues Kael mentions. I used them more back when they could be used to found carnivals in Balseraph cities. Strategically, they were too expensive for a unit that gave a little money, slow mapping, and was killed as soon as war was declared.

I also like the differentiation of freaks and Loki, as many stated they wouldn't build freaks because of Loki. Removing Mutate makes a lot of sense.

Also in an odd sort of way it does indeed fit with Elhoim pacifism:

They make war against oposing empires (if anyhow) not those empires populance.


That whould perhaps make it fair to further increase their war weariness but decrease the modifier for: "we yearn to join our motherland" and reduce the time of: "viva la resistance" by a turn or two (since the people there are hardly effected in their way of life so they have a bit less of a reason to be upset by the Elhoim taking charge.).


Two rather "serious" problems with that though: First a flavor one which really sounds like a hard infringement on the flair of the civ (and a very major one for balance as well): if you build another civs palace you also get their war weariness modifier so if you capture a clan or doviello city + build their palace their ferocity now springs over to the whole elhoim empire?
(let alone malakim or infernal where they can war with more or less complete impunity afterwards. Whould actually be a reason for them to encourage veil worshippers to summon Hyborem so they can capture a city from him and go all-out warmongering without any need to take care about how many people die in said war. Very odd. To say the least.)
That sounds a bit much of tolerance (taking over the other civs stance towards mourderous armed conflicts.)
The other one with the lanun palace allowing Elhoim to get very rich yields from coast / ocean / lakes. (That at least makes some sort of sense flavorwise though and might not be as big a problem as it seems. And they can't terraform / build coves)
Don't know if there is a more serious effect from palace than Lanun seefood and warlikeness.

On the other hand Grigori adventurers originating in the Elhoim Empire and the likes really sound very neat and flavorful. And whould go further to explain why Grigori and Elhoim get along rather well in Lore. (Don't they?)

Perhaps war waeariness modifiers for Elhoim / even all civs could and should be placed elswhere? Seems like this is more or less necessary by any measure with the new Elhoim.


Also Calabim cities building vampires sounds more or less fine.
Seems to me they really follow a rule of complete noninterference (with the new trait) save some core principles (like determining sanctioned state religion. And make macropolitical decisions like when to go to war and what civics to run.). So as long as the cities populance followes these guidelines the elhoim only care for the unique places / world improvements nearby and look the other way if other matters are concerned (so as to not occupy another "populances" territory.).
Also calabim behavior is very much influenced by religion run and Elhoim have a tendency to favor "good ones" (so at worst you are eaten / opressed for the greather good and at best your matters are dicussed by an strictly hierarchical / evealued by a wealth centred society. Still rather better off than in calabim-controlled territory. Somehow... i think...)

Edit: but later than 2 posts down. So got ninjaed : + In Elhoim Lands feasting is forbidden by the games mechanics (noncalabim nations can't have their citizens feasted by vampires.). So that is taken care of already. (Doesn't mean though that no one is "eaten" in those i imagine. Bloodpet "volounteers" and others might still get their soul robbed just not on a grand scale. And some twisted things going on in those cities breeding-pits still...)

So tolerance might be a bit of an understatement / underdescription (noninterference / loose confederation might be a bit more fitting if harder to understand from reading of the word. So i can see why tolerance was chosen.).

On the other thigs: Some nice. Some unsure about. Will wait and see.
Looks like i've been wrong on doviello getting their beef up now (thought they whould get assimilation) so those seem to have to wait a bit longer still...

Just trying to remember... Is there a limit on the feast ability that vampires have which only allows it to be used on Calabim cities?

Non-Calabim vampires won't be able to feed on the population. I don't have too much trouble reconciling this with the lore- redemption, etc. After all, the background lore is undoubtedly canonical but really more a collection of interesting stories; the actual gameplay is an infinite collection of what-ifs. Forcing the gameplay to adhere rigidly to the lore would simply not be fun. At all.

Looking forward to the new Elohim mechanics! I'll admit I was hoping for something interesting to be added to the Doviello, but maybe next time.

Would it be possible to bring back the Gypsy Wagons with Loki's Spells, but they sacrifice themselves when they cast them?

I know, it's a nigglingly small unit, but it was so fun to play a multi-player game, be quiet for a few turns, and then drive my caravan of leeches across the world.

Um, for Angels being able to use weapons promotions, that sounds like an extremely major, possibly even gamebreaking, boost. Angels are what, 4+1 holy? With Iron weapons, that's 7 str, and with Mithril it's 9. I for one would just spam Acolytes at 1 per turn per major city, send them on suicide missions, and be effectively building experienced champions every turn from every city. Sure, they're 1 strength less than real champions, but they would be so easy to mass produce and are cheap to upgrade.

The AI gets a good boost from this, but it seems a bit exploitable for human players.

maibe let angels only use weapons up to iron, and giving mithril weapons to the upgrades?

Blackmantle said:

Looks like i've been wrong on doviello getting their beef up now (thought they whould get assimilation) so those seem to have to wait a bit longer still...

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I could see the Doviello getting a similar ability, although calling it "Tolerant" would make no sense for the Doviello. They could take over a city and perhaps keep all the buildings there (or have a higher % for keeping them), focusing on attacking the living instead of sacking the buildings. This would make warring more of a priority, especially post-Writing when they can conquer cities with libraries.

Kael said:

Yeah, from a flavor perspective it works so well for the Kuriotates. But it doesn't mesh with the Sprawling trait at all. At first we were goign to make the Kuriotates the Tolerant civ and move their Sprawling trait to another civ. But we backed off of that because everything in the Kuriotates design is because of sprawling (special buildings, centaurs, huge late hero) so moving the trait would mean a design challenge for the civ that recieved it and for the Kuriotates.

So we looked for other civs that we could see as allowing local customs to remain and the elohim were the next best choice. They also suffer from being very bland wthout a significant gameplay mechanic or uu's. So it made for a great fit both on the flavor and on the function.

The trait rewards warmongering, so its a little odd for the elohim. But placing it in a civ thats good are warmongering makes it to powerful. The nice thing about implmeneting it as a trait is that its easy to move around. I'll be interested to hear the playtest feedback once people have a chance to play with it.

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How about this, then: Give the Kuriotates the option, whenever they conquer (or otherwise acquire) a city of disbanding that new settlement and creating a new unit called, maybe, a "Refugee". Refugees can then move to Kuriotate cities and join those cities, allowing that city to produce the UUs and UBs of the original owner of the city that was disbanded.

I suppose that's different from the Tolerant trait, but it fits extremely well flavorwise.

This is from an old post of mine on the the angels and Iron issue...

I have played a number of games (31 d and e) now with Basium being summoned into the game. About half I have edited them to allow their base angels to use Iron weapons. From this experience I have seen the Mercurians:

1. Without Iron weapons they tend to turtle in their only city (2 if they can settle their settler). Basium will go out and sit in his allies capital or some other mundane action. He usually dies fairly quick when attacking an AV empire.

2. With Iron weapons he will actually get angels that can fight right off the bat. They will actually capture one or two cities before they run out of steam (this is expected due to the mid to late game era they are summoned), but they can hold their ground until they get more angels with experience points summoned to their side. I have never seen them get very strong but I have seen them with their ally beat me in a game (it was a culture victory with the elves). On a side note I usually remove the culture victory cause I loose to it more often

The only problem I see with them getting Iron is when a human player gets them. They get summoned with experience points (I have seen as high as 50) and I can run over other civs as long as I can keep all the other good civs at war.

The solution here I see would be allow them to use up to mithril weapons and remove any experience points from the units that died to make them. I would test it myself but I have not figured out how to do so.

My last game I let them use Mithril weapons and I was Hyborem (see save game in bug thread). I had to kill them off quick cause they were crushing my vassals. I loved it I was forced to cross a lot of land just so i could end them before they got to many angles from my other battles. Thats how I imagine how they would play in the game. Their strengths should force a rival player to face them were ever they are and eliminate them before you can attack other civs or they will just buff up and crush you.

Love the new Tolerant trait, but perhaps a +50% WW in all cities? Perhaps an additional amount in ethnic cities that you are at war against. Also they should have a higher % chance of keeping buildings in conquered cities. Perhaps they could not build Demons?

I like Yvain as a treant.

The new improvments appear to be for the Labruscum sceanario.

WIll the gargoyles spawned from the Guardian of Pristinus Pass be barbarian, or belong to the player who entered it?

EDIT-

Will puppets essentially give the Balseraphs 6 archmages?
Instead of making the puppet have the exact same magic as the summoner, make the puppet have a 10% chance of gaining every promotion the caster has. It's chaotic like the Balseraphs and much less unbalancing.

Stuff sounds good. Cant wait.

What about a second leader for the Kuriotates with Tolerant and no Sprawling?

Everything else sounds pretty good.

KingOfLands said:

What about a second leader for the Kuriotates with Tolerant and no Sprawling.

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I think Sprawling is more of a Kuriorate thing then Cardith. If you had a tailor and jewler in 10 cities instead of 3 you would be unstoppable with the gold income.

I like the Elohim mechanics, but I hope there is something to stop them from simply attacking everyone.

Rex rgis of Ter said:

I think Sprawling is more of a Kuriorate thing then Cardith. If you had a tailor and jewler in 10 cities instead of 3 you would be unstoppable with the gold income.

I like the Elohim mechanics, but I hope there is something to stop them from simply attacking everyone.

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That's probably true, and I imagine it's what Kael's talking about when he says they were 'designed around Sprawling,' but a guy can hope.

Perhaps the Gypsy Wagon could become (or be part of) a Balseraph Settler?