"Shadow" schedule

So... They do upgrade without being worked on then?... Or they will do soon?... Or what?...
 
IMO the team has found the nice trade-off in the implementation of Pirate Coves and Forts.Now we have a choice between working a tile more productive and another tile less productive which if worked can have a strategic relevance

From a strategic point of view 2 things could be done to improve its implementation, considered that Forts outside city fatcross autoupgrades

-upgrade speed of Forts and Pirate Coves (which needs to be worked to improve) inside a city fatcross , should be faster than for Forts or Pirate Coves which are outside fatcrosses, so that people are not encouraged to build forts only outside fatcrosses; with this implementation there would be a tradeoff among forts which costs you some production,food or commerce but upgrade faster and forts outside city fatcross which doesn't cost you anything but upgrade slower
-to avoid people spamming forts outside city fatcross, forts should be capturable by enemy units, giving them a smaller defensive bonus.
e.g.

Forts gives +50% bonus and the other bonuses mentioned to its owner

if captured gives a 20% defensive bonus to enemy units without other bonuses
 
I wasn't particularly excited by corporations in BtS, but your Guild ideas sound really interesting. Of course we'll all be able to give you more informed feedback once we play-test, but it sounds like it's going to make a nice addition to the mod.
 
*rubs hands together*

*curses not being near his PC over Christmas*

*also curses having to work lots after Christmas*

*despite all that, looks forward to building Catacomb Libralus and chasing Gaeden around :)*
 
Yeah, forts and coves will now upgrade when they aren't being worked (or even when inside a players borders). They will upgrade faster though if they are being worked.

I'm not too sold on the Cult of Dragons. It seems even less attractive than when it was a Religion. But I guess I should try first, after reading everything though, now I'm not sure I will survive till the 16th... :cry:

Im interested to see. Woodelf has expressed some concern about the fact that the cult isn't "fun" since its an entirely negative effect (at least for non-Kurio/Sheaim players. I like the mechanic because when it initially spreads you always have the ability to stop it from spreading into your city (though stopping it always carries some short term cost like causing unrest). If you do allow it to spread everytime it effects your cities you have the option to try to remove it from the city, but you only have a certain chance of success at that, and trying to remove it always causes more damage than just letting the negative event happen.

So it becomes a question of "do i take the hit now, or let it hurt a little now and try to deal with this later". I love the design paradigm, but im not sure how fun it is. Thats why I want to get it out to you guys for playtest feedback.

The Ratcatchers Guild and the Cult are both pretty negative guilds (nobody said guilds have to be positive) so it will be interesting to see what you guys think.
 
can forts be built on forests? its quite a pain to never use forts because you're better off in forests.

forts being only 10% def bonus isn't terrible so long as its not competing with forests, but if you have to pick between a 50% bonus and a 10-40% bonus its a hard sell to use forts.
 
can forts be built on forests? its quite a pain to never use forts because you're better off in forests.

forts being only 10% def bonus isn't terrible so long as its not competing with forests, but if you have to pick between a 50% bonus and a 10-40% bonus its a hard sell to use forts.

Assuming forests gave +50% defense anymore.....
 
Guilds look interesting, but I'm not sure how much I like their implementation; for one thing, most of them can never be founded if you turn random events off (not that I ever do). I don't mind having several guilds tied to events, but they seem a little too dependent on the random event system for my taste. I don't mind these guilds, but I wish there were also a few more traditional ones.

I'm also slightly disappointed that there are no guild that can convert resources for you. I was hoping for a way to get reagents, and maybe an Alchemists Guild that turns reagents/copper/iron/(possible new metal resources like lead) into happiness/health/gold income/research, but sometimes had some very negative side effects (maybe causing Typhoid Mary-like barbarian spawns, the disease related evens, and "nuclear meltdowns")

I too am wondering how you'll get the first mercenary. But in general, I think I like the Guild implementation of mercenaries better that the old way; I never liked how hired mercenaries were always melee units, or why these professional soldiers never came with any xp or promotions from earlier campaigns. This seems like it should have some extra advantage for the Hippus. (Are "the Nine" in any way related to the Ride of the Nine Kings wonder?)

I too think I prefer the Cult of the Dragon as a religionrather than as guild. I also don't like the disappearance of the Wyrmhold. I would much prefer it to be one of several cults/unadoptable religions in the game, and to have its own disciples (although perhaps not in the normal sense. Building able to build its disciples but not control them (perhaps they turn barbarian upon completion) might be interesting)). I don't like thats its effects are entirely negative (although I don't mind them being mostly negative). Also, I think it shouldn't effect the Barbs either, and that is should be introduced in Acheron's city, but not get a "holy city" until the Sheaim/Kuriotates "found" it (or possibly even not until a dragon is created)


I'm also wondering how useful the Brotherhood of Wardens can really be. I like the idea, but it seems like the cultural defenses of older cities would overshadow any defensive bonus granted by the guild (assuming cultural defensive bonuses work like they used to, and that the guilds bonus works through boosting ordinary city defense.)
 
I always picture Svartalfar much like the elves in Heroes of Might and Magic series. I just love the way they look. Will be interesting to see how they look in the game. They sound, smaller and more "sneaky" than the normal elves ;)
 
On another point, I was wondering if there has been any thoughts about adding a morale feature, let's say a group of units encounter a much larger force, all but the deranged, savage, or possibly extremely disciplined units would have a loss in morale, possibly even cause desertion. Would this even be possible in terms of game mechanics?
 
On another point, I was wondering if there has been any thoughts about adding a morale feature, let's say a group of units encounter a much larger force, all but the deranged, savage, or possibly extremely disciplined units would have a loss in morale, possibly even cause desertion. Would this even be possible in terms of game mechanics?

Yes, Loki has designed a morale mechanic for FfH. Its on the design docs for "shadow" but that doesn't garuntee it will go in (every phase has a few features which get dropped just because we couldnt figure out a clean/fun implementation, or they didnt quite fit). It definitly won't be in the version on the 16th, but we will play with it a bit and we may come up with something.
 
My first thought about the guilds was a bit negative (they seem kind of minor, kind of random, and difficult to keep track of) but after reading them again they are growing on me a little.

I guess my biggest fear is that the events could become annoying (I always found them to be in vanilla BTS, since after a few games I'd seen all the interesting ones and it was just a matter of "Oh no, another darned tornado destroyed one of my cottages, suppose I have to send another worker over".) Usually I turned them off, but it sounds like turning events off will seriously harm FFH. If there will eventually be over five hundred, that might be enough to negate the problem. I look forward to trying it out and seeing.

(Will the game work right with no events, or will a lot of things stop making sense and start screwing up the AI?)

Is Guild of Hammers founded the first time someone builds any wonder, or one specific wonder?

The new forts sound pretty useful. Is there any disincentive to building a lot of them? Is there any mechanic for capturing enemy forts (I at least hope if you control a fort in enemy territory, you can still pillage around it!) I don't think I'd want to work forts (they sound pretty unproductive) so maybe their upgrade speed could be linked to having lots of strong military units in them for a long time? (with a big bonus for a great commander)
 
So which religions go with which event type?
EDIT 2: And for clarification, these are my wild guesses.

OO - Prophecy (as stated)
Esus - Crime (maybe deals?)
Order - Judgement (presumably - from their zealous dedication to law)
Emp - Deals (from being diplomatic? Or would they get inspiration?)
Runes - Economy (presumably - from their love of gold)
AV - Inspiration (presumably - from science focus and diabolical deals)
FoL - Rebellion (total guess here, really)

EDIT: And what are their opposites? I'm not even going to try guessing here...
 
So which religions go with which event type?

OO - Prophecy
Esus - Crime (maybe deals?)
Order - Judgement (presumably)
Emp - Deals (from being diplomatic? Or inspiration?)
Runes - Economy (presumably)
AV - Rebellion
FoL - Inspiration (total guess here)

EDIT: And what are their opposites? I'm not even going to try guessing here...

Close. AV's strength is Deals (they get special deal offer from Demons, usually in trade for something). The Orders strength is Rebellion (they get special options to resist rebellion events or are less liekly to get them at all). The Empyreans strength is Judgement (remember they are our councilors and religion based on wisdom, so they will have extra options when dealing with judgement events).

For weaknesses you have to think abotu which religion would be the most likely to suffer from each of the areas. Under which religion would the people be more likely to rise up and rebel? Which religion would have the most difficulty giving logical judgements? Which religion would be the least likely to inspire new talents in its citizens? etc.

FYI: for those that are curious (not that its a huge deal) all 7 of the Guild icons are in 0.25 (compressed in the FPK file) along with their names. I was curious how many people would find them. The German FfH community found them shortly after 0.25 was released, but as far as I know they were the only ones.
 
Guilds look interesting, but I'm not sure how much I like their implementation; for one thing, most of them can never be founded if you turn random events off (not that I ever do). I don't mind having several guilds tied to events, but they seem a little to dependent on the random event system for my taste. I don't mind these guilds, but I wish there were also a few more traditional ones.

I'm also slightly disappointed that there are no guild that can convert resources for you. I was hoping for a way to get reagents, and maybe an Alchemists Guild that turns reagents/copper/iron/(possible new metal resources like lead) into happiness/health/gold income/research, but sometimes had some very negative side effects (maybe causing Typhoid Mary-like barbarian spawns, the disease related evens, and "nuclear meltdowns")

I may be wrong, but I don't think I usually agree with you. If so, let me say that this topic is a huge exception to that. I agree 100%. Again, they *do* look interesting, but I can't see how anything that relies entirely on random events can add all that much to the game.

Unless it's an event which is extremely likely to occur given the right circumstances, you're not going to have any reasonable chance of founding most guilds during the course of most games, as far as I can tell... It seems like even if an event is something like 1% likely to occur each turn given the right circumstance (which I would consider a fair probability), that still gives you no more than a 10% chance of founding that guild, assuming somewhere around 10 civs in the game, even if you're the first one to reach the tech level/pop level/whatever is required to found it. And something that random doesn't seem like it's going to add much strategy to the game.

I admit that I'm pulling these numbers straight from the rectal database, so consider this not as a complaint or grouse so much as just my honest reaction to the news. I'm certainly willing to play with guilds being exactly as described and see how they end up working out, and I do like those particular guilds, but IMHO, as MC says above, it would be nice if there were *a few* guilds that you could found by conscious decision rather than by chance. And also, it would be nice if there were *a few* guilds that let you create/exchange resources/food/production/whatever.
 
Look closer at the guilds. They depend on a Category of events (if you infer from the fact Kael says "event" on all but one, where he actually names the specifics). That means they should be INCREDIBLY likely. And with how many events are in the game, I imagine at some point they will be at least 1 in 5 turns type of occurance (I hope).

The only one which was tied to a single event (actually a single outcome of a chain of events), automatically spreads to every potential location immediately. So don't think of it as a guild so much as a VERY nice reward for going through the chain just right.

And overall, it doesn't seem to be the intention to give us guilds to play with, but rather to spice up the events and their ability to reward someone. As well as to accentuate your play style and make your decisions have some actual, lasting, consequences.


Kael: I don't even know how to view an FPK file. Wish you hid them in the gamefonts_75.tga instead, then I would have noticed ;P
 
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