DREWid said:having read through a lot of the stuff on this page and the ffh forum, thought id put in my input on a few issues...
1) Morai and burning blood
is it not possible to give them back the ability without them being able to go up the divine spell path if they upgrade, i.e. a check for promotions (Does unit have the vampire trait? if equals yes, no level 3 divine).
Or remove the burning blood trait if they promote (the description had the frenzy destroy the body because the vampiric frenzy was to much for the mortal body... but now there vamps the body can control it and they will probably have learnt to control the rage... and for those with a tendency to still frenzy, there obviously destined to become brujah!)
Or would it be possible to mirror the mechanics of the spell and give them burning blood as a promotion rather than a spell
my personal favourite is option 2, burning blood was a big part of the feel of the calibam with there total disregard for there people, it also ties in with the almost divine light the morai hold the vamps in... also it led to the situation were you sometimes had a difficult chose in that do you burning blood that unit with 5 stars to defiantly win... or do you risk it in order to promote the unit to a vamp. with this option you also remove the ability to create 'hero-killing-missiles' (i.e. create morai (with burning blood) upgrade to vamp (keep burning blood) eat city till pumped, cast burning blood, attack hero with an effective combat str of up near 20... theres not many heros who can take that, so yes i think it needs to be removed from vamps
I will see what I can do. The other option is to make a special ability for the Morioi that doesnt require divine and does the same thing as burning blood.
2) Game length
Keal you have this spot on, getting to the end of the game with the highest score isnt winning its survivng, and that shoiuldn't be enough to 'win' in a fantasy setting. fantasy is about epic wars, massive monuments and al consuming religion and yes spreading your culture throughout the world (mainly because this is seen as a good reason for someone else to jump down the offenders throat and begin the epic wars (yes classic fantasy elves im looking at you!))
Personally i always play custom games and turn time victories off... but that might just be me!
3) Adaptive Trait
Wow.... great idea... but WAY to hard, also robs some of the races of there flavour... but from a balance issue... to hard, especially in multiplayer where you can match your traits to beat you opponents (yes i know thats the point of being adaptive... but game balance!).
i know your looking at being able to switch traits after 100-200 turns... but here is my radical suggestion to try and match the huge advantage this gives them ... let them start with one less trait until this point, then they can adapt and gain this second (3rd - kurocates) trait once the games is running and they can see what they have to adapt to... id also remove it from the barbs, but more for reasons of preference (just cant see the orc sitting down to discuss culture!)
The next patch only has 3 adaptive leaders (cardith, cassiel and varn). Id like to see it play out with just them and see if it makes the grigori, kuriotates or malakim to powerful. It it does maybe we will shorten the list or make lesser versions of the traits that they can pick from.
4) not using resources
now i dont know if this is a problem with vanilla civ or just ffh, but the comp doesn't seem to use resources properly or upgrade units. for example the computer has bronze in the boarders(or iron) and the bronze (or iron) working tech(several times because i've given it to them!) and yet doesnt mine the resource and still requires it on the trade screen, this obviously means they dont upgrade warriors,axemen,macemen and in almost all games i find myself fighting ranger/scout, archer/crossbows, religious higher tier units but no melee units as they have the resource requirement.
this seems to be more of an issue if the ai has built something on the square before it gets the tech (which it normally has) now any human would probably nuke a farm or cottage to mine there only source of copper/iron, but not the ai
I hadnt seen that. I'll run a few test scripts and see what happens.
5 Religions
I'm wondering if its possible to add some adaptations to some religions if there founded by certain civs, its probably best if i show you with examples
The Hippus - Nature
The only religion that seems to naturally fit with the hippus would be the fellowship of leaves(or whatever its called) as a nature worshiping base, but i see these raiders more as open plains/horse worshipers than loving the 'slows-the-horses-down' trees , i know it would be to much to totally swap all the benefits round to grasslands/plains but would it be possible to put in a different version of the temples and priests (i.e instead of temple of leaves have temple of the horse (same effects/different name) with the same sort of thing for the priests) also the hero, would it be possible to give the hippus a different hero if they found the religion, someone on horse as the elf dont fit!
The ORCS (barb civ) - Way of the earthmother
not much to ask except if they found this religion would it be possible for them to have a different skinned and named hero... a dwarf with his background just aint right with the orcs! keep all the same abilities and the hero slot, but just make him someone else!
The Calabam - Ways of the deep
If i play the vamps and found this i always imagine this as them finding some ancient immobile vamp god under the holy city (and being as this is normally founded way before vamps) and look at the drown as ancient unevolved vamps (ala season 7 buffy) and the stygian guards as holy vampire guardians... basically with this combo i think it would be sweet to rename the drown (something like the 'first childe' or 'first children') and a vamp type hero instead of the defult one.
Theses suggestions would/should only occur if that civ founds the religion, and not come into effect if it spreads into the civs citys from outside it just seems a shame that several civs have to 'make-do' with religions that are obviously tailored to other civs (leaves/elves - eartmother/dwarfs) and short of creating more religions, i thought this might be the next best thing.
i realise these suggestions are very work heavy but hope that you at least find the comments useful (even if a little long!)
thanks for listening!
Personalization of the religions would take a lot for a moderate effect. There is a lot of plans heroes, especially when we go into the "Shadow" phase and start to introduce quests and I would hate to complicate that by having different flavor heroes for the religions.