FFH How to have a better experience

Hi all,

During this ten year i was played civ IV in many mod and expansion.

I think that FFH it's the best mod ever for civ IV, but yersteday i've an idea to give a better and more realistic experience during FFH games.

The problem it's that in long games IA stack ton of unit (hundred) and all improvement (spell based, weapon material, best tech) it's useless against hundred of unit. The mod, who is rich and fun for the variability of races/tech/religion etc etc, becomes a race for the more productive training yard of the world.

I' think that a solution is inside the mod, when i see some unit "limited" like chivalry or shadow (national unit) the best option is to limit EVERY unit type to a different limit.
The limit can increase or decrease for many factor (civics, technology, population of city).

The question is:

1)how it's possible to modify/add this limit?

2) any suggestion about "simplify" this idea?

Sorry for the english....:/

Blinding Light spell works well to slow down stacks of doom!

Bad Player said:

Blinding Light spell works well to slow down stacks of doom!

Click to expand...

Yeah, but i want a system that permit a limited deploy of unit, based on number of cities/population.

With this system make sense to build specialized unit (like national unit) search strategic resource and diversify unit instead of build infinite swordsman for beat opponent simply by number.

Something similar is done in the Sengoku modmod; if I remember correctly units are limited to the number of cities or certain buildings in that mod. This probably involves altering the DLL.

I think that could be very interesting.
However it is currently implemented in MoM and I think it could take much improvement !
In particular it would need a more complex mechanism… which could render it too complicated for AI.

In particular balancing wide and tall is needed.
It also needs to be balanced between strategies.
it will also need to be targeted so that it forbids mid-game 200 unit stacks... but still allow end game with many units as you might have many cities to defend, multiple fronts... etc
It will need to take into account that a too high value has no effect for most of the game (and is this not really meaningful), and a too low value weakens attackers a lot.... (as attacker need units at home and at the front) and makes being attacked on 2 front a death sentence.

For example:
-you might need multiple counters:
1 per unit-type (mounted/melee/recon/arcane/etc…etc)
or
1 per supply-type: People (melee/archer/recon/mounted) / animal (animal/beasts/mounted /recon) / mechanical (siege/naval) / magical (disciple/arcane/no-unit-type) / summons
In that case each unit-type (or unitclass) is a mix of counters:
(I'll mix the two systems in the example below)

you might want (or need) an all-purpose counter:
Example: you can build 10 melee, 15 mounted, 5 all purpose (ie: 5 of any type: 15 melee +15mounted or 10melee 20 mounted), or you have 30 People supply 20 animal supply and 20 all-purpose : you can build 20 melee (30 ppl +10 all purpose), 10 mounted (10 all pp 20 animal) or 5 melee (10 ppl), 20 mounted (20 ppl and 20 animal +20all-purpose).

-you might want units to have different cost value:
Tier 1 cost 1, tier 2 costs 2 …Etc (or better : all unit costs 2, and on that is added +1, +2, +3, +4 depending on tier: to have a less bothersome effect)

Or tier 1-2-3 cost 2 and tier 4 costs 3 or 4:
tier 4 units get +2 cost (melee /mounted /archer : +1ppl, +1mecanical ; recon : +1ppl +1 animal; lich/archmage: +2 magical ; Druid : +1 animal+1magical, High priest +2magical
arcane barge or flying barge are 2 mecanical 2 magical; Queen of the line is 4 mecanical.

or more complicated

-you might want to have means to influence the counter(s) (for tall and wide):
. Techs : each archery tech increases the archery unit counter? Or each military tech increase the supply count.
. Ressources? Each game resource (+ horses) increases animal counter by 5, each iron/copper/mithril increases mechanical by 10, each grain/fishs/sheep/pig/ cotton/ gold/gems increases People by 5.
. City number
. Wonders
. Civics ?
. buildings:
-you want each civ to be unique
Ljos could get less costly archers? or Ljos get +10 initial archers slots, and +3 per city…
Clan could get a double (or tripled) counter, but Ogres cost more
Khazad could get a smaller initial and per city counter but have 2-5 free (melee or mechanical) per forge / dwarven forge + 2-5 all purpose (or ppl) per beer /grain / brewery /tavern, + 1 all-purpose/ppl per 100 gold in treasury ?
…etc

-you might want to have means for some units in city to not count toward the counter: dungeon / castle / walls / taxe office / …etc allow each (or globally) for "free" units in city. Or any unit in city/fort can be garrisoned … (see MoM) and the buildings only reduce the cost to "free" them

-you might want to have heros not count in the counter.



An alternative to the two systems above would be to have only 1 supply counter, with a huge value, and many elements influence the supply counter and the unit-supply cost : some in a fixed way and some depending on the situation of the unit

play this modmod: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=486227

it includes More Naval AI for a much improved AI and Erebus in the Balance for a much better gameplay balance

You actually already have this same mechanic in civ 4 in the gold cost of maintaining a large army and since the AI is already programed to take that into account simply better editing the army supply cost would be the easier route to take.

Although I do like the idea (I considered it after playing the awesome Sengoku-Mod mentioned earlier), I chose to not tackle it in my modmod because it would imply rebalancing everything to a point in which you would nearly be doing a new game. Many FFH2 mechanics, such as for example spells, would also need to be reworked in order to fit with this limitation. Realism Invictus also includes new stack limitation mechanics, although they are very different than what you suggest.

Yeah, what's the issue with just increasing the gold upkeep for having a large army and possibly another mechanic could be making cities unhappy if you have a large military stationed outside your borders?

AI mods are a must for FFH. More Naval AI is generally considered to be fine.

Calavente said:

I think that could be very interesting.
However it is currently implemented in MoM and I think it could take much improvement !
In particular it would need a more complex mechanism… which could render it too complicated for AI.

In particular balancing wide and tall is needed.
It also needs to be balanced between strategies.
it will also need to be targeted so that it forbids mid-game 200 unit stacks... but still allow end game with many units as you might have many cities to defend, multiple fronts... etc
It will need to take into account that a too high value has no effect for most of the game (and is this not really meaningful), and a too low value weakens attackers a lot.... (as attacker need units at home and at the front) and makes being attacked on 2 front a death sentence.

For example:
-you might need multiple counters:
1 per unit-type (mounted/melee/recon/arcane/etc…etc)
or
1 per supply-type: People (melee/archer/recon/mounted) / animal (animal/beasts/mounted /recon) / mechanical (siege/naval) / magical (disciple/arcane/no-unit-type) / summons
In that case each unit-type (or unitclass) is a mix of counters:

Spoiler :

Melee/archer/disciple is 2 ppl (people) / mounted is 1 ppl 2 animal / recon is 1ppl 1 animal / arcane is 1 ppl 1magical / catapults/cannon is 2 mecanical / boats are 2 mecanical

(I'll mix the two systems in the example below)

you might want (or need) an all-purpose counter:
Example: you can build 10 melee, 15 mounted, 5 all purpose (ie: 5 of any type: 15 melee +15mounted or 10melee 20 mounted), or you have 30 People supply 20 animal supply and 20 all-purpose : you can build 20 melee (30 ppl +10 all purpose), 10 mounted (10 all pp 20 animal) or 5 melee (10 ppl), 20 mounted (20 ppl and 20 animal +20all-purpose).

-you might want units to have different cost value:
Tier 1 cost 1, tier 2 costs 2 …Etc (or better : all unit costs 2, and on that is added +1, +2, +3, +4 depending on tier: to have a less bothersome effect)

Or tier 1-2-3 cost 2 and tier 4 costs 3 or 4:
tier 4 units get +2 cost (melee /mounted /archer : +1ppl, +1mecanical ; recon : +1ppl +1 animal; lich/archmage: +2 magical ; Druid : +1 animal+1magical, High priest +2magical
arcane barge or flying barge are 2 mecanical 2 magical; Queen of the line is 4 mecanical.

or more complicated

Spoiler :

scout is 1 people, warrior 2 ppl, axe: 2ppl 1mecanical, Champion is 3 ppl 1 mec,
Horsman is 2 ppl 2animal, Chariot is 2ppl, 2animal, 1mecanical, (HA is 3ppl 2animal), Knight is 3ppl 2 animal 1 mecanical, …
archer 2ppl, Longbow is 3ppl, X-bow is 2ppl 2mec,
Arquebus is 2ppl 1mec
catapult is 2 mec, cannon 4 mec
hunter: 1 ppl, 1 animal, Ranger : 2 ppl, 1 animal, assassin : 3ppl ; Beastmaster : 2 ppl, 2 animal
adept 1 ppl, 1 magical, mage 2ppl 1 magical, archmage 2 ppl 2 magical, lich 1 ppl 3 magical
Wood golem is 2 mecanical, 1 magical,

-you might want to have means to influence the counter(s) (for tall and wide):
. Techs : each archery tech increases the archery unit counter? Or each military tech increase the supply count.
. Ressources? Each game resource (+ horses) increases animal counter by 5, each iron/copper/mithril increases mechanical by 10, each grain/fishs/sheep/pig/ cotton/ gold/gems increases People by 5.
. City number
. Wonders
. Civics ?
. buildings:

Spoiler :

stable increases the mounted unit counter, training yard for the melee counter…etc
or stables increases animal counter by 5 and People by 5, training yard/archery yard increase people by 5, mage guild increases magical counter by 10 (more?), forge increases mechanical by 10 (or increases melee by 10)
bear cage/lion cage…etc each increase the animal counter by 3

-you want each civ to be unique
Ljos could get less costly archers? or Ljos get +10 initial archers slots, and +3 per city…
Clan could get a double (or tripled) counter, but Ogres cost more
Khazad could get a smaller initial and per city counter but have 2-5 free (melee or mechanical) per forge / dwarven forge + 2-5 all purpose (or ppl) per beer /grain / brewery /tavern, + 1 all-purpose/ppl per 100 gold in treasury ?
…etc

-you might want to have means for some units in city to not count toward the counter: dungeon / castle / walls / taxe office / …etc allow each (or globally) for "free" units in city. Or any unit in city/fort can be garrisoned … (see MoM) and the buildings only reduce the cost to "free" them

-you might want to have heros not count in the counter.



An alternative to the two systems above would be to have only 1 supply counter, with a huge value, and many elements influence the supply counter and the unit-supply cost : some in a fixed way and some depending on the situation of the unit

Spoiler :

like : you start with a 100 counter,

each unit have a base supply-cost between 4 and 15: scout is 4, warrior is 5 archer/recon is 6, axe is 7, horseman is 8... each mundane tier get roughly +1-+3 depending on cases: ex champion is 9, Immortal is 11, chariot are 11, HA are 10, Knight is 13.
Adept/disciple can be 5, mage/priest 9, archmage/lich/Highpriest/Druids 13

Being out of your borders gives +1 to recon (+0 to animals) and +2 to others.
Conquest put out-of-border counter at 1 for all units (save animals)
Druids get -1 in grass, -2 in forest/ancientforest/jungle, -2 near river, -2 if the tile has no improvement

unit-supply cost : Reductions:
Being fortified gets you -1
Being in a fort/castle or city gets you -1
Being in a city with infirmary / (forge ? …brewery…tavern) gets you -1 per building (capped at 0)
Being in a city with religion/ temple of the religion of the unit : -1 (-2)
Being in a city with stables gives -1 to mounted units.

Civs;
Ljos get -2 to all archers
Hippus get -2 to all horses
Amurite get -2 to all arcane (but not disciples)
Clan supply counter is doubled (but unit costs is the same)
Doviello don't get any "out of border" effect and have no animal cost
"Crusade" gives -1 per civ you are at war with
…etc

Increase of supply counter
Having stables gives +4 to total, having forge gives +10, Palace gives +50, summer/winterpalace gives +25 …etc tavern gives +3, theatre gives +2, colosseum gives +3, mage guild gives +5 …etc
Each pop gives +1
Each city gives +5
(something for tall civs?)
…Etc

Having such and such civic increases the supply counter by 20%, 50% …Etc;
Each tech increases supply counter by 2% ?? or by a fixed amount depending on the relevancy of tech to support units "culture" doesn’t give much, military gives small, supply/food/weapons gives medium / strategy/tactics/ give much:
…Etc

When your unit-supply cost is greater than your supply counter you get : angry people ? -10%str on all units ?? units are randomly deleted, starting from less experienced units?

Click to expand...

Very Interesting.

This is near what i think about the problem.

uthertepes said:

Yeah, but i want a system that permit a limited deploy of unit, based on number of cities/population.

With this system make sense to build specialized unit (like national unit) search strategic resource and diversify unit instead of build infinite swordsman for beat opponent simply by number.

Click to expand...

The game has a counter for huge stacks: magic. Mages are overpowered, as most spells hit ALL the units within a radius. A good example is the Astrakein dude or whatever he is called. A few Wind II mages can reduce the strenght of all stacks within 2 radius to 70%.
Anyway, as they told you, you can stall a stack almost forever with Blinding Light and hit and run tactics.

Part of the fun in fighting huge wars in this mod is, for me, to smash my stack against the AI's stack. Never was my game more exciting, than when I marched a 100-unit stack right into Infernal territory, complete with healers and magic support and everything, and killed Hyborem with it - who had his own gigantic stack of units, which in the end proved stronger than my own stack even after Hyborem's death. Of my own stack, only a few horsemen ever made it back home. (I later brought back another doomstack and killed the Infernals for good. The game was on Erebus mapscript, with snakey valleys, and the AI mostly just sat there, waiting for my invasions, doing nothing but marching units back and forth over their limited territory.)

If the AI manages to march a huge stack into my lands before I am ready - well, that's game over then, and trying better next time!

Flipantropo said:

The game has a counter for huge stacks: magic. Mages are overpowered, as most spells hit ALL the units within a radius. A good example is the Astrakein dude or whatever he is called. A few Wind II mages can reduce the strenght of all stacks within 2 radius to 70%.
Anyway, as they told you, you can stall a stack almost forever with Blinding Light and hit and run tactics.

Click to expand...

I heard this over and over.

Okay there are a lot of map scripts and mods. But so far as I know Chalid Astrakhein(m?) requires you to get Religious Law in absolutely every one. So getting him is a long, long way off.

Now as far as using magic to stop stacks of doom... Really? Okay, which mod are we talking about? I've seen Blinding Light as a level 1 spell, and I've seen it as a level 2.

Or you could go Empyrean, and use Rathas and Radiant Guards. But face it, the Empyrean pretty much sucks for everything but Chalid and the Blinding Light of the two mentioned unit types. Almost every civ is better off with Leaves or Kilomorph than that one. At least as far as economics and development go. Then you have the kind of specialized civs that are designed to have it all burn (Sheaim) or tied to a particular kind of location (Lanun).

Now you might say you can use mana. Well as far as I know there are two mana types that let you do something similar in paralyzing units in a stack - Ice and Sun.

Okay most mods Kuriotates and Malakim have Sun mana and no one else does if I remember correctly. Ice mana is only with Ilians in most of them (don't think Doviello get it in most of them). Or you can wind up with Letium Frigius in your territory.

Meaning for the most part you can forget about Ice Mana. So you have Sun mana.

Well I hope the node you are developing has lot of ice around it, because otherwise the only use you have for that thing is clearing ice. That's it. Well pumping Chalid up.

So you have to dedicate one of your mana nodes to Sun mana, without worrying about any other use you might have for that thing (or you might have Mirror of Heaven, think that has Sun Mana in most mods).

Just saying it's not a given you are going to have Blinding Light available. You sure have to give up a lot to get it.

There are a couple of other way, I think. The Khazad can have four Mushroom Beastmasters that do something similar. I think there are some kind of nature things that let you do something like it in some mods, but it is a level three thing (Treants maybe?).

Then you have the problem of the mages getting enough xp to actually become mages. Really easy for some civs and leader; you wait a while with others.

And then there is the thing people bring up about using the Air II lightning spell, or Fireballs against stacks. Again you need certain mana types.

And there is more. Assuming your civ doesn't have the right type in Palace mana, you have to research Knowledge of the Ether, Elementalism/Divination, and Sorcery to actually make the nodes and the mages.

Assuming you have the nodes, and don't absolutely need the mana for something else.

Also unless you have the tower of alteration, you aren't guaranteed to stop everything or close to it in a stack. Some of them are LARGE as has been discussed.

Now you can look ahead and do all this. If I can tell I'll be fighting the Sheaim eventually, I make sure to get mages with Life II, because of the darn Pyre Zombies. But sometimes it doesn't work out.

@sunbeam - thank you. I always get a little annoyed at those who cite completely impractical strategies as an excuse for why someone shouldn't be having trouble. "The Kuriotates are the one civ that doesn't need to build on the water; they can always get airships!" Yes - because having not built on the water means that fishing, sailing, optics, and astronomy are exactly what I want to spend the early game researching.

In any case, I feel like the author of this thread is quite aware of all the strategies employable to survive large stacks. The question at hand is introducing a limit. Calavente's logistics are intriguing but extremely complicated. Modifying supply cost is in my opinion a better idea, but I've always marveled at how the AI thinks they can afford as many units as they get with their present cost.

It would be interesting to know whether or not the AI ultimately takes supply-costs and the tech-hit into account when deciding to build its armies. I believe I've seen mods where you can disable unit cost - does anyone know if the AI actually gets even bigger armies, or if some other mechanic is stopping them before they reach total economic collapse? If the former, ramping up supply cost should be sufficient (unless the AI is dumb enough to actually totally collapse their economy. Then we have a bigger problem), but if it's the latter, could we impose a hard cap of 10x or so of your "free unit" cost? I'm not sure exactly how that scales in his game but I'm presuming it increases with cities and population.

I'm very much no modder, so I wouldn't know how to implement this anyways, but does that sound like it might be "balanced"?


Post note: @Bad_Player, I saw your idea of large stacks generating plague or some such in a nearby thread. It should absolutely be possible to generate a chance to bestow a promotion on units in a stack of some arbitrary number. Something new, other than diseased or plagued, which should be able to be healed with an herbalist or perhaps just infirmary, but not by priests. I imagine it would do some amount of damage each turn, and perhaps have a small chance to spontaneously heal, but on average kill those afflicted if they are not rushed to a hospital.

Frankly, I kind of feel like this is what "plagued" itself ought to do. I think I might make that change for myself, minus the spontaneously-infect-a-stack mechanic, which would probably be simple enough in Python but require some way to convince the AI to...not use stacks of doom, and if that can be done the underlying issue is kind of already solved!



Also, I just had a great idea, probably not remotely possible but so much more realistic for war and Civ4 would be much better if it were designed this way from the get-go: units should consume food somehow, and take "hunger damage" if they don't have access to it. Any given tile should support its food yield for free, but if that is exceeded, there has to be a clear "supply route" between the units and a city. So, any food that would be put into stockpile is first sent to any units that need it, and only the leftovers contribute to growth. I suppose you'd need a toggle switch to force the city to stockpile all its food.
Recon units, I imagine, would not have the food requirement. And non-living units are of course exceptions. And probably animals/beasts too. Hey, this actually sounds like it would be a good mod. Does anyone think there may be a way to pull it off?

Jecado said:

@sunbeam - thank you. I always get a little annoyed at those who cite completely impractical strategies as an excuse for why someone shouldn't be having trouble. "The Kuriotates are the one civ that doesn't need to build on the water; they can always get airships!" Yes - because having not built on the water means that fishing, sailing, optics, and astronomy are exactly what I want to spend the early game researching.

Click to expand...

What are you hoping to hear? Obviously you have to actually invest effort in your economy so that you can unlock all of the cool stack-demolishing toys. Blinding light, collateral spells, etc. aren't "impractical", they're integral to basic FFH battle tactics, they just aren't casually handed to the player. If you're dying before you can get any of the myriad options available online you either need to work on your empire management or turn down the difficulty.

BobCW said:

What are you hoping to hear? Obviously you have to actually invest effort in your economy so that you can unlock all of the cool stack-demolishing toys. Blinding light, collateral spells, etc. aren't "impractical", they're integral to basic FFH battle tactics, they just aren't casually handed to the player. If you're dying before you can get any of the myriad options available online you either need to work on your empire management or turn down the difficulty.

Click to expand...

Oh, I was really hoping to see the *other* line of thought in the thread resurrected. In-game strategies for dealing with enemy tactics are all well and good, but the original thought in this post was that this game can be even better if the enemy utilizes tactics a bit cleverer than "hundreds of the same unit in a single tile". Mostly it's an AI question, but some mechanic which forces the AI to distribute their hundreds of units amongst many tiles may be workable, and I was really hoping to hear if anyone had any fresh ideas or contributions to that concept.

Mostly I was hoping to hear if my wacky ideas are remotely possible, as I have not been brave enough to try learning how to mod the game myself.

If you just want to stop the AI from building hundreds of units, then the best solution is to give them the same restriction that prevents human players from doing so- make them pay heavy maintenance for huge armies. If the AI is still able to construct massive doom stacks because you're playing on Deity and it gets buckets of free gold, well, you're getting the same high-difficulty experience of Civs III and IV vanilla.