Ideas, Requests, and Feedback

A few questions/suggestions:
  • Bannor: Do you plan on giving the cleric any medic promotions at all? (It's supposed to be an early battlefield medic unit, after all; in its current stage, it's basically a more expensive warrior. At least make it upgradeable into priestlings like the Lightbringer.
The Cleric gives all units in his stack a promotion with raises their healing and I think gives them March. I think it's been that way since FF.
If it's not in his description, it should be.
The upgrading idea is still valid though and makes sense.
 
The Cleric gives all units in his stack a promotion with raises their healing and I think gives them March. I think it's been that way since FF.
If it's not in his description, it should be.
The upgrading idea is still valid though and makes sense.

I knew it did something like that. :lol:

The upgrading likely wouldn't happen; Already done by two units, don't want to expand it, frankly.
 
Yes unhealth is a bit harsh currently. Relying on fresh water and healers is the way to go; being expansive helps a lot too.

Eventually perhaps Healers will be slightly boosted. Despite what maths said, I found them quite useful to grow past unhealth. Note that a Great Physician gives you +6 health, that's +3 pop points, which is now a lot.

One thing that is lacking right now is buildings health balance, since those haven't been touched at all. Eventually there will be buildings that you will want to counter your unhealth, even more than now.
 
Ogres! Holy crap, Ogres! In my very first game, a band of 3 ogres (3 ranged 50%, 6/5) and a stoneskin ogre (3 ranged 50%, 16/18) showed up in the first few turns. After two ranged attacks on my 3-unit stack of warriors, they were all level 3+.

Am I meant to deal with ogres locking me up in my capitol?
 
Ogres! Holy crap, Ogres! In my very first game, a band of 3 ogres (3 ranged 50%, 6/5) and a stoneskin ogre (3 ranged 50%, 16/18) showed up in the first few turns. After two ranged attacks on my 3-unit stack of warriors, they were all level 3+.

Am I meant to deal with ogres locking me up in my capitol?

They're from exploration. Currently lair results aren't waited by game turn... the first patch will fix that.
 
I gotta say, I miss the Fishing Boats everywhere. I love the End of Winter challenge, and that made my game easier. Less so now :(
 
Well, it's not about making the game easier, you know? Putting FBs everywhere was awful!
 
Keep in mind that while you build improvements slowly, you wouldn't be able to grow too fast anyway due to health restrictions.
Having two workers is more than enough to build improvements!
 
play at the elves ljosarfar , a great ingeneer from exploring let me construct steamwork wonder at the 12 turn , that a bit weird .

perhaps give the elves some techs for ancient forest , like dunespeakers for desert malakim , and the inability to construct road on ancient forest .

change skeleton strength from 2(+1 death) to 4/2 .
 
Would it be possible to make the unhealth per population change via techs? It could start at 2 and be reduced by .1 for each tech that gives health buildings or just by .5 at sanitation.
 
Would it be possible to make the unhealth per population change via techs? It could start at 2 and be reduced by .1 for each tech that gives health buildings or just by .5 at sanitation.

But this doesn't address the biggest problem (and neither does boosting healers). Which is that if you don't settle next to a river, your capital cannot be size 3 without producing a worker first. I'm not sure about the late game effects of the crazy unhealth (since I find the game unfun with the current setup - to the point that I can't bear playing long enough to find out), but it seems like it would be easier once you have some resources connected up, some health buildings constructed, and some population available to turn into specialists. But early game, none of those are an option, so it has turned an already slow, boring part of the game into tedious drudgery, at least IMO.

For now, I'm just going to edit the XML and play it the way I want to...
For others who want to do that: in \Rise from Erebus\Assets\XML\GlobalDefinesAlt.xml, change FRESH_WATER_HEALTH_CHANGE to 2, and UNHEALTH_PER_POP to 1. At least, I assume that's right, haven't tested yet. New baby in the house has been sucking up a lot of my time (man, this kid can't do anything for himself!).

Anyway, sorry if I sound overly critical. I'm sure you guys will examine the health changes and determine a good balance, but for now I just don't like playing it as published.
 
They're from exploration. Currently lair results aren't waited by game turn... the first patch will fix that.

Stoneskin ogres are pretty cowardly, too, given their ability to destroy the entire world when they generally appear in games with Ancient Ruins checked. :p

I find they tend to hang around outside cities bombarding uselessly, over and again. Even when the lair weightings are in place you might want to look at the AI for these units. I can't imagine why the barbarian AI would choose to do anything but utterly steamroll with these guys.
 
play at the elves ljosarfar , a great ingeneer from exploring let me construct steamwork wonder at the 12 turn , that a bit weird .

perhaps give the elves some techs for ancient forest , like dunespeakers for desert malakim , and the inability to construct road on ancient forest .

change skeleton strength from 2(+1 death) to 4/2 .

Bug, used to be the Machinarum shrine and I forgot to remove it from the engineer. Will be fixed in the first patch.

Probably not. Takes away uniqueness from the Malakim.

Why?

Would it be possible to make the unhealth per population change via techs? It could start at 2 and be reduced by .1 for each tech that gives health buildings or just by .5 at sanitation.

That would be possible, yes. Not sure it will happen though.

But this doesn't address the biggest problem (and neither does boosting healers). Which is that if you don't settle next to a river, your capital cannot be size 3 without producing a worker first. I'm not sure about the late game effects of the crazy unhealth (since I find the game unfun with the current setup - to the point that I can't bear playing long enough to find out), but it seems like it would be easier once you have some resources connected up, some health buildings constructed, and some population available to turn into specialists. But early game, none of those are an option, so it has turned an already slow, boring part of the game into tedious drudgery, at least IMO.

For now, I'm just going to edit the XML and play it the way I want to...
For others who want to do that: in \Rise from Erebus\Assets\XML\GlobalDefinesAlt.xml, change FRESH_WATER_HEALTH_CHANGE to 2, and UNHEALTH_PER_POP to 1. At least, I assume that's right, haven't tested yet. New baby in the house has been sucking up a lot of my time (man, this kid can't do anything for himself!).

Anyway, sorry if I sound overly critical. I'm sure you guys will examine the health changes and determine a good balance, but for now I just don't like playing it as published.

To be frank: Then make sure you have a river when you settle. There's a reason they are giving out more health now. Everyone wants a river. The AI will tend to settle next to them. You just have to adapt your strategy.... Just because that spot a few tiles over gets you more resources does not make it better, when you lose the river. Make that your second city.

But yes, those global defines make it easy to change.

Stoneskin ogres are pretty cowardly, too, given their ability to destroy the entire world when they generally appear in games with Ancient Ruins checked. :p

I find they tend to hang around outside cities bombarding uselessly, over and again. Even when the lair weightings are in place you might want to look at the AI for these units. I can't imagine why the barbarian AI would choose to do anything but utterly steamroll with these guys.

I'll check their settings, may have bad UNIT_AI's.
 
To be frank: Then make sure you have a river when you settle.

To be frank: that's poor balance. Rivers are already really good. You can't irrigate without them, they give a commerce bonus, allow Watermills and the Deruptus Brewing House. You already want a river at least near by, if not settled on. Making it so you *have* to settle on the river makes the game more boring.

Several things made RifE appeal to me: For one thing, Rivers aren't as necessary as they are in vanilla civ, or even as much as they are in regular FfH. Partially because you could build any improvements without needing a resource or a worker tech (with worker techs still being desirable due to a 75% reduction in build time), and because improvement yields were higher. It was easier to get plenty of food to grow your city even without tons of farms, allowing you to focus on commerce, production, or specialists more.

So, in the new version, improvement yields are reduced, worker techs are now required (much more boring - before worker techs were helpful, but you didn't have to grab all of them in the early game if you only needed to build, say, 1 plantation to hook up a needed resource... now we're back to vanilla civ's paradigm of grabbing a bunch of worker techs relatively early in the game), most improvements can only be built on resources, and oh... if the need for irrigation due to that stuff wasn't enough to already make a no-fresh-water start into a quit-restart, now you are pratically hardcoded required to settle on a river. Plus, even if you do that, your cities are now capped at a much smaller size than before because cities could grow "too big" before.

I recognize that much of that stuff comes from FF, and is still available in FF, but RifE also has some pretty cool innovations either implemented or in the works that I was really excited about, but I'm not going to ever see most of it if the game isn't fun anymore. While I can change the unhealth problem, there's no way for me to get back the way improvements worked, and changing the unhealth for myself puts me out of sync with everyone else playing RifE.

Yeah, that's pretty whiny, I know. I apologize for that. And yes, I still appreciate all your hard work, I just think that some of the new balancing stuff is off-target. I'm also confused because from the last version, it looked like RifE was *supposed* to be headed towards easier growth and more diverse options than base FfH, and now through a complete 180 in design philosophy, it's becoming the opposite.
 
Every Time I start a game I intend to make this request then I forget. Here it is finally. When in the custom game setup screen would it be possible to have the civ name(s) next to each leader name or better yet, when you select a civ can the list of leaders be restricted to just leaders for that civ? Unless of course you choose to unlock the leaders.

For example, I wanted to start a game as the Legion and I wanted to see which leaders I can choose from but I had to click through the entire list since I didn't memorize all the leaders for that civ. I guess I could have checked the civlopedia ahead of time but this would make it more user friendly.
 
To be frank: that's poor balance. Rivers are already really good. You can't irrigate without them, they give a commerce bonus, allow Watermills and the Deruptus Brewing House. You already want a river at least near by, if not settled on. Making it so you *have* to settle on the river makes the game more boring.

There will be changes in future patches which make it possible to settle away from rivers. As has been said, this is a first attempt; It is near impossible to balance with such a small group of people playing, particularly when we all know exactly what changes were made and how to handle them. This is the entire purpose of the Balance thread, please post there next time. :p

Several things made RifE appeal to me: For one thing, Rivers aren't as necessary as they are in vanilla civ, or even as much as they are in regular FfH. Partially because you could build any improvements without needing a resource or a worker tech (with worker techs still being desirable due to a 75% reduction in build time), and because improvement yields were higher. It was easier to get plenty of food to grow your city even without tons of farms, allowing you to focus on commerce, production, or specialists more.

It was also far too easy to reach the happy cap, to achieve monstrous city sizes, and runaway research and production.

None of the active members liked that, quite honestly.

So, in the new version, improvement yields are reduced, worker techs are now required (much more boring - before worker techs were helpful, but you didn't have to grab all of them in the early game if you only needed to build, say, 1 plantation to hook up a needed resource... now we're back to vanilla civ's paradigm of grabbing a bunch of worker techs relatively early in the game), most improvements can only be built on resources, and oh... if the need for irrigation due to that stuff wasn't enough to already make a no-fresh-water start into a quit-restart, now you are pratically hardcoded required to settle on a river. Plus, even if you do that, your cities are now capped at a much smaller size than before because cities could grow "too big" before.

Yields were reduced because they were part of the problem; With such high yield, early runaway growth was far too easy.

Not all improvements require a tech. There are basically two groups of improvements, Base and Resource. The first is composed of Farms, Mines, Camps, etc. Improvements that do not require techs to build. The second are those that cannot be built everywhere (honestly, there are only 3 yields. If yields are reduced, then it is impossible to have that many improvements built everywhere and actually useful), and require techs.

Again, there will be ways to settle without rivers. We need balance feedback to make these changes work well, We are aware there are rough edges.

And cities are not capped at smaller sizes; The same cap as before exists: Happiness. It is simply more difficult to reach, that is all.

I recognize that much of that stuff comes from FF, and is still available in FF, but RifE also has some pretty cool innovations either implemented or in the works that I was really excited about, but I'm not going to ever see most of it if the game isn't fun anymore. While I can change the unhealth problem, there's no way for me to get back the way improvements worked, and changing the unhealth for myself puts me out of sync with everyone else playing RifE.

Then provide feedback in the Balance thread. It is something that is needed, and the feedback of other players has already spawned a few changes.

Yeah, that's pretty whiny, I know. I apologize for that. And yes, I still appreciate all your hard work, I just think that some of the new balancing stuff is off-target. I'm also confused because from the last version, it looked like RifE was *supposed* to be headed towards easier growth and more diverse options than base FfH, and now through a complete 180 in design philosophy, it's becoming the opposite.

We gained new team members, had others change their minds (including myself; The game was too easy, to unrewarding. I want a challenge, I do not want something I can win without thinking about it), and shifted to a different design philosophy.

Every Time I start a game I intend to make this request then I forget. Here it is finally. When in the custom game setup screen would it be possible to have the civ name(s) next to each leader name or better yet, when you select a civ can the list of leaders be restricted to just leaders for that civ? Unless of course you choose to unlock the leaders.

For example, I wanted to start a game as the Legion and I wanted to see which leaders I can choose from but I had to click through the entire list since I didn't memorize all the leaders for that civ. I guess I could have checked the civlopedia ahead of time but this would make it more user friendly.

AFAIK, not possible. It's handled in the exe. Only method would be to add [CIVNAME] to the leader name. Meaning you'd see Lord D'tesh [D'TESH] everywhere.
 
A few scattered thoughts:

As mentioned in the Balance post, the Lectum barbarians are really annoying. Got the standard popups to go find the Lectum, did so and got my Aggressive trait (as the Illians), got it in city range, connected it over, and still barbarians, pop pop pop. I am considering having Auric sit on it for the rest of his hopefully very long life, mainly as now that I'm at the Mage and beyond point, the free XP is starting to feel very cheap.

Tying in to that, I'd love to see more interactions involving the various World Wonders. Could the Illians (I'm spelling their name wrong, aren't I?) and Dovillo, and maybe even the Amurites figure out someway to do something with the mana so everyone and their brother doesn't pop there? Could the Elohim find a way to turn it in to a memorial so that Every Barbarian In The World would stop popping on me? I don't know how feasible stuff like that is... maybe for a module.

I keep wishing their were more interactions for some of the newer civ's (...or older ones!) when certain events pop up. Would you guys be interested in hearing some just random ideas? Not sure how you're doing there.

The AI seems to be doing a bit better. As usual it completely runs away with terraforming civ's: AI + lizards are doing quite well, while not being broken ala the old Frozen. Fun to play against... that means, though, just watching the AI, the two lizards, the Illians, and the Scions and Malakim tend to run to the top of the heap. Oh, and the Hippius, who still hold their own as always.

World of Erebus mapscript is a lot of fun. Bit too much kelp spawning, but I imagine you're all over that.

Pink Squares on the highlight over a city and see pictures of what's there (the new UI improvement): Temple of the Hand, Heron Throne... and I think Steamworks (which probably shouldn't be buildable anyway by random engineer .01).

One thing I'm really missing, from I believe both Wildmana and Rise of Mankind/A New Dawn, was the 'barbarians only spawn where you can't see them save for with a lair' game option. I had most of a tiny continent (...really more like an isle) in my culture control, with only three spaces not (and an assassin standing guard on a lighthouse there, too). Every so often, in one of those two spare spaces, four frostlings will suddenly spawn even if I'm staring right at them- no event, no lair, just boom, frostlings! (and sometimes orcs, but usually the frostlings). I don't like this- it's a immersion breaker for me, even if it does mean less barbarian chaos. It's one thing for them to pop on the LF as I complained about above- my problem there is that I can't do anything about it. Them just popping on nothing, though... it irritates me. =/

Tiny request: would you considering porting the real time clock from BUG? It sits up in the top right bar, next to the Turn/in game date. As I'm playing full screen late at night, I usually use that clock to remind myself that, Yes I Do Need Sleep, as there are no other clocks around. A silly request, but one I plead for all the same.
 
"The game was too easy, to unrewarding. I want a challenge, I do not want something I can win without thinking about it), and shifted to a different design philosophy."

Most of the changes are awesome, and RiFE is just an amazing mod.

Animals seem to have been fixed (no more 20 str giffon flights on turn 6!) However, the barbarians are still too strong, too early. Improvements are too slow too early, because it takes roughly 2x the workers to get anything built now, slowing growth even further.

Hill Giants pillaging slow-grown improvements is just too much. Coupled with the health changes that makes certain improvements necessary, the game has slowed considerably, but has also become more annoying. The most boring part of the early game is now more boring. With no city growth, everything takes longer, which is fine in the mid game with more cities, but with one city stuck at 3 pop, it is excruciating.

As mentioned before, "expansive has gone from being the red headed step child of traits to.. bar none the strongest trait." I think it is exciting to see some of the more neglected traits- expansive and industrious, come into their own, so kudos for that flavor!

I also want to quote this, because it sums up my view nicely: "The real, key problem here is that generating Great Physicians is now a *necessity*, not a choice. The new mechanic effectively takes the decision-making regarding the first few GPs out of the player's hands entirely. It just so happens that those first few GP tend to define how the entire game is played, for most players. Nobody wants to have to play 200 turns of a 600 turn game before they can even decide what kind of victory to try for."

Slowing down the game doesn't really bring it out of the mid-game into late game. I am still rushing with horsemen, assassins, axemen, etc. It's just that the turn counter is later than it would have been in 1.23. From this point of view, nothing has changed, except the number- and my score is lower.

Again, I think RiFE is just about the best thing since Zork, and thanks for the amazing game!
 
I would like the fort commander's "sentry" command to be modified so that they "awaken" when an enemy enters bombardment range, rather than sight.
 
A few scattered thoughts:

As mentioned in the Balance post, the Lectum barbarians are really annoying. Got the standard popups to go find the Lectum, did so and got my Aggressive trait (as the Illians), got it in city range, connected it over, and still barbarians, pop pop pop. I am considering having Auric sit on it for the rest of his hopefully very long life, mainly as now that I'm at the Mage and beyond point, the free XP is starting to feel very cheap.

Lectum may well gain a new effect... Something I have in mind, actually. ;)

Tying in to that, I'd love to see more interactions involving the various World Wonders. Could the Illians (I'm spelling their name wrong, aren't I?) and Dovillo, and maybe even the Amurites figure out someway to do something with the mana so everyone and their brother doesn't pop there? Could the Elohim find a way to turn it in to a memorial so that Every Barbarian In The World would stop popping on me? I don't know how feasible stuff like that is... maybe for a module.

You mean the various Unique Features, right?

It's possible, just not likely. The idea I have would actually remove barb spawning from the UF anyway.

I keep wishing their were more interactions for some of the newer civ's (...or older ones!) when certain events pop up. Would you guys be interested in hearing some just random ideas? Not sure how you're doing there.

This thread is devoted to random ideas. :p

The AI seems to be doing a bit better. As usual it completely runs away with terraforming civ's: AI + lizards are doing quite well, while not being broken ala the old Frozen. Fun to play against... that means, though, just watching the AI, the two lizards, the Illians, and the Scions and Malakim tend to run to the top of the heap. Oh, and the Hippius, who still hold their own as always.

The AI will be even better once Snarko finishes his teching changes.

World of Erebus mapscript is a lot of fun. Bit too much kelp spawning, but I imagine you're all over that.

Yep, need to reduce the growth rate significantly. Kept forgetting to, just altered the file so I won't forget again. :lol:

Pink Squares on the highlight over a city and see pictures of what's there (the new UI improvement): Temple of the Hand, Heron Throne... and I think Steamworks (which probably shouldn't be buildable anyway by random engineer .01).

Will fix those. And no, the Steamworks should not be buildable, already slated to be fixed in the first patch.

One thing I'm really missing, from I believe both Wildmana and Rise of Mankind/A New Dawn, was the 'barbarians only spawn where you can't see them save for with a lair' game option. I had most of a tiny continent (...really more like an isle) in my culture control, with only three spaces not (and an assassin standing guard on a lighthouse there, too). Every so often, in one of those two spare spaces, four frostlings will suddenly spawn even if I'm staring right at them- no event, no lair, just boom, frostlings! (and sometimes orcs, but usually the frostlings). I don't like this- it's a immersion breaker for me, even if it does mean less barbarian chaos. It's one thing for them to pop on the LF as I complained about above- my problem there is that I can't do anything about it. Them just popping on nothing, though... it irritates me. =/

That will not happen, honestly. There is a very good reason for it as well... If barbs can spawn only in fog of war, then you can pacify an entire continent with a single hawk. Or a group of scouts. It is not an ability I want to reintroduce.

Tiny request: would you considering porting the real time clock from BUG? It sits up in the top right bar, next to the Turn/in game date. As I'm playing full screen late at night, I usually use that clock to remind myself that, Yes I Do Need Sleep, as there are no other clocks around. A silly request, but one I plead for all the same.

There is a clock built in to the game. Options->Other->Clock checkbox.

"The game was too easy, to unrewarding. I want a challenge, I do not want something I can win without thinking about it), and shifted to a different design philosophy."

Most of the changes are awesome, and RiFE is just an amazing mod.

Thanks. ;)

Animals seem to have been fixed (no more 20 str giffon flights on turn 6!) However, the barbarians are still too strong, too early. Improvements are too slow too early, because it takes roughly 2x the workers to get anything built now, slowing growth even further.

Yes, barbs are going to be adjusted, and we're working on improvements.

Hill Giants pillaging slow-grown improvements is just too much. Coupled with the health changes that makes certain improvements necessary, the game has slowed considerably, but has also become more annoying. The most boring part of the early game is now more boring. With no city growth, everything takes longer, which is fine in the mid game with more cities, but with one city stuck at 3 pop, it is excruciating.

We also have multiple new ideas for health; Will be addressed in the first patch, most likely.

As mentioned before, "expansive has gone from being the red headed step child of traits to.. bar none the strongest trait." I think it is exciting to see some of the more neglected traits- expansive and industrious, come into their own, so kudos for that flavor!

Others will be enhanced as well. ;)

I also want to quote this, because it sums up my view nicely: "The real, key problem here is that generating Great Physicians is now a *necessity*, not a choice. The new mechanic effectively takes the decision-making regarding the first few GPs out of the player's hands entirely. It just so happens that those first few GP tend to define how the entire game is played, for most players. Nobody wants to have to play 200 turns of a 600 turn game before they can even decide what kind of victory to try for."

We're going to enhance the Healer, in several ways, and also provide other ways to gain health.

Slowing down the game doesn't really bring it out of the mid-game into late game. I am still rushing with horsemen, assassins, axemen, etc. It's just that the turn counter is later than it would have been in 1.23. From this point of view, nothing has changed, except the number- and my score is lower.

The turn counter is later, your population/research/etc is lower, and so on.

Again, I think RiFE is just about the best thing since Zork, and thanks for the amazing game!

:goodjob:
 
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