Resurrecting the Aifons - a sea-dwelling civ for FF

When I said naval warfare sucks it is because there is only one worthwhile ship (aside from Black Wind) and that is man'o'war ... Everything else plain sucks. I dislike having an unit that is superior in every way. Rather, we should have several different types of ships, which have distinct roles in combat. And then we need some promotions to further specialize our ships. And finally, land units should become more involved in naval combat. Boarding ships and guarding them against boarding. Capturing ships should not be a special feature for Lanun.

I agree. We need to rework naval warfare in FfH/FF. It'd be cool to have ships that can shoot somethin similiar to greek fire. (Not magic like fireballs, but greek fire. Ya know, science-oriented fire.) Then have really powerful ships that are the powerhouses of the ocean, like Man o' War, but w/o the huge 6 to 8 (w/ promotions) unit carrying capicity. Then ships that are catapult-like, in that they are purely seige ships and can cause collateral damage or severe damage to city walls. (Of course, we'd have to remove the bombardment of most ships or marganilize the bombardment of most ships. As it is, tho, catapults and canons still level city walls better than ships.) A few kamikaze type ships would be cool as well, sorta like fire ships or ships that explode and destroy other ships upon attack. (The key to these would be that you lose them after combat and they're useful for nothin but combat.) Maybe a primitive submarine would be cool too. It'd prolly be magically oriented to keep it from being flooded or something. Then, a ship that is similar to Ironclads. (I'd argue for this ship being a UU for the Dwarves, since they are more scientifically-based than other civs.) Idk, jus a few spitballed ideas on improvement of naval warfare.

I think that improved naval warfare needs to be key if a civ like the Aifons comes into being again. Otherwise, the idea of an aquatic civ is jus kinda stupid. (The Aifons should have UUs of all the improved ships.) And naval warfare was always kinda my biggest problem with FfH.

Of course, there should be 3 DLs. One, for jus the Aifons. (I doubt this'll be used much, but some might desire it.) Two, the Aifons and improved naval warfare. And three, jus improved naval warfare. This should keep everyone happy and reduce the amount of potential complaints.
 
nice ideas about new ships rlaf. definitely agreed that more variety would make things a lot more interesting. catapult ships, ballista ships, etc. ;)
 
Maybe also, we should borrow a ship from WHFB. The Black Arc. (We'd rename it.) Or, to be more specific, borrow the idea. These ships are basically floating castles. Kinda like small cities, they carry thousands of troops. And, I think, that such a ship above all else should be stronger or weaker depending on wat units it's carrying. Like some1 else said, if an Immortal is on it, it should be harder to sink. But I think it should only really apply to the Water Fortress (needs better name, huh?). The reason why is that such a ship was built to be a castle. It'd be like the 'dragon of ships'. I think it should work like this. The ship's overall strength should be this formula. Ship's base strength (let's say 5) + 50% of the base strength of the units carrying it (So, w/o the bonuses added by mithril, iron, or bronze weapons) = the total unit strength of the ship. So, 2 Immortals and the ship itself would give it a strength of 14. Wat do ya guys think?
 
Maybe also, we should borrow a ship from WHFB. The Black Arc. (We'd rename it.) Or, to be more specific, borrow the idea. These ships are basically floating castles. Kinda like small cities, they carry thousands of troops. And, I think, that such a ship above all else should be stronger or weaker depending on wat units it's carrying. Like some1 else said, if an Immortal is on it, it should be harder to sink. But I think it should only really apply to the Water Fortress (needs better name, huh?). The reason why is that such a ship was built to be a castle. It'd be like the 'dragon of ships'. I think it should work like this. The ship's overall strength should be this formula. Ship's base strength (let's say 5) + 50% of the base strength of the units carrying it (So, w/o the bonuses added by mithril, iron, or bronze weapons) = the total unit strength of the ship. So, 2 Immortals and the ship itself would give it a strength of 14. Wat do ya guys think?

I wish we had some things like this... (actually, the way i envisioned it as a unit that could produce it's own units as well as carry them...) A huge floating structure with not only a military but civilian support as well...

naturally, a civ would only be able to support a a few of these floating wonders...

Anyone read 1984 recently? One of the major weapons is a huge ship called a floating fortress, with thousands of troops and hundreds of guns...
 
Yeah, I think that there should be a national cap of 3 or 4 on these ships.
 
Lots of ideas in this thread to inspire imagination. :p

I was sort of thinking of an ocean race with a slow mobile capital- an islandhome on the back of an ancient sea creature. It could be a powerful unit or just a moving platform floating on water, but I imagine a mobile city would be a coding challenge. Still, the code for mobile cities could pave the way for airborne cities down the road.

Anyway, this oceanic race would be able to create sea-based settlers, but their city area would be limited to the 8 tiles immediately surrounding the city (maybe upgradeable by tech?). These would suffer a cultural penalty, and (if possible) culture from these ocean settlements would not be able to spread onto land (until a certain tech is discovered, perhaps).

An advantage for this race is that their capital is mobile: it can move, albeit slowly, to resources (that is, if oceanic resources tiles are created). Their units automatically having the amphibious promotion wouldn't be a stretch, either.

The great penalty for this race is that its ocean settlements can be attacked and destroyed by naval units (once the garrisons are defeated). One idea might be having settler units be very expensive until the discovery of a certain tech, which would make them cheaper than others. This would prevent this ocean race from gaining too much of an early advantage, while addressing the frailty of their settlements later in the game.
 
The only major problem with a 'moving capital' or 'moving cities' is how exactly can we combine a city and a unit. It doesn't really work. The basic programming of Civ, since Civ I, has been units and cities separate. Wat's more feasible, imho, is having the cities underwater, as Gekko said he was thinkin bout doin. You see, altho that will require some new codin, I doubt it'll be as much as makin a 'unit' that is both a city and moveable. Sides, which, the most logical place for the Aifon capital is the Ilse of the Aifons (or watever it's called). That city would be on a island, obviously. (However, it'd be understood in the lore that half on land and half underwater.) I think the Aifons should be able to build cities on land and underwater, with condition that any land cities must be near an ocean tile.
 
Lore aside. And I speculate.

Moving City. City on a single landsquare, unique 'dragger' unit that only can move maximum one grid-square from the city. Every end of turn there is a check if the 'dragger unit' is inside the city. If it isn't the entire landsquare, city, all units etc are transferred to the square where the 'dragger unit' is.

You can even give the 'dragger unit' a spell that have a wait period of three turns, so that the city can move one grid square each three turns.
 
A city in the ocean should be a big exception! Otherwise the ocean will lose it's current function as a natural boarder. Maybe only the capital of the Aifons should be sea-based and all other cities have to be coastal or on a river.

Naval warfare - Invasions:

But first of all we need a working AI for naval invasions. I saw a lot of games lately played automatically by the AI and the AI did never! manage to conquer another continent or island. In most cases they didn't even try. They destroy some ships, bombard a bit and that's it. Anything else than a pangea map is almost cheating for a human player. Maybe we can steal something from the new Better BtS AI version and adapt it for FfH or FF. They changed some things about naval warfare in there. For some reason I can't remember how well the AI did in BtS. It's too long ago that I played an unmodded game.
 
Better BTS AI is definitely something that would be awesome to adapt to FFH/FF , it does make the game better.

nice idea about partially submerged cities Aifon Isle style being 1-tile islands, that would be a lot easier to code than totally submerged cities I guess :D
 
hears another idea, not very well thought out though...

what if the aifons raised the sea floor to form massive coral flats and volcanic islands? so that their cities would spread 'underwater' versions of land terrain like hell or swamp terrain conversion? each turn ocean, would have a small %chance of turning into coral (+1 food +1 hammer) or volcanic islands (+2 hammer) however make it so that tiles only continue to change to coral/ volcanic island so long as the city has more than 1 coast tile linking it to the ocean. in addition make it so that any land tiles within the Aifon cultural borders degrade to coast and ocean and potentially later to coral volcanic islands.

make Aifon settlers only able to settle on coral, volcanic island, ocean or coast squares, and never within 2 squares of a land mass greater than 10 squares.

the way i see it the aifons would then be a civ that can use 'land' units (but obviously flavoured to have distinct advantages in coral or oceans)

Give Aifons special workers to replace work boats that cannot work land squares, only coral volcanic island ocean and coast, and give aifon special improvements for each.

this way each Aifon city would be surrounded by a matrex of coral and volcanic islands whilst still being connected to the ocean. alowing for easyer AI invasion.
 
Sorry if this has been brought up before, but what about only having cities on islands and/or coast but also having a unit similar to the Mongol movable unit they had in the Warlord scenario. It would randomly generate a unit every so often.

I was always a big fan of the Pirate faction in SMAC:AC so I'd like to see this as well. I'm also a big advocate for upgraded naval coding. Civ III used to be evil when it came to naval combat. Civ IV, OTOH, seems to be mentally challenged.

Plus I wish we had better graphics for the different ships. I mean the Elves are going to have different ships from the Dwarves and the like.

I would think this race could have a sort of Decius as one of their leaders. I mean the Call of Cthulhu is hard to resist...I mean the "Octopus Overlords". :D So you can have one leader for the neutral to good, another for the OO.

One idea is to have some units that have water-walking, but have some sort of promotions that causes them to get weaker the longer they are on land. Sort of like being diseased. So while they'd be great attacking coastal areas, they'd be really limited inland.

Plus, what race would these people be? I always wondered about the artwork for the Svartalfar. I mean Faeyl looks like she's underwater. Maybe the Wood elves drove the 'evil' elves into the oceans.

One thing about this race though, regardless of what race they end up: I would think they would be TOTALLY against the Illians. I mean glaciation is not good if you live in the water. If anything, you want lots of warm water, shallow seas and the like.

To bad there isn't any coding that I've seen that mimics the ability formers had in SMAC where you could terraform up or down. Being able to raise oceans to seas or sink certain lands to create islands would be nice. Not to mention it would be nice on certain maps to be able to lower mountains to hills so you can make passes.
 
To bad there isn't any coding that I've seen that mimics the ability formers had in SMAC where you could terraform up or down. Being able to raise oceans to seas or sink certain lands to create islands would be nice. Not to mention it would be nice on certain maps to be able to lower mountains to hills so you can make passes.

thats why i propose an automated terrain conversion based off the hell terrain conversion and swamp conversion :p
 
If it could be coded, then it'd be cool.
 
Over on the Cult of Dragon thread, a lot of us have been talking about different dragons. Maybe the Aifon could have a take off of Jörmungandr and have some sort of muckin' huge Sea Serpent as their late game 'hero'.

I agree with what has been said about some of the changes in terrain like the Hell terrain or the marsh/swamp terrain from FF. If the Illians are trying to make everything cold and snowy again, I would think the Aifons would want warm weather, shallow seas and the like.

So yeah, you'd expect them to want to transform areas to coast/seas with lots of islands and the like. Plus, tropical islands are supposed to have volcanoes, right? :p Maybe the Aifons could get some sort of special resource of them. Of course I think religiously, the Aifons would really be a Dualistic type people, caught between elements: Air above, water below - fire brings technology, water brings food/wealth.

Which brings up the thought that if the Aifons don't do metals, what sort of units would they create to compensate? You'd think they'd end up with obsidian weapons and shells, kind of like Jules Verne's Nemo crew's gear. I mean that could be used as a limiting factor for them: no bronze, iron, mithril upgrades.

I do like the idea of corral as a sea resource. Plus I wonder if there would be a way to make it damage ships that enter the square with it?
 
Over on the Cult of Dragon thread, a lot of us have been talking about different dragons. Maybe the Aifon could have a take off of Jörmungandr and have some sort of muckin' huge Sea Serpent as their late game 'hero'.

Damn, I like that idea! We really should implement this.
 
I do like the idea of corral as a sea resource. Plus I wonder if there would be a way to make it damage ships that enter the square with it?

id prefer a coral terrain which large late game ships cannot enter, but early game ships can at the risk of being damaged. and perhaps a coral resource which grants aifons a bronze weapon like upgrade? (coral can be extremely painful and strong)
aifon ship uus would obviously get no penalty from coral and all would be able to cross it.

one interesting thing we should consider then is that land units and sea units will come into contact with each other and thus be able to fight each other...

Over on the Cult of Dragon thread, a lot of us have been talking about different dragons. Maybe the Aifon could have a take off of Jörmungandr and have some sort of muckin' huge Sea Serpent as their late game 'hero'.

i think id rather the Aifon be able to 'tame' the Leviathan if it spawns in the world. iirc Kael said there arent any more dragons besides the ones already in the game... id also prefer their hero to be Trenton rather than another big beasty.

I agree with what has been said about some of the changes in terrain like the Hell terrain or the marsh/swamp terrain from FF. If the Illians are trying to make everything cold and snowy again, I would think the Aifons would want warm weather, shallow seas and the like.

my thoughts exactly :)
 
Coral as a terrain? That wouldn't make sense. Coral Reefs as a Feature, on the other hand, makes perfect since. It is simple to make this feature impassible to some ships, and to make it damage ships that do enter these tiles.




There definitely were more dragons. Some gods made several, while others made none. Some relied on other forms of beasts that strictly speaking were not dragons. The dragons in FfH are however the strongest of the dragons created. Most of the weaker ones have been slain, and aren't coming back.


Leviathon was a Beast that served Danalin and was essentially equivalent to a dragon. He was awakened to protect the Aifons from whatever horrible fate would happen, but he failed. Leviathon was the only survivor and only witness to what happened, but the horror drove him completely insane. He was once a gentle beast, but not anymore.



I still prefer the Aifons not return, although I'd love to see them added in and Age of Magic prequel after Ice is done.
 
Coral as a terrain? That wouldn't make sense. Coral Reefs as a Feature, on the other hand, makes perfect since. It is simple to make this feature impassible to some ships, and to make it damage ships that do enter these tiles.

why not as terrain? it is possible to walk (and swim) vast distances over coral atols, and there are many pacific islands made entirely of coral. the whole point of the coral asa terrain was to alow land units to invade aifon cities easyer. if thats impossible to code, then i suppose coral as a feature works fine.


There definitely were more dragons. Some gods made several, while others made none. Some relied on other forms of beasts that strictly speaking were not dragons. The dragons in FfH are however the strongest of the dragons created. Most of the weaker ones have been slain, and aren't coming back.

ah k, didnt know that. but id still rather not see the other dragons in the game, too much of a good thing ya know?

Leviathon was a Beast that served Danalin and was essentially equivalent to a dragon. He was awakened to protect the Aifons from whatever horrible fate would happen, but he failed. Leviathon was the only survivor and only witness to what happened, but the horror drove him completely insane. He was once a gentle beast, but not anymore.

i know, thats why i suggested that. but if the leviathan saw the aifons come back do you think that some of its former loyalty would return also? perhaps not... its a cool thought none the less.

I still prefer the Aifons not return, although I'd love to see them added in and Age of Magic prequel after Ice is done.

how come all the civs in FfH have to be in the same time scale? after all the Sidar wern't around when the Amurites were fighting the illians, so why cant the aifon be added in? plus vanilla civ has civs from all across history, i think its a lame excuse saying theyre not in the same time period. although, an age of magic prequel would be awsome.
 
Top Bottom