FfH2 0.40 Changelog

I'd still love a "Nets" promotion for naval units that lets them capture sea monsters.
 
It would be a good idea to incorporate Defensive Strikes into the combat odds because combat odds are used by the AI to determine whether or not to make certain attacks. It wouldn't be necessary to put into the first version this Tuesday though, since it wouldn't have massive effects on the odds.

As for the GotN thing, maybe there could be a World Wonder that works like it does now, and a national wonder version that only lets you recruit them in the city in which it's built?
 
with all the necessary tools from the crew, I could have the odds calculations done by monday easily, though I'm not sure how easily I'll be able to translate it to code.
 
Hey, Kael? Are you going to add the years (Like: "Age of Rebirth Year 125") instead of just "Turn 125"?
 
I think one way to balance Guild of the Nine might be to make mercenaries incur more maintence costs than a normal unit. This would make them very usefull for last ditch defense or suicides but not a usefull component of your long-term army.
 
I like the idea of mercs being national units. It simulates the fact that you can't support an infinite number of them, but they are quickly and easily replaceable.
 
I'm gonna have to side with mastaofdisasta here. His idea sounds the best to me.
 
Well, no, fafnir, that isn't true actually.

The game records a game year, and uses the game year as an identifier (Like for instancce, in the victory screen play through, it normally lists what 'year' something happened).

Since we only have 'turns' which is seperate from the time, we don't get any information in these areas. We do not know what year we even finished the game (Meaning that reviewing an old game isn't as informative as it could be).
 
I like the idea of mercs being national units. It simulates the fact that you can't support an infinite number of them, but they are quickly and easily replaceable.

But thats why they are mercenaries- you dont have to support them as if they were part of your army. The extra maintenance would be a better idea, as it simulates the fact that you have to continue paying them if you want to keep them, although personally I do not believe that either nerf is necessary.
 
but depending on what speed you're playing at, the measurement may not actually be years. So if you want your game review to look nice, maybe you should build a modmod for the game and petition kael to get it added to the main game.
 
I like the idea of mercs being national units. It simulates the fact that you can't support an infinite number of them, but they are quickly and easily replaceable.

Why not just give mercenaries a chance to go barbarian (or chance to auto-delete) "Your mercenary has found someone who will double his salary"?

Or cost a lot to maintain? You could buy a bunch if you need them, but would need to delete them, or kill them off ASAP, or go bankrupt.
 
I agree with Fafnir on Principle, but Zechnophobe points out legitmate issues imo, so it should probably be added back in.
(I still prefer the ratio of 4turns=1 year, and think it would be neat to have a turn be a season, but I don't know if a cyclical calendar would work.)
 
What I thought was that more maintence costs would make them a little less powerful and would fit better with the concept of mercenaries. It just seems thematic to me if they are best used for a last ditch defense or a critical battle instead of a just performing the same roles as an axeman or champion.
 
Some ideas for balancing the mercs-

Give them a reverse-Fear. They'll always attack with over 50% odds, the worse the odds the more likely they'll refuse. Gold is useless if no one is left to spend it.
And
Give them very high defensive withdrawal. And set it to trigger at 40% health rather than just before they die. They won't fight to the death for you.

Makes them less useful as cannon fodder.


Make them a bit stronger, and much more expensive. They'll deal with the hordes maurauding through your lands but you'll mortgage your kingdom to do it.

Make a "We fear for our security!" unhappiness penalty that grows depending on how much of your army is merc.

Make them cost money to promote. They're well-known, they have other bidders now. If you want to keep them you're going to pay :lol:
 
Some ideas for balancing the mercs-

Give them a reverse-Fear. They'll always attack with over 50% odds, the worse the odds the more likely they'll refuse. Gold is useless if no one is left to spend it.
And
Give them very high defensive withdrawal. And set it to trigger at 40% health rather than just before they die. They won't fight to the death for you.

Makes them less useful as cannon fodder.


Make them a bit stronger, and much more expensive. They'll deal with the hordes maurauding through your lands but you'll mortgage your kingdom to do it.

Make a "We fear for our security!" unhappiness penalty that grows depending on how much of your army is merc.

Make them cost money to promote. They're well-known, they have other bidders now. If you want to keep them you're going to pay :lol:

I definitely agree with these ideas, they would definitely differenciate mercenaries from regular units, you would certainly feel the effect of utilizing a merc army. I'm no modder, but I think they could probably be applied pretty easily by condensing them into a mercenary promotion. I'm not sure how the happiness penalty would work, but my gut reaction is that it would be a real turn off since lowering your happy cap makes it harder to build real troops in the future.
 
Sounds like a bit too much to me. Extra maintenance costs sounds the simplest, while still being available in a fairly wide number of situations. Disbanding them after you are done with them would be cool, too.

As for the idea of a national unit... It's probably unnecessary to do this seeing as it'd be expensive to maintain such a large contingent of Mercanaries, but you could set a number cap for them.
 
Some ideas for balancing the mercs-

Give them a reverse-Fear. They'll always attack with over 50% odds, the worse the odds the more likely they'll refuse. Gold is useless if no one is left to spend it.
And
Give them very high defensive withdrawal. And set it to trigger at 40% health rather than just before they die. They won't fight to the death for you.

Makes them less useful as cannon fodder.


Make them a bit stronger, and much more expensive. They'll deal with the hordes maurauding through your lands but you'll mortgage your kingdom to do it.

Make a "We fear for our security!" unhappiness penalty that grows depending on how much of your army is merc.

Make them cost money to promote. They're well-known, they have other bidders now. If you want to keep them you're going to pay :lol:

I like these ideas very much, except for the money-for-promotions idea, which is a little too much of a nerf imo.
 
How about mercs actually work for the highest bidder?

A set of mechanics like this might be good:

Magnadine and The GOTN can "build" new mercs at a discount price, but anyone can hire existing mercs with the "hire" spell...that would be available to all civs at a certain tech (for instance whatever allows you to build GOTN).

In order to cast the "hire mercs" spell, one would need to pay gold...but the price would keep going up.

Let's say I build a merc with GOTN and pay 120gp.
We'll say this is a discount rate, and the merc won't change sides for less than twice that or 240gp.

Player 2, on his turn, has over 240 gp and casts "hire merc." The only merc in the game switches sides and now belongs to player 2.

Player 3 want's the merc, and if it's still alive on his turn he can cast "hire merc" for 264gp (+10% each time after the first)

If I build a second merc, I can do so for 120gp. Player 2 can again "steal" the merc for 240gp. And player two could cast hire merc a second time and hire the next cheapest merc away from player 3, who now costs 304.

Player 3, is rolling in money and he decides he wants another turn with the mercs...so he casts "hire merc" twice and buys the first one away for 304, and then the second one for 331.

and so on...

Mercs would switch sides at whatever location they are on the map,unless then need to move to not occupy a tile with units they will be at war with. They will start with their entire movement and attacks available.

It would also be interesting to give the mercs XP each time they get hired away...just to reflect that the more expensive mercs buy better equipment and are in theory the best mercs to have.

In this way the GOTN allows you the easiest access to mercs, but they are a double edged sword.

Or, clearly it would be nice to try to hire away only the particular merc you want...but that would require some sort of targeting ability and you would need enough money for that particular merc.

Maybe it wouldn't be difficult for the AI to understand this...if it's at war with a merc in it's territory and it has the money to hire it, it probably should.
 
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