Shortages in game concepts

[WarKirby]

I've played quite a few games where I've maxed the whole tech tree now, getting a feel for FFH in general.

I'm finding there are two things in the game, that there just aren't enough of.

1. Health.

There are a ton of buildings and resources that give happiness. You can get up to 10 happiness from a gambling house, 3 from public baths, then there's theatres, carnivals, quite a few wonders that give happiness to all cities, etc.

There are nowhere near the same provisions for health, though. And this is exacerbated by forges, baths, flood plains, etc that increase unhealthiness. It's especially annoying when the blight comes.

There aren't so many resources that increase health. And there aren't enough buildings for it, either. I start to get health problems in all my big cities eventually, and nothing but Future Tech can fix it.

Some suggestions to improve things.

• Give +1 from all temple buildings, since priests have medic promotions.
  
• Give extra for units with the Medic promotion stationed in a city. +1 for medic 1, and +2 for Medic II. This would give disciple units another use in general, and help emphasize trusting in one's faith when armageddon is at the doorstep.
  
• Add some more health oriented buildings in general, like Sewers (available with sanitation), Public Healers(requires life or body mana). Maybe public healers could have a constant gold cost to have, but provide a large bonus to health like +4
  
• Give a passive health bonus from granaries/smokehouses, as well as the resource based bonuses they give.
  
• Have Body Mana give extra health, like Life Mana.
  
• Add a city support spell to either body or life spheres, that would grant some extra health as long as the caster remains in the city. Like Inspiration, and Hope.
  
• Maybe remove the health penalities for floodplains/jungle with the discovery of some specific tech, like Commune with Nature.

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2. Engineer specialists.

As far as I'm aware, the Forge is the only non-wonder building to allow engineer specialists. Which means until you get guilds (and if you're willing to use it) you're limited to a single engineer specialist in most cities. This severely limits a specialist oriented economy, and makes cities that don't have at least a few hills nearby, almost impossible to produce things in.

To remedy this, I'm thinking a few more industry oriented buildings are needed.

Blacksmith.
Would become available very early, with bronze working. Would give +10% and allow one engineer specialist. In addition, the presence of a blacksmith in the city could become a requirement to build/upgrade units with bronze weapons. It seems a bit odd that better weapons are just magicked out of thin air, even if this is a magical game...

Foundry
A more mid-lategame thing. Would require Engineering and/or Iron working. Similar to blacksmith, could be a requirement for Iron weapons.
+20% and 3 engineer specialists.

Master Armorer
Available at Mithril Working (Mythril ?)
+30% and 2 engineer specialists, as well as being a requirement for mithril weapons. Maybe this could be a national building of some sort, so you can only have 4 of them in your empire, making Mithril weapons a bit more scarce and valuable.

The Industrious trait could double production speed of all of these, too.
Exact percentages of extra production to be added could be tweaked for balance, of course. These are just general outlines.



I really love using these little icons when talking about stuff

[xalien]

Yeah, unless you're playing elves burried in forests health indeed becomes a problem. Especially if health terrain starts to spread and butchers all health resources.

Although a few lumbermills can mitigate health and production problems a little. All you need is to adopt FoL for a while and build those priests.

[Iceciro]

I do agree there needs to be more ways to pick up Engineer specialists... I can have stupidly huge numbers of priests or sages, but only the one engineer?

[Demus]

there used to be more buildings that provided engineers (at least i thought the weaponsmith and machinist did), but they got axed because they overcomplicated things. By the way, doesn't RoK allow for additional engineers as well?
Instead of adding additional buildings, i was wondering if it would be possible to have the forge allow for additional specialists at certain techs (metalworking or craftsmanship wise), don't know if it's codeable though, or if you'd need building replacements at those techs (if that's possible)

The health thingy i totally agree on, perhaps adding some of the FF buildings would help here?

[MiKa523]

RoK temples and the shrine also allow engineers and imho it's fine the way it is.
Too many, especially early, opportunities to create great engineers would give you the ability to rush multiple early wonders without sacrificing military production or commerce.

Regarding the health problems I think it was fine before those civics were cut that improved health.
I don't like giving temples health bonus, because that's the thing of the FoL-temples.
That's why going with FoL and later guardian of nature and leaving some forests for every city is also an option to fight health problems.
Imho there are enough buildings that provide health bonus, but maybe the herbalist and infirmary need a little buff to make up for the loss of the health civics.

[WarKirby]

Not everyone uses RoK. That religion already gets massive increases in income, and production from the gold for temples, and Arete. Are you saying only RoK players shoud be building the early wonders? Because that's pretty much how it goes atm.

Health can still be "the thing" of FoL temples. They could just be better than others at it. But it's commonly known in the past that churches, monasteries, temples, etc, would care for the sick. I think it would be a good thing to have.

[xalien]

RoK temples do not give engineer specialists. RoK shrine allows 1 and Mines of Gal'dur allow 3, but those are world wonders so it doesn't really count.

[cabbagemeister]

I like the way it is now, that you are severely limited in some game concepts (like health and engineer buildings) unless you make hard choices to get yourself more, and each of those choices has an opportunity cost (i.e. it prevents you from getting other things). Vanilla BTS works on the principle that everyone can eventually have access to everything (all units, all health- and happiness-providing buildings, all wonders), and it's just a question of what you try to get first technology-wise. And that's fine for BTS, but it goes a long way towards the feeling I think a lot of us FFH-ophiles have, that every BTS game ends up being the exact same. I think FFH works on the principle that you can't have everything, and you need to choose what you want/need the most, and there is no "right" choice, only different ones that are all awesome. So I guess I am in principle opposed to making more of the limited game-resources like health and engineering GPP available to everyone.

Just my 2 cents.

[Skitters]

Not totally against the idea, but do think that by adding health to temples it would further encourage CoE to be used as a secondary religion only

[Thunder_Gr]

I like your ideas. The problem with CoE is an issue, however...

[xalien]

Not sure what you mean by problems with CoE. It's not like you need to adopt a religion to build it's temple. You can happily run CoE and build all the temples you want.

[Thunder_Gr]

Yes, if you get to that religion. Why going CoE first than? No reason. As previous poster said, CoE is futher run into a secondary religion... Well, of course, thematically, CoE temples( if they existed ) wouldn't provide healing, so they wouldn't give health benefits, anyway... So, after careful consideration, there shouldn't be any CoE issue .

[xalien]

Health problems for big cities only happens late game, by that time you can research religious techs in like 2-3 turns.

[Dora190]

Whilst health can be an issue I generally only worry about it after the blight, I rarely worry about that much. The Granary, smokehouse double the bonuses for grains and animals respectively other later ones also help.

As for great people I'm far more concerned about great generals, they are much harder to farm.

[Nor'easter]

I'm actually not especially upset about the health issue. Plenty of buildings provide health bonuses: granaries and smokehouses with the appropriate resources, as well as herbalists, aqueducts, infirmaries, and temples of leaves. Most of the food resources provide health bonuses, as does life mana.

Besides, a fantasy world is usually a quasi-medieval setting, predating modern medical science by centuries, so health should be a bit of a challenge. And the AI suffers from the same health problems, so it's not unbalancing, I don't think.

[Grey Fox]

Don't cut your forests!
Best fix for health in the game would be to move lumber mill earlier.

[Neomega]

Originally Posted by Dora190

Whilst health can be an issue I generally only worry about it after the blight, I rarely worry about that much. The Granary, smokehouse double the bonuses for grains and animals respectively other later ones also help.

As for great people I'm far more concerned about great generals, they are much harder to farm.

I agree, with both sentiments.

[Tarquelne]

Originally Posted by WarKirby

There are a ton of buildings and resources that give happiness. ...
There are nowhere near the same provisions for health

I'd prefer a reduction in the sources of happiness.

Hmm... the severely snipped post reminds me of something... ah.

"Heaven produces myriads of things to nourish man;
Man never does one good to recompense Heaven.
Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!"

[Nor'easter]

@WarKirby:

I don't know which patch you're using (in another thread you intimated that you had installed none of the patches), but patch l changed the Medicine tech to provide +1 health, which you might have missed if you're playing under an old patch.

[renardargent]

Although I like how things work right now, I also think it might be nice to have banana and sugar provide +1 health through some building.

Corn, rice, and wheat all provides +1 health and 10% bonus on commerce through appropriate buildings, and they also receive +1 food from agrarianism and sanitation.
It is true that thanks to the FfH tech tree, these plantation resources had become much useful, but I think they could also receive some bonus from maybe sanitation, where farms receive the +1 food bonus.