Balance (Involving Orbis-related changes)

[Mylon]

I've noticed that trade becomes a powerhouse of income later on. If on a river, there's the river port, the tavern, the exchange, and many others that all add an extra trade route and a bonus to trade. Put this all in one big city and the commerce from the tiles doesn't really matter all that much anymore.

Add in the factor that guilds now add some very nice bonuses and there gets to be a point where economic development becomes fairly pointless and all there is left to do is succumb to the tedium of 1-unit-per-turn massing. The amount of beakers required for the techs should probably be increased. And likewise for the amount of hammers required for most buildings/units, especially wonders. National units probably should cost a bit more too. It's a bit bothersome smashing multiple of a person's national units and seeing it pop up again a turn later.

Great generals also spawn a bit too frequently. Probably related to the increased XP gain in Orbis. That and they kinda seem underpowered. The engineering corp and the different acadamies are much more useful than adding as a specialist or even joining to a unit (curiously, I joined my generals to my immortals, which I thought was fairly amusing).

Withdrawal is still fairly powerful. Not quite as annoying as before, but getting attacked by 4 camal archers, suffering collateral damage, having them withdrawl, and then having them withdraw again when I attack them is bothersome. I could foresee withdrawal not being quite so uber if the withdrawing unit suffered at least some damage (except in the case of, say, Loki) and if healing wasn't quite so powerful. Which is another thing: Damage doesn't really matter too much in this game. Is what matters most is landing the killing blow. With a disciple unit with medic 3 and a necromancer to cast replenish, my scion army was instantly regenerating from anything while in enemy territory. And I was building these disciple units with all 3 medic promotions. I could also ranged attack a city with multiple Man'o'Wars and they'd all be fully healed next turn.

[Wauthan]

I agree that trade is very powerful in Orbis, compared to FFH. Especially since the modmod adds so many ways for the player to be sneaky. You can easily create a town that's both your economic and production center, by constructing the buildings you mentioned and pushing for optimized workshops and farms. In current version of Orbis it's really a battle for food, making the Three-Field Order a very wise investment. Combined with the prospectors guild even your outposts can hold their own.

It seems fairly balanced though, since the AI (especially the elves) know how to turn a buck. Creating a trade powerhouse means you have to actively have to push for that, staying out of wars, constructing the right buildings, spreading your guilds etc. If the AI would actually go on spy missions and buy mercenaries things would be well enough as it is. The AI is a bit hampered by it's desire to build the town improvement, instead of farms, mills and workshops.

Perhaps the problem is simply that the AI is not aggressive enough? The long years of peace favors the player, who can simply puts a single unit in every city and go on a construction/research rampage. It would take a lot of effort to superpower your economy while fending off enemy units every turn.

Great Generals spawn quite often, which means that you quickly have all the wonders up and running, but since they otherwise are pretty weak I don't feel that it's unbalanced.

I'm not sure what you mean by withdrawing units not suffering damage. As far as I know units withdraw instead of dying, with just a tiny fraction of health left. The example of healing that your using is a bit odd. You have after all created a strategy that relies on healing your troops quickly. Units in a city should heal fast, or conquering them would be a piece of cake. The "one turn breach" is really what's causes the need for complicated strategies in this game. Using ratcatchers to disrupt a city, pillaging all improvements and starving production, pounding the defenders with spells and artillery while taking the wounded with assassins, taking a weak city and the leaving it undefended forcing the AI to send units out of the fortifications to reclaim it etc.

[Mylon]

The problem with economic development is that there is no suitable means of comsuming the fruit of such a powerful empire. And as far as I can tell, there does not seem to be a point at which an empire might collapse in on itself due to maintenance and building a 400+ unit army is the tough part. Maintaining and paying the upkeep is easy. If upkeep was more of a concern then keeping an army moving forward (to take advantage of the city takeover income and pillaging) would be more important, as well as giving more power to commerce/gold as opposed to hammers.

I recommend splitting +trade route buildings and +trade yield income buildings and increasing city/corporation/civic upkeep and at the same time reducing maintenance reducing buildings.

[tyranny12]

Originally Posted by Mylon

The problem with economic development is that there is no suitable means of comsuming the fruit of such a powerful empire. And as far as I can tell, there does not seem to be a point at which an empire might collapse in on itself due to maintenance and building a 400+ unit army is the tough part. Maintaining and paying the upkeep is easy. If upkeep was more of a concern then keeping an army moving forward (to take advantage of the city takeover income and pillaging) would be more important, as well as giving more power to commerce/gold as opposed to hammers.

I recommend splitting +trade route buildings and +trade yield income buildings and increasing city/corporation/civic upkeep and at the same time reducing maintenance reducing buildings.

I've noted that in mid to late game as well - I think the late game techs (in Orbis and in FfH) aren't well balanced out without a better tree structure. I've said this before, and need to get my ideas in a little more coherent layout.

Especially, it seems to fall apart a little more when playing with maps bigger than huge. Naval needs attention in FfH in general I think.

[Tayschrenn]

About balance, the griffon spawning should be going down, their more dangerous than any barbarian hero as far as I'm concerned

[Mylon]

Another thing I think might help FFH as a whole is if everything got a 2 point strength boost. This would help even the power out between some of the units and, hopefully, make combats much less predictable. Most battles seem to be on the order of >90% chance of winning or <10% chance of winning.

[Mylon]

Ocean tiles really need +1 food to balance the +1 food required for population.

One thing that's always bugged me in Civ4 is ocean/river tile placement. If a city isn't on the ocean, but there is ocean in the workable radius, it can never build the lighthouse to make proper use of the ocean tiles. Likewise with rivers. Levees and river ports cannot be built. This should be changed so if the appropriate tile is in the workable radius the city can build the appropriate building to benefit.

[civ_king]

I concur...

[arkham4269]

Considering that ships can get to a 'inland' city via cottages it would seem to make sense that when building things like harbors that they are in the tile with those cottages.

Of course it would probably be impossible but it would be interesting if you couldn't build any of those buildings till you have a cottage on the ocean and bordering the city in question and those improvements would be destroyed if that cottage was pillaged.

[Ahwaric]

Originally Posted by Mylon

Ocean tiles really need +1 food to balance the +1 food required for population.

Done

Originally Posted by Mylon

One thing that's always bugged me in Civ4 is ocean/river tile placement. If a city isn't on the ocean, but there is ocean in the workable radius, it can never build the lighthouse to make proper use of the ocean tiles. Likewise with rivers.

It could be nice, but no idea how to change it... Also, it is hard to build river port if the city is not directly at the river. Same with ligthhouse and sea.
You already get some commerce from the river itself.

[Elm]

Regarding corporations: I will horde great people so that I can get all the corporations.

It may be a good idea to have corporations compete with each other, as some do in vanilla BtS.

[Mylon]

Originally Posted by Ahwaric

Done


It could be nice, but no idea how to change it... Also, it is hard to build river port if the city is not directly at the river. Same with ligthhouse and sea.
You already get some commerce from the river itself.

I could find it and change it and give you the code.

My thought on the port/lighthouse thing is the BfC is the city, while the center plot is downtown. So if there's a river or sea in the radius, the city should be able to exploit it. As for harbors and other improvements, however... That's up in the air. I guess I might as well. This also gives the Kuriotates a bit more leeway in city placement.

And towns allow movement through land? Well, now I know! That makes things handy.

As for competing corporations... That kinda bugged me about Civ4. I liked being able to collect all of the religions in a city, but I couldn't do that for corporations. I do think some of the corporations are a tad too powerful, however. I mean, the bonuses for having the resources is nice, but for the executives to also have powers/spells?

[arkham4269]

Well not to get to complicated, but the idea of a international mega-corp is a pretty recent invention. Back in the day, merchants were a bit more under the thumb of the ruler of an area and often had to kow-tow to the local way of doing thing. They still got business done, but it was often hard.

So perhaps if it could be coded, if you are at war with a civ and they have (s)one of your corporations in their cities, either you should get a drastically reduced bonus from them or not at all. In fact, if I'm the Bannor, why should I let trade go to my enemy the Balseraphs? Why not force those merchants to work for me instead?

Perhaps there might be a 'lesser' corporation where due to war, a corporation is severed from it's parent. Probably way to much work, but I do find it odd that corporate merchants keep on cranking out business at full capacity, even in warring Civs; that's just not right.

[Mylon]

Originally Posted by arkham4269

Well not to get to complicated, but the idea of a international mega-corp is a pretty recent invention. Back in the day, merchants were a bit more under the thumb of the ruler of an area and often had to kow-tow to the local way of doing thing. They still got business done, but it was often hard.

So perhaps if it could be coded, if you are at war with a civ and they have (s)one of your corporations in their cities, either you should get a drastically reduced bonus from them or not at all. In fact, if I'm the Bannor, why should I let trade go to my enemy the Balseraphs? Why not force those merchants to work for me instead?

Perhaps there might be a 'lesser' corporation where due to war, a corporation is severed from it's parent. Probably way to much work, but I do find it odd that corporate merchants keep on cranking out business at full capacity, even in warring Civs; that's just not right.

I thought of corporations more of a kind of franchise. The franchises operate indepedently. And they pay their franchise fee to the HQ. FF doesn't use HQs, so there is no confusing there. But in a world with mages, maybe one teleport and/or engage in instant communication and lord over the individual offices and collect franchise fees.