Thoughts on the Modmod from my first game.

[aimlessgun]

Well, initial thoughts. It's not over yet, but in the endgame (in the 800's, 4 techs unresearched, should be starting Tower of Mastery soon). I'll be comparing it to base FFH a bit since that's what I just came over from.

Game settings: Marathon, Immortal w/ Increasing Difficulty (so basically Deity without the scary Deity starting bonuses).
Large Archipelago map with snaky continents and low sealevel, which ended up having most civs on one large continent with a few on seperated continents (almost nobody cut off via deep ocean tiles though). Thought it was a good mix of being mostly connected by land but also testing the computer's ability to do naval.

Decided to pursue some peaceful strategy so I could see how things played out until the very end. Self imposed rules of no declaring war on people and no capturing/razing the cities of the people who declared on me.

-AI: Better in a lot of areas so far. Expands faster, techs faster than FFH AI. I got boxed into a small 4 city peninsula very quickly by Rhoanna. The computer has kept pace with me in tech the whole game, and was even in front for some periods. They spam units a lot less which probably has something to do with their improved economy.

AI also did a really good job of grabbing the nice islands as soon as they got optics, beating me to most of the prime spots. However! They didn't send workers there or build workers on those cities. Currently none of the AI colonies have any improvements at all. I should probably WB improvements or at least workers for them...

Have not had much war so far. Sheaim, Svalts and Balseraphs DOWed me early-midgame but didn't send anything at me (we didn't share borders, and due to lack of OB agreements they would have had to come by sea, which they didn't). I methodically slaughtered most of their units with a hero assassin to grab money from the peace deal, so not much combat testing there really. Not sure if you can program the AI to declare war on a civ that's sheltering an enemy unit right on your borders.

Should get to test war better when I start building Tower of Mastery.

-AI trying to win:
Well bad luck it seems in that none of the contending civs out of the 18 starters seem to be trying for cultural victory, wanted to see that happen hehe.
-Nobody is being particularly effective at domination either. Infernals are being overly meek for having the 3rd largest army and weak neighbors. Dain the Caswallan has probably double the powergraph of the next guy and is basically even with me on tech but doesn't seem interested in conquering people.
-Dwarves with 1 of the towers so far, but not sure if they're actually pursuing that victory or just thought it would be useful.
-Rhoanna beelined Warhorses and had a monopoly for some time on it, but didn't build Ride of the Nine kings. Seems like something she should prioritize...

-Barbarian changes are nifty, definitely harder (my god the floods of privateers...). Is Acheron supposed to show up so late? I think he popped in the late 700's, base FFH he shows up early game.
I can't seem to mount this pegasus that I spent like 10 freakin turns trying to capture :/

-Random notes...
-equiptment seems a little too good for Grigori but maybe they need it after the defensive strike/blitz nerf. I really like the Grigori changes in general though, definitely adds a lot to both gameplay and flavor.
-influence driven war seemed like a neat idea but ends up being a little weird. Seems like the influence gains are too high maybe, 10% or so for a battle is quite large.
-liked the redone random events
-trade routes are pretty crazy good giving production and food, new cities immediately get solid base production.
-maybe I'm missing something but the benefits of spreading corps around seem low compared to the upkeep costs...do the benefits scale much faster than the upkeeps if i grab a bunch of resources?

Not sure how much I can comment on balance since it's my first game so I don't have comparisons.

Lastly the MAF issue is pretty bad but I guess the fact that I'm playing through it is a testament to how good the mod is (or maybe to my videogame addiction, not sure which..)

[tesb]

Good to hear you are having fun

Lastly the MAF issue is pretty bad

what version do you use? sephi has poured much effort in reducing this issue with the latest versions.

equiptment seems a little too good for Grigori

as of now the equipment option is mostly for the player to tinker with, currently the ai does not know how to make use of it. So it will shift the balance of your game quite considerably. I like this option very much, but i am also very biased towards it . I especially like that you can choose between a few very good units or just spam spam spam like without the option.

As to the ai declaring war: How high is your Armageddon Counter? I think civilizations are much more prone to war when it is high.

[aimlessgun]

Originally Posted by tesb

Good to hear you are having fun


what version do you use? sephi has poured much effort in reducing this issue with the latest versions.

So hear, I feel bad for bringing up more technical issues :/ But I am using the latest version and have tried all the methods discussed in this forums.

as of now the equipment option is mostly for the player to tinker with, currently the ai does not know how to make use of it. So it will shift the balance of your game quite considerably. I like this option very much, but i am also very biased towards it . I especially like that you can choose between a few very good units or just spam spam spam like without the option.

I see. I definitely love it, I suppose I'll have to think of ways to give the AI advantages to make up for now.

As to the ai declaring war: How high is your Armageddon Counter? I think civilizations are much more prone to war when it is high.

This is something that hasn't changed from base FFH: the AC never goes above 20 if I'm not raising it myself.

[BasilAbdef]

Play with the double AC change option (last days, I think?). I've had games where I literally just defended as waves of barbarians, demons, and the four horsemen wiped out every other civilization.

[Breez]

My current game it hit 49 before i got sanctifying enough to reduce it back to 35. Having the Shiem in the game makes a huge difference in that

[Honor]

Yeah, it sucks when Armageddon happens too early. I wish I could code some kind of phased increase mechanism to the counter, so that it will be limited to a max increase rate of 25/250 turns or so (epic speed). So the AC would be stuck at 25 until 250 turns, after that it is free to rise up to 50 and stay there until 500 turns have passed, etc... There would be 3 plateaus where the AC increase will stop and give the player the chance to adapt. It ain't funny when all hell breaks loose at turn 300 because the AI is so good at increasing the counter.

[Tarquelne]

Originally Posted by Honor

It ain't funny when all hell breaks loose at turn 300 because the AI is so good at increasing the counter.

It sounds funny to me.

IDW: I've played IDW a lot as part of Revolutions. The values struck me as high in WM, too. I wonder if the formula is different, or it's just the FFH2 set-up.

AI: I really enjoy seeing enemy stacks flee, rather than commit suicide, when confronted with a SoD.

[Pazyryk]

Strange, I hardly ever see the AC go up much in my games unless I'm really working hard to raise it. I know it can happen if there are a lot of good religions around and a lot of city razing, but I rarely see this.

What annoys me more is when almost all the world's cities are AV and the AC never even gets to 30.

[Sephi]

Originally Posted by aimlessgun

-maybe I'm missing something but the benefits of spreading corps around seem low compared to the upkeep costs...do the benefits scale much faster than the upkeeps if i grab a bunch of resources?

yes. More resources do not increase the costs of the noble houses, it's always 10%.