Civ: favorites and balance discussion

[esvath]

If you are playing Xtended, please answer the following poll: which civ is your favorite?

Please explain why!

Incidentally, the poll only allow 25 options. Thus, Mazatl, Jotnar, Dural and Frozen are not included in the poll. You are free to vote for them, of course, and if you do, please explain why and how do you envision them in the new mechanic?

Also, if you find any civs which, in your opinion, is over-powered or under-powered, or its gameplay is not interesting/not appropriate with the lore, please put your thought and suggestion here. I'll see what I can do with them.

 

[Calavente]

I put Austrin, but that's cause i'm a builder and switching cities is real nice
further, Windswords are very nice
And last : Pegasus as a local legend is for once, nice
(Edit: re-Pegasus : I meant that the local legend FELT like a real Legend.. it was a unit that I couldn't yet build at the time the local legend was built... it felt nice)
However, i have not played much of the other civs since there are roosters (only grigori, lanun, illians, sheaim) ; (and none other since the current version).

 

[esvath]

I'm putting this here for further discussion:

I havent had time to play the Bannor myself (too many cool civs and too little time), but i noticed in my singleplayer games, that the AI does exceptionally well with them.

 

[Alexej]

I voted for Khazad, simply because dwarfs are my number one race in every single fantasy strategy or rpg game. Their gold mechanic is old and simply great

 

[esvath]

~200 downloads on the latest Xtended but only 6 votes and 2 comments? :/

Come on guys! Drop me some comments please!

 

[GenEngineer]

Personally, I love the Sheaim. Mostly because I like how it takes a mechanic that hypothetically is available to everyone (the Armageddon Count) and makes it uniquely important to them, what with the endless tides of high power demons from the Planar Gates. I do wish they still had a way to make peace with the Barbarians though - some games, I start the apocalypse, only to quickly get overwhelmed by all of the horsemen being near me and out for my blood (if it's still possible to be at peace I'm missing something).. I can't speak too much to balance though (not good enough to be certain anything is balance-related, not my incompetence related).

I also like the Lanun, but that's more because I really like the Octopus Overlords and think it's just the most thematic with the Lanun (really, I love all of the religions, the way they are implemented in MoM).

 

[esvath]

Thank you Calavente, Alexej and GenEngineer for your thoughts!

I am still waiting for other players to share their opinion here.... Come on, it will take you just five minute. Unless you are so conflicted on which civ is your favorite

Which leads me to the poll: there are six fav civs from six participants. One civ for each. Hmmm, this is good! It means each civ is balanced enough (or, OP enough to balance other OP-ness of the other civs, lol).

Again, I am waiting for your opinion, guys and gals! Share them here, please

 

[remex]

Good day to you Great Maker

I voted for Scions. My 2nd and 3rd choice would be probably Illians and Calabim, I am sucker for these Immortal Emperor "Palpatine-like" civs. I am still in process of familiarizing myself with changes from base ffh2 (which I played a lot) and some things need to get to used to (separate tech trees, improvements cost, magic research...) but the process is helluva fun nevertheless.

In my last Scion game I lost Alcinus quite early (he decided to go hunting spiders alone), I was expecting to get him back in capital as I remember from some other modmod of ffh but that never happens . I suppose info for example in http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=300307 is quite outdated and don't apply in Xtended?

If someone would add proper documentation or explanation through ingame civilopedia it would be 10/10.

Keep the good work!

Regards.

 

[Ombatur]

It's actually quite hard to decide for only one civ. My favourite civ in vanilla ffh2 were Sheaim and Lurchirp, but i voted Elohim here. I always felt they were not special enough in vanilla ffh2. They didnt really have unique mechanics, buildings and only a few special units. Master of Mana and Extended changes all of that. They now have a unique mechanic with their bonus from special landmarks, cool units and new buildings. And their more pacifistic way of playing fits my not so aggressiv playstyle.

 

[sungchiahao]

Elohim would get my vote too. I like to find unique features and grab all of them!

 

[esvath]

I suppose info for example in http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=300307 is quite outdated and don't apply in Xtended?

Hi! Thank you for your kind words, I hope that you have wonderful time playing MoM Xtended!

Yeah, that documentation is not up to date. I might use it for tweaking the Scion, but Scion is relied heavily on python modding. There are so many things to do

Xtended is 80% feature-locked, so if someone is interested in writing a guide for Xtended, I'd be grateful

 

[esvath]

It's actually quite hard to decide for only one civ. My favourite civ in vanilla ffh2 were Sheaim and Lurchirp, but i voted Elohim here. I always felt they were not special enough in vanilla ffh2. They didnt really have unique mechanics, buildings and only a few special units. Master of Mana and Extended changes all of that. They now have a unique mechanic with their bonus from special landmarks, cool units and new buildings. And their more pacifistic way of playing fits my not so aggressiv playstyle.

Elohim would get my vote too. I like to find unique features and grab all of them!

I am happy that the Elohim got the majority here (well, at least temporary majority )

Have you managed to win with Elohim? In my test games, the Elohim performance is mediocre. A few times they managed to enter Top Three, but mostly they are at the middle level.

 

[Ombatur]

Have you managed to win with Elohim? In my test games, the Elohim performance is mediocre. A few times they managed to enter Top Three, but mostly they are at the middle level.

I managed to achieve the Altar-Victory with them. I chose a spiritual leader and used the Empyron civic, that increases your great person rate. I was getting a great prophet every 10 turns or so at this state of the game. I could have done the 10000-faith victory before, but i thought altar victory was cooler. I often feel the faith victory is not really satisfying. It feels a bit too easy.
I should mention, that i played on prince difficulty, so the AI was not a real challenge. And my neighbour didnt build any new cities for some reason.

 

[esvath]

I managed to achieve the Altar-Victory with them. I chose a spiritual leader and used the Empyron civic, that increases your great person rate. I was getting a great prophet every 10 turns or so at this state of the game. I could have done the 10000-faith victory before, but i thought altar victory was cooler. I often feel the faith victory is not really satisfying. It feels a bit too easy.

I put a code that force other players with other religions to declare war against player with last Sacred Knowledge to make it more difficult to cast the final miracle, but I have to check whether the code is working.

Did any AI players declare war when you start building the last Altar?

I should mention, that i played on prince difficulty, so the AI was not a real challenge. And my neighbour didnt build any new cities for some reason.

Is this with the newest version? What was the civ, if you remember?

 

[Ombatur]

I put a code that force other players with other religions to declare war against player with last Sacred Knowledge to make it more difficult to cast the final miracle, but I have to check whether the code is working.

Did any AI players declare war when you start building the last Altar?

Well, this might explain why all the sudden all other civs declared war on me. I was a bit confused about that, because i thought we were all best buddies
I think i should try the next difficulty level. This should make things more interesting

Is this with the newest version? What was the civ, if you remember?

Yes, newest version, and Calabim when i remember correctly.

 

[esvath]

I notice that AI will not expand if their first three or four expansions were failed (either destroyed by Barbarians or conquered by other civs).

The good news is, CarnivalBizarre is joining the team! He already worked so hard, modifying dll and fixing some AI problems. Let us hope he could do something about this AI behaviour!

 

[PPQ_Purple]

It has to be the Calabim. Their play style just suits me best. And the lore of soul devouring vampires is appealing to me in ways that elders warn against and sane people dread.

 

[Psychodad]

Hallo,

me i mostly play Amurites. Magic is just too powerful and they get plenty of Mana. Especially cunjure matter seems OP for me. One of their Leaders has philosophical + magic civics. With this he can build up new citys to sages-district -> arcan-district with all its buildings, without ressources, in no time (conjure Matter); very Poverful.

Balance:
Eloim can see Landmarks in the beginning. This is very powerful. If they manage to get their capital naer dragonbones (which are a little OP IMO) they are really in advance.

Cultural Victory is too easy, it can be achieved very fast if you get the +100% wonder and build mascerade in your citys. Its to easy because you only need 1 good city (you really need that Wonder) and Culture by itself is very useful too unlock guilds and traits. To balance it i would recomment to make 2 or 3 high culture city necessery to win.

Greets Psychodad

p.s. Thank you for your continued work on this great game

 

[esvath]

Thanks PPQ_Purple and Psychodad!

Yeah, cultural victory is too easy atm, and culture is too powerful and too easy to get. I think we need to discuss balance between commerce types (gold, science, culture, faith, spell research and mana).

I have shared my thought in the general thread, looking forward to reading feedbacks from you and other players!

 

[Ombatur]

I played as the Sheaim recently. The Planar Gates spawned in units, even after the unit cap was reached. Im not sure whether this is intended, but i think its too powerful. I had 50 units with a unit cap of 18. At this points the AC was quite high (90 or something) and the extra units were just annoying because i simply didnt need more.