Damn Lizard Warriors

[carn]

Isn't 2 str 3 mv 2 Units in epic turn 15 patrolling the border of the one city a bit hefty even for deity?
Or is there any good way to deal with settler preying lizards, while having just 3 warriors?


I fell they are a bit strong and it makes a huge difference, whether one has ruins and is alone on ones continent. Skels and other barbs are less problem, because they attack anything, so a warrior on a forested hill is attacked as well and can win easily. But lizards seem to attack only when they have chances > 50%, which means, you have to use 2 warriors per lizard men, to get you're settler through.

 

[onedreamer]

just don't play epic. It's been said over and over, the barbarian system is not balanced to this speed. Moreover, FFH is much, much slower than Vanilla, I think that playing standard FFH is like playing epic Vanilla, if not more. Try it.

 

[vorshlumpf]

which means, you have to use 2 warriors per lizard men, to get you're settler through.

Hmm, I suppose it depends on what you're used to. I see this as normal practise.

- Niilo

 

[carn]

just don't play epic. It's been said over and over, the barbarian system is not balanced to this speed. Moreover, FFH is much, much slower than Vanilla, I think that playing standard FFH is like playing epic Vanilla, if not more. Try it.

Thanks for that info.

OTOH this makes a few things a lot stonger, e.g. arcane and hero probably are not game speed adjusted either, just like Ancient Forest growth.
Somenone should update the FFH wiki, there are descriptions about Orthus and Red Dragon creation(e.g. Orthus i think fast 50, normal 100, slow 150, epic 225), that imply the game is ok for those speeds.

 

[carn]

Hmm, I suppose it depends on what you're used to. I see this as normal practise.

- Niilo

In principle i as well, but in that game no other barb showed up, so my warriors had 0 or 2 xp, when my settler finished and wanted to go somwhere. And there was no AI on the island, so i realy had to do it myself.

 

[onedreamer]

Somenone should update the FFH wiki, there are descriptions about Orthus and Red Dragon creation(e.g. Orthus i think fast 50, normal 100, slow 150, epic 225), that imply the game is ok for those speeds.

It's not a globally recognized fact that Civ4 and even more FFH are not well balanced for speeds different from standard, it is my opinion. But if you read several discussions you will notice that it's based on consistent facts... you noticed some yourself. The main problem with FFH is that many, many scripts are based on events that may randomly happen each turn, rather than each X turn (too predictable), or random number -K (which would scale to speed). And the main problem from Civ4 is movement. Production and research are slower yes, but the time it takes to move a unit from A to B remains the same.

 

[carn]

It's not a globally recognized fact that Civ4 and even more FFH are not well balanced for speeds different from standard, it is my opinion. But if you read several discussions you will notice that it's based on consistent facts... you noticed some yourself. The main problem with FFH is that many, many scripts are based on events that may randomly happen each turn, rather than each X turn (too predictable), or random number -K (which would scale to speed). And the main problem from Civ4 is movement. Production and research are slower yes, but the time it takes to move a unit from A to B remains the same.

With vanilla civ i thought it was the main idea, that you can conquer something before you're units are out of date. Also the unit price scales with 2 in epic while buildings scale with 3, so you can build more military units and they actually have time to go somewhere. Barb tech is also slowed, strength 5 axemen appear around the time one should have bows.

Except for this intended effect, epic works ok in vanilla civ - just not so well for builders.

But good to know FFH is not tuned for different game speeds, i'll try a few normal games.

 

[vorshlumpf]

But good to know FFH is not tuned for different game speeds, i'll try a few normal games.

Again, this is a matter of opinion. I primarily play marathon speed games, only playing other speeds when I'm specifically testing the game, and haven't been unhappy with how the game plays out.

- Niilo

 

[Ringtailed]

my own observations:
I think the main difference between speeds in FFH is that barbarians are harder to deal with on slower speeds. The relative speed at which skeletons/lizards spawn is faster on slower speeds; there doesn't seem to be an adjustment made. An example: it seems as likely that a skeleton/lizard will spawn on turn 10 of epic speed as on turn 10 of normal. But, you're less equipped to handle that on turn 10 of epic as opposed to turn 10 of normal. I believe this issue of ruins and barrows spawning very early on slower speeds has been brought up on this board once before and there was a suggestion of making barrows/ruins spawn lower strength creatures for a bit on those game speeds. I forget what happened after that...
Anyway, I haven't personally noted that big of a difference as far as the AI's relative performance between speeds... not sure if that's because there's no difference or because I wasn't really paying attention. But I've noticed that barbarians seem harder to deal with on slower speeds.

 

[salaminizer]

I hate those lizards... but I started to take 2 (and not one) warriors with the settler because of the skeletons (when the barrows were added). but as was stated above... skeletons are predictable, lizards are totally unpredictable and in my opinion a little overpowered, appearing so early.

 

[vorshlumpf]

From a flavour perspective alone, I feel lizardmen come too early. After all, it takes the Clan many years of research before they can 'make' this unit. Perhaps these early lizardman should actually be primitive lizardmen - the early relatives to the Clan unit that appears later in the game. Perhaps these guys could have a STR of 2, or 3/1 to reflect their feral demeanour?

It makes sense to have skeletons from the beginning but, again, from a flavour perspective the sheer number of them makes them too much. However, I haven't played a new game since Kael modified their appearance rates.

- Niilo

 

[frenzyslave]

I hate those lizards... skeletons are predictable, lizards are totally unpredictable and in my opinion a little overpowered, appearing so early.

I play on epic, and i hate those lizards. The computer uses them to "cheat", sliding them in and doing the dirty on you. And if those ruins are not taken out (considering how hard they are to take out early) they swamp the map. Is it just me, or do the lizards wander half the world over just to get the player?

 

[vorshlumpf]

It's not just you. The barbarian AI knows where you are and it's just a matter of time before you become a target.

After saying all I have in this thread, I just got myself killed in less than 30 turns tonight. Huge map, marathon, emperor. A trio of skeletons took out my only warrior which I had to rush (I was Ljosalfar so started with two scouts). My second warrior was 2 turns away (I was also production rushing it).

There are two ways I could have prevented this. Emphasize production from the beginning or keep 1 or both scouts home.

I re-loaded the game and managed to get past that hurdle (for some reason, one of the three skeletons decided to go elsewhere after the reload). Now I'm at turn 150-ish - there are many orcs and goblins popping up, but Lizardmen seem to the most populous at the moment. One of my original scouts is still alive and has Forest Stealth, and is stepping past more lizardmen almost every turn.

Meh, I'll live (against the barbs, anyway) - but does it seem right?

- Niilo

 

[snarko]

I just did a test, played 150 or so turns (on marathon) where I created lots of barrows/ruins in WB. As far as I can tell the skeletons will move towards the nearest city they know about. So if your city is the only they know about, they'll all come for you (hopefully discovering some other city on their way). Lizards... they were just plain crazy, moving around much like animals. Didn't look like they had a plan and they were certainly not focused on me in any way, even being in the middle of a lizard infested continent I only had a few around my city. Most of them stayed around where they spawned.

The barbarians don't seem to care about your defense. I had a city with no defense and the barbs would choose other cities to attack until mine became the closest they knew about. Placing a unit near another closer city to make sure they knew about it they started to attack that one instead. I even made a long pathway from one of the continents, putting a city with no defense at the end and made sure the barbs knew the way there and gave them a scout with sentry on a one plot hill island to ensure they would at all times see that I had no defense. Nothing. No units went for it.

As far as I can tell the only bias there is is the AI getting an insane bonus against barbarians. On anything above noble the AIs warriors are stronger than the lizards/skeletons.

 

[onedreamer]

Would be nice to continue this discussion in the thread "Raging Barbs in Fire" since the topic is pretty much the same and interesting stuff is coming out from both threads... but not very organized like this.

 

[Kael]

I just did a test, played 150 or so turns (on marathon) where I created lots of barrows/ruins in WB. As far as I can tell the skeletons will move towards the nearest city they know about. So if your city is the only they know about, they'll all come for you (hopefully discovering some other city on their way). Lizards... they were just plain crazy, moving around much like animals. Didn't look like they had a plan and they were certainly not focused on me in any way, even being in the middle of a lizard infested continent I only had a few around my city. Most of them stayed around where they spawned.

The barbarians don't seem to care about your defense. I had a city with no defense and the barbs would choose other cities to attack until mine became the closest they knew about. Placing a unit near another closer city to make sure they knew about it they started to attack that one instead. I even made a long pathway from one of the continents, putting a city with no defense at the end and made sure the barbs knew the way there and gave them a scout with sentry on a one plot hill island to ensure they would at all times see that I had no defense. Nothing. No units went for it.

As far as I can tell the only bias there is is the AI getting an insane bonus against barbarians. On anything above noble the AIs warriors are stronger than the lizards/skeletons.

There is no unit AI in Civ4, only player AI. The Barbarian player tends to pick and opponent to attack rather than just spreading his forces willy nilly. When that player is the human then it often seems like the barbs hate human players, when its not the human players often dont realize its going on. The barb player doesnt have a preference for human players.

ps Did I just use "willy nilly" in a forum post? Man Im old.

 

[snarko]

Having peeked in the SDK I think I know why I saw what I did, the map was too small. The barbarians (atleast those with unitai_attack like skeletons have) will attack the city that is target for that area, unless there is another acceptable city close by. On small maps chances are there is another city nearby. On larger maps (or with fewer civs) that chance is lower so you get more barbarians going for the target city. As if it wasn't enough that there's more fog for them to spawn in.

I didn't try to understand what "acceptable city" meant. Both a city with 100 archers and a city with abashi was considered acceptable ingame, so I guess the barbs don't have very high demands

 

[Kael]

Incidently the amount of lizardman ruins and skeleton barrows are reduced in 0.22. Although this wasnt intended to lower the difficulty (I did it to balance out for the increased amount of animals from animal packs) it will mean less lizardmen.

Incidently I forgot to set my chance on wolf pack upgrades correctly (so every wolf automatically upgraded to a pack which started spawning wolves and on and on). It was a rangers paradise, I'd never seen so many wolves.

 

[frenzyslave]

Of course, we all could play the Clan, Chardon or Hyborem. Then we dont have to worry about barbarians. But that leaves other cool civs out.

One hint is if you are being jumped continually by spawning barbs, is to sleep a worker under protection from a couple of warriors, on the fringe. I found that the barbs migrate over to try and top it. Call it Barbarian Control.