ExtraModMod

Jojo_Fr said:
Hello.

I would like to report few problems, problems of unbalanced features/spells we encounter in our recents multiplayer games. These problems may be redondants with past suggestions.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry but as I mentioned earlier in this thread, for the time being I'm not implementing any balance changes. In fact, ExtraModMod is on freeze except for minor things, merges with MNAI/BarbsPlus and bugfixes. There are extensive discussions about the Blinding light spell earlier in this thread.
 
AI Illians performing very well, killing of 3 other AIs (I killed the other two). Despite the fact, that they soon fell victim to my hordes of vampires, this is a significant improvement from the vanilla FFH. The AI is actually trying to win a conquest victory!

Well done, Tholal and Terkhen!

Spoiler :
 
Jojo_Fr said:
Ok. Thank you.

- The main problem is there is very few players who play in multi, so a considerable MP patch would concern very few people. So why making this work ? You or any other people don't seem motivated by that (and me I have no coding skill^^).

- The idea of "fighting the broken by the broken" don't feat for the concret situations in the game. For exemple, you cannot fight a raider cavalery army especially in double move. The best what you do, is having yourself a large cavalery force, and/or trying to kill his own cityes.

It is the same problem with Sidar teleport (and Sidar invisibilty). If the argument is not say "Yeah it's broken, but you can take a raider civ / orcs rush etc. and attack him before him, I dont agree with the "Broken Fighting".

- An OK broken fighting, is for exemple the Calabim Vampires : they are strong and very dangerous for a long period of the game, but you can defend with some units, as catapult or magic, and in end games, vampires became weaker.


- I think me and the others people with who I played, will continue playing by using more and more specitics rules, to ban the insane broken things because I don't thing a technical solution (a patch) will one day be done about our problems. :)
Click to expand...

((-- Additionally there were some deleted posts (above) that had mentioned reducing a demon's death resist from 100% to 50%, removing assassins ability to target weakest unit, or removing assassin unit altogether except sidar ghost, and something about blinding light ---- I haven't done enough research on the new blinding light to be certain, but at the same time I know that I was also using Druid's entangle ability on his stack so ... separate issue--))
Click to expand...

Edit: Found it!
Spoiler :
Jojo_Fr said:
Hello.

I would like to report few problems, problems of unbalanced features/spells we encounter in our recents multiplayer games. These problems may be redondants with past suggestions.

Off course, feel free to do or don't do what you want, I just want to give our experience.

1. The overpowering of immunity to death or devil damages

- There are units who are immunised to source of damages. It may be logical but it nerfs totally units which are founded on this damage source. For exemple, Fantoms are pretty weak but can become strong if you got some death mana node.

But versus immunised, as Eidolons, or Any demons, they became very weak, useless in fact.

Proposition : Reduce immunity to Death/Impis damages from 100 % to 50 %. It is logical, balanced thing. I dont see why a demons would be immunised to a very strong empored undead as the spectres.

2. The overpowering of the Blinding Light spell

- Confronted to this situation where the Ennemy has few very strong demons in defense, who canceled my fantoms strategy (I played Sheaims and the AC was at 100), I needed to create special counter unit so I go for the Cannons.

- But when I came to his city with 20 canons and a big army, he used several Rathas with Blinding Light and from here he succed to totally block me. My 50th units were stuck here each turn, the only things which I could done was to invoque spectres for attack, but they were useless versus his demons defenders...

Proposition : Mass SPells have always been a unabalance factor, but this spell is largely too strong. First you can have it just by building units (you don't need upgrame an adept, for exemple), and two it affect every unit in all stack and all directions.

I propose you can only send one type of mass spells per turn on an ennemy stack (if it is technically possible).

If not, I propose blinding light can only 3 units by each spell used (witch is still important).


Another solution should be to be able to developp the opportunity of spell resistance because now, there is nothing versus that except dispell but Blinding Light make unpossible any spellcasting....

3. The assassins

- Do you plan to create units who protect vs them ? Now an ennemy who has assassin can kill any adept/mages/ritualistes and ruin totally your attack.

Defense in FFH2 is largely too easy compared to attack. You can use mass spells before him, invocations, sieges, and with assassin, any attack become impossible (vs an intelligent ennemy, from the mid game).


So the game tend to become very defensive and going from a stupid Tower Mastery competition, not conquest victory.
Click to expand...

My response now in Spoilers
Spoiler :

Kael founded FFH2 on the ideals on assymetrical balance. He did not want each army being just another war games clone, but he wanted an assassin heavy army to do good vs a mage heavy army, a mage heavy army to do good vs a melee heavy army, and a melee heavy army to do good vs an assassin heavy army.

One of the beautiful things about FFH2 is that, even if things are very difficult to overcome, there ARE ways around it, especially if your economy is stronger than his. Most things in FFH2 when it comes to actual victory have to do with your economy. Who has the most hammers, who has the most food, who has the most commerce. Usually hammers matter the most, as you may well know.

Well ... in FFH2 there is a wide variety of what can actually happen!

Sometimes a big army is best, sometimes a small army is best. If your huge army of level ZERO units is having trouble ... maybe a smaller band of heroes would have worked better. If your small band of heroes gets wiped out, maybe a larger army was required in this case. Some times in FFH2 a small army can utterly destroy a large army on account of resistances, spells, abilities, strength, or even just promotions.

If your opponent is raider, then he will by default be weaker economically, or even on raw attack/defense, or something, on account of picking up the Raider trait. GRANTED, usually raider is BEST TRAIT for a number of reasons .....

Having a commando army isn't necessarily the problem, but the ease with which a Raider Civ can get commando can certainly become problematic.

"Balance" Mods for FFH2 should always keep in mind that its never going to be 'balanced' ... per se ... as that is part of the beauty. In some situations u never know what is going to ing happen, and that can be both awesome and scary. Now, you like predictability, you like for economy to affect military 1:1 .... and FFH2 just isn't always like that. Econ to Military can be 1:2, 1:5, 5:1 .... effectiveness has more to do with "what" you pick rather than how much of it you have. The right unit choice, or the right overall Strategy (like experience gathering strategy for instance) can make all the difference. For some civs, an experience gathering strategy needs an entire game to accumulate, while for the vampires, they have a lot more flexibility when it comes to fielding heroic-like units. The Sheaim can certainly get heroic units, but that needs to be the focus, AND .... if you are barbarian trait, u are missing out on Barbarian exp, which doubly hurts you when it comes to fighting humans, because LEVEL affects SPELL RESISTANCE. An infinitely large army of raw recruits can be permanently blocked with the right spells ..... equally so a mage army that is not properly equipped to deal with assassins WILL DIE TO ASSASSINS.

Spectre death affinity is one of the most hotly contested pieces of FFH2 game mechanics .... and by that logic why shouldn't other tier2 summons also have such affinity? Or why is there fire resistance promo but not a death resistance promo? how fair is that? -> especially since death damage is 2nd most common source after fire.

When trying out my SHeaim buffing mod, I specifically dealt with the opposite of your scenario jojo ... I was sheaim with tons of spectres n wraiths ... and I had to deal with annoying Vampire heroes, like Losha, vampire paladins, and vampire Eidolons. Now, sometimes my spectres could work really well, and other times the presence of an Eidolon would really mess my strat up. I made a few other mistakes which I won't go into, but even with a buffed Sheaim I ended up losing, or at least unable to win, vs the Calabim threat .... and it was very annoying.

As far as I can tell for every strategy there is already a counter .... however the ONLY strategy that has no true counter is amassing raider-cavalry, largely because of the amount of investment required for an extensive defensive network vs.... exactly.

I actually have a few ideas right now on how to make the raider trait completely different, and even more fun :)

But look, the point of the matter is, is that *I* in my infinite multiplayer experience have made TONS of modmods .... most of them came RIGHT after a battle, with some skewed vision of what the game should be, and I was doing things right and left in a somewhat biased manner. Now, bias is almost IMPOSSIBLE to avoid, unless u have consensus rule. And even then its just consensus bias, to a certain extent. That is where you have the differences of opionion vs Democratic approach and control by expert/specialists.

The times when I trust my judgement the most on such matters are after I've been away from MP for a few days OR when i've seen a wide variety of strategies ....

At this point in my life I think I have attacked with and defended with almost every known FFH2 strategy known to mankind, and therefore I believe that, due to my strong memory of these situations, I have a bit better knowledge .... plus the fact that I am aware of the distinctly unique aproaches by the Play by Email community over in Realms Beyond, who, in their pitbosses and play by emails, play with an excellence of professionalism beyond which I have ever truly seen in Multiplayer.

Therefore, with my own experiences, and the knowledge gleaned from others in both this community and the realms beyond community, I feel quite confident about my ability to determine the fairness of basic concepts ... especially the notion of "Should there be a counter to Spectres AT ALL" and ... "Should assassins exist". Now, I'm not saying its 'balanced' per se .... but then again, Spectres aren't even closed to 'balanced' .... but going back to the thesis, FFH2 is about ASSYMETRY. You aren't going to get perfect symmetry here ... but u might get it in my new upcoming mod Age of Dragons, which is a new Civ IV game that uses FFH2 code shamelessly ;P


Now, I know this isn't the balance thread, and development is on hold, I just wanted this here because I know "balance" discussions tend to come up often, especially in a community of modders, or a community where the knowledge of modders is known ... where ppl tend to cry "change" in the face of an obstacle. I mean, I love tweaking the out of FFH2, but I am not going to just go into a modding spree at the whims of someone less experienced with the game-play. And I doubt any modder would do so without first consulting a wide audience and/or their own experiences.

My friend Thirlan used to play Hearts of Iron 3 .... and at one point they started modding. It got so bad that they released a new mod before every game, on account of different ppl's suggestions and it got out of hand. Ultimately to be a successful modder you have to either have a team, and the team works as a cohesive unit, or if you have a piece of the puzzel to solve, to always trust your own judgement first, and then after release, consult for bugs and possible balance issues. There is a difference between something being uncounterable, and uncounterable using certain strategies.

--------------

Now onto pieces of the actual quote here, in context with the deleted posts as well.

Vampires are perhaps strongest in the Mid-Game this is true .... BUT!! for the late-game they also have unlimited promotion potential for certain tier4 units. Unfortunately vampires cannot upgrade to phalanx, but they can upgrade to brujah, eidolon, paladin, and vamp lord. Now, in our game where u were vamp and I was lanun ... u could have used more moroi to garrison your cities as a precaution vs Coastal attack, OR you could have used them to enhance your army. Also you could have used a weaker unit like a scout or a bloodpet to scout the neutral territory instead of wasting valuable vampires. Also, you could have kept your vampire stack in your homeland post-conquest, rather than use it to defend newly conquered territories. You could have also gathered more promotions on a couple of your vampires .... but instead it looked like they all only had death 2 and a few combat promotions. Shock2, Fire Resist, Cold Resist, Cover 2, and City Raider 3 are just a couple examples of why feasting your vamps may be worthwhile. So in that game you saw how the 'spectre spamming' basic vampyre has limited uses in the late game ... but failed to take advantage of their late-game potential ... while in our next game, perhaps it was mostly Druids that crippled you, but you also saw late-game potential among vampire kind. Such as Eidolons that can kill entire armies of spectres ... etc.

---------------

One of the points I am trying to make is that, look ... we are all here to play the game. So maybe sometimes lets just play the game how it was meant to be played, and respect the modder's decisions to keep certain things the same, and accept that maybe others have more experience and knowledge in how the game is meant to be played.

I remember my early modding days where I wanted the game tailor made just for me ... and a guy named Gyther showed me how even the Doviello can do great things ... I just had to play them the way they needed to be played.

Its not that I don't like tweaking, I just don't like the pressure to change things just because someone had a bad day on the battlefield.


---------------
 
Terkhen: Have you considered adding a modified directory to your next patch so that the folder can be named 'Extra Modmod' without needing a FFH2 folder present?
 
- I don't agree with your psychological argument which say that my vision is falsed because I am victim of a frustrating or loosing situation.

- Clearly, by myself when I played Sidar, I decided to forbid myself using assassin invisibilty in ennemy territory and assassin teleport inside ennemy territory. I affirm I have a global interest vision of problems in this game. It is not a question of diversity versus others things, it is a question of super powered combo with make certain strategy and civs too powerfull, and that RUIN the diversity.

For exemple, it is obvious in our game, there is nearly never Elohim, Doviello, Bannor or Bannor. That is because they are weak or very weak compared to some civs.

If I can mod myself, I'll accomplish strong changements to this situations, with the final view of increasing the pleasure of every civ.

- To retake the exemple I mentionned, your idea which say it could be better to have few small bands of heroes and not two stack of dooms is not viable. Because If I do several small bands, in our inland sea configuration, you will just exterminate the band one by one because there is not strategic possibilty to avoid your two fronts cityes. Moreover, I have no way to have very promoted units, I am not Calabim, experience cannot be created.

So I have no way to defend versus Blinding Light or Assassin (no guardman promotion). So it means using adept/mages/ritualistes become impossible, so defenders spell casters you have will have huge advantage (+blinding light).

- The situation is clear, objective. There is no psychology needed : it should be changed. If someone think I can learn quickly how to mod FFH2, I'll do it myself because I am the only motivated person to do it it seems.
 
Ororo said:
AI Illians performing very well, killing of 3 other AIs (I killed the other two). Despite the fact, that they soon fell victim to my hordes of vampires, this is a significant improvement from the vanilla FFH. The AI is actually trying to win a conquest victory!
Click to expand...

MNAI improvements to AI have been coming very gradually over time, but when you consider the jump that the AI has made from vanilla FFH2 versions to current MNAI you realize how huge that work has been. Tholal's work has truly made the game far more enjoyable :)

Tasunke said:
Terkhen: Have you considered adding a modified directory to your next patch so that the folder can be named 'Extra Modmod' without needing a FFH2 folder present?
Click to expand...

You can copy a vanilla FFH2 folder, rename it to any name you want to, patch it with EMM and it will work. And, again, please continue the balance discussion at either Jojo_Fr's thread or at the EMM balance thread. I'm sorry to be so insistent on this, but I feel that given how long and "intensive" balance discussions can become, it's better to have them in their own thread to avoid drowning all other discussions. Thanks!
 
Tasunke, please do as Jojo did: move that huge post to the relevant thread and delete it from this one. Jojo can then do the same with his last post and you can continue the discussion there ;)

edit: ninja'ed by Terkhen :lol:
 
Just want to ask how to get the bear trophy promotion?
Is fol hero and satyr become too early available?
 
Ororo said:
AI Illians performing very well, killing of 3 other AIs (I killed the other two). Despite the fact, that they soon fell victim to my hordes of vampires, this is a significant improvement from the vanilla FFH. The AI is actually trying to win a conquest victory!
Click to expand...

I am playing the Illians right now, and I have tons of research for some reason. I'm racing through techs faster than anyone else. I feel overpowered (I'm sure having rivers everywhere helps). I chose Riuros, but the Spiritual trait seems kind of pointless, as I can't seem to create priests of Winter. I only have the 3 priests from the White Hand ritual, and Eidolons for the bonuses. I have played against the Illians before, where they were able to create endless priests of Winter, but that may have been another mod(?).

I like the new leaders. The other most powerful civs in my game are Malchavic for the Sheaim, Kane for Malakim, and Jonas CoE. I play on a Huge map with no water or mountains LOL (with tons of rivers/resources). I thought about my next game being more barbarian leaders. Kane always does well in MoM for the barb trait, though Sheaim not so much.

Other civs doing well are Flauros, Master Koun, Einion, Kandros Fir, and Capria (especially since they scored Basium).

Arendel and Dain are doing OK, with Rhoanna hanging in there, but Luichurp suck as usual (one or 2 cities left).
 
IMO. The best illians leader at EMM is dumannios - arc/sage

Due to civcs cottage economy in EMM is viable option, worked very well for illians instead of usual aristogarianism.

Auric as avatar simply sucks and is not worth of hassling. Hint - no blitz promo.
 
tipwong said:
Is fol hero and satyr become too early available?
Click to expand...

I'm sorry if the following is wrong, but I'm not sure if I understood the question correctly. You can check the full changes of ExtraModMod in the Features page. In the case of Kithra Kiriel and Satyrs, the following changes come from EitB (which is included in ExtraModMod):

Features said:
Kithra is available with Hidden Paths instead of with Feral Bond.
Satyrs now require Hidden Paths instead of Animal Handling.
Click to expand...


Freesmog said:
I am playing the Illians right now, and I have tons of research for some reason. I'm racing through techs faster than anyone else. I feel overpowered (I'm sure having rivers everywhere helps). I chose Riuros, but the Spiritual trait seems kind of pointless, as I can't seem to create priests of Winter. I only have the 3 priests from the White Hand ritual, and Eidolons for the bonuses. I have played against the Illians before, where they were able to create endless priests of Winter, but that may have been another mod(?).
Click to expand...

It is not possible to create additional Priests of Winter in ExtraModMod. Although undoubtedly Spiritual is not as strong for the Illians as it is for other civilizations, with this trait Riuros gets a stronger start since he is able to switch Civics as soon as possible without fear of anarchy, and he is able to pull a better Priest of Winter rush than the other leaders because they are more powerful. Another advantage is that he can build the Temple of the Hand faster, which is a must for expanding aggressively on bad terrain.

I'm glad that you like the new leaders :)
 
Yes, I posted in this thread because it wasn't a change suggestion, therefore I did not want to clutter the modification thread.
 
I mean the fol hero and satyr are too powerful in early game.
And I didn't find any cave bear , I can see the normal bear quite common however.
I play the game with the option of "high to low" and the map become much larger is that intentional?
 
Auric as avatar simply sucks and is not worth of hassling. Hint - no blitz promo.
Click to expand...

Not even for his powerful snowfall?

tipwong said:
I mean the fol hero and satyr are too powerful in early game.
And I didn't find any cave bear , I can see the normal bear quite common however.
I play the game with the option of "high to low" and the map become much larger is that intentional?
Click to expand...

Pics/expand? I don't understand how this would be possible.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

W
Trying to create shortcuts to individual mods on Steam Deck - what am I doing wrong?
Replies
1
Views
280
lymond
lymond
Spillsandstains
Getting the XML to accept a double-move doesn't work with custom features
Replies
4
Views
244
Nightinggale
Nightinggale
voigt
RFCEurope Enhanced Edition
Replies
12
Views
572
stillblackadder
S
The_J
April Fools': Xenforo enables new AI features
2 3 4
Replies
60
Views
2K
Valka D'Ur
Valka D'Ur
The_J
New indie game release: Empires Shall Fall
Replies
0
Views
290
The_J
The_J
Top Bottom