Fall Further 050 Balance Issues

[MrPopov]

I posted this in another thread but I will do it here.

Illians receive 2 food on ice hills

Cualli/Mazatl receive 1 food on jungle hill plains.

I'm not sure if these yields are intentional or not, but it seems kinda broken. Ice hills become better than just plain ice in every way. Jungle hill plains are better than jungle hill grassland (unless there is a food resource like pig or sheep, or if you are going to use a windmill)

 

[Deamon]

Scions are extremely overpowered.. With the 10-20x hammers of most other civs they easilly dominate the early game to such a degree that other players/ai get a VERY hard time catching up.

It's been like this every game I've playd with them, even when I've had "bad" starts. Playing on emperor should be challenging, not a walk in the park.

Not sure how to resolve this though.. perhaps downgrading the amount of hammers they produce? 60-75% of the current hammers could suffice.

 

[Sarisin]

I noticed that some civs start with a lot of points. Not that points are such a big deal, but Falamar and Scions both started with at least 100 pts to my 8.

Playing Prince/Epic if that makes any difference.

 

[Valkrionn]

It's been mentioned by Iceciro... Pretty sure it's a result of their unique techs.

 

[WarKirby]

Scions are extremely overpowered.. With the 10-20x hammers of most other civs they easilly dominate the early game to such a degree that other players/ai get a VERY hard time catching up.

It's been like this every game I've playd with them, even when I've had "bad" starts. Playing on emperor should be challenging, not a walk in the park.

Not sure how to resolve this though.. perhaps downgrading the amount of hammers they produce? 60-75% of the current hammers could suffice.

I have to disagree here.

They get a nice quickstart, sure, but fallow is a double edged sword.

It's not just that they don't need food to grow, but also that they CAN'T grow with food.. Their initial lead dissipates quickly, and before long every AI player aroundyoun will have more and bigger cities. Scins have to struggle for every awakened, and then triage where it's needed most. Any other civ can plop down a city next to some corn or fish, and watch it balloon to size 8 in a short time.. Then do the same elsewhere, etc, etc

I'd have to say that I find the scions to be entirely the opposite of overpowered. Maintaining a tech lead s very hard when you're basically economically cripppled due to farr less workable tiles in your empire.

 

[Valkrionn]

I find them to be more toward overpowered than under, but not intensely so.. Honestly, it's playing the Scions that makes me want to be to raze my own cities.

Particularly after getting the tech for reborn from razing... Would allow me to leave a trail of scorched earth when on the losing side of a war, and bump my mine cities up so hopefully I can recover.

 

[Keyeth]

I'd say over, too. With a population of 8 a normal city needs to be working.. What.. 16 food worth of tiles in order to stagnate? A Scion city of half that size can be netting solely hammers from hills, or commerce from cottages, with absolutely no worry for food at all.

Getting awakened is really painfully easy, in my experience, regardless of difficulty or map size, and once you can start creating reborn (from cities and combat/razing cities) it's just a horror show for everyone else.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Why was Death 1 removed from vampires in the latest patch?
And why was the ability to learn it removed too?
I always found it to be realy neat and a great adition to my army.

Also, the pedia no longer lists the Vampire Lord as one of the units the standard Vampire can upgrade to. Does this meen that regular vamps can't become lords?

 

[WarKirby]

Why was Death 1 removed from vampires in the latest patch?
And why was the ability to learn it removed too?
I always found it to be realy neat and a great adition to my army.

of course it was a great addition to your army. Laser rifles and nuclear bombs would be a great addition to your army too. >.>

But seriously, vampires heal faster, have the ability to gain infinite experience out of combat, and they have body magic, meaning they don't need march or mobility. But they still CAN take those and be even better.

the 1 less strength that they have compared to champions, is hardly a penalty at all when you're twice the enemy's level. Being able to summon stuff just made them even more ridiculous.

Also, what other civ has rank and file troops that can summon. Any? It was a horribly overpowered ability, and essentially doubled the size of your army. Skeletons, although not powerful, are expendable and infinitely replaceable. You could summon a huge stack of them to suicide on the enemy's walls, and thenmove in to finish off the wounded defenders.

 

[Valkrionn]

To be honest, I agree. I WOULD like death access for the Vampire Lords, but beyond that I think it's fine for the rank and file vampires to not have access.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm actually thinking that in my version I may remove the Vampire UU entirely (keeping the art for Calabim champions), or at least remove most of their free promotions. Vampire would be a promotion only available to level 6+ Calabim units in cities with Governor's Manors. Moroi would probably still be able to get vampirism at level 4 through a spell (probably changed so that the unit ecieving the dark gift cats instead, so it would be xml only), but Losha would be only unit to ever get the promotion without a level prereq. The promotion would become an alternate prereq instead of channeling promotions for Death, Body, Shadow, and Mind 1 & 2, so with enough xp and the appropriate mana vampires would be much stronger.

 

[WarKirby]

Playing Patc N. The malakim are WWAAAAAAAAAY overpowered.

It seems that vehem incorporated a few things that were taken out of malakim+. Namely the +1 on desert, and the free maintenance on dunespeak promo.
Playing a hotseat game atm, my friend is playing malakim. he's miles ahead of the rest of the world.

Incidentally, if you pick Fnancial as the adaptive trait, and run aristo/agrarianism. You can get 5 1 and 5 from a floodplain farm. It's ridiculous

 

[JimMorrison]

Nyxkin(sp?), the Svartalfar Horse Archer, seem to be primarily melee oriented, this is probably out of the question, but I think it would be nice if they could upgrade weapons (even just Bronze) as they seem to be rather poor ranged attackers. As it is, I was all excited to make them (their model is so cool), only to find that they're not very good at killing things.

 

[pimparel]

Playing Patc N. The malakim are WWAAAAAAAAAY overpowered.

It seems that vehem incorporated a few things that were taken out of malakim+. Namely the +1 on desert, and the free maintenance on dunespeak promo.
Playing a hotseat game atm, my friend is playing malakim. he's miles ahead of the rest of the world.

Incidentally, if you pick Fnancial as the adaptive trait, and run aristo/agrarianism. You can get 5 1 and 5 from a floodplain farm. It's ridiculous

Yep. I do agree. I've played 200 turns with them, already adopted overcouncil and founded empyrean (which is the only religion founded!!!). Around the 100th turn I was already leading by a HUGE margin.

 

[Valkrionn]

Haha there were reasons I removed those... Between the Merchant trait, the Bedouin Improvements, and floodplains, the Malakim become commerce MONSTERS. Which is generally fine, without out extra hammers and free upkeep...

 

[PPQ_Purple]

To be honest, I agree. I WOULD like death access for the Vampire Lords, but beyond that I think it's fine for the rank and file vampires to not have access.

Eather that, or make the vampire sumoned skeletons defence only and +chance to defend the stack. The way I see it, vampires should not sumon skeletons to fight for them. They should sumon them to act as a meat shield.

 

[Vehem]

Haha there were reasons I removed those... Between the Merchant trait, the Bedouin Improvements, and floodplains, the Malakim become commerce MONSTERS. Which is generally fine, without out extra hammers and free upkeep...

I've actually gone a slightly different way with the hammers. Floodplains will no longer grant a bonus hammer for the Malakim, and I've removed the Bedouin village level from the improvement progression.

Including desert bonuses (+1 and +1 )

Bedouin Sit- 2 1
Bedouin Camp- 2 1 1
Bedouin Gathering- 3 1 2
​

The village was removed as

Bedouin Village- 4 1 and 3 at Sanitation​

allows a little too much growth in a pure desert (you can put the city in the middle of nothing but desert, and have every tile worked with enough growth for several specialists). Leaving the food bonus at +2 max means the tile will eventually become self-sufficient, but won't contribute to further growth.

====

My next concern is "Adaptive". Combining Financial and Merchant can be fairly potent, but Financial and the extra availability of +2 commerce improvements is the real problem. Creative and Spiritual both suit Varn fairly well, the Malakim merchant tendencies are covered by a Civ-Trait (as it's the Malakim, not Varn that are merchants).

Would it be a terrible move to remove Adaptive from Varn? I can't really see any lore reason for it - other than the fact the Malakim are adapted to life in the desert (and the trait allows you to make the best of whatever surroundings you have). The desert-adaption is now pretty well covered in many other ways - does it still need Adaptive as well? Are there better (balanced) traits than Creative/Spiritual for Varn?

 

[Sephi]

Financial isn't all that great for Malakim. Other civs can also build cottages and probably will have more (since cottages don't need to grow to give food).

OTOH Adaptive really rocks for Malakim. Philosophical (GP for Altar->high XP lightbringer that can be upgraded to A LOT of different stuff) and Charismatic (theoretical possibility to be able to train instant archmages via lightbringer upgrade) both help to take advantage of Lightbringer/desert shrine mechanic and with adaptive you can atleast switch between them!

 

[Vehem]

Financial isn't all that great for Malakim. Other civs can also build cottages and probably will have more (since cottages don't need to grow to give food).

OTOH Adaptive really rocks for Malakim. Philosophical (GP for Altar->high XP lightbringer that can be upgraded to A LOT of different stuff) and Charismatic (theoretical possibility to be able to train instant archmages via lightbringer upgrade) both help to take advantage of Lightbringer/desert shrine mechanic and with adaptive you can atleast switch between them!

Which do you think is the most useful? I'd say Philosophical makes more Lore-sense than Charismatic, so if I were to replace Creative/Adaptive, it would probably be Spiritual/Philosophical in that case...

 

[WarKirby]

The village was removed as

Bedouin Village- 4 1 and 3 at Sanitation​

allows a little too much growth in a pure desert (you can put the city in the middle of nothing but desert, and have every tile worked with enough growth for several specialists). Leaving the food bonus at +2 max means the tile will eventually become self-sufficient, but won't contribute to further growth.

But the villages do look pretty.

And playing as malakim, I find rather a lot that I'm forced to put cities in pure desert. Rivers aren't everywhere, and even the sea is only self sufficient, unless there's food resources.

I'd personally rather see the hammer bonus removed, than reducing the food. Possibly even less commerce, too.

My next concern is "Adaptive". Combining Financial and Merchant can be fairly potent, but Financial and the extra availability of +2 commerce improvements is the real problem. Creative and Spiritual both suit Varn fairly well, the Malakim merchant tendencies are covered by a Civ-Trait (as it's the Malakim, not Varn that are merchants).

Would it be a terrible move to remove Adaptive from Varn? I can't really see any lore reason for it - other than the fact the Malakim are adapted to life in the desert (and the trait allows you to make the best of whatever surroundings you have). The desert-adaption is now pretty well covered in many other ways - does it still need Adaptive as well? Are there better (balanced) traits than Creative/Spiritual for Varn?

I really like the adaptive, personally. one of tyhe primary draws of Varn is the (as far as I remember) unique combination of Spiritual and Financial that can be achieved.

Why not remove the merchant thing instead. I'm not sure why that was added to begin with. What does it accomplish?