General Commentary and Suggestions

[SchpailsMan]

If you simply group your adept with hother units, the Haste button shows up. When moving large stacks of units, I often mix a single spellcaster with the stack and repeat sequences of "cast Haste, right-click somewhere far along the path, when the stack stops (no more MP) hit backspace to cancel orders". Get it ? You cast Haste before the stack moves, you move as far as possible, and then you tell the unit to stop moving so that it won't move automatically on the next turn (this to avoid letting the stack spend all its MP during the next turn without you having cast Haste, as it won't be automatically selected when cycling through units).

It sill works, but is less efficient when to haste-capable spellcaster are in the stack because they will both attempt to cast Haste so that one of them will get the "casted" promotion for nothing (although this may not be true anymore, now I come to think about it... after the first spellcaster casts Haste, any subsequent one should not be able to for lack of a valid target in the stack... I'll have a try this weekend just to make sure).

edit: what I'm really missing right now is keyboard shortcuts for spells there are many of them, which probably won't make choosing and assigning the actual shortcuts an easy task, but for spells like Haste, Spring or Fireball it would be a very handy feature. In fact, only spells that are meant to be cast in a city wouldn't get much benefit from a KS since you just cast them once (at worse make that "per city") and then fortify/sentry them to maintain the spell.

 

[vorshlumpf]

If you simply group your adept with hother units, the Haste button shows up. When moving large stacks of units, I often mix a single spellcaster with the stack and repeat sequences of "cast Haste, right-click somewhere far along the path, when the stack stops (no more MP) hit backspace to cancel orders". Get it ? You cast Haste before the stack moves, you move as far as possible, and then you tell the unit to stop moving so that it won't move automatically on the next turn (this to avoid letting the stack spend all its MP during the next turn without you having cast Haste, as it won't be automatically selected when cycling through units).

I'm a micromanager to the nth degree, so please believe me when I say that I've used Haste to the limit. Yes, I know including adepts in a group of units will make the Haste button available, and I do that for my one or two groups of advance troops. But the majority of my use of Haste is when passing by cities (or strategically placed adepts), because you get a better benefit from them this way (for example, if an adept leaves a city with some other units to Haste them to their destination, who will Haste the next unit(s) that appears at that city?). Plus, I typically leave an adept/mage at each city for defense purposes, and don't want them to leave yet would like to use their Haste ability when possible.

If no one else plays this way, I would not be surprised. But I feel a phantom Haste button would be a help to me and anyone else who micromanages as I do.

- Niilo

 

[Kael]

Yeah, I am looking for ways we can reduce the clicking. But I fear this will be more frustrating then helpful. Casual players will notice their unit, who is in the stack with an archmage, has the haste spell and click it before attacking (maybe its on an adept who really doesn't have the spell himself, maybe there are 2 adepts in the stacks and one has haste and one doesnt). But when they cast it they just used up the archmages spell for the turn making him unable to cast the meteor swarm they were counting on. Then comes the frustration.

 

[QES]

Yeah, I am looking for ways we can reduce the clicking. But I fear this will be more frustrating then helpful. Casual players will notice their unit, who is in the stack with an archmage, has the haste spell and click it before attacking (maybe its on an adept who really doesn't have the spell himself, maybe there are 2 adepts in the stacks and one has haste and one doesnt). But when they cast it they just used up the archmages spell for the turn making him unable to cast the meteor swarm they were counting on. Then comes the frustration.

Whoa, is that ever the truth.
-Qes

 

[vorshlumpf]

I learned early on never to cast spells with multiple-selected spellcasters.

I just had a thought, perhaps an idea for the future. There is a great Plot List Enhancement mod that I've used for Vanilla (and really miss it for FfH) - I'm sure you're aware of it. It allows you to show which units in a selection can upgrade (and to what), and which are injured, or not, etc. When the time comes to concentrate a bit more on such niceties, perhaps that mod can be used and modified to include a spell caster filter which will show the spell casters and the spells they can cast (and allow you to click on the spell above their icon, just like with the unit upgrades).

- Niilo

 

[kumari82]

I'm with Slithy on his AI comments. The rest of the mod is just freakin' incredible so it's a little disappointing that the AI is somewhat outmatched.

The AI actually wasn't that great even in vanilla civ, so with the added complexity of FFH I'm guessing that it just starts to break down. With all the spells and possible options the FFH developers have given us, I think it might be unreasonable to expect the AI to ever take full advantage of it.

Still, I'm curious, how are the developers approaching this problem?

I'm thinking my next game I'm gonna try Emperor/ large map/ raging barbarians/ always war/ all AI civs allied against me (is that even possible? I've never tried it). I'm guessing I'll get beat down in a serious way, but it should be fun at least.

 

[Sureshot]

ive done that (tho deity, 17 AI's always war, raging barbs)... gets really hard when they start bringing siege weapons

 

[Grey Fox]

Man this is an old thread o.O. Well ok not that old, but still...

 

[Endovior]

Indeed... what's with the thread necromancy?

 

[Sureshot]

lol just noticed that... i only rezzed it 3 days,, kamaria rezzed it a couple months

 

[vicentiko]

Kael, i know you are not planning at all to upgrade FFH2 to Warlords, but i've heard from many people that warlords implements pretty much the AI, wouldn't that help out a bit FFH2 AI management?

 

[Silverkiss]

The improvments made to AI on Warlords were alredy implemented, IIRC

 

[Kael]

Some of the AI fixes in warlords were backreved to FfH, but definitly not all. There is a function that helps players determine if they should go to war based on resources in the opponents lands that I would love to backrev but its a lot of code.

We have no plans to update to Warlords. Its to much work for to little benifit. It would be better on Warlords. Just if Im going to spend all that time working on the mod I would rather be adding other stuff than Warlords code.

So its not a case of not wanting to be on Warlords, just gotta prioritize, convert or work on new stuff (like hidden nationality, the new naval system, fixing bugs, adding all the art teams cool units, writing, etc etc). It would be cool to have more time to do everything we'd like, but for now prioritization means some stuff, even though its good, doesn't get done.