Ideas, Requests, and Feedback

[Grey Fox]

Something that will be a city spell is the Buying Slaves spell, and Recruit Mercenary.

 

[Valkrionn]

But ... if you ever feel this mechanic should be limited to adding one slave a turn ...

But I don't. If you have the pop to add, you can add it.

Now, something that maybe should be limited is removing population to transfer it to other cities; That's a bit more problematic for balance.

Something that will be a city spell is the Buying Slaves spell, and Recruit Mercenary.

 

[Kurrel]

Playing as any evil civilization, I almost always end up as Neutral due to religion choices. RP-wise, what religion is really appropriate for someone like the Svartalfar if they want to rule in evil rather than destroying absolutely everything?

Council of Esus seems just about the only feasible choice, as Ashen Veil seeks seeks to destroy everything while the Octopus Overlords are possibly even worse in that they may be trying to end all reality, if similar to Cthulhu.

I'd like to see a religion of tyranny, vice and corruption, content to rule a world of splendid evil. Are the religions considered final and closed or still ongoing input for these?

 

[Valkrionn]

Playing as any evil civilization, I almost always end up as Neutral due to religion choices. RP-wise, what religion is really appropriate for someone like the Svartalfar if they want to rule in evil rather than destroying absolutely everything?

Council of Esus seems just about the only feasible choice, as Ashen Veil seeks seeks to destroy everything while the Octopus Overlords are possibly even worse in that they may be trying to end all reality, if similar to Cthulhu.

I'd like to see a religion of tyranny, vice and corruption, content to rule a world of splendid evil. Are the religions considered final and closed or still ongoing input for these?

Currently, the best bet would be Council of Esus.

In the future, there will be another choice.... as a small excerpt from the lore:

Vimos perpetually sought power and dominion over "lesser men" as his natural rights, denying himself all other pleasures to purge himself of weakness.

Also:

while his brother laughed at the unenlightened and decreed them little different from ants

Please note that the 'his' in the second quote does NOT refer to Vimos.

 

[Kurrel]

Good to know!

I've played a couple of different games and really enjoy the way you can steer the various civs to different stories.

The Mazatl jungles is a really neat mechanic and easy to imagine the lizards on a crusade of their own to lock the world under a jungle density... like a flip side to the ice age.

The Kuriotates were neat with massive cities and the Empyrean spread throughout, though a repeating CTD forced me to abandon that game.

Currently playing a Doviello campaign with Halfmoon... haven't really seen the lycanthropy shine much yet and still getting to grips with them. Early days.

Looking forwards to playing several other civs.

One thing I have noticed is that good civs seem to be a little outnumbered by evil. Is this intentional?

 

[Valkrionn]

Lycanthrope promo really isn't too strong (though one benefit of Duin's trait: You have constant access to the Influence Driven War mechanic, otherwise a late game mechanic), but the trait will become a bit stronger in 1.4.

And yes, fairly intentional for good to be outnumbered in dark fantasy.

 

[Kurrel]

It seems like you have lots of plans laid out already, especially as regarding the magic system and a whole new civ. Are there many more plans to continue making each civ more unique? I know how much of a pain that can be to balance, naturally.

 

[steampunk1880]

Xivan's diplomacy theme sounds rather familiar... kind of like something I played on the SNES. Why does it bring to mind boomerangs, magic canes and pieces of hearts.

In all seriousness though. I personally believe "Dark World Dungeon" would be a better fit.

 

[Viatos]

the Octopus Overlords are possibly even worse in that they may be trying to end all reality, if similar to Cthulhu.

The Overlords are the nightmares of Hemah, who is the dream of the generally benevolent God of Water. They're crazy and terrifying, but evil is a difficult word to apply to them, and I don't recall any mention of their plans to end reality - then again, that's not Cthulhu's plan either. He just wants to deactivate his stasis field and phone home - driving everyone on Earth mad and triggering civilization's self-destruction is incidental to his super-awesome communications tech. Our tiny minds get overwritten by the signal, like if you put a kernel of popcorn next to a hundred billion cellphones.

Incidentally, I always figured if there was one thing the Overlords wanted in relative unanimity, it would be to wake Danalin up. Given their, uh, perspective Armageddon might look like the best game plan to some of them, of course...

 

[Gerk]

So has there been a verdict reached regarding sickness vs. population/growth balancing?

I understand it was meant to curtail early growth and avoid the mega-cities that would pop up, or at least delay them, but after a good, long 8 or 9 rounds in RiFE 1.3 cities just aren't what they used to be, even end-game; I don't think this is quite working at all, and I feel like I'm playing Civ1 again, being somewhat strong-armed into using specialists to combat a problem in my cities rather than as a luxury/strategic decision (the game feeling a need to dump 1-3 healers into my auto-spec and having to correct it manually whenever I give control back to the planner gets dull, very quickly.) Prior, the only time I'd ever even remotely felt forced to use a specialist was for Bards in the midst of a border push/culture war...and now we've got this scenario, the unfortunate side effect of the overtly extreme solution to a problem that didn't really exist.

I'll be damned if I can even get the resources to combat 40 sickness points, which, at Size 20, is what I'd really consider the beginning of "large cities". And don't even think about 1000-Slums cities anymore, either. Maybe if you're FoL with those delicious ancient forests and their +0.5 health, but the image of such a city makes me giggle more than it should.

(Oh, and exploiting improvements to give 4+ food on every single tile of your city is not an acceptable 'solution' to this, IMO.)

 

[Calavente]

I like the current Health system.

A size 10 city feels like a big one, it is a fun change.
It changes from other games were you weren't satisfied until all cities were at least size 17. (20-25 for the top 4).

The only issue is that there are not enough bonus late game (like in buildings) to help you have big cities.

I'll really like a system using the cathedral mechanism of vanilla civ :

like "Hospital" : needs 4 cities with apothecary (or infirmary) (sorry for the spelling) :
+2 for life mana ; +2 for reagants, +2 for nature mana; +2 for incense.
Thus for 1 city out of 4, you'll be able to get +8 health. (4 more pop)
Maybe kuriotates could get a special UB for Hospital, needing "only" infirmary + apothecary + library in city, but not needing to have mutliple cities requirement (as they have few cities). The UB could also have a +2 for ... fruit of Yggdrasil and creation mana (so they can get more pop in their sprawling cities)

Add another building "dietetics" : buildable by Great Healer : +1 for fish/cow/corn/wine/banana/mushroom : potentialy +6 (+3pop) (one per "improvement-type")

those are random ideas, feel free to change name/specifics..etc but they would help you to :
-get a real use of great healers,
-still be able to get some "few" cities bigger than others, but not ALL your cities cold become really big.
-keep the early game as it currently is but allow for some late game big cities.

PS: sorry Opera, I didn't meant to annoy you . Maybe you already thought of some fixes

 

[Gerk]

I'm not really a fan of that though. Granted, I'm nobody on here, but I know I'm not alone with this viewpoint.

I know RiFE isn't a paragon of realism or anything, but why should only some cities have access to adequate health facilities? The "mini-wonders," as I called them back in regular BTS, are fun but usually they serve more of a "cherry on top" role for production/research/whatever.

My two-minute solution:

1. Tweak the starting health bonus for a city.
2. Look at the starting sick/pop. in a city, maybe even make it higher than it was.
3. Create buildings higher up the tech tree that reduce the sickness points each added population point generates.

Think of this idea as the distant cousin of Civ1's Aqueduct building (or, if you will, the Sewer System in Civ2 on top of this.)

 

[inuyashasama]

Here's what appears to have been decided upon in the balance thread:

1) Higher starting health bonuses for all difficulties
2) Buff the healer specialist to four health and some beakers
3) Health bonuses from food are going to be modified, but I'm not sure of the overall effect the changes will have.

 

[Gerk]

Still can't say I'm terribly crazy for that fix since it only further makes the use of Healers an imperative.

But, as mentioned above, I'm just some nobody so what's it matter :3 There's always mods, right?

 

[Calavente]

I'm not really a fan of that though. Granted, I'm nobody on here, but I know I'm not alone with this viewpoint.

I know RiFE isn't a paragon of realism or anything, but why should only some cities have access to adequate health facilities? The "mini-wonders," as I called them back in regular BTS, are fun but usually they serve more of a "cherry on top" role for production/research/whatever.

Because in reality you don't have hospitals in every city, nor do you have catherdrals in every city.
The other reason can be that some building are SOOO expansive civ-wide that having them in every city is NOT possible. think of it as a way to simulate that the top healers/scientist of 3-4 cities are needed to work on the hospital... research center...Etc

IMO it is a great mechanism of vanilla civ. And I think it is underused in FFH. The only use is as a prerequiste for some wonders.

And furthermore I've got an issue with your use of "adequate": what is "adequate"?infirmary+aqueduct + apothecary + granary/salthouse/harbor/well/smokehouse are adequate health building for a medium size city.

My problem is with the gameplay :
I like the thougth that medieval fantastic civilization are not made of many many cities of 20+pop (3-5 million inhabitants).
Normally there are many small towns (towns improvement) and Few cities (cities, up to 12-15pop), and very few megalopolis (more than 15-20pop).
Before, almost every city was due to become a 15+ city : its too big !
Currently for normal civs, you can't have any megalopolis due to big big unhealth. I think it is not fun as having some super-huge cities is part of the fun.

For me, those semi-wonder building, are way to show that the cities of your empire contributes with the other in order to further the developpement of some few important cities.

That's why I made those proposals.

 

[Calavente]

Here's what appears to have been decided upon in the balance thread:

1) Higher starting health bonuses for all difficulties
2) Buff the healer specialist to four health and some beakers
3) Health bonuses from food are going to be modified, but I'm not sure of the overall effect the changes will have.

As Gerk I'm not really happy with some of those changes.

1. why not, especially at high difficulty (but maybe only in capital city !!).
2. okay (so that healers is worth the pop point and a bit more)
3. IMO, if those changes are available to all cities, it won't change the end-game from before : all cities will be huge.

 

[Kurrel]

You know, Calavente, your statement about civs and city sizes makes me think of a different way to limit pop caps.

What about having 'buildings' that indicate the expansion of a city? At a certain point, new use of architecture and space are required simply to house all the people living in the area.

The building could be 'town planning' for anything greater than 5, 'city planning' for greater than 10, etc. There could be several requirements that vary between civs. Perhaps the Lunan never need the 'town planning' improvement, whereas the Kuriorates can only build 1 'town planning' for every 5 cities they have but each one includes the 'city planning' improvement.

Edit : The idea being that, before the planning structure is built, the pop is either hard-capped to 5 or that every pop point over 5 gives 2/3/4 unhappy faces.

 

[shoggi]

wasn't that how it worked in civ 2 at least?

I think you needed an Aqueduct to grow a city past 7 and something else i can't remember to grow past 14.

 

[Calavente]

yep.
aqueduct for passing size 7 and sewer for going farther than 14

 

[Milaga]

Still can't say I'm terribly crazy for that fix since it only further makes the use of Healers an imperative.

I agree. Improving healers too much will just make everyone use a lot of healers and once again have massive cities.

I like the health changes, but where I to make changes, here's what I'd do:

Double the health bonuses for difficulty. This is an easy 1 or 2 population for all cities. Double the health bonuses for herbalist, reagents with an herbalist, add an equivalent health bonus for herbalist/nature mana (a la Wildmana), double the health bonuses for the infirmary.

But, as mentioned above, I'm just some nobody so what's it matter :3 There's always mods, right?

Don't say that. You're a player, so your voice is no less important than any other player.