Insane AC results

[HadesScorn]

So I'm killing some steam by playing FF [as my current game of FfH is heavily altered and I wanted some relaxation at someone else's expense]. This is the first game I've played since the new AC system went into place where it became this noticeable. Check the attached screen. Basically, before turn 500 [marathon], not only have I been hit by Blight, but I've been doublewhammied by the new Horsemen feature. The extra +5 Angry [!!!] citizens in each city have rendered them essentially dead on the vine. The penalty makes even less sense after jumping into World Builder. I knew Stephanos was not on my island, but he is close to a third of the world away!

This game will have to be abandoned despite a fairly good start. No effective way to survive the incoming Khadi hordes with my production shot this early in the game, and my cities fated to shrink to next to nothing in a matter of turns.

I *strongly* suggest altering Stephanos' effect to only trigger if he shares a continent with you. Hell, I would strip my cities bare to try and kill him if I could, but as his current opponent seems to be sitting around with a thumb up his backside and I lack sailing, there is no way outside of WB to remove this effect in time to save my cities.

 

[Eldrene]

I think the real problem for you here is Marathon speed and it would be nice if some adjustments could be made to the rate at which the AC could possibly rise. I know that the dev team is working on increasing ways in which one can lower the AC because sometimes you just feel completely powerless in the face of number 100 quickly approaching. If you have ever gotten to 100 just out of curiosity, and happened to have, oh, i don't know, several 300+ exp units that you had nurtured for basically the entire game, and they just go *POOF*, it is very saddening.

Anywho, your suggestion could be a way of making the effects of the AC less hellish.

 

[stupidnewbie]

The problem with the AC is that it can vary wildly from game to game. It looks like you had a death knight or something spawn in your game and go around smashing cities to tiny bits, whereas my 533-turn marathon game with Last Days enabled has so far managed to barely reach 30 AC before it dropped back down to 18.

Perhaps a better solution might be to prevent epic bad dungeon monsters from entering cultural borders.

Also, you could try planting your units in a haunted lands tile in an effort to make them undead and, therefore, immune to the 100 AC kill-off.

 

[xienwolf]

Horsemen will remain a global threat unless I am beaten into submission by the other team members. But I am pretty sure they agree with me on it. The global effect and need to double-kill them is part of what has finally made people say "Oh crap! The Horsemen are coming!" instead of "Yipee! New free gear!"

My advice is to hunt them down ASAP when they do appear. 2 in the world at once is quite debilitating. And waiting for them to become a direct threat for you is a sure way to have 2 in the world at once.


But yes, we are going to try and make the player be more capable of fighting the rising AC. Once tools are available to fight against the rise, we will make it tend to rise faster unless fought, and train the AI to want to fight it. The ideal would be that if 2 players are fighting a fierce war (many units die and some cities get razed) that the rest of the world needs to focus on anti-AC actions, or attempt to stop the fighting.

My picture for an end-picture is that the AC fairly accurately reflects the current situation of the world, if lots of fighting is going on, it screams up toward 100, if people are apathetic, it remains stable after the fighting is done. But if people are seeking to reduce it and nurture "good will" then it returns to 0 not too long after the world ceases hostility.

 

[Gedwyn]

I've been having the same issues in both the marathon games I've played with this latest release.

AC rises incredibly fast - don't remember the first one, but it was at 26 or 27 by turn 250 in my latest game - and there's nothing to be done. That's a % as well, so the actual number was something like a count of 55 or 60 out of 220 (don't remember the specific numbers, but you get the idea). And turn 250 in a marathon game is really really really early. Nothing's even happened yet. No wars usually, most civs have 3 cities at most, not much unit spam etc.

One thing I've noticed both times is that it seems to be 100% event driven.

If you mouse over the AC counter, and you've met a few civs, you can see what they have contributed to the AC. Most of the civs at that point had put in 5 or 10 points (3 in my latest game had a contribution of 10) which seems to me to mean that they are getting those events, doubling up on them, and picking the wrong choices (after all, there are only a couple civs that actually want the AC to increase...surprisingly, in my latest game Tebryn of the Sheiam had a -5, but Ethne and Aerendal both had +10's).

I did a fairly thorough WB check in this latest game and found 2 city ruins. 1 I had created, and another one in between some close nieghbours...not sure who destroyed the city, but 2 ruins on the whole map at that point, so lots of city razing was not the issue. And it was too early for AV to have been founded...at that point there wasn't a single religion founded.

Can't wait for the event overhaul

In the meantime, I guess my next game will have the option checked on to limit the AC counter to make it more manageable. (Hrm, actually is there one? I know there's a double. Will have to check that)

As a suggestion, while AV is great in raising the AC in middle stages of the game, wouldn't it make sense to have one of the opposite religions (Emp would be my suggestion) to counter that by lowering the AC by 1 for every city it's in? Of course, the AC would go up when Emp was removed from the city, or it was raised (I guess the counter would go up by 2 then).

I think the AI would need to be taught to use Inquisitors so that both sides could get rid of religions they don't necessarily agree with.

 

[HadesScorn]

Xienwolf- I understand your reluctance to change anything, and I completely support the overall goal - that of making the AC something to prevent 9/10. [My two cents] However, at 500 on Marathon, hitting 40 on the AC, there is literally nothing I could do to prevent city death. No one had units powerful enough to take out Stephanos in short order, and the AI usually is fairly incompetent when dealing with the Horsemen. I'm suggesting the limiting of the effect if only because I [the human] cannot possibly reach him [the Horseman] even with my meager forces. Very Frustrating. Frankly, with the two kills rule, it would be interesting to have to invade a foreign continent covered in Hell Terrain IOT chase him down...but as it stands there's no way in hell I can get to him in time. The effect needs to be toned down or pushed later IOT have the desired effect. Right now, it's pretty much a "Main Menu" restart.

 

[Iceciro]

I support what you're doing to make the Horseman scary, but right now if they're scary on another continent you're just boned...

 

[WarKirby]

I think it would really be better if those global effects had some limited range. It could be a really long range, say 30-50 tiles.

Or failing that, it would be nice to have some easy method to find the horsemen. When they're rampaging around your empire, they're scary. But when they're rampaging around empty mountain ranges, with their Flying and 4 movement, very little short of Kuriotate airships can catch them, and they seem more like annoying cowards. And catching them is a seperate matter from even finding them. I've seen times when all the horsemen were awakened, yet you could search the entire world and never find one, simply because they move so fast. You more or less need plain luck to run into them

 

[Eldrene]

Also, you could try planting your units in a haunted lands tile in an effort to make them undead and, therefore, immune to the 100 AC kill-off.

That would be awesome if it worked that way, but in the game where I lost lots of fun units, it happened to be while I was playing the Scions. I had nurtured Koriana with a ton of equipment, so she was something like 18-14, with a ridiculous amount of promotions and things like ring of striking (I love that one). Then when the horsemen came out, I got curious and decided running around with War (one of the horsemen's weapons that causes every living unit killed by the unit wielding it to raise the AC by 1), things went up rather quickly. Hitting 100, I lost ~50-75% of my army, which was very depressing, but did allow me to just say screw it, and I declared war on the world and unleashed a massive number of the Scion champion-like units with my 6-7 cities that could pop one out a turn.

Also the 100 AC event is particularly brutal on the Scions, as it basically nukes all your cities 1-2 times it seems, meaning the population in some cities, for example my capital which I had up to 50 something for kicks and giggles, went down to around 20ish.

 

[2Hydroclopse]

To the far-off goal:
I really like the idea of the AC mirroring the actions of the civilizations walking Erebus, with one largish exception.

To me, when I was first trying out FFH2, AC was the solution to end-game boring-ness that inevitably happened with almost all BtS games. According to the final version, if everyone is being really peaceful then ,in fact , the game will likely be boring and since the Arm Counter would reflect that, no AC to shake things up.

The reason I post is not to directly assault the end goal, but to suggest adding a feature in custom game settings to set how the AC will behave for that game. For instance, perhaps a model for where the AC likes to equalize -model = graph-, ex. really high, middle, or low; also have the scale of time for how quickly AC goes towards that goal area, ex. quick, medium, or slow.

This suggestion is mostly aimed at the time frame of "when everything else is done, or when the modders feel like it" so yes it is a lofty request but I don't ask it to be done anytime in this reality.

 

[WarKirby]

Hitting 100, I lost ~50-75% of my army, which was very depressing, but did allow me to just say screw it, and I declared war on the world and unleashed a massive number of the Scion champion-like units with my 6-7 cities that could pop one out a turn.

Also the 100 AC event is particularly brutal on the Scions, as it basically nukes all your cities 1-2 times it seems, meaning the population in some cities, for example my capital which I had up to 50 something for kicks and giggles, went down to around 20ish.

I don't think this is supposed to happen. I'm certain non-living units were supposed to be immune to AC 100.

 

[deadliver]

Would it be easy to have a ritual that helps you locate these suckers? I have a terrible time trying to find them using WB.

 

[HadesScorn]

The ritual would still leave you having several turns [even with a max production city late game] where you had no idea where they were. If my units are worried about a "Nearby Unit" that's half a world away, they should know where he is.

 

[xienwolf]

Xienwolf- I understand your reluctance to change anything, and I completely support the overall goal - that of making the AC something to prevent 9/10. [My two cents] However, at 500 on Marathon, hitting 40 on the AC, there is literally nothing I could do to prevent city death. No one had units powerful enough to take out Stephanos in short order, and the AI usually is fairly incompetent when dealing with the Horsemen. I'm suggesting the limiting of the effect if only because I [the human] cannot possibly reach him [the Horseman] even with my meager forces. Very Frustrating. Frankly, with the two kills rule, it would be interesting to have to invade a foreign continent covered in Hell Terrain IOT chase him down...but as it stands there's no way in hell I can get to him in time. The effect needs to be toned down or pushed later IOT have the desired effect. Right now, it's pretty much a "Main Menu" restart.

The end goal would grant you control enough over the AC it shouldn't reach such levels so quickly.

To the far-off goal:
I really like the idea of the AC mirroring the actions of the civilizations walking Erebus, with one largish exception.

To me, when I was first trying out FFH2, AC was the solution to end-game boring-ness that inevitably happened with almost all BtS games. According to the final version, if everyone is being really peaceful then ,in fact , the game will likely be boring and since the Arm Counter would reflect that, no AC to shake things up.

The reason I post is not to directly assault the end goal, but to suggest adding a feature in custom game settings to set how the AC will behave for that game. For instance, perhaps a model for where the AC likes to equalize -model = graph-, ex. really high, middle, or low; also have the scale of time for how quickly AC goes towards that goal area, ex. quick, medium, or slow.

This suggestion is mostly aimed at the time frame of "when everything else is done, or when the modders feel like it" so yes it is a lofty request but I don't ask it to be done anytime in this reality.

There would be ways for you to push for AC growth in spite of a peaceful world, but the AI would fight to counter your actions in that regard. While nice to shake things up, how realistic is it for Armaggedon to strike a world that sings Kumbayah and holds hands?

There could be a portion of the AC which relies on unowned lands though, making it much akin to global warming, where it escalates faster than you can deal with it in a full world.

Would it be easy to have a ritual that helps you locate these suckers? I have a terrible time trying to find them using WB.

A good idea. How about a "Taunt" ritual instead which makes them beeline for your city? Then it solves both finding them and getting to them.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

What happens if multiple players go for taunt and all finish it close together? Does the horseman lurch around the map like a seasick Khazad who tried to drink away his discomfort, constantly distracted by the new rituals?

 

[xienwolf]

That would be one of many questions I ask myself when I write the code.

 

[deadliver]

The ritual would still leave you having several turns [even with a max production city late game] where you had no idea where they were. If my units are worried about a "Nearby Unit" that's half a world away, they should know where he is.

Still would give you an idea.

A good idea. How about a "Taunt" ritual instead which makes them beeline for your city? Then it solves both finding them and getting to them.

Sounds good to me

 

[HadesScorn]

I like the idea of a Taunt ritual. The Horsemen all possess flying, correct? If so, this solves the problem nicely. And if only human players can create the ritual, that should cut down on potential problems until the final code version is completed. Basically, as long as I can aggro them when they're on the other side of the world making my cities unhappy, I'm happy.

 

[Iceciro]

The ritual shouldn't be too hammer-intensive considering that you'll be using it while he's around, killing your production with faces.

 

[WarKirby]

hardly any hammer cost would be needed, really. The cost of it is in drawing their ire, mainly.

I'd say, make it just one ritual that draws the attention of any horsemen currently in the world. However, not to your specific city. Just to that general area, where they'd attack whatever they feel like, including your workers and such.