darkedone02
The Suggestor
alright, a new version finally, good job Keal. I'm going to test this new version out, and i'm glad that you put in a theme for the cult of the dragon.
strategyonly said:I knew that but since you posted it yesterday, there has been alot of entries here and a few posted back from you'll. But was nice to hear from you on above, thx. Is it better to post here or the FfH other forum?
Kael said:For old timers like you its probably better to post in the bug thread in the forum. Easier for me to track the information. This thread is for more general issues and those folks who want to download and play but don't want to spend a lifetime digging through all the FfH forum threads.
Unser Giftzwerg said:Dear FfH Project Team,
I only recently discovered the Civilization Fanatics Forum and all the fantastic mods contained within. I fiddled around with a few other mods before FfH 1.0 was released. I then played 2 ½ games under 1.0 (One game encountered a repeatable CTD problem; saved game available if desired.) I liked 1.0 so much I was going to start a new game. But then I figured I should try 2.013, if for no reason other than to supply the project team with player feedback while feedback was still valuable.
Boy, am I glad I did. I did not expect version II to be such a huge change from version I. (I didnt read any of the introductory material so as to preserve surprises during play.) Now that Ive seen version II, theres no going back to I. All that is left is to play the game, enjoy the hell out of it, and supply feedback to help make it as good as possible. Its my pleasure to play a small part of the process.
PLAYERS FEEDBACK FfH Version 2.013.
My first game as the Grigori ended with my resignation in about year 200 with the loss of a couple frontier garrisons, my reserves already committed, and enemy Drowns and Hunters already penetrating into my interior. But I considered it a valid game as I could have avoided my fate by making a different strategic choice earlier. I had fought a war against the same foe earlier. If I had rode out war weariness longer during that war, when I had the upper hand, I could have defanged my nemesis. But soon after the war ended they founded the Overlords, and my little Grigori cities could not keep pace with his development.
My second game was even more fun. A bit of a riff of the game can be found here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4277495&postcount=1569
Conditions: Emperor, Raging Barbs, Aggressive AI, City Flipping After Conquest, Permanent Alliances, New Seed, Fractal Map (large, random conditions)
Civilization/Leader: Amurites / Valledia the Even
Opponents: Hippus/Tasunke, Lanun/Hannah the Irin, Clan of Embers/Sheelba, Calabim/Alexis, Doviello/Mahala, (Kuriotates, Infernal.) The last two were founded in the other hemisphere and were not encountered until the game was well underway.
Religions/Adherents*: Leaves/Amurites*, Clan of Embers; Overlords/Calabim*, Hippus, Lanun, Doviello; Kilmorth/Kuriotates*; Veil/Infernal*; Order/None (Kuriotates founded the religion a few scant turns before the Infernal razed the city in which it appeared.)
Game Play Summary: With so many hostile alignments and religions nearby, the Amurites found themselves under nearly constant attack. Fortunately they were screened by a layer of co-religionist Clan cities. With a Finlandized Clan on the land borders (and occasional unexpected appearances by Treants love them surprises who hoo! - the Amurites were able to turn away the various invasion forces, even if it would take 10 years to whittle down powerful, but charmed invasion units. Later on when the Amurites sought to expand, decades of constant war nearly brought down the realm from war weariness. All in all, it was a most challenging, immersive game. (It has not been played to completion yet, but the Amurites clearly have the win in hand.)
PROBLEMS & BUGS: Ive no idea which bugs are already known. Further information and/or saved game files are available to the project team upon request.
Charmed to Death: A stack of three Adepts were able to blow up enemy naval units. The three Adepts would cast Dance of Blades, then Haste, then would cast Charm and target a tile containing enemy naval units. The naval unit(s) would vanish in a cloud of yellow smoke (like the Taint spell effect). I blew up a privateer this way. I was able to reproduce the effect on a stack of two gallies on a later turn. Save files are available.
Fishing for Glory: The Valor spell certainly inspires. I have made Gallies, Hawks, and Fishing Boats valorous. The Gallies make sense, and the others dont hurt anything from a game balance view. Just FYI.
Cannon Fodder Fanatics: Weve all heard about the soldiers who threw themselves on grenades in order to protect their pals. But at least one AI unit took the concept too far. It was observed to peel away from an attacking stack in order to throw itself upon an Amurite fireball which had run out of range and thus failed to detonate. I hate seeing ammo going to waste, but still
Ya Cant Charm Kharma: A stack of two rather nicely skilled Amurite Wizards went up in a cloud of pixels when they off-loaded from a Galleon and one of them cast Inspire. Probably because Fate decided to make up for the charmed Hippus ships sitting in Davey jones locker.
Druids Dont Farm Squid: As established Farms were liberated from the Lanun, they would maintain their Overlords coloring scheme for a few turns after joining the Amurites Leaves realm. Later on the colors were correct, but just when or why they changed was not observed.
Your Tectonics Are Slipping: As the game reached turn 600 or so, problems were observed in the minimap. The overlay showing city locations and cultural boundries was shifted many tiles south with respect to the continental land masses.
Firebow Mithprint?: The tech tree says Mithril is needed to build Firebow units. This was not true during play. Firebow units were built / upgraded several times, and the Amurites have yet to learn mithril technologies.
Anarchy Amnesia?: Here my notes are poor and my memory refuses to jog. But I made a note to the effect that some spell effects were no longer in effect after a period of anacrchy. By this I presume buff spells such as treetop defense fell during the anarchy. I probably should not even report this, but perhaps it will jibe with other feedback.
Tardy Panel: The little mini panel under each city does not always update changes made that turn, at least for larger games. This may be to do with my pathetic 500MB of RAM. FYI.
Tech Woes: One attempt (of several) to load a saved game resulted in Civ freezing and needing a Windows End Task to kill the session.
PERSONAL OPINION
Fellowship of Leaves Too Nice? Ancient Forests, all the +Happiness from Guardian of Nature, the self-emerging Treants, the way forests will spread to city tiles (thus enabling Treetop Defense while inside cities), ease of terraforming all these concepts and perhaps more certainly combine well and are synergistic. Perhaps they are a bit too much so. I found this religion to be extremely powerful. I do not have game play experience with a different religion under version II. I cannot say Leaves is overpowered in comparison to any other religion (or to agnosticism). I have reached no conclusions at this early stage, but I will be watching religions effects most carefully.
Magic, OTOH, Requires No? No question mark that is; it is too powerful. A gaggle of 4-5 Adepts were enough to spoil offensives comprised of three times as many units each twice as powerful as the best Amurite unit. At low skill levels it might take a lot of time and conjured tigers and skeletons, but even a couple key Charms will make your cities safe from capture.
Everything in the mod is more powerful than vanilla civ. I used to joke that I got feedback on how every unit type was to powerful after FfH's first release.
Later on, when Adepts become Wizards, a half dozen are enough to melt down the toughest defense, ruin the largest invasion fleet, or to stop an invasion before it reaches your border. Fireballs are quite usefull, but nothing spells overpowered like the Plague spell. It has range, affects multiple units, leaves a lasting debuff, will collaterally damage units below the 50% mark, and can be cast on ships at sea or enemy units positioned in non-combatant realms. One or more of these aspects needs be removed and/or drastically attenuated.
RECCOMENDATIONS:
Remove the magic Range II skill. Magic is powerful enough without the ability to melt enemies at a distance. Force arcane units to get close in order to bring their powers to bear. At the moment, I would tend to support the removal of even the Range I skill!
Magical balance. Death magic and fire magic are very strong, but not all fields can say the same thing. Ive no specific recommendations at this time. But I know I am already strongly disposed towards a few schools and predisposed against a few others.
Likewise, more differentiation is needed for Conjurors. I did not create many of them as the Amurites, naturally, but I did not see much reason to build them. Or to specialize in more than one type of magic. Once you can conjure one type of creature, it is virtually meaningless to be able to conjure a second type. Except for Guardian Vines, that is. So expect every Conjuror built to take Nature II, plus one other level II skill. Appearance of this sort of common template is a sign of imbalance amongst the options available to players.
BRAINDRIZZLING
It might be interesting to give one race, perhaps the Infernals, a resource benefit from fallout tiles. This is a purely stylistic suggestion. I am unaware of any game balance issue this would or even could address. File it under the it might be neat if category.
Kael said:Everything in the mod is more powerful than vanilla civ. I used to joke that I got feedback on how every unit type was to powerful after FfH's first release.
Kael said:In this case you are playing the best spellcasters in the game, the Amurites. You should notice that your wizards (best t3 casters) are more effective than your other units.
Although we could look at modifying the resist chance on charm person I don't know that I am ready to do that yet. What I really think needs to be done is the AI needs to respond appropriatly to mage attacks. I dont mind that mages can be 3 tiles away to fireball (if you have put points into that), they are more expensive than other untis and take longer to grow. But the AI should counter with mounted units that seek out undefended mages and keep you from being able to park at the edges of their lands and throw spells at them
I think that, more than an adjustment to the spells themselves will help balance them out..
Kael said:Some additional balance is defintily needed (as well as the addition of some missing spells) but the spheres aren't intended to equal. They appeal to different players for different reasons, and players have to choose which they want to go for. I often find that certain players love a particular sphere that others dont. More military players prefer death and fire, but would tyou expect that those sort of spells would prefered by military civilizations?
Kael said:You were playing the Amurites, the best mages in the game. If you were playing the Sheaim you would probably say that mages aren't very useful compared to conjurers. Mages definitly have more utility, but conjurers offer more muscle. Especially when you consider that none of their spells can be resisted and summons stick around to defend (see the point above about how the AI needs to be better at picking off casters).
Unser Giftzwerg said:I agree with your prioritization. Things like valourous hawks do not affect the game, so they can be left until last, if ever. Now that I know which of my bugs you've not seen before, I will be sure to do my best to capture save files for them.
seamus75 said:Hello-
I'm wondering, as I've yet to see any other posts, if anyone else is having the white flag problem with .14? I had been playing with .13, installed the flag fix & everything worked fine. Is it necessary to re-install the flag fix after installing .14? Did the fix only work for .13? The game is still playable, but a bit more confusing. Let me know.
Thanks,
Seamus
seamus75 said:Oh & the flag fix doesn't seem to want to work with .14. I've tried re-installing it & I still have white flags. Any suggestions why? Do I just run the exe. file & let it place itself or do I need to put it in myself. I believe I just let the exe. work itself for .13.
Sorry to be a pest,
Seamus
seamus75 said:Oh & the flag fix doesn't seem to want to work with .14. I've tried re-installing it & I still have white flags. Any suggestions why? Do I just run the exe. file & let it place itself or do I need to put it in myself. I believe I just let the exe. work itself for .13.
Sorry to be a pest,
Seamus
hawkeye72 said:I haven't tried other civs yet, but I can create elven adepts without mage's guild (playing Ljosalfar.)
Is it the leader I chose? Thessa.
ogredpowell said:This might already have been answered, but I noticed when I build 3 fire mana nodes, when i upgrade my adepts (built after all3 nodes were built) to mages, they do not have fireball (fire 3) automatically. Is this intended?