Multiplayer balance questions and thoughts on current tiers

[knightpraetor]

This may prove to be a long post, but i decided i should ask for people's opinions on multiplayer balance and the current tier list.

Balance in FFH2 tends to be along the lines of giving ridiculously powerful strats to most of the races, but I was wondering what options everyone plays with/ thinks would be the most balanced for a multiplayer game.

To me, multiplayer balance is far more important than the rest of the game mechanics, because it is not fun for a player to be playing a race that can't compete with comps and will get owned by the other players as their warriors attempt to defend against a flood of str 5 or 8 units. However, multiplayer balance in this game, as in most games i've played, has a set of tiers, due to the near impossibility of balancing all races equally (which is made even harder due to the differentiation in map types..as well as the luck of the spawn location).

So far, the options we have been using, are slower xp (to strengthen non-financial/philosophical...although with slower xp charismatic seeems really strong..ultimately, teching is more important in mp games and so the econ traits are not really hurt that much, while the military traits are buffed) with no tech trading on emperor difficulty or monarch depending on our mood.

On monarch usually all or most of the human players easily surpass the comps even in the early game (turn 100-150), while on emperor only one player will tend to be surpassing all computers, while the rest will be near the top (usually this means one player got a great start location.)

Anyways, we turned off the dungeon mechanic because one player popping a great person or extra axemen pretty much places them at the top of the game immediately and will mean the other players will be royally owned...early techs count so much.. bulbing is very powerful without finding a great person...

Events we have been leaving turned on...but we had one game in which all the other players got owned by an early golden age event...who all gets events..I'm curious how balanced it is..i know some of them are down religious trees..so i don't really mind...but illians just pop it at the get-go..
Anyways, wonder whether people think events are roughly balanced are not..

Based on our gameplay...i have a rough idea of the tier lists.

Illians: they don't get the number one slot because they start at God tier..stasis needs a tech requirement or mp games need to set a particular turn when it's fair to cast it..recommendations on this would be nice...but yeah..against a good player, you won't catch up from stasis on turn 1.

1 and 2: elves...comps can't deal with elves... but even if we had all humans, i don't see how elves would be particularly weaker than other races...they still get the same types of units roughly at the various techs and can tech their faster...you can burn forest...but that requires a bit of tech doesn't it? burned forest regrows unless you put it out with water? No other players have been able to come close to keeping up with elves so we haven't gotten that much experience at playing with them or dealing with it...but supposedly you need to go to an early war with the elves....but i still don't think the elves are hurt any more than a normal race when you go to war with them early...because their econ will mean they can grow at least as fast and tech to the same levels as you.

3-7: Kuriates, Luchiurp, lanun, balseraph, calabim

...bals and calabim are strong militarily..luchiurp and lanun have ridiculously strong early econ mechanics to jumpstart them (and honestly early econ is far more important than any theoretical econ in a mp game)

The rest of the races seem roughly balanced in their own tier classification, except I feel that malakim and elohim seem a little weaker than the others...haven't tried the new malakim mechanic..but it doesn't sound enough to make them equal to a top tier race..but maybe do ok for the normal races.

i dont' really know how to place CoE..does their world spell actually get you more than 1 or 2 units? are you supposed to use them like the doviello by immediately swallowing another player?

Anyways, we are considering turning off unique features because of Remnants of patria..some other players said yggdrasil was just as good...what does it give? i've forgotten, though i've gotten it in many games...it's sad how many thousands of hours i've played this game...

oh obviously we have been allowing world spells...your perception of tiers would change drastically without world spells...luchiurp and calabim would drop a lot with the loss of it

we had been playing with barbs on; we used to do raging barbs, but felt that made expansion strats too impractical.

with barbs on i feel that aristocracy can compete with the cottage/city states strategy that people on the forums said was stronger. The reason being that it becomes difficult to expand to the point where cottages will surpass farms...with 3 or 4 cities aristocracy can compete outside maintenance costs i would think..mainly by getting great people with the extra food? An analysis of this would be appreciated...

oh, props to kael for increasing the unit limit for maintenance purposes..military rushes are less costly now..so maybe you can deal with that elf next to you better..though somehow i doubt it...

anyways, everyone is free to post thoughts on the tiers or balance or suggestions to help me improve balance in my mp games.

Thanks again.

 

[knightpraetor]

forgot to throw sheim in there..i think they are probably in the 2nd group, not the last...so basically i think there is a nice group in 3-8 that are pretty balanced..and honestly the rest of the races are not that far behind that 2nd tier..it's just elves and illians that can't be fit in at all

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I think you made a nice summary... stasis needs a tech requirement, elves are overpowered. balseraphs and calabim are always doing very good both with human and AI.

I'm curious to know your opinions about the Kuriotates btw

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Making an MP tier list for a game like normal Civ4 or any mod of it like FfH is pretty much impossible because:

- Settings affect the balance so drastically. The tier list could get completely reshuffled on settings different from what you play.

- Starts are random, and different civs do best with different starts. This also ties into the first part because of mapscripts.

- Games are FFAs, so there's stuff like dogpiling, trading blocks, sanctions, players having the luck to start next to the psycho, etc. which have nothing to do with the strengths and weaknesses of the civs.

- Because of all the above factors, it's very hard to determine who's a good player and who sucks. Good players get bad luck and lose,. Bad players get good luck and win. Players who make names for themselves are more prone to getting ganged up on. etc. Since competitive tier lists tend to be based on high level play, they can't exist for a game in which you can't identify the high level players.

 

[Kolath]

Good to finally see you posting again, knightpraetor

Have you read Evernoob's Elohim guide? The monk rush strat seemed decent when I tried it the other day. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=291178

I've always heard Hippus being a top rushing civ, though with the nerf to raider that may have cost them a bit from the top teir. But having faster and stronger units in the early game really helps if you have a neighbor in range for early war.

@Monkeyfinger, you are definitely right about settings playing a big factor. Certain settings obviously favor certain civs (water maps favor lanun, highlands favoring dwarves, great plains favoring hippus, etc.) Our approach so far has mostly been games on Pangea or pangea tectonics, usually with 1-3 civ overcrowd from the base number of civs.

But I think it is possible to theorycraft some rough groupings of civs/leaders given a few game option scenarios. Perhaps a good approach would be to come up with say 3 common MP game configurations (map script, size, over-/under-crowd, raging barbs on/off, and a few other variables) and then propose which civs would do best in those situations.

 

[knightpraetor]

is there any way to turn off events without using debug mode (i was afraid this might crash things)...we had to restart after a half hour due to a player getting -1 health in all cities and stalling with no growth...i mean, it's pretty lame to die to a random event.

kurioates seem really strong on high level difficulties when it is difficult to keep control of a large empire...i assume with all humans it would be less useful because one human might end up with much larger territory..but in general, we play on maps with about 3-5 cities per player without much conflict...so until the enemy absorb two players worth of territory i think the kurioates are at an advantage against most races....with the exceptions being elves and illians, and maybe the luchiurp due to the instant great engineer and wood golems...luchiurp are weaker though with raging barbs.

i also learned recently that lanun can be extremely overpowered if they start next to 4 pearls and get two pirate coves

 

[onedreamer]

Making an MP tier list for a game like normal Civ4 or any mod of it like FfH is pretty much impossible because:

This is wrong, in Civ4 multiplayer is quite balanced. In FFH2 it isn't but this is an aged problem / discussion and simply won't be fixed IMHO because it is a design issue. Basically, in Civ4 all civs are the same plus one UB and one UU, which have nice boni but not overpowering ones. In FFH2 the design is meant to give every civ an overpowering strategy but there are big flaws in this mechanic:

1- some of these strategies are available much earlier than others. While this is somewhat manageable when you play SP, in MP a human player will exploit the civ strategy near or at its best and as soon as possible, and this results in unfair and unbalanced gameplay because of the disparity of potential between civs, cause by the fact that civs traits/features aren't just boni like in vanilla Civ, but huge strategic gameplay changes. While this is a good and "cool" factor for the mod, it isn't from a MP balancing point of view.

2- some civs don't have just their "epic moment" strategy, but features that can endure the whole game since when you "activate" them. For example Calabim's Vampires upgrade to more vampiric units so the Calabim will benefit of the strong feature of vampirism since when they discover Feudalism.

3- the fact that civ features/boni are balanced in the sole way of awarding supposedly equally powerful features/boni creates a bigger balancing design issue, especially if paired by the fact explained in point 1 meaning that these boni come into action at different times.

4- Slow start. The slow start is also a great source of unbalance paired to stuff like tech founding from events (huts etc), starting area, etc.... all of which is exponentially more important in a multiplayer game.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

And the exact power of these strategies, or even what they are, depends on the map.

You might be able to make a tier list for each given combination of settings and mapscripts, but a one-size-fits-all tier list for MP in general? No.

Though even for specific sets of settings it would be hard because of the FFA politics bit. A civ that has established a very strong strategy on a given map type is going to get treated different by good players. It'll get dogpiled more, traded with less, and as a result, start performing poorly, knocking it out of the top tier.