Save the wilderness campaign

[Lord Bayushi]

It seems to me that civilization spreads too quickly for a real dark fantasy feel. In most of my games (almost always quick speed on a huge map), the entire world is enveloped in civilized boarders by turn 200 or earlier. No more barbarian incursions or hunting parties, just war and intrigue between civilized peoples. This seems wrong to me.
I think that there should always be room for the unshaven hordes of barbarian warriors and the wild beasts of the outlands. Is there a way to have areas of barbarian influence that are not based on cities, so that the dark fantasy feel can be preserved longer? These badlands should remain dangerous to all non-barbarians until the end of days, and could even be the basis of quests and events to further deepen the excellent game-play of FFH2.

 

[xienwolf]

You and all the rest of us There have been many ideas on how to preserve the unknown regions, just none have panned out very well as yet

 

[woodelf]

I think we still have plans for this.

 

[Arwon]

You can limit civ growth by selecting Advanced Start and No Settlers (I'd recommend putting the points up higher than the default) which allows the development of civs of a few cities without the capacity to expand further.

Kinda hurts the AI but it's good for atmospherics.

 

[sylvain5477]

Would it not be possible to implement some "city" which would be barbarian and cannot be conquered, and would spawn group of barbarien regularly (the latter the more units) ?

 

[oyzar]

Try deity raging barbs wildlands barbarian world if you really want to feel it.

EDIT maybe without barbarian world is actually better as they will fogbust to spawn less animals/barbs.

 

[skallben]

I tried to use Smartmap script with FFH. Downside is you get really few Mana-nodes and Reagents doesnt seem evenly spread. However, the maps can be pretty awesome. Ill show some areas of my map, it's almost turn 400 on normal speed...

A bit of desert between Doviello and Khazad lands noone seem to want.

Spoiler :

A bit further south, forest and mountains.

Spoiler :

A desolate island, only civilization close is a tiny colony of the Kuriotates.

Spoiler :

While most of the world looks like this.

Spoiler :

Im allways playing with Raging Barbarians and Barbarian World because it slows the growth of Civilization and adds an early game challenge. I learned recently that playing with additional wildlife (don't remember that options name) is a bad things because it means less Barbarians spawn and more animals instead.

Part reason why Dovielly/Khazad lands look like the do is that they where the only two Civs on that continent each starting on a separate end of the landmass. However, this is easilly reproduced by having few Civs on big maps.

This playstyle is perfect for warlike Civs, adding Aggressive AI option also makes fun so AIs get less time to expand on wild territory and instead focus on war. Combined, this makes so that both you and the AI focus less on infrastructure while some lands get plundered - adding to the "Uncivilized world" feeling. What also needs to be said about my current game is that it is extremely peaceful, turn 400 soon and not even close to Blight. Some areas where wild a looong time before they got built upon, if there was an apocalypste in this game, things would have possibly been alot different.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Would it not be possible to implement some "city" which would be barbarian and cannot be conquered, and would spawn group of barbarien regularly (the latter the more units) ?

You could make it so that a barbarian city starts on impassible terrain (like, a peak with flames). It could still be conquered by beastmasters or druids with fire resistance, but that would be very late in the game.

 

[Deon]

Well I think it's not a bad idea to make "special" barb cities.
Usually as I play barbarian world I begin the game with opening the world builder, creating a few barb cities far from civilizations with some cool names, and adding building/troops to fit (themed, like undead city/north warriors dale/pirate island).
So it makes some fun to fight them...
It could be even funnier if the barb city type is defined by the region it is in:
-Northern barb cities have "doviello"-like architecture and spawn northern barbarians with wolves and galleras (viking-like).
-Cities in desert are nomad/undead cities.
-Cities on small islands spawn ships mostly and privateers later with lanun-like crews.
And so on...
It would be a nice addition to the barb.world .

 

[thomas.berubeg]

that would be nice.

I was actually thinking along the lines of arandomly assigned building to each new barbarian city. this building would give a racial promotion, like, say, orcish, (or lanun, though that's not a race...)
though if yours works, deon, it would be cooler..,

 

[Cuteunit]

You're playing on Quick and complaining you expand too quickly? What?

 

[Mesix]

It seems to me that civilization spreads too quickly for a real dark fantasy feel. In most of my games (almost always quick speed on a huge map), the entire world is enveloped in civilized boarders by turn 200 or earlier. No more barbarian incursions or hunting parties, just war and intrigue between civilized peoples. This seems wrong to me.
I think that there should always be room for the unshaven hordes of barbarian warriors and the wild beasts of the outlands. Is there a way to have areas of barbarian influence that are not based on cities, so that the dark fantasy feel can be preserved longer? These badlands should remain dangerous to all non-barbarians until the end of days, and could even be the basis of quests and events to further deepen the excellent game-play of FFH2.

This was made worse in patch G since settlers went from 160 to 120 build cost. I personally like the idea of having settlers escalate their build cost exponentially to keep the number of cities down (first settler costs 120, second 240, third 480, etc.). Seriously, seing "your empire has reached 100 million people" makes me cringe in a dark fantasy setting where reaching one million should be a feat.

 

[woodelf]

This was made worse in patch G since settlers went from 160 to 120 build cost. I personally like the idea of having settlers escalate their build cost exponentially to keep the number of cities down (first settler costs 120, second 240, third 480, etc.). Seriously, seing "your empire has reached 100 million people" makes me cringe in a dark fantasy setting where reaching one million should be a feat.

Exponential was discussed a long time ago and I really liked the idea then and now. I was even willing to try more for a 120, 120+X, 120+2X, ect. I have no idea how hard this would be to implement or code. Conversely, CivIII's method of using pop for workers and settlers isn't such a bad way to control expansion either.

 

[Mesix]

Exponential was discussed a long time ago and I really liked the idea then and now. I was even willing to try more for a 120, 120+X, 120+2X, ect. I have no idea how hard this would be to implement or code. Conversely, CivIII's method of using pop for workers and settlers isn't such a bad way to control expansion either.

It's so easy to reach the happy/healthy cap in the early game that any mechanic to reduce pop would be more of a benefit than a hinderance IMO.

 

[oyzar]

In ffh it is even easier due to the sick overpowered ness of the insanly broken agriculture civic...

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I hink the "pop has reached x" natices should be removed. They are really useless, and get annoying after a few games. I was tired of them in vanilla too, but they are especially inappropriate in FfH.

 

[Mesix]

I hink the "pop has reached x" natices should be removed. They are really useless, and get annoying after a few games. I was tired of them in vanilla too, but they are especially inappropriate in FfH.

I quite agree. I just think that the whole flavor of the mod is not condusive to an urban society of city dwellers spreading bourgeois reform and taming the wildlands. This mod would be a lot better if there were a limit to civilization expansion and large tracts of wild/barbarian land was more common.

To this end, I like to play with the "no settlers" option and overpopulate the AI for the map size. I find that 12-15 civs with one city each is plenty for a standard sized map and there is a significant amount of wildlands to make the game fun. To keep it challenging, I group the AI players into teams of two to three players so that they can progress faster. Due to the lower number of cities, and the inability to settle new cities, I think that the Blessings (2x bonuses) is appropriate. Unfortunately, this creates maps with no reagents so tier III spells are more or less removed from the mod completely (except for high level priests in the late game).

 

[it-ogo]

Best way to make resettlement more slow is to raise many times city maintenance cost - both from number and distance. But then well have some strong balance changes of civics and sprawling trait and lose some possibilities. Then not sure what to do with colonies.

Then you will be able to kill AI civ with maintenence just founding cities near its borders and gifting them to it. AI is not very smart in accepting such gifts. You can do it even now though it is more complicated and risky.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I don't think we need to slow down settlement as much as make parts of the map inhospitable to population (until certain techs). Adding maintenance costs or making settlers (buildings, units, etc) more expensive may slow down expansion, but it slows down everything else as well (making for lots and lots of pointless clicking as turns pass without anything getting done) and ruins economies. The AI doesn't handle it well, and it isn't fun.

I still think that they should implement the idea of making certain terrains unownable and even impassible to most civs until certain techs (but not the same techs; passibility should come before settleability, and I'd prefer if recon units could move through such terrains sooner then melee or siege units)

I'm also not opposed to civ III type population costs, especially if they removed the inability of a city to grow while building such units.

 

[woodelf]

Terra Incognito or however it was spelled from EU would be perfect here. Dense jungle or attrition laden deserts or impassable hills until techs are researched is the best bet.