Hi there...bare (bear?) with me here, this will probably be a long post...
With the recent changes to both Ffh and FF I find myself a little confused as to how the AC counter works now, and some of the newer things the counter effects.
I've been browsing/skimming the various bug and balance threads here, but haven't found many answers. I'm also not sure if the new changes are due to changes in the new version of FFH, or if they are inherent to FF...anyways:
Quick game summary:
Ancient start, huge world, marathon. Monarch difficulty.
Playing a Capria led Amurites game. Founded Emp for Chalid.
Goods: Elohim, Ljosalfar
Neutrals: Khazad, Hippus
Evils: Sheaim, Balseraphs, Doviello, Cualli, Calabim, Svartalfar
Khazad beeline to Runes of Kilmorph...pretty much goes worldwide within a 100 turns or so. Doviello go neutral due to adopting this.
Around turn 350 or so? I get involved in a long war with the doubly annoying Cualli - doubly annoying because they won't back down and stop fighting and also because once conquered their land is all but useless due to jungles and wetlands.
I end up spending about 100 turns or so killing off the Cualli thanks to my Stooges (great early game stack killers after some careful fights and good promotions). Unfortunately, due to the undesirable land and the lack of Adepts at this point, the AC goes up to 22 from 11 or 12 or so pretty quickly since I'm razing their cities.
Another few hundred turns go by....few wars break out but I'm able to stay out of them for the most part and concentrating on building. I did have to save Ethne from a Balseraph/Hippus/Shiaem war, but they backed down pretty quick once I sent my heavy hitters in. AC hits 30.
At turn 752, AV enters the game as the Svartalfar research it. I'm currently at turn 878 and AV has spread - according to the latest maps - to a handful of cities around the world. AC has been hovering around 32 for the last 150 turns or so. It did dip down to 25 at one point when I sent a few mages down into the swamps to sanctify all that rubble I left behind, but that didn't seem to make that much of a difference really. Now the game seems to have stalled.
AV is not spreading as just about everyone has Runes for a religion except for me and the Fotl Ljosalfar. I keep waiting for a Hyborim pop, but it doesn't seem to be coming. Meanwhile, there's a good...33% or so of the world covered by the spreading hell barrier (I found this in the worldbuilder, it's a darker shaded border, even on water, radiating out from the hell terrain).
There's a good chunk of hell terrain and Demons in that area of the earth...and with nothing to do but wait, I sent 4 mages, a couple Rangers, a Stooge and Bridgit down there to clean up the zone. So I spent the last 50 60 turns clearing brush fires, killing demons and sanctifying land.
Which is not making any difference at all. The hell terrain comes back - I figured it would. The demon population keeps growing. The AC isn't being effected.
This is actually my second game that I've taken past a few hundred turns since the latest version came out. This one seems to have stalled, and the last one did as well. I liked having the deck stacked against me in the last version, with lots of evil civs vs a few good civs and a couple neutrals tossed in...so I've continued to do that in the new version as well, but in both games now - up to turn 900 or so - they seemed to have stalled.
AV either appears and doesn't take hold, or just doesn't get researched at all. Which means no Hyborem either.
Or am I just not waiting long enough?
So here are the questions:
a) Shouldn't cleansing the ground lower the AC? If the amount of hell terrain depends on the AC counter in some function, shouldn't cleaning the hell terrain lower the AC? And as for the hell terrain spread, if I continued with my cleansing and eventually cleared the whole area, where would it come back from if there's no Hyborem to contend with?
b) At what point does the hell terrain enter the game? Is there a specific AC number to watch out for? (edit: What about Bradeline's Well? Can that tile be sanctified? Is that where the hell terrain spreads out from originally? Is the Well in every game therefore?)
c) I know there have been a few posts on this already, but do the demon hordes need to be so prolific? There are probably in the neighborhood of 200 or so Stygian Guards running around at this point - mainly on the ocean. Add in the earth and water elementals, the manticores etc etc...There's gotta be 300ish demons on the map. (is that why the game keeps crashing?
)
d) If the demon horde spawns in a proportional rate to the amount of hell terrain or tile influence (counting that hell border ocean tiles) then shouldn't there be less demons as I clean - or at least a lower spawn rate? I cleaned about half the actual ground terrain - a good 400 or so tiles - but it didn't seem to affect the spawn rates at all. And if they are proportional, what's the rate?
e) What's increasing the AC now if AV isn't very prevalent besides the normal events/razing cities/heroes/slow over time increase? And in this case, how do you lower it? I could theoretically go in and mow down the 6 or 7 cities with AV right now including the capital and probably get the AC down from 33 to 23 or so...but then what?
(Addendum: I built the Prophecy of Ragnarok wonder to have it under my control, so there aren't any stigmata units out there at all to build up the AC).
I'd like to know how it shot up to 30 in the first place with no AV around. I know I contributed a good 10 or so to that with my Cualli city razing (but I also took it down by roughly the same amount 100 turns or so later) , but other than that, there wasn't much going on. I did open the WB at one point to check on rubble for razed cities and found 3 others...so that 30 AC wasn't from all the razing - and it was early enough that there weren't that many events/heroes etc to cause it to rise that quickly - at least going by the old version of the game. Maybe the AC rise over time rate has been increased in the new version?
f) Is that 'hell barrier' - the area that's under the influence of hell - directly tied to the AC counter? Just from looking at the map in the worldbuilder it seems to...about a third of the world is under it's influence with an AC of 32 33.
I guess at the end of all this what I'm really looking for are better ways to keep the AC under control, or at least to decrease it quickly when needed, since the hell influence and corresponding demon hordes are so dangerous now. (edit: I don't want to eradicate it completely, but it needs to be watched due to all the bad guys that come along with it. In some ways, I'm not sure I like the random demon hordes at all...but at the same time I love the Hyborem/Basium storyline, and how the high AC affects the world with the 4 horsemen and the events etc).
I build the Prophecy wonder in just about every game to keep those stigmata units under my control (ie: I just don't build any units with that city at all, except maybe the occassional settler, which does lower the AC by 1 when they found a city) but that doesn't seem to be helping. Or maybe it is, and by turn 900 the AC should be higher?
Events that come to me that are supposed to lower the AC counter don't seem to be effective as well. I had a -5 event pop up (I think it was cleansing the burning tree) but it only took the AC down to 17 from 20.
Maybe something along the lines of killing demons...for every 30 demons that are spawned from the hell terrain that are killed lowers the AC by 1. Just tossing that out there, but...it would be nice to see a better mechanic in place for control. Or maybe I just need a better understanding of how things work now.
Ok, I think that's it. Thanks for reading my mini essay. Edit: Ok, apparently submitting a post with no javascript enabled on these forums creates a zero formatting rule. Sorry for the wall of text if anyone saw that...I put some line breaks in.
With the recent changes to both Ffh and FF I find myself a little confused as to how the AC counter works now, and some of the newer things the counter effects.
I've been browsing/skimming the various bug and balance threads here, but haven't found many answers. I'm also not sure if the new changes are due to changes in the new version of FFH, or if they are inherent to FF...anyways:
Quick game summary:
Ancient start, huge world, marathon. Monarch difficulty.
Playing a Capria led Amurites game. Founded Emp for Chalid.
Goods: Elohim, Ljosalfar
Neutrals: Khazad, Hippus
Evils: Sheaim, Balseraphs, Doviello, Cualli, Calabim, Svartalfar
Khazad beeline to Runes of Kilmorph...pretty much goes worldwide within a 100 turns or so. Doviello go neutral due to adopting this.
Around turn 350 or so? I get involved in a long war with the doubly annoying Cualli - doubly annoying because they won't back down and stop fighting and also because once conquered their land is all but useless due to jungles and wetlands.
I end up spending about 100 turns or so killing off the Cualli thanks to my Stooges (great early game stack killers after some careful fights and good promotions). Unfortunately, due to the undesirable land and the lack of Adepts at this point, the AC goes up to 22 from 11 or 12 or so pretty quickly since I'm razing their cities.
Another few hundred turns go by....few wars break out but I'm able to stay out of them for the most part and concentrating on building. I did have to save Ethne from a Balseraph/Hippus/Shiaem war, but they backed down pretty quick once I sent my heavy hitters in. AC hits 30.
At turn 752, AV enters the game as the Svartalfar research it. I'm currently at turn 878 and AV has spread - according to the latest maps - to a handful of cities around the world. AC has been hovering around 32 for the last 150 turns or so. It did dip down to 25 at one point when I sent a few mages down into the swamps to sanctify all that rubble I left behind, but that didn't seem to make that much of a difference really. Now the game seems to have stalled.
AV is not spreading as just about everyone has Runes for a religion except for me and the Fotl Ljosalfar. I keep waiting for a Hyborim pop, but it doesn't seem to be coming. Meanwhile, there's a good...33% or so of the world covered by the spreading hell barrier (I found this in the worldbuilder, it's a darker shaded border, even on water, radiating out from the hell terrain).
There's a good chunk of hell terrain and Demons in that area of the earth...and with nothing to do but wait, I sent 4 mages, a couple Rangers, a Stooge and Bridgit down there to clean up the zone. So I spent the last 50 60 turns clearing brush fires, killing demons and sanctifying land.
Which is not making any difference at all. The hell terrain comes back - I figured it would. The demon population keeps growing. The AC isn't being effected.
This is actually my second game that I've taken past a few hundred turns since the latest version came out. This one seems to have stalled, and the last one did as well. I liked having the deck stacked against me in the last version, with lots of evil civs vs a few good civs and a couple neutrals tossed in...so I've continued to do that in the new version as well, but in both games now - up to turn 900 or so - they seemed to have stalled.
AV either appears and doesn't take hold, or just doesn't get researched at all. Which means no Hyborem either.
Or am I just not waiting long enough?
So here are the questions:
a) Shouldn't cleansing the ground lower the AC? If the amount of hell terrain depends on the AC counter in some function, shouldn't cleaning the hell terrain lower the AC? And as for the hell terrain spread, if I continued with my cleansing and eventually cleared the whole area, where would it come back from if there's no Hyborem to contend with?
b) At what point does the hell terrain enter the game? Is there a specific AC number to watch out for? (edit: What about Bradeline's Well? Can that tile be sanctified? Is that where the hell terrain spreads out from originally? Is the Well in every game therefore?)
c) I know there have been a few posts on this already, but do the demon hordes need to be so prolific? There are probably in the neighborhood of 200 or so Stygian Guards running around at this point - mainly on the ocean. Add in the earth and water elementals, the manticores etc etc...There's gotta be 300ish demons on the map. (is that why the game keeps crashing?
)d) If the demon horde spawns in a proportional rate to the amount of hell terrain or tile influence (counting that hell border ocean tiles) then shouldn't there be less demons as I clean - or at least a lower spawn rate? I cleaned about half the actual ground terrain - a good 400 or so tiles - but it didn't seem to affect the spawn rates at all. And if they are proportional, what's the rate?
e) What's increasing the AC now if AV isn't very prevalent besides the normal events/razing cities/heroes/slow over time increase? And in this case, how do you lower it? I could theoretically go in and mow down the 6 or 7 cities with AV right now including the capital and probably get the AC down from 33 to 23 or so...but then what?
(Addendum: I built the Prophecy of Ragnarok wonder to have it under my control, so there aren't any stigmata units out there at all to build up the AC).
I'd like to know how it shot up to 30 in the first place with no AV around. I know I contributed a good 10 or so to that with my Cualli city razing (but I also took it down by roughly the same amount 100 turns or so later) , but other than that, there wasn't much going on. I did open the WB at one point to check on rubble for razed cities and found 3 others...so that 30 AC wasn't from all the razing - and it was early enough that there weren't that many events/heroes etc to cause it to rise that quickly - at least going by the old version of the game. Maybe the AC rise over time rate has been increased in the new version?
f) Is that 'hell barrier' - the area that's under the influence of hell - directly tied to the AC counter? Just from looking at the map in the worldbuilder it seems to...about a third of the world is under it's influence with an AC of 32 33.
I guess at the end of all this what I'm really looking for are better ways to keep the AC under control, or at least to decrease it quickly when needed, since the hell influence and corresponding demon hordes are so dangerous now. (edit: I don't want to eradicate it completely, but it needs to be watched due to all the bad guys that come along with it. In some ways, I'm not sure I like the random demon hordes at all...but at the same time I love the Hyborem/Basium storyline, and how the high AC affects the world with the 4 horsemen and the events etc).
I build the Prophecy wonder in just about every game to keep those stigmata units under my control (ie: I just don't build any units with that city at all, except maybe the occassional settler, which does lower the AC by 1 when they found a city) but that doesn't seem to be helping. Or maybe it is, and by turn 900 the AC should be higher?
Events that come to me that are supposed to lower the AC counter don't seem to be effective as well. I had a -5 event pop up (I think it was cleansing the burning tree) but it only took the AC down to 17 from 20.
Maybe something along the lines of killing demons...for every 30 demons that are spawned from the hell terrain that are killed lowers the AC by 1. Just tossing that out there, but...it would be nice to see a better mechanic in place for control. Or maybe I just need a better understanding of how things work now.
Ok, I think that's it. Thanks for reading my mini essay. Edit: Ok, apparently submitting a post with no javascript enabled on these forums creates a zero formatting rule. Sorry for the wall of text if anyone saw that...I put some line breaks in.
(like changing the requirement for Earthmother, Overlords and Forest religions to Philosophy instead of Mysticism...which puts them pretty much on par with the other religions in terms of tech requirements).
