Armageddon counter & effects

[Thennorin]

What are your thoughts on the armageddon counter and its effects?

To me, the system feels unfinished. Three reasons.

1) The AC seems to slowly creep up, and only up. It's very easy to raise the counter slightly with razing of cities (especially barbs) or having the AI build +AC wonders but there are no equally common ways to lower the counter slightly. There are simply less chances to have a life 1 adept sanctify ruins, especially when it's an early barb city miles away from your civ.

The end result is that it always feels to me like I have little control over the AC. There should be more opportunities to lower it by a small amount. Add a -AC attribute to some of the "good" wonders. Lower AC when building life, sun, etc nodes. It's the little changes like this that make the system feel dynamic.

2) The severity of events varies greatly. Imo, the second most severe event is the first to occur! This feels wrong. I think the severity of events, from most harmful to least, is: armageddon, blight, avatar of wrath, four horsemen (any order), hellfire. Meanwhile, the AC counts are roughly: 100, 40, 90, 60-69, 70. I'd love to see the impact of AC events increase in a more linear way.

I think blight should be pushed back to somewhere between 50-60. Meanwhile, a couple of lesser effects should be triggered in the 35-50 range, giving players a fair warning of what will happen. Perhaps separate the destruction of food sources from farms & land quality and make them two different effects?

3) Events are erratically placed. From memory, there are gaps between 0-40, 40-60 and 70-90. I think some of the effects could be drawn out rather than being 1-time events. Example: the hellfire event at AC 70 could trigger at AC 70, 75 & 80. Each time it would spawn an increasing number of hellfire tiles. There's no harm in reusing the same effect.

 

[Grey Fox]

I agree that the one at 40 is quite potent, and is quite a shock since the counter hasn't done anything yet. Maybe it should start small at 40 and some farms and other foodstuff is destroyed, and maybe some terrain gets worse. Then from 40-60 more can happen, and there could be plague and starvation events going about this era, giving cities additional unhealthiness.

 

[vorshlumpf]

I have no problem with things starting with a bang.

I also don't agree that AC decreases should balance increases. The game is intended to edge toward Armageddon.
Despite this, though, my last few games haven't gotten high enough in the AC for even the blight to happen.

I agree with your point #3.

I'd also add that I'd like to see some variability to the event schedule. For instance, give blight a chance to occur when the AC is at 36, but only a 10% chance. Every point of AC increase gives it another 10% chance on top of that (guaranteeing it by AC 45).

 

[nikosison]

How about adding Rhye's and Fall's Plague effect as an Armageddon Effect. It basically kills one unit per city and adds +7 Unhealth to city for several turns.. It's a bit similar to Armaggedon so how about putting it at the 60-80 range? Also its a great way to bolster the Mercurian and Infernal Ranks.

 

[nikosison]

How about adding Rhye's and Fall's Plague effect as an Armageddon Effect. It basically kills one unit per city and adds +7 Unhealth to city for several turns.. It's a bit similar to Armaggedon so how about putting it at the 60-80 range? Also its a great way to bolster the Mercurian and Infernal Ranks. (Which should be immune since they are not "alive")

 

[Silmeran]

I would love to see a popup showing what event was triggered

 

[westamastaflash]

How about adding Rhye's and Fall's Plague effect as an Armageddon Effect. It basically kills one unit per city and adds +7 Unhealth to city for several turns.. It's a bit similar to Armaggedon so how about putting it at the 60-80 range? Also its a great way to bolster the Mercurian and Infernal Ranks. (Which should be immune since they are not "alive")

Oh god I HATE that effect so much. Just when I'm about to win my arabian UHV, BOOM here comes the plague to decimate my army just as I am about to invade spain....

 

[xienwolf]

It'd be mildly nifty if they did make it easier to lower the AC randomly (so that it only changes from baseline dramatically if someone TRIES to change it), and introduced events that happen at negative levels. But wouldn't completely fit in with FfH

 

[Bitwise]

I don't mind it creeping up I just wish there were better ways to actively fight it.

 

[TheJopa]

Bad Events- Tornadoes, floods, hurricanes (as in Vanilla BtS) all have AC prerequisite.

 

[Meserach]

The horsemen should be a little more rapacious, as should the units spawning from the hellfire. I'm hopeful that'll come in later versions with AI tweaks and such.

But the AC event that needs serious attention is the blight that destroys all the farms. It's too sudden and dramatic. What would be better I think is if the farm destruction was somehow staggered over several turns, especially with a cool accompanying effect, like a plague of locusts scuttling across the map or something.

Say like, after the event is triggered, one tenth of the farms on the map are destroyed ever turn until after ten turns, all the farms are gone. Or something similar. Then your workers, if you had them, could cope more easily.

Actually, to be honest what I dislike most about the blight is not that I lose a bunch of population due to plummeting food, but that I have to go around tediously re-planting all the farms I spent ages doing already.

How about an effect that disabled all the farms for, say, thirty turns, and then they came back? You'd still get the same overall effect - a dramatic drop off in food that recovers after time - but without the need to send workers scuttling everywhere. If you still wanted people who had lots of workers to get a recovery advantage, you could make re-enabling the farms something that workers could do faster. It could be a bit like clearing fallout in vanilla Civ 4.

 

[xienwolf]

Or a global -1 in all squares with at least 1 already, only able to recover from it by reducing the AC below 40 again

 

[vorshlumpf]

How about an effect that disabled all the farms for, say, thirty turns, and then they came back? You'd still get the same overall effect - a dramatic drop off in food that recovers after time - but without the need to send workers scuttling everywhere. If you still wanted people who had lots of workers to get a recovery advantage, you could make re-enabling the farms something that workers could do faster. It could be a bit like clearing fallout in vanilla Civ 4.

I like this. I have no general problem with Blight (though I dread it every time), but it is a source of game-playing annoyance to redo all farms.

 

[ZhugeTien]

I must admit to the same frustrations with Blight that others seem to feel. It is a very dramatic and hard-to-repair occurrence. If the AC counter were as easy to reduce as in previous versions, it would be less of a problem, but Blight serves its in-game purpose, really. It is intended to be frustrating to agrarian societies who rely on farms, plantations, etc. A more gradual implementation could certainly be argued for, but I think the mechanic works well as it stands, overall. If you're playing the Calabim or Sheaim, you'll think twice about farming anything besides grains. Those and the plantations can be rebuilt easily enough, and cottages become the order of the day. Sure, you have slow-growing cities, but I think that helps the flavor of the scenario FFH is intended to represent. The Bannor are representative of this: The idea is to grow quickly, then replace old farms with cottages to work toward as many demagogues as possible when the Crusade begins. In this way you can beat the Armageddon counter by eliminating a few evil civilizations. As the Elohim, your role is to perform the Hallowing as often as you can to assist the rest of the Good world in their noble crusades. The Blight should remain as it is, however crippling it may be to certain play styles. I have recovered from it many times by changing my strategy mid-game, and if one is that flexible, it only serves to make the entirety of the game more interesting and fluid.

Just my two coppers...

 

[Grey Fox]

Yeah well just as someone else said before, it's not so much the effect of the blight I don't like. It's more that I have to rebuild all farms. I think famine and disease could be better represented through events (like lots of unhealthiness) and other stuff. Pastures could still be removed. Terrain getting worse and resources disappearing could still be in.

 

[rusty217]

How about an effect that disabled all the farms for, say, thirty turns, and then they came back? You'd still get the same overall effect - a dramatic drop off in food that recovers after time - but without the need to send workers scuttling everywhere. If you still wanted people who had lots of workers to get a recovery advantage, you could make re-enabling the farms something that workers could do faster. It could be a bit like clearing fallout in vanilla Civ 4.

Thirty turns? without food? Seemes like a good idea to reduce micromanagement, but 30 turns? That would guarentee every city in the world falling down to 1 population....?

30 TURNS???????

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I think that there should be several new Armageddon events, but that they should be random; they would still have a prerequisite AC, but wouldn't happen as soon as that AC is reached, and some might never happen.

 

[Thennorin]

Yeah well just as someone else said before, it's not so much the effect of the blight I don't like. It's more that I have to rebuild all farms.

That's what I had in mind. Sure, blight damages population but when it's also a micromanagement nightmare to recover from, that's not good. I'd rather just take a -33% population hit in all cities + lose all improvements on food resources and be done with it. Same effect, less irritation. Creating a horde of workers for a one-time event you know is coming is silly.

Speaking of expecting events, I support the idea put forward that AC events should have a range. Knowing that events will definitely happen at a certain point removes all suspense from the AC, once you know the trigger points.

 

[MaxAstro]

I must agree that I'd favor more ways to reduce the armageddon counter, if only because it feels like a "lose/lose situation". More specifically, whenever I am playing an evil civ, especially the Sheim, I don't really feel like I have to ~try~ to raise the armageddon counter. It goes up on its own so fast, and there's so little anyone can do to stop it, that why even bother? Hell, I brought about the Armageddon as the Clan of Embers just because I had to kill off three civs for expansion purposes (two of which where neutral); I'm not even sure the Ashen Veil was created by then.

For that matter, whenever any of my friends or I play as Cardith Lorda, armageddon is downright guaranteed just because Cardith has to raze cities he takes in battle until he has all his major cities placed. It seems wrong that a Good civ should be forced into causing that much armageddon... (An elegant solution, by the way, would be to have cities captured in battle, regardless of how many true cities you have placed, always turn into Settlements, and then have the option of upgrading them. But even then, since Cardith has to place cities differently than everyone else, it tends to be a better idea to raze the existing cities so you can place your own).

I would definately agree that it seems like there should be a wide variety of small things that lower the counter by a little bit, just so that there is ~something~ you can do to effectively fight the Armageddon if you aren't the Elohim.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

There should also be random events that effect the AC. Some could raise or lower it depending on which option you choose, and others could be quests.