Armageddon counter & effects

[Quetz]

I have to agree with most of the posters here. The actual pop loss from Blight is never really that bad, but rebuilding all farms is a pain in the ass - enough for me to usually just use the new option to disable the AC entirely almost every game. I would great prefer hellfire first, and Blight at 80 or whatever Hellfire is at now.

 

[slithy]

I just changed the xml to have Blight occur when the count gets to 90. It just seems much more logical to have it there, at 40 it happens almost every game, so it just becomes an annoying distraction. When it happens at 90 it is much more significant - you realize you are REALLY in trouble because there are horsemen running around, the Avatar is raging, demons are coming out of the earth and then the Blight comes and cripples your ability to respond.

 

[Falc]

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).

Strange, your experiences seem to run counter to mine.

Yes, as long as you don't have all your Cities, you probably need to raze. But once you have those, you should just capture everything, effectively slowing the AC.

 

[Thennorin]

I just changed the xml to have Blight occur when the count gets to 90. It just seems much more logical to have it there, at 40 it happens almost every game, so it just becomes an annoying distraction. When it happens at 90 it is much more significant - you realize you are REALLY in trouble because there are horsemen running around, the Avatar is raging, demons are coming out of the earth and then the Blight comes and cripples your ability to respond.

This is another reason to have blight occur later. With the AC events, timing is everything. Even armageddon itself is easy to recover from if you've taken care of the avatar and aren't involved in any wars. No threat = no worries. It's the same with blight.

I think blight should either occur just before the horsemen, or just after them. As it stands, the event is more irritating than threatening. A different implementation is needed to remove the irritation, but putting the danger back into the AC counter will make it fulfil its purpose better.

 

[TheJopa]

I think best solution for Blight would be to create new improvement, 'blighted farm', and when blight happens all farms are, instead destroyed, replaced with blighted farms. And each blighted farm has 10% chance per turn of recovering. It would be just like blight is now, but no micromanagement.

 

[marioflag]

I agree with what the OP says.
Some of the things which needs to be balanced are Prophecy of Ragnarok which is too much powerful not probably in the hands of the AI, but of a human player.There should be an upper limit on the number of units with the prophecy mark (like max 10 units alive with the mark).
Razing Barbarian cities should giive a minor increase of AC considering that in early game there is no way to prevent its increase, and often razing those cities is necessary.
Hallowing of the Elohim and Elegy of the Sheaim should be a bit more powerful because they are really costly in hammers and their effect is not so noticeable.
Making also those AC events more random would be also a better idea considering that it destroy the suspense knowing when an event will happen.

 

[Meserach]

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???????

Well, one, I plucked that number out of the air, so yeah, it might be excessive. Two, I said thirty turns without functional farms, not thirty turns of no food at all. Tiles that naturally produce food would continue to do so. The improved food value of farms would just be "deactivated", with any other food production continuing as normal.

This is likely to hurt your population significantly, yes, and especially so if you've made extensive use of farming plus the Agriculture civic. But it won't starve all your cities to 1, as the base terrain food value would still be there.

 

[max_gradient]

1. I agree that there should not be any "easy/painless" ways to decrease the AC - if it gets too high for you, you have to get out and kick some Ashen Veil ass, or bribe others to do it for you. This way, you have an eye on the AC right from the start, converting civs and actively influencing the game, instead of saying "oh boy, the AC keeps rising but no worries I can just build a ritual or two and it's ok again".

2. The blight is a major micromanagement annoyance. Any way to temporary disable improvements bonuses while keeping the improvements would be highly appreciated.

3. Instead of some biblical text, could you include a description of what actually happened - for casual players it's difficult to see what actually happened.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

If you wanted the four horsemen to more closely resemble those in the Revalation, then it would make most sense to have blight occur just as the 3rd horseman (Yersinia) arrives.

Personally, I think this should be one of several events that might or might not happen over a broad range of AC values, perhaps becoming more likely as the AC rises (if possible). It would be nice to sometimes see other effects, like sea levels rising or falling, possible sinking cities or leaving port cities landlocked. You should never know which disaster to prepere for.

 

[Quetz]

I just changed the xml to have Blight occur when the count gets to 90. It just seems much more logical to have it there, at 40 it happens almost every game, so it just becomes an annoying distraction. When it happens at 90 it is much more significant - you realize you are REALLY in trouble because there are horsemen running around, the Avatar is raging, demons are coming out of the earth and then the Blight comes and cripples your ability to respond.

which xml file is that?

 

[Ekolite]

Sorry if this has already been said but Maybe alignment of civs could have and effect on the AC. A civ converting from neutral to evil would increase the AC by 2, good to evil by 5 etc. This would also work in reverse s converting more civs to good or neutral decreases THE ac?

 

[TravellingHat]

It would be good to see the AC come down sometimes, but with the balance being a slow creep up. Am I right that only the Elohim have a direct means of reducing the AC? If that's the case, they may not be in the game, and when they're in my games I've never noticed the AI performing that ritual.

The existing "mercy" event (chance to show mercy to a war opponent, bringing peace) would in my opinion be a good one to change to also include a modest AC reduction.

 

[Grey Fox]

The AC went from +44 to +33 in my game. It got Elohim in it, but it mostly dropped after I killed Hyborem (he had no place to put his city).

 

[beorn]

My criticism is that when playing solo it is too predictable, giving the human another huge advantage over the AI. AC getting close to 40? I guess I better have a bunch of workers ready to repair the coming damage, and plan around a tough stretch coming up.

 

[snarko]

I think best solution for Blight would be to create new improvement, 'blighted farm', and when blight happens all farms are, instead destroyed, replaced with blighted farms. And each blighted farm has 10% chance per turn of recovering. It would be just like blight is now, but no micromanagement.

Instead of a % chance why not make it use the existing code for upgrading improvements? Could work like forts, automatically upgrading, or cottages, need to work them. Either way they should give no benefits (not even resources(?)) and not be possible to pillage.

 

[Old MacDonald]

I think best solution for Blight would be to create new improvement, 'blighted farm', and when blight happens all farms are, instead destroyed, replaced with blighted farms. And each blighted farm has 10% chance per turn of recovering. It would be just like blight is now, but no micromanagement.

I like this idea. When I first encountered Blight, I quit my game never to restore, because I just couldn't stand the idea of replacing all the farms I had spent ages building. I was just about to get to a point where I was really satisfied with my empire, and then wham! back to square one. Now I play the Elohim every time, and will not let Blight (as it is now) happen ever again.

So anything that makes the blight less annoying (but maybe not less damaging) sounds good to me, and this idea in particular seems like an almost ideal solution. Snarko's suggestion is nice too.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

If you do adda blighted farm improvement, I'm thinking that Defile (the Entropy I spell) should also blight farms. Currently that spell is almost worthless, doing nothing but create fallout. Having it increase the tile counter of nearby tiles (by, say, 6 each time you cast it) would be nice too (when the counter reaches 20 the tile becomes hell terrain. Obviously the requirements for casting the spell would need to change too. This would be better if hell terrain could spread in Good lands, since Evil civs could use this to ruin Good civs' lands.

 

[Kentarion]

The AC Effects are bad, i don't like them, and... i love them.

That's what the game is for.

The BLIGHT event is one of the best and central events in the Game everyone have to keep this magic number 40 in mind preparing for it.

I hate it, but i love it.

That's one hell event so to say


What i hate is when i want to play GOOD against the AC-Counter founding eg. the runes of kilmorph too early - the possibility a BAD guy adopting to it is to big, so i sometime had NO increase in the AC-Count because everyone was having peacetime - that's not ok a race like shae'm shouldn't adopt to eg. Order (when played as AI)

 

[Bluenoise]

How about when a good civ captures an evil civs city (or barbarian) and doesn't rase it the counter goes down 1 point?

 

[Bluenoise]

How about when a good civ captures an evil civs city (or barbarian) and doesn't rase it the counter goes down 1 point?