Balance Feedback
- Thread starter Valkrionn
- Start date
This would be very bad. Giving ancient forests no penalty and 2 commerce bonus would make them broken. You'd have lumber mills or orchards on every tile. To put it in perspective a grassland town yeilds 2 food 5 commerce (60 turns later >.>) whereas an orcharded ancient forest on that same tile would yeild 3 food, 1 production, 4 commerce. Much much better. There should be no change other than health for other civs if the orchard becomes a spammable improvement. Otherwise everyone and their nuts will follow FoL. Elves can take a hit to food and a boost to commerce or production, in favor of working fewer tiles (though they should still have enough to hit 20 population especially with windmills and the like). Do regular forests have -1 food as well? I seem to recall only ancient forests taking a hit.. which is why civs kill themselves by switching, but I might be using a different version. Elves are honestly fine with the changes. They probably get 'too much' food really.
And the bug is new.. apparently elves remove forests when completing the improvement or something.
Well that's a different version of what I've heard
Not sure what to do then...
And I'm still waiting for confirmation on that bug, since I didn't see it.
Is it possible you're using the team version of RifE where the bug has already been fixed, as it is already a confirmed bug for 1.3 and Valk noted its cause and said he was implementing the fix?
EDIT: In response to Evalis and Ophelia's posts: Am I playing a different game?this is confusing heh, The only other FoL Compatible civ on par with elves is Mazatl, that I know of, and they don't get anything at all from FoL without the civic((Which is useless to them anyways)) none other can take FoL and are able to build in forests at the same time. Not having siege units is easily countered by 1 fire node. The economic boon to elves is HUGE +1 production and +2 commerce to 'every' tile, that's +20 production and +40 commerce, before counting %'ages, and then add 10 health and optionally the insane stuff from the civic too... It isn't +0.05 to health per tile, it's 0.5.
You are indeed playing a different game. Some of us use the 'ranged' mechanic on siege weapons to turn solid defenders into tasty 2.5 defense charred herring. Otherwise you have to deal with +105% City +25% Hills 5 defense defenders who will raped your chickens and their daughters. Also... 'just' a fire node.. I'm pretty sure you need mages, which require both xp and a much heftier tech requirement, not to mention a node that could be used on a variety of better things than crappy fire mana. In any case, though you are definately playing a different game (probably some variation of kittens and unicorns OF DEATH), you are right about the huge bonuses from tiles they get. I don't have any issues with them.
And that was a typo.. I meant +0.5
OpheliaImmortal
Chieftain
Originally Posted by Opera
So what you guys would think of:
(1) Ancient Forests: 0 food change, +1 production, +2 commerce
(2) Elves: unable to upgrade cottages past the village
(3) Elves: +1 food from Ancient Forests and regular Forests
(4) Elves: requires 3 food per pop
Its the addition of the Orchard improvement that will be the biggest problem for the elves. Giving other the abitity to build a perfectly valid improvement in forest means that the elven ability will not matter so much. 1F 2C seem far to strong for the Orchard.
+1 food per forest AND 3food per pop is self defeating. It allows the same city sizes as everyone else.
The balancing on Fall From Heaven and RIFE was never that all civilizations should be equivalent at everything. It was always that each civilization had their area of superiority and that that in itself was balanced. For instance Sheaim have their dominant early military, hippus have their mighty cavalry, Amurite ability with magic is unparralelled ect.
But now where would the elven area of strength lie? They would be ever so slightly more capable in forests, while at the same time slower to build improvements overall?
They'd be trading the ability to build improvements, that when compared to Orchards, would be subpar. A civilization with higher food requirements would weigh 1F 2C over 4 C and thats comparing (with the proposed town changes) fully grown cottages. Farms would be a poor comparison. The only comparision would be the late game improvements, but they are supposed to be superior.
The addition of the Orchard/Camps/Yaranga will take away all the elves unique strength leaving them with.. nothing. Literally no unique strength, only a variety of unique and flavourful weaknesses. The orchards combination of food and a reasonable amount of commerce will make it probadly the most desirable improvement. Especially since elven cottages would be nerfed
I understand that their economy was once overstrong, and thematically not very elven..
However this is from the same developement team who claims the Scions were completely fair and balanced in 1.23, when their economy, production, research, and milititary were all insanely strong, at the same time as the elven strength.
Instead of this akwardness why not give the elves the capability to build a nature preserve style improvement? Make it +1 commerce, have every 1 of them grant a free specialist, while being worked. Make elves require 3 food per population, while not giving them any buffs for forest food. So on a grassland ancient forests would be 2F, 1H, 3C with the preserve, not a bad tile but not self substaining, while granting a specialist. This could enable some econonomic powerhouse elven cities, that would remain tiny?
So what you guys would think of:
(1) Ancient Forests: 0 food change, +1 production, +2 commerce
(2) Elves: unable to upgrade cottages past the village
(3) Elves: +1 food from Ancient Forests and regular Forests
(4) Elves: requires 3 food per pop
Its the addition of the Orchard improvement that will be the biggest problem for the elves. Giving other the abitity to build a perfectly valid improvement in forest means that the elven ability will not matter so much. 1F 2C seem far to strong for the Orchard.
+1 food per forest AND 3food per pop is self defeating. It allows the same city sizes as everyone else.
The balancing on Fall From Heaven and RIFE was never that all civilizations should be equivalent at everything. It was always that each civilization had their area of superiority and that that in itself was balanced. For instance Sheaim have their dominant early military, hippus have their mighty cavalry, Amurite ability with magic is unparralelled ect.
But now where would the elven area of strength lie? They would be ever so slightly more capable in forests, while at the same time slower to build improvements overall?
They'd be trading the ability to build improvements, that when compared to Orchards, would be subpar. A civilization with higher food requirements would weigh 1F 2C over 4 C and thats comparing (with the proposed town changes) fully grown cottages. Farms would be a poor comparison. The only comparision would be the late game improvements, but they are supposed to be superior.
The addition of the Orchard/Camps/Yaranga will take away all the elves unique strength leaving them with.. nothing. Literally no unique strength, only a variety of unique and flavourful weaknesses. The orchards combination of food and a reasonable amount of commerce will make it probadly the most desirable improvement. Especially since elven cottages would be nerfed
I understand that their economy was once overstrong, and thematically not very elven..
However this is from the same developement team who claims the Scions were completely fair and balanced in 1.23, when their economy, production, research, and milititary were all insanely strong, at the same time as the elven strength.
Instead of this akwardness why not give the elves the capability to build a nature preserve style improvement? Make it +1 commerce, have every 1 of them grant a free specialist, while being worked. Make elves require 3 food per population, while not giving them any buffs for forest food. So on a grassland ancient forests would be 2F, 1H, 3C with the preserve, not a bad tile but not self substaining, while granting a specialist. This could enable some econonomic powerhouse elven cities, that would remain tiny?
I would humbly request that while this balancing occurs the team keep in mind neither civ was overpowered due to jungle before the health fiasco. Instead of gaining a buff, they were just not crippled by its implementation.
For the Mazatl, wyverns are overpowered and wyvern guardians are wastes of production. Could some sort of fusion occur here?
I thought so too. More dependency, no buff. You put it nicely in the rest of your post, elves have no area of superiority to excel in right now. I would ask the rest of the team (Opera has stated her opinion) to consider this issue. I don't actually like the elves, but I don't like gimped opponents either.
I'd vote for this but not make elves require 3 food per population, so that such a preserve IS self-sustaining. Remember the Grigori already do this, compensating slow growth with hero generation.
Tsathoggua
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2009
- Messages
- 127
If it's going to be removed, accounting for it in balance considerations is the last thing you should be doing, IMO.
The matzl and the cualli have always been among the stronger opponents played by the computer. I dreaded seeing them when starting a game on monarch or higher. And playing as them was 'easy town' They were pretty broken 'before' health changes.. I can only imagine how strong they are now. They had the population and commerce of the elves (without needing to research silly religious techs) and could fuel a massive war engine. In any case, I suspect their tweaks will be simply to bring their food generation in line with everyone else.
Wyvern Riders?! Weee! Or were you talking some sort of souflee?
This is a plus, in my opinion, of having them exist.
"Silly religious techs" were always present in their need for religion to get their heroes and to be effective lategame. Their commerce is not great, they get 1-2C for jungle tiles. Their population was good, and Lost Lands could get them FoL-equivalent cities, but it's more difficult to acquire then FoL and its tech tree doesn't help their military.
Their massive war engine is nonexistent. They rely on a passive-aggressive playstyle using either assassin-priests or a slow religious buildup to their hero; they do not have a strong arcane or melee line, their production is solid but nothing to write home about (notably their flavourstart is low in metals and often puts them in regions that are also low in metals). I can't imagine what you could spam to win - Wyvern Guardians? Lol.
Shadow-Priests are awesome, especially if you build them out of Assassins, but still require defensive support and are not spammable by any means. Wyverns are overpowered, Valk has already said he's looking into that.
This isn't true. Math is your friend. Everyone else will be building windmills (because farms suck) or using ocean tiles at +3 food per tile with only a 2 food requirement. This does not equal the same population. I liked your idea with the specialists.. I think there might be an issue with it though.. You'll have like 20 citizens until you research guilds, arcane lore or religious law.
OpheliaImmortal
Chieftain
True. I was only considering the case of forested tiles. Wheareas there are non forested tile 
You would probs have to many citizens, however this could just contribute to an even more builder oriented style, with the construction of every temple and elder council ect that you could .
You would probs have to many citizens, however this could just contribute to an even more builder oriented style, with the construction of every temple and elder council ect that you could .
You don't need 'special units' to win combats, just spam catapults and champions with their rediculous production.. You must not have been running lost land with towns everywhere... utterly rediculous. Mind you that the bonus commerce from paths has been removed, so that was a start in the right direction, but being able to build in jungle means they keep their food bonuses while gaining commerce and production. This is similar to the way the elves worked before.
Spiders are way too powerful. At the moment I'm owning a level 7 sword spider (combat III, drill I, greater mucro) and I'm killing everyone, conquering one city after the other - on immortal. Kind a makes it too easy.
Greez,
Tschuggi
Greez,
Tschuggi
tokala
Emperor
I can only reiterate that messing with the 2
per pop is a potential minefield. You would really need to think or better calculate that through very carefully, especially considering that not every tile ist flat grassland. That is 50% more food requirement compared to everyone else. IIRC in Orbis the Elven Citizen mechanics required 20% more food for Elves, and that was already borderline, and balanced by some serious static buffs for elvesTrue that they don't require techs for their jungles, but jungles, as opposed to ancient forests, only give 1 production.(And if Opera is correct, +0.25 health, and on that note the food doesn't override, but gives -1 for jungle and then +1 for jungle and being Cualli, a jungle on a grassland or marsh gives 2 food and 1 production, note sure about the health though still...) while an ancient forest takes away 1 food, gives 1 prod, and 2 commerce. in addition to this, gives 0.5 health. The problem as I see it is that they get free farms everywhere in addition to this though
((Also I'd argue that being agnostic is worse than having no siege weapons by far. But I always concentrated more on having a strong commerce and industry than the warfare.) Cualli also cannot get Lost Lands in 1.3, don't know if they could before. Mazatl with lost lands and the ability to get another religion is scary though
well ranged attacking is what I use archers for. True about the tech though maybe... Mage xp isn't usually a problem for me at least... But you're probably right, I just didn't miss them much personally
Those unicorn riding kitten necromancers are really tough to crack even with catapults though. Sorry about the misunderstanding on the 0.5, I get confused easily hehe.EDIT: As for the 3 per pop, myeah that area is indeed a bit of a minefield. These orchards also sound scary to me.
EDIT2: humm and yeah I forgot about the commerce from trails in Lizard territory >_>
Opera
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2008
- Messages
- 4,643
There's no 'fiasco'. And yes, the Lizards always had some underlying unbalance going on.
Also, about Guardians of Nature: I'm wasting my time trying to balance it so you guys can play balanced games while we're making other changes, including new content.
Anyway, not really sure what to do with Elves right now.
I've just started my first Mazatl game so obviously not experienced with them, but it didn't look to me like they they could have an improvement and a jungle on the same tile? Or maybe it's no marsh and improvement... Coulda sworn though that building improvements removed the jungle.
Opera, could you (or Valkrionn for that matter) explain why you chose to force smaller cities as the thrust of your balancing efforts, rather than balancing tech and build costs to the size of cities that were occuring under the old paradigm? I think a lot of folks around here don't get the motivation for the changes.
