Balance Feedback

[Krieger66]

Then there were three large islands, one of which the remaining AI started at.
That one was quickly slaughtered by barbarians, but on the main continent, there was only moderate barb activity.
Later on I discovered why, the island continents were FLOODED with barbarians...

I've had the same thing happen as you can probably tell by my earlier rant.

Are you playing on fractured world too? Because if you are I think it may be the map type screwing up the barb spawns, and subsequently causing increased MAF's/crashes. It would account for most people not getting this problem...

 

[rezaf]

Ah well, my current game's savegame is now corrupted as well.
I have the savegame from just the turn before, something that happens during that turn kills the game. Would it help if I uploaded that savegame someplace?
Edit: I just uploaded it to a random filehoster here.

Krieger66: I was using the ErebusWorld mapscript.
_____
rezaf

 

[rezaf]

Wanted to give some positive feedback for a change.

I played a new game with the latest version.

Balance is now very good, maybe even a bit on the easy side. The problem with "Spawn clusters" remains, though.

I lowered the graphics settings to play Cavemen2Cosmos, which still crashes VERY frequently starting at about the Renaissance, but with these changed settings I just won a RfE game at about turn 500. Very few crashes. Well, the game basically always crashes when I try to reload a game from a ongoing game (as opposed to from the title screen), but that's totally bearable for me.

So thanks for quickly patching the most glaring issues, this is a very nice FfH variant now. Looking forward to possible future development.
_____
rezaf

 

[Pakhawaj]

I recently switched civics to liberty(I think?), republic and mercantilism. I went from earning -20 gold per turn on 100% research to earning over +200 gold per turn due to the +2 free specialists mixed with the extra gold per specialist. This seems quite over-powered.
I'm liking the current barbarian balance of power, though I think they could do with being a wee bit more powerful since the AI seems to have little difficulty in taking barbarian cities.
Also, every civilisation has researched the "Way of the Earthmother" technology, but perhaps they just traded with each other... Regardless, perhaps trading these kinds of technology could be restricted? It seems like an easy way to convert others. Or maybe the free acolyte could be restricted to the first one to gain the technology, I have no idea whether either of these things are possible!

 

[Derf]

Try turning on the 'No Technology Brokering' option in a custom game. Then everyone has to either research it themselves, or go to the original researched and ask very nicely.

 

[Valkrionn]

The civics are all being changed in 1.4 (along with virtually everything else), so I won't do anything there for now.

Barb cities could stand to be more powerful, yes... But we have a mechanic we're adding that could easily be applied there, quite nicely. Need to bring that up to the team....

That's the nature of techtrading. I always play with No Tech Brokering, personally. Inability to trade religion techs could be a good idea...

 

[Torugu]

That's the nature of techtrading. I always play with No Tech Brokering, personally. Inability to trade religion techs could be a good idea...

I don't think it would be a good idea at all. If you have gone through the trouble to convert one of your neighbors to your faith you'll generally want them to take care of their own cities, to see them use their religious units (except the heroes o/c) and you want them to stick with your religion. You do not want to have to send missionaries to every single of their cities - especially not newly founded ones - to see them ignore their state religion completely and least of all do you want to see them convert to the next religion that spreads in their lands.
And how can you expect them to do that if they don't even have the tech required to build their own temples? It's not just a question of waiting a few turns either, the AI can be quite stubborn, if it wants to beeline Iron Working, it will be line Iron Working before it even considers researching religious techs.
Influencing the AI's pathetic understanding of fantasy lore is one of the cornerstones of a successful roleplay game, and trading religious techs is invaluable for that - Remember that WB is not an option in multiplayer.

 

[Valkrionn]

For what it's worth, I said "could". And let it trail off.

It would not work at all with our new techtree designs. Why, I won't say.

 

[Pakhawaj]

Thank you for showing me the "no tech brokering" option, I did not know it was there.

 

[Derf]

Torugu, I can't verify this at the moment, but I believe if you give (or are given) a technology that founds a religion in FFH & respective modmods, the recipient still gets a disciple of that religion. It gives them the start they need, and allows them to have one city that can build both temple and disciples, from there expanding it.
Plus just having a trade route, let alone open borders, will passively spread religions. It's not quite as good as wandering disciples in, and you lack the control over which religion spreads, but it does happen.
I've also found that converting all the cities of an AI empire seems to have next to no influence on their choice of religion, unless you're specifically using diplomacy to force them to convert - which they seem to ignore, or even hide the option entirely in some cases (Ljolsalfar and FoL, for example. Get Amelanchier into FoL and he'll never leave)

 

[Torugu]

Torugu, I can't verify this at the moment, but I believe if you give (or are given) a technology that founds a religion in FFH & respective modmods, the recipient still gets a disciple of that religion. It gives them the start they need, and allows them to have one city that can build both temple and disciples, from there expanding it.

But I can verify it. And it's one of the reasons why being able to trade religious techs is so important.

Plus just having a trade route, let alone open borders, will passively spread religions. It's not quite as good as wandering disciples in, and you lack the control over which religion spreads, but it does happen.

And controlling which religion spreads is the important part, after all that's the only way to get Os-Gabella out of RoK (Though that one has been fixed in 1.3x).
+Religions don't spread passivly into cities that have a religion already.

I've also found that converting all the cities of an AI empire seems to have next to no influence on their choice of religion, unless you're specifically using diplomacy to force them to convert - which they seem to ignore, or even hide the option entirely in some cases (Ljolsalfar and FoL, for example. Get Amelanchier into FoL and he'll never leave)

Well, he's not supposed to. Would be stupid AND against his lore.

I'm not sure if you understand what I wanted to say. Because it seems like you aren't disagreeing with me at all.


Not like it matters seeing how there are already plans for the religious techs.

 

[Derf]

Eh, sometimes I make points that escape even me. I *think* I was trying to say there isn't as much importance on religions as you make out, but unless someone cares to find a time-machine so I can ask myself when I was writing that, I can't remember for sure.

You're wrong about the passive spread though - I've just finished a RifE game where I founded a city with a FoL settler, and within two turns of connecting it to the trade network, Runes, Order and Octopus were all there. Not on the same turn, but they spread without any outside influence.
That said, I did have the respective Shrines for those three (and White Hand too), but that may or may not affect it.

As to Ammy and FoL... I find he works better with Runes, but that may just be because I'm heavy on my economy, and Runes brings nice bonuses.

 

[Torugu]

You're wrong about the passive spread though - I've just finished a RifE game where I founded a city with a FoL settler, and within two turns of connecting it to the trade network, Runes, Order and Octopus were all there. Not on the same turn, but they spread without any outside influence.
That said, I did have the respective Shrines for those three (and White Hand too), but that may or may not affect it.

Really? In vanilla civ they definitely don't. I entertained the possibility that it was changed in FFH/FF/RifE but since I have never seen it happen in any of my games...

Also, if you were indeed trying to say that religions aren't that important you missed my point even more. I'm not talking about efficiency but about roleplay and controlling religions is invaluable for that. (So glad that the times of RoK Sheaim are over...)

 

[Evalis]

Runes of Kilmorph is still the go to religion for most civs. Even the sheim benefit from this, though hell terrain is certainly much nicer for them now. It used to be fellowship of the leaves when you could lumbermill Ancient forests and they provided +1 food and +1 production. Good times.. Now only the elves and the doviello benefit from it. Amusingly Ancient forests are -worse- for every other civ because Camp + Ancient Forest < lumbermill. 4 Pips vs 5 or 4.5 if you add 50% for food.

I'd actually like to see some of the improvements revisited, but I don't think I want to get it buried here.

 

[Krieger66]

The civics are all being changed in 1.4 (along with virtually everything else), so I won't do anything there for now.

Barb cities could stand to be more powerful, yes... But we have a mechanic we're adding that could easily be applied there, quite nicely. Need to bring that up to the team....

That's the nature of techtrading. I always play with No Tech Brokering, personally. Inability to trade religion techs could be a good idea...

I like the idea of "building" a religious wonder that founds the religion in question(i.e. FoL requires hunting and the base tech for all religions which conveniently eludes me) instead of having a seperate tech for each one. I mean it could even be a holy book, scroll, or even a city ritual/spell in some cases. Second-tier religious techs could be kept, however, taking the founding religion's place and still making you tech into religion to get the good units and buildings. Also, once a player has founded a religion, there would be a second, one-time city ritual/spell that creates a disciple of a given religion and can only be constructed by a civ with no state religion(and possibly cost gold if it is a spell to balance); Each civ can have one of these "wonders" as a second favored wonder, easily eliminating non-flavor religious combos for ai's. Maybe, even a hated wonder?

I even had an idea for AV; once you complete the ritual you lose one(or more) pop in the building city as a tribute to the demons to really get under the sheims' skin.

 

[Valkrionn]

That's not likely to happen. Not a bad idea, but I'd rather just keep it simple.

 

[OpheliaImmortal]

Before I comment
What gamespeed and difficulty do you balance towards.
And more importantly, before calling out whether something needs abused by the nerf bat, or cuddled with a timely buff...
Which Civilization/civilizations are you balancing towards?
Because the world is a whole different pile of cheese if its say Scions on one hand.. and Hippus on the other.
Equally what religion is considered balanced? Kilmorph would be my guess?

 

[Valkrionn]

Before I comment
What gamespeed and difficulty do you balance towards.
And more importantly, before calling out whether something needs abused by the nerf bat, or cuddled with a timely buff...
Which Civilization/civilizations are you balancing towards?
Because the world is a whole different pile of cheese if its say Scions on one hand.. and Hippus on the other.
Equally what religion is considered balanced? Kilmorph would be my guess?

We balance towards normal speed. Ostensibly the difficulty would be Prince (no AI bonuses), but I play on Emperor (or whatever it's called; Two down from Deity).

We balance towards the strong civs. Rather than nerf all civs into the blandness of the Hippus, we'd prefer to buff them into the OPness of the Scions or D'tesh.

Not sure on religions.

 

[OpheliaImmortal]

Hmm..Well Amurite early game is a terrifying place. Poor traits all around (at least until your recieve wizards) AND not much in the way of defence or punching power. Having one of those wouldn'd be a problem.. but.. It really really shows for the poor Ai.

I'd actually say that, (besides the difference between the runaway powers with tons of unique things, which I'd say that will be fun when everyone has later on..) is that Traits such as Trader, Financial and say... Agressive, which is really useful in such a hostile world, really make things like arcane, defensive, industrious ect seem useless.

Kelp hurts the Lanun a LOT. Just..ow. Makes the sea really tempting for everyone, and slows navies down to a crawl. And stealing someone else strength is effectively nerfing them... theres just no need for that much sea food. Kelp giving everyone passable food takes the Lanun's early costal dominance away.. leaving them bland.


Finally, this isn't your doing.. but.. what is with the tech prerequisites on fellowship of the leaves hero units? They are so by and away larger and deeper in the tech tree then every other religions. Is Kithra really that good?



This all being said, the Health is wonderful now,a stat slowing growth but not stopping it, equal in weight to happiness. (if not only slightly more important just because of blight) ^_^
Lots of stability... you did an awesome job.

 

[Valkrionn]

Hmm..Well Amurite early game is a terrifying place. Poor traits all around (at least until your recieve wizards) AND not much in the way of defence or punching power. Having one of those wouldn'd be a problem.. but.. It really really shows for the poor Ai.

Amurites will get some improvements with 1.4, with the new magic system and with the new leader system.

I'd actually say that, (besides the difference between the runaway powers with tons of unique things, which I'd say that will be fun when everyone has later on..) is that Traits such as Trader, Financial and say... Agressive, which is really useful in such a hostile world, really make things like arcane, defensive, industrious ect seem useless.

This is another thing that will be rebalanced... Believe it or not we actually have a chart of traits, who will have said traits, and so on. No two major leaders will have the same traits.

Two things I'll say: All traits granting promotions will grant extra promotions (as in, Aggressive would not give Combat1, but a new promotion with the same effects... Leaving you still able to gain Combat1, granting a permanent boost), and traits such as Arcane and Summoner will be far more worthwhile given the addition of the Capacity and Willpower stats.

Kelp hurts the Lanun a LOT. Just..ow. Makes the sea really tempting for everyone, and slows navies down to a crawl. And stealing someone else strength is effectively nerfing them... theres just no need for that much sea food. Kelp giving everyone passable food takes the Lanun's early costal dominance away.. leaving them bland.

Lanun ships will likely be immune to the effects of Kelp. There is another mechanic they will receive as well that will restore their mastery over the seas.

At least until the Bezeri/Isenj are added. But they'll still be in the Big Three as far as oceans go.

Finally, this isn't your doing.. but.. what is with the tech prerequisites on fellowship of the leaves hero units? They are so by and away larger and deeper in the tech tree then every other religions. Is Kithra really that good?

I have no idea. But the techtree is being rebuilt from the ground up (in a very significant way...), so expect that to change as well.

This all being said, the Health is wonderful now,a stat slowing growth but not stopping it, equal in weight to happiness. (if not only slightly more important just because of blight) ^_^
Lots of stability... you did an awesome job.

Awesome to hear!