Buildings countering the health problem of a city is a good idea. If you are going to build a city in an unhealthy place, you should have to spend time building up the infrastructure in order to make it prosper.
Opera's idea, actually. She's fond of the vicinity bonus mechanic.
I can see this going both ways. I think this is only a big problem for the Grigori because great prophets are almost useless for them. But a settled great prophet is probably the best settled unit, especially early game. 1 hammer is big, 5 gold is literally your entire economy, and the 2 health is now pure gold. Of course, were I playing Elohim and trying to spam religions, I would certainly like a GPP from my settled prophet.
I can see that, yes. I'm planning to work in some kind of UniqueSpecialist mechanic, so once that's done the Grigori could get a unique priest without the GP points.
I don't think it will be missed. Did I mention it was noisy?
Noisy, and easily exploited. The second is the main reason for it.
Cool. I think Acheron is more scary this way than that version of FfH when he roamed Erebus.
So do I... And I like it far better than having a random new unit spawn, with
it being the dangerous one instead of the freaking dragon behind it.
Much better. Although it would be cool if Beastmasters could get them all. They already are tough enough for a low tech cost, so their base strength might have to be toned down slightly were that the case. I always thought it would be neat if Hunters could have a pet promotion (very similar to the Blood idea.) The pet promotion would change the icon of the Hunter.
Hmm.... A beastmaster having the ability to have more could be interesting. Not sure it would be all of them, though.
And the pet promotion would be possible (even with just the blood promos), just a lot of new artstyles.
From a flavor standpoint, the Sidar are awesome. From a game standpoint, they are both underpowered and bland.
Well, not what we were going for.
Let me say three things before I begin: (1) The mist is one of the most original and amazing features added by RiFE. I am blown away by the awesomeness of it. There are, however, a few problems, which I will address below. (2) I think that the immortality promotion change is not working, or if it is, it is not easy enough to see or understand when a unit becomes immortal for the turn. Lastly, (3) Rathus Denmora is an awesome machine of destruction. If he gets Orthus' Axe, the world belongs to the sidar.
The immortality effect does not seem to be working.
OK, Now to my point: Remove the Sidar, and give the Mist mechanic to the Svaltalfar or the D'Tesh. Both civilizations are better than the Sidar at their own game: the recon line. In fact, that's the sidar's only game. In fact, their game really ends at the Poison tech, because everything else about the civilization is bland. Their early game is bland, their midgame rocks with assassins and Rathus, and their late game is as flavorless as lettuce.
Not ever going to happen. I dislike removing FF civs, not going to remove FfH civs at all.
One caveat- my favorite civ is the Hippus. I like to play a fast rushing civ, and the hippus do it in style. A lot of people complain they are bland. They are not bland in the slightest- they may be one- dimensional, and they may have an easily acessible focus, but they are fun. Very fun. And Magnadine is the most awesome hero in the game, despite what that flavortext guy says about his pony. Mounted mercs are awesome. They have flair and style, and they may be simple, but they are not bland. However:
I agree. What the Hippus do, they do well. It's why I've resisted pressure to improve them... They are MEANT to be vanilla.
The Sidar boil down to one tech. Poisons. Meanwhile, the Svart are rocking their +1 attack from turn one, and Thanatos is beating everyone at their own game. I love Thanatos, and after playing that civ, I see no reason to ever play the Sidar. So give the Mist to the legion, since they already have so many wonderful and surprisingly awesome things about them- why not add more?
Because more would make them overpowered.
Here's what is wrong with the Sidar, as I see it:
(1) the immortal promotion thing may be an awesome mechanic. I never saw a unit gain it when looking in mouseover. I had a level 25 ghost, and if never got it, then the mechanic is not working, or the chance is far, far too low.
It's not working currently. Need to test to see exactly what is failing.
(2) Rathus does not get the promotion that allows him to become immortal. He's like the king Ghost, bust the other Ghosts beat him at his own game.
That's because he's apparently not getting the Shade racial. It will be fixed.
Sidar have invisible recon units as well, and better yet have the Divided Soul ability. That said, it could be a good idea to expand the invisibility of their recon units.
(4) One leader no longer fits with the new mist mechanic. This is more of an annoyance, or maybe an oversight, or maybe could be a change. In any case, other civ's cities captured by the leader who has the (formerly called) tolerant trait retain their own civ's building capacity. This is great, because the sidar units are all so bland. However, it sucks because captured cities from other civs CANNOT use the Mist. Again, the mechanic is awesome. I think it's bad to have a leader who cannot use the only thing the sidar have going for them for a majority (at least to an aggressive player like me) of their cities.
That is an oversight; City spells are using the city's civilization, rather than the owner's civilization. Will be fixed.
That said, Xivan may well be removed completely. His mechanic is too overly complicated.
(5) D'tesh has invisible great commanders. This is awesome. Very awesome. The sidar- well, they do not. I have a stack of 10 hidden ghosts and one, very visible, great commander. I also like the combat applications of the new great healer, casting heal on my ghosts. So it's two great people and a bunch of invisible units. Well, would be two great people, except they just die. (I know the worldspell into the mist would help here, but honestly, in my game, either I used it early without knowing, or was never able to actually use it, or couldn;t find it. In any case, it was never used).
The D'teshi Commander is going to lose it's invisibility (in fact, already has in my version); Too possible to spam forts.
And the worldspell is a city spell, as all others are. You must cast it from a city, not a unit.
(6) After poisons, you get those stupid and bland basic Shadows that everybody gets. You know what- the art in RiFE is amazing. Some of the units are stunning. The FFH2 and RiFE artists are awesome, and this is just bellyaching, but I hate the Shadow model as much as I hate the Paramander model, in general. But the poor Sidar, who even cares about their Shadows, because they can just stop at poisons. If they don't- barring religious heroes (which they will almost never get because of their tech priorities)- they get absolutely nothing unique.
I could easily see giving them a unique shadow.
When they used to be able to wane shades, the sidar could be nigh unstoppable end- game. They were like an avalanche; starting slowly, building momentum, and then crushing everything with a supercity. A supercity that, in RiFE, would be almost as good as the D'Tesh or Scion cities.
The Shade mechanic was horrible, for several reasons.
- It focused on sacrificing high level units. This runs counter to the general "Protect your high xp units" philosophy present in the mod.
- It was very overpowered. The one civ people could reliably win a OCC Immortal game with was the Sidar. That's not a good thing.
- It turned what should be an isolationist, builder-civ into a warmonger civ.
Ok so there's 6 points. It's not exactly material for the feedback thread. It is certainly a balance issue, however, because the Sidar are complete filler. They are not balanced against any of the powerhouse early game civs (Khazad, Hippus, Clan, and the incredibly broken archos), not balanced against any of the mid game civs, and have no real late game.
To be frank, it seems like you are trying to play them in a way they aren't really meant to be played. They are not, and should not be, a warmonger.
They are a
builder civ. That is the purpose of the mist... To allow you to isolate yourself, protect yourself, and build peacefully.
Want to make the Sidar on par with the Legion, the Scions, or the Archos? at level 6, all uints gain the blood of the phoenix promotion. They can die once and be resurrected. At level 12 (or 15, or whatever) They become truly immortal. There- now the sidar are balanced as overpoweredly as any of the other awesome, flavorful, detailed, and fun civs.
The immortal mechanic they have will be better, once it is working correctly. The basic formula for them to gain the immortal effect is as follows:
rand(1-1000) < UnitLvl * 50
Lvl 6 odds = 30% (each turn)
Lvl 12 odds = 60% (each turn)
Lvl 19 odds = 95% - This is the max, cannot get a higher chance (hardcoded)
And one last thing- I have said it before and I can't say it enough- you have an awesome and incredibly talented team at work on this mod, and there is no game that gets even a tenth of the playtime as FFH2, and now RiFE. I love the "more is better philosophy," the innovative game mechanics, and the sheer brilliance that has gone into this mod. I'm looking forward to your work in Civ 5.
Thanks.
Due to 2 unhealth per population point every early growing city is forced to keep 1-3 healer specialists, thus first and highly probably second and third great persons born are great healers that must be placed into largest pop cities to alleviate large (-6 to -10) unhealth. As a consequence, possibility to receive other great person than healer moves into late-endgame except for random events. Thus any civ without philosophical trait/ardor is effectively denied useful great people exc for generals.
Honestly, that is the first opinion of many people (and steps are being taken to counter it), but play with it more. You'll find there are ways around it without using healers.
The larger issue is that currently you virtually MUST settle near a river. That will be adjusted, though it will still be much better if you do.
That's not as big an issue as it seems at first. You have the option to choose your great people, if you do this, you'll get the ones you need. And there are a lot of ways to gain health in RiFe. For starters, every food resource gives you 2 health once you have the granary/smokehouse/harbor. Secondly you've got wells, herbalists, and similar things that add up.
There's tweaking that's needed around the edges of the system still - and that will come - but I think the principle of the change is fine. I'm playing an Elohm game right now and going for an altar victory. Getting plenty of prophets and developing my civilisation at a nice modest speed. Only have about a third of the food resources available at this stage, 250 normal turns in, but its quite adequate to have functional cities.
Exactly.
The main issue with great person dilution is that cities normally try to stop growing when they get close to their happiness cap, they do not attempt to stop growing when they reach their unhealthiness cap, so unless you pay close attention to those messages that say "X city will become unhealthy next turn" (of which only 3 can appear at one time, including combat messages..) you will pump out an excess of great healers. You can of course mouse over the city and it will tell you how much health/happiness it has left before reaching the cap. A really nice feature opera added, which has probably gone unnoticed.
Some cities grow too damed fast though (Raitlor is a huge cultprit for this) to catch before they start producing great healers.
Perhaps cities can be programmed to stop growing once they hit the unhealthy cap, and healers(along with priests) are not among the specialists the computer uses automatically (you have to tell the city to use them).
Having the city ignore specific specialists is not likely, but you can already tell it to stop growing at the unhealthy cap. Hit the button next to the food bar.
In my Doviello game, 7 Troll Warriors just popped up next to my capital in turn 137. Frankly, this seems a bit much. Not sure where they came from. (Next to a bunch mountains) It's basicly lost, as I only have 3 warriors and 4 wolves at it (which seems a relatively good amount of protection), and even though I tried to save scum it, I couldn't find any path to hold it.
That's a bit much.... Hmm. Think when I rebalance the barbs, I'm going to introduce a few new tags, allowing me to control how many of that unit spawn at once, and what 'leader' unit it spawns with.
), that objection disappears. I was talking about the current, on par with citizen version. As long as they are valued correctly it's good.
