The Cualli workers are lacking the ability to remove swamps, thus unable to build improvements near their cities in most cases. Lacking the Deepen forest and shape jungle abilities of their Mazatl counter-parts. Also have -40% slower workrate than the Mazatl workers.(The slower workrate might be intentional though.) They can still remove swamps on resources, like other civs can chop forests without the tech on resources by building the resource collecting building.
As for health and slow improvements, I absolutely love these, the health makes me concentrate a lot more on building my cities correctly and timing buildings. And the slow improvements are amazing to, connecting my cities/resources is finally fun, and Border guards to protect from pillaging important. I don't think base health, (though I've only played on Prince, it might be different on higher difficulties) should be improved personally.(No opinion on healers or palace health.)
Will add a way for them to remove swamps, but the Cualli both lacking those abilities and having a slower workrate (but higher withdrawal) is intentional.
Glad to hear you like the changes.
As Grigori both the Adventurers & Refugees continue to spawn during Stasis, presumably other units with similar spawn methods too.
Most likely all of them. Easy to block it, though.
Ok, so I got back to my Austrin game last night and realized all that I said about not accomplishing much in 100 turns, was ACTUALLY 175 turns. lol
Epic speed, as always.
Unfortunately, about 60 turns later, and finally getting things going well, middle of the pack score-wise, I got the dreaded AI turn won't complete bug. Reloading saves wouldn't fix it, no python errors after enabling exceptions, so I restarted.
Well, that's not good. If you still have the save, please upload it.
After playing that game most of the way through... 300 turns or so and I've basically won, I noticed a few more things.
1- Worldbreak doesn't work, Teryn cast it and nothing happened, error was something about an unknown damage type.
2- Popping a 10 exp Champion (with a Charasmatic leader, too!) before 30 turns in isn't good for the survival chances of your nearest neighbor.
3- Was already mentioned, but the Elephant Blood promo isn't castable.
4a- After playing with it a bit more, the slow improvement building is actually delaying growth more that the health changes. I know you're already addressing this, so I think we'll have to wait to get a full evaluation on the health changes effectiveness.
4b- BUT, one thing is obvious already, those civilizations who basically ignore health issues through various mechanisms (D'Tesh, Mazatl(sp?) for sure and I imagine Cualli as well, FoL/Guardian of Nature elves surrounded by forests, others that I'm missing I imagine) received a huge indirect buff. They're simply capable of outrunning everyone now. As an example:
- I'll check it.
- Won't happen much longer.
- Will be fixed.
- Yeah, they'll become a bit faster.
- This is true; Health changes came late in the dev cycle. Adjustments will have to be made.
On the Austrin game that bugged out, I went into the WB to see if I could identify the problem, and was rather shocked by what I saw, even though I kind of expected it just by knowing the scores. This was turn 250 or so, epic speed. My capital was at 9 pop and at stagnant growth from health issues, happy cap was 11 or 12. Prespur and the Svartalfar capital were both at 11 pop, unhealthy, unhappy. Hannah the Irin had two 10 and an 11 city in varying combinations of unhealth and/or unhappiness. Those were the largest citied on the map, except the Mazatl. They had 3 cities between 22 and 25 pop (plus another city around 15 or so), unhealthy of course but who cares at that point, AND not even happy capped. How on earth I have no idea, they didn't have enough territory to have that many resources, I can only guess they were running Guardians of Nature, as they were FoL. Needless to say they were running away score-wise, at about twice the score of the second place Civ.
Ouch. Yeah, nerfstick has to come out, there.
On a side note, Austrin may not be as straight up powerful as some civs, but they win on style points! Having 24 trackers and Harmatt all with Mobility 1 & 2, riding their griffons or w/e they're called, carrying 24 attack falcons, with most of the blood promos (Harmatt had them all), and all the Master Outfitter promos, throw in a few similarly equipped assassins for horsehockys and giggles... fun stuff. An attack force consisting completely of 7 movement point flying units makes for quite the blitzkrieg.
Even got the Grand Managerie that game, thanks to Harmatt.
Fun civ.
Not to mention their ability to found cities using recon troops.
EDIT: And I don't see how D'Tesh was supposed to be nerfed. Yes, +10% strength per Death Mana isn't as strong as +1 strength per, but it works against all enemy types, even death immune or resistant. Combat 5 plus 10-20 Death mana's makes for some very strong units, so I'm not sure you can really call that a nerf. More of lowering the crazy overpowering strength against most units in favor of a mostly overpowering strength against all units.
That was not the nerf, honestly. Or rather, not the only nerf. It is a buff against certain civs, while a nerf against the majority.
The main nerfs were the popcap, the city limits, the unitline tweaks (no free xp on mages, no perma-invisibility on recon, etc).
How does FoL work with their native terrain creep, did you happen to note?
It doesn't. They terraform to Marsh, which creates Jungle, which is unaffected by FoL.
After playing a few more games I want to share so of mt thoughts:
- Love the health changes. Sure, you need to increase base health somewhat and the healer needs to be reworked but overall it's still possible to have size 20 cities, it just takes more time, which is good.
- FoL wasn't buffed by the new health system, it was nerfed. Now that Ancient Forests are actually decreasing the amount of food generated by the tile, the Ljosalfar actually have more trouble keeping their cities growing than non FoL civs which I don't think like, FoL doesn't have much going for it except it's better economy, if you take that away by counterbalancing increased commerce/production output with decreased city size all that's left are strength 2 fawns. But this will probably be solved by the increased health bonus forests are supposed to get anyway.
- This isn't really related to 1.3 but it fits the last two points thematically so I'll post it here anyway: There is absolutely no reason two choose the +1 Health option over the +2 Food option when you get the monument inscription event. I suggest changing it to either +2F/+3H or +1F/+2h.
- I've gotten used to the longer improvement times by now. It's still somewhat to long if you have pillaging barbarians in the area, but I think it might be fine once the built time reduction bug is fixed.
- Concerning the D'Tesh: 1% research and 1% slave capture chance for Infused Ash is op, even without Pyres on water and Greater Mausoleums I got 23 Ashes in my 1.23 D'Tesh game, in my current game I already got 9 Ashes while my score is still closer to 150 than to 200. I say make it 1% for every 2 Ashes or replace the slave capture bonus by a 2% strength bonus per Infused Ash, this way 25 Ashes will give you a 50% bonus which is the same as the maximal bonus from the Stigmata promotion which I think is a quite balanced strength promotion, neither to weak nor to powerful.
- Greater Mausoleums give you too much territory too early in the game. I suggest you limit them to their second stage for the early game and allow them to upgrade further only after researching some mid game tech (no clue which one, but si=something which fills the gap between rushing to KotE and Way of the Wicked. and Necromancy would be nice)
- I think managuardian Liches need to be nerfed/their skeleton summon rate needs to be adjusted to game progression
- Glad to hear it. They really just take time to get used to, is all.
- I'll play a game as Ljos FoL to see what needs to change.
- This will eventually happen, in 1.5 if we don't get around to it before that.
- Yeah, trying to find that bug.
- I'll remove the research, and increase the number you need for the slave chance.
- That's not actually possible atm IIRC. Can reduce culture a bit, I haven't seen them in the latest version. Or increase upgrade time.
- They kinda are nerfed, as opposed to other guardians; Held, not Leashed.
Build & Health will be adjusted also thanks to some balancing to civics, at least I think so. I made the changes already, need them to be reviewed by the team. Basically I tried to give some workrate boosts with early civics as well as a bit of health. Also tried to bring up some less loved civics (Consumption, Mercantilism) and fixed some bug about the AI valueing too much free XP.
I'll check it out.
I'll have to try a Ljosolfar/FoL game next. The problem was that Elves with FoL never had to worry about food (nor health, really). They could spam cottages or workshops and still always have more food than they needed. This meant that any location with trees was good enough for a city.
It would seem that change will once again make resources and city location important, while still giving a good bonus to Ancient Forests. In my previous non-FoL games Ancient Forests were excellent tiles that I always seemed to be using even with no improvement. Tonight I'll have to see what it's like to subsist entirely on them.
EDIT: Strike that, I'll have to wait until workers can build in Ancient Forests again without removing them. This Civ is pretty much unplayable in the conventional matter until it is.
Yeah, it's an issue with LinkedBuilds.
And honestly, the change was made because Elves are supposed to be longlived... Not rabbits.
You'll have lower population, but higher commerce and techrate. Once the issue with them being unable to build in forests is fixed, it shouldn't be too bad honestly.
Shouldn't Grigori Questing be limited to combat units?
I ask because Questing with 5 Great Generals gave my army a HUGE boost afterwards.
It's going away completely.
Questing altogether will be removed, apparently.
Yep.
Okay, who thought Orthus really needed to be stronger AND get to recruit the warriors I'm obliged to suicide against him AT FULL HEALTH? Seriously, I get that you want barbs to not be pushovers, but Orthus is one we're supposed to have some kind of chance at, aren't we? I mean we basically get one shot with a stack of however many warriors we happen to have and if it doesn't work, he gets an army, and a couple extra Combat promos, assuming he wasn't at 5 when the transaction began, and I get to start a new game.
Uh, wut? The only change
we've made to Orthus (and yes, I checked after reading this) was giving him a promotion which has a
chance to make him hasted, able to use his axe. There is no recruit mechanic for him. Sure it's not from a module you have?
Played my fourth game now. As the elves (Svartalfar). After 50 turns of fellowship of leaves my empire was falling apart. I converted to Council of Esus because of widespread starvation, and my elven workers started desperately chopping down ancient forests. The yield from a grassland ancient forest tile, even running fellowship of leaves +guardian of nature is terrible when compared to a grassland cottage, or (late game) a lumbermill. Guardian of Nature, with the health changes now provides a 'real' 2.5 health, and the nerf to forest health hurts as well.. and happiness isn't an issue at all in a starving wreck of an elven nation that can't even maintain a size 10 city. Farms wouldn't have saved me. They merely would have allowed me to have cities equivalent to an all farms on plains city in base civilization four. (Bit of an exaggeration)
Fellowship of Leaves was the only fun part about playing svartalfar. Extremely weak leader choices + awful worldspell + no siege was balanced out by an amazing economy. Now we have.. possibly the worst civilization in the game. Tiny cities + useless high maintenance civic + awful leaders + awful worldspell + no siege + drastically harder to reach religous heroes + no useful unique religous units...
Foreign trade has lost its only competition as a civic.
Why would anyone play as Svartalfar now?
With the health changes, and a lack of corresponding changes to anything else.. why would anyone play any religion that aren't Veil, Kilmorph, or taking a distant third, Order?
You will still have the economy; It is simply focused on smaller cities producing more research, than large sprawling cities which frankly don't fit elves at all.
There are a few issues atm, but mostly related to bugs.
IIRC FoL is going to get a unique improvement, buildable in forests by all civs (the orchad).
So plot yield have to be finely balanced in order to avoid uber ancient forests, correct me if I'm wrong.
That said, the elves are almost unplayable atm, a bug makes elven worker remove forests when building improvements, we'll just have to wait for a patch.
Yes, FoL will receive an Orchard improvement. I think something along the lines of 1
, 2
. Closer to a village than a farm.
So let me get this straight.. In order to make fellowship of leaves attractive and viable for all civilizations an improvement is going to be added with FOL that anyone can build in forests, while the elves will only be able to build that improvement as well?
Again I'm going to bring up the point. Why would anyone play the elves, (I understand they are broken right now), in the future, when any other civilization will be able to get just as much benefit out of fellowship of leaves without the negatives the elves have to put up with. The elves were strong only because of their synergy with fellowship of leaves, every single aspect of both elven civilizations (excluding the Ljosafar world spell) was weaker then average, designed to balance with their one strength.
No. The Elves will have absolutely any improvement they want. Frankly, the only tiles they will really want the Orchard on will be resource tiles. Otherwise, they'll prefer their ability to build farms or towns. The elves will maintain a synergy with FoL; It is just being changed, to remove the massive Elven cities which always felt odd.
With the slower build speeds of elven workers (which is extremely harsh in the new climate of RIFE) it won't matter that the elves can build other improvements in forests. Elven flavour start makes as many of their possible tiles forests, effectively minus one food plus two commerce in all tiles. Lets assume that Orchards are +2 Food. They will become the only viable improvements until sanitation, making the elves the weakest civilizations to run FOL, as they will be forced to spam Orchards. If Orchards are only +1 food, then FOL will still favour the non elven civilizations over the elven ones, as the elves will have to spend more time to achieve the same tile yields, though, at least farms would become semiviable at sanitation, which would allow the elves some semblance of usefullness. In addition, the elves only have a single leader with a top tier trait, Thessa, with expansive, and that is paired with Arcane, the worst trait.
(For simplicity's sakes, since they are mechanically nearly identical, I am using elves to refer to both Svart and Ljos)
Elven build speed may go up, but it honestly hasn't come up yet.
As for traits: Traits have been rebalanced for 1.4. Those that are currently weak will not remain so... Arcane, for example, will gain boosts for the new magic system.
