The Clan entertaining a massive breeding program for (savage) Minotaurs is really not funny if you happen to be located next to them and those Minotaur hordes start to wander in your direction shorly after turn 100 normal speed
That will change.
Maybe just maybe.. fawns used to be great for defence with woodsman two. However.. now since all FOL elven food tiles can't contain forests, all food tiles must be built on rivers.. and since all cities must be built on rivers...
This is the proposal I made last night on #erebus.
- Hunter Strength
- Animal unit
- HN (will appear as belonging to Cernunnos)
- Charm, similar utility spells
I think you see where this is going. The is a direct path that the elves, with their no siege, and mediocre military must defend without forest or benefit. Rendering fawns even more uselesss now then they have ever been.
(I know I sound bitter.. I am more then a little bit. My two favourite civilizations can no longer be played.. so, perhaps I am distinctily annoyed. I still have my baalseraph, their mechanics are still ok.. but the elves are now so bad that I'd play the hippus without mounted units first. And as far as I can tell their is no intention to ever remedy the situation. Restoring the ability to build in forests wouldn't do it, nor would the addition of Orchards for everyone. A Civilization designed specifically to gain benefits from forests,while being inferior in other areas, cannot be balanced or playable unless they are allowed to gain benefits over other civilizations for forests. 'IF' the yields on orchards are what Valkrionn has implied, then the elves will forever be relegated to the garbage pile, permanently the worse possible choice for fellowship of leaves or any religion.
Frankly, you seem unwilling to adapt to the proposed changes. Yes, there are currently issues, but they will be worked out. Smaller Elven cities, however, will not.
They WILL be balanced around forests, and they WILL be playable. Give it time, patches do not come at the snap of the fingers.
Do the math on 1f, 2 commerce orchards. Figure a single improvement the elves could build that would be better. The best possible comparison would be Aristocracy + agrarianism farms, with sanitation ..and even these would have one less production then orchards.
I'm.. and I hate to say this.. trying to find the download link for 1.23 again.
I spouted those values off the top of my head. They would have been playtested first, and honestly, you're right; Too high. Could be as low as a single Commerce, only gaining higher yields on the resources it works.
For Ashes :
-isn't it possible that the ashes give science% to the city it is related instead of civ-wide ?
-why can't floating pyre be limited to fish/clam/shrimp and crab ? (fishing the creatures then burnng them to crisp) thus, D'tesh has interest to go into the water but not OP.
Not that I know of, not currently.
No reason it couldn't be, and that's what I'd do if I moved it back to an Arcane Barge instead of cutting it entirely.
Elves :
-to have high production high commerce but small cities :
-have Ancient forests get 0F/2P/2C with FoL (-1F/+1P/+1C without FoL ; normal forest being -1F/+1P IIRC)
(0F means a grassland ancient forest is self sustainable) ; have forest at +0.5
and ancient forest at +1
(or respectively +0.25 and +0.5)
+ give 1F for elves in forest + 1P/1C in ancient forest.
No. Those changes simply reintroduce the large elven cities, effectively undoing that change. They will not make a return.
Giving more health/food to forests/elves/ancient forests defeat the purpose of smallering their cities.
What we want for them is not to have ultra-big cities when running FoL. You people are saying the Mazatl and the Cualli are overpowered, it would be the same, but for elves. So why would it be okay for them but not for the lizards?
The other thing is we want FoL to be viable for other civs as well, right? So basically, elves should perform better with FoL, but they shouldn't be the only one able to perform well with FoL.
The elves have a great boon: they can build and maintain forests. It's broken for now but it will be fixed.
The issue of other civs is that they can't do that. Adopting FoL is kinda shooting oneself in the foot...
So, seems like the automatic terraforming from FoL is the problem. Why not make it so other civs can build into forests/ancient forests? That way it would become viable for everyone.
(How that should be done, I don't know; maybe through a civic or just by adopting FoL)
Then giving enhanced yields from forests/ancient forests for the elves would make them perform better.
No. Just no. The main unique feature of the Elves is the fact that they can build in forests, or are supposed to be able to. Granting that effect to the religion, rather than the civ, is a bad idea; I already dislike Dwarven Mines for RoK, and plan to nerf them for non-Khazad.
There are better ways to do it than by taking a civ's unique mechanic and giving it to a religion.
It is not the case that all non-elven civs are bad at running FoL. My doviello are very well suited to it, and having a non-elven civ running FoL means that fawns are a very powerful and useful unit (free Woodman II). My FoL powered doviello economy running GoN is very powerful indeed with camps (buildable on Ancient forests) upgrading naturally to yarangas. Not OP, just right.
A few balance queries regarding the DOVIELLO:
Is it intended that Doviello recon units can't use the 'blood of' animal promotions from animals? They can only get these from the buildings, which are often built well after I have built my scouts and hunters.
Also, I found a great little exploit: although doviello cannot get 'subdue animal' promotions, their FoL fauns (which are amazing, by the way, contrary to what has been said elsewhere) can. This means that I can keep four fawns and four wolves in a city, and each turn 'release' the four wolves into the wild, recapture them with the fawns, and so on and on, getting loads of XP.
Also, I do not think that the 'shared XP' mechanic is working for the doviello. Do animals and workers count towards this?
Also, I heard somewhere that doviello animals can upgrade is this the case? And if so, how?
On FoL - Exactly.
For the Doviello:
- Currently intended, but I am considering allowing it.
- The Doviello CAN get Mesmerize Animal though, so same thing essentially.
- It checks specific unitcombats. Melee buffs other melee, recon other recon, etc.
- They do not.
Personally I think removing the Guardian of Nature civic entirely is the way to go, being able to grow ancient forests wherever you want alone is worth the whole religion.
If you're not an elf, put a lumbermill on it and it's already better than all other improvements+0.5 health per tile. The Mazatl's civic ought to be balanced along with it to.
Lumbermills cannot be built in Ancient Forests.
Also, it will be removed. However, that removal would require the full civic revision we have planned, which requires the tech changes, which necessitates the unit/building/etc changes.... So for now, we must balance around it.
1) One thing to consider for the elves is using the bannor mechanic of spawning free units from the proposed orchard improvment. Perhaps they could be a weaker version of the treants that spawn from the the wood elves' world spell. Maybe each orchard produces a melee treeman, but the dark elves also have a chance to spawn an agry ent seige unit from their forrest work shops, and the wood elves can spawn a ent priest from their forrest cottages (just throwing out ideas). If the goal is to make elven cities smaller but as productive as other civs, means of production outside of normal tile yields will have to be considered (perhaps running coucil of esus could allow the svart to spawn some units from their tiles as well)
Not likely to happen. I don't want FoL to be all about spawning units.
2) I am also concerned that the health changes are going to make achieving the stated goal of the developers of reaching a "finished" product a much larger task. There are many civilizations that have to be rebalanced now, and that will require a lot more than just simple tinkering. Plus, as has been discussed, a lot of important issues can't even be worked on until the health model has been finalized. I can't see much meaningful balance work being done at least until 2 more patches have been released and the health and savage barbarian systems have been implemented, because balancing towards a moving target is usually counter productive (as is illustrated by the theory that the legion has been nerfed this patch vs the reality of their continued broken state; I guess you just can't keep a good lich down it would seem).
Anyways thanks again, and I am always pleasantly suprised that a community of modders exists with so much energy and dedication.
The final version is quite some time off.
Just played a Svart FoL game as Volanna, with Ancient Forests not removing food anymore (but not adding any either). Also add the new health balancing tweaks and the new Guardian of Nature civic (with less hapiness, +4 health only and -25% military production).
I didn't have any issue with building improvements in (ancient/) forests
I thought someone said that ability wasn't working anymore?
So it was pretty playable. Don't see any need to balance the elves more.
I'll play a game with it, see how it goes.
Also: The issue with improvements removing forests is from LinkedBuilds (verified, via a post about the Mazatl). You didn't go far enough down the metal line for the linkedbuild to activate, so you never removed forests.
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
I don't think they need any production boost really. Just build a mine! They get already more production from all tiles if they are FoL.
(2) would mostly be to reduce the cottage+AF benefit (only slightly though).
(3) & (4) would be so they have a slower growth but not that slow.
I'm not sure of 2, 3, or 4, honestly.
(2) Why limit their commerce improvements, when that was the yield chosen for them to emphasize rather than food? Seems counter-intuitive.
Now, blocking it from upgrading within Ancient Forests might be different.
(3) + (4) I don't really like 4 (big bag of worms....), and without 4, 3 is OP.
What bug? I didn't get any issue in my game
Again: LinkedBuilds.
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?
As I said, the Orchard's yields could be as low as a single value.
I dislike the Preserve idea, though.
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 disagree about it being a fiasco. For the majority of civs, there was no unbalancement. It is... Around 6 that received indirect buffs.
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.
That's kinda the way I see it as well.
If it's going to be removed, accounting for it in balance considerations is the last thing you should be doing, IMO.
It's removal hinges on the implementation of so many other changes that it simply
must be balanced for at this point in time.
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
More that the others are too weak currently, as the AI doesn't understand the Health changes yet.
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.
I'll answer this one.
Honestly? The main reason we chose to decrease city size (rather, city
growth, as max size is still the same) is that the team did not care for the speed with which the game was progressing, and the sheer size of the cities.
Well, still don't understand this orchards so might not be balance compared to them, but saw this in wildmana I think, ancient forests having a chance to spawn treants when an enemy walks in your territory, how about getting rid of the guardians of nature civic, and making the tech do this instead..?((Keeping the rest of the religion as is.)) And get stronger with other techs so as to not completely splat invaders in the begginning or just level them up later..
That is in every FfH mod.
I played a few games but as is, I cannot bring myself to play with the current issues/balance except to test things. I do love the smaller citites and slower improvements a lot though. Thanks for a great modmod, and for the continued work on it to make it even greater. 
isn't meant as such.
cathedral of tali - grants free lighthouse EVEN for INland cities! 
for elves)
is worth less due to importance of 
