Barbs and Uberunits

[DieselBiscuit]

With Civs current combat system a single, strong unit will seldom survive the onslaught of 7+ lesser units, making the proposal of killing off Orthus with warriors doable, if a bit costly. With the improved AI from Warlords I imagine the barbs will do better against your über-super-transcendent warrior of improved luminosity +3,14, so don't learn to count on those one-man-stacks-of-doom(tm).

If you want a tougher matchup right now, try running an Emperor level difficulty game with raging barbs. And never save or load. I know it's frustrating to lose your beloved lvl 9 unit in a fluke 99,3% matchup but don't load that game. Don't. It will improve your experience and prepare you for the joys of multiplayer. Trust me on this.

 

[Sureshot]

you're 100% right diesel, it also makes you a better player against the ais, since you plan for losses and make sure to have a standaing military and the ability to pump out reinforcements quickly.

once i stopped saving and loading i became much better at beating the ai's, immortal seems easy now, i like to build some high production cities that just pump out units and everytime i have a decent amount i wage a campaign against an ai for a land grab.. with all those units other ais are afraid to attack me, and losing the units is actually good because i need to lower my maintenace costs.

 

[marioflag]

With Civs current combat system a single, strong unit will seldom survive the onslaught of 7+ lesser units, making the proposal of killing off Orthus with warriors doable, if a bit costly. With the improved AI from Warlords I imagine the barbs will do better against your über-super-transcendent warrior of improved luminosity +3,14, so don't learn to count on those one-man-stacks-of-doom(tm).

If you want a tougher matchup right now, try running an Emperor level difficulty game with raging barbs. And never save or load. I know it's frustrating to lose your beloved lvl 9 unit in a fluke 99,3% matchup but don't load that game. Don't. It will improve your experience and prepare you for the joys of multiplayer. Trust me on this.

Diesel i'm not whining about the fact that noble difficulty is too easy.
I have stated that i have noticed some great unbalancement about barbs units and superunits.At the beginning barbs are more deadly than in vanilla version so i like it but later when barbs become just an instrument to make units more experienced it is not good.Barbs should pose always a treat to your settlements,when they become just fresh xp for your units it's clear that there is something wrong in their role; having also goblin with 1 strenght or orc warriors with 2 strenght which attack your 5 level archers which receive also city bonus is simply not fun.
If you are able to crush entire civilizations with just 2 experienced units in my opinion is another aspect which needs to be balanced beyond any consideration about the level of difficulty.

 

[Sureshot]

the ais usually get high xped units too from what ive seen. one person actually claimed an ais unit was overpowered because it was too highly promoted heh

there might be a need for smarter ai (guarding their highly promoted units more, not putting them on boats or risking them on bad odds) but i dont feel its an imbalance.. after all, all civs have the opportunity to fight barbs, and barbs do make it generally harder to expand, you need armies with your settlers, all your cities need defenders.. in vanilla civ i used to just send out settlers alone and no bother putting units in my cities unless i was at war or had monarchy

 

[Endovior]

I don't really think that it's UNBALANCED to have high xp -> powerful unit.

After all, getting to that level of high xp is hard.

As per standard strategy, I have two tiers of defenses... passive (fortified in cities) and active (wandering around killing barbs in/near my borders).

Naturally, the active defenders gain XP much faster. Of course, they also have a tendancy to get dogpiled and killed.

In my current game, the best of my active defenders (a Warrior with Mobility, Combat 3, and Shock 1) had just leveled when Orthus stepped into view. I gave him Shock 2 and sent him to greet the Barbarian King. 66% odds, followed by victory. That same unit then levelled twice and proceeded to take the offensive, taking out the Hippus singlehandedly. The Hippus had no units beyond Warriors and the occaisional Scout, and only two units had any decent training whatsoever. Lots of questionable promotion choices, mostly.

 

[QES]

Wait a minute, people saved and loaded their games?
To change odds????
WHY DO THAT?
That seems to defeat the point of it all. I'll start over when i see defeate looming, or am no longer having fun, but i dont reload the same game, i start a new one. Make or bust.
-Qes

 

[DieselBiscuit]

Diesel i'm not whining about the fact that noble difficulty is too easy.
I have stated that i have noticed some great unbalancement about barbs units and superunits.At the beginning barbs are more deadly than in vanilla version so i like it but later when barbs become just an instrument to make units more experienced it is not good.Barbs should pose always a treat to your settlements,when they become just fresh xp for your units it's clear that there is something wrong in their role; having also goblin with 1 strenght or orc warriors with 2 strenght which attack your 5 level archers which receive also city bonus is simply not fun.
If you are able to crush entire civilizations with just 2 experienced units in my opinion is another aspect which needs to be balanced beyond any consideration about the level of difficulty.

Ok, I'll try to sum up my thoughts on this coherently so you can refute them if you disagree with me:

I You're not whining about the general difficulty level, but that barbarians should be a continuous threat during the whole game.

Some major points: Your main weapon against barbarians is expansion. The less areas that aren't in your zone of view, the less barbarians spawn. This mechanic inherently makes barbarians less of a threat as civilization spreads across the world. One way to make them a real threat, even in late games would be spawning a surge of barbarians (like in Civ1-3) instead of single units. However, the AI players are at least as suspectible as you (even more at higher difficulty levels) to this threat and the name of the game is "civilization", not "rampant barbarism". It can be argued that a better balance can be found, but in general I conclude that it is more interesting to play against other civilizations than hordes of barbarians. I am pretty sure that when the AI gets upgraded, the barbs will tend to dogpile a little better than they do now, so don't underestimate them from .016 on. Additionally the change list adds spawning grounds for new and horrible abberations so this issue is already being adressed, although barbarians will tend to become less of a threat with time by necessity, as noted above.​

II The über-units issue.

I find it hard to believe that you smashed an entire enemy civ with one or two units without saving/loading. The statistical odds are stacked against you, even with a mediocre AI. At higher difficulty levels you will find yourself dogpiled and dispatched fairly quickly, as the AI will be closer to matching you in tech levels and fortifications bonuses start to really stack against you.

As for über-units vs. barbarians this really isn't a big issue. If you purposefully leave a small patch of land in your civilizations backyard for barbarian spawning as a training ground, go ahead! You'll probably be missing out on some land and resources, so this will be a prioritization from your side. Besides, if you leave über-units to deal with barbs, you really could use a good, old-fashioned war.
​

Ok, that's my point of view. I am still of the opinion that you should give a harder difficulty setting a try. Remember, it slightly boosts the barbs combat odds and frequency of spawning (I think ). Good luck!

 

[Endovior]

Wait a minute, people saved and loaded their games?
To change odds????
WHY DO THAT?
That seems to defeat the point of it all. I'll start over when i see defeate looming, or am no longer having fun, but i dont reload the same game, i start a new one. Make or bust.
-Qes

Well, let's see.

In recent memory, I've reloaded once, immediately after the supreme, god-like warrior who singlehandedly exterminated the Hippus after slaying Orthus, was attacked and killed by a bear while exploring. On checking the odds in the reload, they seem to have been 100%... so I reloaded and proceeded to ignore the computational fluke.

 

[marioflag]

Diesel about the first point what i mean is not that i want a crush the barb game but i don't want also a game in which killing barbs is like shooting pigeons.In vanilla games there is a cap to xp from combating barbs which is 10 due to balance reasons.In mod you can have a unit with 100 xp which means a 10-11 level unit if my memory deserve, and you get also experience from barbs faster than in vanilla, it means that your units will soon have 4-5 promotions after initial attacks.Barbs attacks also with the same unit for a long time so you have to counter goblin,orc warriors with archer with lot of promotions which in combat odds can be translated in 95-100% chance to win.A good player would leave at least 2 defender for city and you get free xp for your units.It is clearly exploitable.

About the second point i crushed 2 civs which were my best opponents almost with these 2 units accompained by 2-3 units in case they needed defense from AI attacks if they were hurt so it's possible to destroy 2 civs with a bunch of xp units (without reloading game which is a form of cheating which i don't like).My unit killed Curtiss without any need to be healed so imagine against infernal spearman or bloodpets what could do also if they were defending inside a city.

And yes i will soon change difficuly level but these 2 points in my opinion remains valid.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Interesting; at least at lower difficulty levels, the only tier-3 units (and sometimes the only tier-2 units) other than mine have been from the Barbarian State in my games.

The barbarians don't build any more tier-2 and 3 units than the AI. The difference is the spontaneous genesis of units that the barbs can take advantage of. When units are created out of the fog of war, they ignore building and resource requirements. So, it's very likely that while the AI (including the barbs) is still building herbalists and such, despite the fact that they have iron working, the fog of war barbarians will be the only tier-3 units there.

 

[marioflag]

noob question:
what is tier-3 tier-2 units?

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Tier-1: Warriors, Scouts, Prophets

Tier-2: Axemen, (edit: Archers,) Hunters, Disciples, Adepts, Horsemen

Tier-3: Macemen, Longbowmen, Rangers, Assassins, Priests, Mages, Conjurers, Horse Archers

Tier-4: Immortals, Shield Walls, Beastmasters, Druids, Shadows, High Priests, Inquisitors, Archmages, Knights, Camel Archers, War Elephants, Flurries, Marksmen.

No doubt I missed a few.

 

[Silverkiss]

Missed Tier 2- Archers

 

[QES]

Well, let's see.

In recent memory, I've reloaded once, immediately after the supreme, god-like warrior who singlehandedly exterminated the Hippus after slaying Orthus, was attacked and killed by a bear while exploring. On checking the odds in the reload, they seem to have been 100%... so I reloaded and proceeded to ignore the computational fluke.

Maybe he had a heart attack?
Or, if we see them as groups (as i do), perhaps they died of disease, perhaps sexually transmitted from all their journeys and plunderin'.

As it is, while i may gripe over losing a prized unit, thats what movies are made of, the 1 in a million chance. I always imagine some "namless" protagonist who destroyed my mighty warrior, or the evil villan who cunningly decieved my mighty army. Nothing should ever be 100% IMHO. Certainty should never be.
-Qes

 

[DieselBiscuit]

Diesel about the first point what i mean is not that i want a crush the barb game but i don't want also a game in which killing barbs is like shooting pigeons.In vanilla games there is a cap to xp from combating barbs which is 10 due to balance reasons.In mod you can have a unit with 100 xp which means a 10-11 level unit if my memory deserve, and you get also experience from barbs faster than in vanilla, it means that your units will soon have 4-5 promotions after initial attacks.Barbs attacks also with the same unit for a long time so you have to counter goblin,orc warriors with archer with lot of promotions which in combat odds can be translated in 95-100% chance to win.A good player would leave at least 2 defender for city and you get free xp for your units.It is clearly exploitable.

You have to defend your improvements to be competitive, at least on higher difficulty levels. You cannot sit in your ivory tower city and watch your improvements gettings pillaged. It might be exploitable, as is being able to utilize spells fully while the AI have only rudimentary use of them is, but aby exploit is a choice (e.g. chopping for settlers in vanilla). My main problem with your arguments are not the arguments themselves but that you choose to bring them here after one (1) game on noble difficulty. Do you believe the community (and the fantastic team) hasn't adressed the issue? Do you believe every FFH fan enjoys a game as a walk in the park? Have you read other posts about the same topic in these forums?

About the second point i crushed 2 civs which were my best opponents almost with these 2 units accompained by 2-3 units in case they needed defense from AI attacks if they were hurt so it's possible to destroy 2 civs with a bunch of xp units (without reloading game which is a form of cheating which i don't like).My unit killed Curtiss without any need to be healed so imagine against infernal spearman or bloodpets what could do also if they were defending inside a city.

And yes i will soon change difficuly level but these 2 points in my opinion remains valid.

The überunit issue has been adressed earlier, mainly in the form of "hero X is too über." What it all boils down to is that FFH introduces such a plethora of new concepts that the AI cannot keep up with it. The team has made some units cast spells to summon and buff, but there is still a long way to go before it plays anything like a human player. Until then, if you want a challenge you have to give the AI boosts to basic CIV functionality and the best way to do that is to play at a higher difficulty level. Alternatively, you can get some friends together and play MP. It's all good.