Calabim overpowered?!

[Ashdrake]

Hello.

So i'm fairly new to CIV4/BTS and FFH2, i dont think i played on anything higher than warlord in bts and in FFH2, but i said WTH lets up the difficulty to prince and see what happens.

so i've played as calabim, prince difficulty, standard map, 12AIs, locked assets.
i had barbarians coming over me since i started close to the tundra area and orthus spawned near me. After taking them out got another city and started to pump bloodpets, 12 bloodpets and the hippus were history.
Got axes and then the bannor were history.
Turtled up, beelined vampires got some farm cities with smokehouse/grenary/breedingpits feasted until every vamp had 40-60XP points, city raider 3 + combat promotions + archers or Melee and then the entire map proved to be a drag.
20 vampires, a few with reg , haste and summon specter (i had 1 death mana) and it's easy.

So you may want to look in that balance because i havent needed anything except vamps to win it, (and the AI usually had like 6-8 archers in the cities). 20 shadows and then no matter how many units the AI had they all were weakened enough.

I havent even bothered to get Ring of Fire, with that it will be even easier.

My 2 cents at least.

 

[BCalchet]

While the Calabim are quite powerful, especially when facing the AI, your problem is likely the difficulty level. I'd suggest cranking it up to at least monarch, as well as checking the option to have the AI ignore building prerequisites - that should allow it to put up some kind of challenge.

 

[westamastaflash]

If you play on higher difficulties, you won't be able to steamroll the AI so easily. Try on Emperor. Warriors can't easily take cities when the AI gets 2 free promos on each defender...

 

[loki1232]

Yeah. You'll find that just about every ffh civ is overpowered on Prince (in a player's hands against the Ai).

 

[WarKirby]

but don't difficulties above noble give the AI "cheating" advantages ?

I really like playing on a level field with my opponents.

 

[Justicar333]

Hey leave my Calibim alone. They work good, but I'm still hoping Kael might give them another little bit of shine. Mechanically though, one of the better put together civilizations. Others have said it well already. Winning doesn't mean the race is broken. It means the time has come to raise the difficultly setting.

 

[WarKirby]

I played a game with calabim, and they did feel quite powerful in some ways. Most notably, the breeding pit. Giving them free food like that is a kind of breakthrough, which other races don't have. It allows an extra specialist, or an extra person working a mine that makes no food. Or just faster growth in general

And getting Losha up to lv18 before she even fought anything, did feel a bit unfair. Feast is awesome, though it seems to bring diminishing returns, or perhaps it just doesn't work well on newly captured cities. I'm not sure which. Used to give 19xp a time, now only 3.

 

[Justicar333]

Feast XP is directly realted to city size. And the Calabim loose elder councils to get their breeding pits, which are rather expensive to build ealry game.

 

[WarKirby]

Maybe so, but the extra food helps far more than 2 extra research, IMO.

I'd personally like to see the breeding pit come in a bit later, so it doesn't give such an advantage early on.

 

[Yaotzin]

Food is extremely easy to get in FFH, so it's not that strong. Very expensive too.

Keelyn/Faeryl etc can slaughter the Calabim. Vampires are fine and all, but swarms of summons and almost uninvadeable lands are better

 

[BCalchet]

The problem with a level playing field is that your AI opponent has certain intrinsic handicaps that make it no challenge - I'd say Noble is roughly the civilization-skill equivalent of a facing a five-year-old in the professional boxing ring.
Sure, the playing field is level, you both have the same kind of gloves, but neither of you will be enjoying the fight much, barring terrible sadistic tendencies.

 

[WarKirby]

what handicaps are those ?

 

[Zechnophobe]

There are two problems here, or one problem, and then an exacerbation of that problem.

Firstly, is that an AI pretty much has to follow it's own rigid guidelines, and once you learn them, they always work out the same. (This is even more noticible in fighting games).

More so to FFH2, is the amount of modding that has occurred, but without the AI being updated to work within those mods. This isn't a slight to the FFH 2 team, AI is ridiculously hard to program well, but it means that the AI doesn't handle a LOT of the concepts in the game. It can't use Loki effectively, it doesn't know what advantages a 'barbarian' civ truly gets, or how to terraform its deserts with Spring. It doesn't know to rush against a Calabim player before he's built governor's manors in all his cities.

 

[WarKirby]

Food is extremely easy to get in FFH, so it's not that strong. Very expensive too.

Keelyn/Faeryl etc can slaughter the Calabim. Vampires are fine and all, but swarms of summons and almost uninvadeable lands are better

uninvadeable lands? Can you clarify a bit? I've not played with Keelyn at all yet, all I know is that she's a summoner.

 

[Isotope]

uninvadeable lands? Can you clarify a bit? I've not played with Keelyn at all yet, all I know is that she's a summoner.

I think it's a metafora.

 

[BCalchet]

what handicaps are those ?

A complete lack of any intelligence, mostly. It's a machine.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

uninvadeable lands? Can you clarify a bit? I've not played with Keelyn at all yet, all I know is that she's a summoner.

He was talking about Faeryl, probably. Some people have this ridiculous idea that a leader with one purely offensive trait, one trait that's utterly worthless till sorcery, and no strong early UUs can become a defensive juggernaut by adopting FoL and banking on unreliable treant spawns. It's a baseless, false myth, but also a common one.

 

[odalrick]

but don't difficulties above noble give the AI "cheating" advantages ?

I really like playing on a level field with my opponents.

Then either play online or stick a rusty nail in your brain.

Don't take it as an insult, there is just no way a computer is going to match your intelligence within the foreseeable future.

 

[zup]

Really I don't see the issue. Calabim are supposed to be the king when it comes to creating extreme units I think. And it takes forever to feast an army of vampires to 1000+ xp unless you go Sacrifice the Weak and get 50+ pop cities. A higher difficulty level should make your early game more difficult. Even one less city after the early expansion will hurt you.

Actually I am attempting prince (moving up from noble where I don't find enough stuff to kill) and can already see the difference. I might remove the free xp though and move even higher. I want my uber veterans to mow down legions of cannon fodder.

 

[Humakty]

Monarch can be a bit tought with some factions, if you don't play to their strengths/have a bad startpos(barbarians notably). Best is to try them at prince, then move up once you know what you're going to do with this particular faction.

I personnaly find the prod bonus of governor manor a tad too efficient.