Design: Civilizations

[bluehorn]

Id actually like the world to be more tundra starting out then fade to the real map through the begining of the game. Might give the doviello a nice starting boost too.

That would definately be interesting, and it probably would make more sense than than my idea which would likely have the Doviello spawning tundra in the middle of a desert or something

 

[Sureshot]

I like playing on Ice Age to fit with the theme, but what about having tundra next to non-tundra/non-ice tile(s) having a chance to melt into deserts/plains (cold deserts are fairly common as well, deserts usually just mean lack of access to water) and ice into tundra thats adjacent to a tundra tile?

Then allow the Doviello to turn tiles adjacent to tundra into tundra as well (either a frost spell or somehow worker, and make it a time effect so it doesn't happen quickly) and tundra thats next to ice into ice (through the same or a similar spell/ability).

This would give the Doviello a neat battle against the loss of their favoured habitat [and make icing in another civ territory an act of war. Then in war you might see them sending in troops and tring to freeze your land (assuming they share a border and have tundra on it)].

 

[woodelf]

I pre-empt this thread to say one word; MAPSCRIPT!

Kael knows why I keep harping on it.

As you were.

 

[Kael]

I pre-empt this thread to say one word; MAPSCRIPT!

Kael knows why I keep harping on it.

As you were.

Alien Bacteria?

 

[woodelf]

Alien Bacteria?

That's 2 words.

Just wait until FfH is done and I make an alien invasion scenario. I'll have Alien Bacteria then. Muhahaha.

 

[z00t]

Love the mod, awesome job u guys are doing =)

Hippus seems a bit overpowered to me in the early stages, aggressive/raiders traits + horseback riding + guaranteed horses = a very quick path to wiping out other civs early with raider units while they still have warriors. Maybe raiders should be lower in base strength but get a bonus against archery units, weakening them right at the start but keeping them useful as the AI develops? Or extend the tech path needed to get them...

 

[Maian]

Does this mod have too many civilizations? I see some problems with the "lots of civilizations" route:

- Since each civ would have different units and stats, it would be a huge hassle to balance it all out, even though the differences are relatively minor (compared to typical fantasy RTS games). Vanilla Civ4 doesn't have this problem since the vast majority of units between each faction is the same.

- It would take a much longer time to finish the mod. This depends on how divergent you plan the civs to be. For example, if you plan to do with each civ, what you've done with elves, i.e. elves are composed mostly of unique units, it would take forever.

- It tends to dilute the "prestige" of each civilization. Not sure what the word is here, but there's a certain elegance to having few factions. For example, I'd prefer an class-based RPG with 10 classes over an RPG with 1000 classes. Each class in the former RPG would feel a lot more special than a class of the latter, not to mention that each class would also get more developer attention. This applies to RTS games as well - each Warcraft 3 race is much more memorable than each Rise of Nations faction.

There are of course advantages to having many civs. If you can pull it off in a timely manner, it can make the game more immersive and interesting (lore and all that), allows more civs per game, and potentially improves the replay value of the mod.

But I have to wonder if it is worth the cost.

 

[Kael]

Does this mod have too many civilizations? I see some problems with the "lots of civilizations" route:

- Since each civ would have different units and stats, it would be a huge hassle to balance it all out, even though the differences are relatively minor (compared to typical fantasy RTS games). Vanilla Civ4 doesn't have this problem since the vast majority of units between each faction is the same.

- It would take a much longer time to finish the mod. This depends on how divergent you plan the civs to be. For example, if you plan to do with each civ, what you've done with elves, i.e. elves are composed mostly of unique units, it would take forever.

- It tends to dilute the "prestige" of each civilization. Not sure what the word is here, but there's a certain elegance to having few factions. For example, I'd prefer an class-based RPG with 10 classes over an RPG with 1000 classes. Each class in the former RPG would feel a lot more special than a class of the latter, not to mention that each class would also get more developer attention. This applies to RTS games as well - each Warcraft 3 race is much more memorable than each Rise of Nations faction.

There are of course advantages to having many civs. If you can pull it off in a timely manner, it can make the game more immersive and interesting (lore and all that), allows more civs per game, and potentially improves the replay value of the mod.

But I have to wonder if it is worth the cost.

You are absolutly correct. There is a huge disadvantage to having this many civs. The biggest one is that the team can spend 2 weeks detailing a single civ and that work will only be seen by 1/16th of the casual players (those that play the civ).

Of course there is some rollover from those playing with the civ, but by and large thats the truth.

We made FfH1 and had all the civs the same and we are taking on 21 times the work in FfH2 (just for the civs, that doesnt count all of the other changes). It definitly ambicious, but I think that it is possible (with the FfH team), and the end result is worthwile.

 

[Xyshi]

I think it would be great if you focused on mobility for the Hippus. This could include anything from buildings giving free mobility promotions to having their horse units treat plains, grasslands, and desert as roads. Also having pillage only take 1/2 a movement point for them is also really interesting.

 

[Brancaleone]

Wheres the undeads? I liked them in FfH 1. Back when i played DnD, there was this race of intelingent undeads i created (but never used except as npc); they were not zombies, they could do everything humans did except eat, sleep, grown up, etc. They had a method of changing a dead human into one of them, cleaning all his memories in the process; they used to "import" dead bodies from other nations. In order to not degenerate and become weak, ugly skeletons, they had to bath themselves everyday in olive juice (i think thats the word; bad english) everyday; so in cities with humans and undeads, half of the crops were wheat, the other half olive trees.

There were vampires as well, but while undeads were neutral and passive, vampires were arrogant and ambitious; also, undeads are dead humans changed; to get a vampire, you need a LIVE human; plus, they need drink blood, from any animal, and they consider themselves superior to humans, so...

When i saw the undeads, vampires and everything else in FfH1 i went WTH! Theres my undead empire! And the undead plantations are blue/green or some sort of dark; exactly how id imagine it.

Do you plan on putting them back in? Or theres no place for an undead Republic on your campaing world..?

Right now im playing Doviello (but i changed Mahala to Agg/Ind instead of Rai/Ind), and Amurites, both very cool.

 

[Maian]

I'm playing my first FfH2 game. This is the first time I've played Civ4 since last December. Needless to say, this mod is great (otherwise why would I be posting ) even in its incomplete state.

However, after going through about half the tech tree and establishing a stable empire, I discovered one of the reasons I left Civ4 in the first place: against the AI, the game isn't dynamic enough. I'm not playing on a really hard difficulty, so I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the initial challenge is to just expand and defend your empire such that it becomes large and powerful enough to become practically impervious. Once that's done, you've pretty much won the game. And this can happen really early, say 1/3 the way until the game determines you really do win.

Fall for Heaven doesn't fix that for the most part. I've read (but haven't yet experienced) things like apocalypse and blight, but I don't think that's enough (I could be wrong here though). I recognize that some people are perfectly happy with this, and that FfH wasn't designed to fix this anyway. This is a Civ4 issue, not a FfH one. But I'm playing FfH and only FfH, not vanilla Civ4, so I'm posting here anyway

So how can this be addressed? I did a couple of searches and came up with this modpack: Revolution: Revolution: with BarbarianCiv, Rebellion, AIAutoPlay. The idea of civil war, rebellion, etc. really intrigues me. And that's only a start. How about "events" in general that could happen semi-randomly? Besides civil war, how about new civilizations suddenly arising in the middle of a game? Or sudden changes in civs, both in personality and units, such as slaves overtaking their masters? Bouts of corruptions and natural disasters that have spelt the doom of many of Earth's empires? The events could also be small, ala "We love the King day". For example, the random surfacing or exhaustion of resources.

Of course, these events can't be completely random, or that would ruin the strategy element of the game. There need to be specific cues prior to most events, and most events need to be preventable. On the other hand, the rare truly random and/or unpreventable events could spice up gameplay as well.

The current armageddon spells are good step toward that. Again, I haven't encountered them yet so I don't know how they exactly work. But it seems that they can't be prevented and have no warning - 2 big no-no's for large semi-random events. In any case, these events shouldn't be limited to just armegeddon spells.

 

[Chalid]

Welcome to the World of FfH, Maian

Well what is to be said. We have discussed things like Revolt, the splitting of your empire and similar things during the Design, but the fact is that most players would simply quit a game if half of their empire including some of their well tended units suddenly belongs to a new civilization. So we do not plan those random events.

As you imagined the Armaggedon spells are similar, but they are not random.

Nevertheless I myself like an AI that is a challenge during the game so i work on the FfH AI. Its really hard work as one never knows if the changes do what one wants them to do or if they cripple the AI in other Aspects (Not speaking of bugs that sneack into the code). But in the End i hope that it gets really challenging, especially compared to the Vanilla AI.

If i may ask which level of difficulty are you playing?
As the Ai does not yet know how to use its spells and similar things real efficently i recommend playing at least one level harder than you played vanilla.

 

[loki1232]

I think we have a few things planned for Maian.
1. Hell
2. Quests
3. Armegeddon
4. Wilderness and monsters.
Once we get all of this you should be fine.

 

[Maian]

Nice to see that you guys are trying to address the issue

I would argue that the point of most players quitting when a civil war happens is irrelevant. The challenge of the player is to avoid the civil war. If it happens (notice I said "if" rather than "when"), then they can choose to persevere or quit.

The main problem with catastrophic events in games is that the player is often given little warning and/or can't prevent it from happening. The more catastrophic an event, the rarer it should be, the more warning the game should provide, and the better the ability the player has to prevent or alleviate it.

Consider the American Civil War. It did not just happen. There were plenty of events leading up to it. A significant enough portion of the population needed to be unhappy, such that the new nation would have a chance at winning the civil war. The succession also did not necessitate a civil war. In the cae of the the Civil War, the Union started it - it could've been a peaceful split if the Union had a different Congress and President. Futhermore, the unhappy population needs to have the means to organize and overthrow anti-succession elements within their regions. For example, unhappy populations are less likely to rebel if the government is oppressive (of course, oppressive govts make populations unhappy, but that's another story). The moral of the story is that there should be plenty of opportunities to stop or alleviate a catastrophic event.

In any case, catastrophes should be the minority of events. Some events will be big, most will be small. Some are bad, some are good. Most events should be things on the scale of "we love the monarch day" stuff. I'd consider a quest system to be a type of event generator as well.

Another thing is that events should be happening to all other players as well, regardless of whether they are AIs or not. It just makes the game a lot more interesting. Imagine a civil war splitting an orc empire into two. Or a good civ change into an evil one. Or a drought striking an enemy. Point is, events don't just have to happen for the human player; it can occur for others yet still make a large impact on the game.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I forgot the difficulty of the game I'm playing. It's on some medium-low difficulty. As I expected, it didn't take long for me to get to the top, but I just couldn't envision a case where once I'm at the top, I could ever be defeated, regardless of difficulty.

 

[Kael]

Nice to see that you guys are trying to address the issue

I would argue that the point of most players quitting when a civil war happens is irrelevant. The challenge of the player is to avoid the civil war. If it happens (notice I said "if" rather than "when"), then they can choose to persevere or quit.

The main problem with catastrophic events in games is that the player is often given little warning and/or can't prevent it from happening. The more catastrophic an event, the rarer it should be, the more warning the game should provide, and the better the ability the player has to prevent or alleviate it.

Consider the American Civil War. It did not just happen. There were plenty of events leading up to it. A significant enough portion of the population needed to be unhappy, such that the new nation would have a chance at winning the civil war. The succession also did not necessitate a civil war. In the cae of the the Civil War, the Union started it - it could've been a peaceful split if the Union had a different Congress and President. Futhermore, the unhappy population needs to have the means to organize and overthrow anti-succession elements within their regions. For example, unhappy populations are less likely to rebel if the government is oppressive (of course, oppressive govts make populations unhappy, but that's another story). The moral of the story is that there should be plenty of opportunities to stop or alleviate a catastrophic event.

In any case, catastrophes should be the minority of events. Some events will be big, most will be small. Some are bad, some are good. Most events should be things on the scale of "we love the monarch day" stuff. I'd consider a quest system to be a type of event generator as well.

Another thing is that events should be happening to all other players as well, regardless of whether they are AIs or not. It just makes the game a lot more interesting. Imagine a civil war splitting an orc empire into two. Or a good civ change into an evil one. Or a drought striking an enemy. Point is, events don't just have to happen for the human player; it can occur for others yet still make a large impact on the game.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I forgot the difficulty of the game I'm playing. It's on some medium-low difficulty. As I expected, it didn't take long for me to get to the top, but I just couldn't envision a case where once I'm at the top, I could ever be defeated, regardless of difficulty.

Yeah we had civil wars in an early draft. It was killed by one question, "Is it fun?" The answer was no and it killed the idea.

I could see that a civil war scenerio could be very fun. You take control of an empire on the brink of collapse, you have to bring it back or deal with the civil war that erupts. But I don't think it is a fun concept for the mod as a whole. Players will be frustrated when their country splits in the middle of a significant war. A strategy game at its heart should be predictable, or else strategy becomes impossible. And taking a significant portion of a players resources based on a coin flip (even if you can adjust the odds with actions) makes it to random.

We are planning for an Armageddon counter in "Fire". Certain actions cause the counter to rise, certain actions cause it to fall. Although a high armageddon counter won't cause the player to directly loose units and cities it will make the world much less friendly, making nastier wonder available, raining demons on the worlds and merging hell with creation at its most extreme.

The players empire is the machine he has built. I would rather change the world and challenge the machine, then change the machine.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

The Lucuip start with enchantment mana, whcih fits thematically, but is a poor choice strategically because their golems (iirc) cannot get the enchanted blade promotion. Maybe enchantblade should work on golems, or have some secondary effect, or unique spells for lucuip arcanes.

 

[Maian]

The players empire is the machine he has built. I would rather change the world and challenge the machine, then change the machine.

That's a reasonable approach. But what about catastrophic events for non-player civs? As I mentioned previously, the player could take advantage of an enemy splitting into two civs. Events don't have to happen just for the player. That fits with the "change the world and challenge the machine" approach.

In any case, my main suggestion wasn't civil wars or catastrophes. It was semi-random events in general. Things like natural disasters, mysterious troop disappearances, introduction of new islands, new resource spawning, corrupt official steals from treasury, some new quest comes, etc. Imagination is the limit. The goal is to make the "endgame" no longer the endgame, to force the player to keep on his/her toes even when s/he controls a powerful empire. In fact, the more powerful a player, the more events s/he should get.

Nevertheless I myself like an AI that is a challenge during the game so i work on the FfH AI. Its really hard work as one never knows if the changes do what one wants them to do or if they cripple the AI in other Aspects (Not speaking of bugs that sneack into the code). But in the End i hope that it gets really challenging, especially compared to the Vanilla AI.

The best TBS AI I've ever seen is GalCiv2's AI. If you need inspiration, just look there.

In particular, the latest version of GalCiv2 has a system where other races start ganging up on the most powerful race, usually you. Well, they don't simply gang up on you - they just start distrusting your intentions more and are much more likely to form an alliance against you. This "checks and balances" system is desparately needed in Civ4.

The other major AI blunder is more of a tactical one. The AI seems to always streams units to the front lines. This isn't so bad, until the front line collapses, in which case the units streaming in a slaughtered one-by-one. I'm not playing a hard difficulty, so maybe the AI doesn't stream at high difficulties. Nonetheless, this is one area the AI needs to focus on.

As for making the AI use spells intelligently, I don't envy your task Many spells are very tactical, and AIs make pretty bad tacticians.

If you really want the AI to be good, perhaps you should follow one of GalCiv2's design mottos: "only implement features that the AI can take advantage as well", or more concisely, "if the AI can't use a feature, don't implement it".

 

[loki1232]

yeah we've had that problem with the ai not using features. That's why hte mercenaries mod isn't in anymore.

I really like Maian's ideas for random events, and i think that we should copy them over to the quests thread.

 

[Kael]

If you really want the AI to be good, perhaps you should follow one of GalCiv2's design mottos: "only implement features that the AI can take advantage as well", or more concisely, "if the AI can't use a feature, don't implement it".

I agree, but at some stage when they added a feature in the ai didnt know how to use it yet. You are playing a beta version of the game and the ai hasn't been adjusted yet. By the time we get to a real release candidate we hopw that the ai will be able to use these features better than it currently does.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

One similar idea that could be doable: Throw new leaders into the mix halfway through the game (say turn 200), if either there are at least 3 cities (scale with map size) belonging to minor tribes within x spaces of each other, give their control to an unused AI, and allow diplomacy with them. They'd probably need a tech boost and such to stay competitive.

Or you could inflict civil war on the AI, if they have 75% more points than any human civ, split off 1/4 to 1/2 of their cities into a new color, using either the other leader of that civ or a new one entirely.