Arcadian83 said:
Pillaging:
What is ancient majestic forests filled with wonderous creatures to the Fellowship of Leaves, may be prime timber or charcoal, inhabited by pelts filled with reagents to many enemies of the forest. While the treants defending it may be huge, so are the looting possibilities. Allowing military units to pillage ancient forest or workers to chop it for great rewards only makes sense. The infernals might even burn them as a ready-made sacrifice to the hells for a boon. The time taken to grow ancient forests means that destroying them would be true defilement, a more devastating loss than towns to the owner, hence why they are so protective of them.
Balance:
Ancient forests with towns/farms on them were unbalancingly powerful. The ability to add another improvement on top of the bonuses of the forest is what is unbalancing, as the ancient forest by itself is not so great with Grassland + Ancient Forest = 3F 1H. As a result, only the elves have a -huge- incentive to go 'Leaves, whereas other races, while welcome to go 'Leaves for the happy/healthy bonus, don't have incentive to grow forests since they can't build improvements on them, making their use of 'Leaves as a nature religion half-hearted at best. One thing I prefered about FfH1 was that your race didn't so directly determine your strategy. Allow other races to build these other custom forest-improvements you've been talking about. Specializing different parts of the forest is good, but uber-town-forests is too much.
The idea of pillaging AFs seems quite promising upon first impressions. That seems like a great route to both flavor and play-balance. Lets keep this idea alive.
I agree that non-Ljo Leaves followers will be drawn by the allure of lumbermills and this is not evactly Leafy. However I do not tink the answer lies in piling yet more production onto what is already a very, very productive religion. I think we need to look back a step.
Right now FfH is rather schitzophrenic. It hasn't really decided where certain power originate. What the **** do I mean? I can't really explain it except by the three obvious examples: Ljosalfar/Leaves, Khazad/Runes, and Lanun/OctoLords.
Leaves is the religion of Nature. It's power is manifested in the game primarilly through forested terrain. The Leaves as state religion grants the civilization with certain enhanced abilities, primailly involving forest. The same comments apply to Rune hills and mining) and OctoLords (sea power).
But there are three civilizations that also derive their benefits from Nature, the Earth, and the Sea. Ljo can build improvements in forests, move fast throught them, fight well in them, and so forth. Likewise for Khazad and hlls, ditto Lanun and the sea. Now, none of these realms are required to follow the "expected" religion. Oh sure, there are powerful synergies to entice each Civ to go down the expected path. But there is no reason they must do so. This leads to situations that don't seem to taste right, in terms of flavor.
Ljosalfar can invent Runes to gain the added religious revenue and the superior hills combat promotions. But even though the Elves in this fantasy word derive their power from the Runes, they wil till retain many LEaves-like abilities: Build improvements in forests, double move and +10% STR in woods come to mind. How does the race that invented the Earth religion continue to derive powerful benefits from the Realm of Leaves? More powerful benefits than Leaves grants to its own state religionists?
Or consider Khazad trading in earth for water and inventing the OO for the culture. Now the shorites pray to their crazed undersa masters, yet they retain some nifty earth-based abilities such as unpillageable mines, fast hills movements, and the increased ability to find special mineable resources. Seapower+landpower=not all that shabby ... but once again why is Kilmorph so generous to adherents of the competition.
Lanun are slated to be FfH's seapower, but nothing but habit stops them from inventing Leaves. Extra food from Ancient Forests plus extra food from every sea tile plus massive happiness bonuses from the Leaves civic and you have the potential for some massive Lanun cities, and/or some serious Conquest production. Which is all well and good, but why do teh sea gods continue to allow Lanun ships to sail so fast, or to extract so much of the ocean's bounty?
I call this situaton schitzophrenic, because it strikes me that Nature Power in FfH does not originate with Leaves, it originates with Ljo and Leaves. And ditto for the other two. When the civilization happens to pick it's "expected" religion, things don't seem so out of whack. But it leads to oddities such as non-Ljo Leaves followers cutting down AFs.
It also leaves other terrain-loving civs looking awfully pale by comparison. Doviello get a combat bonus for fighting in tundra. Pardon my lack of enthusiasm, but whoop-tee-doo. That will help holding off the Ragers, I suppose. but what would help a lot more would be a religion designed to thrive in tundra regions. Likewise the Malakim get a desert bonus. Once again, handy for fighting over rich patches of desert, except, at 0/0/0 production we rarely see wars fought over rich swaths of desert.
My point is, serveral civs have been created with an eye to enjoying a specific terrain. But their "enjoyment" varies dramatically. Doviello and Malakin get some mild combat/movement bonuses in some low-value terrain types. Khazad, Ljo, and Lanun, in contrast, are granted numerous terrain-specific abilites in high-production terrain types.
Furthermore, it can be said the civilization-specific bonues given Lanun, Ljo, and Khazad dwarf the abilities for given for state worshippers of the cooresponding religion. Ljo can build improvements in forest ... the single most powerful specialability in the game, bar none, IMO ... shouldn't that be Leaves state-religionists? Shouldn't unpillageable mines be a boon granted by Kilmorph? Are not the OctoLords the ones who bestow the bounties from the sea?
Sure, dwarves are traditionally miners ... and if they follow tradition, if they follow Kilmorph, they will act as traditional dwarves. But FfH allows the non-traditional path to be trod. If the dwarves choose a non-traditional path, if they choose to hug every tree they see ... why do they still act like traditional dwarves? Shouldn't a non-traditional path taken in the early game result in non-traditional mannerisms during the endgame?
Well, that's just something that's bugged be a bit. If it was just a matter of flavor, i wouldn't care. But I think there are play-balance / gameplay fun aspects here. As in other threads, I beleive the tech tree needs a bit of reshuffling. If that day ever comes to pass, I hope some thought is given to the 'schitzophrenia' situation I've described.
That's just my take on the matter. I am guessing I will find myself holding the minority opinion once again.
