Design: Game Options

[Kael]

There are quite a few new game options in "Shadow", some were snuck into 0.25 but I'll list them all now because some have been modified and vanilla players may not be aware of the new options that got put into 0.25.

Barbarian World- The Barbarians start with a city for every player in the game (this is the Labrascum option renamed).
Wildlands- Double the normal rate of animals, in "Shadow" this has been rewritten so that it truely doubles (there was a smooth check that took place after our doubling that made our change insignificant). Also in the new version animals continue to be spawned much later if this option is selected.
Blessings of Amathaon- Doubles the amount of bonuses generated on the map.
Living World- Doubles the frequency of events.
Last Days- Doubles the rise and fall of the Armageddon Counter.
Hallowed Ground- Removes the Armageddon Counter from the game.
Compact Enforced- The Mercurians and the Infernal won't be spawned during the game.
No Lairs- Lairs won't be be automatically created on the map (though animals can still make lairs).
No Settlers- No players can create settler units.
End of Winter- The world starts frozen and slowly thaws to the normal terrain type.
No Unique Features- No Unique features are created on the map.
Remove Religion- Fellowship of Leaves- Removed the Fellowship of Leaves religion from the game.
Remove Religion- The Order- Removed the Order religion from the game.
Remove Religion- Octopus Overlords- Removed the Octopus Overlords religion from the game.
Remove Religion- Runes of Kilmorph- Removed the Runes of Kilmorph religion from the game.
Remove Religion- The Ashen Veil- Removed the Ashen Veil religion from the game.
Remove Religion- The Empyrean- Removed the Empyrean religion from the game.
Remove Religion- The Council of Esus- Removed the Council of Esus religion from the game.
AI No Building Requirements- With this option selected the AI no longer needs any building requirements for units. So they can build axemen without training yards and longbowmen without archery ranges. My goal eventually is to improve the AI enough so that this doesn't have much effect (and in "Shadow" the AI's ability to field upgraded units is MUCH better than in 0.25) but we put this in for testing and decided to keep it for players that wanted to try it out.​

I have been playing a lot of games with various religions on or off. Especially on smaller maps 7 religions is an awful lot. Sometimes its nice to have a game with just the Order and the Ashen Veil, or the Empyrean and the Council of Esus. I also think that it will be helpful to scenario designers.

I've also been playing a lot of "End of Winter" games. We have been talking about a mechanic like this for a long time and we finally found a way to do it that isn't processor intensive on huge maps. I think you guys will enjoy it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Looks good. The Remove Religion - ____ options seem like they would be really good if Ice brings back the White Hand. Maybe you can go ahead and implement 21+ religions now.


Assuming you still haven't gotten it to remember your settings, I think I'll change the default options to Advanced Start/Barbarian World/Wildlands/Blessings of Amathaon/Living World/End of Winter, and play around with disallowing religions pretty often too.


Have you considered an option to half the AC too? I usually want it to rise slower than usual, especially sine Advanced start and Labruscum/Bararian world tend to make it rise faster. Hopefully the normal AC rate is lower now that such issues as the death of Prophecy mark units and razing evil cities has been addressed. Lately I've always ended up always turning the AC off rather than deal with its rapid rise.

 

[JanusTalaiini]

I have been playing a lot of games with various religions on or off. Especially on smaller maps 7 religions is an awful lot. Sometimes its nice to have a game with just the Order and the Ashen Veil, or the Empyrean and the Council of Esus. I also think that it will be helpful to scenario designers.

Yeah, whenever I wanted to play Order/AV games, I always opened up the WB, made a one-tile island in the middle of the ocean, built a barbarian city on it and made it the holy city for all the other religions, and then turned the tile back into ocean. This option will make it a lot simpler!

 

[zxcvbnm]

Looks good. The Remove Religion - ____ options seem like they would be really good if Ice brings back the White Hand. Maybe you can go ahead and implement 21+ religions now.

I don't like the 21 religion idea, as I won't be able to disable any

But for scenarios disabling some religions will allow creating more realistic situations

 

[Willgar]

...Have you considered an option to half the AC too? I usually want it to rise slower than usual, especially sine Advanced start and Labruscum/Bararian world tend to make it rise faster. Hopefully the normal AC rate is lower now that such issues as the death of Prophecy mark units and razing evil cities has been addressed. Lately I've always ended up always turning the AC off rather than deal with its rapid rise.

This is a very real concern for me, on emperor - unless i can grab the Propercy of Ragnok, the AI will normally send the AC up to 70+ before i can get the tech/units able to deal with the horseman.

 

[Jono]

How about an option that multiplies the required GP points for a GP by x? Call it 'Sterile Minds'.

 

[vorshlumpf]

End of Winter- The world starts frozen and slowly thaws to the normal terrain type.

Heck, yeah! I assumed I wouldn't see this until Ice, so many thanks for putting it in now.

*excitement level for Shadow doubles*

 

[Sto]

An option we have added for our MP games (not optional in fact) in the previous version that would be interesting with more religion : a player that already have a holy city can't research the tech to discover another religion until another player have found the religion . However this is doable only for religions granted by techs on a dead end tech tree .. and i don't know how the new religions will spread .

Tcho !

Edit : for the option double the amount of bonuses , you should divide the iUniqueRange by 2 (and reduce a little more if there is lots of players in a small map ) also to makes it more efficient . If not all the last strategical bonuses added will missed .

 

[Dogfax]

End of Winter looks and awesome idea! The fight for land will be intense to the xtreme..

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

Heck, yeah! I assumed I wouldn't see this until Ice, so many thanks for putting it in now.

*excitement level for Shadow doubles*

Same for me This will double the fun factor from early game expansion and struggle for survival.

 

[galahadba]

AI No Building Requirements- With this option selected the AI no longer needs any building requirements for units. So they can build axemen without training yards and longbowmen without archery ranges. My goal eventually is to improve the AI enough so that this doesn't have much effect (and in "Shadow" the AI's ability to field upgraded units is MUCH better than in 0.25) but we put this in for testing and decided to keep it for players that wanted to try it out.[/indent]

I loved this option, i will see how de AI do in shadow, but i think i will use it many times anyway

 

[zxcvbnm]

Same for me This will double the fun factor from early game expansion and struggle for survival.

Add wildlands, raging barbs and barb world to create a crazy and *very* realistic fight

 

[Broken Hawk]

I second the opinions on the End of Winter option. Coming out of the Age of Ice at the beginning of a game will greatly add to the atmosphere.

Having the ability to disallow religions will make games more credible, at least for me. If I hand pick my rivals and I leave out the dwarves and the Ljosalfar, I don't want RoK and FoL in the game.

With the AI having no Building Requirements maybe it will make better choices as to what units it fields.

Nice job team.

 

[Nor'easter]

End of Winter sounds really interesting, I'll definitely have to try that out.

Wildlands -- well, now maybe I'll finally have a chance to build the Grand Menagerie.

 

[Ekolite]

Wasn't wildlands in the current version? I'm sure there was something to do with making more animals.

 

[kevjm]

I'm sure it's been done before but Barb World + No Settlers + No City Razing, in multiplayer I wanna try that

 

[Kael]

Wasn't wildlands in the current version? I'm sure there was something to do with making more animals.

Yeah, some of these got added in the 0.25 playtest version (we had some time to kill waiting for firaxis to release 3.13). Wildlands in particular works much better in shadow because the doubling occurs after a smoothing alogrithm that balances the amount of anaimals that are going to spawn, instead of before it.

 

[mrtomsmith]

Blessings of Amathaon- Doubles the amount of bonuses generated on the map.

Forgive me for asking rather than trying this out myself in .25, but I've been wondering - what exactly does this do? I can't tell from the description. Does it mean that each special resource (cow, gems, etc.) adds twice as many food/hammers/gold to the tile as normal? Or that the bonus when you connect to the resource (happy/gold/etc.) is doubled? Or that each special resource you connect to gives you two of that resource (for trading, mostly)? Or all tiles produce double? Or the map has twice as many resources (cows, gems, etc.) placed on it, but they act like normal resources? Does it affect unique landmarks? Does this affect mana nodes?

--Confused in Cali

 

[marioflag]

I think that for me the Day of Outrage is 12th December not the 11th seeing the game options available in Shadow.
I was really hoping that an option to slow down experience from combat would have been available, because Marathon is clearly not as balanced as Normal Speed.
On Marathon your units usually get a lot more experience than at Normal Speed because they perform more fights; in my Marathon games i always notice these unbalancement

-Heroes or units become really unstoppable if they become a lot experienced
-Too easy to have units or heroes over 100 xp (usually i have Heroes with over 500xp in my games)
-Too much 99,9% combats
-Entire Armies or Civilizations even if more advanced can be easily destroyed by an experienced Hero in a stack with a Medic and some defensive units to protect it from counterattacks, in the opposite case moving an Hero or experienced units to a besieged city can solve nearly all problems if you need to defend the city from an enemy stack.
-If units can become too powerful when used they usually have 99,9% combats; it doesn't force you to use them more strategically, you simply use them everytime they are available

The aforementioned observations really give a clue that experience in Marathon is not balanced, it's a problem nearly similar to the AC which when introduced for the first time (before it was fixed) in FfH2 moved too fast toward 100 on Marathon.

To make Marathon games a bit more balanced i suggest one of the following game options:

-slow down combat experience gains to civ4 vanilla levels, it should make units leveling harder on Marathon
-Vorshlumpf suggested to make an option which gave 0xp to any combat over a certain percentage (e.g. combat over 99%), it should also have a good benefit on gameplay.

 

[Jono]

That'd put Leaders with the Raiders trait at a huge advantage.