Blakmane
Prince
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2007
- Messages
- 447
Hi all,
With Terkhen very rightly not involving himself too much in balance brawls, I figured we could continue the balance discussion, flamebaits, name-calling etc in a thread separate to the main one.
I don't think FFH2 will EVER be balanced, but small tweaks to mix up the metagame are definitely something I can get behind. To this end I am maintaining a branch of EMM with very minor tweaks that we use in our own games. All the changes made so far have been based entirely off of feedback from our home games. Every player group has different settings which heavily influences balance (part of the reason it's so hard to reach consensus!) so these tweaks may or may not be relevant depending on your local metagame. We play 5-10 human players with prince AI making up the difference, No alliances/tech trading, Standard sized erebus continent maps on quick speed. Our player skill varies a lot from diety players to newbies, with the more advanced players usually being ganged-up on by or vassalising the newer players.
I am happy to include extra changes if there is interest. I want to try to keep tweaks as small as possible, and I don't want to change anything unless it comes from played feedback rather than theoretical discussion. We could go in circles forever debating what to change, otherwise. I also don't want to mess around with anything that would require a recompile, for sanity's sake.
Anyway, you can find it merged with EMM here. No fancy release.
Here is the current changelog, with short justifications in italics
EMM 0.4.0 Balance Version 1.3:
VERSION 1.3 CHANGES
- Updated to EMM 4.0.0
- Updated version checking
VERSION 1.2 CHANGES
- Crusade no longer prevents diplomacy when active
purely for multiplayer games to allow Bannor players to vassalise defeated opponents. We use vassalisation as a way of stopping that awful 'knocked out 3 hours in and then watch my friends play for another 10 without me' that happens in big MP games so often. Incidentally this is also a huge help to Bannor AI who gets trapped in unwinnable wars otherwise
- Merged Bannor Crusade Hotfix (OBSOLETE FROM v1.3)
VERSION 1.1 CHANGES
- Champions, Dragon Slayers and Battlemasters gain 1 free promotion on creation.
Suggested a long time ago in an EitB thread. Champions are actually out-performed by Axemen in hammer-to-power ratio with the Axemen cost change, so this is a small tweak to put it just back into the champion's favour mathematically.
- Mimics and Boarding Parties strength increased from 5 to 6.
Never used units. This makes them only slightly weaker than champions (no free promo), but better in their niche, rather than worse in all situations.
- Chaos Marauder strength changed from 4 to 5/3.
tiny change to make these slightly less lacklustre, pretty self explanatory
- Training Yard and Archery range cost reduced to 75 from 100.
Slight buff to encourage people to use these units and get them out quicker, and to counteract the slight axeman cost increase. We've played with this for a while and are wondering if down to 50 hammers might even be appropriate.
- Mobility 1 promotion prerequisite moved from horseback riding to cartography.
- Mobility 2 promotion now also requires Combat 3.
We found mobility line needs to change, I don't think anyone would disagree here either. Cartography is an orphan tech and this makes it much more attractive. Also reduces synergy with the mounted line as you aren't forced to pick up HBR to get it. Mobility 2 is no longer available to a standard army, only veterans: another direct nerf to mounted and recon lines. I'm leery to nerf mobility 1 much more than this, because in our experience the loss of extra movement hurts the slower unitcombats more than the already fast unitcombats. We are considering allowing mobility 2 for all units, not just recon and mounted, to reduce this gap further... although honestly, we have found this change already makes a huge difference.
VERSION 1.0 CHANGES
- Axeman and Swordsman cost increased from 45 to 50.
this is purely to put them back in line with champion cost/hammer ratio after EitB reduced them to 45 from 60: without it, even the free promo doesn't quite make up for it, mathematically. Very minor, but I know that nerfing any melee is bad, so I tried to compensate by lowering training yard costs. Incidentally, I kept Sons of Asena at 45: Doviello need all the help they can get.
- Monks now have channeling 1 and spirit 1, can gain passive XP.
We found, and I'm sure noone would disagree, Monks to be extremely lacklustre. This change gives them a unique niche (only direct combat unit that gains passive XP), fits thematically with the Elohim (incentive to remain out of early wars and let army passively improve) and mechanically with Einon (spiritual trait gives them a huge buff, making them a solid frontline unit and allowing him to ignore other tech lines to focus soley on religious tech line, as was the original intention of the UU)
For the next version I am considering the following changes:
Please let me know if you are interested in testing these changes, have general balance issues you want to nark on about or have any other concerns that have come up in your games. I'm always up for discussion, even if we don't agree in the end!
With Terkhen very rightly not involving himself too much in balance brawls, I figured we could continue the balance discussion, flamebaits, name-calling etc in a thread separate to the main one.
I don't think FFH2 will EVER be balanced, but small tweaks to mix up the metagame are definitely something I can get behind. To this end I am maintaining a branch of EMM with very minor tweaks that we use in our own games. All the changes made so far have been based entirely off of feedback from our home games. Every player group has different settings which heavily influences balance (part of the reason it's so hard to reach consensus!) so these tweaks may or may not be relevant depending on your local metagame. We play 5-10 human players with prince AI making up the difference, No alliances/tech trading, Standard sized erebus continent maps on quick speed. Our player skill varies a lot from diety players to newbies, with the more advanced players usually being ganged-up on by or vassalising the newer players.
I am happy to include extra changes if there is interest. I want to try to keep tweaks as small as possible, and I don't want to change anything unless it comes from played feedback rather than theoretical discussion. We could go in circles forever debating what to change, otherwise. I also don't want to mess around with anything that would require a recompile, for sanity's sake.
Anyway, you can find it merged with EMM here. No fancy release.
Here is the current changelog, with short justifications in italics
Spoiler :
EMM 0.4.0 Balance Version 1.3:
VERSION 1.3 CHANGES
- Updated to EMM 4.0.0
- Updated version checking
VERSION 1.2 CHANGES
- Crusade no longer prevents diplomacy when active
purely for multiplayer games to allow Bannor players to vassalise defeated opponents. We use vassalisation as a way of stopping that awful 'knocked out 3 hours in and then watch my friends play for another 10 without me' that happens in big MP games so often. Incidentally this is also a huge help to Bannor AI who gets trapped in unwinnable wars otherwise
- Merged Bannor Crusade Hotfix (OBSOLETE FROM v1.3)
VERSION 1.1 CHANGES
- Champions, Dragon Slayers and Battlemasters gain 1 free promotion on creation.
Suggested a long time ago in an EitB thread. Champions are actually out-performed by Axemen in hammer-to-power ratio with the Axemen cost change, so this is a small tweak to put it just back into the champion's favour mathematically.
- Mimics and Boarding Parties strength increased from 5 to 6.
Never used units. This makes them only slightly weaker than champions (no free promo), but better in their niche, rather than worse in all situations.
- Chaos Marauder strength changed from 4 to 5/3.
tiny change to make these slightly less lacklustre, pretty self explanatory
- Training Yard and Archery range cost reduced to 75 from 100.
Slight buff to encourage people to use these units and get them out quicker, and to counteract the slight axeman cost increase. We've played with this for a while and are wondering if down to 50 hammers might even be appropriate.
- Mobility 1 promotion prerequisite moved from horseback riding to cartography.
- Mobility 2 promotion now also requires Combat 3.
We found mobility line needs to change, I don't think anyone would disagree here either. Cartography is an orphan tech and this makes it much more attractive. Also reduces synergy with the mounted line as you aren't forced to pick up HBR to get it. Mobility 2 is no longer available to a standard army, only veterans: another direct nerf to mounted and recon lines. I'm leery to nerf mobility 1 much more than this, because in our experience the loss of extra movement hurts the slower unitcombats more than the already fast unitcombats. We are considering allowing mobility 2 for all units, not just recon and mounted, to reduce this gap further... although honestly, we have found this change already makes a huge difference.
VERSION 1.0 CHANGES
- Axeman and Swordsman cost increased from 45 to 50.
this is purely to put them back in line with champion cost/hammer ratio after EitB reduced them to 45 from 60: without it, even the free promo doesn't quite make up for it, mathematically. Very minor, but I know that nerfing any melee is bad, so I tried to compensate by lowering training yard costs. Incidentally, I kept Sons of Asena at 45: Doviello need all the help they can get.
- Monks now have channeling 1 and spirit 1, can gain passive XP.
We found, and I'm sure noone would disagree, Monks to be extremely lacklustre. This change gives them a unique niche (only direct combat unit that gains passive XP), fits thematically with the Elohim (incentive to remain out of early wars and let army passively improve) and mechanically with Einon (spiritual trait gives them a huge buff, making them a solid frontline unit and allowing him to ignore other tech lines to focus soley on religious tech line, as was the original intention of the UU)
For the next version I am considering the following changes:
Spoiler :
- Increasing frequency of Tum Tum spawn
None of us have ever see him in our games, ever. Anyone else have this experience?
- Moving Foreign trade to Writing
Even with the extra civics in EMM, noone goes cottages outside of Elves. Aristofarms are still so much better it hurts. We brainstormed and figured this was mostly because cottage improving techs/civics all come too late to be useful. Having the cottage growth tech available at the same time as Aristocracy might make this an real choice, especially because writing is a useful tech for a lot of civs regardless. Unfortunately, it also buffs Elves, albiet not drastically. We need to come up with a way of bringing them back on par which doesn't cripple their playstyle - I'm open to ideas.
- Move overcouncil/undercouncil to Trade
Tasunke raised this a long time ago and several of my players have also mentioned it. OC/UC basically never comes up, due to the heavy beaker sink. Moving it back to trade balances out the loss of the civic from the change above and gives players a lower-hanging fruit to pick up those +10% bonuses. As an aside, you can't found CoE early with this using the nightwatch resolution: there's some python code that prevents that.
-Fawns -50% city attack
I played some 1v1 test games with the other deity player to try and break the game with FoL. Whilst I'm still not convinced it is economically better due to the horrible commerce yields, the Fawn buff is definitely a big change and I have to agree with the other posters that something needs to counteract it. A big city attack Malus should still give them their niche (great in forested areas) without totally nerfing them into oblivion like they have been in the past.
-Satyrs -50% city attack, requires Animal handling
Same logic. City attack malus especially REALLY hurts them, because we found they were mainly used to penetrate city defenders before collateral came online. I have an inkling that this might almost be too much: pushing them back to animal handling will make them much more difficult to get out in time to be relevant, as it forces an opponent to continue up the recon line which has no economic benefit if they want them early.
-Kithra Kyriel requires animal handling
I'm not convinced this one is necessary at this point, but requiring animal handling as well would push Kithra back to 1900 beakers on quick speed, which is similar to the other power 8 mounted heroes. I'm worried that so many FoL nerfs will leave them at the bottom of the religion pile.
-FoL economy potential nerf
Also not convinced on this one, but FoL elves really is silly and EitB didn't help to fix that like it did with Calabim/Lanun changes. Ideally something that hurts elves more than other races: always the danger, like with cottages, is that you nerf FoL to the point where elves are 'ok' and it becomes unviable for other races.
My immediate thought is Ancient forests don't give an extra food over normal forests. This is the simplest change which reduces the city bloat potential of elves but doesn't impact other races as much (although it still hurts). Would love some feedback on this.
-Wood golems potential nerf
There have been whole threads discussing where luris sit in the grand scheme of things. There's obviously a lot of contention. From our MP games we've found them distinctly underwhelming. Ultimately, the lack of mobility promos on their golems means that their megastacks crawl at such a horrendous pace on the offensive they just can't compete in the high-movement, mounted and recon dominated metagame. The EitB changes also hurt them because their wood/iron golems get no advantage from the other melee line buffs. That said, the Luri players in our group have never once got to firewood golems at a competitive pace due to early pressure... which really highlights their main issue in MP I think.
Still, firewood golems create a problem because they are a degenerate strategy which forces only a single viable tech line for most playthroughs (making luris a 'boring civ'), so I can understand the impetus for change. I would propose one of two changes:
1) Wood golems no longer eligible for blasting workshop promo
This is the simplest change, which I like - Iron golems are expensive and, honestly, luris deserve to win if they can get a megastack of iron golems AND sorcery without being knocked out. That said, weakening the earlygame of luris exacerbates the underlying issue and it still encourages a singular tech line.
2) Blasting workshop doesn't give fire 2, instead gives +1 or +2 fire(?) damage
A more complicated change that might open up some more interesting luri strats. Extra damage is worse than fireball promo so this is a definite nerf, but pure damage gained is nothing to sneeze at as, with combat promos on barnaxus, this makes golems punch very hard cost/power ratio wise. Making this change would require some testing to determine the most realistic damage increase from the promo. My initial thought is that +1 is far too lacklustre and +2 is a better balancing point, but I haven't crunched any numbers on it. Thoughts?
Other thoughts I am most interested in at the moment:
-What can be done to make archers interesting, without sweeping changes?
None of us have ever see him in our games, ever. Anyone else have this experience?
- Moving Foreign trade to Writing
Even with the extra civics in EMM, noone goes cottages outside of Elves. Aristofarms are still so much better it hurts. We brainstormed and figured this was mostly because cottage improving techs/civics all come too late to be useful. Having the cottage growth tech available at the same time as Aristocracy might make this an real choice, especially because writing is a useful tech for a lot of civs regardless. Unfortunately, it also buffs Elves, albiet not drastically. We need to come up with a way of bringing them back on par which doesn't cripple their playstyle - I'm open to ideas.
- Move overcouncil/undercouncil to Trade
Tasunke raised this a long time ago and several of my players have also mentioned it. OC/UC basically never comes up, due to the heavy beaker sink. Moving it back to trade balances out the loss of the civic from the change above and gives players a lower-hanging fruit to pick up those +10% bonuses. As an aside, you can't found CoE early with this using the nightwatch resolution: there's some python code that prevents that.
-Fawns -50% city attack
I played some 1v1 test games with the other deity player to try and break the game with FoL. Whilst I'm still not convinced it is economically better due to the horrible commerce yields, the Fawn buff is definitely a big change and I have to agree with the other posters that something needs to counteract it. A big city attack Malus should still give them their niche (great in forested areas) without totally nerfing them into oblivion like they have been in the past.
-Satyrs -50% city attack, requires Animal handling
Same logic. City attack malus especially REALLY hurts them, because we found they were mainly used to penetrate city defenders before collateral came online. I have an inkling that this might almost be too much: pushing them back to animal handling will make them much more difficult to get out in time to be relevant, as it forces an opponent to continue up the recon line which has no economic benefit if they want them early.
-Kithra Kyriel requires animal handling
I'm not convinced this one is necessary at this point, but requiring animal handling as well would push Kithra back to 1900 beakers on quick speed, which is similar to the other power 8 mounted heroes. I'm worried that so many FoL nerfs will leave them at the bottom of the religion pile.
-FoL economy potential nerf
Also not convinced on this one, but FoL elves really is silly and EitB didn't help to fix that like it did with Calabim/Lanun changes. Ideally something that hurts elves more than other races: always the danger, like with cottages, is that you nerf FoL to the point where elves are 'ok' and it becomes unviable for other races.
My immediate thought is Ancient forests don't give an extra food over normal forests. This is the simplest change which reduces the city bloat potential of elves but doesn't impact other races as much (although it still hurts). Would love some feedback on this.
-Wood golems potential nerf
There have been whole threads discussing where luris sit in the grand scheme of things. There's obviously a lot of contention. From our MP games we've found them distinctly underwhelming. Ultimately, the lack of mobility promos on their golems means that their megastacks crawl at such a horrendous pace on the offensive they just can't compete in the high-movement, mounted and recon dominated metagame. The EitB changes also hurt them because their wood/iron golems get no advantage from the other melee line buffs. That said, the Luri players in our group have never once got to firewood golems at a competitive pace due to early pressure... which really highlights their main issue in MP I think.
Still, firewood golems create a problem because they are a degenerate strategy which forces only a single viable tech line for most playthroughs (making luris a 'boring civ'), so I can understand the impetus for change. I would propose one of two changes:
1) Wood golems no longer eligible for blasting workshop promo
This is the simplest change, which I like - Iron golems are expensive and, honestly, luris deserve to win if they can get a megastack of iron golems AND sorcery without being knocked out. That said, weakening the earlygame of luris exacerbates the underlying issue and it still encourages a singular tech line.
2) Blasting workshop doesn't give fire 2, instead gives +1 or +2 fire(?) damage
A more complicated change that might open up some more interesting luri strats. Extra damage is worse than fireball promo so this is a definite nerf, but pure damage gained is nothing to sneeze at as, with combat promos on barnaxus, this makes golems punch very hard cost/power ratio wise. Making this change would require some testing to determine the most realistic damage increase from the promo. My initial thought is that +1 is far too lacklustre and +2 is a better balancing point, but I haven't crunched any numbers on it. Thoughts?
Other thoughts I am most interested in at the moment:
-What can be done to make archers interesting, without sweeping changes?
Please let me know if you are interested in testing these changes, have general balance issues you want to nark on about or have any other concerns that have come up in your games. I'm always up for discussion, even if we don't agree in the end!