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I mostly played erebus continent. My two cents regarding changes:

I think the game would run smoother if you removed techs rewards from huts and gave everyone two starting techs instead. That would probably smooth out early game swingyness by a lot. If I remember correctly, advanced civ does this too.

I would lock the animal conversion promotion behind hunting. Trying to luck out boar/wolf pens with 2 str scouts shouldn‘t be encouraged. Maybe make hunter a requirement too.

It would be great if civ placement in the erebus map script could be improved. It often clusters civs. That seems to get worse with more civs that have flavored starting positions.

Maybe give elves 1-2 tiles of ancient forest instead of work speed. But I‘d try the extra starting tech for everyone first. That should change early game balance a fair bit.
 
The saga of Brigit and the goblins continues: She's now an Esus worshiper.

Refusing to follow her own god because of the strength of her conviction and standing for millennia locked in ice for her faith, only to convert because of some shrine she found in a goblin fort
 

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I mostly played erebus continent. My two cents regarding changes:

I think the game would run smoother if you removed techs rewards from huts and gave everyone two starting techs instead. That would probably smooth out early game swingyness by a lot. If I remember correctly, advanced civ does this too.

I would lock the animal conversion promotion behind hunting. Trying to luck out boar/wolf pens with 2 str scouts shouldn‘t be encouraged. Maybe make hunter a requirement too.

It would be great if civ placement in the erebus map script could be improved. It often clusters civs. That seems to get worse with more civs that have flavored starting positions.

Maybe give elves 1-2 tiles of ancient forest instead of work speed. But I‘d try the extra starting tech for everyone first. That should change early game balance a fair bit.
Why don't you just turn huts off?

Definitely agree with civ placement on Erebus/ErebusContinent. It's a real downside to that map.
 
Why don't you just turn huts off?

Definitely agree with civ placement on Erebus/ErebusContinent. It's a real downside to that map.
I do turn huts off. But I would prefer the advanced civ solution. It‘s not a big deal though.

From my advanced civ experience, I can say that the recommended map script produced impressively balanced start positions and resource distribution (I can‘t remember which one it was though). Maybe it could be adapted for the erebus scripts? I am no modder though, so I don‘t know how big of an undertaking that would be.

One more note: Higher tier techs seem too cheap in my experience. I tend to have very short research times past turn 250 or so, even for the last tier of techs. While it seems like a fairly big commitment which improvement tech to get early, researching endgame units is so fast you barely have to choose - just get everything.
 
Honestly civ clustering is realistic. Although of course, this is explicitly a fantasy mod.

Historically agriculture developed in a few small independent areas (Amazon basin, Andes, China, Egypt, Indus, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, Mississippi, Papua New Guinea, Sahel) and those areas produced civilizations (besides the Amazon basin and PNG) which then spread agriculture and state institutions to their neighbors (often by force).

That doesn't mean we should necessarily emulate this. After all, the world of FFH is a fantasy world where agriculture is being re-established after a long ice age and cultivatable crops start randomly distributed throughout the map, not one where its being newly discovered and cultivatable crops are extremely rare and must be spread by humans.

I also understand how clustering can be frustrating from a gameplay perspective, but I remember an Age of Mythology map I played when I was a wee lad ( :old: ) called Vinlandsaga where the players started clustered on a tiny island and had to break out onto a mainland inhabited by skraelings. I quite enjoyed it. I can see being frustrated by clustering, but I think I'll be trying Erebus/Erebus Continents next :p
 
Some additional observations about Erebus map generation and game balance in general:

The subdue animal promotion seems incredibly strong. I find myself always going animal husbandry first. It is somewhat of a gamble though. Maybe lock it behind hunting too (which really needs a boost imho)?

Floodplain starts seem very strong. There isn't nearly as much drawback to them as there was in the base game. Forges are hard to get and produce very little unhealthiness. Health is very easy to get, I never find myself limited by it.
Desert also has the best resources. Gold and Incense are top tier luxuries. Stone and marble are strong.
The AI consistently does much, much better in floodplains then anywhere else. A decent floodplain start is ~2 whole difficulty levels easier then playing against floodplain started AI.

The only AI that does really well without floodplains are Lanun, their pirate coves are just that good.

Where floodplains are really good, jungles are prone to mess up starts. The Lanun seem to be the only ones able to cope. In normal civ, iron working is a staple and essential tech many strategies want to rush. Advanced civ treats jungles as barriers for start positions, much like a desert and never places civs in the middle of them. Jungles being poor start positions is especially bad for civs that have other priorities then melee.

The Balseraphs tend to perform poorly in my testing, but I assume their jungle starts in my tests bring a lot of bias.

Illeans and Dovello are almost always last, because tundra does not provide strong enough resources to balance having to start there. This ties into the idea of locking subdue animal behind hunting: To buff tundra starts. They may need more then that though.

Dwarves are often doing very well. But that seems mostly because their starting position bias tends to place them near floodplains.

Falamar/Lanun doesn't care as much about his starting position, pirate coves are very strong.

The Ljosalfar are very volatile in their performance. If they get ancient forest clusters or floodplains, they go brr. If not, they often place second to last (before the tundra start races). The main reason for this seem to be poor AI weights though. Their workers do not prioritize improving forest plots. They tend to get calendar+agrarianism even without resources to improve, when they really should have prioritized cottages and Way of Leaves. The proposed -10% workspeed probably makes a bigger difference on fast game speed, because 1 turn is more valuable there. I don‘t think worker speed is the main issue for the AI Ljosalfar though.

Cassiel/Grigori just never does well. I have too little understanding of how Grigori work to give useful advice.

The Elohim tend to do below average, except for floodplains starts.

Some suggestions for changes if you are still willing to implement changes:
1. Make the subdue animal promotion require hunting (maybe in addition to animal husbandry?). This would buff tundra locations because they naturally want hunting for improvements and they usually have a lot of space for animals to spawn in.
2. Reduce available health, increase unhealthiness from buildings and/or population. Health is just too abundant, floodplains have no real drawback. Reducing the amount of health granted by granary and smoke house would probably be a good start. I‘m not sure I like the granary change compared to vanilla. Granaries are supposedly not OP in vanilla except with slavery.
3. Amurite balance: Replace fire 1 with something useful for combat. Maybe a firebolt that is a smaller fireball with range 1, 2 fire combat and doesn't deal collateral damage. The idea is to improve adepts in combat for Dain/Amurites without any other tech.
4. Lock dancing bear, cobra charmer and the griffon aerie behind carnival (or some other building), like the rest of the animal pens. It seems a little inconsistent that some of the happiness animal buildings require a carnival while others do not. It also makes those much better then the animals requiring carnival.
Halving bonuses from animal buildings (round up) seems like a good idea too, the bonus is too large for the amount of rng involved.
5. I can't seem to make supplies after constructing a bathhouse. Is that intentional?
6. Change the Ljosalfar AI in the following ways: They can probably rex a little less and play taller, even though two of their leaders suggest otherwise. Heavily de-prioritize Agrarianism. Calendar should be low priority, like Mining: Only get if you need happiness and/or have lots of tiles to improve. Prioritize Education and cottages more. Workers should prioritize improving tiles with forests first. Change Arendel's favorite civic to something sensible like guardian of nature.
7. Illians balance: Maybe give their temple of the hand a commerce bonus? Maybe just a fixed commerce on the building. Their lack of commerce is probably what makes them so weak. You could also discount the temple with stone, I think it would be thematic and play to their start position.
8. Ljosalfar balance: I'd probably change ancient forest placement before touching Ljosalfar aside from making the AI play them more sensibly.
9. Lanun balance: The cove nerf already proposed seems warranted.
10. Jungle is worse then tundra in my book. I think start position placement should consider this more (advanced civ does a god job here, maybe those changes can be transported?). Due to the different tech structure compared to vanilla, I think remove jungle would be better placed in a tier 2 tech.
11. Elohim could use the old defender trait as 3rd trait imho. Dunno if trait slots are limited by number though (it seems like sage replaced it?).

About the map script:
Advanced civ has some really good solutions for civ placement. Maybe those can be ported?
Advanced civ also reduces clustered gold. Gold is very strong, reduced clustering would improve map balance imho.
Maybe there is a way to balance placement of special features? Some are super strong (remnants) while others can break a start position (guardians). Generally speaking, I think special features are more interesting then raw mana nodes, distributing them fairly and more frequently seems desirable.
I think it would be better if ancient forests would be sprinkled around the map in single tiles only, not clustered (if enough regular forests are around). Clustered ancient forests come close to floodplains in start position power but don't quite seem to match them. Maybe place some in the tundra too, tundra starts can use some help. This should also help the elves with their economy problems.

There will probably be more, but I really need to go to bed now. I spent way more time with this then I should have :)
Thanks you for maintaining this great mod!

Edited multiple times for better wording and more ideas.
 
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The good guy version of the "build the tower of mastery by buying a bunch of slaves and having them rush production" hack: Arete to hurry production of a bunch of Soldiers of Kilmorph, then use the Nexus to bring them into the city and have them hurry the building
 
I got this python exception when I tried to rename a barbarian city in Worldbuilder. The city did get renamed though!
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Sorry everybody for the late replies, the new forum sometimes decides to hide watched threads from the "alerts" for some reason, so I don't see new messages.

Trying to luck out boar/wolf pens with 2 str scouts shouldn‘t be encouraged.
Why not? And I can't check right now, but I think they have decent chances with the subdue animals promotion. My scouts usually get eaten by a griffon or spider on the way back home.
I made note of the civ clustering problem, but don't expect anything soon, these mapscript are really messy.

Where floodplains are really good, jungles are prone to mess up starts. The Lanun seem to be the only ones able to cope. In normal civ, iron working is a staple and essential tech many strategies want to rush. Advanced civ treats jungles as barriers for start positions, much like a desert and never places civs in the middle of them. Jungles being poor start positions is especially bad for civs that have other priorities then melee.
I agree that civs shouldn't start on jungle in general. But this has to be done for each mapscript individually.
Clan of Embers is supposed to get +1 food on jungles (this has been planned since some time), which might improve their situation a bit.
Their workers do not prioritize improving forest plots.
This is interesting, I'll have to check this.
Amurite balance: Replace fire 1 with something useful for combat. Maybe a firebolt that is a smaller fireball with range 1, 2 fire combat and doesn't deal collateral damage. The idea is to improve adepts in combat for Dain/Amurites without any other tech.
This is a nice idea, Amurites do feel a bit underwhelming before mages to me, too. I'm just worried that this might upset balance in the hands of a human player. There are combat options like skeletons for adepts if you know what to do (which the AI most probably doesn't).
Lock dancing bear, cobra charmer and the griffon aerie behind carnival (or some other building), like the rest of the animal pens. It seems a little inconsistent that some of the happiness animal buildings require a carnival while others do not. It also makes those much better then the animals requiring carnival.
This is deliberate. They are not supposed to be consistent. There is no inherent reason why some animals shouldn't be better than others. And avoiding patterns is actually one of the core principles of FfH design.
Change the Ljosalfar AI in the following ways: They can probably rex a little less and play taller, even though two of their leaders suggest otherwise. Heavily de-prioritize Agrarianism. Calendar should be low priority, like Mining: Only get if you need happiness and/or have lots of tiles to improve. Prioritize Education and cottages more. Workers should prioritize improving tiles with forests first. Change Arendel's favorite civic to something sensible like guardian of nature.
These suggestions seem mostly reasonable, though I'll have to check how easy they are to implement, when I have time.
Ljosalfar balance: I'd probably change ancient forest placement before touching Ljosalfar aside from making the AI play them more sensibly.
Wait, are you talking about Erebus or Erebus Continent now? Erebus doesn't place ancient forests AFAIK.

Your comments kinda make me want to delve into the map generation code again, though the last time I tried I regretted it. :)
I will definitely consider your comments the next time I do, though.

The other balance changes you propose that I didn't comment on are simply a bit out of scope for me, unfortunately. Thanks for sharing your thoughts anyway, it was an interesting read.

[Also, the Erebus mapscript is just really weird with the flavorful civ placing, so I don't really want to optimize balance for that. What is the reason you play that mapscript? Maybe there could be an option to reduce the imbalanced civ placement somehow. I personally don't mind imbalanced starts that much, but I don't play Erebus that often.] -- Now I realize that you might be talking about Erebus Continent instead, could you clarify that?
 
I think 1str feels reasonable for a free adept spell.
 
Why not? And I can't check right now, but I think they have decent chances with the subdue animals promotion. My scouts usually get eaten by a griffon or spider on the way back home.
Because I found myself going for Animal Husbandry first every time (even without an animal resource), finding even a few boars and wolves seems insanely strong. Reducing Animal Handling from tier 4 to tier 3 and putting the promotion there might be an even better solution. That tech path can use some love.
I'm pretty rng averse, so I dislike features with high volatility, so there may be a lot of personal bias.

This is a nice idea, Amurites do feel a bit underwhelming before mages to me, too. I'm just worried that this might upset balance in the hands of a human player. There are combat options like skeletons for adepts if you know what to do (which the AI most probably doesn't).
I don't think this is will be a big problem because the Sheaim can make skeletons without any further research already.
These suggestions seem mostly reasonable, though I'll have to check how easy they are to implement, when I have time.
Thanks a lot!
Wait, are you talking about Erebus or Erebus Continent now? Erebus doesn't place ancient forests AFAIK.

Your comments kinda make me want to delve into the map generation code again, though the last time I tried I regretted it. :)
I will definitely consider your comments the next time I do, though.
I'm sorry for not being clearer. I'm talking about Erebus Continent.

The map script seems to have a lot of influence on game balance. Erebus Continent paces a lot of floodplains. If you indeed find the time to delve into the mapscript and civ placement, AdvCiv could be a good source for inspiration (e.g. no floodplains on river corners), f1pro worked real magic with civ placement.

The other balance changes you propose that I didn't comment on are simply a bit out of scope for me, unfortunately. Thanks for sharing your thoughts anyway, it was an interesting read.
Thank you for considering it. I also tried my luck over at the erebus in the balance forums. Trade appears OP to me, at least very powerful to others. Both Harbor and Lighthouse have significant buffs and there are more ways to stack trade bonuses.

I also think that the Smokehouse could be removed and the granary could be changed to 50% food after growth without health bonuses. The vanilla granary supposedly isn't OP without OP slavery according to f1pro and this would solve the weird health vs happiness balance issues.

Would you be willing to implement Erebus in the Balance changes?

[Also, the Erebus mapscript is just really weird with the flavorful civ placing, so I don't really want to optimize balance for that. What is the reason you play that mapscript? Maybe there could be an option to reduce the imbalanced civ placement somehow. I personally don't mind imbalanced starts that much, but I don't play Erebus that often.] -- Now I realize that you might be talking about Erebus Continent instead, could you clarify that?

I'm sorry again for not being clearer on this. I was talking about Erebus Continent. That seems like the default way to play FFH2 for many players, but I do think it creates a lot of imbalances. Landmark placement seems mostly randomized for example.
Fall from heaven is not really about perfect balance. But after some runs, I started getting bored by the AI with floodplains always winning, the AI with tundra always loosing, jungle screwing magic focused civs etc.
 
I am going to get back to you at RB - I've had that thread open as a tab for a while. I'd note that I agree with Chief that trade routes feel too strong in EMM, especially with the extra bonuses at City States and Foreign Trade. I don't think animals are as OP as suggested though, and certainly wouldn't want to bump capturing further up the tree. I often feel that by the time I can fit AH in there aren't that many animals around.
 
I am going to get back to you at RB - I've had that thread open as a tab for a while. I'd note that I agree with Chief that trade routes feel too strong in EMM, especially with the extra bonuses at City States and Foreign Trade. I don't think animals are as OP as suggested though, and certainly wouldn't want to bump capturing further up the tree. I often feel that by the time I can fit AH in there aren't that many animals around.
If you find you want more animals, turn on the Wildlands option. I always play with it on. I find it makes getting animals less random but returning them to your cities more dangerous
 
Thank you, I do.
 
Because I found myself going for Animal Husbandry first every time (even without an animal resource), finding even a few boars and wolves seems insanely strong. Reducing Animal Handling from tier 4 to tier 3 and putting the promotion there might be an even better solution. That tech path can use some love.
I'm pretty rng averse, so I dislike features with high volatility, so there may be a lot of personal bias.
I understand your point now. But I disagree on OPness. In particular wolves only give culture, so they're only really useful if you're expanding and don't have a religion yet. In general, animal taming seems relatively weak to me (I do it quite often for fun), especially since hunters are so expensive.
Would you be willing to implement Erebus in the Balance changes?
In principle, yes. But there would need to be some kind of consensus, and I much prefer making small, incremental changes rather than sweeping ones.
 
I understand your point now. But I disagree on OPness. In particular wolves only give culture, so they're only really useful if you're expanding and don't have a religion yet. In general, animal taming seems relatively weak to me (I do it quite often for fun), especially since hunters are so expensive.
I don't think animals are as OP as suggested though, and certainly wouldn't want to bump capturing further up the tree. I often feel that by the time I can fit AH in there aren't that many animals around.
Well, I often forgo an early religion with the Amurites. It is probably not optimal play, because of the happy cap in FFH2. But I also think religion does not solve all the needs for monuments.
Animal captures seem like a huge boon early game to me. The monument is 60h, the scout 25h. Wolves are very effective at saving hammers. More importantly: Wolves are very effective at saving hammers in the crucial rexing phase of the game when you really need them. The cobra is very strong because happiness is hard to come by in the early game. Boar is sometimes better then the agrarian trait in the early game.
I also think this would play out very differently in multiplayer. Especially on higher difficulties the AI gets a big bonus towards subdue animals both in form of promotions and combat bonuses. The AI also tends to run around and exterminate the wildlife and it seems like the AI is cheating at visibility too.

Changing Animal Handling to 420 beakers and adding subdue animal there would:
1. Give a mostly useless tech line a specific purpose
2. Strengthen tundra tiles/starts because those already need hunting
3. Make hunting animals more into a strategic choice then a call to rngesus
4. Weaken the AI that doesn't go for hunting

But I do not think this is the most pressing change. But I still wanted to promote it :)

On another note:
Thinking about Amurites, happy caps and religion, not locking the happy bonus of the ancestors cave behind religion would be a good idea I think. This would be a very minor buff, but one that diversifies the Amurites strategic options a little.
 
Appropos of nothing, I'm thinking of running a FFH2 Adventure, likely on EMM. Would you take part if I do?
 
No worries. I''ll link here when I post it.
 
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