ExtraModMod

[DarkLunaPhantom]

Infernals should be able to build the Mercurian Gate. If they can't, it is a bug. See: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5216329&postcount=23

So you aren't able to build Mercurian Gate when Ashen Veil is your state religion? I don't think that's documented anywhere in Civilopedia.

You are right. I have added it, the text will appear in mouse over description of future versions.

There are more things like that in tooltips and Civilopedia: missing effects, wrong effects, broken/wrong links in Civilopedia and ambiguous descriptions. I would be more than willing to compile a list of those if that would be helpful, i.e. if you are willing to fix that.

Where do those names appear?

This is purely cosmetic, they appear in scoreboard when Civ Description or Leader/Civ Desc is selected for Display name in Scoreboard tab of BUG options. They also appear in (BUG) notifications. Names are correct on game start no matter the team size, but if during the game team grows (by permanent alliance, Mercurian Gate or world builder magic) so that the resulting size is greater than 2 then some of the names are incomplete.


Also, city ruins can be pillaged (for 0 gold) removing the possibility of sanctifying them. Is that intentional?

 

[Qgqqqqq]

So you aren't able to build Mercurian Gate when Ashen Veil is your state religion? I don't think that's documented anywhere in Civilopedia.

There are so many things breaking the civilopedia. It's really unlikely to change anytime soon (fixing entries is painful, unrewarding work that will very rarely be seen or noticed by players, and can pretty easily break the game (so needs testing)).

 

[Terkhen]

I disagree with the idea of replacing tech trading with tech diffusion.

Tech trading is a transparent system that requires player involvement and gives immediate feedback. Tech diffusion is much more passive and obscure, and I think it should be a minor aspect of gameplay instead of replacing tech trading.

In my opinion tech diffusion should just be a rubberband mechanic that allow less fortunate civs to not be completely left behind in the tech race.

Tech trading also allows the option of focusing on military and then getting techs from peace treaties with rivals, which is a very viable option in ffh2.

With "no tech brokering" enabled tech trading is a balanced and well functioning feature of the game, there really is no need to remove it.

Technology trading has not been removed; you can keep playing with the old options if you want to, or enable Technology Propagation too along with them. The default game options in ExtraModMod only reflect the recommended settings for new games, because they are the ones I have in mind when balancing and implementing stuff.

I don't see the player involvement component of technology trading as a good point. It adds an additional layer of micromanagement and it is in most case the center of the diplomatic interactions for no good reason. During gameplay, it mostly serves the purpose of making the strongest players stronger. They can trade the best technologies between them to make themselves more powerful, while leaving the weak aside. Waging wars for the sake of forcing peace, stealing technologies, and repeating again is a powerful strategy, but also a boring one. I'd rather have a "Technology progress by conquest" mechanic. Rewarding players with economy technologies for ignoring them does not seem like a great reason for having a mechanic to me either.

Although certainly technology propagation is more passive than technology trading, it encourages being more careful with diplomacy and giving diplomatic agreement more strategic depth. It will also tie with certain civilizations, traits and civics in the future.

It is a secondary reason, but I also think that technology trading also makes little to no sense from a realism point of view. Empires never managed their technologies that way; instead they kept an eye on their neighbours both to prevent them from learning their secrets and to try to take theirs. This is represented better by technology propagation.

Although sadly I cannot show the effects of technology propagation directly in the number of beakers gotten each turn (see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13578251&postcount=594 and http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13584335#post13584335), its effects can be seen in the tooltip of each technology available for research so I wouldn't say that it is invisible. Suggestions on how to improve its visibility are welcome.

So you aren't able to build Mercurian Gate when Ashen Veil is your state religion? I don't think that's documented anywhere in Civilopedia.

If I remember correctly, you need to be Good or Neutral.

There are more things like that in tooltips and Civilopedia: missing effects, wrong effects, broken/wrong links in Civilopedia and ambiguous descriptions. I would be more than willing to compile a list of those if that would be helpful, i.e. if you are willing to fix that.

That's great! I'm willing to fix them if you provide a list, as long as you are also willing to write up proposals for those texts that need to be modified or added.

This is purely cosmetic, they appear in scoreboard when Civ Description or Leader/Civ Desc is selected for Display name in Scoreboard tab of BUG options. They also appear in (BUG) notifications. Names are correct on game start no matter the team size, but if during the game team grows (by permanent alliance, Mercurian Gate or world builder magic) so that the resulting size is greater than 2 then some of the names are incomplete.

I see, I never noticed them. I'll take a note to look at it but this will have low priority.

Also, city ruins can be pillaged (for 0 gold) removing the possibility of sanctifying them. Is that intentional?

I'm not sure, but I believe it is intentional. When I follow the Ashen Veil I always pillage city ruins to prevent my oponents the chance of sanctifying them.

There are so many things breaking the civilopedia. It's really unlikely to change anytime soon (fixing entries is painful, unrewarding work that will very rarely be seen or noticed by players, and can pretty easily break the game (so needs testing)).

I agree completely with this; this is probably the second most boring thing I ever had to tackle after OOS error debugging. But whenever I notice one of these errors, they bother me so much that I need to fix them

 

[Sarmatian]

Sorry for not replying sooner. Had a lot of stuff at work, so I've had little time to play with FFH.

In my experience the AI suffers when dealing with Pyre Zombies (so do I, honestly), but it can deal with them. I've never seen what you mention happen in ExtraModMod, even when we are the ones in control of the Pyre Zombies. It's relatively simple to conquer the AI with them, but it also is quite simple with nearly any valid strategy. At which difficulty do you play?

I would also like to mention that Averax is Imperialistic in EMM, and the pyre zombie cap is 90%, not 95%. The scenario you are mentioning seems to fit with Erebus in the Balance; is it possible that your problematic games against the Sheaim have been played with that mod? More Naval AI has added a lot of incremental improvements to AI since EitB separated from it and in these years the AI has become better at handling wars. Besides the general improvements, I believe that some of the AI changes were specific improvements to this kind of units (via the bExplodeInCombat XML tag).

It was indeed EitB, as I mentioned.

I've tried a few more games, and it seems that Averax is also a part of the problem. He expands rapidly due to Expansive and Barbarian trait, so most of the time he's got a great power base to build a lot of Pyre Zombies to steamroll everyone.

That's not my experience, as I mentioned in my previous post. If the people I play with declared war to me as soon as they see Loki, that would serve my purposes too. I would just use Loki to annoy them and move it around their lands while ignoring their declaration of war and focusing on my economy.

You don't need Loki for that, you can do that with a scout. War weariness affects both, and unless it is someone like Elohim, it hurts both. Some nations will be even less hurt than Balseraph, those that have less war weariness from their palace.

Anyway, regardless of that, it's a bad feature in strategy games if there's only one right move and only one (poor) counter.

Even with that, it leaves the issue of AI vs AI.

Early game economy is vital and if they don't focus on it they will be defeated.

Quoted, bolded and generally emphasized for truth. A few wrong moves can cost you the game. Imagine how crippling it is when one Civ has the option of conquering several cities with one relatively inexpensive unit without declaring war and suffering little or no consequences.

Well, that's the whole point of Loki, messing with other players for your benefit.

Agreed, but taking over cities easily is too much.

I see your points, although in my opinion they are not as severe as you say. Nevertheless, I'm interested in which drastic measures you believe he needs. As it is happening with the Savage case, I'm always open to changing features if a good proposal that solves all problems and is more fun comes through.

As been noted, AI learned how to use Loki, but not how to deal with him. In my latest game, Balseraph have started between Hippus and Khazad. They took over 2 cities from Khazad, built 2 and took over 3 from Hippus. At the time when most civs had 2-4 cities, they had 7 and have crippled Khazad and practically destroyed Hippus. Hippus had just their capital surrounded by Balseraph cities on all sides. Hippus couldn't build another city as they couldn't pass through Balseraph territory.

I'm not really sure I'd like to have AI declare war on Balseraph as soon as they see Loki. That's bad design and poor strategy. The best would be to take away Loki's ability to take over cities. He should be able to:

1) Cause unrest
2) Destroy buildings
3) Steal gold
4) Steal tech
5) Steal map
6) Steal contacts...

that sort of stuff... Stuff that help Balseraph but don't cripple opponents. Even more of a super spy than he already is.

I'm not sure myself... Maybe ability to take over workers? And give all those abilities a significant cooldown so that players/AI have to use him in a balanced way, not just spam the best ability constantly.

I'm only sure he should lose the ability to take over cities. I'm not sure I know how to compensate loss of that ability. Maybe other people have additional ideas.

My original problem with Pyre Zombies was that they were able to kill with just collateral damage. The EitB changes fixed that and, as I mentioned earlier, in my experience they are powerful but not game breaking (against both human players and the AI). I'm not sure if the cap should be increased from 95, though... In ExtraModMod the cap is actually 90%. Pyre Zombie explosion was heavily nerfed by my nuclear banhammer approach to balance in the first version (from which I hope to have moved away and learned from in these years). When the first feedback posts made me see the error of that change (among others), between the cap values they suggested I chose the lowest one. After that change the Pyre Zombies have always felt right for us, although we probably wouldn't even notice the difference if it went up by 5%.

Even with a cap, they're deadly, and it doesn't scale well. The more units on both sides, the deadlier they are. 3 PB vs 3 Axemen? Maybe the axemen can win. 10/20/30 PB vs 10/20/30 Axemen? Axemen have no chance.

In the first example, even if PB win, they will lose most likely two, which translates to 66% of the force and only slight advantage over the opponent. Having 2/3 of the losses of losing side is not so great.

In the second example, they may lose a few PB (2,3 or 4) which will significantly weaken entire stack of 30 Axemen to have the rest of PB slaughter the remaining Axemen. In that case, PB suffers 10% losses, opponent loses everything.

If it's Epic or Marathon game speed, both issues become even more pronounced. That's why I said, don't rely on EitB too much. Sure, MP is very good for balancing, but EitB is balanced around practically only MP and they always (or in 99% of the cases) play on Quick. Again Qqqqqq, no disrespect, you did a hell of a job, it's just apples and oranges.

Loki is much more deadly on Epic and Marathon. Building a settler usually takes between 40 and 70 turns on Marathon. Loki can scout entire map, take over 10 other cities and come back to steal the one you're going to build with that second settler.

EDIT: Or maybe give Loki the Hero promotion and have his unique abilities unlocked as he gains XP, like Combat I/Combat II... and have the ability to steal cities the latest promotion when he gains over 80 XP? That way, AI can build a few cities and start producing culture in them so Loki can hurt them but not cripple them. He could steal steal a city or two, but if AI looses a 5th or 6th city, it can cope, and by that time, AI usually has an army so it can go to war to take them back.

Or move Loki further in the tech tree, so that he can't appear until everyone has already built a few cities?

 

[Qgqqqqq]

If I remember correctly, you need to be Good or Neutral.

Nope.

If he revolts to no state religion, Hyborem can even build the Mercurian Gate.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Even with a cap, they're deadly, and it doesn't scale well. The more units on both sides, the deadlier they are. 3 PB vs 3 Axemen? Maybe the axemen can win. 10/20/30 PB vs 10/20/30 Axemen? Axemen have no chance.

That's a silly analogy. Zombies are one of their features. A better example is, say, a force of Zombies vs. Trebuchet and axes. Or vs. 5-move Horsemen. Or vs. a ton of cheap high-promo Sons of Asena.

Point is, balance is asymmetrical. You can't beat Averax by playing his game. You need to fight back using whatever breaks the game in your favor.

(Which is not to say you're playing badly. Simply that this argument isn't illustrating the proper tradeoff for fighting him.)

 

[Terkhen]

It was indeed EitB, as I mentioned.

As I said in previous posts the situation in EitB with regards to how the AI deals with enemy units in general, and with Pyre Zombies in particular, is quite different in ExtraModMod. Therefore I won't continue discussing the "AI being steamrolled by pyre zombies" problem here because I don't think it applies to EMM.

You don't need Loki for that, you can do that with a scout.

Honestly, I don't understand this. My point was that, since you argue that Loki is so extremely dangerous to warrant an inmediate declaration of war from anyone who sees it, the Loki player could also use that paranoia for his advantage. A scout won't cause the same reaction.

As been noted, AI learned how to use Loki, but not how to deal with him. In my latest game, Balseraph have started between Hippus and Khazad. They took over 2 cities from Khazad, built 2 and took over 3 from Hippus. At the time when most civs had 2-4 cities, they had 7 and have crippled Khazad and practically destroyed Hippus. Hippus had just their capital surrounded by Balseraph cities on all sides. Hippus couldn't build another city as they couldn't pass through Balseraph territory.

I've never seen this problem happening at that size, ever. I think that the AI deals with Loki better in current ExtraModMod / More Naval AI and that your experience comes from facing older versions of the AI code. I'm not saying that it does not happen in EMM, I'm saying that the scale is far smaller.

I'm only sure he should lose the ability to take over cities. I'm not sure I know how to compensate loss of that ability. Maybe other people have additional ideas.

I already mentioned that I'm willing to to change this ability of Loki to other, but as I said before for that I would need a more defined and complete proposal, which is agreed upon after discussion here. I don't think that the solution is to add more espionage stuff to Loki because of two reasons. The first one is that since FFH lacks espionage, this would be granting Loki too many unique strategies. The second one is that the AI wouldn't know how to deal with those abilities either.

Loki is much more deadly on Epic and Marathon. Building a settler usually takes between 40 and 70 turns on Marathon. Loki can scout entire map, take over 10 other cities and come back to steal the one you're going to build with that second settler.

10 cities, isn't that excessive? That's far beyond how much maintenance costs they should be able to pay for in the early game. I lost because of over expanding a few times when I was learning FFH, and it was because I had 4 or 5 cities too early. With 10 the AI would just go bankrupt.

EDIT: Or maybe give Loki the Hero promotion and have his unique abilities unlocked as he gains XP, like Combat I/Combat II... and have the ability to steal cities the latest promotion when he gains over 80 XP? That way, AI can build a few cities and start producing culture in them so Loki can hurt them but not cripple them. He could steal steal a city or two, but if AI looses a 5th or 6th city, it can cope, and by that time, AI usually has an army so it can go to war to take them back.

Loki is supposed to be an early hero. This change would just make players keep it safe until it is powerful enough to do its thing. It can't combat, so there is really not other way to earn XP than waiting or baiting barbarians with it (which would be quite boring). Having promotions would also make Loki better at defending himself, and I don't think you really want that. I also think that Loki is meant to only defend himself via puppets and by using his unique "run away" feature.

[/QUOTE]Or move Loki further in the tech tree, so that he can't appear until everyone has already built a few cities?[/QUOTE]

I already answered this suggestion.

Nope.

If he revolts to no state religion, Hyborem can even build the Mercurian Gate.

You are right. I checked the code and it only prevents building the gate if you follow the Ashen Veil.

--------

I have reordered the game options. Sadly, I wasn't able to find a way to customize their format in order to make the headers of each classification more noticeable. Anyone has ideas on how to improve them, or knows some mod that managed to make them bold or something like that?

 

[Sarmatian]

Fair enough. It would be much easier if EMM wouldn't crash on me.

The game freezes at the end of turn. There was an error about vampire promotion, but I've clicked ignore always which now leads to a freeze and a crash eventually.

I did a clean install before. Civ IV Complete -> patched to 3.19 -> FFH -> FFH O patch -> copied over contents of EMM.

Did I do something wrong? It appears I'm the only one with errors, so I'm guessing the problem is at my end. Do you have any ideas?

 

[Tholal]

If it's Epic or Marathon game speed, both issues become even more pronounced.

Just wanted to chime in and say that slowing down the turn speed alters the game to be more controlled by unit tactics rather than strategy, and as a by-product, ends up giving the AI a hidden penalty as they will never be able to manage their units as well as a human player can.

 

[ArkhanTheBlack]

Played another MP game with the beta yesterday with the usual small lakes map and quick tech setting on monarch difficulty. Fortunately, no OOS or event error this time.
However, again no animal lairs, graveyards or dungeons. I had the impression that there's a very high chance for lizard lairs a lesser chance for goblin lairs and almost no chance for everything else.

And since there's some talk about Loki, can we nerf him please?! Somehow it seems to get worse from game to game. He just runs around getting one city after another for free, resulting in absurd growth rates of the Balseraphs. The small maps where enemy cities are very close probably give him an edge.
What makes it even worse, is that it doesn't stop even if you declare war on them since you have to dedicate a small army just for him. I don't exactly see why 'Krusty the Clown' gets unbelievable advantages like immortality pretty much shoveled in his ***, even the most powerful end game heroes can just dream about. If he would at least re-spawn at his capital if I beat him, but nooooo the poor boy would have to walk all the way back to me, which wouldn't fit to his 'no disadvantages' rule. Not that this would be a big problem considering his running speed. I tried to calculate it once when I attacked him multiple times, just to have him run through half of the continent, and I think it was about the average speed of a F/A-18 Hornet attack aircraft.
Ah yeah, I know, that's not really the fault of the mod, but it was just too frustrating yesterday...

Anyway, two other things:

I continued my trend to play races I didn't play before and tried Illian. I really liked the temples of the hand and the priests of winter, but otherwise I think the white hand religion is a bit lacking in comparison to the others, especially since Illian can't have another one. I think it would be nice to have the White Hand upgraded to a full religion, maybe even available to other races like Doviello. Priests of winter are the only unit they have and they can't even be rebuilt. If I remember right there was another mod where they had frost giants which was pretty cool and very fitting with the theme. And priests of winter could be upgraded from an lower level disciple unit like seers maybe.

I also thought about playing Clan of Embers and then remembered what was always disturbing me about them. They have a clear Ork & Goblin theme but they also have the complete lizardmen included. I never liked that since they should be separate. Lizardmen are usually a southern jungle race with a tropical climate while orcs are usually a northern race with a colder or at least temperate zone. Other mods like Fall Further did the right thing and made them a separate race. I'd appreciate a change like that, though splitting or adding a race might exceed what the mod wants to be. But well, it doesn't hurt to ask I guess.

 

[Terkhen]

The game freezes at the end of turn. There was an error about vampire promotion, but I've clicked ignore always which now leads to a freeze and a crash eventually.

Do you remember the exact error you got? A screenshot would be most helpful.

I did a clean install before. Civ IV Complete -> patched to 3.19 -> FFH -> FFH O patch -> copied over contents of EMM.

Did I do something wrong? It appears I'm the only one with errors, so I'm guessing the problem is at my end. Do you have any ideas?

Sounds right to me. I also install the media pack, but to my knowledge that shouldn't be causing crashes. My only idea is to delete the entire "C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword" folder, as some mods install stuff there that could be interfering with BUG or ExtraModMod. Besides that, I'm clueless about what could be causing your error

I can reproduce the crash locally with the save you attached, but sadly the same error on my setup that prevents me from testing OOS errors is preventing me from debugging your savegame too. The new computer should be arriving soon, I will check your svegame when I have it ready.

Just wanted to chime in and say that slowing down the turn speed alters the game to be more controlled by unit tactics rather than strategy, and as a by-product, ends up giving the AI a hidden penalty as they will never be able to manage their units as well as a human player can.

That's definitely true. Specially in this case, given that using Loki requires a lot of micromanagement.

Played another MP game with the beta yesterday with the usual small lakes map and quick tech setting on monarch difficulty. Fortunately, no OOS or event error this time.
However, again no animal lairs, graveyards or dungeons. I had the impression that there's a very high chance for lizard lairs a lesser chance for goblin lairs and almost no chance for everything else.

Thank you for reporting, I should definitely take a look at that.

And since there's some talk about Loki, can we nerf him please?!

I already agreed to replace the conquer city ability... but not to a nerf as huge as just removing the problematic ability. I need a proposal that partially offsets the loss. I've given the issue some thought but I did not think of a replacement.

I continued my trend to play races I didn't play before and tried Illian. I really liked the temples of the hand and the priests of winter, but otherwise I think the white hand religion is a bit lacking in comparison to the others, especially since Illian can't have another one. I think it would be nice to have the White Hand upgraded to a full religion, maybe even available to other races like Doviello. Priests of winter are the only unit they have and they can't even be rebuilt. If I remember right there was another mod where they had frost giants which was pretty cool and very fitting with the theme. And priests of winter could be upgraded from an lower level disciple unit like seers maybe.

The White Hand is on my list of "stuff that would be nice to have but I will probably never have time to implement". There is actually a partial proposal in the issue tracker, that you can check here: https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/issue/142/the-white-hand

In this case, or in the case of any other proposal of this type, if anyone is interested in getting it into the game help is more than welcome.

I also thought about playing Clan of Embers and then remembered what was always disturbing me about them. They have a clear Ork & Goblin theme but they also have the complete lizardmen included. I never liked that since they should be separate. Lizardmen are usually a southern jungle race with a tropical climate while orcs are usually a northern race with a colder or at least temperate zone. Other mods like Fall Further did the right thing and made them a separate race. I'd appreciate a change like that, though splitting or adding a race might exceed what the mod wants to be. But well, it doesn't hurt to ask I guess.

In Fall from Heaven orcs definitely have a tropical climate theme. In Fall from Heaven lore the lizardmen are allied with orcs and other races as part of the Clan of Embers. You are right; ExtraModMod aims to stay close to the original lore so a change of this size is out of the scope of the mod.

 

[Sarmatian]

Indeed.

I don't understand how anyone can't see how game-breaking Loki is. Hopefully the next few screenshots will finally convince everyone that a huge nerf is long overdue.

ExtraModMod, latest beta build.



Early in the game. Balseraph are in the south of the big continent. They've built two additional cities and taken one from Clan and Lanun. Balseraph now have 5 cities while their two immediate neighbours have just one each.



Some time later, Clan and Lanun build additional city each, Balseraph take over both. Now Balseraph have 7, while Lanun and Clan still only have their respective capitals.

The epilogue?



Balseraph have 5 times the score of the next best AI, and almost twice my score.

 

[Terkhen]

I don't understand how anyone can't see how game-breaking Loki is.

I see your points, although in my opinion they are not as severe as you say. Nevertheless, I'm interested in which drastic measures you believe he needs. As it is happening with the Savage case, I'm always open to changing features if a good proposal that solves all problems and is more fun comes through.

I already mentioned that I'm willing to to change this ability of Loki to other, but as I said before for that I would need a more defined and complete proposal, which is agreed upon after discussion here.

I already agreed to replace the conquer city ability... but not to a nerf as huge as just removing the problematic ability. I need a proposal that partially offsets the loss. I've given the issue some thought but I did not think of a replacement.

I believe my previous answers make it clear that I already agreed on changing this Loki ability. I may disagree on how strong the ability is, but since I'm asking for changes already I don't see the point of trying to convince me of something I'm already convinced about.

For the sake of discussion, I ran 3 test games until turn 300. In the first one I used settings which I believe would make things even simpler for Loki to run amok:

• Pangaea map
• Small size
• Weevil as Balseraph leader (Loki won't get disturbed by barbarians). He plays at Settler difficulty.
• Anagantios, Dumannios, Minister Koun, Riuros. Neither of these leaders is Creative, they have no military traits that could help early against Loki, and they are agnostic so getting culture from religion is out of the question.

The Balseraph AI took three of the closest cities early and was at the top of the score table. It soon ended up at war with two of the Illians, who reconquered all the lost cities and drove the Balseraphs to one corner. By turn 240, only the Balseraph capital remained and it was in an eternal siege. The Balseraphs were at the bottom of the score table at this time. At turn 281, the Balseraph AI capitulated and became a vassal of one of the Illians.

For the second game, I thought that maybe the three Illians loved each other so I just used four random evil leaders as adversaries. At the beginning they would love the Balseraphs so any action against them because of Loki would be delayed. Loki started taking a lot of cities far away from the Balseraph capital. By turn 150 Charadon conquered back the three cities he had lost. Sheelba lost two cities and was at peace with the Balseraphs but preparing a war plan. Soon after that those two cities were taken too and the Balseraphs had been driven back to having only their capital and being at war with half of the world again. Weevil lost the game at turn 195.

On the third test game, I used Large size and Marathon game speed. Random Balseraph leader, and random opponents. Loki was created at about turn 290 (at a time at which the Balseraphs already had 3 cities), and it was quickly sent into the wilderness. Loki soon stole a city from Sheelba, who declared war and reconquered it. Shortly after that, he started taking cities from the Luchuirp and letting the Barbarians raze them. This also triggered a war with the Luchuirp. At this point, the Balseraphs were again dropped to the bottom of the score table. On turn 468 they were driven again to only a city while still being at a total war agains two AIs.

I don't believe these games are representative enough; I'm sure that in some cases the Balseraphs manage to pull off a dominant position but I think I already have enough cases to prove my point. My conclusion is that Loki's ability to steal cities is certainly problematic, but for different reasons than the ones you believe. The first and most important one is that the AI is too eager to steal cities, even when it is detrimental (the city is too far away, it is angering a powerful opponent, it is already losing 10 gold per turn and so on). The second one is that although opponents can certainly recover from the loss of these cities, Loki changes the dynamics of the early game too much and being too dominant. The third and final one is that the "conquer and raze" strategy is extremely bothersome. As I assumed, being too greedy when using Loki leads to a loss, not to a victory. I may not agree with you, but we agree upon the need of changing this ability. Let's talk proposals now

By the way, I'm glad that you managed to fix your problem with ExtraModMod. What was causing it?

 

[ArkhanTheBlack]

I'd have two proposals for Loki:

1.) Make the take over city ability so expensive that the Balseraph player at least has to pay a reasonable amount of gold for getting a complete city. This would also lower the chance that he takes over several cities in a very short time. Not sure what would be a good price for it, 100 - 200 gold maybe? Never played him myself before so I'm not sure if the ability is currently for free or if there's a small price attached.

2.) If I attack him the second time in a round, he should at least respawn in his capital instead of just running away forever. Or reduce the running away chance for each attack per round. Reducing the chance by maybe 25% per attack would at least give a chance to kill him if I send several units to hunt him down.

Though I have to admit that Loki getting several cities at the start doesn't necessarily mean auto-win. But he still screws up the early game too much for my taste, and if the AI would have a better skill to choose which cities to take, he would be devastating.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

By the by, Loki is incredibly strengthened by Deity, because there are a number of cities immediately out which - largely - don't have the ability to create culture.

Idea: keep with the culture-sapping ability, (potentially strengthen it) but stop it so that 0 culture doesn't then become his. At that stage he spreads a certain amount of Balseraph culture to the city tile, which could (eventually) be enough so that it starts to revolt of its own accord. I.e., make it closer to a powerful version of the spies spread-culture power.

Secondary idea: make it so that instead of sapping a set value of culture, he saps a certain percentage of it's culture (say, 10%). Thus, he'd never get to the point of city-capturing via it, but the effect would be more powerful as a way to win cultural wars/sabotage players efforts.

 

[Tasunke]

I like the percentage option, if u give it a few more perks for early game ... something.

I really liked when loki could cast mutation spell .. maybe give him that back?

I like the percentage to sabotage other people's culture victory. What do yall think?

 

[omegaflames]

I'd have two proposals for Loki:

1.) Make the take over city ability so expensive that the Balseraph player at least has to pay a reasonable amount of gold for getting a complete city. This would also lower the chance that he takes over several cities in a very short time. Not sure what would be a good price for it, 100 - 200 gold maybe? Never played him myself before so I'm not sure if the ability is currently for free or if there's a small price attached.

2.) If I attack him the second time in a round, he should at least respawn in his capital instead of just running away forever. Or reduce the running away chance for each attack per round. Reducing the chance by maybe 25% per attack would at least give a chance to kill him if I send several units to hunt him down.

Though I have to admit that Loki getting several cities at the start doesn't necessarily mean auto-win. But he still screws up the early game too much for my taste, and if the AI would have a better skill to choose which cities to take, he would be devastating.

loki is the easiest world unit there is to kill. You surround him on all sides by either units or impassable terrain and then you attack him. This requires up to 9 units at the absolute most (8 to surround him and 1 more just incase you don't kill him with the very first unit that attacks him) and 5-6 can be enough to force him towards a corner and death. You only need 1 strong unit the rest can be warriors as they are there only to provide a "fence" boxing him in. As long as there is ANY plot he can run too then he will run to it. I can't speak for how the AI is setup to take on loki but for a human player you shouldn't have such problems.

 

[Terkhen]

Though I have to admit that Loki getting several cities at the start doesn't necessarily mean auto-win. But he still screws up the early game too much for my taste, and if the AI would have a better skill to choose which cities to take, he would be devastating.

Yes, that's one of my main problems too.

By the by, Loki is incredibly strengthened by Deity, because there are a number of cities immediately out which - largely - don't have the ability to create culture.

Since I have never played Deity I did not think about that... that's giving Loki free reign, yes.

Idea: keep with the culture-sapping ability, (potentially strengthen it) but stop it so that 0 culture doesn't then become his. At that stage he spreads a certain amount of Balseraph culture to the city tile, which could (eventually) be enough so that it starts to revolt of its own accord. I.e., make it closer to a powerful version of the spies spread-culture power.

Secondary idea: make it so that instead of sapping a set value of culture, he saps a certain percentage of it's culture (say, 10%). Thus, he'd never get to the point of city-capturing via it, but the effect would be more powerful as a way to win cultural wars/sabotage players efforts.

I like the first idea. It would still allow to steal cities from enemies, but the final step would require outside influence from a Balseraph city or (if the player is enough of a troll) fort. Then instead of just fearing Loki, enemies would just take care about settling too close to the Balseraphs or being engulfed by their culture. It would still be difficult to pull off, though. This way of stealing cities away fits the Balseraphs better and would also allow to disrupt culture wars and perturb culture victories. The secondary idea is not as attractive to me as it would lose completely the "steal cities" mechanic... but mostly because on the late game it could be used to put a huge dent on the efforts adversaries trying to get a Cultural victory. 10% would be a lot of harm at the late stages, while a constant value would just allow to postpone the opponent's victory.

I really liked when loki could cast mutation spell .. maybe give him that back?

I'm not sure if it fits. From his lore entry, it seems that Chaos, Mind or Shadow magic would fit Loki better.

loki is the easiest world unit there is to kill.

Although he certainly can be killed I wouldn't say that he's easy to kill

 

[Calavente]

I like the first idea. It would still allow to steal cities from enemies, but the final step would require outside influence from a Balseraph city or (if the player is enough of a troll) fort. Then instead of just fearing Loki, enemies would just take care about settling too close to the Balseraphs or being engulfed by their culture. It would still be difficult to pull off, though. This way of stealing cities away fits the Balseraphs better and would also allow to disrupt culture wars and perturb culture victories. The secondary idea is not as attractive to me as it would lose completely the "steal cities" mechanic... but mostly because on the late game it could be used to put a huge dent on the efforts adversaries trying to get a Cultural victory. 10% would be a lot of harm at the late stages, while a constant value would just allow to postpone the opponent's victory.

I agree with this.
However, then, maybe the culture swap could be more important (in number) to still have an effect on cities with some culture production.
or maybe it does not impact "culture" per se, but "influence" ? (it would be articifial... but why not)(like when you conquer a city than was from another civ... the influence does not change your amount of culture, but the history of the plot...)
like: Loki increases balserpah influence in city by 10% : with 5 spells, the city should be proposing to switch to baleseraph... especially if nearby baleseraph empire.
or maybe 10%, with max effect similar to 10 culture for 10 turns.

 

[Tasunke]

Mutation is Chaos 2.

Charm is Mind 2, and Shadow-walk is Shadow 2.

Loki used to have channeling 1 and channeling 2, along with these three spheres, in order to purchase spells. I usually gave him mutation, and then perhaps charm. Inspiration is a useful enough spell, and *mutation* alone is likely worth Loki's hammer cost. You could strengthen the 'size' of the culture drain, (or even have it be small + a percentage, but harder to code) ... and just have it leave the city's culture at 1 (or 0) without actually going below Culture = 1, so that the city never converts. That way you need local Balseraph culture

Loki's spell could reduce culture by 4 culture per turn, and it also 'creates' a temporary building that applies a -50% culture production modifier. Perhaps simply return all values of negative numbers (and zero) as 1. Therefore the culture can never go below 1 and the city will never flip!

**The spell itself shouldn't add rival culture/influence, just lower local culture.