Fall Further 0.51 Balance Discussion Thread

Mobility I has no promotion prereq, but it does have a tech prereq of Horseback Riding. Which is pretty early anyway.

Actually, I'm wondering if tech prereqs might be good on some other things too. Like making Shock I require Warfare. As is, it's a ridiculously overpowered promotion to take in the first 100 turns or so when warriors are all anyone has. At that point, it's basically taking two levels for the price of one, and unlike BtS, melee units never obsolete.
 
The problem, though. Is that other civs' recon units don't get any such penalty inside borders.

<hyperbole>No. Instead the equivalent unit of other civilizations is the scout, a unit so weak that it loses against animals.</hyperbole>

The problem with Explorers is that they are so very early, so very fast and so well supported by maps. An Explorer rush sacrifices nothing, and can wipe out a civ before they could get archers.

I think they need something to take the edge off those very crucial first 50 turns. What if the civilized penalty went away with Hunting?

Or something completely different, increase the city attack penalty, but allow them to buy City Attack promotions?

In fact, their rangers are weaker. What they do have is better utility, a bit more xp, and earlier tech requirements.

The relevant part is weaker and earlier. It doesn't even matter that much for rangers, they're late enough that there is time to research a defender.

Explorers are earlier and stronger. So early that Rogues exist only so that you have a unit to upgrade to Explorers.

As has been pointed out, both of the early military techs (bronze working/archery) give you stronger units than a hunter equivilant. And that's what you should use to fight them.

But you won't have axemen and archers by the time someone is beset by stack of 5 to ten Explorers. Then Dierdra will have two capitals, pushing out units. A little later three.

If you begin with Crafting and immediately start researching Archery, you will have Archery at about the same time as Dierdra declares war by moving a pack of Explorers into your territory.

Explorers are fine. Learn to defend. Or, expand faster and don't get outproduced next time.

It happens to us all sometimes. I remember losing to masses upon masses of ljosalfar fawns just because their empire was 3 times the size of mine, and they could build them so fast. My own fault for not expanding.

I agree with the assessment about that particular game. Outproduced; do better next time.
 
An Explorer rush sacrifices nothing

Not true. An explorer rush sacrifices 60:hammers: per explorer you build. Whereas warriors are 25 :hammers:, allowing the enemy to have twice as many units as you if you both focus on military that early.

and can wipe out a civ before they could get archers.

A warrior in any random city is almost equal to a Combat I explorer. If you're smart, you'll build a palisade, and culture expansion raises the city's defense bonus farther.

Also, you can produce two warriors for every explorer dierdra sends at you. And if you get bronze, they're the same strength, too.
 
:D I realize that outproduction is an issue. Normally I'd have written it off and moved on, like when all sorts of other bad things happen like I pop a lich from graveyards or whatever. I'm no stranger to losing - it's why I like FF and keep poking the AI trying to get it to do prettier backflips.

Its the speed and the rate she was able to pull this shenanigan off that got me talking. I probably wasn't clear about that when I posted, but I don't think she needs to be nerfed too much - I've been playing the Calabim, widely accepted as one of the strongest civs - but that her ability to do it so EARLY needs to be toned down.

When the rest of the world was building infrastructure, Dierdra was conquering other AIs. While I was going for Code of Laws, and the Balseraph player was building his third settler, Dierdra now has eight, maybe nine cities. That's a lot of industrial might, leading to the out-production - but I wasn't involved in this in any way, neither was the other player, she was just chomping up other AIs because of early super-explorers. So that when she comes knocking no, the players don't have equivalent numbers of units. I will tell you he did have both Archery and Bronze working. But the really fun thing about explorers is that they can dive on a city from 2 squares away, negating the early archer shoot the units in the face bonus. And it only takes two or three such dives to kill an archer. Normally wouldn't be an issue, but if she has three times more cities she can afford to do this.

The out production is partly an issue of the other AIs rolling over and playing dead for her. Which is due to her early strength. Which is what I want a nerf of. The surround promos are just something I've wanted in game for some time - and the super-stacks of Hunters gave me the initiative to actually do it.

Her early initiative to eat other AIs is actually the issue - this stunt would be a lot harder on human players at the start if she didn't have their lands, too. Other AIs can take lands like she does but they slow down afterwords as they build infrastructure to catch up on maintenance. Guess what she doesn't have - distance maintenance. Part of the equation. It's all a very perfect storm of random problems that suddenly end up in your face.

As to the Archos - Yeah, they can have a pretty good rush too. Mining - 300 beakers, Bronze Working - 600 beakers. No need to build Barracks. 900 beakers and you're ready. Str5 Combat I.

Cartography - 300 beakers. You're done - thats all that's needed.
So maybe you can pick up some infrastructure with your next 600 beakers while you build out heedless of distance to pick stellar spots. The 600 beakers will get you - Ancient Chants, Education - Combat II. Adapt to Aggressive. Combat III. Done. Str 4 times 60% is 2.4 - so 6.4 str Hunters. Yeah, that's right, 6.4 strength to an Archos' Brute's 5.5(combat I) at the same tech level. With better technology to expand your empire (agriciulture, education), an empire that expands in general better, your units have a two move unhindered by terrain and can found cities. Mind you, before your swapped to Aggressive you were Expansive and so are more likely to have a larger number of your own cities. Also, you're charismatic, so as your uber-explorers eat animals and barbarians they rack up more and more promotions.
 
Guess what she doesn't have - distance maintenance. Part of the equation. It's all a very perfect storm of random problems that suddenly end up in your face.

A thought. Perhaps, only cities built by the austrin should start with the Austrin Settlement building (the thing which gives the free d.maintenance)

It would be very un-fun for captured cities to be stuck without it permanantly, but forcing them to build it, rather than getting it free, would help to slow the steamrolling effect.

Still, for the AI to cohesively use all those advantages and be successful, is pretty nice.. I do like the Austrin quite a lot, and they're clearly among the ranks of enemies to be feared. They seem to have a winning formula that's simple enough for the AI to understand and use sucessfully. I think that's a good thing.
 
I'm impressed by them, and by the AIs capability to use them once I told it not to build 8,000 archers. I only pulled one bit out, and it seems to have slowed, but not stopped them, in the AI test games I've been running. They're still nasty enemies to have to deal with, but they don't have a steamroller, just a jackhammer. I like them being strong and competitive - they're another civ I enjoy playing. If the Naval Antics module fixes the AIs hydrophobia like it looks like it does, they're going to be even better - they REALLY shine on a map with more than one continent.
 
While playing the legion i had my 3rd ring cultural expansion from my home city expand over a wandering 5 str saber tooth with 2 promotions. It then promptly decided to roam my lands and eat my undead peoples. i dont expect this is as intended, but it could be a balance or bug.

To sum up the damage he did, he chased my workers/slaves around, so that delayed my improvements. i did have a settler escape with a warrior to found another colony, but before i got far i was pushed back into my own lands by an enemy building a city adjacent, and the cat was then kind enough to eat them so they didn't have to walk so far around, both the warrior and the settler :(. After that it of course took the sacrifice of 3 warriors (given legions warriors start with only 1 str + 1 death, i could have used scouts but they were quite far out and i would have stalled further to build more). All in all a considerable if not fatal setback in early stages. Figures the bannor were right on my doorstep too.

morale of the story
nerf saber tooths coming into my homeland lol
 
Wrong forum - that's Fall Plus. Fall Further doesn't have the Legion.
 
Whether he's the legion or not doesn't matter much though. The issue he wants to discuss is the fact that animals can move around in your borders under some circumstances.

Apparently this is intended, but it's a pretty scary thought considering how strong animals in FF can get.
 
Whether he's the legion or not doesn't matter much though. The issue he wants to discuss is the fact that animals can move around in your borders under some circumstances.

Apparently this is intended, but it's a pretty scary thought considering how strong animals in FF can get.
Aye, it's a bit strange that animals become a threat when they happen to be next to your borders when they pop. I've had my share of trouble with rampaging bears (who can be tough to take down before Axemen/Hunters if they have Combat IV from eating AI scouts).

I have to say that I liked it better when they just moved away from your borders instead of moving randomly and causing havoc (and even attacking cities - lost a city to a Giant Spider once) until they accidentally stumble outside your borders again.
 
Just imagine it happening to gurid or margalard....

I think the intention is to prevent them being stuck and easy pickings, but I reckon the animal AI should look for a path out of your borders if it ever finds itself inside, and make haste to leave your territory ASAP, only attacking things that get in it's way.

y'know, "fight or flight" rather than "fight and fight and kill empires"
 
Just imagine it happening to gurid or margalard....
At least in my games the gorilla has been pretty happy coming inside borders and killing empires... I thought that was working as intended. The orangutang works like a normal animal, though.

Edit: oh, wait. The gorilla overrunning empires might've been in a FFH scenario and not in normal play. Not sure, sorry.

I think the intention is to prevent them being stuck and easy pickings, but I reckon the animal AI should look for a path out of your borders if it ever finds itself inside, and make haste to leave your territory ASAP, only attacking things that get in it's way.

y'know, "fight or flight" rather than "fight and fight and kill empires"
Agreed, that would be ace.
 
Actually, animals are worse in FFPlus because I added a few stronger ones. :lol:

That said, I believe the main point of allowing animals in your borders to attack and do damage isn't to prevent them being easy pickings, but rather so that civs at peace with animals can have their spawned animals walk directly into a neighbors territory and tear them up. :mischief:
 
Actually, animals are worse in FFPlus because I added a few stronger ones. :lol:

That said, I believe the main point of allowing animals in your borders to attack and do damage isn't to prevent them being easy pickings, but rather so that civs at peace with animals can have their spawned animals walk directly into a neighbors territory and tear them up. :mischief:
But they come inside your borders only if they happen to end up inside through an unlucky border pop.
 
Valk's right. If I start near the doviello, my priorities change and I rush hunting. Between the "oh hi, animals spam into your borders" and "we have one of the most OP world spells in the game for combat time" you need hunters for defense and offense.
 
Has anyone else found/discussed that the Guild of the Nine seems to be able to function as a big "I win" button? I tend to play large maps on epic speed, to reach late game, and by the time mithril can be hooked up, any half-decent economy can easily pull in a few thousand gold per turn by dropping its science rate to 0% and all city production to wealth. Then just bring a stack of 50 or so units into a city and you can effectively double that in size every few turns with mithril mercenaries, and start doing that in two or more cities = game over. The troops are completely disposable, so as long as you keep your base 50 units there, so even at higher difficulty levels you can (but don't have to) support way more troops than necessary to conquer any civ, and there's no way to counter that I can see. Any way to make it have a cap on units / turn, higher costs, or something else?
 
I think Mythril weapons not being free would be a good way to balance that,

Also, it'd be nice to see mercenaries have a little more depth.


They're mercenaries. Hired soldiers. Unlike your own men, who swear their lives to your service, mercenaries are just in it for the money. Offer them a big enough paycheck, and they;ll do just about anything. But no matter how much you offer them, they can't enjoy it when they're dead, so it would make sense for them to refuse orders that would lead to their certain doom.

I'm thinking, if you attempt to send a mercenary into battle at less than 50~% odds, they should have a chance of rebelling, scaling invesrsely with their odds of victory. At 15% or so, it could be a complete certainty. And if they rebel, they could either just abandon you, or even go barbarian and turn on you. :)
 
Or teach the AI how to use Ring of Flames/etc...
 
I like Warkirby's ideas about increased weapon costs for sure, to keep from being able to generate absurd numbers of troops, and abandonment/turning on you based on survival odds -- possibly even running and deserting when they're being attacked as well.
 
Top Bottom