Fall Further 0.51 Balance Discussion Thread

[2Hydroclopse]

I like religious victory condition myself.

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On another note, is it intended for the Dural adepts to be mostly useless? By this I mean, once you have the statues which auto-give valor, courage, etc then, the spells to give those promotions become mostly useless; and without plentiful mana, those are the spells your stuck with.

I ask if anyone else might like their capital manas to be switched, the passives are somewhat useful at least.

Ps: This is true unless you still make a large number of military units in other cities; but, personally I pick one of the somewhat few cities which has a good production to build a military -except in emergency-.

 

[Wodan]

Re: birds being unbalanced

You know, it'd probably be OK if the "rebase" mission was simply removed. You can still use the load/unload features, and it makes some sense for the hunter to have to physically be present to pick up the bird.

Re: graveyards

Playing as the Chislem right now, and it definitely should be a DOW offense if somebody else enters my borders and "pops" my graveyard. To that end, I'd suggest either allowing you to DOW without negative diplomacy repercussions from others, or alternately to change the AI programming so that they don't pop graveyards (or anything else either) except in neutral or their own territory.

 

[WarKirby]

I've had a quick look at the hawk unitinfos, and I don't see any obvious place to remove the rebase feature. Anyone know how, or if it's possible without DLL work ?

 

[Wodan]

Doesn't exist. (I did a text search of ALL xml files.) Must be a python change.

 

[stupidnewbie]

Did you know that hawks can get CoE? Well, they can; adding this to their amazing ability to teleport to rival cities -whom have open boarders- and you have the formula for a quicker religious victory. Another reason hydroclopse thinks the hawk's teleport is a bit overpowered.

Trying to spread CoE to a foreign city never seems to work for me. It'll take my gold and cast the spell, but nothing happens.

 

[Valkrionn]

Doesn't exist. (I did a text search of ALL xml files.) Must be a python change.

Well, it would be python if it was a spell... But I highly doubt that. I believe it's something intrinsic to the unitcombat, like planes for BTS, which would mean the DLL.

 

[admtanaka]

Trying to spread CoE to a foreign city never seems to work for me. It'll take my gold and cast the spell, but nothing happens.

I believe that is because CoE presence in the city is hidden to other teams, no?

 

[Iceciro]

Question: Why is Sentry restricted to Combat III?

Is line of sight +1 really something that should be as difficult to get access to as Shock II? Just curious.

 

[Pohlmann]

yesterday i started a hotseat party. my calabim player's scout got mutated from a lair and received mobility 1 and sentry. this way he scouted a huge plains area and picked every lair from the ljosalfar player whose scouts then ran into nothing and the calabim scout wasnt even seen as he could see further than the other 2 and could move safely as he would be able to even spot gryphons before they could see him.

does this answer your question ? ^^

 

[Iceciro]

yesterday i started a hotseat party. my calabim player's scout got mutated from a lair and received mobility 1 and sentry. this way he scouted a huge plains area and picked every lair from the ljosalfar player whose scouts then ran into nothing and the calabim scout wasnt even seen as he could see further than the other 2 and could move safely as he would be able to even spot gryphons before they could see him.

does this answer your question ? ^^

Probabaly has a lot to do with Mobility I....

 

[Pohlmann]

yes i think so too. but the early combination of sentry and mobility is quite hard. so its ok that u need a more advanced unit to take this promo. its the same with guardsman. you often think why is combat 4 a prereq? i would never use it. but then the svarts attack u with hordes of assassins and u start to cry

 

[WarKirby]

Sentry requires Optics, and Mobility requires Horseback Riding. The tech prereqs are enough for both of them. Even without the promotion prereq, you wouldn't have gotten sentry that early, so that argument doesn't fly, I'm afraid.

We've been looking at these internally, and are probably going to change some of them. Guardsman's prereq is getting the evil eye too @_@

 

[Iceciro]

Thank you. I would think my advanced empire capable of channeling magic into usable forms, controlling a world-wide government, and fielding huge armies with epic leaders could tell a few guys "You guys? You're getting trained in observation. You? You're Saverous' bodyguards." without them having to kill a whole bunch of guys to discover this.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Doesn't seem too powerful that the Werewolf promotion stops units infected with Lycanthrophy from abandoning you? That means you could have the living religious heroes and unlimited high priests of every religion all at the same time.

 

[odalrick]

Doesn't seem too powerful that the Werewolf promotion stops units infected with Lycanthrophy from abandoning you? That means you could have the living religious heroes and unlimited high priests of every religion all at the same time.

Provided you manage to infect them in the first place.

It's there so that when you manage to capture one of them by infection, they stick around for more than a turn.

A similar effect should probably be added to domination if there isn't already, and possibly to Command as well.

 

[Wodan]

Here's something that's bothered me for a bit. The whole incentive to scour the world for animals and throw them into cages. Especially bears. They give free culture which is huge for new cities and border cities. They add happiness, which is a huge benefit for large cities.

What if they only added happiness to the Balseraphs? Everybody else could get the culture benefit but nothing else.

 

[Lone Wolf]

They give free culture which is huge for new cities and border cities. They add happiness, which is a huge benefit for large cities.

That's a strategic choice. Besides, a new or a border city can become a large city in the future.

 

[Iceciro]

Zoos are awesome - don't change them. That's really my only input here.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Awakened spawning for scions shouldn't scale based on difficulty. It's basically equivalent to scaling both the food requirements and settler costs based on difficulty for any other civ, and no other civ has a special difficulty-based variable like that. It's not like the scions need it, since all the normal difficulty level changes affect them.

Prince is currently the level where AI and human spawns are even (10% "bonus" for both) - that's probably a fine rate to use across all difficulties.

 

[Iceciro]

Well, I just had a game cut short, so this is kinda a whine post. Take your cheese at the door, sit down.

I have never seen the austrin do well, admittedly. I see them get killed off early pretty often, actually.
But my friend was just decimated by the Austrin. Is it really necessary the Exploration guild give 2xp out to every recon unit? It doesn't seem like much, but remember, there's no counter promotion to Recon units. And Dierdra's Adaptive on her expansive trait. And the guild itself passivetrains up to half the level of the Hunter's Hall.
This is what my friend was faced with:
Dierdra goes to Aggressive/Charismatic. Dierdra is in Apprenticeship. Not a big deal, right. Not at all... until you get wave after wave of Combat 3 Explorers charging you. Wave, after wave, after wave. Because they're Recon units, there are no "solve problems" promotions. So we're looking at when the Austrin have Hunting and Education, they're dropping Combat 3 Str 4 non-counterable units on you.

Sure, you can do this trick with a lot of civs using the right combination of civics, but does anybody get it at Hunting? Dierdra's getting 6.4 strength units for 60 hammers at Hunting. Sometimes they sit and marinate and get stronger, but they don't need to. This is probably a balance issue that doesn't come up because often her AI is lukewarm at best, but watching it happen firsthand is a different matter. It let her steamroll the other AIs and have 15 cities when most of us had 4-5, and have a bunch of great commanders, that she used to build Command Posts, by the way, giving her units another exp boost.

I think this is a lot like removing Death Magic from the Vampires. They don't need it to be strong. This is a bit much. 2xp doesn't sound like a lot - but for free, to a charismatic leader, on a building that already has two other great buffs (an additional trade route and a higher passive training cap, equal to the passive-training designed building -making that obsolete) on its regular cousin for no increased hammer cost is a bit much. The kicker to all this?

The Austrin version of the Hunting Lodge is available at Cartography. Not hunting. They can pull this off with their SCOUTS.

Allright, that's probabaly the biggest rant I've ever thrown about anything I've ever seen in Fall. Feel free to heckle, tell me how it's not a big deal, or whatever. *dons flame-retardant suit* I know I can just change this lickety split, but I wanted to bring it to attention before someone else suffers OMEGA EXPLORER DOOM. >_>