Fall Further 050 Balance Issues

[Sarisin]

It seems like there are a lot of 10% bonuses in the game, particularly with the new outfit gear, etc.

But, I'm wondering what good a 10% boost to strength, defense, etc. is. Maybe I don't know how this bonus works, so please correct me if I am wrong.

For you to get a bonus pt of strength, defense, whatever, wouldn't you need at least 10 to apply the bonus to? And, if that is true, aren't we talking just about heroes and Tier IV units then being able to use a 10% bonus?

Does it round up or down? If you have a unit with a strength of 6 and a 10% bonus, does it have strength 6 or 7?

The reason I ask is I am trying to figure out whether much of the outfit gear, etc. even Enchanted Blade, for that matter, are worth it.

Apologies if I am just thick and don't know how these bonuses work.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

a str 6 unit with a 10% bonus has 6.6 strength. that is 6 + 0.6 , and 0.6 is 10% of 6. otherwise the combat promos would be kinda useless

 

[WarKirby]

Or, in short, Combat strength is a float, not an integer.

Also, bonuses are additive. For example, if you have:
Combat I (20%)
Combat II (20%)
Enchanted Blade (20%)
Homeland (10% within borders)
Shock (40% vs melee units)

And you're attacking an axeman inside your territory, with a champion. It works as follows

The bonuses are added together first:
20+20+20+10+40 = 110

Then that bonus is applied to your strength.
6
+110% bonus
=
6 + (6*1.1)
=
6+6.6
=
12.6

So your combat strength is 12.6. That axeman is screwed.

 

[Sarisin]

Thanks for the explanations, gents.

So, really, in the example you gave, WarKirby, even though the unit shows a strength of only 6, you really have a unit with nearly 13 strength.

You really have to forget about what the unit strength says, I guess, and focus on those semi-reliable combat odds to know the true strength of your unit.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain.

 

[Tarquelne]

IIRC +10% usually works out to around +15% better combat odds, assuming the units are otherwise evenly matched.

 

[Breez]

My 3rd game (v. .50d) I did not select Barbarian World.

Initially, there was a bit more raging barb activity, but it simply dried up on short order. I rarely saw more than 1-2 barbs in my territory, and into turn 400+ (epic speed), still about 95% goblins and warriors with an occasional axeman. No barb Lizardmen yet and that seems strange this far into the game.

One thing that is missing, and I am certainly not complaining, is that you don't seem to get the Lizardmen and Skeletons spawning from ruins and barrows like in previous versions. They were sometimes a challenge in the early going before, but now I haven't seen them at all.

The big change was, of course, the introduction of the lair bosses that have been demolishing AI civs.

I see the barb spawning grouping is changing as well as when the lair bosses spawn.

Last night I had my hero sitting outside my culture and he killed 10 Barbs in 14 turns. I had a constant stream of them flowing towards my nearby city.

(Non-barb world, normal speed, Noble difficulty, standard map size)

One thing to consider, as I understand it, is Barbs spawn 1 per X # of uncultured tiles Land only ?). If you have a lot of culture, or not much land this could cause you to have less barbs than someone else

I had a game I played Standard Size map with 18 civs... I had VERY few barbs in that game.

 

[Grimz101]

Just look at the attached..

 

[Vehem]

Just look at the attached..

This one counts as a bug (as well as a balance issue) as the demons appear to have captured a city (they should always raze) - but which patch is it? If it's Patch E, do you have a save game?

 

[xienwolf]

I would say it is mostly the frostlings that did it. I just recently realized that I hadn't placed a tech requirement on them. Before Patch E that wasn't a problem because they weren't able to spawn. But when I fixed up Orc spawning I made Hill Giants common (and possible) in Deserts, and the 3 Frostlings in Tundra/Snow. As a result, for this patch only, you can see Frostling Archers and Wolf Riders from turn 1 out of cold tiles. I expect it will cause serious issues for players and AI alike. (Of course, the Chaos Marauders and Ogre would also be a hefty factor, granted)

AI is a bit more careful with lair exploration starting next patch as well.

 

[Grimz101]

Patch C or D, im too scared to patch E, everyone is reporting CTDs with it

 

[Sarisin]

Last night I had my hero sitting outside my culture and he killed 10 Barbs in 14 turns. I had a constant stream of them flowing towards my nearby city.

(Non-barb world, normal speed, Noble difficulty, standard map size)

One thing to consider, as I understand it, is Barbs spawn 1 per X # of uncultured tiles Land only ?). If you have a lot of culture, or not much land this could cause you to have less barbs than someone else

I had a game I played Standard Size map with 18 civs... I had VERY few barbs in that game.

That's interesting because my last game was a Culture victory and I am going for one in my current game as well. The AI just doesn't seem to build those Wonders that generate a lot of culture, and I find, with it fairly easy to populate your carnivals with culture-giving animals the Culture victory is the way to go.

If this is the case, and I am again seeing very few barbs, so maybe it is, doesn't it seem to be the OPPOSITE of what one would think it would be? I mean you would expect those ragtag barbs to want to attack the cultured civs, right?

xienwolf, any connection between number of barbs spawning and cultural civs?

One other funny thing I have noticed:

The barbs seem more inclined in v. 50 to immediately attack/chase any unit they can see. In my game, I have a Treasure Chest out in the middle of noman's land and it will be some time before I can get to it. However, it is highlighted and I can see tons of barbs just swarming around it like bugs attracted to a light! They seem like they want to attack it, but, of course, cannot, so just hang around!

 

[jwin]

So, the new barbs spawning in groups up to six and traveling in hordes is really dominating. I sit in my city with four warriors and watch as a group of five frostling wolf riders pillages everything I built.
Normally on Empire difficulty, I fall behind in score early and stay that way until late mid game. These last two games (which I only played about 200 turns of because of frequent but non repeatable CTD(I am having some other computer problems)) I have been in first most of the game. I think even with their bonuses against barbs on that level, they are having more problems than I have.

 

[xienwolf]

Barbarians are easy (no improvements, no cash, no concern about research -- Most of that comes for free ideally --, and lots of units for free without worry about upkeep). And since they were a major feature of this latest version, they had a corner on my attention.

I am slowly working my way through various routines to try and assist the player AIs right now, but also lose huge chunks of time trying to figure out why the game doesn't unload properly (causing almost guaranteed CtD if you try to start a second game without reloading from desktop). The hardest part is identifying which area the AI needs help in first, and avoiding making that fix cascade into other problems (example: encourage more defenders to protect from the Barbarians, but cause crippling Unit Maintenance and thus impinge on the ability to research...)

But don't worry, I won't be satisfied with the AI until I read that NOBODY is able to win on Deity difficulty. Essentially the only way I actually get to play is through the AI players, so since I play to win, I need my boys to bring their "A" game to your table...

 

[Sarisin]

Yeah, that's great. The CTDs should be the priority and all these issues with barbs, etc. can be addressed later.

Personally, I am having a hard time keeping up with the patches, assuming they break games. I get a good game going and, as I use Epic speed, don't want to dump it and start another. So, I am spinning wheels as far as the frequent patches go.

But, the hard work of the team on making the fixes so quickly is amazing to me.

 

[Iceciro]

Honestly, Xien, the having to reload to desktop is simple once you understand you have to do it - you can do it without even leaving the game by going to advanced->load mod and just reloading FF .50 - not being able to get a solid game against the AIs is for me a larger problem.

To me, it's one thing to have to do maximum 5 minutes of inconvenience reloading the game (some of my player-mates have really, really slow PCs that shouldn't really be playing Civ IV at all! And that's as slow as it gets for us) when we swap from one game to another, than having ALL of the AIs be pushovers. At this moment, they're pretty much just building cities for the players and keeping them warm for us.

But Your Millage May Vary and I'll support Fall Further no matter what order stuff's fixed in.

 

[xienwolf]

Well, I tend to work on a couple of things at a time so that I don't get blocked up by a single brainfreeze. I've been adding a lot of extra debugging tools to the game and uncovering the ones which are already there. So as I see things that are odd I am more able to figure out WHY they are happening, and then I can change that. For example: Scouts being used as defenders was strange, especially since the AI didn't value them very highly as a city defender type. But then I looked in their UnitInfos and found that someone had stated City Defender was an ALLOWED AI type for the unit. I moved that one over to NOT ALLOWED Ai type. Now some of them sit in cities, but as City Counter (read: Roaming Defender) instead of City Defender (read: AI will always try to have a few of them in each city).

So far it seems to help a fair deal. And with how much success the groups of Orcs are proving to be, I am wondering if I can teach the AI to understand the concept of a mini-stack on their own. It would certainly make them have a higher survival rate, especially if they happen to regroup after a few of them are wiped out.

But overall, I am reasonably certain that the area the AI needs the most assistance (with the least adverse side-effects) are in choosing the first items to build in any city, and in choosing improvements. After that we'll see where they are hurting. Probably Tech Selection (I'd love to get rid of the damnable hardcoding, and make AI consider Religions as unique from each other)

 

[Iceciro]

I don't expect them to be as good as a human player... but right now it's pretty bad. I mean no disrespect to you or anything, making the AI behave semi-intelligently in any game is always a pain in the butt. Your work on Fall Further is always appreciated.

 

[Grimz101]

Well lets look at which AIs do best consistently, then isolate why it is so, and try to replicate that whilist making every civilization unique.

My Input:
Every game i have played where the Evil Lizard civilization who are non religious (i forgot their name), they are always 1st on the leader board or 2nd (with me being 1st)
They always have a huge power graph aswell.. and proceed to conquer/vassalize a few civilizations.

How about the games you guys play, which AI does the best consistently?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

cualli, calabim, ljolsafar, hippus seem to always be the most powerful when played by the AI. I probably forgot a couple others as well.

 

[ounceofreason]

I'm not wild about the tech requirements for worker actions being semi-lifted - it seems to have broken the auto-improve AI. Workers will gleefully spend 75 turns building forts and lumberthingies, while ignoring the swaths of easily farmable flood plains that would only take 5 turns to improve. I know a lot of people prefer to handle their workers manually, but for us sub-optimal types, it's kind of a pain. Maybe change workers so that they will disregard (or put at very low priority) any task that will take longer than 12 turns? (0.50 is my first time playing FF, so if it was wonky before this, then nevermind )

Animal units seem much better balanced in Patch E - if anything, the buff rate is a little low now, but I wouldn't up it by too much.

Is it possible to have the barbarian demon faction at war with the animal and orc factions? It would be cool to see them fight outside my borders, and maybe make the demons look a bit more menacing. You'd probably have to rebalance the barbarian factions a bit to compensate for the attrition, so maybe it's not worth the effort?

Anyway, great mod. It's like an expansion pack for the best game never sold.