Broken Hawk
Emperor
Yes. I just supported your point and gave one more argument.
It's a shame. You think people could make better use of their time.
Fall Further Wiki
- Thread starter Vehem
- Start date
It's a shame. You think people could make better use of their time.
Valkrionn
The Hamster King
What vanilla civs have been changed by Fall Further? I've got the Elohim, Amurites, Doviello, and Malakim.
WarKirby
Arty person
Sidar have the House of the Grey UB, and now divided soul promotions
Svartalfar have Shrouded woods, which has something to do with forest stealth
Ljosalfar have extra ranged strength from dexterous, and flurries have 2 range, I believe.
Infernals get extra yields from hell terrain, making them much more powerful than in FFH. They also have the Sect of Flies champion UU, which is visually identical, but has some different functions
Sheiam get a few free demons if they have Bradeline's well in their territory, and free peace with Agares on converting to AV
Bannor get the Gallows UB, and Cleric UU
Calabim lose death magic
There may be more...
Valkrionn
The Hamster King
Hmm... With that many changed civs, I think one writeup on the Elohim, and then a page documenting the changes to all the other civs, should be enough. The Elohim are the only ones with major, wholesale changes, after all.
WarKirby
Arty person
Malakim and doviello have major changes (thanks to you!)
I'd say they both deserve their own pages too.
I'm thinking, amurites do also
The rest are fairly minor, and could probably get by with a "Minor changes to other civs" page.
I'd say they both deserve their own pages too.
I'm thinking, amurites do also
The rest are fairly minor, and could probably get by with a "Minor changes to other civs" page.
Valkrionn
The Hamster King
Actually, they really don't in FF. A few new units or a trait, the improvements, but that's about it. The majority of the stuff in Malakim+ is not in FF, same with Doviello+... Actually, the most major thing gameplay wise were the scorch changes, which affect all civs and were written for the most part by Jean, even if inspired by my original work. 
Amurites gained alot of functionality, yes, but it's actually only a few changes... New Mage's Guild UU that allows random units to start with lvl 1 spells, lvl 2 with the Cave of Ancestors, and a new Arcane promotion. Can't think of anything else.
Amurites gained alot of functionality, yes, but it's actually only a few changes... New Mage's Guild UU that allows random units to start with lvl 1 spells, lvl 2 with the Cave of Ancestors, and a new Arcane promotion. Can't think of anything else.
WarKirby
Arty person
25. Removed Nomad Camp, Added Bedouin improvements - from Malakim+
36. Added Merchant Trait for Varn - from Malakim+.
37. Malakim get +1 further food from Oases - based on Malakim+ (think that had +2)
55. Added Dervish, Malakim Champion and Anubites units to the Malakim - from Malakim+
3 new UUS, a new improvement, a new trait, and a civ bonus.
I personally think that's enough to warrant a page.
Vehem did mention he'd be plundering more ideas in future, too. So I have a feeeling that won't be all for malakim
Valkrionn
The Hamster King
Actually, two units... The Champion is an exact clone, only change is the ability to upgrade to the Dervish. 
Hmm. I just don't think it's enough to warrant a whole page... Or rather, a section on the front page. Maybe a link to it's page from the composite page, instead.
Hmm. I just don't think it's enough to warrant a whole page... Or rather, a section on the front page. Maybe a link to it's page from the composite page, instead.
Can someone on the development of FF add a brief blurb to the bottom of each Civ listing in the Wiki? For many of these Civs I cannot see what the design goal was from the flavor text.
Example: Chislev - "Absorke dubbed those who joined him that night as his "warchiefs" and sent them out to re-establish villages and rebuild the strength of the tribe. When the time came, every warchief vowed to be ready. Years have passed, and that time is now approaching."
That's all history. None of it says what the elements are that make the Chislev interesting and none of the Civs spell out what the design goals were.
Potential example: "Archos - We wanted to make a Civ that made better use of FfH's Giant Spider units. Our goals were to expand on the uses of this unit for this specialized civilization, through unique units that require spiders to be captured first. We balanced this by slowing their research power."
(I'll admit, I have not yet played FF and I fear that a few of the Civs did not have a clear design goal, but instead are a patching together of ideas in order to capture a flavor. A design process that Kael warns against in his "How to Design a Mod" article: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=173061)
Example: Chislev - "Absorke dubbed those who joined him that night as his "warchiefs" and sent them out to re-establish villages and rebuild the strength of the tribe. When the time came, every warchief vowed to be ready. Years have passed, and that time is now approaching."
That's all history. None of it says what the elements are that make the Chislev interesting and none of the Civs spell out what the design goals were.
Potential example: "Archos - We wanted to make a Civ that made better use of FfH's Giant Spider units. Our goals were to expand on the uses of this unit for this specialized civilization, through unique units that require spiders to be captured first. We balanced this by slowing their research power."
(I'll admit, I have not yet played FF and I fear that a few of the Civs did not have a clear design goal, but instead are a patching together of ideas in order to capture a flavor. A design process that Kael warns against in his "How to Design a Mod" article: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=173061)
WarKirby
Arty person
FF probably breaks a ton of kael's rules. That's why he's not making it, and vehem and co are.
Try asking yourself why FFH needed two elven races, two dwarven races, two stealth oriented races, etc.
Try asking yourself why FFH needed two elven races, two dwarven races, two stealth oriented races, etc.
In fact, I could answer that question. The racial type stems from the desire to meet a design goal, not from the attempt to match features to a flavor (except the Dark Elves, which Kael obvious added to meet this staple of Dark Fantasy).
Example: Design Goal - produce a Civ that uses non-living Golems as their key type of units. Design question that comes up when making that Civ: what race should they be? Answer to that question: Well, I've already got dwarves from making the treasure-mongers; sounds like a good fit here too.
xienwolf
Deity
Manual wasn't written by the designers though. So it is certainly not accurate about the design decisions behind any of them.
I don't think that your examples listed so far for the design goals are really proper examples as per Kael's write-up. Granted, I haven't read it, but I assume it is quoting solid game design practices, which would state that you need a REASON for a thing to be added to the game, as in "I wanted to make people who prefer peaceful gameplay have a race with which they can achieve cultural victories." Your examples of "I wanted Golems" would be almost exactly what someone should advise you NOT to do. You should say "I want something which encourages using units as cannon fodder, and leads to unit spam instead of careful guarding of powerful individual units" Then realize that Golems can be a nice fit for that model.
I don't think that your examples listed so far for the design goals are really proper examples as per Kael's write-up. Granted, I haven't read it, but I assume it is quoting solid game design practices, which would state that you need a REASON for a thing to be added to the game, as in "I wanted to make people who prefer peaceful gameplay have a race with which they can achieve cultural victories." Your examples of "I wanted Golems" would be almost exactly what someone should advise you NOT to do. You should say "I want something which encourages using units as cannon fodder, and leads to unit spam instead of careful guarding of powerful individual units" Then realize that Golems can be a nice fit for that model.
That makes sense, since they are supposed to be busy creating and fine-tuning content. But the designers have certainly discussed their design goals in the forums and I had thought that these comments were the basis of the description of the Civs in the manual. It's handy to have that all in one location, such as the FF wiki request that I made.
I agree that it's not the best wording. I might have suggested that the goal was to have a Civ that was not affected by all of the many living-only effects that were being created, putting the player more in the vanilla playing style, and that a Non-Living, Non-Magic-Using unit type (Golems) is a solution to that goal. I did not emphasis the "non-living" element in my ad-hoc'ed write up enough, I guess.
But, I now regret implying that there were not design goals for FF or that these Civs have coherent game systems to define them. My primary request is: Can someone add to the Wiki (or discuss here) what new play experiences I will have if I choose each Civ and what mechanisms I will encounter?
I just don't find the description "A race of Giants" does an effective job of telling me what mechanics I'll encounter and what sort of decision branches I'll need to figure out.
The risks of this method are discussed by Kael, Soren and others at the link I provided in that paragraph: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=173061
I'll point out that this course leads to risk, not certain problems.
WarKirby
Arty person
Did you actually read the Jotnar page?
it has exactly what you're asking for.
http://www.vehemence.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Jotnar
Opera
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2008
- Messages
- 4,643
Oh, yes, I remember now. Good flavor with poor function, yeah. I see your point more clearly now. It's kind of helping, in fact. Realizing things, you know... Well, whatever, I can't answer for someone else so I get out of this thread...
Actually, no, I didn't read that one. After finding only history text for the first couple of Civ names that sounded interesting, I posted my concern here.
Vehem
Modmod Monkey
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2005
- Messages
- 3,219
I really suggest you play something or at least read the threads before you do that. Each civ does have an intended mechanic that differentiates it from each other and from the default FfH civs. In some cases that mechanic is realized better than in others, but the ones that fall short are being worked on.
Archos - aggressive and brutish gameplay, but with an unusual focus (unlike Doviello/Clan) on defending and improving the capital so as to gain the greatest benefit from the spawning mechanics tied to it. Those mechanics happen to revolve around spiders, but in all honesty it could have been scorpions, bears, puppies or even Tarq's hamsters. The way the civ plays isn't particularly dependent on the flavour, beyond the fact that some of their units deal poison damage.
Chislev - distributed/tribal government. Can construct a *lot* of semi-capitals and gain additional benefit from their world spell for each one that they have. Again - nothing particularly flavour based there, but the flavour explains it in the context of the FfH world.
Dural - high quality builders. They have recently been worked on to better fill that role, but the civ was designed for the more peaceful-player who liked to construct every possible building and have large and prosperous cities. As this seems contrary to the existing FfH storyline, they were made naive and idealistic - though in keeping with the Princess rule, they are starting to realize the nature of the world around them and the conflicts to come.
The Mazatl and Cualli were born in a discussion about flavour ("where do the lizardmen come from?") but were then created to (a) introduce a new terrain mechanic to the world so that not everything would end up farms and cottages (the elves already started this with the forests) and (b) add two distinct styles of play to a single race (lizardmen) to make sure there was no simple way to say "Lizardmen are just barbarians". To that end, the Mazatl (good guys) do best when they have several large cities to maximize on their internal trade mechanic (they gain food/production from trade routes) and the Cualli (bad guys) do best when they exploit their populace (are able to use Pop-Rushing from the very start of the game and can later sacrifice units for substantial temporary power boosts to their UUs). They then gained flavour that makes one of them noble and burdened by knowing that the world's fate hangs in the balance - willing to lay down their lives to stand against the evil that approaches. The other became self-serving and treacherous, ruling by fear and dark bargains and exploiting those too weak to challenge for power.
I don't think there's anything here that hasn't been discussed in at least a couple of threads each but if anyone wants to add the relevant sections (or paraphrase them) to the wiki, feel free. It's not normally a good move however to enter a forum, admit to having never played the mod and then start quoting other modders to argue that the mod has been designed badly.
I happen to agree with a lot of the principles Kael and Soren speak about in the articles. Simple is best, function before flavour, if it doesn't add anything - remove it. All very sound advice. I think we're probably due for a few removals actually to keep things strong, but the modder's first instinct is to create and I'm lucky to be working with some very talented modders that do just that.
Grantor said:
Xienwolf said:
Got to agree with Xienwolf 100% here. The example you gave is exactly what you're speaking against. Even if you did think "I want Golems" as your initial inspiration, your very next thought should be "but how would that be interesting?". From there you create something that will (hopefully) be an interesting twist on standard Civ-gameplay, then tie it back to your original premise, including picking a race that suits the flavour to use them.
