FF 0.43 Wishlist

[xienwolf]

1) the avatar race means that the unit has a very high chance of defending. this makes Auric Ascended too vulnerable imho... his very high strength means that he will defend very often even without "improved chance to defend the stack"

2) I think it might be good to create a new promotion that has only one effect: making the unit "less likely to defend the stack" , and taking away that ability from channeling and hero promotions. this would allow to further customize units ( arcane units should all get decreased chance to defend stack, but NOT all units with the channeling promo should imho. vampires for example, and any unit that's good at fighting but can also use a couple spells. )

I have a feeling that either Kael meant it to be this way because healing rates are done by percentage (meaning even in rival territory, 1 turn worth of healing means about 4 strength points regained for AA), or just to ensure that a swarm can take down Mulcarn EVENTUALLY. Otherwise if it was just to ensure that the Godslayer would attack Mulcarn and avoid cronies, he could have just set it up so that the Godslayer made the unit specifically target AA first if he is in a stack (UnitTypeTargets kind of field, or the existing UnitCombatTargets and a unique UnitCombat for Avatars). Note how I am not stating my thoughts on actually changing anything though. Haven't made a decision on how I think about the matter. Same with #2, but seems like a decent idea.

3) it'd be nice to have flexible difficulty raising/lowering difficulty less/more depending on the speed you're playing at.

Thanks for the reminder, I had meant to change that one a while back, but got distracted by other sections of the code and forgot about the idea. Final Five and other challenges which are turn based will get the same treatment.

4) you're already doing a great job at balancing the games at different speeds I hope in the future you'll also have more stuff scaling with map size, that would be great. for example, movement points scaling with map size..

The problem with scaling things is finding a common multiple. You'll note that in general things which scale by gamespeed are 3, 6, or much larger. This is so that they don't get rounded horribly causing some of the shifts to make little sense (scale 1 by gamespeed and it doesn't change at all except in Marathon). Since a lot of movements are very low numbers, it is incredibly difficult to adjust to gamespeed, unless you increase average movement so that move 1 units only exist in a duel size map. But then you have to rebalance the entire game from the ground up almost.

8) Succubi have mind 2 ( charm person ) , but they sonly have channeling 1 : shouldn't they have channeling 2 ?

Don't need channeling 2 to cast rank 2 spells, but if you have channeling 2 and a rank 1 spellsphere, you can learn new spells, which in this case we do not want.

9) axemen get a bonus against warriors, which is awesome. does that bonus also include warrior UUs like beastmen? it should, imho.

Such bonuses are based on UnitClass, so yes, all UU's (that state in the Civilopedia "Replaces ___") are also vulnerable

11) it would be nice if the info that is shown when you're choosing a tech would only list things that you can actually get. like, hiding heroes belonging to other races, promotions that you'll never be able to get, etc.

Right up until you accidentally trade away a "Useless Tech" to a civilization you aren't familiar with and realize that you just enabled his most awesome UU and got a whole 25 gold for the trouble...

12) I know you've heard it many times already: when adaptive trait prompts you to choose a trait, it would be great to have mouseover tell you what that trait actually does

Are you sure we don't? I wrote code for that before joining the team and it should have been in ever since.

13) when trading maps, it'd be great if the game would tell you how many tiles that map would reveal, so that you could evaluate if buying that map/selling your map is a good idea or a ripoff before it's too late

And then a few weeks later you'll ask that it let you know which tiles, and if they are just ocean.... Maps ain't worth much, you take a risk

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Right up until you accidentally trade away a "Useless Tech" to a civilization you aren't familiar with and realize that you just enabled his most awesome UU and got a whole 25 gold for the trouble...

you're right, I even thought about this myself, then forgot about it prior to posting. good call.

Are you sure we don't? I wrote code for that before joining the team and it should have been in ever since.

I guess you're right, now that I remember my last game with an adaptive trait civ ( Malakim ) was prior to the release of FF 043 so it was base FFH.

-----------------------------------------

thanx for the reply btw

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Otherwise if it was just to ensure that the Godslayer would attack Mulcarn and avoid cronies, he could have just set it up so that the Godslayer made the unit specifically target AA first if he is in a stack (UnitTypeTargets kind of field, or the existing UnitCombatTargets and a unique UnitCombat for Avatars). Note how I am not stating my thoughts on actually changing anything though. Haven't made a decision on how I think about the matter. Same with #2, but seems like a decent idea.

Except that those tags only exist for units, not for promotions. He probably didn't feel like doing the work to let promotions have the same ability, if he even remembered that the ability for units even existed. I tend to think that this is the only reason for Auric Ascended to defend so much. I also don't think that a god should be able to be defeated by swarms of fodder, only by the godslayer.

I would much prefer it if you changed it so that promotions could use those targets fields, as I have several promotions planned that depend rather heavily on it. (I'd also really like it if you added a similar tag that targets units with specific promotions.)

 

[heisenberg]

Ahh.. just remembered a minor pet peeve of mine that occurs occasionally...
You know those events when a dwarf offers to transmutate your gold into copper and vice-versa?
It'll be nice if... we could actually get to check our maps before we decide, rather than try to recall if we had a spare copper lying around to want to change one into gold.

So... something along the lines of...
Turn 1: Dwarf offers to transmutate copper into gold for say 50 gold. He'll be back for your decision on the matter
Turn 2: Do you want to pay the dwarf to change your copper into gold?

That'll be great

 

[hbar]

Ahh.. just remembered a minor pet peeve of mine that occurs occasionally...
You know those events when a dwarf offers to transmutate your gold into copper and vice-versa?
It'll be nice if... we could actually get to check our maps before we decide, rather than try to recall if we had a spare copper lying around to want to change one into gold.

So... something along the lines of...
Turn 1: Dwarf offers to transmutate copper into gold for say 50 gold. He'll be back for your decision on the matter
Turn 2: Do you want to pay the dwarf to change your copper into gold?

That'll be great

Or something along the lines of
"Dwarf offers to transmute one of your (3) copper resources to gold for 50 gold."
Where obviously the number in parentheses would be you actual resource count.

 

[heisenberg]

Still, sometimes I'd really like to be able to take a look at the whole map before deciding lol, since often I don't bother hooking up multiple resources of the same type if they were out of my city's BFC but yet within my cultural borders.

But even so what you mentioned, hbar, would certainly be a large improvement over the current event, and admittedly should be way easier to code in.

 

[xienwolf]

You would also want it to state how many gold resources you had currently I imagine. Just so you know if you already have one or not.

It triggers on a specific tile right? So you know in advance if it is in workable range of a city?

 

[odalrick]

Another way to do it would be to spawn a temporary unit with a unique spell. If you want to transmute, you use the spell, otherwise it's gone the next turn.

I don't think I've ever used the transmutation though, but I mostly play with Blessing of Amathon.

 

[Ambreville]

Toll Houses

You could build one in a city in order to collect a little gold each time a foreign unit enters its BFC (while at peace of course). Toll Houses would be available with the Guilds tech. 1 gp per land unit, 5 gp per sea or air unit. Invisible or HN units don't pay, of course. Toll is deducted from the owning civ.

It would make cities located at choke points very valuable. The way this might work is that a visitor receives the "Taxed" promotion in exchange for the toll while in a foreign BFC, and would lose it when exiting the BFC. If the owning civ does not have the cash for the toll, the visiting unit cannot enter.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

a couple more ideas and suggestions:

1) being able to choose "Random" for more options would be great. for example, Erebus has options for 0% peaks, 10%, 20% etc. why not random?
same for all the checkboxes in the custom game setup. think good ol' Minesweeper: one click sets the option on ( an "X" appears in the checkbox ) , two clicks set the option to random ( a "?" appears in the checkbox ) , three clicks set it back to off, loop.

2) it would be AWESOME if the more XP a unit has, the slimmer the chance of it defending get. high level units should only defend when chances of victory are very, very high. due to the well-known shortcomings of Civ combat system, you can't choose which unit you want to defend with. and since vanilla Civ is NOT focused on fewer, strong units, you often see your most powerful units dying on defense. if XP decreased the chances of the unit defending, you could use cannon fodder for defense ( who cares if they lose ) and use your strong units for attacking, thanx to your superior human common sense wise choices

3) assassins should get a bonus when defending against assassins imho. right now assassins are great for killing assassins, which doesn't make much sense. you would think a guy that kills for a living knows how to NOT get killed, right?

4) shouldn't coastal cities be able to build sewers as well?

5) I'd love to see cities built on riverbends be considered riverside.

6) there's still the old exploit of gifting an opponent a city, capturing it, gifting again, repeat until the opponent LOVES you. if you can fix this you're awesome. ( and you're pretty awesome already, trust me )

7) another exploit is creating a great person with Alazkan's mirror and then using the illusion to start a golden age

8) AIs still often like building scouts instead of warriors in the early game. this often gets them killed. or was this changed in patch E? ( seeing as patch E "improved AI for defending cities" )

9) possible change for the "Wither" spell : make it cancel all food output of farm tiles in a 3x3 radius for a while. alternatively, just make it cancel all food output, not just farms ( idea stolen from AoW, I liked that spell )

10) if HN units will never be able to be grouped, I hope that the Svartalfar wordlspell gets changed. a mechanic that raises micromanagement by 1000% is, ipso facto, a bad mechanic imho. if you choose to do so, you could start a poll asking people for a new idea - I'm sure many will come

11) this one is obviously a wish for a distant future: I hope that someday FF will overhaul the crappy unrealistic way that Civ handles resurces. i.e. no more 1 bronze mine providing enough bronze for a worldwide empire, and being able to "spread" live resource ( grains, livestock ) , etc.
same could be said for maintenance cost, no more units costing a hell of a lot more as soon as they step 1 tile outside of cultural borders, but maintenance costs linked to distance from homeland, etc.

 

[deadliver]

3) assassins should get a bonus when defending against assassins imho. right now assassins are great for killing assassins, which doesn't make much sense. you would think a guy that kills for a living knows how to NOT get killed, right?

I agree that assassins should be useful guarding against other assassins, for two mechanics reasons:

1.) Guardsman as a promotion is lame.
2.) Would save having to come up with yet another unit.

The only thing is though, that assassins should be good at countering assassins, so maybe instead of getting a defense bonus, the assassin should have a higher chance of defending the stack...

 

[xienwolf]

You even think that FF guardsman is lame?

 

[deadliver]

Meh. Guardsman sounds like a unit not a promotion. The minor defense bonus can be useful in the early game I suppose. Never take it myself unless I play Bannor then I take it all the time.

 

[xienwolf]

Minor, PER UNIT, defense bonus. And I can't remember if it is defense which can be bombarded away with seige, but I am inclined to think it is not.

 

[deadliver]

You are right however I find it hard to believe people promo up hordes of guardsmen specifically for the bonus, thats at least 6 or 7 dudes to get 20%. Nice little bonus for Bannor, but then they get it for free.

I don't play Bannor so I have no idea if that bonus can or cannot be bombarded away.

 

[xienwolf]

Yeah, it's mostly for Bannor, or people who have some good training buildings for their home force.

 

[deadliver]

really bro if I am that worried about assassins, I roll around with skeleton summons, they always seem to take the hit, course I cannot haste them so they are slow but that is my strategy. Otherwise I just use weaker units to soak up the hitman goodness.

Guardsman promotion are for players who want their units to gain xp from killing attacking assassins instead of getting picked off each turn, I guess thats why it is expensive promotion wise.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

problem is that using skeletons and other weak units to defend against assassin doesn't make sense imho. an assassin would never target a weak, useless unit

 

[Ambreville]

I think there ought to be a cap on the total number of assassins a civ can build. It becomes pretty ridiculous when a civ builds armies 80% made up of assassins.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I still think that promotions need to have the ability to target specific unitclasses/unitcombats/units with other promotions. I'd like marksman to let you switch out between various targeting promotions so you could pick targets, or at least the basic type of targets. The same tag could make the Godslayer target Avatars.