FfH2 0.13 Balance Recommendation

[Chalid]

After looking at all the improvements i would recommend the following:
The normal Improvements stay as they are because they seem well balanced.

The only one that is a bit off is the workshop. I would therefor add a bonus to the Workshop with two civics (in the same row): Serfdom should give +1 Hammer, Guilds should give +1 Commerce.

For the Elven Civ i hold to my ideas:
Elves should be able to build Elven Farm (like normal Farms, but not allowed In Forests (rewuirements to cut the Forest -> Never Tech)
The same for Cottages
As Compensation they get two new improvements:
The gatherer Hut: +1 Food, does not Spread or need Irrigation.
And Treetop Cottage/Hamlet/Village that are identical to the Normal ones but can only be built in Forests and grow only to Village.

This Way the elves get an early advantage (that can be well combined with the Ancient Forests later on) but their Gatherer Huts are a bit weaker to the end of the game. Note that the Gatherer huts can also be planted in Hill-Forests which allows the elves an kind of early game Windmill.
(Make sure you set Bonus Makes Valid to False for the Food bonusses (but allowing them to the gatherer hut)this way the hut can be placed on the boni but only if they are within forests..)

Furthermore i would introduce a late game Improvement that can be built by workers and priest of the leaves:
Enchanted glade - requires Commune with Nature - can only be built in Ancient Forests. Gives +1 Commerce.
This way Ancient forests are equal to forests with lumbermills.

 

[FM_Freyland]

I would like to suggest Summoned units do not cost any maintainence. (lol, can't spell tonight). Is that even possible?

Jonathan

 

[drjones]

battle preview when I clicked and drug the circle over him
only showed 25% bonus

For bonuses like vs anumals or vs mele you do not see a +, their value is lowered automaticlly by the amount. So when you look at a lion you will see x vs. 1.00 because they have a value of 2 normally and you have a 100% bonus vs them.

So yeah. it's there you just have to look for it.

 

[Sarisin]

I suspect in your case you had either promoted your unit on shock or the goblins were promoted on shock/combat. This way the gobbos were the stronger defenders (goblins are no melee troops so shock does not work against them)..

For choosing yourself. We modified it that not only the strength defined who defends but so that Heroes and Mages come later in the line (when the strength is equal normal units would defend first) and Summons come earlier to defend.

The AI has not yet been tweacked to change the way it attacks (i have only dealt with the way mages are moved by the AI, but am not yet satisfied with the way they do). But i'm planning on implementing some task force based attack algorithms for the AI farther down the road.

Thanks for the compliment! You know.. my goal is that experienced games have to switch to Warlord to beat the AI

Yes, here is an example to illustrate the problem I have with not being able to choose a defender. I had the following in my city as defense: Archer (3 city defense promotions and a few extra first strikes), 2 Hunters (plenty of promotions), 3 Warriors (again, plenty of promotions).

I was hit by a stack of 5 Lizard Men. They did some serious damage to the Archer, but the others were virtually untouched. Next turn another Lizard Man attacks and kills my archer who had 0.X points left. I am sure the others would have put up a better defense, but I wasn't given the choice of my defender. The Lizard Man simply attacked and killed my Archer. I suppose I could have moved the Archer out of the city knowing what would happen, but he would have been picked off by the Lizard Man anyway.

As a balance issue, I think the Worg Riders, Barbarian Chariots, and, meet the new Barbarian, the Lunatics come too early in the game. It is certainly before you have a chance to defend powerful units with many movement points like these. The Lunatics started showing up in yr. 443 in my game.

In the raging barb mode, IMO, it is not about defending your city so much, but your improvements. The units listed above are mainly about pillaging vs. attacking your city. Unable to kill them outside of your city, your improvements will vanish quickly.

Oh yeah, one thing about those Lunatics...they are acting like, well, Lunatics.

Some have one movement, some two even though I don't see any kind of promotion. And, I have seen those with one movement land on an improvement (one move) and pillage in the same move. What's up with that?

Chalid, I'm not sure if it is the mod changes themselves or the tweaking of the AI, but I have had to drop DOWN one level from Prince to Noble. I was able to win at Prince 90% of the time, but now, no way. Noble gives me all I can handle with raging barbs. So, keep up your 'fine' work and I will be at the Warlord setting soon.

 

[Chalid]

Yes, here is an example to illustrate the problem I have with not being able to choose a defender. I had the following in my city as defense: Archer (3 city defense promotions and a few extra first strikes), 2 Hunters (plenty of promotions), 3 Warriors (again, plenty of promotions).

I was hit by a stack of 5 Lizard Men. They did some serious damage to the Archer, but the others were virtually untouched. Next turn another Lizard Man attacks and kills my archer who had 0.X points left. I am sure the others would have put up a better defense, but I wasn't given the choice of my defender. The Lizard Man simply attacked and killed my Archer. I suppose I could have moved the Archer out of the city knowing what would happen, but he would have been picked off by the Lizard Man anyway.

Hmm that must be some Vanilla behhaviour you are seeing here. I suspect it comes with the Big city defense promotions and the (vanilla) bad calculated first strikes. I had proposed that we add some code that also moves wounded units down in the line of defenders. It had not been included yet. I'll review that entire section when im going back to the Combat AI. I hope to be able to solve that problem. As i would anytime sacrifice an warrior to give a chance to heal to my highly promotes Archer myself - if i had a choice.

Edit: Thinking some more about it, yes the reason are most probably the first strikes (you know in Vanilla sometimes you get chances above 100% and loos anyway with those). So you see some Vanilla behaviour here.

 

[aku]

Why there are some techs which don't do anything for certain civilisations? They're utterly useless for them. Why not only enable them for those civs that can get enything from them? For example just played a game as Calabim, the endgame tech Domesticane Elephants don't do bloody anything. Since this civ obviously can't use war elephants why it can research the tech? It doesn't make sence. Either give them some elephants or remove the tech because it's useless
Other example: tech Deception. I don't know which civ gains anything from it. For those that I've played so far it was useless.
Maybe you plan to add some effects to these techs in the future?

 

[Chalid]

Deception will be removend ( i think - there was a unit ther but that got moved to another tech.)
For Domesticate Elephats - simple don't research it for the time beeing. But maybe there will be something more moved to that tech. Blocking it for one civ simply adds programming complexity so it might not be worth it, especially if it might get worthwile later on.

 

[kevjm]

Terreforming terrain with druids. It doesn't seem particularly.. natural at times, when you end up having random patches of grassland in the snowy regions. Would you consider giving a negative effect to terreforming? Slight unhealthyness to the city, having it add to global warming for example? Just an idea.

 

[El_Raisuli]

Terreforming terrain with druids. It doesn't seem particularly.. natural at times, when you end up having random patches of grassland in the snowy regions. Would you consider giving a negative effect to terreforming? Slight unhealthyness to the city, having it add to global warming for example? Just an idea.

Perhaps instead of adding a negative modifier, it could be changed so as to seem more realistic/organic? Like you could only terraform a desert tile to a plains tile if it has freshwater access (from oasis or lake) or is adjacent to a non-desert tile. That way you wouldn't see grassland in the middle of desert, but rather spreading into desert from greener regions.

In regard to ice and tundra, ice could not be changed to tundra unless adjacent to tundra; tundra could not be turned to grass unless adjacent to grass, etc.

On the other hand, it would be an interesting element of realism to see a global warming effect from removing a large number of ice tiles.

 

[Maniac]

Terreforming terrain with druids. It doesn't seem particularly.. natural at times, when you end up having random patches of grassland in the snowy regions.

It's magic - it's supernatural.
Personally I do think it kinda fits with the nature mana theme - making your own paradise in an inhospitable region.

Also IIRC at some later phase there will be some Armageddon spell that slowly changes the world to ice. Druid's terraforming will then be an important tactic to try and counter this.

 

[Maniac]

If you want to make a GP strategy viable yet at the same time make sure it has to be a conscious decision that all others can't easily profit from, possible modifications could be:

• Increase the threshold for getting your first Great Person to, say, 300.
• Lower the GP point increase back to 100 per GP.
• Use Impaler's GPP pooling - nothing more annoying than knowing most of your GP points will be wasted due to the ever increasing city-based limit.
• Significantly increase the bonus you get for having the Philosophical trait, and for running Pacifism and Arete. Possibly reduce the normal GP production to two per specialist.

In other words, due to the increased first limit and low GPPP production without running Pacifism/Arete/Philosophical, harder to get a GP by just having a random specialist now and then, but if you focus on them, they can roll out easier.

I think there's a better way to make Great People a viable strategy.

In vanilla after you get ten GPs, the increase for the next GP rises to 200 instead of 100. And even later to 300... I haven't actually done a GP strategy game yet with FfH, but I assume it's the same here. :cute: But anyway, I would suggest to do it the other way around.
For the first GP, the threshold is increased to 250 GPP. Then for five times the threshold increases with 150, as it is currently in the beginning. The threshold is then at 1000 GPP. Instead of increasing, I would suggest that the threshold increase is lowered to 100 points per GP, for the next five GPs. You're then at 1500. Then I would suggest another decrease, to only 50 extra points per GP. At that rate of increase it would stay.

This has at advantage that heavy investments in Great People pay out in the end, while it's less so for just random GP producing civs. It also fixes what I consider one of the biggest design flaws in Civ4. For all other strategies the principle counts that everything gets better for you as the game progresses. Your farms give more food, your mines more hammers (well that not in FfH ), your cottages grow and grow, your trade routes becomes more lucrative etc... The sole exception to this are Great People. They are very good in the beginning, but due to more than linearly increasing GPP threshold, the more GPs you produce, the less the return on your GPP investments becomes. Sure, there's a gradual increase in eg the beakers that each GP gives, but AFAIK that increase is just fixed in time. So again this punishes people who invested heavily in GPs and rewards those who only go for some GPs later in the game. At a certain point in the game the entire game strategy of a heavy GP player becomes unlucrative. I think my suggestion could rectify this.

 

[kevjm]

Summons: As far as I can tell, Water 2 is superior to Law 2. Why would I want a stength 4 law bringer who can't even attack half my enemies when I can get a strength 4 djinn who can even cast level 1 spells?

 

[Kael]

Summons: As far as I can tell, Water 2 is superior to Law 2. Why would I want a stength 4 law bringer who can't even attack half my enemies when I can get a strength 4 djinn who can even cast level 1 spells?

Good point, I'll make the Djinn strength 3 and give it water walking.

 

[H.GrenadeFrenzy]

Deception will be removend ( i think - there was a unit ther but that got moved to another tech.)
For Domesticate Elephats - simple don't research it for the time beeing. But maybe there will be something more moved to that tech. Blocking it for one civ simply adds programming complexity so it might not be worth it, especially if it might get worthwile later on.

Bummer, I just started a game and there is a some 40 Elephants already visible by round 60, Ivory only, damn and OK at least I know that the horses that haven't shown should be all together somewhere and what strategy not to use......

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Are Sand Lions the only units that "can see stealth" ? Or is that another way of saying can expose spys in rival territory, which the shadow and sabeteour have? Maybe add seeing stealth to another unit, like marksmen, so it isn't just in the magic and recon liines...

okay, thanks!

 

[Kael]

Are Sand Lions the only units that "can see stealth" ? Or is that another way of saying can expose spys in rival territory, which the shadow and sabeteour have? Maybe add seeing stealth to another unit, like marksmen, so it isn't just in the magic and recon liines...

Units that can see stealth:

Kithra (hero)
Marksman
Elven Marksman
Sand Lion

 

[Frozen-Vomit]

Units that can see stealth:

Kithra (hero)
Marksman
Elven Marksman
Sand Lion

Could you give the flying eye the same ability? I think that fits their flavour very well.

 

[Kael]

Could you give the flying eye the same ability? I think that fits their flavour very well.

Will do .

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Hmm, M@ni@c's ideas with the great people sound good, even in vanilla Civ, I have no idea why the original game was made to have GP farming be so useless in the late stages.

Also, consider this. This game gives you 33% less GPP per specialist, which have always been the primary way of getting Great People. Further, it takes 150% more GPP to get a great person, which means that you need a +225% great person rate to even match the Great Person rate of vanilla Civ. I know you all wanted to make Great Person generation more specialized, but the way it is now, there's just less Great People across the board. I doubt this is what you intended, or at least not to this degree.

So, I'd say that you either need to make philosophical give +200% GPP (too much more powerful than the other Civs), or make it just easier to get Great People across the board (what I'd prefer).

Also, about the Grigori, I've been having some intersting thoughts about how to make it work. Perhaps you could have the Agnostic trait automatically spread a hidden religion to all cities that the Grigori found or own. This religion could just function as a placeholder (allowing religious civics), and would probably make it less likely for other religions to spread in Grigori lands (I'm pretty sure this is how religion already works, with lower spread rates to places that already have religion). It would also possibly have the side effect of impacting diplomacy with all religions, which might be useful. Whether you'd want this "religion" to have any temples or unique units would be up to you, of course.

Edit: Crap, I forgot to mention the other idea I had; how about Grigori trade routes give GPP instead of commerce? Maybe only with Grigori Taverns? You've got to admit, it has an original flavor.

 

[Sarisin]

More about one of my favorite topics, barbarian AI (maybe there should be a separate topic on this forum on barbarians ):

1. I noticed a strange phenomenon. Playing Luchuirp on a huge balanced map at Nobel, raging barbs, I was getting the usual pounding by goblins, spearmen and lizard men and handling it OK.

However, to the NE of my sole city was a group of 17 lizard men. They were just circling each turn and not making any movement towards my city - it looked like a convention of lizards of some sort. Thankfully, because 17 of them would have overrun the city. But, it seemed very strange AI behavior I had not seen before.
This continued until I gave up on the game when I discovered the AI cheating again by the barbs not attacking Kuriotates (13 cities, no barbs in territory, no BAR trait).

2. Orthus bypassed two other civs (close to and above mine) without the BAR trait and came straight for me. I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen, but it is not very nice.

3. I had to use 4 of my 7 warriors to kill Orthus and got the axe. However, then the resulting barb invasion was insane.

When you get Orthus' axe does this make you a homing beacon for all the barbs on the map? Sure seemed that way. I was able to defend my city, but it was tough generating any new units or keeping the city from starving as barbs covered just about all tiles around my city.