FfH2 0.14 Balance Recommendations

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Seems this was a long time ago. Elven Archers dont's get any basic promotion except for elven. There is no city defence bonus for them and without training yards they start with zero experience points (2 if you have form of the titan or a fitting civic). So Elven Archers have 50% less city defence and a city raider promoted warrior can bet them with ease. Archers outside cities are just passed by the AI and not attacked, so the wood defence bonus doesn't help you.
For Guardian of Nature ... what you describe is usefull for high difficulty levels maybe but a lower level (noble/prince) I rarely see happiness issues. Also keep in mind Guardian costs high upkeep.

Ghostmaker

Heh, I played a game as Ljo/Fellowship and I never noticed the lack of the inherent City defense. So I take everything back.

As for bypassing units, I know the AI often does so. But it does not do so always. And if it tries to bypass you, you can try to foil that tactic. In my game I was hit with a surprise sea landing. I was dominating a massive continent, and I hadn't spared any resources for naval exploration. So the ships hit from out of the fog of war, plus they from the last nation on the map I expected to go hostile. I lost the city at the invasion point, and I had a bunch of units amidst cities with almost no defense. I sent any units I could in to buy time. The AI tried bypassing, so I found myself forming 'front lines", just like in the old board wargaming days. The AI's stack could bust any of my tiles, but the point was to force battle and attrit the invaders. Eventually they had to give battle in my forests. My sacrificial skirmishers bought enough time for the reserves to come up. Only the first city as lost.

It was a lot of fun. The sequence gave very much the feeling of a campaign. Maneuver was more involved and the AI was a bit more clever than in vanilla civ. So I think it's possible to fight a war of maneuver successfully in FfH.

That being said, once again I was wrong about the nature of the Elf archer unit. It definitely should have some innate City defense bonuses, regardless of how well Elves can maneuver on home terrain. I see Kael has addressed this in a later message.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Yeah, they arent intended to have the weakest archers. I like the fact that the fellowship archers arent any good at city defence (hiring nature worshiping elves to guard your human/dwarven cities just seemed wrong to me).

But the normal elven archer should be changed. We have 5 values to play with:

1. Strength, currently 3; base archer is 3
2. Hills defense, currently 0; base archer is +25%
3. City defense, currently 0, base archer is +50%
4. First strike, currently 1; base archer is also 1
5. Cost, currently 60; base archer is also 60

My tendency would be to raise the hills and city defence to +25% each, and give them an additional first strike chance. I think adding a point of strength is to much and i like that they are weaker than normal archers at defending cities but they should still be good at it. And I think the additional first strike chance will make them into the best overall archer.

Thoughts?

Here I was ranting on Elf archers and the lack of Dwarf 'archers' and I didn't realize the Elfs did not get the inherent city defense bonus. Obviously I think every nation should have access to a basic city defense units. As much as Elves or others might lije to 'spread out to suburbia', the game of Civ still revolves around cities.

Your suggested change if fine. The extra First Strike compensates some for the loss of 25% city defense. It's cleverer than just giving it more +woods/jungle defense boni. With the Treetop Ambush spell, even a rookie unit will get four free shots when off skirmishing. That's pretty decent.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

I Must agree, it should take a long time for a forest to appear. I also think that spring happens to quick also. The ability to turn a dessert square into a plains would require either a lot of magic or a long time. I think that for both forest & spring should take about 3-5 turns for your magic-user. Maybe knock a turn off per level above 1st.

Spring & Scorch might also work 'too quickly', yes. In the game I'm playing now, the highly cantankerous and unpopular Infernals ended up reigning over a kingdom of wild jungle and barren desert, with the occasional spot of green grassland. (Mind you, the Infernals were in for it that game, regardless of how long it took to cast Scorch.)

OTOH, I don't think these problems have too significant an impact on a given game, when civs are of moderate size. Large size tends to offset random chance. You'll end up with so much forest you'll have plenty to exploit. Even if that perfect tile refuses to grow up past 'New', you don't care much because you're already raking it in. But in smaller civs, a single special tile can be quite important. You might be cursing that stubborn new forest tile.

For Scorch and Spring used in war, there is something very much to be said for giving opponents reasons to come oput of the cities to fight in the fields. Since Scorch can be undone in a single turn of casting, perhaps it is fine casted in a single turn. Does it put too much influence in the hands of having Fire/Water Adepts? Good questions.

It's really a hard question. It's not really a matter of forests maturing 'too fast'. Or spells casting 'too quick'. It's a matter of all the various game elements working together at a pace so no one aspect of the game dominates all the others. So far, it quite impressive to see how well the various elements work together.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Hunters and warriors are different tiers, hutners should be way better than warriors. Its better to compare them to axemen. An axeman is strength 4, if the hunter was reduce to strength 2 then axemen and hunters would be the same strenght against animals (strength 4) and the axemen would be better at everything else except movement.

If I changed hunters at all the only thing I probably consider would be a reduction of the vs animals percentage from 100 to 75% (suince they get a +25% fromt eh subdue animal skill nowdays).

Personally, I haven't seen real playbalance problems with Hunters. But I did find the statements there persuasive enough to be willing to give the change a try.

Personally, I think effect is more pronounced as Hunters become Rangers. It more than doubles their STR. The net result is usually a massive change in strategic capability. In my ongoing game I had to assemble the entire Army to fight a battle. And even so, dug-in Archers would have cost more Malkim Swordsman lives than I cared to spend. But all that changed once I was able to promote my surviving Hunters up to Ranger. Units it would take my entire Army an entire turn to set-up and kill, were suddenly vulnerable to naken Banzai attacks from the Rangers.

I'm not saying these units should not be allowed to become more powerful, or that an invention should not have an impact on warfighting. It was just such a dramatic change. I went from sitting on pins and needles, defending my nation with little margin for error, to budding Napoleon with an appetite for Infernal cities. Hippus' Typhoid Mary and Bambur, off reducing the last Infernal city, went from Oh God Don't Let Hippus Attack Us, to Bring It On. I, perhaps, engage in a bit of poetic license here, but I think you get my gist.

I'm not sure there's a 'problem' here. All games play out differently. I think it's more a matter of pacing than the inherent unit strengths themselves. Some STR tweaking might be needed, eventally, but maybe not.

 

[Mavy]

Recently played a game as the Hippus and i think their horsemen should benefit from the Agg/Rai traits.
Makes their leader with Agg/Rai abit useless in my opinion, since the UU don't proit from the traits.
Or in other words, choosing between the two leaders is very easy right now.

 

[Sureshot]

and something needs to be done about their Brigands, their Raiders have 4 str 4 movement, and the Brigands only get 5 str 3 movement... makes it seem like a bad idea to upgrade them.

 

[Kael]

Recently played a game as the Hippus and i think their horsemen should benefit from the Agg/Rai traits.
Makes their leader with Agg/Rai abit useless in my opinion, since the UU don't proit from the traits.
Or in other words, choosing between the two leaders is very easy right now.

They benefit from the raider promotion in that they get faster xp, and they benefit from the aggresive in that their stables are half priced.

 

[Kael]

and something needs to be done about their Brigands, their Raiders have 4 str 4 movement, and the Brigands only get 5 str 3 movement... makes it seem like a bad idea to upgrade them.

You're right, Im thinking of the following to high light their mobile nature over raw power (and i was surprised to see I hadnt done a very good job of polishing the stats of the upper units when Sez made all the skins):

Horseman: Str 3, Moves 3, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 25
Raider (old): Str 4, Moves 4, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 25
Raider (new): Str 3, Moves 4, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 35

Horse Archer: Str 5, Moves 3, First strikes 1, Withdrawal 35
Brigand (old): Str 5, Moves 3, First strikes 1, Withdrawal 35
Brigand (new): Str 5, Moves 4, First strikes 1, Withdrawal 45

Chariot: Str 6, Moves 3, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 25
Hippus Chariot (old): Str 6, Moves 3, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 25
Hippus Chariot (new): Str 6, Moves 4, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 35

Camel Archer: Str 11, Moves 3, First strikes 1, Withdrawal 45
Hippus Camel Archer (old): Str 11, Moves 3, First strikes 1, Withdrawal 55
Hippus Camel Archer (new): Str 12, Moves 4, First strikes 1, Withdrawal 55

Knight: Str: 12, Moves 3, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 35
Wind Knight (old): Str 12, Moves 3, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 35 (casts dance of blades)
Wind Knight (new): Str 13, Moves 4, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 45 (casts dance of blades)

War Elephant: Str 14, Moves 3, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 25
Hippus War Elephant (old): Str 14, Moves 3, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 35
Hippus War Elephant (new): Str 15, Moves 4, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 35

War Chariot: Str 13, Moves 3, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 25
Hippus War Chariot (old): Str 13, Moves 3, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 25
Hippus War Chariot (new): Str 14, Moves 4, First strikes 0, Withdrawal 35

 

[Sureshot]

ya that looks much nicer, i was skipping brigands completely before but i wouldnt with this

 

[Jono]

What with Hippus starting off with Law mana in 0.15, I just can't see wind knights with dance of the blades ^^ . How about changing the Law mana to, say, Earth? or Body? (or you could change the Windrider ability to Haste or something)

 

[Sareln]

Heya, took the dwarves for a spin the last couple of days. The dwarven vaults are most excellent, but they do end up hampering the growth of the dwarven empire rather severely, especially if you get unlucky and have your scouts get eaten. Just a thought, but since the dwarven kingdom (Khazak?) never fell during the age of ice, wouldn't it make sense for them to start off with a small amount of gold, maybe 100 ish, so the second settler isn't too delayed?

All in all though, the vault idea is most excellent. I find that I end up using a middling placement of cities, with some empty space in between for the borders to fill in. It also means I have almost no interest in warring at all because I want to maintain my nice lovely pile of loot. I suppose I'll give the war a shot when I have a nice little stash of cash, and can afford to take a couple cities.

 

[Jono]

Also, what about Magnadine? Is he still 3 movement? (it'd be sad to see him fall behind ^^)

 

[Kael]

Also, what about Magnadine? Is he still 3 movement? (it'd be sad to see him fall behind ^^)

Good point, Ill boost Magnadine to 4 too.

 

[SchpailsMan]

Kael, the Team,

It is about Lannun. Few minutes before writing this post, i decided to play this civ on a Pangea Huge map, 8 civs, Prince level and Epic Speed. I was very disapointed... I have to regenerate the map 9 times before beginning near the ocean....
If i well remember, there was a civ trait in civ III that gives the starting settler the ability to start near the ocean. It would be great to add this ability to the Lannun. Aren't they a sea power, if not THE sea power of FfH2 ?

What do you think of that ? Is it possible to do by a special Leader trait or a specific tech (adding that to seafaring?) ?

The Frog.

SmartMap includes a "start position" option. You can choose to start inland or on the coast, and you can choose wether this choice affects all civs or only the player's civ.

 

[z00t]

Is it intentional that the Grigoris obelisk replacement doesnt increase the early chances of getting an Adventurer?

base GPP from the palace is +2, plus 100% from leader = +4 GPP,
add in the building and you get 4*1.15 = 4.6 = +4 GPP

the only way to actually get another GPP from it is to dilute the chance of getting an adventurer and add specialists or wonders. Unless thats the intention, I think it should be raised to +25% (to make it +5GPP)

 

[subanark]

I think the tradeoff you make when playing the Grigoris are not worth it, no religion, no special hero, and you have to trade off Great People for adventures.

Possible suggestions I might like to see:
1. Allow Grigoris great people to 'upgrade' to adventrues. (The problem with this is that the AI will do it too often).

2. Allow the adventures to "sleep" in a city and give it bonuses while they do so (similar bonuses to what joining a great person to a city would do). This allows the AI to simply leave the hero there and get the bonus (since I often see the AI just have their hero sit in a city).

3. Give all Grigoris units the ability to get promotions from other unit categories (e.g. a warrior with city garrison, or an archer with haste after you reasearch the ability to make adepts).

 

[pa12ick]

Regarding the Khazad, is there a reason that scouts/hunters cannot upgrade to Dwarven Druids?

 

[pa12ick]

And also, I've seen the question, but never an answer for why the "Dwarven" promotion doesn't work. It says double movement in hills/mountains, but it doesn't unless the unit also has Guerilla II...

 

[Jono]

I think the tradeoff you make when playing the Grigoris are not worth it, no religion, no special hero, and you have to trade off Great People for adventures.

Possible suggestions I might like to see:
1. Allow Grigoris great people to 'upgrade' to adventrues. (The problem with this is that the AI will do it too often).

2. Allow the adventures to "sleep" in a city and give it bonuses while they do so (similar bonuses to what joining a great person to a city would do). This allows the AI to simply leave the hero there and get the bonus (since I often see the AI just have their hero sit in a city).

3. Give all Grigoris units the ability to get promotions from other unit categories (e.g. a warrior with city garrison, or an archer with haste after you reasearch the ability to make adepts).

I haven't played Grigori really, but it was my understanding that they only received Adventurer points from their palace and received GP points normally.

 

[Ghostmaker]

Didn't see an answer to this question:

Why was the training yard removed? This pretty much forces you to go for Form of the Titan or a Civic with +xp if you play on higher levels or with raging barbs. Are there plans for a replacement?

Greets
Ghostmaker