FfH2 0.15 Balance Recommendations

[Nikis-Knight]

i really don't think shes too tough strength wise, her plague ability is what makes her dangerous, but strength 7 without any good starter promotions (and no hero promotion?) makes her fairly easy to kill outright.

We need to give her the summon plague rats spell that was discussed a while back.

 

[Sureshot]

ya thatd be neat

atm i never bother building her because the plague ability is sketchy at best and when i did build her she ended up dead often

 

[QES]

Alright, when a city (especially your starting city) starts in nothing but floodplains, it cripples the game.

Now, isnt flood plains supposed to be great early on, suck late game?
The fact that its nigh impossible to use flood plains worries me a bit. If they were ONLY good for population growth and pumping out settlers and workers that'd be fine, but they cant even do that....even as the malakim.

The -1 health per floodplain negates the extra food gained by it. And flood plains dont particularly provide anything else, like hammers. Therefore, its a 2 food 1 gold square. In the beginning of the game this is death. And if youve NO forests, or hills near by, you simply have to WAIT to produce that settler, which can take forever. There must be some way to mitigate this, make it good for early game but not so great for mid/late game.

Hopefully this isnt too whiny of a post.
-Qes

 

[Sureshot]

you can build cottages and farms on them, they're like the best terrain ever, and late game you can vitalize them to plains/floodplains for 4 food 1 production and 1 commerce, plus either a farm (+2 food) or a cottage (+1 production +4 commerce) and even vitalize it to change the one production into another food... i dont think you fully understand floodplains lol

 

[Sureshot]

can heroes still be disbanded when you go on strike? havent had it come up in this game, but i lost an adventurer to a strike in a 0.14d game

itd be nice if all heroes cost no maintenance and couldnt be strike disbanded.

 

[QES]

you can build cottages and farms on them, they're like the best terrain ever, and late game you can vitalize them to plains/floodplains for 4 food 1 production and 1 commerce, plus either a farm (+2 food) or a cottage (+1 production +4 commerce) and even vitalize it to change the one production into another food... i dont think you fully understand floodplains lol

One cannot build that innital worker fast enough, Barbarians were knocking on my door by the time i had my first worker. The 0 hammer problem is the one i'm talking about. And if there was ''enough" food to produce workers and settlers quickly (to compensate, as the second city could be placed in hammer friendly territory) it'd be fine. But floodplains are not even useful for producing settlers and workers. I had 2 cities by the time my opponent civs had 4, and the barbarians had begun assaulting my territory before I even had a second warrior to defend said city.

-Qes

EDIT: Specifically, if it was feasiable to "use the extra" food to produce units, it'd be alright...but there IS no extra food. That -1 health kicks it, you need buildings (which in the beginng you do not have) to counter act the problem. My city in all 20 squares was flood plain...crazy double river situation. Had I a single woods, it'd have been fine. Had the "extra food" been useful to produce workers/settlers it'd have been fine. As it was I had to wait 60+ turns to produce a settler. I'll also note that the size of the city didnt particularly matter except to anger people in my city. The time to build was the same.

 

[Sureshot]

my last game i had forests and floodplains around me, and that city grew quick.

floodplains are amazing terrain, but especially useful early on before you reach the sickness cap, since then they are acting as a 3 production 1 commerce for outputting more settlers (if you stay below the sickness level you do get full use of their 3 food, and 3 food 1 trade is better then any other base tile)

though it would be nice if malakim got +1 production from desert tiles (in civ 3 you got 1 production from deserts, i dont see a problem with malakim getting what civ 3 deemed fair)

one weird thing, why dont desert floodplains get the -25% defense modifier and 2 movement cost? (i find low defense tiles easier to defend improvements, since you can let your enemies land on them and then ambush them there)

what would be even nicer for malakim would be deserts allowing quarries to be built on them, which could add a further 1 commerce and 1 production, and the chance of finding stone or marble

 

[QES]

my last game i had forests and floodplains around me, and that city grew quick.

floodplains are amazing terrain, but especially useful early on before you reach the sickness cap, since then they are acting as a 3 production 1 commerce for outputting more settlers (if you stay below the sickness level you do get full use of their 3 food, and 3 food 1 trade is better then any other base tile)

though it would be nice if malakim got +1 production from desert tiles (in civ 3 you got 1 production from deserts, i dont see a problem with malakim getting what civ 3 deemed fair)

My city was sick nearly from the beginning. There were one set of hills, and 19 floodplain/desert. The floodplains looked juicy, so i poped down the city. Then i noticed that my city wasnt growing very "Fast". It was sick nearly from the start, and the 3 free techs i got from goodie huts, were the only thing that kept me "on par" score wise with the AI.

What i noticed, is that because i get a -1 health PER floodplains utilized, and each floodplain is a 3/1 food/gold squaire, effectively, im only generating 2/1 food/gold per tile. In this....its not that great. Considering each citizen takes 2 to eat, and the city tile itself is worth 2. Im generating a whopping 2 food extra per turn, REGARDLESS of how big my city gets. I built a warrior, which took a long time at the 1 hammer progress. And then i built a settler, which as the 3 total input in production took forever. I know that "Waiting" and building a worker first (i did have agriculture) would be another 20 some turns behind my rivals. So i settled first - the only reason i had warriors by the time the barbarians came was because of that second city. Then i finished a worker when all hell broke loose. I would up giving up, because the penalties were just too steep initially. I couldnt maintain the farms, and cottages, becuase barbarins looked at them with druel in their mouths. All in all it COULD have been awesome, had I a single forest in the area. The fact that I was Malakim just hurt it all the more, maybe they should not receive penalties in health from floodplain? Or mayhap there should be a limit on how much negative health floodplains can generate. Over all a 2 1 square without hammers is crippling In the very beginning of the game.
-Qes

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Treetop defense effects attacks too. Makes sense if goint into forests, but if you are in a forest next to a city, until the last defender is gone, you'll get the bonus.

 

[Thonnas]

I don't know how balanced or unbalanced this is, but it kinda got me miffed: I usually don't even bother making any kind of effort for bowyers as the gains it gives for the amount of research requiered doesn't seem so great. I'm usually at or past iron working by the time I get research or trade for it. Well I was playing a game as Amurites and after getting bronze working I found no copper resoruces in any reasonably accessible areas, the nearest was deap within my neighbors territory. So I began making plans to warmonger and since I was Amurite I decided to go for bowyers to get the bowmen instead of head for iron working and hope for the best. Though I had built up a preaty good research base, this still tooks some time as I was cramed into 3 cities (one almost devoid of commerce). Well I finally get there and am ready to start making some bowmen to get my war on and I find out they requier a metal. One of the perks about bowmen in vanilla was that they did not requier metal, and therefor could provide some means of medium strength combat for those lacking metal.
I understand that a 6 str unit with no resource requierment might be a bit much, so maybe they could be 5 but not requier metal.

 

[Sureshot]

the tech for them takes long enough to warrant 6 str without resources id think, i hate researching that tech, it takes forever O_o


i added more to my previous post, QES, that you prolly missed

about your situation.. floodplains are good.. in moderation, i only had about 4 or 5, and some forests, which worked out great

 

[ydejin]

My city was sick nearly from the beginning. There were one set of hills, and 19 floodplain/desert. The floodplains looked juicy, so i poped down the city. Then i noticed that my city wasnt growing very "Fast". It was sick nearly from the start, and the 3 free techs i got from goodie huts, were the only thing that kept me "on par" score wise with the AI.

I've done this before. It's all about balance. Mostly flood plains is good. All flood plains gives to much sickness to grow the city.

 

[Grey Fox]

I've done this before. It's all about balance. Mostly flood plains is good. All flood plains gives to much sickness to grow the city.

I would say, Some floodplains, 3-6 of them. Some hills, and the rest plains/grasslands with resources and forests is a good start. (and 1-3 coastal tiles all with sea resources, if its a coastal city)

And plenty of river.

 

[Silverkiss]

lol, thats too much to ask, dont you think ?

Perfect city placement ^^

 

[Eddiit]

The vampire Lord requiring lvl 12 is crazy. I dodnt think Ive ever had a unit hit lvl 12 in any game ive played. Lvl 6 is fine but 12 is insane.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Wait, are flood plains giving a full +1 now? I thought they were 1/3 or something before. Also, maybe the Malakim shouldn't face the penalty, seeing as how they are deserts people. It would be a light economic advantage, but still nice.

Oh, and can't vampires go above 100 xp by devouring populations?

Edit: forgot to mention this... maybe we should make Alchemy dependent on something else, too, but make Typhoid Mary a hero? Heck, even if she's only strength 5. Currently, only the AI builds her (and very early for some reason).

 

[Silverkiss]

I alredy got vampires whit more than 700 exp... of course i alredy could have won the game, and was just having fun.

 

[Sareln]

The vampire Lord requiring lvl 12 is crazy. I dodnt think Ive ever had a unit hit lvl 12 in any game ive played. Lvl 6 is fine but 12 is insane.

Feasting on the civilian population used to be a quick and easy way to get enough experience for a significantly large number of levels. I don't know how effective it is anymore now that it takes 2 pop points instead of 1.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Need to teach the AI what to learn as a Conjurer. I'm beseiging a Sheaim city with 5 conjurers, all either enchantment, fire (not on desert) or no spheres at all. They could be providing me experience!

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Maybe I missed something, here, but aren't the mana nodes supposed to give a and boost? Now we're back to square one, trying to keep them out of your workable radius...