FfH2 0.15 Balance Recommendations

I seem to recall a set of comments on the problems Veil have with disease (specifically them having no cure disease, in spite of the fact they spread it).

A couple of suggestions (no partiular order).

1) Make the disease civ-specific (so you don't get infected by your own disease, even through a third party.

2) Allow units to have a chance to recover each turn, You could make this happen as a result of the Sacrifice the Weak civic (the diseased ones get culled out).

Sacrifice the Weak seems, well, weak at the moment anyhow.

I prefer 2) above, as it seems like it should be simple enough to implement. You could even put a level dependency in the recovery, so tougher units get a better chance.

[My first post, that! Hope it's in the right place... ]

 

ya that makes sense, and personally i really need a better incentive for sacrifice the weak than currently exists.. its just not worth it atm unless theres somethin im missing

 

The only incentive I know of, is that some evil civs like you more.

 

I think it would be worth trying the summoning trait with just 2 turn long summons. Another option would be to give all summoners combat 1 (so there summons get a combat bonus).

 

Or a free promotion for being upgraded to a conjurer, and another for being upgraded to a summoner?

 

Having played the Sheaim extensively, in fact they are the only race I play i agree with what you're saying. Spamming Chaos marauders is a tactic no other race can compete with. Its like spamming with macemen but instead of having to pay 120 hammers a pop you pay zero. The end result is that war which should be detrimental and costly for both sides isnt for the Sheaim. Ive been in third place and taken over every single city of the first place player in my game(about 15+) without losing a single unit. There's something wrong with that. Any other race doing this would lose thousands of hammers worth of units.

I like the summoner idea but i agree with Unser and his past posts. The turn that summons last should be lowered since as it is now it allows you to assault a city up to 12 tiles away (assuming mobility and spell extension 1 & 2) without risk to your conjurors. Id rather see the turns aspect of the summoning trait lowered, even down to one, but give their summoned units cool or unique bonuses or promotions. Perhaps ones based on mana. So if you had water mana maybe your summons can water walk, chaos mana would give first strike, etc.. neat stuff like that. This would help correct the game-breaking mechanics of the current summon ability but still make thier summoned units quite a bit tougher.

 

The Chaos Marauder thing isn't just the Sheaim. I've done much the same as Thessa.

CM's are ridiculously efficient.

Upping the "turn to barb" chance might fix things - or skew the chance as more of them arrive.

Of course that doesn't stop you summoning more to try to kill the rogue ones.

 

Fortresses bug me somewhat at the moment:

1 - They're far too weak, IMO. No way is a forest better def than a fortress!

2 - You can only build in your territory. Unreasonable to let you build in enemy territory, but unclaimed land should be ok.

 

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=181357

thats a thread specifically about fortresses, so far no changes have been made that im aware of but i wish there would be some changes, one particlar change would make the ais use them frequently (forts improving sentry towers for a bonus)


unfortunately, to build outside borders requires an SDK change, though im hoping it gets in eventually anyways, since itd be tons of fun and allow some neat things

 

Thanks for that.

I'll post my ramblings there

 

Reduce chaos marauders to 6. Remove summoner from Thessa. It makes her equal to Sheaim, plus forests.

 

Heh, I was in much the same situation, except I was going to end the war with two more units than I had at the beginning, thanks to Inquisitor captures. Or so I thought ... the next turn a truely impressive number of units emerged from the fog of war to kill my captured Inquisitor, plus a good number of my own units. Then again, I wasn't even bothering to have my Eaters eat population. A better player would have avoided those losses.

Anyway, I agree there is probably a better way to give the Summoner trait flavor and substance without the 3-turn summonings. I'm supportinve of all the related comments made here recently. I'm not fanatical about any specific change, just hope the Team gives the subject some consideration.

 

A couple weeks ago someone suggested that Druids require access to a Nature node in order to learn all them nifty Nature-based spells. I posted in to second that requirement. I also added a suggestion that rule should extend to all units that have an ability to cast spells. But at teh time I could not rememebr my rationale for such a change.

Well, much to your chagrin I have remembered the rationale.

1) One reason to make such a change is sort of 'makes sense' for spell casting units to all folow the same rules. But 'makes sense' isn't good enough a reason.

2) A better reason is that certain magic use affects diplomatic relations. Well, it's more accurate to say that certain magics are supposed to affect diplomatic relations. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

If you are playing Ljosalfar and decide to build some Contagion-casting mages, you will need a Death Mana node. Building this node will earn you a major diplomatic negative with certain civilizations.

But if you are Calabim and you have developed Vampire technology, then you can create dozens of Contagion casting units and no civilization in the world will object. This is because Vampires do not need a Death Mana node in order to cast Death magic. Ditto for Ashen Veil and their Death-casting, Entropy-casting Priests.

3) Adding a node requirement for all units will admittedly affect a large numberof units. The largest effect however would be to make Desciple units especially Priests a tad less valuable. This in turn makes No State Religion games a bit mroe viable. I've recently played some extremely fun games without relying upon a state religion for long, long stretches. Since civilizations can thrive with no state religion, this leads me to believe the designers can reduce the "Religion Goodie Basket" by a caramel apple, and still leave religions as powerful forces to be reconed with in FfH. So it seems to me that if a religion wants to dabble in the Dark Arts, thar religion should, at least, earn the same international pariah status as secular dabblers in teh exact same Dark Arts.

4) Note that the node requirement would not actually inhibit players very much. Most religion's Holy City building prvides the core mana node type. 98.8673% of all startup maps offer at least one raw mana node within each civilizations' startup zone. The primary effect would be to ensure diplomatic penalties would apply if a civilization actually used the abhorred magic type.

Inventing Ashen Veil would not trigger the diplomatic effect. Building a Death and/or an Entropy node so the AV Priests could actually begin casting those spells would trigger the diplmatic penalties. Thus it would be possible to invent AV, or create a Death-casting hero, and avoid the diplomatic hit by delaying node construction.

Submitted for consideration FWIW.

 

it might be taken into account with the differing religions and the "youve fallen under the sway of a heathen religion" but i agree, need more diplomatic modifiers to make for easier friendships and more common enemies.

 

I agree. I like stirring up trouble. Me and Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker - all cut form the same cloth.

 

So now priests require incense and three specific types of mana to be as they are now? No, thanks. Priests get their magic directly from their gods, druids get it from communing with nature, it's only the mages and summoners that independently work their magic. Religions are powerful, but it's in the happicap department that they need the most work. At least, that's my opinion.

 

Mana nodes would be required but the number needed would vary according with control of the Holy City and depending on how good a match the religion was with that civ's Palace. I think it would lead to a bit more variation, because, quite frankly, right now I see myself building Water, Nature, and/or Fire nodes in most every game regardless of my civ or my religion. Those categories are just too darn convienient. The other categories have some nice spells too, though, if you give them a chance. The theory goes that by adding some more mana requirements, players might have the motivation to try those less-popular approaches in some games.

OTOH, I'd probably be content I think if the diplomatic relations reflected religious magic use. I think the diplomatic modifiers are tied to mana nodes not actual use of spells. That's the source of the idea.

Like I said, FWIW.

 

Wow, my both proposals made it to 0,16
And lawbringer is now 5, another change I was about to post

 

Yeap, thanks for the good advice.

 

Sorry to beat this horse again. I forgot one point. I'll make it and then put this topic on the back-burner.

Let's put aside the Priest unit for a moment. What of Arcane Barges, or Amurite Firebowmen? Do they too draw their powers directly from their gods? If so, why is there no religion requirement? If not, how do these units manned with 'commoners' learn magic spells immedeately it takes student of the arcane years to learn? And without a mana node to draw on? Or vampires, do they draw power from their gods? (Even Orderly vampires? )

Now Fire magic is very popular with player and AI alike. So most nations that field Fire Barges probably have a Fire node. (The Amurites might even get Fire on their Palace; I didn't look it up.) And there are no diplomatic penalties for Fire nodes. But Death and Entropy nodes do have a penalty, and few civs build such nodes. Yet the Calabim, or any AV civ, can cast massive amounts of Death magic without drawing the ire of Good.

The biggest effect would be on Priest units, agreed. But there are other units in the mix too.

Like I said, I think it would probably be enough if it was possible to program these diplomatic implications based on actual spell casting. But I suspect it is tied to ownership of certain mana nodes due to programmer sanity considerations.

I also doubt there will be much traction to this idea, so I am not going to blister my fingertips typing up advocacy for this point. It just bugs me enough that I have to bring up the topic FWIW. Then the itching goes away.