FfH2 0.15 Balance Recommendations

[Eddiit]

Burning Blood was removed from the Moroi because giving it to them required the Divine promotion, which gave access to a whole heap of spells for vampires and vampire lords that shouldn't be available.

SO can they create a new Moroi only promotion with the same effects?

 

[Grillick]

Good question. Best solution, I'd think, would be to remove the Divine promotion when upgrading the Moroi, in a fashion similar to that used when Ravenous werewolves become Blooded, and lose their Enraged promotion.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

In the department of tweaking, you might want to consider keeping the Dungeon at 20% maintenence reduction, bumping the Courthouses up to 45%, and slipping the Basillica down to 35%. That would still allow Order realms to achive 100% reduction, without changing the Courthouse much. As it is one of the key buildings for the generic Organized trait, reducing the Courthouse affects Organized realms a bit more than that others.

20% : 35% : 45% is also roughly the 1:2:3 ratio. So a Courthouse alone is almost 1/2 reduction. A Courthouse and a Dungeon together is roughly 2/3s reduction. And a Courthouse+Dungeon (available to all) is roughly twice as effective as a Basilica alone (religion-specific realms).

I realize this is a small change. Just throwin it out there. File it under 'possible fine-tunings'

 

[Firestrom]

I have found that in nearly every game that the Luichurp are in they have an extremley small empire and are on the bottom of the pile in every respect. Is this a problem with the civ or a coincidence?

 

[Grillick]

Coincidence. It's generally tied to how high-leveled they can get Barnaxus, and how long he stays alive.

 

[Sureshot]

probably symptomatic of your game settings, what settings do you play? ofr instance, if you play smaller maps with more civs, creative trait leaders really shine because theyre better at land grabbing, and such. settings can play a big role and many players use similar settings in all their games.

 

[Firestrom]

That might be it. I usually play standard (all my comp can handle well) and fractal.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Archery is one tech off of Hunting, which is as useful for Luchuirps as for anyone. But since they don't get any further archers, I'd raise their cost (maybe) and kill their archery range requirement on slingers, and move Velox workshop to something else. (It takes two techs to get to precision, and tha's all it gives them.) This would also be good to give them one more unit that doesn't require a building since otherwise their troops are over-connected to buildings.

Now that I've played more of my game, I DO underastand some of what you're saying. I haven't gotten to the Velox Workshop ... ah that's their version of the Weaponsmith or Armorer, yes? ... anyway, I didn't get that far, and I'm no sure I want to run through to the end of this game.

It started off great. I got a great start, then it sputtered, then I got my feet under me, almost, when I saw a largish stack of Clan too close to my border and too far from home. I ran my warriors over there and suer enough, Clan declared on me. As my reserves arrived at teh hot LZ, Orthus appreared right where my reserves deployed from. So they countermarched back leaving a warrior and a Lion to defend the other city. Basically, I had to hold defend my #2 overall city against three Orthus attacks, him STR6 5* w/Axe, and me with STR 2 Warriors and my best unit wounded for the first two rounds of combat. If I held him for three turns, I would be able to ean enough gold aftwer a few turns 0% R&D to rush Bambur. If I lost the first three battles, well, I had only three Warriors available >> Game over man. Orthus died on his second attack. And the city facing the Clan almost held. In fact, it did hold against the Clan. But there was a Barbarian SPearman tagging along. Boom went the city, and then my 'pal' Bannor came in to plant his own cities on 'my' area. We fought some more, by which time my experienced warriors were dead, but Wood Golum #1 had deployed and fought. I made peace with the Clan, by now, on the opposite side of Bannor.

So I was left with 5 cities. My army from that point out consited of roughly 1 Warior / city owned, plus Braxas (also rushed during the war) and Bambur with Orthus' Axe. I used my Wood Golom plus a brand-new one on Aecheron to soften him up, then killed him in a 100% attack with Bambur. I was exploiting all the land this opened up when good-pal Varn asked for help against his war enemy Hippus. Going to war with Hippus is not a yes/no question but a when question, so I declared. The Wood Golom had been replaced and a new one en route to the front. Hippus released his raiders, they blasted a new city of mine and razed a bunch of stuff. But then they were dead and my heroes and Wood Goloms methodically captured the entire Hippus empire. So I went from a small realm with a shakey economy, to a "doublewin" strategic situation, all because we followed in the wake of one uber-unit that could not lose, plus an increasing swarm of goloms that were "only" 99.9% killers (Baraxas and his kindling kindred.) I mean, at one point the two hero units were the only units I had in the field, and only my capitol produced hammers well. I went from that past Orthus past Aecheron, ate up Hippus, and took first place in size. It was all on the back of my heroes. My economy was poorly developed.

But after ingesting this massive empire, and leacing every city garrisoned with whatever unit we could find, I could not bear the thought of garrisonning this behemoth. I had one city that could make Wood Goloms, one that could make Adepts, one that could (but hadn't) made siege equipment, and none that could make Slingers. (Lots of Temples though.) I didn't even have 1 Warrior/city at this point. The thought of building Wood Golom for each city made me just call the game a win. If Aecheron and Hippus couldn't stop me at 5 cities, no one was stopping me at the 16 or 18 I had by then.

Its a real interesting concept. But I think Kael's plan to dial back the Golom power some is needed. And I agreee now 100% with the idea to make Slingers buildable anywhere. The Lurchurip need some love in the flexibiity department.

I'll also run up the flagpole the idea of scrapping Wood Goloms and giving the Lurcuirp Axemen. I guess making Slingers buildable everywhere would let them upgrade their Warriors to something else. But Axemen are useable for more than city defense ... I don't know, seems like it might give them flexibility in the early/mid game. Give them more breathing room before they transition to a Golom army, and same for their opponents.

I'd also consider toning down Bambur by a STR point. He's a one-Dwarf nation-wrecking machine! (Which is cool, if that nation is packed gulla Elfs )

 

[Firestrom]

Bambour is basically a super-unit for a large portion of the game. I love that little guy!

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

That could be a play-style preference on my part, but the problem I've always seen with city-defender promotions is that you actually have to be attacked to level up these units enough to make them really useful - dual-role units you can use to pick off raiders and get promos, or you can send them back to your cities as defenders after seasoning while rotating out your garrisons to get some combat experience in their turn. Relying on my enemies to siege my cities doesn't seem an optimal strategy to me.

Essentially the same problem comes with the mounted units - because they are weaker than melee units, you try to avoid battle with them, but if you avoid battle, you stay weak. If you are fighting defensively, heroes allied with Priests are far better than horsemen (with Mobility and a couple combat promotions any Priest is a more than a match even for the Tier 3 horse units - and the Priests don't have to fight to get these promotions, so it is trivial to have some in reserve), and as far as pillaging goes a stack of four melee units that mostly stick to rugged terrain will outperform any dozen cavalrymen.

In vanilla Civ the cavalry units rule because they are powerful enough to make their speed useful in that you can overwhelm a city before it can be reinforced by bringing enough of them - it doesn't make sense here, because being weaker than melee units you would need so many that it would be horribly wasteful and a sure path to defeat.

However, in reality cavalry weren't all that useful in taking cities so it does make logical sense, however in reality cavalry also had other roles that can't really be modelled that well on a strategic level - you can't cut off your enemy's supply routes, you can't break his morale by charging in from the flank, you don't need to force him to stand and give battle, there aren't any poorly trained and equipped levies that you can overrun and panic, etc.

The one thing you CAN do is pillage with them, but since they don't have the ability to run away if attacked (as they could historically unless you brought cavalry of your own or managed to get them trapped against rough terrain) they are just not worth the effort - if you are going to have to stand and fight, it makes sense to bring your best fighters, 'cause all your mobility does is move you into killing range of your opponent more quickly.

One further idea I had was to give cavalry +100% plains defensive/offensive bonuses, but since they don't get defensive bonuses at all I don't know if that's even possible. That way, they would rule the open spaces, as is proper, but once in rough terrain they would be vulnerable, as is also proper. Then it would be hard to dislodge raiders without cavalry of your own, thereby giving them an essential role you'd ignore at peril.

Aside on the units with city defender. I like these units as cost-effective garrison units. In vanilla civ, you could put fill rearward city garrisoms with an old Warrior if you still had any lying round. But in FfH, there is the possibility a Shadow will come along and kill that Warrior and that city. (At least, human players will do that.) But even one Longbowman with City Defender 1 and some tall walls will make such attacks dicy.

I liked a lot of your comments on cavalry and they sparked a thought. In one of my games I noticed that occasionally a unit would refuse to attack Aecheron because it was 'feared' You probably see where this is going. How about giving certain mounted units the "Refuse Combat" promotion. It would act like the Fear spell ... when it triggered it would force the attacker into a Withdrawal action. The odds of triggering Refuse Combat would differ from Fear, but the function would be the same. It should trigger reliably against foot units, well against 'militia-grade' mounted, and work only rarely (if at all) against attacking units whch also posess Refuse Combat.

This would allow a mounted unit to potentially avoid any number of combats in a round without having to surrender its tile. Sounds like a screening force, maybe? But if a mounted unit is in the same tile with a non-mounted unit, and they come under attack, the odds are the foot unit would defend first. So the "Refuse Combat" ability would come into play only mounted units were defending that tile. (Or the other units in teh tile are weak.) (That is, you could not make a slow-plodding invasion force "invulnerable" by escorting them with several mounted units all spamming "Fear" on any defender sent out to intercept.)

Refuse Combat could also be given to units presumed to be a personality and accopaning small bodyguard ... Adepts, Zealots, etc. They'd probably be riding personal mounts, role-playing concept there. So maybe the concept would work with them too. ATDTWISISBD.

I don't know the limitations to programing situation aspects ... affecting the odds depending on terrain (no refuseing combat if you are in a city!) or the presence of friendly mon-mounted units in the tile. If possible, certain situational modifications could be included.

Think this might fill what feels missing in your mounted unit experience?

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Bambour is basically a super-unit for a large portion of the game. I love that little guy!

Bambour goes where Bambur wants!

 

[Frozen-Vomit]

0.15 Patch "e":

1. Fixed some of Arendel's diplomacy tags.
2. Added a Eurabatres pedia entry written by Wilboman.
3. It now costs 135 gold to upgrade a Warrior to a Drown.




should'nt this be scaled be playing speed?

 

[Jono]

3. It now costs 135 gold to upgrade a Warrior to a Drown.

Does this mean the drown ability is gone?

 

[Bad Player]

It should be remembered that an undead unit is less powerful than a living unit because 1) they can't keep citizens in a city happy with their protection and 2) opponents can give the undead slaying promotion to hurt them. However are they affected by other characters' (e.g. Archeron's) fear?


Deathling it was a pretty big exploit being able to produce Drown for the cost of a warrior!

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

This is not a balance reccomendation, but it might help with future balance tweaks in the combat portion. Has the Design Team considered doubling the base STR value of every unit in th e game? This would let y'all 'fine-tune' unit values twice as finely.

Note that I assume the combat system treats a 30STR vs 20STR battle the same a a !5 vs 10. Both are 3:2 odds in the favor of the attacker. I assume each battle would have the same odds of victory. If the game does NOT work like that, then this idea cannot be used.

Let's take my first-impression thought to reduce Bambur's base STR from 7 to 6. That might be too big a change. But if Scouts were 2 STR, Warriors 4, Axemen 8, and Bambur was 14, you could tweak Bambur down to 13. You could make smaller changes when playtesting calls for it. And the idea mightbe used to smoothen the transitions as more powerful units come into the field.

(I am not suggesting this to try to make it easier to change Bambur.)

Of course, this wold require remendous busy-work. All the databases would have to be checked and double-checked. Or at least I assume.

Just throwin it out there.

 

[Silverkiss]

Imagine The Mithril Golem.... 80 str ! LOL ! w00t i love it

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

The last thought and then I will get on to playing the new patch and experiencing a new FfH Civilization.

As I play these game I notice I have a lot of fun in the begining. Well, not the absolute begining, when you are hitting End Turn 20 times in a row, but while your realm is still smaller than most of the AI civs. Then eventually one of the AI civs attacks you, or pisses you off, or otherwise calls upon itself Operation Regime Change. You go to war.

Often times this results in the player ripping off a few AI cities and adding them to the empire. Sometimes, quite a few cities. Usually the war comes to an end. The formerly big AI realm is now reduced to a rump empire. The player's empire is now 50% or 100% bigger. You were once surrounded by 300lb gorrillas, now you are a 400lb gorilla.

This is all fine and good and it is, after all, what the game is about.

But when it happens early on, all those neat end-game tech just don't see the light of day.

The opportunity is too tempting (for me at least) to reduce any other remotely threatening Civ to rump status. Then you're stuck with a 700 lb gorrila of an empire, and it's just a matter of you choosing which type ov victory to pursue. (I upped my difficulty setting when starting 0.15, and I guess I should try a different game speed. I'm sure there's a way to get closer to the 'sweet spot'. That will help, but the same basic dynamic will still exist.)

Soooo I was thinking, is there a way to design a bit more "comeback-ness" into AI realms? This is what I came up with:

1) Significantly higher defense bonuses for defending a city. I don't want to throw out specific numbers, but to give an idea of what I mean ... you know how you see a lot of '+25%" defensive values on your early-era maps? I'm thinking you should probably be seeing three-digit percentage vaues instead. At least after some Palisades and/or Walls are up.

2) Up the effect of War Weariness. Again, I am not going to offer any numbers. The idea though, is to make long wars quite hard to continue until technology and civic advancements come more into play.

3) Perhaps the Raging Barbs would have to be upped in strength a little, so as to have SOME sense of threat against the stronger defenses. It's a possibility; maybe not.

The idea here is that early wars would be raider wars. Even if the player utterly crushed the enemy's mobile forces, the cultural borders would remain intact so long as even a handful of defenders were alive to garrison each city. (Something the AI does do well, or I miss my guess.)

Even if the player scoured every road and improvement from the enemy city, it's Workers would (probably) be protected behind city walls. The crushing war weariness would eventually cause even the most determined player to eventually sue for peace.

Then out come the workers and the AI re-develops its still-substantial empire. It has been dramatically weakened, but it's borders are largely intact. Wars will be briefer and city captures much harder. They will still occur, but with luck, will not reduce AI realms to rump status. So when the war ends, the AI civs have a much better 'bounceback' abiity.

Keep 'em alive for the pile-on, I say!

I have great hopes for the pile-on AI changes done. My fondest, fondest hope for this game is to re-create the opening game tension with end-game capabilities ... and them neat Armegeddon wonders. But maybe the AI empires still need a bit of help surviving long enough to this point? I figure, any AI civ that can retain its cultural borders (for the most part) long enough to reach the tier3/4 transition era will be a credible problem to consider as Ragnarok looms ever-nearer.

Higher city defenses also bring in a greater role for siege weapons. It might also bring about a side-effect of making mounted units the ore desireable.

OK, on to playing this thing called 0.15e.

[Edit: Moved tis paragrpaph to a PS for continuity in the main article:

Upping War Weariness enhances a way to make civs "different" (Once those mid/endgame tech do come into play, that is.) A civ could be particularly resistant to war wearniness so as to balance off some other weakness. Say the archtype Orcs ... always at war ... always dying in droves. Or Hippus perhaps ... war is fine so long as it is raiding. But city fighting? Ick. Or flip-flopped, "strong" Civs could be suceptable to war weariness. Inability to build dungeons for some Good realms, perhaps.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Imagine The Mithril Golem.... 80 str ! LOL ! w00t i love it

Hee hee!

Yeah, he's the reason to limit it doubling. Otherwise it's easier to just multiply everything by 10 ... 400 STR Mithril golom. Heeeeeere Vanilla Civ tankie tankie tankie ... come out to play-ayyyyyyy. I don't know if the Team wants 100+ STR units, or if Civ4 can handle a 3-digit number in that field. Mithrilhead sets the upper limit.

 

[Grillick]

Those suggestions, Unser, might also do a good deal to 'balance' the Ljosalfar?

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Those suggestions, Unser, might also do a good deal to 'balance' the Ljosalfar?

There's no reason any of those would have to apply to Ljosalfar. The other side of that coin, of course, is that they could. Having a huge economy that goes straight to hell the moment an unpopular war is launched is certainly a balanced concept, in theory.

But no, I didn't make any suggestion with the idea it was a way to approach Ljosalfar. It just came to me as I watched Bambur casually strie through all of Hippus, pausing only at each city, one turn per defender. Towards the end I had a bit or WW to contend with ... one population point was actually lost to starvation, on the very last turn of Hippus' existance. That's when the thought was born ... tougher cities and more WW, and I wouldhave a vengful Hippus on my borders for the next century or more.

As a side note ... this was my first game I actually got Orthus' Axe. If I known I could attack more than once/turn even WW wouldn't have meant too much.