FfH2 0.15 Bugs

[Kael]

I'm not sure if this is a bug, or just really, really bad luck, but...

Playing as Perpentach on a huge fantasy realm map at Prince level I had war declared on me by five AI civs in two turns.

Yes, I was using Aggressive AI, but never had anything happen like this before.

The first three game from civs that were Furious (2) and Annoyed. The other two (One I had just traded with for techs) were 'only' cautious and we had open borders agreements. They cancelled and declared war on me the next turn.

One gripe I have about this game is how the AI civs can 'red out' the tech and resources they will not trade as well as red out the declaration of war on other civs. You, of course, cannot do this.

This leads to absurd 'Trade Animal Mastery for 15 gold' and outright threats. When you refuse, your standing suffers.

Why can't the human player make certain tech and resources off limits as well as war declarations. It is frustrating to constantly be asked to declare war or end agreements with other civs when you cannot do same with others who have them redded out.

Thanks

Having things redded out just means the AI won't trade them. Human players can do the same thing by not agreeing to trades. I could make those trades "white" and just have the AI always refuse but the red is just there as a tool for human players so you dont waste time asking for deals that the AI will never give.

 

[Kael]

Ok I managed to reproduce that ancient forest bug.

Look at the attached screenshots or get the save (0.15k) and move the complete stack to the ancient forest. That's all I did between those two screenshots.

Why are A and B moved back?!

Cool, thanks for the save. Im going to address this by only checking for the treant chance if the tile is empty. As it currently is the units get moved off to prepare for the drop of the treant but the treant can't drop because there is another unit already in the tile. So there is no real reason to move them off.

 

[goodgulf]

Forgive me for not reading the entire thread, it's massive. Perhaps you guys can set up a bugzilla or something for easier searching?

Anyways, love this mod. I played FFH (original) about once through and it was OK, though I was disappointed that the AI didn't understand the sheer nastiness of an archmage. It was insistent on building 6 and 7 strength melee units, which my archmages mowed down by the stackfull from a safe distance behind their own city walls. I'm hoping this issue has been resolved or will be in FFH2.

I digress. I am on my first playing of FFH2. LOVE it. Great work. I'm trying the elves (please please make the Svartalfar a full race). Love the approach that being an elf implies; I've forested every square I own, play as a completely xenophobic race (NO open borders or foreign trade, EVER), and have managed to still be on top despite never chopping a single forest.

So, some issues that may be bugs, or by design or what-not for your perusal:

1) I read somewhere that "Forester gives a bonus on attack as well as defense" (I think on the wiki). By forester, I assume this means Woodsman. I was not able to confirm this with the odds display.

2) Woodsmen II is available to archery units, but Woodsmen I (a requirement of Woodmsen II) is not. Also, since warriors can upgrade to Elven Archers, but Elven Swordsmen cannot, I find myself building warriors to give them the Woodsmen I promotion, then paying to convert them to Archers, so I can get them Woodsmen II. (This also means Gilden Silveric, that Legendary Elven Hero who single-handedly destroyed the Calabim Vampire Clans, cannot get Woodsman, for example, despite being Level 14.) Something is just not right here, flavor wise.

3) Bloom and Spring do not work on Flood Plain/Desert squares. This may be by design, but I'd like to petition for a change here. It is fully possible for plains and forest to be by rivers, and, as the Elven player, if you have the bad luck like I did to get smacked down in the middle of a desert by a river, it sucks to have to leave half your land unforested. The 7 flood plain squares surrounding my capital are an unsightly blight on what is otherwise a beautiful and ancient forest, stretching from sea to sea.

4) Finally, this may be core game related, but I can build Elven Cottages on Grass/Hill/Forest squares, but not on Plains/Hill/Forest squares for some reason. I dont think I have a Plains/Hill/Ancient Forest yet, so I can't check that.

Thanks, and keep up the outstanding and amazing work. By far, this is (assuming a resonable AI in the end) the best Fantasy Strategy game I have ever played, in my 25+ years of computer gaming.

 

[Silverkiss]

Forests and Flood plains cant coexist because both are Features. And you can Vitalize Lands (III-rank spell) to turn a Flood Plains/Desert into an Flood Plains/Grassland (5 food yay), altough there will NEVER be a forest in that tile.

Cottages need 2 food, and PLains Hills only have 1. When you have an Ancient Forest on that tile you will be able to build a cottage there.

 

[Neo Knight]

Did you happen to switch to the Ashen Veil religion at the same time? If so, that's intentional. If not, I don't know.

No I remained Runes of Kilmorph. I also noticed that I had built a National Unit in another city at the same time. I found that when I saved and closed out of the game (went to desktop) then loaded the game back up it was fine....until I built another military unit in the city of Wercer.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Ah, you mean that cottages need at least one food on the tile they're built on, while hills/plains don't have any food. Ancient forests give one food, so elven cottages can be build on hills/plains/ancient forest. This is intended, as far as I know.

 

[Silverkiss]

ya, that. I dont have civ now so my info is a bit confused

 

[goodgulf]

Forests and Flood plains cant coexist because both are Features. And you can Vitalize Lands (III-rank spell) to turn a Flood Plains/Desert into an Flood Plains/Grassland (5 food yay), altough there will NEVER be a forest in that tile.

I can accept the exclusivity of features. I guess the real problem I have is spring not working. I'd like to see spring upgrade flood plains/desert to empty plains. It works on every other desert square, why not flood plains? Especially since flood plains is a <feature> of desert, and the spell is meant to affect the <base terrain>, that tells me that it should have any effect on the spring spell. If this doesn't seem reasonable, perhaps a new spell is in order ("solidify soil" in the earth domain) to remove the flood plains feature?

As an example, spring *does* work on Deserts with Oases, which is a base terrain of desert, with a feature of oasis. It has no problem making plains out of these squares. (And btw, maybe it should remove the Oasis when it does so? Having a plains/oasis is neat, but silly. I call them my "sacred groves").

Cottages need 2 food, and PLains Hills only have 1. When you have an Ancient Forest on that tile you will be able to build a cottage there.

I'll assume here you meant cottages need 1 food, which is a perfectly good explanation to me. You can close #4 as wont-fix.


Not a bug, but a suggestion:

I find it somewhat peculiar that your "elements" are Fire, Earth, Water... and Nature; even though there is mention (under the Tower of Elements) of an Air element. This is a major design issue, I'm sure, but maybe there could be some consideration for an actual "Air" element, and Nature can get moved into the same type of sphere as Life/Death or Chaos/Law, or be a 5th "element", being the summation of the other 4.

I'd also suggest merging Chaos and Entropy, and Life and Spirit (conceptually, these are pretty much the same).

So, you could have Elementalism: Fire, Earth, Air, Water; Alteration: Mind, Body, Dimensional, Enchantment; Life Force: Law/Chaos/Life/Death.

Nature could be its own 4th sphere, or be considered the combination of the above 3 spheres, or be the combination of the 4 components of either Elementalism or Life Force (or whatever you want to call it).

Some potentially cool Air spells would be Flying (massive movement bonus, no terrain penalties), Summon Air Elemental, Haste (if its not under Body already), etc. Just seems weird there is no "Air" element.

Anyways, I know you guys have probably had a bazillion hours of design discussion around this topic (I see how 2 spheres each lead to Summon/Sorcery, so some of this may have been "forced"), so I don't expect you to make any huge changes here, but that's my 2 cents for what it's worth (about 1/50 of a dollar, I'd wager).

Thanks again.

 

[Silverkiss]

Oasis are allowed to stay (and be springed) because they are so rare.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I find it somewhat peculiar that your "elements" are Fire, Earth, Water... and Nature; even though there is mention (under the Tower of Elements) of an Air element. This is a major design issue, I'm sure, but maybe there could be some consideration for an actual "Air" element, and Nature can get moved into the same type of sphere as Life/Death or Chaos/Law, or be a 5th "element", being the summation of the other 4.

I think this is likely eventually.

Some potentially cool Air spells would be Flying (massive movement bonus, no terrain penalties), Summon Air Elemental, Haste (if its not under Body already), etc. Just seems weird there is no "Air" element.

Air elemental and Haste are in already, you must build Hippus summoners to find the air elemental at the moment, and yes, haste is body.

Julius is right, Oasis are rarely more than one in a city tile, and can't hold improvements, so spring is reasonble there, gameplay-wise. Floodplains are not uncommon, and can hold improvements, so spring was deemed too strong given its tech placement.
Druids, however, can improve floodplains (indeed, I find this their best feature.)

 

[Silverkiss]

Yeps, grass/flood with a town and arcane lore is awesome !

 

[goodgulf]

Julius is right, Oasis are rarely more than one in a city tile, and can't hold improvements, so spring is reasonble there, gameplay-wise. Floodplains are not uncommon, and can hold improvements, so spring was deemed too strong given its tech placement.
Druids, however, can improve floodplains (indeed, I find this their best feature.)

Since we're passing away from bugs and into design, I'll make one final comment and then leave it.

I don't really understand the above statement. Is converting a 3F1G tile to a 1F1P1G tile overly strong? If anything, thats a backwards-move (-1F) as compared to converting a -- desert square to a 1F1P square (+1F1P). That'd be a worse improvement by 2 Food and 1 Production.

Additionally, this strategy is something that probably only the elves would ever want to do (in light of the above negative impact), with their ability to really exploit forests. The technique requires time (for a placed forest to grow into an ancient) and a Priest capable of casting Bloom as well as a Mage capable of casting Spring, plus time for the cottage to grow into a town. Plus time to get to Arcane Lore. With all my efforts hell-bent on getting here, it still took me about 400 years before I had fully forested my land, and I'm still waiting for a lot of them to grow into ancients.

Flood plain/desert with a town and arcane lore: 3F1P5G.
Plains on a river, with Ancient Forest, an elven Town and Arcane Lore: 2F3P5G.
Plains on a river, with a Town and Arcane Lore, for anyone else: 1F2P5G (can't imagine anyone doing that).

Doesn't seem completely outbalanced to me (net gain is 2 production at cost of 1 food), but maybe it is. Am I missing something here?

I think this is likely eventually.

Air elemental and Haste are in already, you must build Hippus summoners to find the air elemental at the moment, and yes, haste is body.

Cool cool on the Air thingie. And kudos on the racial-specific stuff, that really gives the game flavor.

I think my next game will be tried with all Tech Trading off, to prevent me from getting every tech thru trading anyways, and force more civ distinctions. Hopefully, this won't handicap the AI too much.


Thanks for taking on this discussion, sorry we got so far from the bugs. Please don't forget about the other 2 issues I mentioned, which I am more certain are actual bugs somewhere (whether in documentation or implementation, I don't know).

 

[goodgulf]

Yeps, grass/flood with a town and arcane lore is awesome !

Good point, I hadn't considered this one: it's 5F1P5G.

More total food/production than a plain with an ancient forest, so again I query: how is changing a flood plain/desert to a plain an outbalanced move?

Bottom line, as an elf, I'm more interested in the defensive advantages of the forest than I am in picking up one food or production here or there. It's a gaping hole in my defenses, through no fault of my own (bad placement at the beginning of the game) that I can never remedy. I don't build walls around my cities (elves hate walls) - because I have the forests. My units don't sit in the cities, they roam the lands free as nature intended.

^^ can you tell I'm having fun with this?


Anyways, not being able to forest on those flood plains just kinda takes the shine off the game, and I'd wager that for the 7-10 squares on the entire map that it affects (and again, only really would it help the elves, and only after significant investment) - I'd wager it wouldn't unbalance things too much to allow it.

 

[goodgulf]

I think I just figured out the disconnect.

What I'm suggesting is not to change flood plain/desert to flood plain/plains, I'm saying, change the desert to a plain, and *LOSE* the flood plain (since it is only applicable to desert base terrains).

Same argument for losing the oasis when upgrade those.

I think if you change the base terrain, you should also re-evaluate which features can exist on them (and why you should maybe disallow forests to be bloom'd directly onto desert squares - and yes, i tried it).

This could get nasty, if someone scorch'd your Ancient Forest/Plains into a desert, it would wipe out your forest (but after all, shouldn't it?).

Late!

 

[Silverkiss]

You can&#180;t bloom a desert, at least not a desert/hills.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

You know, if you want to keep the elves out of the deserts, try the FfH Fractal map generator. It's really fun, as it puts the elves in forests, Malakim in deserts, dwarves in hills, Lanun on the coast, etc. I rarely play FfH without it.

 

[goodgulf]

Well I did just scorch a plains/forest and it gave me desert/forest, which about as weird a square as I can think of.

Also, I'm 99% sure that I tried to bloom a desert just to see if it would work, and was surprised that it did. Once I conquer some more desert, I'll try it out to verify.


Chandra, thanks for the map tip.

 

[goodgulf]

Also, I'm 99% sure that I tried to bloom a desert just to see if it would work, and was surprised that it did. Once I conquer some more desert, I'll try it out to verify.

Good thing I left that 1% in there, cuz I just verified that you cannot Bloom a desert.

However, you can get a forested desert by scorching a desert/plains, as I mentioned.

What does this all mean?

a) You cannot grow trees in a desert, but they will remain behind if you turn a plains into a desert.

b) But, even though you can turn desert into plains suitable for growing trees on, this doesn't work if there is a flood plain or oasis in said desert.

Bottom line, it seems like the spells that are affecting the base terrain should maybe be made more intelligent about knocking off features that can't naturally exist on the "new" base terrain.

^ But, that's just one man's opinion.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I believe the best defensive bonus you can get from tiles outside a city in this whole game is a Malakim unit in a hills/desert/forest tile... just an interesting thing. +90% defense is very fun.

I'd like Spring and Vitalize alike to be able to terraform floodplains tiles, but they should obliterate the floodplains tiles as they do so. Tiles with a base yield of 4/1/1 or 5/0/1 are just ridiculous; they don't add anything to the gameplay, and they make Vitalize even more powerful than it needs to be for players to go for it.

 

[David49b]

Hi, I'm new to the forum. I downloaded Fall From Heaven 2.015k on Tuesday and have been playing it since. I haven't finished my first game yet, but here are a couple of bugs that popped up:

I've been playing single player as Ellohim on a large map. When I finished my first wonder (Tomb of Sucellus), all the screen text changed to little colored blocks. The text boxes still worked and I was able to save and restart, but I had to go all the way back to the desktop twice and reload the mod to get the text back. The first time it cleared up the map text, but the text in the city screens was still colored blocks.

A few turns later (less than 10), the ancient forest tile set turned red and blotchy. This only affected ancient forest tiles, not any others. Again, I was able to recover by saving and reloading the mod.