FfH2 0.16 Balance Recommendations

[retro V]

They aren't moaning, they are proving feedback...

There's a difference?

I know you (plural) are making a game for people to enjoy, and I for one love the new challenge. Others who may have died and lost in their first 10 turns perhaps don't see the fun in that, whether starting a new game was an option or not

So far, like you, I've only seen AIs getting whooped early, and I've overcome this by adding in more AIs to start with (I always preffered crowded maps anyway). Now what happens is the gaping maw left behind by the unlucky sod becomes vacant real estate for either barbs or a random civ that undoubtedly flies ahead in score and power. And I like the challenge in that too.

After some 10 short and long games, I like the way it is now. If in another 10 I change my mind, I'll let you know

Then we should make the sailor's dirge a hero also! Have it summon skeletons instead of spawn so that they recieve empowered.

Oooh, that sounds neat.

 

[Kael]

I started a poll on the Dirge.

 

[MrUnderhill]

I like the summoning hero idea, as well. We could give the Dirge fireballs as well, like the Arcane Barge, along with a few mind spells to represent it's fear-inspiring qualities...oooh, this thing could get scary pretty fast.

In exchange, we could make the Dirge capturable, so the civ that defeats it gets a bonus like Orthus' Axe, except that instead of a promotion you get a whole unit.

 

[triangle]

In exchange, we could make the Dirge capturable, so the civ that defeats it gets a bonus like Orthus' Axe, except that instead of a promotion you get a whole unit.

That would be really cool, but it would take an age to get ships powerful enough to compete with it.

Still, the possibilities for capturing an early game ubership are huge... if a good mechanic could be devised, that would be great.

I think the biggest chane the dirge needs is it mus always spawn a certain distance away from all the civs, so it doesn't move right next to your capital on turn 2.

 

[Xuenay]

Pact of the Nilhorn seems overpowered. Make a beeline for it, and you'll be wielding three STR 6 units (with city bombardment!) at a time when others are still relying on their Warriors. I'd suggest moving it a couple of techs back in the tech tree, or at least removing the bombardment.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Thanks to a neighbor's cable modem, I got my 0.16a.

I chose the Elohim thanks to the forewarnings of the Dirge supplied here.

Well, the thing never showed up. But that extra 15% STR sure helps against the skels. The Elohim are a good choice if you're concered about early game survival in 0.16. Annnyway.

The Elohim are also well positioned for the ol' Early Cottage Spam method so naturally that's how I began. Mysticism, then Exploration, then Hunting, then Leaves were researched. Bam. One turn into Leaves, and someone else invents it. "I see Ljosalfar is in this game", I says to myself, I says.

Now rodinarilly at this point I would go for OO, just to get a religion. But, remembering my big mouth shot off here in this thread, I dropped Leaves and got Aristocracy. My starting area is extremely hammer-poor, so GK was doing almost nothing for me. So I picked up Aristocracy about turn 80 (or so, I think?). I built my first Farm on around turn 210.

Why is that? Well, first off, my cities were already maxed. With no religion my happycaps were minimal. But now I could start pumping out cheap 25- happycap boosters, aka Warriors. I did that while I rushed Currency and Monarchy (at the time, I thought I might need the Royal Guards). Only after Consumption was enabled did I go for Festivals, to get the triple-win Marketplace (+, +, specialist). Only then did I make the move to found the Order, which I did in the late 100's. However thanks to Aristocracy and Consumption, and a lack of Incense, most of my happycap boosts continue to come from Warrior Corps barracked at my major cities. In fact I have not yet caged my pair of captured animals, as it is easier to just move a Warrior around. And a new Warrior is easier to get than is a new Lion.

After getting Order I rushed Sanitation all the way up from Crafting. I no longer had any non-Jungle areas to develop. But thanks to all my Cottages, R&D proceeded at a nice clip. Shortly after this my Hunter discovered we are alone on a smallish continent ... the first such game-start I have experienced under the Fractal generator. Around this time we also met our first foreigner ... a Hidden Nationality Pirate owned by the Ljosalfar, of course.

It's now around year 260. Ljo's score is about 1600, mine is about 600. It should be a good game. I think I'll go for a Cultural win.

What does this have to do with te balance thread? Well, Aristocracy is everything I expected it to be just from reading the patch notes. I would have gone to Aristocracy in tis game were I plaing 0.16 or 0.16a. My capitol did not produce hammers, I did not have an early religion, food was not a priority, so Aristocracy was a perfect fit.

But this was 0.16a. So once I had Aristocracy up, my thinking changed. I suddenly had no happycap concerns whatsoever. So I ignored entire branches of the tech tree while I went for fairly high techs early on. It ws the first game I've ever played where I was knocking down Jungle tiles, but still had no technology to chop down Forest

Now, there are two ways to look at this. The optimist says, look how radically different 0.16 plays. What a success! Thanks to the +/garrisons in Aristocracy, you were able to persue entirely new and fresh pregressions up the tech tree.

Whereas the grouch will agree with the freshness and all, but will still insist it is too much of a good thing for too little a cost. It would be OK if Aristocracy allowed for one, perhaps two, extra s. But limitless s removes the pressure on tech strategy. Before I went to Aristocracy, I was trying to figure out which desperately-needed tech was the most desperately-needed. After I popped out a couple Warriors, the thought process was more like, "don't need that, don't need that, don't need that, that one can certainly wait, won't need that one ever, now, don't need that."

I think the idea was to make Aristocracy a bit more attractive. I don't think the intent was to provide a civic available around turn 50-75, which would then be in force for the rest of the game. Honestly, at this point the only incentive I have to drop this civic is to get Republic's cultural boost, should I go for a Cultural victory. With Agriculture, I am getting for instance 4 and 3 from a Plains River Farm. That's pretty phat production, combined with uncapped happiness. That's a pretty good deal for a Low Upkeep civic.

 

[velk]

Pact of the Nilhorn seems overpowered. Make a beeline for it, and you'll be wielding three STR 6 units (with city bombardment!) at a time when others are still relying on their Warriors. I'd suggest moving it a couple of techs back in the tech tree, or at least removing the bombardment.

I agree, the combination with hidden nationality is a bit much.

There's a few AI quirks with hidden nationality as well :

If you park a hidden nationality unit next to an enemy city, they will continue spend their entire production sending a constant stream of low level troops that have not got a prayer of even damaging it ( I had Moe parked outside the Sheaim capital and they just kept sending warriors as soon as they could build them, even when Moe was level 15 )

If you park a hidden nationality unit on an enemy city they still build troops that are 'underneath' the unit, but no combat occurs until one of you moves out and in again.

Captured spiders are a little over the top I think, this seems to be because the AI prioritises scout units very low after the initial expansion rush - this means the spider can park in forest inside their borders and proceed to chow down on every settler and worker that pops their head outside a city, while remaining immune to retaliation because none of the AI's units can see it.

Forest stealth is very nice, but an equivalent of 'declare nationality' to make them visible for a turn or whatever would be very handy, it's annoying to always have to eat the defensive penalty for attacking with your woodsman II units, and losing defensive bonuses is painful early game.

Also, while possibly this angle is covered, I can think of a problem in that Grigori heroes will be able to start as scout, learn forest stealth and then upgrade to horse archers/chariots etc, where the invisibility neatly negates their lack of defensive bonuses.

Barbarians seem oddly reluctant to take cities - I had the elven hero on the other side of the continent, making a nuisance of himself, and ended up capturing a barb city by mistake - I left it empty in the hopes they would pillage it to save me the distance maintenance cost but they instead spent 100 turns circling around it and pillaging their own improvements.

 

[Frozen-Vomit]

Inquisition works in players cities you have open borders agreement with. That way I had a very fast religious victory. I'm not sure if inquisition counts on your or their state religion (we all were runes - I just helped them to get rid of their non state religions.)

But I still think that inquisition in other players cities should cause war or shouldn't be possible alltogether.

 

[bdmarti]

It's probably come up before, but I think the Ranger is a bit over powered.

I didn't double check everything, so I may be wrong on some of this...

It seems that you can get to Rangers, a 7/2 unit, faster (research wise) than you can get to any other maceman type unit. Is that correct? that alone seems a bit powerful.

However, then there is the fact that there is no promotioin against the recon line...so, it's 7 STR is pretty darn good when it goes up against comparable units with a similar number of promotions.

However, the thing that really bugs me about the ranger is it's ability to move thru impassable terrain. This seems to really put this unit over the top for me. I don't think the rangers need this ability to be perfectly useable and desireable.

Having your back to a mountain range is a tradeoff in production for saftey...and the impassable movement of rangers breaks this tradeoff fairly early in the game.

I don't mind some units having this ability, and I think it should be avialable to heroes, national units, and even as a late promotion or a dimensional spell, but to pile this onto rangers seems overpowering at the stage of the game where they appear.


I concede that the impassible terrain movement is not overly broken in the vast majority of cases, as most cities are not next to mountains, and most maps don't have huge strings of mountains, but in those maps and cases where you might try to hide a city or unit surrounded by mountains, rangers foil your plans early on.

I happen to enjoy chokepoints as well, and seeing units run right though the mountains and wave at my unit's possitioned at the pass is pretty annoying, especially if I'm trying to chase those rangers now behind my lines with movement 1 macemen types or other garrison units.

 

[Sureshot]

can't remember if this changed on 0.16, but hunters get +75% versus animals and that means against Hill Giants too. So pact of nilhorn is usually useless once your enemies have hunters.

about rangers/hunters and their uberness.. i couldn't agree more, and hunters come the earliest in their tier as well, making the easiest path to conquest being recon.. which just seems so wrong, since recon can do practically everything besides pillage better than every other unit (except siege engines, but who needs that when you outpower everyone who didnt go recon and is stuck with units a tier below yours still).

 

[Ennet]

I have played dozens of games on 0.16 and I have never died to the dirge, though I did see AI players killed by it. In many of those games the dirge was much more dangerous than it is now (it was nerfed in playtest down to its current form).

I like the idea of making the Dirge's lethality modified by the game difficulty as it is in 0.16a, maybe I will expand on that idea and make it more granular. Different players like different level of risk, the difficulty slider seems to be a good way to set for the game you like.

Gamespeed would be nicer, and the Dirge isnt overpowered in itself, infact you could make it harder, because its quite easy to deal with once you get the appropriate techs.. the Dirge can also be utterly useless, camping it out in a Barb city.. the Dirge can reasonably unload skellies from turn 10+ if you or the AI are unluckily enought. You dont always have access to a plains hill with a plains forest next to it, and even if you do, on slower speeds you might not be able to build another 2 warriors in time, it would also be kind of imbalancing if all coastal civs had to choose a poorer starting position just because of the dirge.
Yes to move the dirge back a bit, but also yes to making it more powerfull. After it's killed, give it a chance per turn to respawn, maybe even with some promotion(s) to keep it being a threath to players and the AI.
Combat promotions would make it harder to kill and giving it a chance to pick up another cargo promotion further down would make it more of a long term threath to your cities.
Question: Does it always spawn skeletons or will it spawn thoughter units later if it lives on? If it doesn't it should.
Balancing how the AI use it would also be cool if possible, so that it doesnt get stuck in a city and also maybe switches target a little now and then. Having it parked for a 100+ turns as a floating skeleton factory isnt as cool as it ought to be. I imagine it more like a ghostly ship that can appear out of the blue and unload a smaller horde of skeletons at a weakly defended port town.
That would add some unpredictability to it, and force all players to plan defence against it, not just the first unlucky soul that happen to catch its attension. Right now, if you are coastal and not attacked by the Dirge you can often let your security slip a little which is bad.

 

[Grey Fox]

It seems that you can get to Rangers, a 7/2 unit, faster (research wise) than you can get to any other maceman type unit. Is that correct? that alone seems a bit powerful.

I thought Rangers were brought down to 6 strenght and would cost more hammers than the .15 version.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I think Aristocracy would be better if it only gave happy bonus for certain, aristocrat like units, say Knights, Royal guards, immortals and high priests. Then you can have a happy bonus where you need it, but it doesn’t make trivial bonuses from religion or resources.

I thought Rangers were brought down to 6 strenght and would cost more hammers than the .15 version.

Should be.

 

[Sureshot]

a cost increase in aristocracy would make sense, i really like it now, but it should cost more than low upkeep, like medium or high (in 0.15 it should have been no upkeep for what it gave heh).

rangers would be more balanced if they were either weaker, or national units, or cost waaayyy more than other units in its tier. atm the ai's just spam them and theres really nothing to do against them except get your own.

 

[Teg_Navanis]

Please stop me from beelining to cartography and winning the game with three hill giants all the time. I think they got even more powerful with the hidden nationality promotion; now I can more easily manage to destroy a civilization one or two units per turn without being always at war and suffering from war weariness.

I just finished a game where my Moe got 270 kills in 310 turns (killing among others and in chronological order: Typhoid Mary, Hyborem, Gilden Silveric, Trojan Horse, Acheron and the Sailor's Dirge).

Please, please nerf them.

 

[bdmarti]

rangers would be more balanced if they were either weaker, or national units, or cost waaayyy more than other units in its tier. atm the ai's just spam them and theres really nothing to do against them except get your own.

I'm with Sureshot.

I think the Ranger would be a more balanced unit, if it lost the impassable terrain movement, if it was something like this:
STR 5
2 move
Free Subdue Animal promotion
Free Woodsman 1 promotion
Free Guerilla 1 promotion
+150% vs animals
- 50% city attack

and in this way it would rule in the wilderness and would be plenty useful for capturing animals and scouting even in the face of raging barbarians, or even for protecting your frontier...but it just would not be suitable for conquest.

Such a unit would start off able to hold it's own against any the other maceman level units, as on hills or woods it's STR would be effectivly 7.
If need be, it could also adequately garrison a city against units of the same tier.

The advantages of the ranger would come from it's ability to explore, to carry birds with wide vision ranges, and to capture animals far better than previous units.

 

[Sureshot]

Please stop me from beelining to cartography and winning the game with three hill giants all the time. I think they got even more powerful with the hidden nationality promotion; now I can more easily manage to destroy a civilization one or two units per turn without being always at war and suffering from war weariness.

I just finished a game where my Moe got 270 kills in 310 turns (killing among others and in chronological order: Typhoid Mary, Hyborem, Gilden Silveric, Trojan Horse, Acheron and the Sailor's Dirge).

Please, please nerf them.

how do you deal with hunter spams? giants always die so easily to hunters and the ai's seem to love them in my games

 

[Gamestation]

Not everyone is playing Diety games like you are Sureshot. The AI is probably struggling with the barbarians while the Pact is being completed by Teg.

 

[Xanikk999]

Not everyone is playing Diety games like you are Sureshot. The AI is probably struggling with the barbarians while the Pact is being completed by Teg.

Are there more barbs on higher difficultiy levels?

 

[naf4ever]

I think Aristocracy would be better if it only gave happy bonus for certain, aristocrat like units, say Knights, Royal guards, immortals and high priests. Then you can have a happy bonus where you need it, but it doesn’t make trivial bonuses from religion or resources.
Should be.

That would be a better implementation than currently i believe but i the -1 food +2 commerce still seems redundant to me. perhaps the food penalty should be removed and Aristocracy dimmed down a bit or leave the happy bonus but lower the commerce bonus so that this part of the civic becomes a tradeoff.