FfH2 0.20 Balance Feedback

Incidently Im sure most of the team is reading this thread, which is good. Now that the crashes and basic stuff is working we will be looking at balance more closely.

Things that are probably off the table are making the mercurians and infernals more similar. I know its an excellent way to balance things, but we dearly love having dissimilar options that are still balanced. So we probably won't make the infernals come in as part of a team, or have both of them appear at the same time. Look for options that level them with other civs while still allowing them to keep their unique flavor.

There have been a ton of good ideas in this thread. Things that have been mentioned that I wouldn't mind adding are:

1. An atttitude bonus between hyborem and his summoner.
2. Adjusting burnout (flames dissapearing on non-burning sands tiles) chances up.

(just off the top of my head, Im sure there are more great ideas here).

Im also probably going to add some additional tech requirements to the path that leads to infernal pact so that it isnt any slower when you go to it normally, but it isn't as rushable as it is now (moving Hyborem's entry to Corruption of Spirit is also an interesting idea that accomplished this same effect).
 
Can't you force the summoning AI to switch to the Ashen Veil?

Hmm.. probably. Most of the time they will because the only civs that will research it are evil civs anyway. The case where it doesn't now is when a human player discovers it with a neutral or good civ and then abandons the civ.
 
Hmm, there seems to be no good place to put this, so I'll stick it here. Regarding the planar gates, there should be something that comes with the court house, how many myths involve a lawyer like demon or making deals with a devil...
 
Hmm.. probably. Most of the time they will because the only civs that will research it are evil civs anyway. The case where it doesn't now is when a human player discovers it with a neutral or good civ and then abandons the civ.
I've seen AI, Balseraphs in my last game in fact, stubbornly cling to Fellowship of the Leaves even after researching Infernal Pact. (Despite it not being in all too many of her cities.) Unless they have the religious hero, they should always switch, imo. Part of the problem is that if they don't switch over right away they are probably in a war.
 
Have you guys ever tried having Hyborem not have a <iMaxWarNearbyPowerRatio>1000</iMaxWarNearbyPowerRatio>*? Seems to me like this will make Hyborem immediately decide to declare war on whoever is closest regardless of how powerful that person is and since the closest person is always the person who summoned him, he declares on the summoner. Pairing along <iMaxWarRand>50</iMaxWarRand>* leads to a [pissed](self-destructive angry red dude) due to how quickly he decides that the summoner is the best target regardless of the summoner's power.

*values found in the leaderheads xml file
 
I was playing as the Hippus and a neighboring civ on an island to the north of me summoned the Hyborem. Their was no more room left on the island for the Hyborem to settle so it declared war on it's summoner. However, because their were no more free spaces left on my neighboring civ's island, it got pushed to one of the few free spaces left on my island. It was not able to cross the sea so it declared war on me. I easily defeated it with a large army of Briggands.

It seemed obvious to me that the Hyborem needed to be made stronger. It probably came farely late in my game compared to other games, but still it was much to easy to defeat. I think that a good fix to this would be the later it comes, the stronger it comes or the more armies it comes with. Maybe it could have an enormous almost undefeatable army that could disband after capturing or settling it's first city. This would ensure that it at least has a chance of starting off.

Another thing is that their really is no reward for defeating it. I think it would be great to have some kind of diplomatic bonus from good civs who see you defeated it. Either that or some kind of mechanic such as orthus's axe. Of course whatever bonus could be given could be balance by making Hyborem stronger.

Great job so far on the Fire Phase, I'm really enjoying it.
 
After starting a few games, & playing for awhile in each, I think the appearance of the Infernals should be moved back a step.
Founding the Ashen Veil could give you the the rituals/ability to call them, Corruption of Spirit would be a better time for them to appear, giving everyone else a longer time to get setup a little more.

Just my 2 cents.

Fader

I second this idea. It makes sense both from a balancing aspect and from a flavor aspect. It doesn't make much sense for the demons to pour into the world before they have any followers. The AV religion should be around for awhile and their followers should be working for the return of their master.
 
Another thing is that their really is no reward for defeating it. I think it would be great to have some kind of diplomatic bonus from good civs who see you defeated it. Either that or some kind of mechanic such as orthus's axe. Of course whatever bonus could be given could be balance by making Hyborem stronger.

Just finished a Elf game (fyi, they are still the economic power house we know and love). I won with the Alter (I didn't mind as I had already crushed everyone else scorewise). As a last minute thing, I pushed down and smote the Infernals with my stack of coolness, and was disappointed at the lack of congratulations I recieved. I do think the AC dropped by a fair amount, but I didn't track it closely enough to tell you the amount.
 
I do think the AC dropped by a fair amount, but I didn't track it closely enough to tell you the amount.
I saw that too, it was about 11 or 12 points. This however, is no substitute for a reward, as I did defeat Hyborem for the AC to drop but simply to protect my civilization.
 
Ok, After playing a number of games of varying sorts - I decided to try out Hyborem. First opinion? Simple - I HATE THE MANES. My cities each have 20+ manes just sitting around doing nothing. I have plenty of cash to turn them into troops, but pointless. All my cities are super-sized. i've rushed every building --- almost none of which I use. But having to click click click click to fortify the new manes that I collect each turn is annoying as heck. I can easily see now why the AI plays Hyborem the way it does.

My thoughts on how Hyborem should work..

First, GET RID OF THE MANES.
Second, Get rid of settlers, allowing just the first one and don't let any more be built.
Third, Make them Scorched earth.
Foruth, Give their initial city the sprawling trait.
Fifth, give the initial city a very large cultural rate. (like a cultural output bonus equal to the Arm counter would be cool)
Sixth, initial city starts size 12 or whatever.. to make up for the loss of the manes.
Seventh, All cities which flip due to culture immediately lose all non-AV religions, half population, and Gain AV.


:)
 
I think the best solution for the altar victory is binding certain levels to certain techs accross the tech tree.
 
Letting Hyborem come with Corruption of Spirit would only weaken him, as the later he arrives, the harder it will be for him to gain a foothold.

Yoshi: I don't like most of the changes you're proposing... But I do like the idea of buffing up the Infernals by giving them some culture boni.
 
Well, all I can say is that the way the Infernals are right now - they are unplayable; both for the AI and for myself. The AI's method of dealing with the vast numbers of Manes that spawn is just to send them out to get slaughtered, giving their opponents EXP... seems like a pretty good way to insure defeat. Any my method was just to fortify the 100's of manes at home and get frustrated with having to click click click. Because the AI wants to build up more cities - it just sits at home and sends out the manes as scouts.. Hyborem absolutely needs to be more aggressive as soon as he is spawned.. if he sits at home - he's toast when the aggressive Basium is spawned with Angels (1 * Angel > 10 * Manes).
 
Nothing sucks like deleting everything you just typed out. Anyways, I would really like to see the chance for Manes (or Angels) to spawn decreased signifigantly, maybe even something like the Armageddon counter/2. It is definately aggravating getting so many of the buggers, IMO.

Of course, in that case manes would probably need 3 or 4 strength, or at least be able to be upgraded to Iron Weapons and such, if they can't now.

PLEASE, SAVE ME FROM CARPAL TUNNELS!!
 
This is my second game with Fire and I am playing with Aggressive AI turned on at Prince difficulty.
I have just one question is it normal that Armageddon Counter reached 100 a lot before that i could summon Basium?All the game was just a slugfest with nearly all civs vs everyone, so when every civ is in war with everybody is there anything i can do to slowdown the armageddon counter?Elohim also didn't do anything to stop the counter.
 
Couple of suggestions I think would help improve the mod.

1: Changed Lanun AI so that it knows building farms is a very very very very bad idea and to only do it on resources (saw a whole row of floodplains filled with 0 food farms)

2: Suggestions for the Ljosafar and fellowship of leaves is the health bonuses, they just seem to have way to many and way more then they can use, suggest changing temple of leaves to +1 :) instead of +1 health and the third leader that is expansive/arcane change expansive to a diffient trait, I just don't see how 30-40 health with the forests is going to benefit a 10-20 pop city.

3: add clear forest to lower techs on the line, like clear forest to mining, or clear jungle to construction or bronze working, or add them to multiple places on the tech tree, or add special abilitys to do something similar, like starting a forest fire in a square to remove mass amounts of jungle.

Currently the AI gets crippled by settling in jungles and being unable to do anything about them for hundreds of years, and bronze working forces you to go down the melee path if you want to remove forests.

I do like the idea of massive unpenetratible jungles, the AI is just really stupid about it is all.
 
This is my second game with Fire and I am playing with Aggressive AI turned on at Prince difficulty.
I have just one question is it normal that Armageddon Counter reached 100 a lot before that i could summon Basium?All the game was just a slugfest with nearly all civs vs everyone, so when every civ is in war with everybody is there anything i can do to slowdown the armageddon counter?Elohim also didn't do anything to stop the counter.

I've played a dozen games - most of which all the way through - and I've never seen the Arm counter go over 60; and I've tried to get it to raise. :) And for the record, I play Prince, aggressive.... But I play on small or normal maps -- which is because my system lags on large maps late in the game, and may have some influence over how high the counter gets (AIs get into war with cities size 5, but on a larger map there would be more room for expansion and the cities would reach 10-12 before all out warfare would happen.. and because Arm counter is related to the size of the cities.... etc.)
 
This is my second game with Fire and I am playing with Aggressive AI turned on at Prince difficulty.
I have just one question is it normal that Armageddon Counter reached 100 a lot before that i could summon Basium?All the game was just a slugfest with nearly all civs vs everyone, so when every civ is in war with everybody is there anything i can do to slowdown the armageddon counter?Elohim also didn't do anything to stop the counter.
Spreading the Order SHOULD lower the counter. If Veil is in play, raze their cities.
 
Conquered the the world (large map 9 civs) with Hyborean and 2 Sect of flies. Too easy, though it was on Prince.
 
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