FfH2 0.20 Balance Feedback

[Chandrasekhar]

So, I've been watching the AI do its stuff using that nifty "game.aiplay x" command. Some interesting findings:

They build workers and settlers way early. The settlers have just a single warrior for escourt most of the time, and the workers often have nothing to build.

The AI often starts near forested silk, but they don't seem to realize that they need BW to get at them, thus leading to tons of wasted research time. Is there a way to let the AI know that they need BW for some calendar resources? Or maybe forest chopping could just be made earlier...

They really like Sailing. I'm serious here. They'll go for it when they aren't anywhere near the coast, which isn't good. I can understand some going for Fishing to go for the OO, but this is ridiculous.

They also don't like Education at all. On a normal speed game, about half the Civs can build cottages by Yr 115. This is a big problem. It slows down their research a lot.

Speaking of cottages, they don't build them even when they can. Having 10 farms around the capital is cool for getting settlers out quick, but pretty soon the AI is running at 50% research or less. Something ought to be done to tell the AI to build mostly cottages on floodplains and such.

They don't even go for Ancient Chants that often, and when they do, they don't build obelisks in their new cities. This is a bad thing. At any given time an AI player has two cities out there with just the 8 tiles around it to work.

I've also noticed that none of the AI's really like the Octopus Overlords. I thought Hannah was supposed to pursue it, but it's almost always Keelyn that gets it 50 years after Leaves and Runes have been founded. Now, maybe the elves and dwarves just rush after those two religions way faster than they need to, but the OO gets handicapped by its later arrival.

I also ran some late-game simulations to see how Hyborem does when I'm not there to influence him. One word: poorly. Right out of the gate he builds a hunting lodge, archery range, etc. He should be taking advantage of the higher tier units while he can... also, why does Hyborem just sit there in the capital while Basium goes and kicks butt all over the world? I think Hyborem would do much better if he was allowed to go get some cities with his high strength.

Whew! Sorry about the rant, just had to get some stuff off my chest. Now I'm going to see if I can go end the world with the AV without switching to Hyborem...

 

[Yoshi2942]

( I probably shouldn't even post this -- and may decide to change it later ... but... )

From what I can see there are two ways to address the issues which you describe:

1) Tech tree layout.
2) Weights and Flavors.

Having a streamlined tech tree will make it more likely that all AIs are able to get appropriate techs, while having a well developed weight and flavor system would be more specific - almost to the point of predetermining the research order for each leader.

As for the Hyborem part - I agree, and I think that a lot of it has to do with 3 things -- the developed starting city which basium starts with compared with the undeveloped city which hyborem starts with, the extra settler which Hyborem starts with (and is likely trying to protect while it sends the manes out to scout), and the combat differences between angels and Manes (manes suck in combat, the angels are good - therefore the angels can actually launch offensies and the manes are basically scouts) .

 

[Love]

A nearly boring thing is that we say im the mercurians and create sphener whith order, then i can summon lets say a griffon, but the thing is that the griffon become an angel after a turn, and thats a way too create a huge army. Nearly boring as i said...

 

[Shadowlord]

I'm finding skeletons to be rather weak by the time you're able to make them - Rangers completely mop the floor with them. And I've even built the Tower of Necromancy (which boosts their strength by 1).

Oddly, there's some inconsistancy in their reported strength:
When a skeleton is selected, it's showing as "2 strength (1D)" on the unit info panel in the lower-left corner.
However, the popup when you hover over a skeleton's icon in the list of units in the square shows 4 strength.
And the popup when you hover over the stack (which shows the strengths of all the units there) shows 3 strength for the skeletons.
(And this is with the Tower of Necromancy)

The only good things I've figured out for skeletons to do are:

• Fortify many of them in contested cities to slow down attackers (the skeletons die easily, but with new ones being summoned each turn, the attackers have to throw a lot of people at them to take the city).
• Cast contagion multiple times on enemy stacks, and then once they're weak enough, mop them up with skeletons, who can't get infected by it. (However, combining contagion and ring of flames with half a dozen or more casters tends to just result in the complete destruction of the target stack, so there's no fighting for the skeletons to do)
• Use skeletons with 2 or 3 movement to capture the enemy workers who are stupid enough to stand on the border without guards.

In short, they're cannon fodder, but in many cases your mages would be better off casting something else rather than replacing recently killed skeletons.

I was hoping to field vast undead armies, but the skeletons are just too weak. Instead I'm wiping my enemies out with contagion, ring of flames, and an angry Sphener. The skeletons are relegated to blunting enemy weapons with their bones. (I tried a mass wave of just skeletons, but the enemy swatted them like flies)

Could skeletons perhaps be given a strength boost based on the level of the unit who raises them?

 

[Arwon]

Should skeletons be anything *other* than cannon-fodder?

 

[marioflag]

About my last game Blight was released when i was just researching Order.
The 4 Barbarian heroes were released when i was just able to research Bronze Working luckily they were released all on the other part of the world!
I think that the Armageddon Counter skyrocketed so highly because in this game 16 civs Huge Map Agg AI Prince every civ was fighting with every civ, and quite frankly trying to roleplay the Bannor i helped making the AC high, razing every OO city, AV cities didn't spread near my cities.
My overall impression was just that it's too hard to stop the AC counter, Elohim didn't do nothing, while me as Bannor had no weapons to slow down AC.




Guys on a side note are you really not considering to make promotions more like Vanilla?I have tested modded promotions with halved effect on my last games on Light (not yet done on Fire because I want to familiarize with new features, but i don't think it will change too much), and the overall effect on balance was really good.With promotions halved, while getting xp as fast as in FfH2 i was able to have highly upgraded units, but i din't have all my combats odd at 100%, Heroes were also not so overpowered.Barbarians become a lot more deadly, while I had hard time trying to do what i always do on FfH2: razing cities easily with my superupgraded units.The overall effect was AI a lot more competitive, while it had harder times with barbs, and a harder game also for me because conquering cities wasn't so easy.
I know the mod is in a beta ATM but i hope you guys consider that the promotions are now a major balancement issue

 

[Sureshot]

I'm finding skeletons to be rather weak by the time you're able to make them

its already really really easy to swarm people with masses of skelettes. the key is to make a ton of adepts and just wear down your enemies with summons every turn.

 

[Yoshi2942]

skeletons ARE given str boost based upon unit that casts. (combat promotions = stronger skeletons)

I just played an interesting game.. actually, it isn't completed yet.

Arm counter is at 100 - and has been for a little while.
Both Basium and Big Red are still around and battling it out.
4 civs have been eliminated.
1 civ is stronger than mine, the remaining 3 are weaker.
It is turn 490 or so.
Everyone is furious at my civ, and has been for 200-300 turns.
I've not been at war with any civ yet this game.

Just thought that was odd. Playing Sheaim, and have Way of Leaves (Basium also adopted my religeon. No one else has.) The blight has started entering my lands; tearing down all my beautiful Ancient Forests...

Based upon this game, few comments:

Every critter that I got from the Portals was one of 2 things - That mage chick, or chaos Maurader. I'll have to go back and find the lists and figure out why I never got any other random critters - but After about 100 of each of these two, they got pretty repetetive.

This is the first game I have played where the Arm Counter got high enough for any of the horsement to appear.. so I was stoked about that... but none of them appeared around me, and for all the cool text associated with them -- I saw no effect (except some of my geeks disappeared when the last one came).. never saw the horsemen. Also, one of them spoke of combat breaking out among all of the peoples... only no one declared war against me - I was disappointed.

 

[EvilBohdran]

Just some thoughts on a game I'm playing now.

Who let the dragons out?

So I'm playing the elves and Archon the red dragon spawns in a costal city near my border. Fine enough I think, I had wanted to settle there but I'll let him live his life in peace.

However those pesky Malakim keep snooping around his city, and to my surprise, they sack it and steal his treasure horde. Without killing him! I can't figure out how they did it, and watch as they pull the wheelbarrow of dragon loot back to their territory.

But then to my horror the dragon walks himself into my territory and parks himself outside my captial. Turns later many elves have died screaming in flames and my beautiful forests are on fire! I lose the defenders in my city and half my forests. The only good thing was the flames spread past my borders to affect other civs.

Needless to say that city was useless (the fire destroyed my improvements and I couldn't move workers close to the dragon and live). Eventually I researched the courage spell and raised an army of swordsmen to kill the dragon.

Is this a feature that the dragon is now mobile? He seems content to sit just inside my territory and menance me, even though he could have captured any city he wanted. Not saying the dragon isn't cool or unbalanced, just was very surprised.


The other thing I noticed in my game was that the AI has very good early defense of it's cities. It was not uncommon for me to look at the odds to attack a city and see that the defender is getting +250% defense total. Seems because it is fighting wars earlier and more often, it actually has well promoted units and is choosing them correctly (an archer with city defense and hills defense on a hill city). The Baron at 10str had to think long and hard about attacking a city defended with 2/4str archers. I can't see how you could hope to overwhelm anyone early with equal tier units or even one tier above. You definately need to bring a gun to the knife fight.

 

[Sureshot]

pretty sure the dragon will roam if it gets the commando promotion (hyborem used to do the same thing), so if the AI was tossing tons of units at the dragon, leveling it up, then it might have gotten commando and left its city.

 

[BeefontheBone]

I've observed it sitting 1 tile outside the city it spawns in in every game I've played so far - mainly on isolated islands, actually.

 

[ghost2222]

It seems that angels are worthwhile to have and can kill people and manes are great at leveling up your opponent.

What if manes were changed so that they are all created with 2-5 exp and all manes give thier exp to your other units upon death. Kinda like that divine spell. Except only manes have this ability, not all of Hyborem's forces.

If this change were implemented, then attacking with 10-15 manes and only escaping with 2-3 alive would give each of those manes 25+exp and could be turned into some heavier demons that could actually do some damage to some people.

And later in the game when Hyborem actually gets some bigger demons, the manes would still be good for power leveling those demons to be able to challenge some of the older civs that have had more time to farm exp.

-Tony

 

[katika]

I'm nearly finished with my first game playing as Basium (Emperor difficulty) and I agree with those who say he's unbalanced. When I summoned Basium, Tasunke and Perpentach (who summoned Hyborem) were the top two players. I wiped out Tasunke and Perpantach is in last place with only a couple cities left. As Basium I've built a grand total of 3 units: Bambur, 1 Soldier of Kilmorph (I wanted to see if I would get an angel if I sacrificed him for production, didn't work), and 1 worker (I captured and disbanded several others, so if I had been planning ahead that would have been unnecessary). I only have 5 cities but who needs cities? I have 3 angels per city plus about 20 more fighting evil. The Order has not been founded and the only Runes civs are myself and the Kuriotates (who I started playing as).

The problem isn't the units that dye and become angels; it's razing cities. One AV city I razed produced 2 angels on the city ruins and 1 angel per city (4 at the time). Getting that many free units for razing a city means that I don't have to worry about attack odds because the few units I lose will be replaced. It also didn't help that the cities were mostly defended with Acrobats, Warriors, Adepts, and Raiders. What was really weird was that when I raised some of Tasunke's cities that didn't have any religion I produced angels. Basium slaughters innocents and they join him as angels?

Hyborem might be problematic since he has T3 units, but by now I have several highly experienced angels and Basium (Bambur died on 98.5% odds) so it's only a matter of time.

 

[Shadowlord]

Basium didn't seem too overpowered compared to confessors with ring of flames. However, ring of flames might be overpowered. Or it might not, if stacks of 5-7 people with it really are supposed to be capable of fully destroying everything standing in adjacent tiles. (Though with that many rings of flames going off, I would think that every adjacent tile should catch fire)

The only thing which wasn't completely killed by the barrage of rings of flames was - you guessed it - Basium himself. I finished him off with Sphener. However, his 5 angel escorts all perished from the rings of flames.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I think that Basium himself ought to be made a lot weaker... in some ways. Maybe make him 4 Str, +2 Holy, but start him off with Demon Slaying I & II. Similarly, maybe the angels should be made a bit weaker, but start with Demon Slaying I. It'd make it so that Basium does great against Hyborem's legions, but he's not overly powerful otherwise.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

It seems that angels are worthwhile to have and can kill people and manes are great at leveling up your opponent.

You're not intended to fight with manes, you're supposed to upgrade them. They can upgrade to any demon, can't they?

 

[Shadowlord]

skeletons ARE given str boost based upon unit that casts. (combat promotions = stronger skeletons)

I just summoned a skeleton with a wizard who had Combat I, II, III, IV, and V. The skeleton pops out with a total of +50% strength. Starting with 3 strength, that'd make him 4.5. It's still not even as strong as a hunter.

Also, overwhelming enemies by summoning a bunch of skeletons every turn doesn't seem to be very feasible - skeletons can't attack on the turn they're summoned. You'd be better off summoning chaos marauders instead (which is what I was doing in my last game).

 

[QES]

I always thought Skeleton's should get the weapon upgrades - via bronze, iron, or Mithril, they do carry weapons dont they?

(Shh, I wasnt here)
-Qes

 

[thomas.berubeg]

HMMM? who could that be, lurking in the corner?

 

[Yoshi2942]

Skeletons are lvl 1 spells, they don't need to be powerhouses. Though, yesterday when I played I was also looking at them getting weapons upgrades, which would make sense. Also - I've always thought it'd be nice if they had hidden nationality.... it isn't like the skeleton needs to run around with a set of armor depicting nationality on it.