I also think the ashen veil religious civic should be moved back to corruption of spirit just like every other religious civic, it's the strongest civic in the line by far and the least you can do to lower it is by putting it one more tech behind.
FfH2 0.22 Balance Feedback
- Thread starter vorshlumpf
- Start date
TheBoatman
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2005
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- 298
Calabim vampire priests can stay as patriarchs forever calling as many holy wars as they wish.
katika
Warlord
Hell destroys all forests and most (or all?) food resources. Blight (a result of AC, supposedly desirable by AV civs) destroys farms, pastures, plantations, resources for those improvements, and downgrades terrain. What does this do? It kills your health and significantly lowers your food. IIRC, Kael stated that StW was made to compensate for the lack of health, but now you can get that with no cost (no reduced food/health). StW is by far more powerful than any other civic in its line and is the only religious civic available at the first tech. StW has always been on the same techname, but the order of AV techs was switched a few versions ago (when Hyborem was moved to the second tech).
I also disagree that evil civs are disadvantaged (vampires, summoning, beastmen), and I don't see how that's relevant. Any civ can adopt the AV. If we're talking AI's, that's entirely different, but in my experience they rarely adopt AV unless you push them to it. Also, I don't think that the Altar victory is quite so overpowering anymore and it's definitely a lot harder to get now.
Jean Elcard
The Flavournator
To give the Kuriotates a small boost, would it be possible to allow them something like a lighthouse even if the city isn't a coastal one? It' very difficult to find fitting spots for their huge cities so you don't lose too much food through nearby ocean squares.
Maybe people would choose to play them more often this way (Consider this rather old poll: What are your 3 least favorite civs). Would it make it easier for the AI as well.
Maybe people would choose to play them more often this way (Consider this rather old poll: What are your 3 least favorite civs). Would it make it easier for the AI as well.
Chandrasekhar
Determined
Says someone watching him destroy a different civilization.
Unless you want him to become absolutely unstoppable without tier 2 units, he's probably fine as he is.
Nikis-Knight
Deity
Yes, but it would be nice if the AI were smarter about promoting units.
Chandrasekhar
Determined
The AI as a whole, not necessarily the barbarian AI. If the barbarian AI played smart, they'd save up 20 orc spearmen and rush you all at once. They'd use lizardmen to steal your workers more often. They'd park skeletons on your valuable resources and just sit there. These are all good things for the AI to do, but the advantage you're supposed to have over the barbarians is that they don't play in an optimal way.
Nikis-Knight
Deity
Well, to a point. Taking cover when no civ nearby has archery is needlessly stupid. Though taking two levels of shock because the player only has warriors... needlessly effective.
Then again, if Orthus was really smart about promoting, we could just remove his hero promotion and it would probably average out.
Then again, if Orthus was really smart about promoting, we could just remove his hero promotion and it would probably average out.
The barbarian AI already is handicapped in "intelligence", I believe. It should be affected by the difficulty level.
Chandrasekhar
Determined
Yeah, in my original post I mentioned it was a huge map. Take out 2 of the 10 civs and there is a lot of open space.
Anyway, I discovered an obscure way to slightly impact the counter marching ahead quickly.
Playing as Perpentach, I sent Loki to barb cities. He was able to get them disbanded without the counter moving. Unfortunately, this did not work for the AI civs who continued to move the counter along by taking out the sprouting barb cities.
As predicted, Blight came around turn 550. It is turn 700 now and I am at 58 on the counter. I don't have anything stronger than Swordsmen and Hunters and no Courage because I don't have one mana node in my territory. In Marathon speed, it takes awhile to get techs and I have not been thinking of researching Divination anyway with no mana nodes. I am dead meat if the Horsemen come my way.
One interesting sideline while Loki was making the rounds. In three of the barb cities he went to, they were building:
Forbidden Palace (you know they had a few cities)
The Great Library
Syliven's Lyre
Now, on the last two....
I think the barbs being able to get GPs is a stretch, but letting them build cultural and scientific wonders, is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
I thought they were bent on raging and destroying, not building libraries???
Of course, they had an ungodly amount of turns to get it built, and I didn't know if they got one or not, but don't you think the build list for barbs should be a little more restrictive?
Excuse me, but I have to disaggree.
Being an archer by myself the use of metal for arrow points is decisive for penetration. And for good bows you need good tools, the better metal you can use for tools the more effective is the bow. The same for arrows.In ancient times the best bows were made from special wood such as yew - decisive in England from 1200 on for longbows - and in combination with bone - horseback archers: Mongol, later Turk - making very effective composite bows. Silk or other materials in Civ resp. FfH don't make any sense so far. I see from a realitic point of view only technologies such as advanced craftmanship, training in bow shooting areas (such as in early England) useful, which is already done in the tech tree and producing recurve bows, for which adhesive techs together with high yield fibers are decisive.
And then came the crossbow - much more effective, much easier to target, but there you need good steel. As now in FfH.
onedreamer
Dragon
Aaah, I got you now, I had not understood what you meant with the AV only tech. And yes I agree with you, StW moved to Infernal Pact would make more sense, though the spreading of Hell is all but guaranteed.
It is relevant in the overall balance of the game, and if you look at the other thread, about how well the AI does, you will notice that evil civs generally fare worse than good civs. When you look at balance, you have to look at it from a general perspective, not just the players'. In fact, in the hands of the AI, vampires aren't more powerful than most other units... or even possibly worse, in case Calabim doesn't have metals. Summons and Beastmen, same story. And Civ4 is not all about making war. A good UU is just a help in war time. But to be doing well, a civ must also have a good economy and infrastructure, and StW helps a good deal with this IMO.
But evil civs are most likely to research Corruption of Spirit...
Its sole existance as a victory condition is a disadvantage for evil civs, that's what I meant/think. But I am pretty sure the team is working on a evil only victory condition. Though, currently, they are at a disadvantage.
Fully agreed upon. But in my opinion the continuous attacks of the barbs are mainly to gain XP for important starting units. I use them in theis way for my new built units, which makes sense for me.
I think this is a balance issue...
IMO, the biggest problem still is the plethora of barb cities that pop up. It hasn't helped much on this huge map when 2 AI civs were eliminated early on by the barbs. You are faced with either letting the barb cities grow, especially near your borders, or taking them out and moving the counter. Of course, you have no control over what the AI civs do - they take out the barb cities and the counter moves on.
Worse, is how the barb cities pop up like crazy. For example, I took out one city near my border. Honestly, 5 turns later another was back in the same spot!!
During my first games I found it annonying as well, but later I realized two things: 1. just by placing a simple unit there no further barbs appeared. This comes from visual area control. Also hawks - every turn flights - to the same.
2. I use the barbs just to level up my attack or important defense units by getting cheap XP.
Sarkyn
Warlord
I also think that the Kuriotates need some kind of tweaking.
In particular, the restriction on building in their smaller cities seems too harsh to swallow. It hamstrings you in more ways than the 3-circle cities help you, sufficiently so that I won't play them again with so many more interesting options.
For example:
- you *have* to plant one of the big cities on a coast in order to get access to any navy whatsoever (including Fishing Boats).
- the later placement of settlements specifically to take a resource that is SEA based is pointless unless you are sure you can get a Fishing Boat from your naval dock to your resource - which isn't very easy at all, actually.
And yet:
- Their culture bonus seems too good. Even my rubbishy small settlements seemed to have no difficulty whatsoever out-culturing my neighbours on Prince diffficulty.
Perhaps a slight whack to the culture in exchange for some sort of appeasement of their settlement bonus. Maybe allow them to actually BUILD in settlements, just hit the hammer count with a sufficiently negative modifier to make it a lot less feasible. They already get 0% culture and 0% science from settlements, so the things they would build there would hardly be game breaking. It'd be things like Fishing Boats, Workers, Lighthouses, Castles, Archery Yards, and then eventually military units (but with a hammer negative penalty that's really unbalanced?).
We don't want them to be overpowered, just more enjoyable to play.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I have tons of faith in the team to find one.
In particular, the restriction on building in their smaller cities seems too harsh to swallow. It hamstrings you in more ways than the 3-circle cities help you, sufficiently so that I won't play them again with so many more interesting options.
For example:
- you *have* to plant one of the big cities on a coast in order to get access to any navy whatsoever (including Fishing Boats).
- the later placement of settlements specifically to take a resource that is SEA based is pointless unless you are sure you can get a Fishing Boat from your naval dock to your resource - which isn't very easy at all, actually.
And yet:
- Their culture bonus seems too good. Even my rubbishy small settlements seemed to have no difficulty whatsoever out-culturing my neighbours on Prince diffficulty.
Perhaps a slight whack to the culture in exchange for some sort of appeasement of their settlement bonus. Maybe allow them to actually BUILD in settlements, just hit the hammer count with a sufficiently negative modifier to make it a lot less feasible. They already get 0% culture and 0% science from settlements, so the things they would build there would hardly be game breaking. It'd be things like Fishing Boats, Workers, Lighthouses, Castles, Archery Yards, and then eventually military units (but with a hammer negative penalty that's really unbalanced?).
We don't want them to be overpowered, just more enjoyable to play.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I have tons of faith in the team to find one.
katika
Warlord
Well, I play with tech trading off and the discrepancy between evil and good civs doesn't seem as large to me. The strongest enemies seem to be the Balseraphs and Clan (in previous versions, I haven't seen them much recently) just as often as the Malakim and Elohim, but the worst evil civs do seem to be worse than those of the good civs.
Says someone watching him destroy a different civilization.
My point is not about watching him destroy other civs, that was just a method, where i could watch his behaviour for 30 turns.
The problem is, that as soon as there are 3 warriors inside a city, Orthus will never capture it, because he will spend a lot of time waiting for his promotions to heal him and in this time the 1-2 warriors he killed will have been replaced.
I never have seen Orthus destoy a single city neither AI nor mine.
Even in this game i described, where i managed to keep him alive till he had combat 5 he was unable to destoy a single AI city on immortal level although the cities were just defended by warriors.
This way Orthus is no danger and him popping up just means, that one can give a unit +1 str and blitz - so it is an advantage to have Orthus pop up nearby.
I have, many times. Often Acheron is built there soon after and the AI can't retake their city.
I believe that a part of the micromanagement of course is done much better by the AI, if it can be described e.g. in algorithms. What player really calculates his benefits? Other more strategic decisions or balances are very complicated for the AI to be calculated. So it is quite clear, that sometimes rather silly things are done by the AI giving us there an advantage.
In my opinion there is no bigger difference in the balance between evil, neutral or good civs. The design team has tried to create a big diversity in differences, giving us a large range to find our individual pros. This means that there are indeed several larger advantages to be identified. But exactely this makes the challenge to be more clever than the AI or other opponents.
