FfH2 0.30 Balance Issues

[Zifnab]

AI use March of the Trees (Ljos world spell) in a bad way. Treants don't leave Ljos cultural borders and that is a fatal mistake.

Once I invade Ljosalfar territory they call March. As my stack was on the forest tile it was pushed by the treant back to my territory. And that was all: I had a rest and after three turns continued my invasion. But several of my cities were near the border and treants were able to capture them as well as destroy my army if they entered my borders.

A couple of games ago, I was on a continent with the Ljos and the Khazad. The elves quickly expanded in the early game to have around 6 cities in heavily forested terrain. Suddenly, without any prior conflicts, they declared war on the dwarves, cast march of the trees, and three turns later Kandros Fir was gone.

This is only one game out of a couple dozen, but they seem to be able to use it decently if the cercumstances are right. It seems like if their kingdom is long and thin, and they declare war on someone neighboring their civilization they use the treants more effectively.

 

[Nor'easter]

I assume this is intentional, which is why I'm posting it here rather than in the bug thread.

I noticed in my current game that the Genesis ritual and the Vitalize spell don't affect hell terrain. I don't remember if it always like this, maybe it was. Wouldn't it be more consistent if Genesis and Vitalize upgraded hell terrain in an analogous way to standard terrain, i.e, burning sands upgraded to fields of perdition, fields of perdition upgraded to broken lands? It's possible to upgrade hell terrain indirectly, of course, by first Sanctifying the plot, then Vitalizing it, then waiting for hell to come back in, but I prefer the more direct route.

Speaking of rituals and balance, I've had it happen (once in version 0.30, a few times in earlier versions) that I've completed the Rites of Oghma and none of the new mana nodes have appeared in my territory, even when I've had the largest or second-largest territory. Really frustrating to spend those turns and hammers on something that ends up yielding no benefit. If memory serves, Oghma was a Celtic deity, so he should be grateful for someone completing his rites, no? Is there some way to code this so that at least some of the new mana nodes appear in the territory of the person completing the Rites of Oghma?

 

[xienwolf]

You might be thinking spices. Mithril, Reagents and other top end strategic resources are coded to never appear within 2 squares of anything else

 

[marioflag]

Why not just find a way to make those leaders with the Agnostic trait unable to found a religion? Even if they research that tech, then the next person to research it will found the religion. It would make sense to me that those leaders who choose not to follow the gods would then choose to not allow the founding of a religion in their lands.

Is something like that feasible?

It would be better if Grigori or Illians AI simply avoid to research religion techs and focus on other parts of the tech tree

 

[Bitwise]

It would be better if Grigori or Illians AI simply avoid to research religion techs and focus on other parts of the tech tree

That just rules out Auric and Cassiel getting honor or deception and joining the overcouncil and undercouncil though. They need to be able to get the tech, but not found the religion.

 

[marioflag]

That just rules out Auric and Cassiel getting honor or deception and joining the overcouncil and undercouncil though. They need to be able to get the tech, but not found the religion.

I'am not a modder so i don't know how exactly it works, but reading on the forum i understood that there should be some sort of Tech weight parameter used by AI, where setting X value, will prohibit AI to research a specific tech or to research it at later stager than other civs, because other techs will have a priority.
Grigori and Illians could in this way be allowed to research those techs but only later and never found any religion, which is also a wasted research.

 

[jenks]

The pre-barbarian survival game and capturing animals in nature is one of my favorite elements in FfH.

However I noticed that on about four games after about turn 75 the only animals left in my world are bears and elephants. Capturing these two is fun and the bear is useful for the + culture in cities, but it seems a little uneven that every other animal in the world has become extinct , and this takes away from any player wishing to go with subdue animal - beatmaster strategies

To me this bear / elephant overpopulation seems to be because they are the two strongest land animals - they have the highest base strength (elephants), and a high base strength with a 'spawn shop' (bears - den)

Other animals isues:

Gorilla - too rare without anywhere other than jungle where it spawns
Lion - common but too weak, have not seen one 'evolve' into the lion pride in 0.30
Tiger - too rare without anywhere other than jungle where it spawns
Spider - always see a couple early on but then they seem to die off quick
Wolf - common but too weak, have not seen one 'evolve' into the wolf pack in 0.30

Suggestions to balance animals a little (only having the currently useless elephants by the time i get a beastmaster is naff!)

* Raise the rate at which lions may grow into Lion Pride

* Raise the rate at which wolves may grow into Wolf Packs

* Raise spawn rate of Tiger (or allow spawning affinity outside of jungle ie forest)

* Raise spawn rate of Gorilla (or allow spawning affinity outside of jungle ie forest)

* Raise the chances of Baby Spider spawning from 5% to 25% (I have yet to see one)

* Change Baby Spider from 20 % chance of growing into giant spider on victorios battle (20% chance is never going to happen unless you find nearly dead units) to be something more like 5% chance of growing into giant spider per turn

* Make capturing the elephant useful and a prerequisite of the War Elephant i.e. Wild Elephant upgrades to War Elephant

 

[jenks]

Movement on land is too easy to come by in FfH.

To me the main thing causing this is that the Mobility I & II promotions just seems too powerful (+1 movement each) whilst being the easiest promotions to get (requires horseback technology).

It makes the 1 - 3 base movement of most game units indistinguishing and a little flavourless. Particularly I find that it undermines the power of cavalry and horses in the game.

Why do I need cavalry or chariots to ride out to defend remote parts of my kingdon when my level 2 warrior gets there just as fast?

Suggestions to limit the power of mobility, and enhance the specialisation of cavalry style units

* Make Mobility I available only to Recon, Animal and Mounted Units and make Mobility II available only to Mounted Units

OR

* Give Mobility promotion a prerequisite promotion such as Drill I for Mobility I and Drill IV for Mobility II

OR

* (rather than +1 outright movement points) Make Mobility I give + 1 movement in roads, leads to Mobility II (+1 movement)

OR

* Give Mobility II a prerequisite tech such as Animal Handling or Military Strategy, and a prerequisite promotion such as Drill III

 

[reverend oats]

* Make Mobility I available only to Recon, Animal and Mounted Units and make Mobility II available only to Mounted Units[/QUOTE

I would disciple and arcane units for mobility one. That way it is easier to get priests non-combat units to the front and allows horse-armies to at least keep some support.

 

[Sureshot]

Two events that are just becoming frustating:

A man is speaking out against the government. Three options usually:
1. 50% chance of you getting screwed over
2. 50% chance of you being screwed over twice as much, with a 50% chance of getting +1 happiness
3. permanent +1 unhappiness

Traitorous Literature
1. Nothing.
2. Permanent unhappiness.

For the Man speaking out, we're talking all bad nothing you can do about it unless you have specific guilds already.
Give an option to pay 200 gold to avoid the whole thing.

For Traitorous Literate I don't see why you would choose unhappiness, unless it prevents the Man speaking out event.. but then its Choose 1 unhappiness now repeatable, or wait to get unhappiness later multiple times.


There should always be an option to pay gold to avoid negative effects. Permanent unhappiness is just incredibly crippling, and the other others are 50% chance of horrible effects. Gold costs atleast allow you to prepare for these things and take a reasonable penalty. The other options with having a guild might present an option to pay gold, but just make a separate option that costs a lot more if necessary, and the guilds basically giving you a cheaper alternative.

 

[Sureshot]

Defile is pretty useless, would be nice if it was a reverse sanctify spell that spread hell terrain.

 

[thFrgttn]

Goblins are too weak - they replace the scout for the Clan and yet only have a movement of one.
Meanwhile the barbarian lizardmen are too powerful (especially if they spawn or of lairs in the first few turns of the game), given that they have strength of 4 and 2 movement.

 

[Sureshot]

Goblins are too weak - they replace the scout for the Clan and yet only have a movement of one.
Meanwhile the barbarian lizardmen are too powerful (especially if they spawn or of lairs in the first few turns of the game), given that they have strength of 4 and 2 movement.

i think Goblins were reduced to 1 movement because the barbs had worker stealing ability too early.. now that lizardmen are early the change seems pointless.

might be good to put goblins back to 2 movement.

 

[Grey Fox]

Goblins usually survive longer than a human player scout (I say human cause AI get an insane bonus vs barbs), because they are at peace with the barbs. So that movement point isn't always a problem.

 

[onedreamer]

Goblins do not survive any longer than "human player" (??? let's say "other") scouts. Because the game starts with ANIMALS and GIANTS, which are HOSTILE. So the Goblins, with 1 movement and no terrain double-movement bonus, last LESS. That be the third time I write it in this post.

Two events that are just becoming frustating:

A man is speaking out against the government. Three options usually:
1. 50% chance of you getting screwed over
2. 50% chance of you being screwed over twice as much, with a 50% chance of getting +1 happiness
3. permanent +1 unhappiness

This would be if it was truly permanent. But the +1 happy lasts 5 turns, so I suppose the +1 unhappy lasts the same.

Traitorous Literature
1. Nothing.
2. Permanent unhappiness.

Not sure, I don't recall having this event ever, but it might be the same as above.

 

[Sureshot]

youre right that the happiness lasts 5 turns, but the unhappiness is permanent and stacks with itself as the event repeats (you can check your city screen happiness; i had a "+3 AAARRRGGGHHH" with no timer that stayed til i ended my game much later). id choose the 50% chances except that it causes your city to revolt 50% of the time and cancels what youre building.

and in the Traitorous literature, the unhappiness is permanent, ive tested it, which is why i wrote Permanent Unhappiness both times in that post, because im certain of it.

 

[Shakiko]

After you have a chance to play a game or so, please check back here and give your impressions on what was to powerful, and what you may have just avoided for being to weak.

Holidays are over, finally played a game with each civ at least once (multiple games with Sidar, Svartalfar), my observations and opinions so far:


powerful stuff:

a)Farms + Specialists.
Except for playing one of the elf factions this just beats any Cottage, workshop or sucky windmills out there. Especially after getting Guilds.

How about changing, say the Serfdorm civic to something like "workshops +1 +1 instead of the +20% it got right now ?
Cottages could be improved by giving an underused civic choice (like mercantilism? dunno if that makes sense in an historical context) +1 and prolly +1 for towns.
This would at least bring them up to vanilla civ 4 level - and its not that great in vanilla either.


Instead of pushing the other improvements you could also try to make farms worse: +1 per farm (is that possible/codable ?) would still allow them to be an extraordinaire food source if used sparsely, but kinda make GP-farm-cities abit harder to build.
Thi would also improve the need for in FFH, which is kinda irrelevant right now. (more details down below)



b)Fire mana
Archmages + Fire 3 + some protecting units = quite hard to stop.
Heck, its that good that I tried to get 3 fire mana nodes with every civ using magics I played after discovering it...

How about reducing the coll. damage from metors or at least reducing the numbers of meteors you get per cast ?


c)The grigori world spell.
Wow....just wow... see a)


d) Guardian of nature:
I know it requires a whole tech and a certain state religion and it just works with the elves.... But +15 still obsoletes quite every other building and resource giving happyness.
How about changing it to +1 just for Ancient forests ? Or is there a way to make it 1/3 for Forests, jungles and Ancient forests ?



e) Forges:
Kinda build them in 80-100% of all my cities, the factor and time just depending what civ I played. +25% is just too good and there are quite no alternatives.
Additionally you even get +1 whe nyou have gold....
Thats nice but kinda a no-brainer to build.

How about lowering the -bonus or adding more (2 or 3) to forges to make the decision abit harder.


f) The great library:
It's a cheap wonder (just 350 ), the prerequistes aren't that harsh (even as a non-builder-faction you normally build a few libraries to boost your research) and the rewards are just breathtaking. I tried to build it with every faction I played.


I really like the idea that it boosts the of Scientist specialists (and Scientist GP), but right now it provides quite alot of beakers just by itself AND get you a great scientist in no time, even further raising your beakers, especially as it's benefits als apply to the free Sages you get....

How about lowering the free Sages you get to 1 (instead of 2) ?

 

[onedreamer]

that sucks then. And even more knowing that the happiness bonus lasts only 5 turns but the unhappiness one is permanent. I'm thinking it is an oversight in the first case, and in the second case... we're missing something, or oversight again ^^

edit: this was an answer to Sureshot.

 

[Shakiko]

[continued]



Sucky stuff I never used again when I realized how sucky they were:

a) Archers:
you can't attack with them, thus they won't get any exp; you can't use weapons and simple warriors already get +25 City defense, too.
I did not even use them when playing Ljosalfar.

How about removing the +25% city defense modifier - for me the ability to defend cities is is already featured in their increased defense strength in FFH2 and the fortify/culture bonus in cities.
And adding a simple +25% vs melee units instead ?
This way you could at least try to attack some melee units while still being able to defend cities, but not being overpowered vs Axe-/Swordsmen.

This would also lead to a simple Archery units > Melee units > mounted units > Archery units


b) Longbowman:
Same problem as with archers.
Being able to use weapons improves them but it kinda feels odd... which part of the bow is made out of Iron ?

so how about removing the weapon promotions and granting the same +25% vs melee, too ?
Additionally to represent the "longbow-aspect, how about adding an additional first strike ?

I dunno how this will affect combat odds though, as a normal champion would have 8 with irons weapons while a longbow would have 6 , +25% vs melee and 2 first strikes.



c)
Compassion civics Basic Care and Protect the weak:
Never used them - Fend for themselves is alot better than Basic care and you can easily offset the with Agriculture
Protect the weak does not add anything great in particular.

If I ever did not use Fend for themselves I either went for sacrifice the weak or public healers.

I am aware that you get positive or negative relationship modifcators with different leaders, but those kinda did not matter much.

How about doubling all the and modifiers from all compassion civics ? This would at least add an actual choice for the compassion civic, especially when coupled with the proposed ideas to the forge (or the farms)



d) Siege weapons:
Those aren't that sucky by itself, it's just that Fireball and later meteors are alot better ... harder to get, but you still get other mileage out of your (arch-)mages.
So I would not propose to improve siege weapons but to remove the collateral dmg from some spells - otherwise the unique feature of siege weapons (bombard, coll. dmg) is just not unique anymore - and therefore they don't have any advantage over those other units anymore.

 

[onedreamer]

b)Fire mana
Archmages + Fire 3 + some protecting units = quite hard to stop.
Heck, its that good that I tried to get 3 fire mana nodes with every civ using magics I played after discovering it...

It's not like Maelstrom is less powerful, heh...

e) Forges:
Kinda build them in 80-100% of all my cities, the factor and time just depending what civ I played. +25% is just too good and there are quite no alternatives.
Additionally you even get +1 whe nyou have gold....
Thats nice but kinda a no-brainer to build.

Library +25% science and Money Changer +25% gold are the same but you don't mention them ? Also, Forges are the same in Civ4, so I really don't see what's the problem.