FfH2 0.32 Balance Feedback

[Zechnophobe]

Well, I've got a pretty big gripe here. While being attacked by barbarians around turn 100, when they actually attack, one of my cities was beset upon by a good dozen units. I start building additional warriors to defend it. (Had 2, but I could build another warrior per turn for the next few turns, so I'd likely be okay).

Next turn, I found FoL in the city, and also apparantly trigger the city split event, in that city. So either 6 turns of anarchy, which would kill the city since it couldn't defend against barbarians, or lose the holy city and hope the AI knows to defend against the barbarians.

I try it both ways via save loading, and the city is captured either way.

Even worse, I'm playing the Kuriotates. I've spent a lot of effort on this city.

So my big beef is with the Event. Just in general, this 'split' city event seems like it shouldn't occur until much later in the game. In general, It'd be killer to lose a city in the first 100 turns, and have it be taken over by a potentially rival AI. I only HAD two cities at this point, so I either lost half my empire, or lose a precious 6 turns of output of the city.

Just seems like an overly harsh thing to have happen.

 

[Grey Fox]

I must say that I find most magics to be too good in FfH2, and has almost always been. But might be time to do something about that.

Most spells that damage all units in a stack, need to get an upper limit in how many units they damage (just like catapults can only damage 6 units). Spells that can be used by an infinite number of units, like Maelstrom or Tsunami needs to be toned down by a lot. So you need more units or more turns to turn the defenders into mushy goo just ready to be stomped on.

Many spells might need a max threshold in damage. No not what they have now, where they can do between 20-40% damage per cast, I mean like catapults where they can't damage below 25% of the units hp. (This might already be in I am not 100% sure)

How to handle summons I am not sure. The illusions not able to kill is good.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

I'd honestly be in favor of totally removing stack busting spells for mass producable units like mages and mid-tier priests. I think they're okay as they are on units that require investment and nurturing to raise, and can only be built in limited quantities (Chalid, Hemah, Corlindale, normal archmages, high priests, dwarven druids, etc.) It helps that all of them except normal archmages have a racial or religious requirement.

Spells like that don't belong on units like Cultists and Ritualists (no restriction other than religion) or Mages (no restrictions other than 8 XP gain) though.

Fireball should stay in and keep its bombardment ability though. Being able to bombard with a spell is cool and useful, but not overly powerful like heavy damage to a stack or multiple stacks is. (In case I'm not clear, I think bombarding is all fireballs should be able to do.)

Summons are nowhere near comparable to anti-stack spells. They can only hit one person per turn. I think most of them are underpowered, with the exception of Death 2 (early and strong), Law/Chaos 3 (can be both permanent and summoned in multiple numbers per archamge) and Air 3 (spawns new summons by fighting.)

Actually I guess fireball is technically a summon, only with a useful secondary (collateral) instead of raw strength. Forget what I said about reducing it to just being able to bombard.

 

[·Imhotep·]

I actually like that the Mages are now much more useful as they were back in 0.30. Apart from Casting Fireballs they were just sitting around until they were eligible for the Archmage Upgrade. I agree with Grey Fox on one point though - there are some spells that are incredibly powerful that simply make some roads a best path. OO is very poweful because they open up High Priests with the Tsunami spell - and that spell simply grinds everything to cannonfodder in a coastal city (especially if you have 2 or more High Priests). Chalid's Pillar of Fire is equally good and useable on land cities too. So it's either balancing the spells better and giving such strong spells to every religion or toning them down. Toning them down certainly makes the game harder.

One idea about Hemah though - he used to be my favourite hero back in 0.30 because he came way earlier than any Archmage and yet had all their powerful spells. Now he's just plain useless in most cases (except you give him Law III and the ability to summon Hosts of the Einjehar). Hastur's Razor is a useless spell compared to Chalid's Pillar of Fire. I'd like to see an equipment on Hemah (if it can be coded that way):

Staff of Bizzare Dreams (+2 affinity for Mind Mana, can cast "Hallucination", targeted units lose the ability to defend for 1 turn, can target up to 8 units, can be resisted with 40% chance, if successful caster loses 1XP per hit unit)

Anyway balancing the spells more would be a good improvement.

Imhotep

 

[Randolph]

I'd honestly be in favor of totally removing stack busting spells for mass producable units like mages and mid-tier priests. I think they're okay as they are on units that require investment and nurturing to raise, and can only be built in limited quantities (Chalid, Hemah, Corlindale, normal archmages, high priests, dwarven druids, etc.) It helps that all of them except normal archmages have a racial or religious requirement.

Spells like that don't belong on units like Cultists and Ritualists (no restriction other than religion) or Mages (no restrictions other than 8 XP gain) though.

Fireball should stay in and keep its bombardment ability though. Being able to bombard with a spell is cool and useful, but not overly powerful like heavy damage to a stack or multiple stacks is. (In case I'm not clear, I think bombarding is all fireballs should be able to do.)

Summons are nowhere near comparable to anti-stack spells. They can only hit one person per turn. I think most of them are underpowered, with the exception of Death 2 (early and strong), Law/Chaos 3 (can be both permanent and summoned in multiple numbers per archamge) and Air 3 (spawns new summons by fighting.)

Actually I guess fireball is technically a summon, only with a useful secondary (collateral) instead of raw strength. Forget what I said about reducing it to just being able to bombard.

I totally agree. I'd only add that Air II malstrom is probably the most overpowered example of this, with some metamagic and/or combat promotions it can devistate every enemy within two tiles while avoiding friendlies completely. I think it would be nice if this spell (and similar channneling 2 stack killing spells like ring of fire, etc) had a limit to the number of units it can damage similar to seige weapons.

I also don't have a problem with fireball, and maybe that could be a model for future spells. It can do some reasonable damage to a few units, but can't cause 20%+ damage to three stacks of thirty units. Perhaps Malstrom could summon a hand full of very weak little lightning bolts.

I do like that mages are "stack killing" units, but their effectiveness at this job needs to be better balanced between spheres, and better blanced in general (against say seige weapons).

 

[BeefontheBone]

Are Mobius Witches a touch overpowered now? Being able to get second- and higher-level spells so quickly - ages before mages are available - seems a bit generous.

 

[Grey Fox]

Ages? Arent Planar Gates a bit expensive to build? And their summon rate is dependant on Armageddon Counter, so they will have low spawn rate at first. Though I have no practical experience.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Are Mobius Witches a touch overpowered now? Being able to get second- and higher-level spells so quickly - ages before mages are available - seems a bit generous.

Maybe. Also, they get both the promotions randomly given to them and the free promotions from the mana you own. Still, they sometimes get no free promotions but always start at level 4. I don't like that, as it encourages you to get just 2 combat promotions and upgrade them to Eaters of Dreams (hopefully having gotten enough mana to get more free sphere promotions in the process)

In my version, I don't make the witches start with any levels. Instead I make all planar ate units start with xp based on the AC. In preious versions it has been AC/4, rounded down, but in the next version I'll probably make it more random. I'm also thinking I'll add tech requirements for some planar gate units (Sorcery for mobius witches), and might make the witches unable to upgrade.

 

[Ringtailed]

Mobius Witches are not overpowered. Mine usually pop out at level 4 with 14/17 exp and no promotions. So they're quite inferior to a normal mage but not completely useless since you can get them before sorcery.

 

[uberfish]

new events feedback:

Constellation events are way too frequent. A free golden age from constellation, vs nothing if you have the wrong religion, is completely out of line with other random events power-wise and just makes the game more luck based for no good reason.

Also random negative events like the goblin waste dumping (which seems to be frequent too) need some alternative to make them feel less annoying, possibly give the option to attack the goblin tribe instead and spawn hostile goblins.

 

[Nimbus]

I would agree with the constellation events being too frequent. In my first game they were the only events that I saw, and i saw a lot of them. in my second game i lowered the iweight of all the constellation events from 400 to 200 and i still saw quite a few constellation events but a few other events did manage to sneak in (sob, goblin waste,truffles)

 

[Fafnir13]

On the note of frequency...
It seems like there's way more than ever before, and I used to play with Living World. Worst yet, most of these events don't offer much for you to do. Constellations are the worst offenders, as they seem to happen near constantly and you rarely get a choice in what's going on.
Speaking of choices, there are too many choices occurring that no player could conceivably take advantage of early game. I don't know when people usually get stuff, but how many out there have the Ashen Veil or the Order by turn 100? Is there a way to add some turn number checks for certain events?

Just my 2 cents on that...

 

[Ecofarm]

I'd honestly be in favor of totally removing stack busting spells for mass producable units like mages and mid-tier priests.

Agree.

Fireball should stay in and keep its bombardment ability though. Being able to bombard with a spell is cool and useful, but not overly powerful like heavy damage to a stack or multiple stacks is. (In case I'm not clear, I think bombarding is all fireballs should be able to do.)

Fireball can keep its 4str collateral. Who cares? Do you ever promote fireball instead of maelstrom?? Not me. Not unless I have a ton of mages and an extra node. Of course, if your initial proposal is made reality, then I agree... bombard only.

Summons are nowhere near comparable to anti-stack spells. They can only hit one person per turn. I think most of them are underpowered, with the exception of Death 2 (early and strong), Law/Chaos 3 (can be both permanent and summoned in multiple numbers per archamge) and Air 3 (spawns new summons by fighting.)

So I thought, till Netcortex hit me with twincast spellstaff grigori fire elemental (does collateral?) summoners. It's almost the same thing as mets.

In addition to death 2 (cause fear), Law 3/Chaos 3 (stays with kill). I would add, to the list of formidable tier 3 summons:

Shadow 3, HN invis move4 pillager.

Fire 3, collateral?

And note, Air 3, sentry2 (put one on a peak).

Actually I guess fireball is technically a summon, only with a useful secondary (collateral) instead of raw strength. Forget what I said about reducing it to just being able to bombard.

Instead of raw strength? It is a 4. Hardly weak for a tier 2 summon. Secondary function of collateral? That's the third function I think: 1) kill units 2) bombard 3) collateral

If area damage was removed from common tier2 casters (mage/priest), then I think bombard only is fine for fire, perhaps keeping it's 4str and ability to attack (but not collateral).

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Clan needs a special fire causing spell. Blaze takes about 10,000 turns before a fire starts and by that time wolf riders are long obsolete. If clan had a spell that could cause early/instant fires, they might be fun to play. Warrior replacement: tree hater: moves 2, casts super_blaze, 2str.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Are these collateral causing fire elementals a recent addition? Because I'm in a .30 SG, and the fire elementals in that are just generic hitters.

 

[KingOfLands]

Are these collateral causing fire elementals a recent addition? Because I'm in a .30 SG, and the fire elementals in that are just generic hitters.

Pretty sure they did it in .31 too.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Pretty sure they did it in .31 too.

Fire elementals definately did collateral in .31, I used them often with the Chirp.

 

[xienwolf]

Boar Riders are the Luichirp & Khazad replacement for Horsemen, but they have the same Tech requirements as Horse Archers.

 

[Zechnophobe]

This was actually true before actually. Rarely use Boar riders, since they are only strength 5, and 'basically' replace horse archers. Why they say they replace horsemen I don't get.

I had assumed, possibly incorrectly, that the lack of horsemen was a purposeful weakness. You'll also notice that the Hornguards are weaker than the unit they replace as well.

As for the actual issue though, it does look like it needs an at least a cosmetic touch up.

 

[Grey Fox]

Boar riders already have a weakness in that they require pigs, which always seem to be harder to find (I think on some maps they only exist on one continent, etc).

 

[Blackmantle]

I partly disagree with removing the stack-buster spells completely.

Lowering the damage-cap to 25 % (or even as low as 20%?) for Maelstorm and 40% or 50% for Tsunami whould be sufficient i think (higher Tier busters could be allright with higher cap.). Still a tangiable benefit but not as devastating as it is now. (Tsunami a bit higher since its area of usage is limited and you can protect most of your units from it most of the time by moving them one tile. Exept Naval where its really fitting.) and whould encourage usage / combination of more different spheres as well. Like summons and stackbusters or buffs and stackbusters.
(though i whould rather see Tsunami in the mage branch and relocation of Mutation back to OO Priests. Whould fit better that way around imo and make the later Tiers of Water more useful.)

I completely agree on limit for the number of units effeted by collateral damage on fierball (and other unlimited sources of collateral? Should they exist.) though.