FfH2 0.32 Balance Feedback

[Uberness]

I agree with almost all of Ahrimans points, Mithril weapons could use it's cost cut in half, and the stack damage spells really need a limit to how many units it can damage at once or tighter damage limits, you use just afew ritualists on a stack that would have 99.9% odds killing you, and suddenly its down to 8.2% odds, and tsunami is way to much for every cultist to use, and even destroying improvements along the coast.

A limit of 3-6 units damaged per caster, 15-30% cap or made less spammable would be good, catapults are balanced because you need to risk losing them if you want to -try- and do collateral damage and possibly lose the catapult and then need to wait for the catapult to heal up before attempting again, but with a spell you can just hit the button and use it nonestop.

One way to reduce the power of it is a % chance for the caster to become fatiqued after using the spell often, and while fatiqued it can't cast the spell until it wears off, good way to balance the insanely powerful spells like ring of flame and tsunami.

Tsunami might be balanced if it kept the improvement destroying, and had a damage bonus against units on water, but low damage on land.

 

[TheGreatSteve]

The "frostlings have been spotted..." event needs to be prevented from triggering very early, or kept from spawning on tiles turned to tundra by the constellation event. I just lost a game on turn 5 because the Bear made my city a tundra, then frostlings spawned and insta-razed it.

 

[Zechnophobe]

It isn't that rare, but only if the Kuriotates or SHeaim are in the game, and choose to let the guild be founded. I'm not sure that they should really get a choice.

Well, I played two full games as the Kurios most recently, and didn't get the Cult. Previously as them, I think I've only seen it really spring up once or twice, and never really spread.

 

[smjjames]

The "frostlings have been spotted..." event needs to be prevented from triggering very early, or kept from spawning on tiles turned to tundra by the constellation event. I just lost a game on turn 5 because the Bear made my city a tundra, then frostlings spawned and insta-razed it.

If you had your warrior IN the city, your city wouldn't have been lost.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The "frostlings have been spotted..." event needs to be prevented from triggering very early, or kept from spawning on tiles turned to tundra by the constellation event. I just lost a game on turn 5 because the Bear made my city a tundra, then frostlings spawned and insta-razed it.

Thats kinda funny. It like Mulcarn is still breaking the compact, even in death.


Seriously though, I don't think that events should be able to create barbarian units in non-barb cities.

 

[Uberness]

I'v seen plenty of frostlings take out players early on, pretty annoying.

 

[Kael]

If you had your warrior IN the city, your city wouldn't have been lost.

Yeah, I agree with smjjames. Frostlings wont spawn in any tiles with units in them, so if you leave a city open...

Its really no different than if if they spawned beside the city and moved into it.

 

[Uberness]

I think tribal huts could use some rebalancing, I think it's fine to get free hunting or mining or mythicism from a hut, but free alteration astronomy mathematics and drama?

One game by turn 9, I got knowledge of the ether alteration and sorcery as amurites, seems abit much.

 

[Frozen-Vomit]

Picture 1 & 2 show an exploit to generate massive amounts of gold from kurio settlements (with runes). Stonwarden -> Temple -> Merchant. I guess it would be better to have net income and research multiplied with 0 rather than commerce.

3rd file shows that it's impossible to build the holy city buildings in settlements. Why can priest build temples and great prophets can't build their buildings?

4th shows that you again need all the mana sources for building the lesser towers. I guess the change that you need all but one got lost during transport to BtS...

 

[Blackmantle]

Recently while playing Elohim i realized that devouts could upgrade to Priests of Leaves, Kilmorph and Order which are all more or less "good" religions pre-shadow (which is a very nice feature after all). But they cant seem to upgrade to priests of the Empyrean according to the pedia (and they cant seem to upgrade to "evil" priests but that seems allright given the flavor of the Elohim.).

That seems to have been forgotten to be updated on implementation of the Empyrean / CoE. Whould be surely nice and thematically correct if they could. (Empyrean is one of the most fitting religions for them after all...)

 

[xalien]

Slave trade resolution for Undercouncil is crazy as brings gold-hammer ratio down to 1:1. Which means that mines are only as productive as hamlets and vastly inferior when compared to towns with Taxation. It gets even worse with elves for obvious reasons (yeah, I play Svartalfar a lot so I know it very well). It makes gold-rush property of certain civics totally useless.

I consider soldier of Kilmorph to be a very fair and balanced way to boost production of a smaller cities or wonders, but slave trade blows it out of the water. With 2:1 ratio it would still be *very* strong but not as crazy as it is now.

 

[MondSemmel]

I think tribal huts could use some rebalancing, I think it's fine to get free hunting or mining or mythicism from a hut, but free alteration astronomy mathematics and drama?

One game by turn 9, I got knowledge of the ether alteration and sorcery as amurites, seems abit much.

Yes, and on the other hand, some of the useless effects should be buffed/removed.
I'm perfectly fine with barbarians spawning if you are crazy enough to not use a scout on high difficulties, but getting maps is simply frustrating because it's completely useless whereas getting techs is vastly overpowered. Also, the +5 experience effect was left unchanged from vanilla Civ4, where 5 experience means a lot more than in FFH where it's a totally negligible amount.
Getting a Warrior, Scout, Gold or Tech are the only really worthwhile effects. In about that order.
I think I'll never understand why gold gives ~50 gold at max and techs easily equal 300+ beakers on normal speed...
Perhaps a few FFH only/civ specific effects would be possible, too?
And as has been said, huts (and graveyards) need a cap to the granted techs. You could probably even get Strength of Will or Omniscience like that if you left a hut in your empire...
At least make it grant the cheapest (non-religion - it's pretty unthematic when Bannor switch to FoL or something like that not because they researched it themselves, but because they received the tech as a present) tech or only a maximum fixed amount of beakers (as in Great Sage bulbing).

Slave trade resolution for Undercouncil is crazy as brings gold-hammer ratio down to 1:1. Which means that mines are only as productive as hamlets and vastly inferior when compared to towns with Taxation. It gets even worse with elves for obvious reasons (yeah, I play Svartalfar a lot so I know it very well). It makes gold-rush property of certain civics totally useless.

I consider soldier of Kilmorph to be a very fair and balanced way to boost production of a smaller cities or wonders, but slave trade blows it out of the water. With 2:1 ratio it would still be *very* strong but not as crazy as it is now.

On normal speed it's 30 gold for 10 hammers, which is already a huge nerf from before (and crazy in the almost useless direction). You can also only rush buildings, and the whole thing is not only micro-intensive, but rush-building with several slaves seems to make the game hang for a split-second.

Its effect may be be much stronger on Marathon, of course, because it scales with game speed as far as I know.

I think Slaves should give more hammers but Slave Trade cost should be adjusted accordingly so that buying Slaves costs more, but Slaves gained by other means (e.g. Slavery civic, Taskmaster, Courtesan) would give more money when sold and generally be more worthwhile.

 

[smjjames]

Just thought I would also mention this here as it's also in the bug thread.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=276032&page=56

As Zechnophobe said in that thread, the immunities and resistances should be checked to see if they are working correctly. There could be other instances of that bug happening but people aren't noticing it. The only reason I saw it was because the combat odds against the golems was acting strange vs the combat turnout. The combat odds looked fine when I used those spectres against other units in that game though.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Picture 1 & 2 show an exploit to generate massive amounts of gold from kurio settlements (with runes). Stonwarden -> Temple -> Merchant. I guess it would be better to have net income and research multiplied with 0 rather than commerce.

I don't think this is an exploit, but a pretty well known feature of the Kuriotates. You can build temples via priests in their little settlements. You can also use 'guilds' or other specialist enabling civics to get specialists into these settlements. For instance, a cultural victory With the kurio's likely has you with a pair of Bard specialists in each of your colonies.

3rd file shows that it's impossible to build the holy city buildings in settlements. Why can priest build temples and great prophets can't build their buildings?

Interesting, when you found a religion, can it actually appear in a settlement? It's never happened to me. Maybe if you conquer it though. Hmm.

4th shows that you again need all the mana sources for building the lesser towers. I guess the change that you need all but one got lost during transport to BtS...

I didn't know this was ever NOT true. As long as, I dunno, .31d or some such (As far back as I can remember) it's been this way.

 

[sandroba]

i think hippus is very overpowered early game, since there is no unit to counter horses (ever?) at that tech point. Its too much synergy (especially tasunke) : agressive = 50H stabbles and if he uses his world spell he can hit u with 5 str 5 move 35% withdraw C2(minimum) blitz 40% vs achery horseman reaaaaaly fast. Its just impossible for some civs to survive. Maybe there should be some unit similar to spearman at BW?

 

[Ahriman]

Possible solution;
Shock and cover only require combat 1, but formation requires combat 2 or 3.
Move formation (+40% vs horsemen) to only need combat 1.

 

[smusebaer]

I think that the gift of maps should be removed, and that Tech should only be some techpoints not a whole technologie.
And it would be cool, if you could find items witch allows the building of a building in a city (for example pile of Wood for palisades, or books for a libary),
or other things like healing salves, Weaponpromotions (Poision, Bronce Waepons),
or other units like adapts, healers, animals
or trigger events to buy(or take) things from a village.

Perhaps the gain of villages could be done through a event screen.
a) Gain 50 Gold
b) Gain 50 Sience
c) gain map
d) gain scout
e) pay 50 gold and gain an adept
f) take 100 Gold and spawn barbarians
etc.

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

I don't know if it is worth asking, but is there any chance that a future version of FfH could include the ability to gift cities to a vassal? Not a balance issue, per se, but still something rather annoying when I would like to reclaim lost territory for my underlings.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I've been pushing for that for a while. It makes no sense to me that you can gift or liberate cities to anyone but your vassals, and only liberate to them.


I personally also want the colony liberation requirements changed. I've never liked the "two cities on the same, seperate continent" requirement. I'd rather be able to liberate any single city as a colony, and then gift or liberate other cities to it. It might be nice if this used a python cal so you could program specific AI civs to have different requirements. For instance, Khazad would liberate cities when their gold to city ratio gets too low (thus decreasing the number of cities, and increasing the old per city) while the Lanun would liberate their landlocked cities.

 

[MondSemmel]

Even with the Great Engineer removed from Engineering, Guild of Hammers is still too powerful imo. It should at the very least have a building prerequisite of a Forge in the city it's built in, otherwise you can get the probably best production increasing building for still close to nothing and in every city and, more importantly, without even having the tech for it, either.
Three incredible effects (ingenuity in its city, +1 hammer on engineers, free forge in every city) on a very cheap wonder don't make sense at all.
Besides, and this is probably more important, it gives the owner too big of an advantage over everyone else (i.e. usually the opposing AIs) in the game.
Forges are balanced by their high hammer cost - in exchange, you get huge production bonuses in in the city you build them in. With Guild of Hammers, you get even more for almost nothing. I would suggest having it require a Forge or moving it to a later tech, and in any case make it so you cannot get Forges in every city without even having the tech for them (which, while many players will call it a neat 'trick', is simply overpowered).

In comparison, the Great Library seems incredibly weak (although it isn't, just in comparison to the Guild), for example.

The only reason nobody complains about it is because the AI doesn't beeline for it - if it did, I assume it would have been changed a long time ago.