FfH2 0.34 Balance Thread

[[to_xp]Gekko]

a request: could animal dens be changed so that instead of being autorazed when a unit steps of them, they have to be destroyed with a spell-like ability like the other lairs? that way one could still walk on them and choose to keep them around. I for one like to keep them around as long as possible and capture every animal that comes out

 

[Turinturambar]

Couple balance notes:

Illian world spell "Stasis":
1. Turns should scale to game speed. 20 turns on quick is much worse than 20 turns on marathon
2. Should have a tech requirement because right now if you pop it turn 1-5 you get 20 turns of unfettered growth while AI can't even build units to defend against barbarians

I think the Illian world spellshould be scrapped. Not necessarily for balance reasons, but it is simply no fun. 20 turns of shuffling workers/units around gets boring really fast. How about changing it to a spell that is available at priesthood and gives the Illians 1 Priest of Winter per city.

 

[Blackmantle]

@ leo.: Its not utterly unlikely that this bug / crash stems from you finding a tech there (which only happens very seldomly.). There has been something simmilar with graveyards on start and finding a tech in them before founding your first city.

Perhaps this helps Kael in some way. But it happens seldom enough if i remember rightly from marnoks modmod.

 

[Kolath]

Turinturambar, good idea. I was merely suggesting fixes if they keep Stasis, but I agree that it is an unfun mechanic. Just look at all the other world spells. Almost all of them buff the player and do nothing to other players. The few that do hurt other civs do so in limited ways, such as river of blood taking a 1 pop from all cities. It isn't game-breaking and it is a one-time hit.

Stasis may be fun for the Illian player, but it essentially prevents all other players from playing the game for 20 turns. That is just unfun, not to mention very broken if popped early game.

 

[Blackmantle]

@ Kolath: Oh, i guess you didn't get hit by the new arcane lacuna of the Amurites then. That hit me midgame and it sucks (because it works in a simmilary way for spells) but both are rather thematic.
Those are far from the only 2 Worldspells which are rather unfun if you are at the receiving end (ever unsuspectedly got the majority of your forces killed by march of the trees? Or divine retribution when having lots of undead / demons.).
But if you don't like all so much to get hit by bad things (huge early superstacks are rather simmilar) you better do a lower difficulty and take the casters out early enough to prevent them from doing so...

Stasis though seems very much like it needs a tech-requirement very seriously because of simmilarities to the old raging seas thanks to early barb swarm due to the new behavior of barbs...

Whould philosophy be appropriate? Or priesthood? Spmething else.

No for axing it from me. One of the most fitting worldspells imo and really useful if you are the caster.

 

[BugReportage]

Should be activated by researching a mid-game Illian-specific ritual.

 

[Kolath]

@Blackmantle, good point. I was trying to wrack my brain of the world spells for races I usually play.

But at the very least it needs to scale the duration to the game speed.

 

[Blackmantle]

Its like this in the changelog i belive. So you can very much assume that this will be the way it will work when its fixed (perhaps something along those lines is also causing the bugs with its duration?)

@BugReportage: Another good possibility.

 

[orangelex44]

Right now, the Samhain ritual seems to be killing the Illian AI - in my games, they've been building it from turn 1 and strangling themselves. Maybe make it availible from Ancient Chants?

And this is more of an annoyance than a balance thing, but could Call Blizzard be autocasted every turn? Having to do it as a micromanagement thing is annoying.

And OT, are the White Hand Priests named after anything in particular?

 

[Darksaber1]

Well, in real life the White Hand (Bela Ruka) were a seceret unofficial military organization in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (and later in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) opposed to the Black Hand.
Aslo, didn't Sauruman slap a White hand print on his Uruk-Hai?
But, it might just be a coincedence.

 

[JeffSteel]

Well, in real life the White Hand (Bela Ruka) were a seceret unofficial military organization in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (and later in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) opposed to the Black Hand.
Aslo, didn't Sauruman slap a White hand print on his Uruk-Hai?
But, it might just be a coincedence.

Yeah, the white hand was kind of Saruman's thing in Lord of the Rings (thought the slapping of white hand paint onto the Uruk's was from the movie).

 

[Psycho_Ivan]

"The White Hand of Saruman..."

The way Gandalf spoke it, it rhymed.

The White Hand fits them as a name, though.

 

[orangelex44]

That's not exactly what I was asking; the Priests themselves have special names (a la the Stooges) - do these originate from somewhere?

 

[MiKa523]

I think the Illian world spellshould be scrapped. Not necessarily for balance reasons, but it is simply no fun. 20 turns of shuffling workers/units around gets boring really fast. How about changing it to a spell that is available at priesthood and gives the Illians 1 Priest of Winter per city.

I haven't played against the Illian yet, but I can imagine that it might be annoying. Your suggestion is to similar to the Malakim Worldspell though and I agree with others that the current Worldspell fits flavorwise.

One could change it to
-reduce commerce and production by 50% instead of 100% and maybe increase the duration of the spell a little
-keep the current spell, reduce the duration and add a little buff for the Illian like for instance +1 production on each snowtile during the period of the spell, which would encourage to use it later on, instead of using it to warrior rush.

 

[subanark]

For the stasis spell, how about just 20x research production, and growth in all cities (adjusted by difficulty), and all of your units gain 20 movement points for 1 turn ? This way Illian gets a big turn instead of having each other player loses theirs.

Or, for something completely different, simply all non-team units are immobile (and possibly barbs don't spawn so you don't get a buildup attacking all at once).

 

[smusebaer]

Jep the illian worldspell sucks. In a late game with some min. lag per turn it would be a reason to give up.
I like the idea of slowing down instead of stasis. It could be called winters grip.
Or a spell that is like the end of winter mechanic.

 

[marioflag]

I'm not really happy about the balance of Compassion Civics in 0.34. They all have no upkeep so it means that the only strategy involved is calculating if the turn of anarchy is worth the better civic.Fend for themselves is actually useless because Basic Care is always better and both are available at the beginning of the game.

I would also point out that the synergy of Ljosalfar, FoL, Guardian of Nature is too strong and completely unbalanced in any multiplayer game. If your early rush is not successful against the Elves your economy can't really compete with a player exploiting this synergy.They have superplots from improvement + Ancient Forest and happiness is not a factor with Guardian of Nature.

 

[Master_Hugian]

Just wondering what you guys think of this.

Civilization: Balseraphs
Leader: Keelyn
Unit: Hemah

With twin cast he can do the following.
Summon two puppets, who also possess twin cast, these puppets summon two fire elementals each. Next turn he summons two more puppets and the two previous summon two fire elementals each as do the new ones.


Turn 1: 2 puppets (3 turns left), 4 fire elementals (3 turns left)
Turn 2: 2/2 puppets (2/3 turns left), 12 fire elementals (4-two turns left, 8-three turns left)
Turn 3: 2/2/2 puppets (1/2/3 turns left), 24 elementals (4- one turn left, 8- two turns left, 12- three turns left)
Turn 4: 2/2/2 puppets (1/2/3 turns left), 32 elementals (8- one turn left, 12- turns left, 12- three turns left)
Turn 5 and onwards: 2/2/2 puppers (1/2/3 turns left), 36 elementals (12 disappearing every turn but are resummoned next turn.)

Thus with one unit - Hemah, you can have 36 fire elementals causing havoc and destruction everywhere.

What do you guys think, I believe its rather overpowered as Hemah isn't too hard to get.

 

[yualian]

I finished my first 0.34 games with Bannor, Illians, Malakim in deity, immortal difficulty.

Very important part( +1 XP at every combat ) of Raider trait has been removed due to some kind of balance reason.

Because of that, Valor spell gains significant advantage for nurturing your units. and at now, Chalid is the most fastest way to get Valor spell.

Combining Valor spell With Chalid's two kick-ass magic, you can easily level-up weak units like adept.

We already have Chalid Astrakein, the God of war. Who cares about Auric?

 

[Mailbox]

Auric is very disappointing, I spent a ton of energy and effort to summon him and he died within 10 turns of being summoned. Even if it was because of the Godslayer, that's not a very fun end to a whole game of preparation, work, and build up.

I guess the good side of this is that the AI understands how to use the Godslayer.