FfH2 0.34 Balance Thread

[onedreamer]

...Also, they seem to be a bit biased. I recently found the Broken Sepulcher 3 tiles from the Bannor capital. Since I know that Scouts will never get killed summoning monsters from a lair, I figured it would be a good chance to take the Bannor out of the game. Sure enough, I got the lair to spawn 2 Ogre bosses and a Gargoyle before being cleared out.

All three of them decided to head straight for me (a fifth of the map away) rather than attack the Bannor, 3 tiles away.

What. The CRAP?

*ahem* the barbarian AI has always been biased (since the first version of Civ4). This doesn't change that it is now highly expoitable by the human player, since the AI won't exploit itself
On the Broken Sepulcher, in my game as Bannor I have it 3 tiles from my capital...

 

[Monkeyfinger]

This discussion is funny because I just had Orthrus spawn right next to me, run off to fight the Bannor, and get killed really quickly.

 

[Jabie]

Yep I found Barbs crazy. I popped a bunch of Ogres out of a dungeon and instead of pulverizing my scout they wandered off and destroyed every other Civ on the continent.

Also, is it me or does orthus always spawn on the continent I'm on? Just once in a while I'd like to see he bother the other continent and leave me to building my culture victory.

 

[Yaotzin]

Could cities on hills all have 2 hammers? Only getting 2 for a plains hill seems arbitrary and rather annoying when vitalizing/playing Ilian etc.

 

[Fafnir13]

I've been playing a bit more of the Illians today (who isn't ). Thus far, I'm agreeing with those who say we need more priests. Making the ritual repeatable seems fair, but also somewhat odd to me. A one time spawn of three plus being able to build further priests with appropriate techs (perhaps slightly higher along the religious tree) once the ritual has been performed would seem more...accurate? Flavorful? I dunno quite how to put it. The rituals seem to be a great way to reintroduce some of Mulcarn's power back into the world. Once that bit has been introduced, further rituals shouldn't be required to maintain it.

On a similar note, the frostlings only spawn the one time, correct? Would it be possible to throw them into the random barbarian spawn as well once that ritual has been performed? Be nice to keep seeing them occasionally, if only to remind you that things have gotten a bit different.

Getting back to the priests, I can imagine some complaining about being able to mass produce priests then upgrade them all at once into a horde of high priests. The final ritual could use the boost. The Illians are stuck in a massive war, at the beginning of which they lost half their civilization. In return, they get one extremely powerful unit (after surviving to comple another ritual) and 3 (if they managed to keep them alive) moderately powerful units. Gaining the one powerful unit is great, but it can't be everywhere at once. Getting a massive dose of high priest type units would help to make it much more of a game winner. And, if the Illians are already winning, it will help speed things up. I forget what Kael called it in the pedia entry for the good baron, but it's one of those things that keep a won game from taking too long to complete.

 

[farart]

I played on Erebus map with flexible difficulty level. It seemed to me, that barbarians have appeared as soon as I have received Deity (nearby 100 - 150 turn). I have beaten off from them with Loki and his pupets Its easy. But they have taken out almost all other civilisations. So it is not interesting to play. Barbarians аre not balanced.

 

[LordGek]

I'm now going to whine about a cool feature I've actually never even seen yet, so please excuse my theoretical ramblings...

The guilds are gone including the Guild of Nine which allowed the recruiting of mercenaries. While I understand there is still a wonder that allows the hiring of mercenaries, as I understood the Guild of Nine in 0.33, all Civs could become guild members if they wanted to do so.

Perhaps there could be a compromise here, like one World Wonder Guild of Nine and then, once somebody has taken the big plunge, other Civs can make National Wonder versions with the creator of the World Wonder getting more frequent and or much cheaper offers?

Actually, looking at the Guild of Nine Wonder pedia entry in 0.34 it doesn't say ANYTHING about recruiting mercenaries so I'm a bit confused.

 

[kouji71]

in the games i've been playing so far today, it seems like the barbarians spawn three or four times more units than usual, and they start attacking around turn 40, instead of 120+ like they used to do. i even turned lairs off, but i still got just as many barbarians

also, does turning off lairs also turn off explorable dungeons that don't spawn barbarians?

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I think a national wonder for guild of the nine might work better too, but at least you can try to go take it over.

Barbarian behavior seems a bit off to me as well, maybe something in between the 33 & 34 behavior would be better.

Speaking of ai, do they go out of their way to pillage, or only what they happen to be standing on? In a large war where I was eventually confined on one city, my single sources of copper and horses were untouched.

 

[Brokenbone]

Barbarian concern relating to the poor AI civs.

The AI tended to do "not so hot" in the prior version of FFH when you had one or both of raging barbarians & barbarian world options on. Sure, most'd still get through the delicate early stages of the game, sometimes a couple would get completely annihilated.

The new version, they seem to be doing worse. My working theory is that it's because there are new sources of sometimes overwhelming barbarians... i.e., lairs that spawn little gangs, often impressive ones. I have no idea what influences AI civs to try to "pop" a lair (I assume they do try!), but again, working theory is that they probably just go for it, and then get steamrolled if it's like, a gang of Azers or something else too powerful for them. Again, if they don't do so hot against handfuls of orc warriors, a coordinated assault of 3-4 critters with 6ish combat strength, flying, etc., might be just too much for them.

Human players can at least be judicious about (a) their defenses, and (b) whether exploring a lair is worth the risk of a terrible stack of barbarians emerging. I don't mind the sometimes surprising high strength bosses popping out (hey, it's a gamble), but just don't know if maybe AI civs need to have a certain minimum score or something before they ought explore lairs, or get terrible results.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Keep in mind we're okay with one or two ais being taken out by barbarians due to chance, though of course that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to put up a good fight.

 

[LordGek]

I think a national wonder for guild of the nine might work better too, but at least you can try to go take it over.

As a SP player only, I'm actually not as concerned for myself as "the children" (AI).

I like the idea of the AI coming at me with all sorts of random mercenaries BUT AT THE SAME TIME I'm not willing to just let them make this cool wonder before me if I can get to it first.

 

[Sarisin]

I'm not seeing that much of a difference with the raging barbs in my first game of .34. Yes, AI civs are getting mowed down, but the problem there is STILL the age old problem with the AI in FFH. The AI is somehow wired to expand rather than defend. You can look at them early and will see them building Settlers vs. Warriors. Also, I think some of the beelining for techs by certain civs hurts them as these techs take a long time to research instead of others that might actually help in building stronger defending units - Archery comes to mind.

I have been very lucky with the few lairs I have explored and not had any of the bad guys pop out that are being mentioned. But, again, as a human player, most of the time (yes, there have been some excellent exceptions mentioned here) you can prepare for when they come knockin' by having a good defense ready (Warriors, Palisades, etc.). The AI OTOH...no.

You might end up with a Conquest Victory early on or just you and one or more civs with the Barbarian trait. Of course, I think type and size of map in addition to settings like Raging Barbarians, Barbarian World and AggAI have much to do with what you get in your games.

 

[BeefontheBone]

More of an AI issue than a balance one I guess, this. Hyborem just spawned (summoned by the Svartalfar, with whom I'm at war) a couple of tiles away from a former Svartalfar city which my Priests of Winter were defending against various Svart units including Rosier. Hybo declared war on me, which was sensible and indeed should have been a massive setback - I've not got longbows or champions yet, he could've taken a couple of cities with ease. However, he moved all his units towards me, except for the settler and worker, leaving Dis undefended. I ran a hunter which I'd captured on the interturn around him and capped the city without a fight, wiping him out instantaneously and giving me a free Gila to play with. An action which could've swung the game against me (the Svarts summoning Hybo) instantly turned into a small boost for me (and would've opened up Stir from Slumber later if I'd not already got two kills under my belt).
I think the issue was that he founded Dis after moving his other units, so he didn't know to defend it.

On the whole though the AI has been better this version - the Svartalfar made intelligent use of their worldspell to kill off a few of my defenders with hunters; I could easily have lost a city to the barbs after that if I'd not been able to reshuffle fast enough. The two sets of elves have repeatedly tried to make an elf sandwich out of me, declaring on me on two fronts and turning my would-be offensives into scrambles to retake captured cities from them, and the early game was very tense - between the regular barbs, Mokka's gang, Orthus and the Guardian's gargoyles I was very nearly eliminated early on, and am now really enjoying slowly turning the place back to ice

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

1) Illians should have a 100% chance to raze Pagan temples in conquered cities in order to be able to build their temple of the hand
2) 3 priests of the hand in the whole hand is not enough, the ritual should be repeatable if you lose one or more of them
3) agreed that blizzards should be summonable, blizzard-hunting is weird. btw, the fact that it's mainly useful with guys you have open borders with is weird, and it's very harsh on the AI
4) barbarian trait civs should be able to explore lairs, and baddies spawned by bad results should be hidden nationality.
5) barbs b-lining for cities is overdone, they should b-line for cities only if they have nothing at all to attack/pillage nearby. btw, if you block a chokepoint with a warrior they will leave you alone
6) it seems that barbs are biased against the human player in most cases. not game-breaking, but annoying and unfair.
7) once Samhain is completed, frostlings spawning randomly around the map just like all the other barb units ( maybe in snow/tundra only ) would be nice
8) most Illian rituals should be repeatable ( Samhain, Deepening, White Hand...)
9) AI civs beelining for certain techs is sometimes overdone and it hurts them cuz they ignore very useful techs.
10) guild of the nine only available to the one civ that builds the wonder seems unfair.

now add "imho" at the end of each of these 10 points and the post will be perfect

btw Fafnir, that thing you were thinking about is a "double win mechanic" ( aka win-win mechanic I guess?) , i.e. rewarding the player who is already winning in order to have him steamroll over weaklings and end the game in a reasonable span of time

 

[EverNoob]

I have to agree with the barbs being out of control. They're waaaaayy too many and rush too early. It's actually worse than raging barbs in previous versions of the game, because they come in earlier. I'm fine with a challenge, but constantly fighting barbs all the time isn't fun.

I tried and retried a standard Lake map, immortal difficulty, default settings.

 

[MiKa523]

I also think that Illians should be able to recreate their Priests of Winter, but I don't agree that rituals should be repeatable.
-Samhain is only dangerous in the early game anyway.
-Deepening might be annoying, while playing against the Illians, if they build it multiple times, because everyone gets crappy terrain -> no fun
-Repeating The White Hand for more Priests doesn't seem the real solution to me; it makes the Ritual less special, decreases flavour.

Maybe give the temples a planar gate kinda ability in order to rarely(!) spawn new Priests, which will be activated with the White Hand ritual.
One might link the spawnrate to AC or to the percentage of snow/tundra tiles on the map (The Deepening would then increase the spawnrate in addition to expansion and more temples).

This would also help the lack of production some people are complaining about, when you get the Priests without investing production, besides the ritual to start the spawning.

 

[MaxAstro]

I have been very lucky with the few lairs I have explored and not had any of the bad guys pop out that are being mentioned. But, again, as a human player, most of the time (yes, there have been some excellent exceptions mentioned here) you can prepare for when they come knockin' by having a good defense ready (Warriors, Palisades, etc.). The AI OTOH...no.

It's pretty hard to "prepare" for the AI to pop a lair that results in a strength 8, move 2, BLITZ unit beelining your capital on turn 30-something.

 

[Kolath]

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

Barbarian AI:
1. Needs less bee-lining to capitals. I played an MP game last night and my ally and I were right next to eachother. All barbarians on the map beelined for my capital and ignored my ally.
2. Barbarians do not pillage any more. In .33, barbs always pillaged my farms, cottages, etc. This time they walked right past 3 farms a gem mine, horses, etc. just to attack a city

Unbalanced Lairs
1. Should add a level requirement to pop lairs that scales with the "difficulty" of the lair. This prevents a scout from popping a 8/9 Ogre at turn 5 or popping two axemen allies at turn 5.
2. Perhaps reduce strength of lairs, right now, especially in multiplayer, lairs are a huge source of randomness.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

-Actually, shouldn't they be, like, trying to defend the lair? -Because they're just gallivanting off, now. They don't even attack the unit on the lair.

I'm moving my response to this post from the Bug thread, because I think it's intended.
I think wandering monsters should stick around and guard dungeons, especially those actually spawned by the dungeons.