FfH2 0.34 Change log

The changes are really great. I already expressed my awe of the new Illians in the other thread
Especially that they open a lot of possibilities for a modder, too.

I am a little worried with guild axing though. I agree that most of them are useless and do not need to be guilds at all, but I hope the basic guild mechanics will not be removed from SDK. I do not see a reason to it, just want to say that I REALLY NEED IT. And replacing corporation screen with somnium in 0.33 was painfull enough. So, please, cut just the current guilds, let mine live
I would keep guild of the nine one. Just get rid of the events and include expanded mercenaries by wastamastaflash. It is more fun and is less chance - dependant.

Talking of events, I may be the only one, but I think there are too many of them, but not enough meaningfull ones. I really like the city feud chain and hope for more such ones (the follow up for "found a witch" maybe? - currently you should burn her every time as the other option does nothing). All crime events should be removed, especially now that ratcachers guild is cut. Crime never really worked in my opinion. There are other, like constellations (most of the time) or the mana ones, with the infamous goblin waste on top of it. I do not think they add much and some are simply annoying. Also, the current changes to goblin waste is not enough - we need a way to cope with it without the nature magic. And currently there is none. Ever.

I really love including Marnok's Lairs - it really deserve it. But I think that Barbatos should stay and Broken Sepulcher should be explorable only after killing him (or explorations should always or almost always awaken him).

 

You mean they get +1 trade route per desert tile in the city fat cross? I never said anything. Mammon here I come!

 

"wow" ....

 

I dislike quite a lot the new additions, and therefore i'm not very fond of the new version.
The Static world spell is getting me in a bad mood about the new patch,...
Not only does it sound like a huge advantage, it also sounds as if i as a player can't do much during that time. Wich means i will have to hammer 20 times on the 'next round' button... (yeah i know controlling my untis and such is still enabled....).
So an option to completly block out different civs would be a real nice idea (or is there allready a way?).

I don't know what i should thing about the special uniqueness of the Ice-Mana... because i don't see nature mana as a lot more common... but yeah whatever...

The removal of the guilds is also a thing that's not to great... sure some guilds were completly useless, but i liked some of 'em...

I like the idea for the new gameplay times and such... but as said overall i'm not to enthuastic about the changes and additions.

 

73. Added the "Challenge: Increasing Difficulty" game option (every 50 turns the game difficulty increases by one until it hits deity).

Funny, I've added a pretty similar option to a(n as of yet unreleased) version of my modmod. I'll have a lot of fun playing games with both on that goes from fairly easy to "the AI has HOW MANY units?"
Especially as the Illians appears to suit my playstyle perfectly, building up for one big final war with me vs most of the world using a few really good units to win.

 

yeah, dynamic difficulty is awesome. I can foresee I'm going to start all games at noble now, and they're never going to get boring hopefully

btw, I'm having a hard time understanding what "60. Removed the no_building bypass (exception for the doviello that counted a civ that was unable to build a building as having it for unit creation, so the doviello didnt have to have training yards to make axemen)." means. care to explain?

 

Ooh i like this. Both explorable lairs and Illians and big changes.

Awesome!

 

Thats more a note to myself in case something goes wrong and I have to put it back. At one time I made a change so that if a civ couldnt build a building a unit required they would be able to build that unit without the building. It made things like the doviello easy, they could make standard axemen (even though axemen required a building they couldnt build). Likewise with the Clan and their adepts (since the clan cant build mage guilds).

It was kinda a kludge and I took this opportunity to get that code out and return us to the normal way it works since I didnt really need it anymore. It doesnt effect gameplay outside of the unit switches.

 

Summoning Auric is sort of a win condition, but you can try to stop at the last second. Other avatars would be worth a shot, like the mithril golem, though that is a bit hard to throw together at the last minute.

 

Would Eutrabatres be any good?

 

The player must kill another player to get the Drifa ritual. What exactly does that mean? Do you have to personally capture the last remaining city of a civ?

 

Yeah, I think that's what it means.

 

The changelog is very interesting, but it doesn't include simple bug fixes like free AI techs for difficulty levels (the AI gets for example Mining without the knowledge of Crafting) or Charmeless Succubi.

 

Instead of making the Great Commander promotion have special rules to keep from duplicating them, one idea is to have the Great Commander create an item that confers the Great Commander promotion effects. Like, "Write Strategy Tome", in the spirit of The Art of War. The hope being that then one only has to make sure any items aren't duped.

Its a little less cool than thinking of your army as lead by a charismatic commander, but having a book is much less silly if your unit is a hero. (Its always bizarre to think of that single dude having a commander cheering him on) It would also add the capacity to take the book from a defeated opponent, for better or worse.

 

Please remember that the changelog is a tool that I use to track changes so that if something breaks in a version I have a reminder of what I may have changed that effected it. I dont detail every change, especially XML changes that are unlikely to cause issues.

I know a lot of people enjoy reading the change log, and we do use it as a marketing tool to generate some excitement but dont expect that every change is included.

 

I always thought that a mage getting 2 promotions with each upgrade was a feature, not a bug.

 

Please, please tell me that means "+1 trade route per desert tile (including flood plains etc.) in the BFC"

 

I seriously seriously seriously seriously doubt it probably meant to be +1 commerce.

 

Awesome changelog, I can't wait to play.
I also love those ideas about free xp on higher difficulties and the horsemen items...both sounds kinda familiar *whistles*

Regarding the +1 traderoute(?) from deserts I think it's a nice change for the Malakim, but that's imho not much of a benefit unless you play big maps with many cities and they would still have problems getting their food together for desert cities, right?
How about a ritual for them (available once per city!) to change one flat desert tile to an oasis?
And cottages on desert would be nice, too. Think about it, you can already get desert cottages with that new +1 trade, if you use an adept with Water I and Sun I.

I think all those amazing and seemingly overpowered changes to the Illians are necessery to get as many ppl as possible to play them to try everything out.
It's always better (also judging from other developer's actions and experiences) to overpower new features so that everyone uses them and you can adjust them step by step than to introduce weak, boring features noone is going to check out anyway.

 

Will there be any "No level requirements for AI" option ??