FFH2 .25 Balance Feedback

[NWO]_Valis;6091298 said:
I have to whine about one thing :/ The AC goes awfully fast up on raging barb and Labscurum games. If the map is big enought and you wont add many players to the map so barbs have were to build additional cities the AC goes up in no time.

Adding now the bug that does not lower the AC when razing AV cities and no other real way to lower it, you get the horsmen at the time you got swordsmen if you are lucky.

I definitely agree with this. I don't think a raging barb game on a Huge map (land) and Labscurum is playable now.

I've played 4 games with these settings and all ended before turn 400 (epic speed) with a Conquest Victory for me. Labscurum starts off with 12 - 15 barb cities on the map. It is just wrong when one is building the Forbidden Palace from the get-go. ;)

Then, the barbs seem to take over AI cities now instead of just razing them. Finally, they also spawn barb cities like in previous versions of the game. The bewildering result is 40-50 barb cities on the map with the AI civs getting wiped out in quick order.

Also, the counter really accelerates, especially if you go out razing barb cities. Once again I have to make the case for NOT moving the counter when you raze a barb city.

In my 5th game I chose raging barbs, but not Labscurum and it was a little better until a few AI civs went down that the barb city-spawning mechanism went into overdrive. This needs to be slowed down IMO.
 
well, that's what you ask for with raging barbs checked... try playing one of those maps without that option
 
And for those who don't like some Armageddon events, Hallowed Ground.

That would be a partial solution, as there is no option for "keep all Armageddon events except this particular one, which I would like handled in this other way". Do you disagree with the argument about the blight event being annoying beyond its intended purpose?

The options are great though, in a game like Civilization, you can never have enough customization of the game setup.
 
A couple of suggestions:

Give players a choice of starting bonuses such as a free unit (e.g. worker or hero or great engineer/scientist).

Make early techs much cheaper, and lower costs of settlers and workers.
(I think before in one of the discussions the design goal of having a wilderness was stated - could this also be implemented by setting a cap on the number of cities that can be built with settlers (for example 5 on normal maps scaling with map size, also applying to barbarian cities).
Have you tried playing with advanced start and a small number of points?
I haven't, but it seems it would solve this issue.
 
I definitely agree with this. I don't think a raging barb game on a Huge map (land) and Labscurum is playable now.

It depends on the type of map. I use 'sto_Archipelago' with low sea level to get a sort of snaky pangaea, which means the AI gets choke points to help repel the barbs. It creates a world where there are relatively isolated centers of civilization surrounded by hostile badlands. Almost all the AIs survive -- at least until I come calling.

Furthermore, I notice that the barb cities are not evenly spread across the map. One continental area may have five or six while another has none.
 
I personally still think that the Armageddon events should just have a chance to occur with the minimum AC, not always happen then. There need to be more catastrophes that can occur at different levels, with different likelihoods. It gets rather boring to always know what Armageddon events are about to happen, and to always know just what to do to stop or encourage them (plus this gives an experienced human a big advantage over an AI). I like to have several types of apocalypses; sometimes its blight, sometimes its half the world sinking into the sea, or the oceans drying up. You should never know whats going to hit next.
 
I personally still think that the Armageddon events should just have a chance to occur with the minimum AC, not always happen then. There need to be more catastrophes that can occur at different levels, with different likelihoods. It gets rather boring to always know what Armageddon events are about to happen, and to always know just what to do to stop or encourage them (plus this gives an experienced human a big advantage over an AI). I like to have several types of apocalypses; sometimes its blight, sometimes its half the world sinking into the sea, or the oceans drying up. You should never know whats going to hit next.

ya thatd be nice
 
Adding a random element to the AC events is certainly a good idea, but I wonder about rising sea levels, catastrophic landmass changes, etc... Blight works pretty well how it stands. Not knowing exactly when it's going to come along and kick you in the jimmy would make things far more interesting, to be sure. As far as any other catastrophes, while they would be colorful and such (especially the melting glaciers raising sea levels due to hell terrain or what-have-you), the time required to code them might simply detract from the features already extant in the game. Some of those still need to be tweaked to get them working properly.
As I'm certainly guilty of suggesting random brainstorms, I can't be too accusatory. It is a good idea, and it'd be nice to see it, but I doubt it'll be implemented to any great degree. ::holds breath for Shadow::
Thanks again for the best mod ever, team. Almost 90K downloads now! Woot!

 
well, that's what you ask for with raging barbs checked... try playing one of those maps without that option

Why? I enjoy playing with the raging barb option. :)

The problem is with the AI civs who simply cannot adjust to raging barbs. They play like it is a 'normal' game with an emphasis on expansion rather than defending. The stacks of barbs common in raging barb games easily overrun the one Warrior defenders the AI normally has in its cities.

I've found that playing without raging barbs the game is a little less interesting - but, that is just me.

My main point, though, was that the combination of raging barbs and Labscurum doesn't work on the huge land map. I think choosing one or the other is playable.
 
Raging barbarians are great.. what you do is find the one forest tile next to their lairs/cities..w hat have you and stick your warrior or whatever there and fortify it and let it exp grind til it's like level z.. then use it to crush them all and your enemies.
 
Not sure if this really is a balance issue, but here is a small suggestion:

Burning Blood should make units immune to fear. Just hab my army of calabim axemen (morio?) retreat from stephanos and don't think that this really makes sense. Crazed cannon fodder should be able to attack.
 
This isn't really a balance issue, but is there any way to program the mod to announce the death of a world unit? The creation of a world unit is always announced, of course. It would be informative if their deaths were also announced -- this would be especially useful for barbarian world units, such as the four horsemen, Barbatos, Acheron, and the Avatar of Wrath.
 
The inability to work impassible tiles can really hurt a city, especially the in ability of the Infernal to work any tile with flames on it. Since desert, including flood plane, tiles tunr into burning sands and spawn the flames feature, large sections of the city radius can become useless. Is there a way to allow certain civs (Infernal, Clan of Embers, and Barbarian State, since their units would all be resistant to fire anyway) to work tiles with flames, while leaving them unproductive for other civs?


If it is possible to allow certain civs to work impassible terrain, I think the Dwarves (Khazad at least, if not also Luchuirp) should be able to work peaks (which should obviously be made to provide something, perhaps 4 hammers no food). It would also be interesting if instead the Arete Civic allowed working peak tiles. I would also like peaks to often have the copper, iron, mithril, gold, gems, marble and maybe sheep resources and to allow dwarven workers/slaves to move through impassible terrain, but whenever I have tried modding it they can't build anything there to harness the resources, and even if they could the city still can't work the tile.
 
Why wont you ask in the SDK/python forum if it is possible. I would love to see all those features like you described.
 
I would like to suggest tying Hyborem's entry in the world upon hellfire AC70 [edit: or some earlier AC] event rather than being summonned.

In my last game, no one summonned Hyborem, the veil had barely spread at all, yet the AC went up to 100 in no time because of the raganork wonder (the AI thanks to its bonuses pumps out a unit per turn). So following to the late AC events there is this flood of evil units everywhere, but since they are barbarian they are promptly dispatched by the AI which has high bonuses against barbs. Furethermore, the argameddon does not feel as dramatic as it should be, there is too much of a disconnect between the nice text and what actually happens: there is not even a single hell tile in the world, while Erebus is supposed to become hell, with fire raining from the sky etc...

==> the infernals should be introduced at AC70 [edit: or some earlier AC] (before the 4 horsemen to take charge of these units), the evil units would keep their true strength, and Hyborem would actually have some teeth (thanks to the large number of transferred units). Also it would make more sense flavor-wise : Erebus would really become hell, as hell terrain would have had time to spread - making the world actually look apocalyptic. To make it even more so, the spread of hell could also be increased as the AC goes up.
 
wasn't hyborem supposed to be sent to erebus to help cause the armageddon? when the counter is up to 70, it seems he'd have little work left to do. rather make it at 20-30 or something, with basium summoned at around 50, since he's realising things are getting out of control?
 
Nikis-Knight said:
yes please :)

I don't know if this is in response to my suggestion about announcing the deaths of heroes, but if it is, great! I understand you're a member of the design team, so I hope you and the rest of the team can kick this around and see if it's doable. I'd love to see messages like "Stephanos has been killed." Not just for the barb heroes, but religious and civ heroes, too: "Sphener has been killed," "Magnadine has been killed," etc. Since they're important enough to have their creation announced, it seems logical that their deaths would be important, too.

Hope you'll take this under consideration. Thanks.
 
@Demus: an earlier AC may be better than AC70; my main point was to tie Hyborem's entry into the world to the AC. I suggested AC70 for flavor, since it matched hellfire which is a bit subdued compared to the nifty introductory prose. On the other hand AC20 might be a bit early, not much time for a good civ to do much about it, and if he steps in too early before he gets all of the AC event units he could get wiped out early. Maybe Hybo should step in with the blight at AC40... But I don't know if changing basium to an AC event would be better, it adds variety to the game by letting him be summonned or not (while if Hyborem & hell terrain are missing, the late Armageddon events can be a bit underwhelming).
 
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