FFH2 .25 Balance Feedback

[mindlar]

Haven't seen one of these threads yet and there is no time like the present.

I'll start with the Belseraph arena. It appears to currently work something like 50% chance to kill the unit, if not gain 1-5 xp. Regardless get 1 for 3 turns.

I think it would be better with something like:
5% outright dead
5% lose 3 xp
20% lose 2 xp
20% lose 1 xp
20% gain 1 xp
15% gain 2 xp
10% gain 3 xp
5% gain 4 xp

Units that would end with negative experience die.

 

[arcaner]

Barbatmos is insanely powerful, especially because the placement script considers the Broken Sepulcher a good thing to be near. Every time he has showed up in one of my games he wipes a civ off the map within the first 3 turns.

 

[Kael]

Barbatmos is insanely powerful, especially because the placement script considers the Broken Sepulcher a good thing to be near. Every time he has showed up in one of my games he wipes a civ off the map within the first 3 turns.

I dont have any problem with AI civs getting wiped out early. Human players have been given settlers with huge movement and line of sight so they can move away from him if desired.

 

[arcaner]

I have been the player wiped out a couple times. Because while he was technically within my sight range, he was on the other side of forested hills which block the extra site range of my settler.

 

[Polycrates]

Also, when the barbs start building roads, the range on Barbatos' summons becomes enormous. He was dominating about 1/3 of a standard map in one game I played.

Another thing is that I'm not convinced warriors should get weapon upgrades (particularly after the across-the-board increase in unit strength). With copper (and especially iron), they become a very solid all-round unit that can just about match units that are more than twice the price and require quite a lot of tech and special buildings. And copper seems so abundant that there's very little chance of not getting it.
Sure, there's a slightly increased upkeep cost, but I'd rather just amass a horde of warriors for an offensive than build a training yard and get less than half as many swordsmen. Likewise, I'd rather have a horde of warriors for city defense than worry about going up to archers.
Seems to take a bunch of fun and strategy out of early-game warfare. Also makes barb cities very easy to take with Labruscum on.

 

[Mailbox]

One thing I'm really enjoying about the barbarians is that with the new AI and the right settings, entire continents can become host to huge barbarian swaths of land that make expanding (or even surviving) very hard. I can't wait to play with raging barbarians.

On another note, will the starting city locations treat mana as if it was a mountain peak at some point in the future? While the settler does have a lot of movement and sight range to get a new city, sometimes the starting site is very nice except for an errant mana node that will be quite a pain in the later game.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I still say that the weapons upgrades need to require technologies. Bronze Weapons should require the bronze working tech (no change really needed, since you can't get copper until this tech, although you can see it one tech earlier), Iron Weapons should require Iron Weapons, and Mithril Weapons should require Mithril Weapons. The last one is especially unbalancing, especially since Acheron now seems to be in the habit of leaving his hoard unguarded, allowing you to upgrade all your units to mithril weapons even before iron becomes visible.

 

[mindlar]

I was just about to make the same comment that MagisterCultuum made about mithril weapons showing up much earlier than they should due to conquering acheron's horde.

The other point I was going to make is that advanced start cities should have the same cost as a settler. With a city only costing 100 points and a settler costing 260 the costing doesn't make much sense as it is right now.

 

[Copper Golem]

Bronze weapon for warriors is good upgrade. Becouse not only could do this

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

I still say that the weapons upgrades need to require technologies. Bronze Weapons should require the bronze working tech (no change really needed, since you can't get copper until this tech, although you can see it one tech earlier), Iron Weapons should require Iron Weapons, and Mithril Weapons should require Mithril Weapons. The last one is especially unbalancing, especially since Acheron now seems to be in the habit of leaving his hoard unguarded, allowing you to upgrade all your units to mithril weapons even before iron becomes visible.

Even worse, since the weapons promotions don't require buildings anymore, Acheron seems happy to equip the entire barbarian army in his area with mithril weapons immediatly.

I was laughing at my neighbor the Dovielo for losing cities to the barbs, until they were gone and a 10/12 Orthus came charging out out the mist! And Triremes started landing strength 8 Axemen up and down my coast!

 

[Peng Qi]

I dont have any problem with AI civs getting wiped out early. Human players have been given settlers with huge movement and line of sight so they can move away from him if desired.

I really like the concept of him, but he really has totally warped the balance of the current game I'm playing. Thanks to him spawning center-left on the biggest continent in the world and me spawning on the far right, I have vastly outstripped the expansion of every other player in the game.

Is there some way you could make him at least wait a little bit before he starts churning out the hordes 'o doom? This would give the AI at least the opportunity to build up a little.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You could make him start with only the first or second level spells and need to gain some xp (which, as a hero, he would still do pretty quickly) to bring out the big summons.

 

[xienwolf]

Not sure if it is a balance or bug issue. But I built a druid for the first time ever, and I was able to summon 1 entangling roots in my city, but when I went to a forest to try out the treant, I was able to summon 1 a turn, and they were permanent (never ran into a cap on how many I could have).

Unlimited summoning of power 11 creatures allowed me to conquer the dragon hoard barbarian city that had been staving off the AI for 300 turns when the only thing i put on that continent was my little druid, sitting in a forest that I had culture on from across the water, and completely not at risk.

 

[Turinturambar]

I would like to see basic archer(with hunting)/cavalry (with animal husbandry) units buildable without prerequisite buildings. Those units don´t even need to have a higher power compared to the basic warrior. They just need to have a different unit type. Right now the early game (up to ~turn 150) is basically all about warriors with a few useless scouts thrown in, which makes conquering nearby AI´s trivial once you get shock1-2 warriors.

 

[formless blob]

I think its a bit of a problem that commerce is so hard to come by in the opening game. Cottages takes quite a while to get out, and usually forests needs to be striped also, making it take even longer. This would be fine, except if you can get gold from the beginning, you can practically double your science output, which is too powerful to be reliant on the luck of the map generation.

Oh and I totally agree with Turinturambar, conquest is way to easy in the early game, the AI has only warriors for a very long time. Maybe make the archer cheaper and not requiring a building, its way more expensive than the warrior for not much benifit. Getting the AI to build those would be really good for the game.

 

[Peng Qi]

Is there any way to improve the AI's understanding of their own abilities? For example, Cardith Lorda or however you spell his name doesn't know how his sprawling trait works as an AI; he builds his cities too close together. There are a couple of other bits like this that the AI doesn't understand, too.

Does the AI know how to use the "spring" spell to fix its desert tiles?

 

[Turinturambar]

Some more balance observations(playing at emperor/immortal level)

1)I´d like to have the "remove jungles" ability gained by sanitation moved to an earlier tech (maybe bronce working). Since it comes available so late several AIs get crippled by starting near jungles with no useful expansion possibilities. I feel this handicaps some starts too much.

2) Civics in general: I feel that this is the part that could benefit the most from balance tweaks. Right now the civics that come late in the game generally have the highest upkeep costs. This makes them pretty much useless, because lategame the upkeep cost is one of the most( if not the most) important factors.

To give an example with some numbers. In my emperor hippos game it´s turn 324 and inflation is at 132%. If I would switch from fend for themselves(no upkeep) to public healers(high upkeep) my costs/turn would rise by ~245. I cannot think of a situation where you´d want to pay that much for 4 health and 1 happy per city. Even an organized leader would not want to pay 122/turn to switch to public healers.
So I´d make the early game civics generally high/medium upkeep, because in the early game there is no inflation and civics are cheap due to small empires. Best example that this works is the "god king" civic which is very attractive for the early game.
Then make the late game civics low/medium upkeep to encourage people to switch to them.

Specific civics that could be reworked:

Agriculture: Even after it got nerfed from +2 food to +1 food it is still the best civic by far. It raises the efficiency of a worker working farmed grassland by 100% and makes coastal starts comparatively worse. The -1 hammers is inconsequential except for elven tree farms.
I´d make it high upkeep and replace the flat -1 hammer with a -10% hammers penalty.

Public healers/protect the meek: Very boring civics that have only a marginal benefit and are never worth a revolution on their own. Indeed due to their higher upkeep costs they actually hurt you when adopting them. Reducing their upkeep costs would be unthematic so they should get substantial boosts. A substantial benefit to gpp growth (+50%/+150%) would be really fitting and make those civics desirable.

 

[Pandemonis]

Some more balance observations(playing at emperor/immortal level)

1)I´d like to have the "remove jungles" ability gained by sanitation moved to an earlier tech (maybe bronce working). Since it comes available so late several AIs get crippled by starting near jungles with no useful expansion possibilities. I feel this handicaps some starts too much.

2) Civics in general: I feel that this is the part that could benefit the most from balance tweaks. Right now the civics that come late in the game generally have the highest upkeep costs. This makes them pretty much useless, because lategame the upkeep cost is one of the most( if not the most) important factors.

To give an example with some numbers. In my emperor hippos game it´s turn 324 and inflation is at 132%. If I would switch from fend for themselves(no upkeep) to public healers(high upkeep) my costs/turn would rise by ~245. I cannot think of a situation where you´d want to pay that much for 4 health and 1 happy per city. Even an organized leader would not want to pay 122/turn to switch to public healers.
So I´d make the early game civics generally high/medium upkeep, because in the early game there is no inflation and civics are cheap due to small empires. Best example that this works is the "god king" civic which is very attractive for the early game.
Then make the late game civics low/medium upkeep to encourage people to switch to them.

Specific civics that could be reworked:

Agriculture: Even after it got nerfed from +2 food to +1 food it is still the best civic by far. It raises the efficiency of a worker working farmed grassland by 100% and makes coastal starts comparatively worse. The -1 hammers is inconsequential except for elven tree farms.
I´d make it high upkeep and replace the flat -1 hammer with a -10% hammers penalty.

Public healers/protect the meek: Very boring civics that have only a marginal benefit and are never worth a revolution on their own. Indeed due to their higher upkeep costs they actually hurt you when adopting them. Reducing their upkeep costs would be unthematic so they should get substantial boosts. A substantial benefit to gpp growth (+50%/+150%) would be really fitting and make those civics desirable.

I completely agree, very good remarks.

Can I add that the Foreign trade civic is one I would almost never use, as there is very little chance that the +1 trade route will ever match the -10% gold. The additional +20% of culture is interesting, but only in you are engaged in a strong cultural war, which then would just make you change your slider - and is unlikely to happen before you discover drama and are able to move your slider.
One last thing I'd like to add - but probably not changeable by FfH team : I'd really like to have an opportunity to look at my empire after changing my civics, so that I can cancel the revolution and try other option if I'm not satisfied. I am often in delicate situation when changing from God King to City States due to large empire, and dealing with so smaller management issue. A check on the F1 screen to see your options would be highly interesting, the save/load option is just... meh.
Here Firaxis learned from SMAC, but not all the way through, obviously

 

[Mailbox]

I completely agree, very good remarks.

Can I add that the Foreign trade civic is one I would almost never use, as there is very little chance that the +1 trade route will ever match the -10% gold.

Actually this is misleading because trade routes are while the -10% is to . This means that if you're running an empire with a high science slider, the commerce is converted directly into science and then modified by buildings, while the gold for such an empire is usually low. This means if you're getting 20 per turn in an empire with 15 cities and activate Foreign Trade, you will lose 2 but gain 2-3 (or even more in coastal cities) in each city. Those 2-3 will be multiplied by libraries and such and you'll end up with in excess of 40-50 .

So there are situations where Foreign Trade is very valuable, mostly for large empires with a high science slider (but it does have other uses).

 

[Gamestation]

Actually this is misleading because trade routes are while the -10% is to . This means that if you're running an empire with a high science slider, the commerce is converted directly into science and then modified by buildings, while the gold for such an empire is usually low. This means if you're getting 20 per turn in an empire with 15 cities and activate Foreign Trade, you will lose 2 but gain 2-3 (or even more in coastal cities) in each city. Those 2-3 will be multiplied by libraries and such and you'll end up with in excess of 40-50 .

So there are situations where Foreign Trade is very valuable, mostly for large empires with a high science slider (but it does have other uses).

Still too useless in the view of most people. Also large empires have a high upkeep and the upkeep is offset by the gold it is earning. As a result, it really isn't clear when Foreign Trade is useful. That's why I posted this a while back:

Agriculture
High Upkeep
+1 health in all cities
+1 food from farm, -1 hammers from farm

Conquest
Medium Upkeep
New units recieve +2 experience points
Military units produced with food
-25% war weariness
Extra gold when conquering a city, reduced population in conquered city

Mercantilism
Medium Upkeep
+100% cottage growth
No foreign trade routes
+20% gold in all cities
+2 commerce from village, town
+1 happiness from market
+2 unhappiness from thieves' guild

Foreign Trade
Low upkeep
+25% war weariness (trade is the natural enemy of warfare!)
+1 trade routes per city
+50% commerce from trade routes
-10% gold, +20% culture in all cities
+1 food from workshop

My goal here was to try to make all of the economic civics better (except decentralization since it is the starting civic and guardian of nature because I really do not know how it should be changed) compared to agriculture so that it would encourage switching out of agriculture. Not sure how well these changes will hold up now in .25 up since this was posted back in .22.