FFH2 .25 Balance Feedback

There are a few things that are unfun in FFH 2.25.

1. The event if the armageddoncounter hits 40 is realy anyoing. No Civ has an advantage from it and it causes needless micromanagement work.

2. I like the BtS espionage system. But without the possibilty to use it in FfH, you lose all the demographics and gain nothing. Espionage should be implemented.

3. I dont get exactly what the Sunmana does, but the terrainbonus its gives is unbalanced if you have one in your startin city.

4. To use bronze- iron- mithrilweapons you should need at least a smithy or the accordant technology.
 
1. Yeah it is annoying, but I think it is supposed to be. Personally I think that the instead of having a definite chance of occurring at at a specif AC, Armageddon events should be made possible (but unlikely) at a slightly lower AC and more and more likely as it rises. In BtS,It is probably much easier to make Armageddon events more random.

2. I went ahead and copied the the BtS espionage xml file over the FfH one and made a few buildings (council of esus, eyes and ears network, inns, taverns, a few palaces) grant espionage points. It it a simple change and works fine for passive espionage, but not for spy missions.

FfH's espionage system will be developed in the Shadow phase, and will probably be better than Vanilla BtS's, or at least more appropiate for a dark fantasy mod. It will almost certainly involve the Esus religion (with the Empyrean for counter espianage) and both sun and shadow mana.


3. Sun mana doesn't do anything--yet. Sun and shadow mana have been added in preparation for Shadow where you can expect them to be very important spheres of magic. It has been implied that the passive effect of sun mana may mimic passive espionage, allowing you to see in rival territory, while the passive effect of shadow mana may be to counter this and to make your lands slowly disappear from the maps of those who have already explored them.

4. Yeah, I agree, but the AI apparently can't handle the building requirements. Still, I think the bronxe weapon promotion should require the "bronze working" tech, iron weapons promo should require "iron weapons," and Mithril Weapons promo should require "Mithril Wweapons." Then, the Dragon's horde should be changed back to giving mithril instead of enchanted blade promotion.
(I would also like it if Doviello units were then given a unique mechanic of stealing the weapons promotions from units they defeat, without the tech prereq. It fits very well flavorwise, since they usually find their weapons on the battle field, and will even use the corpses of their victims)
 
Still, I think the bronze weapon promotion should require the "bronze working" tech, iron weapons promo should require "iron weapons," and Mithril Weapons promo should require "Mithril Wweapons."

I'm pretty sure this is already the case. I know I don't get bronze weapons with mining, or iron weapons with smelting. I needed bronze working and iron working to make use of them.
 
You need different techs to make use of the metal resources than to first see them. The tech requirements are for getting the resource, not for the promotions. If you rush for Arete and build the Mines of Galdur for its 3 free iron, you can get iron weapons much earlier.

While you need mithril working to get mithril (which becomes visible at metal casting), the Dragon's Horde used to provide the resource, so if you somehow captured it early you would have a huge advantage. Instead of implementing the logical tech requirements, Kael just nerfed this one wonder so that it it only provides the ehchanted blade promo in stead of the mithril resource.
 
You need different techs to make use of the metal resources than to first see them. The tech requirements are for getting the resource, not for the promotions. If you rush for Arete and build the Mines of Galdur for its 3 free iron, you can get iron weapons much earlier.

It reads very contradictory (also with what you wrote earlier). Can you clarify please ?
 
In the more recent post I was explaining how things are now; in the one before that, how they should be. Currently you need a tech in order for your mines to be able to provide the metal resource found on the tile, but resources can be acquired in other ways (wonders, palaces)
 
Anyone else dropping multiple sides with the three stooges? Getting cartography on the first turn with a tech pop is some seriously cheesy stuff on a packed map.
 
(patch k)

I find Yvain the Woodelf way too powerfull!!
See the pic below:

FFH-Yvain_superman.JPG


he is level 12, with 54/53 strength! (and still growing after EACH attack without changing level...):confused:
Place him on an ancient forest, and he is 53*100%*110% = 111.3 defense points!!! I do no know any modern tank in civ that can reach this... even the nuke!
Have a look at his health bar!...
He was just attacked by 28 (yes, 28...) units from 3 to 9 strength, and he killed the 28 units loosing only half of its life!!!
If he attacks, with the 2 extra 1st strike, I don't think he even notice what he is crushing... ooops sorry...
Ok. I am happy as I have Yvain in my team, but I am not sure it is not too much...

-----------------------------------------------------
Good advise MagistrCultuum (post 91) . It is done
 
In the more recent post I was explaining how things are now; in the one before that, how they should be. Currently you need a tech in order for your mines to be able to provide the metal resource found on the tile, but resources can be acquired in other ways (wonders, palaces)

Yeah but I thought you don't get the weapon promotions until when you have the proper tech, are you sure that you can get iron promotion with Mines of Gal Dur without Iron Working ?
 
yes, I am.


@jprc, the team asked for saves where affinity got out of control and gave units way too much strength. You should probably upload that Yvain game to the bug thread.
 
Magister Cultuum, could you zip and upload the files i need to implement espionage into FFH? I realy like to have espionage in ffh but i have no idea how to do it.
It would be nice if u also write a sentence about how to use the files u potentially upload ;)

Thx, asbesthund
 
I don't know much about zipping and uploading files, or about using the type of installer that could automatically overwrite the needed files, but all you need is really already on your computer.


Go to C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2 025\Assets\XML\Gameinfo, then replace the CIV4EspianageMission.xml with the file of the same name found in C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Assets\XML\GameInfo. This is the normal BtS file, it should be about 30 KB as oppesed to the mod's version which is about 3KB. Actually, now that I think of, I believe the game will look here anyway if it doesn't find the file in the mod's folder. Therefore, you could probably just delete FfH's version instead.

Once this is done, you can do all the espionage you want, if you have the espionage points. Of course, there isn't a way to get the points yet (except through a few rare random events that were unchanged from vanilla BtS). To fix this, you need to make some buildings or specialist provide the points. You could copy the BtS version of CIV4SpecialistInfos.xml over the normal one if you want to allow the new spy, great spy, and great general specialists (note that you need to either edit where they provide GPP, or add units with these great people's names), but you would need to edit some buildings to allow these specialist anyway for them to be of any use. What I did was just edit a few buildings to provide the points (actually, I did copy the specialist file too, because I wanted each great commander to be able to add +2 xp to the city's units, but I didn't make a great spy unit or make any buildings allow for cities to assign citizens as spies).

To actually make the building provide espionage points, add a fourth (<iCommerce>1</iCommerce>) (the number is of course, how many points it should provide per turn) line to either <CommerceChanges> or <ObsoleteSafeCommerceChanges>. (I think the first one is for food, the second hammers, the third gold, and the fourth espionage. You need to add these lines with 0's in them if you don't want it to provide anything in that category in order to add some points in a letter category.) I did this for several buildings like inns, taverns, thieves guilds,the Tower of the Eyes, the Council of Esus, and the Sidar and Svartalfar palaces, and the Eyes and Ears network. (in increasing number of how many points)


If you only want passive espionage, then you are done. If you want some units to be able to do active missions, then you need to give then the ability. To do that, all you need to do is change the value next to <bSpy> from a 0 to a 1 for these units (you may also want to chance <bCounterSpy> to a 1 for a few units like lightbearers or other "spies" so you can catch rival "spies"). Also, you must make sure that they are invisible units; if the rival can see the unit, then you can't pull of any missions.
 
I am dropping civs left and right with them, but hey, it's a wonder.. and it's not like the stooges are invulnerable. If you leave them as non-nationalized it makes it particularly fun to keep them alive if you have foreign wars going and open borders to let the aggressors cross to each other. Besides, the game quickly develops ways to tame the giants as of strength 5 units, which is not deep into the overall tech progress. I've yet to use them unescorted by an army, no matter how early the stage of development.
 
I would suggest two changes that I have experimented with myself:
1-Open borders not availible until Writing-- to slow down spread of early religions.
2-Galleys begin with 1 cargo space. AI doesn't colonize islands well unless they can access a unit with 2 cargo space, and while it is technically able to get galleys that way, it would have to get some XP and choose the correct promotion to do so.
 
I have played a couple of games with .25 now and I am finding the early game pacing too slow (compared to vanilla or other mods). Multiple techs have to be researched just to build basic terrain improvements and all the techs are fairly expensive. In regular civ you have many more choices in the early game with early wonders, settling, tech paths, terrain improvements, war vs. peace, etc... But in FfH2 essentially all you can do is build warriors and scouts and send them on suicidal exploration missions while researching for 50 turns so you can build a mine and then research another 50 turns to build a cottage.

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).
 
There are a few things that are unfun in FFH 2.25.

1. The event if the armageddoncounter hits 40 is realy anyoing. No Civ has an advantage from it and it causes needless micromanagement work.

This is really a major pain, and not in a good way. Micromanagement hell is what it is. The basic idea is good, but it should probably use the poison well espionage effect instead, or just kill a fixed amount of people right away.

Edit: Actually, for people wanting to disable this event, go to your Mods\Fall from Heaven 2 025\Assets\XML\Events folder and edit the CIV4EventTriggerInfos.xml. Search for <iPrereqGlobalCounter>40 and change the 40 to something very high, like 4000. Not very elegant, but a quick and dirty fix for the lazy (like me).
 
another change I would make is to lift the resource requirements for 2nd tier disciple units (cultists, etc). Because no other unit of this tier has resource requirements... so I would move it to High Priests and eventually also Inquisitors.
 
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 have played a couple of games with .25 now and I am finding the early game pacing too slow (compared to vanilla or other mods). Multiple techs have to be researched just to build basic terrain improvements and all the techs are fairly expensive. In regular civ you have many more choices in the early game with early wonders, settling, tech paths, terrain improvements, war vs. peace, etc... But in FfH2 essentially all you can do is build warriors and scouts and send them on suicidal exploration missions while researching for 50 turns so you can build a mine and then research another 50 turns to build a cottage.

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).

Quick game speed, Advanced start, and No Settlers.

And for those who don't like some Armageddon events, Hallowed Ground.

The options really take care of these things well, I know how annoying some of these issues are for some people but they disappear with the right options.
 
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