FfH2 Game Balance Thread

[[to_xp]Gekko]

does playing with the option "automated workers leave forests" have any effect on the AI workers? I'm playing patch Y with that option enabled and the AIs have placed a lumbermill on every single forest tile in their empire. definitely overdone, lumbermills are nice but spamming them so much is wrong. btw, maybe they should get some added bonus with a later tech since they become a lot crappier as time goes by, and later stages are usually when they are more useful due to health issues.

 

[Grey Fox]

The "Leave forests" part means they won't cut down forests to make improvements, so it only makes sense they will make lumber mills instead.

Though this should only affect your automated workers, how the AI behave is another matter.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yep, I know it makes sense that MY autoworkers (tm) build lumbermills. I'm just wondering if it causes any difference in the way the AI workers behave

 

[notque]

I haven't seen an AI worker remove a lumbermill, but I honestly haven't focused on just them.

They do have a ton of them with the change.

 

[Gigaz]

I think the Hyborem AI really needs a buff. In my current game (on emperor, advanced start) the Luchuirp summoned him. He spawned near the south pole with many hills. Esus' influence is strong in the world so he has a great supply with manes from dead nightwatchs. He is, in fact, the strongest Hyborem I have seen on that difficulty level and his power is quite impressive. Theoretically.

He fails miserably because most of his troops are upgraded manes. They don't get the usual experience points that other AI units get from start. His stacks just die when he fights against other AIs.
Evil demons should really have more power in combat.

 

[iffi]

I think the Hyborem AI really needs a buff..

He fails miserably because most of his troops are upgraded manes. They don't get the usual experience points that other AI units get from start..

So true. The Infernals were a miserable lot even in the olden days when the other AI civs didn't get exp boosts via difficulty levels, but now they are just lame. I think the other key problem besides 0 xp upgraded manes is that they seldom have room to settle up a couple of cities to get their thing going (pitiful research capacity). This would be a moot point (somewhat) if the mane-upgraded troops were more efficient.

They do have the benefit of instant iron weapons, but the time window during which that is 'overpowered' is narrow. After all others get iron in their hands practically the only way they can conquer a settlement is via Hyborem, but it usually quite early decides to turtle up in some city.

As always, I play only small maps. Perhaps on larger maps Infernals have a bit more time to spread, and anyway they should get more manes because world population base is larger. On the other hand, there are more opponents too.

Is there a lore-related reason why evil Infernal souls don't get recycled like good Mercurian souls? Hmm..why the AI Mercurians don't do better since they never lose any units? Been a long time since I played them..

 

[25Hour]

So true. The Infernals were a miserable lot even in the olden days when the other AI civs didn't get exp boosts via difficulty levels, but now they are just lame. I think the other key problem besides 0 xp upgraded manes is that they seldom have room to settle up a couple of cities to get their thing going (pitiful research capacity). This would be a moot point (somewhat) if the mane-upgraded troops were more efficient.
....
Is there a lore-related reason why evil Infernal souls don't get recycled like good Mercurian souls? Hmm..why the AI Mercurians don't do better since they never lose any units? Been a long time since I played them..

I think it's probably a bad thing that Hyborem is upgrading manes at all. I've always figured that the infernals should turtle up and just settle the manes until they get some solid production going, preferably using an unlimited specialist civic, for obvious reasons-- most of their population will probably be in a heavily fortified Dis, requiring neither food nor happiness, and the fat cross there will get worked to the limit very quickly. Barring that, even 1-hammer citizens work fine with the God King civic, if you've got enough of 'em.

Re: Mercurians, I always figured that because you're basically giving the Mercurians a city when they start out, they aren't actually killing the citizens inside-- they're just taking over management of the city. So while they do get angels when good units die, the cities themselves are composed of living people, and likewise their army is also mostly alive (notice that their basic units don't get the Angel promotion).

 

[cabbagemeister]

I just played a game where I killed Hyborem after quite a bit of previous warring against evil people. He had settled enough manes to get Dis to size 20...but he still had 85 manes sitting in the city (who all promptly suicided against my crossbowmen when I moved next to Dis). So...what's going on with the AI logic here? Does Hybo see that he can't work more than 20 tiles, and that he doesn't have any specialist slots open, and does he thus decide not to settle any of his manes? If so, he needs to be taught not to hoard manes above 10 or so; as 25hour says, it's better to get +60 hammers per turn from citizens than to cripple your economy by having to pay maintenence for a massive army.

On another note, what if manes were able to use iron weapons, like angels are? That would put manes at 5 str, equivalent to a bronze axe, and might give the Infernals the boost they need to become less worthless. If the Infernal AI is later improved and iron-equipped manes become too powerful, you could always take the iron away from them again.

 

[WarKirby]

They really shouldn't be doing anything with manes, but settling them in the city.

No unhappiness and no unhealthines, means infernals can have infinite population. With the right civics, they shouldn't ever need more than one city, to be extremely powerful. Not if that city is size 150 or somesuch, and has specialists off the screen.

I'd advise entirely removing the capability to upgrade manes, and make them purely and utterly, only for settling. Then make the AI always do so.

 

[xienwolf]

As I recall, AI don't use Manes for population at all, they are just automatically granted population instead of a manes unit from time to time. So all those other ones sitting around he just couldn't afford to upgrade them to a unit of any type.

 

[cabbagemeister]

Hm, then perhaps the auto population : mane ratio need to be revisited. I'd suggest that it should be no lower than 1:1, and probably much higher. Given the Dis I saw, the current ratio must be like 1:4.

 

[Emptiness]

Not a major problem, but I thought I'd mention it. When a unit with fear (like Stephanos, with whom I observed this situation) attacks an undefended stack of workers it doesn't automatically capture them all. The workers that are scattered by fear survive. While this is fine from an rp/story perspective, it makes units with fear less able to capture undefended non-combat units than those without fear. One would think that workers would stand a better chance of running away from a warrior than from a flying agent of doom with 4 or more times their movement rate.

I assume this situation is the result of the way fear is implemented, rather than a conscious design decision. If so, maybe the fear effect can be reworked so that it triggers after the step where an attacking unit would advance into the square it is attacking if there are no remaining defenders in it (so that all the non-combat units would have already been captured before fear could scatter them).

 

[BLubmuz]

I already posted something like this in another thread, but i got some news.
I'm now playing as Ether the White, Monarch, Standard map, Hemispheres, Epic speed.
Just to get the trophies i checked "barbarian world" and "challenge: the Final Five".
I've seen a red message like "lower cut in 100 turns" at the beginning, then it lowered the number of turns, then disappeared before turn 100.

I warrior rushed all my 3 neighbours (with some pause, they was out by turn 120 circa), after a warm-up with a barb city, with unbeliavable good odds in combat.

The barb cities are usually well placed, they have at least 3 resources, and are a good place to take free XP.

Not clear what is this "Final 5" challenge.
Or where is the challenge with "Barbarian world"... it's an opportunity.

 

[Grey Fox]

Final Five removes the lowest scoring player every 50 turns (depending on speed I guess), until there is only 5 players left.

 

[BLubmuz]

Final Five removes the lowest scoring player every 50 turns (depending on speed I guess), until there is only 5 players left.

I supposed something like this, after saw the message in red.

Probably it was useless, since i eliminated 2 players before turn 100.

This is another non-challenge challenge.

But the first problem is that warrior rushes are too easy, at any level.

Another question is: what build the AIs in the first 100 turns?
At Monarch they start with 2 warriors and 1 scout, and i never faced more than 3 warriors.
No buildings found in the cities. They are plenty of time to build warriors: where they put them?

I avoid pangea maps, or i can win by conquest before turn 200, on a Standard map.

 

[Grey Fox]

Try playing on higher difficulties. Also, try using Final Five in combination with High to Low.

Or go play MP, the AI need lots of work still.

 

[Emptiness]

From what I hear, MP still needs a lot of work too. He'd just be trading one set of problems for another set of problems.

 

[BLubmuz]

Try playing on higher difficulties. Also, try using Final Five in combination with High to Low.

Or go play MP, the AI need lots of work still.

I don't like MP, but i'll ramp to Immortal next game. Deity is too much, mainly research-wise.

To be clear, this is a great mod, and i got a lot of fun with it.

A big THANK YOU to the FfH Team.

My criticism is to help improve a great mod.

Btw, High to Low means that the highest score player will rule the lowest after a certain number of turns? Something like in the last scenario?

 

[razzle]

Looking at the balance-issues in FFH right now, I agree with the general problemes concerning the stack-damage spells. But in my opionion AV's "Ring of Flames" takes the prize.

If we compare the different stack-damage spells (of the ones I have seen in use) on the basis of, what is needed, it is:

Snowfall: You need the ice mana + an arch mage or hero with channeling 3
Pillar of Fire: Hero
Crown of brilliance: High Priests
Crush: Druids
Ring of Flames: A 1st level priest

You need to go quite far out the tech tree to get an archmage or a highpriest AND you need to bring those mages or priests up to the required XP to be able to cast the powerful stack-damage spells.
In the case of heroes they are unique for your civ, or you need to get at them first from the religion, they are attached to.
Druids with the ability to cast crush again is civ-specific AND quite costly research-wise.
Which leaves the Ashen Veil priests, which even though AV is further in the tech tree than Fellowship of the Leaves and Runes of Killmorph, still are attainable quite early in the game giving you unlimited access to repeadly production of stack-damage spell-units, and without a cap on the amount of units.

This IMO makes the ritualist 1st level AV priest the undisputed greatest inbalance-issue in FFH.

My suggestion would be to move the Ring of Flames spell to a 3rd level spell with higher damage, in that way make it more similar to the Empyrian Crown of Brilliance powerwise. Which at the same time would prevent the possibility of massproducing 1st level stack-damage spellcaster from the game.

 

[Thunder_Gr]

This looks interesting.