FfH2 Game Balance Thread

All of the stack damage spells (ring of flames is the prime offender IMO, but others including pyre zombies are also problems) seem overpowered on higher difficulty levels (emperor+) right now. The AI will have stacks of hundreds of units, such that even catapults, fireballs, and other collateral damage units still only affect a small proportion, while damage spells like ring of flames can do the equivalent of killing dozens of units per cast. A single ritualist can be worth 50 champions when dealing with big AI stacks. Unless the AI can really learn to deal with whole-stack damage I rather doubt they can ever be balanced.
 
I agree with the statement in general, but stack damagers have been considered over powered in MP where the humans can avoid large stacks so there is a problem on the whole (its not just a high level AI problem) and the minor nerf of RoF is a move in the right direction. It was pointed out to me elsewhere that other stack damadge spells like Air II or Crown of Brilliance take a lot more work to get than ritualists or pyre Zombies so they can be considered more balanced for that reason.
 
stack damagers have been considered over powered in MP where the humans can avoid large stacks so there is a problem on the whole (its not just a high level AI problem)
I certainly wouldn't dispute that, I just haven't played any FFH MP and I didn't want to talk out side of my experience.

I definitely agree that the earlier Zombies and Ritualists are the biggest offenders, as later on there's all sorts of uber stuff going around. My sense is that there need to be some cap on the number of units they can hurt, perhaps 10? Knocking of 15% (It often seems much more than that, I'm not sure of the mechanic. Do combat promotions bump it or something?) from 10 units is still an extremely effective stack killer, without the craziness of taking 15% from 100+ units.
 
Combat promotions are still the problem with ritualists, each level adds 5% so with combat 2 its 25%. I see your point about being able to hit an unlimited number of units, but I wish we could get away from stacks in all Civ games anyway. At least it makes stacks less desireable.
 
Or damage falloff. Every unit after the Xth receives 3% less damage than the one before it to a minimum of 1%.

The problem with damage caps is that it actually encourages stacks of doom. The bottom units of the stack hide behind the top units to avoid damage. Damage falloff ensures there will be many units that don't receive more damage than they can heal in a turn, but

Examples: Fire Pillar - Every unit after the 12th receives incrementally less damage.
Ring of Fire - Every unit after the 5th. It hits every neighbouring tile so why should it get a high cap?
Pyre Zombie - Every unit after the 4th. It is one of the rare magic effects that can kill units outright, so a low number of units before falloff seems appropriate.
Aurics Winter blast thing should probably be completely uncapped.
 
Or damage falloff. Every unit after the Xth receives 3% less damage than the one before it to a minimum of 1%.

The problem with damage caps is that it actually encourages stacks of doom. The bottom units of the stack hide behind the top units to avoid damage. Damage falloff ensures there will be many units that don't receive more damage than they can heal in a turn, but

Examples: Fire Pillar - Every unit after the 12th receives incrementally less damage.
Ring of Fire - Every unit after the 5th. It hits every neighbouring tile so why should it get a high cap?
Pyre Zombie - Every unit after the 4th. It is one of the rare magic effects that can kill units outright, so a low number of units before falloff seems appropriate.
Aurics Winter blast thing should probably be completely uncapped.

I like this, if it would be workable.
 
I agree with the damage-reduction fall-off.

12 for pillar, 5 for Ring, and 4th for Zombies seems appropriate. Might I also suggest 8th for entagled vines and 10th for blinding light (in that its n+3% more easily resisted by units past X, where n is the previous unit in the sequence)

as well as 10 for Tsunami? I think Maelstrom and Wither are "weak" enough to not need such restrictions.
 
If such a thing where to be implemented with % spells I think rust should have a falloff too, its very powerful.
 
Tsunami should be 5, I could see maybe 6 or something but really no different from ring of fire. It's more annoying to fight already. I'd limit the non-Auric Winter Priest/Mage use of Snowfall as well, though for them a high limit like 10 sounds good.

For low level spells both Rust and Slow could use some increased resistance.
 
So I wasn't sure where else to put this, I don't know if it's already well known or if it should be bothered trying to fix, but I found an exploit where you can make multiple Great Commanders. One of my Vampire Lords with a Great Commander had gotten the Black Mirror. An illusion of it died and when it was resurrected, it still had a Great Commander that I could split from the illusion. I could do this multiple times and come to think of it now, I think any unit with the Black Mirror and a commander could pull this off by splitting the commander from their illusions. Free Golden Ages, lots of free troops, and potentially you'd be able to make a superarmy with them.
 
and come to think of it now, I think any unit with the Black Mirror and a commander could pull this off by splitting the commander from their illusions. Free Golden Ages, lots of free troops, and potentially you'd be able to make a superarmy with them.

Black mirror illusions spawn with "has already casted this turn", so they can't split the commander ordinarily. Might be able to do it with summoner promotion trait though. Or spellstaff.
 
Black mirror illusions spawn with "has already casted this turn", so they can't split the commander ordinarily. Might be able to do it with summoner promotion though. Or spellstaff.

Oh right, thought I was overlooking something. The exploit can be used with any immortal unit from what I can tell though.
 
Just want to flag this for Kael and the team, in case they haven't seen it.

Tholal has created a More Naval AI modmod that seems to have significantly improved the naval AI. Might be worth a look to see if some or all of it can be usefully incorporated in the main mod.
 
This is less about game balance and maybe more of a vanilla civ problem but: how does the math work on combat? I'm finding that I'm losing >95% rolls much more often than 1 in 20. Even accounting for multiple attackers that don't have >90% attack odds (sacrificing a bunch of warriors to up the odds on a favoured unit) it still ends up not working out. I realise probabilities isn't perfect but over the long run it should even out and that is not what I'm seeing. More often than not I'll lose an attacker if it is between (and including) 90 and 99.8 percent to the point where I'd say I'm losing a roll of those odds 6 or even 7 out of every 10. Similarly between 30 and 40% I seem to get an unnaturally high win ratio. Does anyone know what's up? Is there some way to make the combat less luck based? (without having to change much code, I'm hopeless with that kind of stuff.) I'm trying to play my games without reloading but the unnaturally high losses in the 90+% range makes it extremely difficult to do so.
 
No, thats not happening. You just believe its happening. As far as I know the odds calculator is reporting the numbers accurately, even factoring in first strikes now.

Don't worry about it, and I'm not saying you're stupid. You just possess imperfect cognitive processes created by natural selection instead of being designed. They have certain biases especially with remembering unusual events and forgetting unsurprising ones. This makes it seem as if unusual things happen all the time when in fact they don't.

Go take a look at your statistics screen and have a look at the Units Killed/Units Lost column. Those numbers should be high enough to reassure you.

Statistics is the only way we can ever really know anything.
 
The combat odds shown are only estimates. Both Defensive Strikes and First Strikes aren't used correctly in the calculation, leading to higher odds estimated than the actual odds. I have no idea what this has to do with game balance though.
 
Cromagnum, are you sure you aren't hitting units with channeling underneath the top defender when you are sending those 10 units with >90% in?

In normal civ the best defender is always on top, so when you stack attack at >90% all units have >90% odds, but because of the channeling promo FFH doesn't work like that. I had the problem with losing a lot of what I thought where high odds rolls when really they where bad odds because a vampire or priest took to the top of the stack and changed my odds from >90% to <30% for that one or two battles.

Otherwise I tend to lose >95% battles as often as I win <5% battles, but most people don't take <5% battles as often as me so far as I can tell.

@ Sephi, are you sure first strikes arn't calculated properly? BTS does and I don't see why FFH would have changed that. I think first strikes are assumed to be calculated wrong because they change the HP outcome of the combat quite a lot but don't change the actual win\lose odds much in most cases.
 
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