Final Fixes Reborn

[black_imperator]

to clarify a bit some of the tags from my last post, specifically those four :

<element type="bNumCitiesEffect"/>
        <element type="bCapitalPopEffect"/>
        <element type="bPopulationEffect"/>
        <element type="bVassalEffect"/>

These four tags allow for affinities based on something else than bonuses
If bNumcitiesEffect is valued at true, we have an affinity based on the number of cities.
If bCapitalPopEffect is valued at true, we have an affinity based on the population of the capital.
If bPopulationEffect is valued at true, we have an affinity based on the total population.
If bVassalEffect is valued at true, we have an affinity based on the number of vassals.

 

[Llewen]

Drifa the White Dragon. What I would do is give her a base str of 25 with a +2 affinity for ice mana. I'd also open up the ritual to anyone with The White Hand religion (maybe this is already the case).

 

[Joey Diamond]

Drifa the White Dragon. What I would do is give her a base str of 25 with a +2 affinity for ice mana. I'd also open up the ritual to anyone with The White Hand religion (maybe this is already the case).

25 str? Strongly disagree. Drifa's summoning already requires some mad setup it almost impossible to do in an actual competitive game. Nerf it's damage will only turn Drifa into a mere trophy wife, not Illian's well feared super weapon. And from lore stand point, why would Drifa give her allegiance to anyone other than her soon-to-be god?

 

[Llewen]

A 25 str dragon, with +2 ice mana affinity, means that in normal game play, for the Illians, she will start off with a str of 31, which is only a couple less than Acheron. And I assure you, in any game, competitive or otherwise, she is far easier to get your paws on as the Illians, than Acheron. A 31 strength dragon will still be one of the top 10 units available to players in the game, with the potential to still be stronger than Acheron if you focus on ice mana, which, lore wise, you should, as the Illians or as a follower of The White Hand.

 

[Llewen]

I don't understand in a competitive human vs. human game as it stands now why anyone would agree to play a game where one of the other human players is playing the Illians. They are so far out of whack, that unless you handicap them in some way, it simply wouldn't be fair.

 

[Joey Diamond]

Drifa was easier to get than Acheron?

Acheron needs a stack of 4 beastmasters to capture. a 5 stars promotion Beastmaster can even 1vs1 him. I tried it a couple of weeks ago. Not only that. the techs path you need to do that is useful for everyone all the way from the start to finish.

Meanwhile, Drifa requires the Illian player to go out of his way to research some techs that aren't useful to them at all. Essentially, Illians are always gimped, on the verge of being outclassed by other armies and eclipsed by opponents in term of health and happiness. Which is most of the game, until they get Drifa. Illians can do nothing but play defensive. Not to mentioned atleast one civ has to be destroyed before we can call him.

And Drifa isn't a hero unit, Acheron is. Small but significant difference. 100xp Acheron is already equal or could even beat a freshly summoned Drifa outright. And i think you can resurrect heroes other than your Civ's hero in this mod too. (in vanilla you cannot resurrect religion heroes but my friend did brought Valin Phanuel back in AoE)

With all due respect but I disagreed with many of your points. You're trying to cry nerf against the Illian's endgame content so much it sounds bias. I'm not even an avid Illians player but i can assured you they don't spend all their time in prosperity with all those ice tiles. Infact Illian lacks gimmick that will help them survive a direct confrontation unlike other civs like Bannor or Amurites. One wrong diplomatic move and they're dead.

 

[Llewen]

Clearly, the line of techs that leads to Mithril Working is worthless...

I've played the Illians. It's nothing to have an Illian city up in the 30's and even 40's in population, while all the other players have cities that are in the low 20's. And you're pretty much guaranteed to have one civilization eliminated, unless you are only playing with two, by the time you have finished researching Divine Essence. Just about every game I've ever played that has the Illians in it, they dominate the a.i. civ's.

And yes, Acheron is much more difficult to get than Drifa. First off he has to be located conveniently, you could easily be in the position of having to fight through multiple opponents to reach him. And if you are playing against other human players, it is a real race to get him. The Illians at this time have exclusive access to Drifa.

And when you say a five promotion beastmaster can solo him, I find that a rather dubious claim, [rather like your claim that none of the techs leading to Divine Essence are useful—this is not what Joey said]. Acheron tends to appear very early in the game, long before anyone has access to beastmasters. By the time a player is in a position to capture him, he is likely to be a very strong, experienced unit.

I avoid reloads like the plague. I suppose if you are the kind of player that constantly reloads to get the results you want, that would make capturing Acheron much easier, something that you cannot do in a truly "competitive" game. One thing that is going on here is that I am certain you and I play the game very differently.

And that isn't meant to be an entirely negative remark. I expect you are a little more hard core than I am, and play at higher difficulty levels than I do.

 

[Llewen]

And yes, I do have a bias against the Illians. I would like to play them without feeling like I'm hitting the easy button. And correct me if I'm wrong, but Drifa isn't the only insanely powerful unit the Illians have access to that no other civ does.

 

[black_imperator]

i am curious about the difficulty levels at which you both play. For the illians, i did say that i intend to restrict the terraforming part (and maybe a part of the ice boni) to rituals instead of having them from the start. I do not intend to do much else at this point other than adding diplomacy mali for the aggressive rituals to force your neighbours to be a bit more wary of you (that goes with general diplomacy ai tweaks, that should make most ai more agressive) . Though i will play a few runs with them soon to see if there's other things that need to be done. They should be, as joey described, a late-game civ, turtling till they can get their heavies.

 

[Llewen]

Meanwhile, Drifa requires the Illian player to go out of his way to research some techs that aren't useful to them at all.

I misquoted you, you did not say all the techs on the way to Drifa are useless—that would be one of the many logical fallacies I used there, but I'm too lazy to look it up and give it a name. Apologies.

I'll take a screenshot of my game play options.

 

[Llewen]

I play at Monarch level with no reloads except in situations where I have a brain fart and do something incredibly stupid, or if I'm in a situation where I don't know what the result of an action can be and there is no info in the 'Pedia. Most of the game options that can be randomized are, including the map script.



This is a screen of my opponents. I randomly roll the number of opponents before each game, and they can range from 5 - 50 in number.



This is the part where you realize I don't play the game like anyone else does...

 

[TheIO]

I play at Monarch level with no reloads except in situations where I have a brain fart and do something incredibly stupid, or if I'm in a situation where I don't know what the result of an action can be and there is no info in the 'Pedia. Most of the game options that can be randomized are, including the map script.

View attachment 463074

This is a screen of my opponents. I randomly roll the number of opponents before each game, and they can range from 5 - 50 in number.

View attachment 463075

This is the part where you realize I don't play the game like anyone else does...

That (in particular the second bit) looks a very funky way to do it. I ought to try it out.

 

[Llewen]

I love my collection of D&D dice. Although I use the random function it my spreadsheet to roll the number of opponents.

 

[Joey Diamond]

... I will refrain from commenting against Llewen's suggestion from now on as anymore of my argument will result in an uncivil thread. But let's just say that: To me, the appeals of Fall From Heaven comes from it's rich stories, unique races and even how the lore translated into the mechanics that makes said civs unique in the first place. Attempting streamlining everyone, nerf the s**t out of something, cutting a unique mechanic or the most importantly, changing feeling and playstyle of a civ is unacceptable and it go against the spirit of FFH. Why turning everyone into cookie cutter races when you can go play vanilla CIV instead?

i am curious about the difficulty levels at which you both play.

And for this question, I've done one multiplay session with other 2 of my friends and 7 AI civs on noble with 1 city challenge for human. Another multplay session with the same amount of players but on monarch and no challenge. Also currently doing another session with exact same setting due to the save file crash before i can take my friend's capital and i don't want any excuses of how him losing to me. Oh and i played Illians in all 3 games.

 

[Llewen]

I'm not talking about making the civ's "cookie cutter". But making them balanced is important. It is entirely possible to maintain some level of balance, without limiting choices, and in fact, a well balanced game will encourage more choices and diversity than one which has balance issues.

I've been gaming, and thinking about gaming, since the late '70's. I've played all kinds of games, from strategy board games, to MMO's, to first person shooters. I've hosted game servers, and helped developers produce games and game mods. I'm not perfect, and sometimes I make suggestions that aren't good, but they are always based on a wealth of experience, and not just with the Civ line of games.

I know, from experience, that any talk of "nerfs" is going to upset someone. Everyone has their own ideas, their own playstyles, and their own pet strategies and tactics. No one likes to see changes made that affect their favourites. And I am truly sorry if I started getting testy. It is not my goal to limit debate, and it is important for you to offer your opinions, especially if they reflect a perspective that has not yet been offered.

 

[Llewen]

The one advantage you clearly have over me Joey, is much more experience playing against human opponents. And I understand perfectly well that playing against a human opponent vs playing against a computer opponent is an entirely different animal. Imperator will have to take that into consideration when he makes his choices.

 

[black_imperator]

So, i've played a few games with the Illians ( one of which i lost to a Hell victory, that hadn't happened in a while^^). And basically, the main culprit of unbalance in my opinion is their very large, very quick to grow cities. That comes from the combination of their auto-terraforming to glacier terrain and the +2food on glacier. Several possibilities of balancing it at this point : either the +2food becomes +1food +1sthg else, or the terraforming is weakened ( either no terraforming before a given ritual, or a terraforming that goes by step ( from start a terraforming to tundra, then after a ritual (or adopting white hand) a terraforming to glacier).

 

[Llewen]

I concur. The simplest solution just might be to reduce the food bonus by one on all the frozen terrain types. I don't have a problem with the auto terraforming, it's the large food bonus that is the real problem.

 

[TheIO]

I concur. The simplest solution just might be to reduce the food bonus by one on all the frozen terrain types. I don't have a problem with the auto terraforming, it's the large food bonus that is the real problem.

Then what should it be instead of food?

 

[Llewen]

Just reduce the food bonus by one across the board and leave everything else the way it is. It doesn't need to be replaced with anything, that food bonus is way out of whack.