Finally found my difficulty level!

[AgentTBC]

I've been loving FFH2 (with Orbis) but have been finding it really easy on Emperor level, so I started my last game on Immortal as the Amurites. Probably should have known it was going to be VERY different when I got war declared on me pretty much immediately when a bunch of scouts started trying to take out my second city as soon as I placed it. It was pretty trivial to kill them off even when they upgraded to hunters very quickly so I thought "okay, the AI is more aggressive but still no big deal".

So now I thought I was sitting pretty, had a whole lot of mid level firebows and wizards, plus the Council of Esus hero at level 12+, and was finally cranking out the commerce+tech. I switched from Undercouncil to Overcouncil because the lizard guys and the Mechanos were on it and the only other significant power left was Volanna (svartalfar) on undercouncil, and I was planning to attack her.

So, uh, she declared war on me. No biggie. Until a couple dozen Nyxkin and two dozen assassins start running around. The assassins arent TOO Bad, they take out some wizards but I wipe them out in two turns.

The nyxkin... these things are what, base 8 strength 3 movement. And they're all massively upgraded. Like combat II-IV (it varied), almost all with Flanking III, march, and commando. Some with Mobility I and II.

A Nyxkin with March, Flanking III, Commando, and Mobility II can move 5 *while using my roads*, has withdrawal 90% (why its 90% and not 85% I dunno since 35 +20+20+10 is 85), and then heals on the move after withdrawing over and over and over from my attacks. That's ignoring the Combat III or IV 'cause, really, that's immaterial.

It's like trying to dam up a river with my hands. I can butcher them down to almost dead trivially but actually finishing them off is virtually impossible, and movement 5 on my roads means they can appear almost anywhere. I can keep my cities all massively garrisoned, but they are wiping up my improvements. So now I dont have any roads and my movement 1 Firebows are chasing movement 3-5 Nyxkins ;x

Ugh. Either Amurites are not nearly as powerful as the civs I've been playing, I don't know how to play as the Amurites, or the difficulty increase from Emperor-->Immortal is immense. It's insane watching these freaking nyxkin run around like they own the place and then not be able to kill them despite hurling fireballs, maelstroms, summoned Djinns (at strength 12), and so forth left and right.

 

[Mylon]

Honestly, no (lasting) unit should have base movement of 3 or higher. Commando + mobility probably should be restricted, and mobility 2 should be incredibly hard to obtain.

I don't consider this playing on a hard difficulty so much as the AI having a set of overpowered units at their disposal.

 

[AgentTBC]

I have to admit that allowing mobility II, march, commando, and withdrawal 90% on a base 3 speed unit does strike me as dubious. On a hero or something, sure, but a not all that expensive horse archer kind of thing?

Is there a spell, ability, or unit that reduces enemy withdrawal chance? If it takes me 10 units just to finish off one badly wounded enemy unit I don't have a chance. I can protect my cities but losing all my improvements is an economic hit I can't recover from at this difficulty level.

Right now it goes like this: I have to keep a ton of units in virtually all my cities since the movement 3-5 commando units can show up well into my territory. Workers have to stay in the cities so I cant fix roads or anything. The enemy shows up, attacks a city with a ton of units. I lose maybe 1-2 units, kill 1-2, and 15 withdrawal. They pillage everything around the city. I come out and knock them all down with fireballs and stuff until I have 99.9% chances to kill every unit... except I can only kill 1-2 and the rest get away to heal again. I still have most of my units but all the improvements are gone, the cities are losing population because of lack of food, and the roads are gone so I can't move my troops around to respond to further attacks. Repeat at the next city.

Any ideas? Like I said, if there is a spell or ability I'm just overlooking to help deal with withdrawal chance I'm all good, but as it is it takes 10 of my units to kill 1 one of theirs simply because I miss 90% of attacks even at 99.9% odds. If the AI were smarter it would be over already. Frankly at this point my best option may be to use my hero (the esus guy) to take over the Svartalfar civilization for a couple turns. I've never played Amurites before so I don't know what that actually does. Maybe I can disband all the units or attack the Mechanos or something.

 

[civ_king]

Mazel tov...

 

[squadbroken]

Honestly, no (lasting) unit should have base movement of 3 or higher. Commando + mobility probably should be restricted, and mobility 2 should be incredibly hard to obtain.

I agree. On that same note, no unit with 2 or more base movement and/or withdrawal (AKA: mounted units) should be able to learn March.

 

[AgentTBC]

I agree. On that same note, no unit with 2 or more base movement and/or withdrawal (AKA: mounted units) should be able to learn March.

This makes sense. Withdrawal+March is not cool.

I don't mind a couple base 3 movement units, but they should be weak in other ways. Mounted recon, basically. These upgraded guys with base 8 strength, 90% withdrawal (!!!), combat IV, mobility II, March, and Commando are not recon

 

[AgentTBC]

I thought about this a little bit and here's what I would do:

1) reduce base movement from 3 to 2 on most units
2) make commando only available to recon and hero units
3) make march unavailable to mounted units
4) make mobility II available only to recon and hero units
5) something to make sure the highest withdrawal % you can achieve is 80% rather than 90%. Not sure how to accomplish this. Having some units with high base withdrawal % is cool and so simply reducing the initial withdrawal % to 25% from 35% isn't ideal, but I don't know how else to do with easily.

 

[zup]

Then we are back to the base FFH issue: everything but melee sucks so bad you might as well go all melee. And seriously, FFH is all about building more champions than the enemy. Ok, it is not as bad as there are other ways to get healing rate in Orbis.

March is not the issue, the issue is the ridiculously powerful flanking promotions. Some promotions should not have been given double effect. Nerf flanking back to bts values and see if that helps first. No need to bring a bazooka to swat a fly. Might also want to reduce mounted base movement by 1.

I know from personal experience how insane flanking is. Playing the Hippus (Tasunke), all of my horsemen were born with 8 xp. This allowed me to buy flanking II for all my green units. That's 25%(base)+10%(Hippus)+20%(flanking I)+20%(flanking II)==75% total withdrawal rate. So I could really attack anything in sight without worry. 10% odds of winning? There are three alternatives. Firstly, a lucky roll, boom 40 xp for winning a single combat against a regular swordsman. Secondly, oh I lost, but my unit survived, the enemy is likely weakened. The next one might finish him off, if not repeat until it goes down. Thirdly, oh too bad my unit died, but at these odds, the enemy got like 1 xp and I lost something that just popped out from the assembly line, repeat until the enemy is down. I decimated the entire world that game with just horsemen. And it was base FFH so no march or metal promos for them, just the insane withdrawal rate.

 

[Mylon]

The reason why cavalry are so neglected in the game is because they don't have the base strength. That, and champions are on the same economic line that _everyone_ needs to have a decent industrial-military complex going. If you try and pillage the country side with cavalry, the enemy will swoop out of their cities with their national units and WTF pwn you. Without any kind of defense bonuses, cavalry will simply die trying to do what cavalry do.

 

[sputnik323]

It is possible for a new mechanic to counter withdrawal chances? It seems that calvary should keep their purpose and just have spearmen/pikemen have true anti-calvary abilities (maybe their strength bonuses aren't adequate). - or can withdrawal chances be calculated for different units... so calvary lose 30% withdrawal chance when facing spearmen/pikemen. If the latter were possible that would be better than just giving spearmen better countering abilities. horsemen could have worse withdrawal against spearmen, horsearchers would have slightly better withdrawal over horsemen and knights would have even better chances.

 

[Valkrionn]

You could give spearmen a promotion that adds a negative withdrawal promotion on combat, like diseased corpses with diseased, but I don't know if that applies before, or after, combat. If after, then it would just prevent a SECOND withdrawal. Which is fine with me, actually.

 

[AgentTBC]

Probably true; if it wasn't for the insane withdrawal % it wouldn't be an issue. The mobility II commando nyxkin could still kamikaze my interior and pillage for a turn... but it would mean a lot of them would get killed.

How about simply knocking back flanking I and flanking II from 20% to 10% then? That would still let you attack at relatively poor odds but a 70% withdraw chance is more reasonable to deal with than 90%. If that's still not enough the base withdrawal chance for most units could be lowered by 5%, but just the flanking change might do it.

I'm not a fan of mobility II in general, but you're right that it is better to do too little than too much.

 

[sputnik323]

I would still be afraid of a melee dominated game... I would prefer to have a counter than a nerf (of flanking).

 

[Ahwaric]

Nerfing cavalry is not a good idea - these are not that strong, just fast and annoying. So counter is better.
Ithink for polearm units, reducing withdrawal chances. Also, it would further differentiate polearm line from the rest of the infantry

Now need to find a way to code it...

 

[Opera]

I've some ideas. However, I don't think they could apply before combat but only after.

First, you could make it so Spear-line units gave a "Crippled" promotion to withdrawing (or only Mounted) units after combat, won or lost.

Secondly, you could make it so that Mounted units themselves gain a "Fatigued mount" promotion after withdrawal. I don't see how a horse could go and go forever without becoming tired.

Thirdly, you could create a spell.
Sub-third one: the spell reduces withdrawal chance to all (Mounted) units in (one stack?) range+1.
Sub-third two: the spell forces the Mounted unit to dismount itself and prevent it to be able to mount again if it hasn't a city with a Stable in it.

 

[squadbroken]

If you recognize that mounted withdrawal is too high, why bother with the gimmicky fixes? Just reduce the withdrawal rates. Mounted units will still be useful, they just won't be effectively unkillable when attacking.

 

[AgentTBC]

Y'all have more experience with the mods than I do so if its better to simply provide a counter to insanely high withdrawal chances that sounds good to me.

Force mana isn't implemented but if it were something like "Holding: reduces withdrawal chance of target stack" would be interesting.

 

[Valkrionn]

Honestly, I don't think withdrawal rates are too high. What bugs me is not when they withdraw, but when they withdraw REPEATEDLY.

 

[AgentTBC]

Seems like the consensus solution would be to have either a certain unit or a certain unit class (spearmen, etc) apply an effect that reduces withdrawal chance then. I would suggest that the more advanced the unit, the bigger the reduction. Additionally there should probably be a spell to do the same thing for those civs that go arcane rather than brute force.

 

[Mylon]

What if defensive withdrawl cost movement points? So if cavalry charge headlong into enemy territory, they get stomped. Dead, gone. If they make a cautioned advance, they can survive the first attack?