"Fire" Developer Diary

[Arpymaster]

Night Of The Werewolves
Architect (male, Dwarf &#8212; Woodelf) <-- I was sure this was you

 

[woodelf]

Night Of The Werewolves
Architect (male, Dwarf — Woodelf) <-- I was sure this was you

Oops, yeah but I've been absent from that. I hope I'm not dead yet...

 

[Arpymaster]

Believe me WE KNOW you've been absent... no post (almost) in 28 pages... but don't worry, we have just decided to kill all the silent ones, starting with RxP13. I will vote you next.

So you can work full time in Fire FFH2.

 

[Kael]

There is a new screenshot and a description of hell and hyborem in the first post.

 

[Civkid1991]

The purpose of this thread is to let the community know about some of the things we have been working on in "Fire". There are still a lot of questions up in the air, and a lot of ideas that we need to get nailed down and included. Because of that we probably won't be answering questions about "Fire". But we will try to provide a weekly focus on some new feature to help give you guys an idea of what to expect and to thank you for your patience.


01/19/2007: "Fire" Developer Diary- Units

Spoiler :

We have a lot of units in FfH, and we are constantly adding more. That poses a design challenge as there are only so many things we can do to differentiate the units. At some point we get tired of "it's just like the other archers but a little stronger". Civ4 gives a lot of interesting unit mechanics, but we needed more. So we came up with two ideas.

1. Something Old:

I always missed the differing attack and defense strengths in Civ3. In general I think Firaxis was right to remove them, vanilla Civ4 doesn't need them. But FfH is much more about the individual units, and even though we wouldn't use differing attack and defense strengths often, it is nice to have.

For example the Giant Tortoise is only strength 3 when attacking but is strength 6 when defending. Conversly, the Dwarven Chariot is 7 strength when attacking but only 4 strength when defending.

This gives us an additional level of granularity to work with when tweaking, and with promotions that only give bonuses when attacking or defending. Even beyond our work I'm really interested to see what other modmakers do with this functionality and I will post a guide on how to add it to mods if other modmakers are interested.

2. Something New:

Another way of differentiating the strength of units is to quality what type of strength it is. For that we came up with 7 damage types:

Cold- Rarely encountered or defended against
Death- Unliving units are immune to death
Fire- The most commonly encountered and resisted damage type
Holy- Generally lower boosts than other damage types, but many creatures have vulnerabilities to it
Lightning- Generally lower damage than fire, but less commonly resisted
Poison- Unliving units are immune to poison, living units that suffer poison damage gain the "Poisoned" promotion which reduces their strength and heal rate until they are fully healed, then it wears off
Unholy- Generally larger boosts but frequently resisted

Instead of just having a fixed strength (what we call physical) units can get strength from any of these damage types. A wraith is now 5 strength +5 death strength, a fireball is 0 strength + 3 Fire strength. In most battles the total strength is all that will apply, so effectively a wraith is 10 strength and a fireball is 3 strength.

The difference is when resists and vulnerabilities are involved. Resists and vulnerabilities are modifiers to the damage types of the unit you are fighting. So a wood golem is 100&#37; resistant (immune) to death. When fighting a wraith that wraith wouldn't get to calculate his death strength to his total strength, he would only be 5 strength against a wood golem. Yet that same wood golem has a -50% resistance (vulnerability) to fire, meaning a fireball is effectively 4.5 strength against him.

Most big magical creatures have multiple damage types. A fire elemental is 5 strength +5 fire strength, and is immune to fire. You can fireball a fire elemental all day long but it will never hurt it (since a fireball is all fire damage). But two fire elementals can battle each other, since they have some portion of their strength as physical damage.

This is one of those mechanics that makes everything else easier. At some point you can juggle around these effects in other ways and it becomes to cumbersome. With this new system the Demon promotion makes you immune to Unholy, Poison and Death damage and gives you a -50% vulnerability to holy damage. Paladins are 10 strength +3 holy, giving them an additional bonus vs demons, allowing for a more natural way to make units more or less effective against each other that fits our fantasy theme.

This is also applied to spells. All spells now do damage according to these types and have the damage modified by the resists. A fire elemental wont be hurt by a ring of flames (without needing any special coding) and a iron golem wouldn&#8217;t be hurt by a spell that kicked out death damage.

01/26/2007: "Fire" Developer Diary- Hell and Hyborem

Spoiler :

"Ahh... a new tribe slinking across creation, still in that twilight between birth and the recruitment of hell." &#8211; Hyborem

If you wondered why this phase is called "Fire" you have only to check the screenshot attached below. The tagline for this phase is 'Save, or Destroy, the World' and even though that is reflected in several parts of our design it is the most apparent in our implementation of hell.

Hell is not another map, we didn't break the map into two pieces, instead we made hell a corrupting force that spreads across creation. Think of the Zerg creep in StarCraft. Grasslands change to Broken Lands, Plains change to Fields of Perdition, Deserts to Burning Sands. And they can switch back.

The Infernal lands are always Hell terrain. It spreads quickly through Ashen Veil lands, slower into evil lands, and even slower through neutral lands. It will never spread into Good lands (at least as its implemented right now). Since it is dynamic switching your religion or alignment will effect the spread and cause it to slowly back out of your lands.

The fire you see in the screenshot is the result of playing Hyborem on an Oasis map. Deserts convert to Burning Sands and one of the special abilities of Burning Sands is they can start burning. Those flames spread if they are bordered by forests or jungle tiles. Hyborem makes a very bad neighbor. Those tiles will start smoking, then eventually burst into flames themselves, potentially leading to huge raging forest fires on heavily forested maps.

Units without at least 40% fire resistance can't pass through burning tiles. They will have to go around, wait for them to burn out, or deal with them in another way (the Spring spell puts out all fires within 1 tile). Of course we are using this mechanic in other places, a unit with over 3 points of fire strength has a chance to start fires if it passes through a forest, fireballs exploding in forests can start fires, etc. (Fellowship players should be rightfully concerned, but Ancient Forests are immune to fire, granting them some protection).

So where does it begin? No player, AI or human can start as Hyborem. The player that founds the Ashen Veil causes Hyborem to enter the world with a small army of his followers. The player that founded the Veil has the option to abandon his civ and begin playing as Hyborem. Where Hyborem settles will start the spread of Hell terrain.

Either way Hyborem gets the Ashen Veil in all of his cities automatically and if he is AI controlled always has good relations with fellow Ashen Veil civs. Demons are more powerful on Hell terrain, and Hyborem is geared to destroy the world under human or AI control.

One of these new features is the rebirth mechanic. If a living unit dies anywhere in the world and it was "evil" (had either of the evil religions, or studied death or entropy magic) it is reborn as an Infernal Mane demon. The least of demons the Manes can be upgraded to any Demon type, giving the Infernals a fresh supply of units as long as evil creatures are dying in the world. Souls do not easily leave the battlefields of Erebus.

Particuarly devious Hyborem players may turn on Ashen Veil allies if they decide they can serve the forces of hell better as Mane legions than as living allies. What else would you expect from a demon?

OMG... Cant wait for the release.. im so eager to play this!!!

edit:

I realized the counter is 22 rather then 0 this time....

One question.. if a fire spreads to a forest will the forest burn down? and if so will the forest start to grow back?

 

[Teg_Navanis]

Sounds utterly amazing! Haven't played Civ4 for a while, but the mod will easily rekindle my fire

 

[Kael]

One question.. if a fire spreads to a forest will the forest burn down? and if so will the forest start to grow back?

It goes through a few stages. First a forest starts smoking. That doesn't effect the forest or units passing through. Right now if any unit with cold strength goes through the tile, or spring is cast within 1 tile the smoke will go out. We may add a unit action that will allow units to put out smoke too.

There is a chance each turn that smoke will turn into a full fire like you see in the screenshot. Once that is done that forest is gone and it could spread smoke to the surrounding tiles. The forest could grow back just as tiles bordering forests have a chance to turn into forests now.

The trick is balancing the numbers enough to make forest fires an interesting event without having them be the ultimate end of forests everywhere. I think we have a good balance now.

 

[Arpymaster]

I will have to play Dual maps with all those fires burning around...

The idea is ... ... <speachless>

So the only way to ge rid of Hell is to distroy the Ashen Veil or Octopus religion civs?

 

[Civkid1991]

So does this mean that fire is reserved for evil only or can the good civs also use fire to their advantage?

I remember somewhere that it was said that fire was supposed to be what the good used to fight the evil... here it seems like fire is a bad thing and instead of being in a firey grave the demons seem to be profiting from being in hell.

 

[Kael]

So does this mean that fire is reserved for evil only or can the good civs also use fire to their advantage?

I remember somewhere that it was said that fire was supposed to be what the good used to fight the evil... here it seems like fire is a bad thing and instead of being in a firey grave the demons seem to be profiting from being in hell.

In the Age of Magic, before Bhall fell Fire was the priests weapons against the unholy. But with the fall of Bhall demons are as at home in fire as in darkness.

But yes, good players can use fire too. Any creature with more than 3 points of fire strength (fire elementals) has a chance to start fire automatically when it goes through forest or jungle tiles. Fireballs and Pyre Zombies that explode in forest or jungle tiles has a chance to start fires, etc etc.

Yesterday I took out an Order Priest and was running around casting Ring of Flames and starting forest fires. It was a pyromaniacs delight.

 

[Arpymaster]

If you take land from Hell it can be reverted to normal with priests or druids?

 

[Kael]

I will have to play Dual maps with all those fires burning around...

The idea is ... ... <speachless>

So the only way to ge rid of Hell is to distroy the Ashen Veil or Octopus religion civs?

Sort of. Next week we will talk about that number on the top of the screen (yes, thats the Armageddon Counter) and how it plays into all of this.

 

[Arpymaster]

Why next week? tomorrow is Friday!!! You can tell us tomorrow!!!! Just kidding

If Ancient Forest are inmune to fire, then the elves will have a better chance to fight the demons than other civs like Khazad...

I made a mistake several posts up, I meant Duel maps.

 

[Bringa]

Question: what does hell terrain mean for the productivity of the tiles? I imagine penalties.... Also, are there movement penalties (for normal units)/bonuses (for demons) associated with hell? And will you introduce a sulphur resource? ;P

Finally, I said twentyTHREE, not two! See, now you had to reveal that it's the Armageddon counter instead of being able to do the Fnord thing. Oh well

How far away is fire? Weeks? Months? Days? ;P

 

[Love]

Hell is sooo cool!!!

 

[marioflag]

Can other religions spread in Hyborem cities as in Light?
For example will i see Order religion spreading in hell or Hyborem cities can only have Ashen Veil as religion?

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Order and Veil are mutually exclusive, and starting with the Ashen Veil, no Infernal built city should ever get the Order in it. Others will most likely spread as normal. As AI, don't expect him to adopt Runes as state, though

 

[Love]

Well, in my game he got leaves...

 

[marioflag]

Order and Veil are mutually exclusive, and starting with the Ashen Veil, no Infernal built city should ever get the Order in it. Others will most likely spread as normal. As AI, don't expect him to adopt Runes as state, though

Wouldn't be better if Infernals could only worship Ashen Veil they are the "true evil" after all.In other words couldn't Infernals have an "invisible" theocracy which make conversion in their cities not possible.About a narrative point of view IMO it would make more sense, i wouldn't imagine Skeletons and Demons worshipping the Leaves

BTW in one my game i had Hyborem worshipping Order. LOL

 

[J-S]

Amaaaaaaazing!!! ​

I don't know in detail the whole storyline behind this game but... Will there be a good counter for Hyborems in the future? Angellical forces descending from the heavens to help whipe out the otherwise overwhelming demon armies... either as a civ, or 'buildable' angel units, or even random apparition of angels (a 'Divine Invocations' civic / Temple of the Order could raise the chances of apparitions)...