Idea for a modmod...

[GabriellesBlade]

So, basically i am kind of the more is not necessarily better kind of gamer.
like the RoM mod is just so totally NOT what i want in a game...
So i was thinking, well that less is better.
And so i would love if someone came up with a mod that basically did exactly that for fall from heaven 2.
I dont really care for 20 civilizations that each are not very different in play than the rest. I would much rather in fact have half a dozen civilizations that play drastically different from one another.
Like for example, the amurites could be all out mage only civ - ie no archers or melee units of any kind - just spell casters of varying power levels. Solving all of their cities problems and needs magically. For example, the obsidion gate tech could be used for the mage civ on a per tile basis to improve yields on crops and mining etc.
The ljaosafar on the other hand could be the ultimate green civ - with no pollution from population and be specialized entirely in ranged combat units and druid power.

Traits also i think should make a BIG difference in your play method. For example, financial - the often thought powerful civ building trait should be improved. I would say make it a 1 bonus for every tile with just 1 existing.
Industrial maybe could add 1 point of production for every size level of the city eg 20 for a size 20. but also have some negative growth issues in the health and happyness dept from it, say -1 health/happy for every 3 city size.
Raiders should be given free exp for every unit produced instead of a set promotion - say enough to make them get level 4 for free.

 

[Senethro]

Kael actually said in an interview that if he were to start FFH again, he would have less civs that were each more developed. There are 21 civs because 21 is significant to the world of FFH. This has left some obvious orphans such as the Hippus and Doviello who have little to separate them from a "vanilla" human civ. Other civs are favoured children, such as the Ljosalfar and Balseraphs who have had lots of development work upon them in terms of game mechanics and graphics.

I'm not sure that making them wildly different such as your Amurite example would be achievable without as much effort as has gone into the mod already though. The AI would completely fail to understand it and if they're all too wildly different then theres no point to having a common tech tree or other shared features. Thats beginning to look like a game that isn't civ, which is why most of us are here in the first place.

 

[Andvare]

Why is this in the strategy section?


On topic, you start the thread claiming that less is better, but then say that the civs should have completely different forced playstyles. Then continue to say that the traits should be more extreme.

Methinks we have different definitions on the "less" part here.

 

[GabriellesBlade]

I suppose we do
What i mean by less is not necessarily less game play elements, but less per game session.
I suppose a specific example would be starcraft - the humans the zerg and the protoss all play completely differently and so it is necessary to play just one race until you are familiar with that playstyle. So while on the whole in total there might be more, but you are not subjected to learning that whole all at once and can in fact find you like one races style more than the others and so stick with it.
For example, in fall from heaven 2 i really like how vampires in calabim change the playstyle of that civ a lot. It would have been nice if that playstyle was the playstyle for the whole of that civs life instead of just towards mid/end game.
Its in the strategy section simply because i thought it would be nice if a modder who knows balance and strategies could redesign the civs to have specific strategies they should use.

 

[cabbagemeister]

Personally, I think FFH already mostly goes towards that super-specialization or civs route. I find that the majority of civs require dramatically different playstyles from each other (once you get past the early game, that is--early on, almost every civ does the same thing). I'd argue that the Bannor, the Elohim, and maybe the Hippus are the only civs that don't feel dramatically different from a normal BTS civ.