Ideas, Requests, and Feedback

I'm having some trouble determining whether a unit is an animal or a beast.

It's easy with the big guys, but how do you know if an Elephant is an animal or a beast?

Is there a cutoff on strength when it ceases to be an animal and becomes a beast? Is there a name change (Gorilla vs. Gorilla Troop vs. Silverback for example) or something in the unit description I am missing? Can I mouseover the unit and easily tell?

Thank you.

PS. I really miss the ole Lizards, Worgs, and even the occasional Sabretooth. Any chance of these guys showing up in the game again?

 

The icon in the red circle is the beast icon. Just mouse over the unit.

 

As was already posted, the UnitCombat icon is displayed in the unitmouseover.

For the animals: Lizards are gone, too close to Raptors (wanted each animal to have a different niche, lizards and raptors shared a niche, chose to drop lizards), Worgs were not wolves (Hyenas are felines, people, not canines), and Sabretooth cats are still in (final tier of the feline line).

 

Could harlequins be given the taunt ability, like in Wildmana? It's lots of fun and fits the flavor perfectly, in my opinion.

Edit: Taunting gorillas also wouldn't go amiss.

 

are you planning on buffing the master ### buildings?

as a quick possibility to buff the wonder you could add the civspecific items that are added in wildmana to the wonder building. i think this could be done quite quickly

 

A Hero concept.
So the Hero would get a Life Manna affinity 1 or 2.
Can get all Weapons.
His main ability would be, that he can get Phoenix Bloot through destroying or cleaning Life Manna Nodes.
After his Death, he must clean another Node to get Phoenix Blood.
He schould start with Life 1 and through Tech or upgrades, he could get Life 2 and 3.
Starting strengh would be 2 or 3.

 

I've heard they'll do something with master of and guilds... But yes, maybe a Master of Ships would work if ships were useful...

Better would be a Phoenix Hero, I always wanted something like that. Could sacrifice itself to give phoenix blood to strong units in a stack, and would revive every 12 turns or so. Should require Divine Essence

 

Better would be a Phoenix Hero, I always wanted something like that. Could sacrifice itself to give phoenix blood to strong units in a stack, and would revive every 12 turns or so. Should require Divine Essence

That would be Too powerfull, because you could make than immortal Heros like Chalid and a few Sun nodes.
And ther is a Wonder for that.

 

Thanks for the response.

Why not bring back a Thunderlizard? The two monkeys and the big fish are becoming lame and show up in EVERY game now.

The Worg was represented by the Wolf icon and gave your Carnival 2 Culture like the Wolf. Have not seen those or the Sabretooth. Only Lions and Lion Pride.

So for Raptor, you have Raptor-Raptor Pack-Allosaur? I thought I saw a Tyrant?

Honestly, the animals (except for the occasional superpowered Elephant/Mammoth) are weak in 1.3. But, I guess that was intended. I just can't get used to (yet) not having the few Animals I use in combat upgrade like in the previous version.

 

Yah, better than #blood, why not make captured animals being able to "join" a hunter, ranger or beastmaster, say, an army of animals lead by a beastmaster.
Could make more sense than that lonely sabretooth that killed everybody.

 

Not at all, at least not in that manner.

The Master buildings are slated to be merged with Guilds. Each guild will provide a limited number of the equipment promotions.

Keep in mind though, that presupposes vastly different guilds to those available now, and quite a few more.

Not bringing back a Thunderlizard, but each extant animal line will have a unit akin to Gurid or Margalard. I just chose not to delay 1.3 just to add them.

The Worg used the wolf icons, but used Hyena art.

Raptors are Raptor->Allosaur->Tyrant.

Pretty much intended, yes. And very much intended that they do not upgrade from combat.

What exactly do you mean, join? As in, have them operate as Commanders for animal units, or have the blood promo change the art of the animal portion of the Hunter unit?

I dislike the first one (Basically combines Commanders and Recon... May be fine for a UU, but for a general mechanic, it blurs the lines too much), and the second one is an absolutely massive number of artstyles that I really don't want to add.

 

Good to see this is still in the pipeline
Are the ideas still similar to the ones discussed in that thread from a few months back?
Also I guess this is still a little way off, ie post 1.4?

 

Well post 1.4, but yes, still similar to the old threads.

 

OK, here is 2 ideas I suggest:

1. Argh, I'm, playing with Khazad right now, and I have too many cities to micro them, so I enable "Automated city production" in some of them. However, as I have a civic that enable city gold production, those cities always chose to deplete my precious vault to hurry those things, even if I don't care for those cities.
Could a Tab be added to the options menu to disabled Auto-hurrying? (I've stated this idea before, but was forgotten, I think).

2. Auric Ulvin's tactics path: Maybe he should only care to found White Hand (through ritual or tech), save his worldspell for later (or perhaps, as a last resort), and rush to Draw/Ascention (possibly casting Stasis after he completes Draw, and rush to Ascention).
Personally, I've never seen the Illian going far than Draw, and worse, the only time I saw illian Ai with Draw was with vanilla FFh2 (and they've failed spectacularly that time). Since then, It never happened again.

Just to add. Sheaim: They fail raising AC. Maybe they just concentrate too much on elegy of sheaim?

 

You got a lot of cities with them? I always thought that they were a civ that had relatively few cities with super-production in each, it's hard to get good cities if the vault isn't above normal level. Still, auto-hurrying should probably be disabled as a default, does this happen with slavery civic too? Would suck if autowhipping happened too.

Currently ice touched trait doesn't block researching religious techs, this was more an oversight than anything I think
Also, I think stasis is good to fire off at any time during the game, early gets you a useful tech/unit advantage over the others and late prevents reinforcements during an invasion. It's a pretty well designed worldspell, annoying or no

He always founds the white hand - the rituals are usually quite a high priority I've found, samhain and the white hand are often created quite early on.
Likewise, I've never seen the AI go for the draw. This is either due to the very early death of Auric that the AI seems to be able to ensure every game, or could be the unfocused nature of the AI teching. I've always been the one getting to strength of will first, and it's probably very optimistic to see any AI getting to omniscience for ascension.

The Illians are actually pretty good at warfare though, they tend to prioritise the metalworking and priesthood line in my games which makes for them making a lot of iron champions. Despite never completing their full roster of rituals they do usually perform quite well.

I believe that there's some AI work being done/planned on the effectiveness of the infernal and sheaim...
didn't think they ever actually built the elergy though, I've never seen them do it - it would pop up as a world message like with the nilhorn/illians/austrin ones if they had. The elergy's actually on WotWicked which is a prereq for AV so it wouldn't slow their progress to AV if they prioritised it.

Usually I find that the civs that go for order/AV tend to drop behind in tech. Individually they're the most expensive religious techs at 900, and this doesn't factor in the additional 1350(!) cost for infernal pact required to get AV advantages really going.
AV's never really played a big part in any of my games unless I found it and make use of it, it's usually a RoK/FoL world, sometimes the OO turns up in a civ or two. The sheaim usually end up RoK in my games which sucks a bit since I try to deliberately include them into games in the attempt to get the AC over 15 without my intervention.

 

Just tried out RiFE for the first time. Lots of goodies and great potential.

I have one request regarding events. The goblin waste event is the most unfun event in the game, mainly because there's nothing you can do about the damage done to your tiles. Can it be made temporary, somehow? Either as a straight time-limit to the food reduction, or perhaps a new tile feature that reduces food output but can be cleared away by workers?

In my game, I had three of those goblin garbage events around my capital city. I didn't even have Living World enabled...

- Niilo

 

Possible to have Barnaxus grant bonuses based on his level of Drill? Something like...

Automation I (Drill I)
20% less collateral damage
+25% workrate

Automation II (Drill II)
+15% Healing
+25% workrate

Automation III (Drill III)
Can Heal While Moving
+25% workrate

Automation IV (Drill IV)
+1 Movement Range
+25% workrate

Greater levels of Automation allow golems to avoid attacks, repair themselves, and improve their ability to navigate routes advantageously.

 

Some first impressions on the game. I played three games as D'Tesh, Amurites and Khazads.

First, in general, I like this new version.

D'Tesh and probably other fallow civs are quite advantaged by the new health system. This game, playing Thanatos, was the easiest ever. At turn 154, playing as Monarch, I had *destroyed* all the others civs and had 130 slaves waiting!! At my very first lair exploration, I was lucky enough by find a fight between dwarves and lizardmen and I supported the later. Having some invisible units of strenght 5 at turn 6 eases things dramatically! But in general, I think D'Tesh are too powerful, despite their limitation in city size. Other civs had city largely below 10 while my 4 cities were all above 20. Maybe growing a city should be more difficult. After size 10, it could require 1 slave to reach 11, 2 to reach 12, 3 for 13, etc.... Or require the sacrifice of 2 slaves to gain 1 pop. Maybe also the D'Tesh improvment line are too poowerful. Probably should reduce the bonus of crypts and pyres.

Animal blood are great. Except boar blood. Recons should not be allowed to do pillaging at all (and of course not autopillaging). And with Thanatos, letting an invisible unit autopillage is just insane with the prevent cost of improvements.

For the Amurites, I followed FoL, and I must say that this religion, which was great, is now a real pain. The new ancient forests give extra trade, but they reduce your food and forbid to build lumbermills . With the importance of food with the new health system, I had to chop down most of them. Guardian of Nature gives you health and happiness, but you will starve healthy (and happy!). Maybe the extra food was too powerful, but food reduction makes FoL completely unapealling

Khazads are greats as always. I played with the new Khazad mod by Beardy Dan, that I liked, despite some instability problems. But maybe they are too powerful, even without the module. With the new improvment technique (and the impossibility to build quarries without resource), RoK is clearly the most powerful religion. Problems to solve are 1/ food, but no religion can help you (and FoL can handicap you!) 2/ production. If you have hills, just build mines, and on flat lands, if you have forest, build lumbermills, but otherwise, the only choice is dwarven mines as workshops, with their food reduction, are useless. Maybe this should be adressed in terms of balance, otherwise civs that cannot follow RoK and have some soldiers of Kilmorphs will be quite penalized. Maybe remove the food malus from workshops?

Concerning the improvments build time, it is too long. You must have armies of workers to have a decent time (and to avoid the game to be boring), and the AI does not use this strategy. AI does not understand that having 10 workers working on the same improvment is by far better either economically or to protect them, than have having 10 workers each on a different task. More the extra production time makes the choices more strategic and IMO it helps the human player. Maybe multiplayers games are more interesting, but the AI behaves quite poorly in term of development presently. I think the time should be reduced, maybe by 2...

Some general remarks, not really specific to this version.

Arcane trait is underpowerded. The mage time reduction is useless with the catacomb libralus, and potency is not so useful. Maybe the arcane trait should also boost arcane lore production and potency should give magic resistance or reduce spell resistance of the target.

Converning combat, when your target withdrawls you get 1 point experience. But with a powerful unit and a weak target, it can be more than the gain for a victory!! Should be fixed. Maybe you should gain for a withdrawal min(1, gain for a victory)...

Otherwise, thanks for all and continue this great work.

 

@Sjru
i didn´t made me really clear.
I meant when Chalid or Yvain would get more than 1 times a game Phoenix Blood promotion they would be obviously to powerfull, and Life manna is not a manna wich is often used in games besides Turn Undead spell.
They are already to powerfull with their 2 affinity.

 

I agree that the D'tesh are too powerful, but it's mostly them being unaffected by the health changes that have done that. Otherwise, they were nerfed.

We'll be working on it.

Boar Blood may be changed.

As it is, the entire Blood system will be changed so that one animal = one blood promo granted, one recon unit = one blood promo max.

FoL is going to get something for it's economy.

The Dwarven Mine is going to be heavily nerfed, with the upper improvement only available to the Khazad, who will maintain their current yields for it.

It was honestly only ever intended for the Khazad, another team member chose to make it available via RoK. It's become clear that was a poor design choice.

It will be reduced somewhat, but not by anything near half.

Check the blog post about the new magic system. Arcane will be a very important trait in 1.4.

Will look at fixing that.

Glad you like it!