2. Doesn't "he" also get the immortal promo for killing enemy units, that seems pretty powerful to me...
Right, thank you, I was asking for comment on what I missed here.
3. You can take out some of the drakes that frequently spawn later in the game.
They are manageable by lots of units already. I had in mind slightly harder units. Another idea: The Illians, for example, have 3 Heros, others just one, so maybe they could lose their dragon, Auric is a FINE late game unit anyway.
4. I never use hawks myself; they eat up resources through extra unit maintanence and don't do any actual fighting. I use eyeballs or a recon unit with the perfect sight promo for recon purposes; I've had the ai spot my invisible units so far, and I'm playing on king difficulty. What difficulty do you play on when you have this happen?
You can get hunting really fast. Not every civ has the mana, or indeed magic, needed for eyes. Often you might have one mana node near you to change, and might not choose the one needed for the floating eye.
Hawks are SO useful to see your neighbour's stength, spot ahead of weaker recon units to be sure you don't lose it to an unexpected barbarian, etc.
Also, with open borders your hawk can fly all around the world scouting those civs and linking up with their neighbours to map out the world in the very early game. Yes, they don't attack, but one or two permanent hawks are very useful.
The AI might spot you, some have units that automatically see invisible units, but most don't.
5. Doesn't that just turn them into fighter planes with bird graphics?
No, becuase they have no ground attack capability. Since it's a fantasy world, I think it suits the game fine, especially as hawks really do kill other birds and not really scout for people. Anway, it would be good if I can't always see either. Maybe shrinking the hawk's sight radius could also be done.
6. That just encourages going in a single direction,
My point exactly. A large part of FFH and RIFE is to force specialization. Why all the buildings needed to build different units? To specialize your cities in more than just which terrain upgrades are around it. So many civs are very specilialzed on direction and terrain. The religions too. Specialization is a big part of this game, it's what makes it
so much better than CIV4 where everyone is mostly the same.
like most people already do.
For many units that never get more than a few promos.. yes, but I often have a core group of units I've upgraded from the beginning that aren't specialized at all, just incredibly powerful. My friend had a shadow with 800XP, and for an experiement, I attacked it with more than 40 units and it took no damage from all the units and magic in my stack, I lost them all.
It obviously
depends on how you play. However, if you get 4-5 units really high throughout a long game, they are almost unkillable and they alone take over any enemy you fight, with a few others in the stack. Limiting their directions will give them some vulnerability.
I mean how many people are going to use up 3 extra promos to get city garrison AND city raider, as opposed to getting the combats or the drill/archery promos.
Most units no, only a core can be done realistically. If you play a lot, hone your game, it's do-able. I understand that for most people, and the bulk of your units, this won't come into play, but it is noticeable big-time in multiplayer games with players of varying skill levels or against the AI. Are you a squatter/builder player?
Try it my way: get a hunter or four, build it (them) constantly on animals and barbarians, upgrade to assassin, become the 'chosen', the black mirror, and then later to shadow and Esus for hidden nationality. Steal Orthus' axe if you can or kill him for early blitz to allow multiple attacks, use movement promos. Never rest the units, always go around and kill all over the world. Kill, kill, kill. You can get one to 900XP in an epic game, kill all the horsemen with no problem if they spawn near you, and the other shadows easily all over 300XP, and can't be killed by anything. You can build a core of other
melee units as well in the same way, always attack with them and be agressive. With units like this on a huge 25 civ map by the time you get Phalanx in the late game, I just use them to garrison new cities as they are so weak.
The point of these promos in any case is to let less powerful units have a good chance against later units and reward you for holding onto your highly promoted units.
It won't matter if you have some units like I mentioned that are too good in all areas. Thus the idea of limiting promo directions, maybe +10% strength, not 20.
I can't speak for anyone else here, but I don't see much of a case for limiting a player's choices for unit promotions when all it would do is force high level units to have to take the "skip promotion" alot earlier in level. From what I'm reading here, you've exclusively played as the calabim, so your not considering other civs that don't gain experience through feeding, and will likely never make it to the point where they have +80% vs everything and 120% strength.
I've only played the Calabim once, I am not talking about just feasting, but yes, this is one way to achieve it. Play like I said above, it's hard to resist the tempation to have ridiculous shadows that kill wantonly and unstoppably.
7. Standard units already typically have less strength than defending units, this would just make shelling up as the player a much harder strategy to beat. Most civs need a stack of siege weapons and a good stack of fireball mages to take cities anyway.
Not all civs have catapults, but yeah I see your point. Still, at times, it does seem a little easy. I guess sometimes they just lose.
8. Use your uber 80% vs everything, 100% strength super units you hate so much.
Your wit exceeds you, I was talking about the early game. You always seem to have a sarcastic word in the forum. I am throwing out experience based ideas for the sake of the forum and the game.
I do not expect that everyone play like me, or that any or all of my comments will be used by the RIFE team.
My intention is to give "feedback, ideas" and hopefully to spawn
constructive discussion.
9. No, but it is realistic to not always be able to win every fight. Try to force the unit to take up poorly defencible ground, and attack with your reserves after he takes some damage from attacking, and before he can take his promos.
Again, early game, reserves will be limited. Obviously it's not every game, but sometimes you do end up with a crazy barbarian that you can't kill, and you fall irretrievably behind. Maybe I'm a little too frustrated byt hem at times. Yeah, I agree that you shouldn't win every fight, but still, sometimes it's extreme.
I do appreciate the slowing affect that the barbarians have on expansion.
So SHE is. I see what you're saying.
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