Improving blight

[Hawe Hawe]

I like the blight feature, because it adds flavor to the game and the story. On the other hand i hate it because its really a disaster for your economy. Further the scorched earth civs (Clan and Infernals) are forced to this kind of self destruction, because they are inevitably pushing the AC.
So i have some suggestions for improving this event:
1. Destroying all the farms should remain the same. Farms are extremly overpowered anyway.
2. The ressources should not be removed
3. Aditionally a terrain feature like the vanilla fallout could be added on half(?) of the former farms and ressource tiles. Fallout causes unhealth, reduces the food and destroys improvements so it makes the tiles nearly useless.
4. Fallout should only be removable by workers with a mid to late game tech.
5. An exception should be the ork/goblin workers with the inherent ability to remove fallout. So the orcs and barbarians would be able to cope better with the ecological disaster and the rising AC. This could even result in a blight-beelining-strategy, that gives the orc a huge advantage when the blight occurs. And it could force other civs to select a unwanted research path for the tech that allows to remove "Fallout".
What do you think?

 

[Celeborn]

I...


Actually like the sound of that idea... Though I'd like it to still remove all pastures and plantations as well. I mean it is meant to be a massive blight sweeping across the world.

 

[Hawe Hawe]

Yes, surely, remove improvements including pastures and plantations. I din't remember the english words.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Sanctify still removes fallout, I think. this might be a good alternative to removing resources completely.

 

[coko]

Yeah, obviously allow a magical way to remove the fallout, but also forcing progress down an unused research line could be beneficial to the game, especially if using the blight aggressively, or even defensively (opponents not wanting to take a city covered with blight around it)...

 

[kenken244]

i dont think its good to force people to go down a certan research line, the point of the game is to specialize

 

[Blakmane]

i dont think its good to force people to go down a certan research line, the point of the game is to specialize

Agreed, sanitation is already enough of a ***** in that regard.

 

[Grunthex]

Nah, I've given up on sanitation completely. One divine caster with ring of flames can clear the entire continent of jungle.

 

[3141592]

I agree with you on the fact that resources shouldn't disappear, but I do like all the desert sweeping in.

Blight hurts all non ashen veil civs equally and all the deserts allows allot of burning sands terrain. Deserts are fightable with spring anyway, so they're not disastrous in the long run.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Deserts sound good to me.

 

[Hawe Hawe]

I'm not sure, but don't even normal Ashen Veil civs suffer form blight, because they also depend on food? The only one really immune to blight is hyborem who doesn't use food and actually profits from hell-terrain, fire and low food but high production tiles. I only played Ashen Veil with another civ (Sheelba, was Overlords before) for a short period to summon hyborem and switch.
I'm sure every human player can somehow prevent the AC to go totally out of control as long as he plays intelligent and is not the Clan of Embers. Maybe its my way of playing but i think they suffer more then others. Their economy is already weak (-10% science), so i play a high food and high production specialist economy, that's totally ruined with blight.
I generally think about two points:
1. Give blight more flavor on the screen. It would be cool if you could see the disease lying on the pastures and farms instead of simply cleaning the map.
2. Give the orcs a unique possibility to deal with this situation.

 

[Aroldo]

Perhaps some sort of rituals available to neutral/good civs could help keeping the disappearance of food resources out of their lands.

Forgot to say, obviously evil civs would in this case need a boost of sort from hell terrain other than the ones they (more or less supposedly?) have.

 

[50C107061CA7]

Being evil is self-destructive

What's the point of blight if not to bring the world's economy to a crashing stop?
Allowing any civ to mitigate this global catastrophe (infernal pact notwithstanding) would take the "flava" out of Armageddon.

Clan of Embers needs to be mindful they do not bring about their own destruction, true. But there's a price to be paid for being evil: if you choose dance with the devil, you should be certain you are leading the devil, and not the other way around. Otherwise, you're just a pawn in his game. And who cares about a stinking pawn's economy?

Stop crying and enjoy the destruction.

 

[onedreamer]

Sanctify still removes fallout, I think. this might be a good alternative to removing resources completely.

Yeah, I removed that part of code because I think it's too harsh, especially with a 25% chance. But the fallout idea risks to be an even bigger nuisance because not only you'll have to rebuild all improvements, but also plan the removal of fallout... it can be even worse than loosing one fourth of your resources.

Nah, I've given up on sanitation completely. One divine caster with ring of flames can clear the entire continent of jungle.

I suppose he will also add +1 to farms, allow you to build Aqueducts and Public Baths, and allow you to research Medicine ?

 

[onedreamer]

Stop crying and enjoy the destruction.

The problem is that Blight hurts more evil civs than good civs, because evil mana gives -health as well as evil civics. Good civics and mana give +health. So in the end permanently loosing health resources is worse for evil civs than for the others... I think.

 

[50C107061CA7]

We're not just talking about some random event here. This is the beginning of the end of the world. If the AC is at 40 that means evil is clearly winning the race. Do you think it's a good idea to help them along?

Blight is pretty much the good guys' only chance to catch up to the bad and to push the AC back before things really get out of hand. From the perspective of the bad guy, it's not "fair"...but I think it's very well-balanced.

 

[50C107061CA7]

I'm finishing up an 8-player map (large, single continent, 66x78, no axis wrap) where a ninth civ, the Illians, are placed in one corner, behind a sheet of ice. I had planned to let blight do the job of "introducing" them into the game. I have no idea how the game in progress would be affected by this. How strong can an isolated civ be by the late game? But on second thought, they are evil, destructive buggers--and an introduction of even a middling evil civ might be enough to offset the relative loss from blight suffered by scorched earth civs.
I don't know yet. Gotta test it out.

 

[onedreamer]

We're not just talking about some random event here. This is the beginning of the end of the world. If the AC is at 40 that means evil is clearly winning the race. Do you think it's a good idea to help them along?

Well.. on the base of what evil is CLEARLY winning the race ? What race ? There is no victory condition that refers to the Armageddon Counter, currently.

Blight is pretty much the good guys' only chance to catch up to the bad and to push the AC back before things really get out of hand. From the perspective of the bad guy, it's not "fair"...but I think it's very well-balanced.

So in the end you're telling me that in a strategic game -as Civ4 FFH is- an evil player should work to raise the AC counter only to give opposing civs a chance to catch up on him ? Pretty much senseless to my eyes.

 

[50C107061CA7]

For some, the Sheaim in particular, Armageddon is victory--victory condition or no. They're a millenarian cult; that's how the civ is designed, don't blame me.

I understand what you're all saying: The orcs get the shaft when blight hits. Maybe I'm going out on a limb, but I think this is intentional. While they're evil, I don't think a civ like Clan of Embers is made to intentionally go after Armageddon. The Reason? They are not particularly adept at reserach, giving them, when played "correctly" (i.e., for a domination victory), a relatively low chance of building the Prophecy of Ragnarok, founding the AV religion and summoning Hyborem.
The fact that they push the AC does not necessarily mean they intend to push it. Orcs want to run over the world, to win the game by domination; in the process of doing this, however, their evil acts awaken demonic interest in the world, thus setting the stage for the infernals' return. If they are major contributors to the AC, they should win the game before the infernals become a factor; if they are minor contributors to the AC, they will likely become demon fodder. What's wrong with that?

 

[onedreamer]

Well, we're only speaking of Blight here. Infernals are not a factor anyways, and the AC is incidental. Btw I think it is also interest of CoE to raise the counter. Higher counter means more wars and more evil barbarians, which would favor them. But this is not the topic. The topic is: someone think the penalties for Blight are a bit too high, too definitive (there isn't a counter to resource distruction. The pollution idea is a clear example of the will of posters here to change this condition), and incidentally they penalize more evil civs than good civs. Now, I don't think that evil civs shouldn't be hit by AC rising or by Blight. But I also don't think they should be hit more than good civs. And currently this is how it is. Because of Blight, and because of Hell terrain (see the other post about it).