Is the game fun again?

[WCH]

In that case your memory might be faulty. Make sure you've got this latest patch.

Well, as I said in the OP, I'm going based on my recollection of it from several months ago. Haven't played the last two patches, was asking in earnest how "fun" people consider the game in the latest patch... because I felt that the fun had kind of degraded this winter, and hope that it's been improved since.

@Kael
I'm glad you think so. I know that I sometimes come off as abrasive or arrogant (although I don't mean to, and I don't really in person), and a couple times I've posted things here, seen you reply to them and then been embarrassed at how I'd phrased things -- in this thread for instance I was trying to honestly ask the question whether people enjoy the newest version, but was a little worried you might think I'm slagging it, which I certainly don't mean to. There's plenty about the game I really enjoy, and I've spent many hours playing it.

I was kind of frustrated for a while with the slow updates, especially as a period of no updates immediately followed what seemed to be the poor/incomplete implementation of well meant AI changes. That frustration caused me to stop playing for a while, but I don't think I went even a week without at least checking your postcount for activity, having faith that once you had the time to invest you'd be able to make the game even better than before.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I think FfH does some cool things to combat stacks with spells, attrition attacks (summons) and counter stack mechanics (assassins, etc).

Don't forget also area damage spells. And if anything else fails, you can adopt Empyrean and Blinding Light everyone.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I share some frustration with slow turn times caused by ai stacks of 100's, and tediousness using stacks that big myself.
I wonder what it'd be like to mod it so that T3 & T2 units had a national unit limit as well. Not 4, Dagda forbid, but something like 8-12. That way you couldn't simply out build an ai hobbled by programming to be nice about it, but wouldn't have to keep up quite as much with what can be some crazy stacks. I think there would be more strategy as well, since you would have to balance offense vs defense (although you do now, of course, with a limit of your production and upkeep).

Not know the specifics of the ai programming, it might be that they would never attack, waiting for a unit amount or a strength differential it was forbidden, so I don't know that this would be satisfying.

 

[Jarrema]

Maybe when there is certain number of units on the same tile, they can get "crowded" promotion?
Like -10% Combat.
For example, one such promotin for each 10 units... Then, when there are 50 units on one tile, all will get -50% combat...
Then one only will need to teach AI NOT to use big stacks

 

[Meester]

I wish the AI would use their navies as effectively as I do. Don't ever recall one creating arcane barges and using fireballs on me. Maybe I never got that far.

The problem with stacking units in one place is that they can also all die in one place. One nuke and its game over. I reckon armies should require maintenance (in a tbs sense) in the field if there are many in one place (they require constant logistics to keep supplied and players should be able to disrupt that). Of course thats just theory-crafting.

 

[Verdian]

I would love to see a mod that limited all unit types. Like, T1 and T2 would be 20, T3 and T4 would be 12. It could be more specific, for example building one building (like an archery range) enabled you to create five of that unit. But then you get into a dangerous mechanic of city spamming, so perhaps a flat out limit would be best.

 

[rief_s]

The problem with limited unit is if we have a large empire then we can't protect it well. IMO the purpose of limited unit is to create Special Forces for attacking not for defending wide empire.
How about we use current plan for CiV for 1 unit per tile? Of course we shouldn't use 1upt, it's too small and with CIV design it will limit unit move and cripple city defense.
Here what I think,
- Outside our culture we can only have 3 units
- Inside friendly culture or a place which was our culture we can have 4 units
- Inside our culture even if it’s mixed with friend/enemy culture, we can have 5 units
- City can have up to its population size or 5 units for less than 5 pops
- Non military unit is not count for this
- Summon unit shouldn’t count on this limit, need play test for this
The impact:
- Stack bump each other still happen but with 8 directions for tile (6 for hex) it should be not too difficult
- We can only roam the wilderness using stack of 3 units
- Attacking distant civ would be difficult and need marching several stacks
- Using friendly civ or attacking neighbor civ will help
- Attacking small city 1-5 pops should be easy, attacking medium city 6-10 pops we need to surround it with 2 tiles, and large city 11-15 pops must be surrounded in 3-4 tiles
- Attacking massive city > 15 pops will need tactics, attrition war (destroy farm, occupy tile with unit), spy war (poisoning city), unit for pop killing (wraith), etc
The issue:
- I don’t know how to implement this , probably using pyton (onmove check)
- 3-4-5 limit should need playtest for balance

 

[Nikis-Knight]

- I don’t know how to implement this , probably using pyton (onmove check)

Feel free to brainstorm, but I suspect this will slow the game to a crawl and/or hobble the ai.

 

[Morkonan]

.. I know its easier since FfH is free (since by the end you haven't lost any money if you don't like something). But it still takes up your time and effort and I really appreciate how nice everyone is.

You know, FFH isn't free. Sure, it's a free mod. But, it costs more than that.

CivIV is "free" once you buy it. Learn how to play one leader and nation effectively and you're done. Play doesn't change substantively between them. It's all about whatever race you decide to run. CivIV becomes a game of nuances.. a game where you try to discover "What would happen if.." That part of CivIV is "free."

FFH isn't like that. The entire game can change on turn 1 when you discover you're alone in a swamp of evil, beset on all sides by leaders and nations who just happen to have traits that are going to make your game a living hell. Your carefully laid plans and strategies frequently don't survive past turn one in FFH.

So, you invest some time learning how everything really works and falling in love with the variety of strategies that FFH offers you. CivIV play is free once you pay for the game but.. FFH requires much more. A single unit can make a difference. One tech can turn the tide to anyone's advantage. A worldspell at an inopportune time can crush your oh-so-carefully planned machinations.. Civ's for wimps. FFH is for game enthusiasts.

But, it's a labor of love. Just as with anything that is worthwhile it takes effort in order to make it a reality. Whether that's inspired due to a desire to succeed, accomplish a task, discover knowledge or make a relationship better, that effort isn't "free." It requires a personal investment.

What has been created by you and the FFH team requires the same type of personal investment. Luckily for us, you've made that personal investment of learning, time and effort painless in comparison with the rewards of outstanding entertainment and an endless variety of play.

No, it's not free. But, the cost is one that fans don't notice because those who have aided in its development are fans themselves. They know the cost that fans play in order to immerse themselves and they have shown they know how to reward such efforts. Player's determination and effort are rewarded exponentially by new realizations in game play, entertaining strategies and a world of their creation where they actually become part of an epic story of struggles, victories and defeats.

Thanks again for giving me years of enjoyment and providing a wonderful world in which to adventure! The cost is there but, I don't mind paying for it at all.

 

[DooMeeR]

I agree that big stacks are annoying, not because of the difficulty, but because they are tedious to manage. In fact, I think FFH is really great but inherits BtS issues and make them worse, as you need to micromanage your units much more. Because of spells, for instance. But spells are great fun, so you can't just get rid of them.

In my opinion the opening of a FFH game is perfect. There is challenge in fighting barbarians and trying to survive with a few units. 10 units to manage is fine, especially when they all have a clear purpose (defend city, scout, level up, defend choke point). But later, as in BtS, micromanagement gets boring, and I usually quit.

I don't think this can easily be solved without changing the whole game engine. The idea of a "crowded" debuff looks nice on paper, but I'm thinking it would actually be worse as you would need to manage multiple stacks, which would be ever more tedious. So I hope Civ5 will prove that 1 unit per cell can work.

But IMO what should actually be done is rethink the whole interface. After the beginning of the game, I don't want to tell my adepts to all learn fireball and move to the front when they are ready. What I want is to tell my governors that I need, say, 5 unpromoted archmages at some specific location. When the governors have finished building the adepts and upgrading them, then, and only then I want to be told that I should do something with them.

Another example (that's not from me) is I don't want to tell my workers to build roads cell by cell. I want to draw a road, and then the governors would select nearby idle workers when available and tell them to build the road.

But this is a very large topic and I have not thought this entirely through so I'll stop here. Maybe it will give you some ideas for another game?

 

[DaveGold]

I don't think there's much point complaining about stack sizes. If you want the solution just buy Civ 5.

 

[blacknight678]

I too was a huge fan of FFH and have been turned off by the latest changes. I haven't played much lately so apologies if these problems have already been remedied. My biggest gripes are the following (comments made with constructive feedback in mind):

- Stacks of Doom. This is a flaw in Civ4 imho, but made worse in FFH where the AI has the bonuses to exploit it. My biggest issue that the it is a do or die situation. Since injured units go to the bottom of the defense list, I either kill/lose the entire stack, or suffer negligible damage. I fondly recall Civ2 where you were free to stack units and the best would defend, but the entire stack would die when one unit lost! This is a bit extreme, but I think a mechanic that dealt 1/4 damage done to the top unit to every unit in the stack might be reasonable. I like a good AI, but his SoD just makes me need a bigger SoD, and pretty soon we each have 200+ units in one space each, and in one climactic battle (which consists of move right, move right, move right...) the fate of the war is decided. Civ2 style forced a player to attack across a front rather than taking a million men up one 2 lane road. Another idea would be to dramatically up the maintenance cost for units so at least we'd be dealing with a SoD of 20 rather than of 200.

- Smart Barbarians. I disagree fundamentally that the barbarians should use the same AI as a normal civilization. The barbarians are NOT one large world spanning nation, they are a thousand little tribes each looking out for themselves, and probably hatting the other barbarians a screen away even more than they hate the player. Imho a barbarian unit should never walk past an undefended city. We should not have a "target player" or "target city" half a world away. The local Blue Elk tribe doesn't even know there is a forest on the other side of the hill much less that the Gimp Monkey tribe has decided that Elves are the player to attack half a world away. Contrary to Kael's view, I think the barbarians should be treated as a force of nature, but that's just one player's opinion.

- AI Free XP. I support the idea of giving the AI a combat advantage, especially in a game where quality of units is as important as number. I don't like seeing 200 champions all having 4 stars. That is not how a human builds an army, and not how any civilization would be able to build an army if it followed the rules. The solution I still support has been proposed a number of times before: give the AI a level cost reduction (ala Charismatic) rather than free XP. I contend that an AI with -90% promotion cost would be just as effective as one with +12 XP, would be more "realistic" (i.e. more human), and would actually allow the variable difficultly to function as intended.

I hope this input helps. Thanks for building us such a fantastic mod to play with!

 

[Tasunke]

The free XP certainly doesn't help matters on the higher levels (emperor+) now that the AI actually builds decent armies and has help maintaining them. I never liked it, but at least before I could see why it was needed as a crutch... it's not anymore.

Yea, the free exp is kind of a turn-off for higher difficulty levels now

 

[WCH]

Contrary to Kael's view, I think the barbarians should be treated as a force of nature, but that's just one player's opinion

Definitely. Barbarians should be constantly testing your defences and serving as a thorn in your side as long as there are nearby wildlands. Generally that works out to free XP, but it's not totally free... you have to defend well enough to hold them back; once you've got sufficient defences they should be less of a threat, and mainly serve as a motivation to get your defences to the point where they're sufficient.

 

[rief_s]

Apparently it's not too difficult. I use unitCannotMoveInto to do this. But for now I just limit 4 units outside culture, 5 units inside culture, as city pops inside city (pops >5). This include worker, settler, and summon unit. I try to separate friendly culture and excluding worker, settler, and summon unit later. So, time for play test , I hope this won't cause performance hogs or AI problem .
Fall from Heaven 2 Patch n. I attach 2 files that need change. It won't break save games, but better restart because this changes fundamental of the game.

Spoiler :

assets#pyton#CvGameUtils.py

def unitCannotMoveInto(self,argsList):
ePlayer = argsList[0]
iUnitId = argsList[1]
iPlotX = argsList[2]
iPlotY = argsList[3]
cPlayerUnit = 0

pPlot = CyMap().plot(iPlotX, iPlotY)
iLimit = 4
if pPlot.getCulture(ePlayer) > 0:
iLimit = 5
if pPlot.isCity():
pCity = pPlot.getPlotCity()
if pCity.getOwner() == ePlayer:
if pCity.getPopulation() > iLimit:
iLimit = pCity.getPopulation()
if pPlot.getNumUnits() < iLimit:
return False
for ii in range(pPlot.getNumUnits()):
if pPlot.getUnit(ii).getOwner() == ePlayer:
cPlayerUnit = cPlayerUnit + 1
if cPlayerUnit < iLimit:
return False
return True


assets#XML#PythonCallbackDefines.xml
<Define>
<DefineName>USE_UNIT_CANNOT_MOVE_INTO_CALLBACK</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>1</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

 

[mcwill123]

Black Knight, your points are excellent. Particularly irritating is the free XP. I find encountering a highly promoted stack of a few hundred "Battle Priests" irritating, mostly because the great majority of them have probably never seen a battle of any sort.

 

[UNIT 666]

I have recently downloaded and played Battle for Wesnoth, and I'm completely blown away by it!

If FfH3 is a TBS, I'd suggest to check it out. It's good inspiration for a non-SoD combat system in a fantasy environment, including multiple damage types as FfH has.

Wesnoth's main problem is the horrible RNG-based battles, far worse than Civilization. Fighting a Dwarf on a mountain? Madness!

It's no fun when a player feels like they have no control over anything.

 

[Jarrema]

I have recently downloaded and played Battle for Wesnoth, and I'm completely blown away by it!

If FfH3 is a TBS, I'd suggest to check it out. It's good inspiration for a non-SoD combat system in a fantasy environment, including multiple damage types as FfH has.

I prefer similar system that has been used in Fantasy General

 

[Jabie]

Apparently it's not too difficult. I use unitCannotMoveInto to do this. But for now I just limit 4 units outside culture, 5 units inside culture, as city pops inside city (pops >5). This include worker, settler, and summon unit. I try to separate friendly culture and excluding worker, settler, and summon unit later. So, time for play test , I hope this won't cause performance hogs or AI problem .

Whilst I agree with killing the SoD in favour of something a little more strategic, I wouldn't limit Settlers, Workers and non-permanent summons in that fashion. It's unlikely, but an AI that doesn't understand the rules might end up in a situation where they won't / can't build Settlers / Workers and therefore can't expand. Likewise, a player can get easily annoyed if they can't summon their uber-beast of pain because of an unanticipated arbitrary limit. Also, if a limit is imposed in this fashion, I'd suggest removing any prerequisite promotions for healing promotions such as Medic I, as it's more difficult to include healers in your stack if the stack is limitted in numbers.

It'd probably kill performance and the AI would probably be clueless about it, but I wonder if a "Crowded" promotion that gave attacking forces a %age chance to temporarily gain the Marksman ability might dissuade SoDs. A larger army is more difficult to coordinate than a smaller one, and hence more prone to ambushes. Being able to select which foes can ensure that your Shock promoted swordsman go up against melee units, whilst your Cover promoted axeman go up against archers is a strong advantage, as is the chance to deliberately eliminate key units such as Heroes, Adepts or catapults.

 

[Tasunke]

sometimes a larger army is more organized ... but yea, it depends on the Soldiers involved, the leader, and the code of the Organization.

Furthermore, there is a critical mass where each such organization reaches "most organized possible" probably at several hundred soldiers, perhaps several thousand. Beyond that, however, yes the organization starts to drop as opposed to increase.