Luchuirp World Spell Needs Tech Requirement

[Calbrenar]

I can't claim any credit for this at all I tried it off a Daladinn post and the results are pretty ridiculous.

Popping the spell right away allows you to get a worker out long before anyone else and gives you free great engineers for the rest of the game and pretty much guarantees an enormous early production advantage. I was creating warriors every turn with experience benefits while my opponent still had like 90 turns of research before he could even cast his spell (bannor). It seems to me that both the Calabim and Luchuirp spells need some kind of requirement so they can't be cast immediately (in Calabim's case when their city is around size 3 in order to do most dmg to other peoples starting cities) and ESPECIALLY needs to be blocked from being cast during advanced start as while the calabim one isn't completely horrible the Luchuirp combined with advanced start is broken.

I'm going to try playing a Luchuirp game tonight on Deity and see if its as broken there starting with one city.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

I would rather have other world spells buffed than have one of the few decent world spells nerfed. I mean seriously, world spells are supposed to be very powerful single shot spells. Whats the point of a weak single us spell? The Luchuirp world spell is (in its current form) one of the few decent world spells out there. If you look at world spells as a whole, almost half of them are pretty useless (ex: wild hunt (summon some wolves), the svartalfar world spell (grants hidden nationality, utterly useless in multiplayer, and barely more useful in single player), the sidar world spell (gives your units a one time use hidden effect (redundant considering their UU and their hero are in the recon tree and), etc...) In short, I want to know why we cant have the non-functional world spells buffed instead of having the occasional functional world spells nerfed.

 

[Blackmantle]

Maybe because Worldspell- and overall Balancing is done at Civ-level in FFH 2 not at feature level? (Thats the FFH2-teams standing on that if i remember correctly)
So perhaps a good Worldspell for them and a weaker one for others is just right.


This Spell in Question should be (a bit) better if you spam 3 or 4 Cities early (or with advanced Start and placing more than one City at Start). So i don't rally see a point in a tech reqirement. After all if you win an good advantage right at the start or a bigger one in early game should net comparable long term benefits.
(Exept if you try to rush very fast and don't aim for a longer game. But then there still should be better Civs for that than Luchuirp overall.)

Worldspells have been given Tech-requirements because they killed off a good part of other Civs right at game Start or comparable Balancing-problems. Not because they are powerful if compared to others. Which they can be allright given the balancing-guidlines stated above.

 

[Calbrenar]

I'm willing to try it out but if you consider what a large advantage building on a plains hill gives cmpared to buiding on a normal one then you consider that their world spell gives you what... Double that? and on turn 1? That's enormous.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

I'm willing to try it out but if you consider what a large advantage building on a plains hill gives cmpared to buiding on a normal one then you consider that their world spell gives you what... Double that? and on turn 1? That's enormous.

Not really... I mean yes you do increase the production of your first city by about 100% in the first few turns until your first city hits pop 2-4 (depending on terrain and resources available), but once that occurs, the advantage gained from using that worldspell for production exclusively is relativeley small. (not to mention it becomes a non-issue once you get your second city and every city thereof). I mean honestly, in a few turns you would have additional cities producing about or more than 10 hammers each. Not to mention that, since the luchuirp worker doesn't require food, your cities will increase in population that much faster, diminishing the net effect of the production of that one engineer.

The world spell in question does have a significant impact on the civ in question, but the impact is not on production, but on gpp. The Luchuirp world spell is essentially the only way to get great engineers that early in the game, which can be used to bulb relativeley expensive early techs (namely construction, bronze working, and smelting later on) or rush wonders (namely the great library).

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm actually thinking I may remove all 21 world spells from my modmod. A lot of them aren't very useful, and/or are kind of annoying. I'll may create civ specific Rituals instead. I may give each civ a unique spell too, but there would be no limit to how often you could use them.

I may also add in Religion-specific world spells, maybe 2 or 3 per religion. I'll probably keep March of the Trees for FoL, Divine Retribution for Order, Raging Seas for OO, my modified Motherload for RoK, etc. I may need to leave some world spells available without a religion, fot the sake of the Agnostic. Some might instead require certain civics or alignments.

Each civ would be able to choose which world spell they want, but they only get one and casting it could not stop other civs from using it too by doing so. Making it work differently would be way beyond my abilities. I guess it make since though, since to use such powerful spells you might have to give up your soul to the religion's deity. It would be hard to to get it back o that you might offer to another their rivals (although I'm leaving in the ritual that would let you do so)

 

[xienwolf]

Plan to leave Birthright Regained in?

Personally I wouldn't mind seeing that particular Ritual become a repeatable ritual, though it would be nice if somehow the cost of it escalated with each build.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Yeah, I was considering that too. The Ritual will definitely still be there, but it won;t be identical to how it is now. I may change the name. Not sure if it is possible to increase the cost like that though. I may just increase the base cost. I may also raise the number of times you can use it to 3 or 7 instead of eliminating it altogether.

 

[jwin]

If you made it a National Wonder instead of a ritual, you could make the multiple uses require the previous one, like the levels of the Altar. Just make the next wonders cost more each time.

 

[Nonobots]

A 'No world spell' option would be nice.

 

[Calbrenar]

I tried it on diety and I dunno if it was quite the enormous advantage I thought. On the other hand I'm not a good enough player on diety to really be ablet o make that call plus my start wasn't anything but mediocre and maybe one of the other ai's was really good. Maybe someone else can give a rundown of how it plays out on diety.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I actually agree with the OP that it's strong, but I don't think it needs changing. The production bonus + Great Engineers you get seem to fit nicely with the Chirp strategy. It's not any more powerful than Clan casting for the Horde on turn 75 and getting a bonus of 12-20 units (And contact with likely every civ on every land mass).

Anyhow, I think it's strong for a few reasons:

1) +2 production in your first city is 'ok' in and of itself... it stacks very nicely with being able to build mudgolems and grow at the same time. You will definately be improving your land faster than anyone else by a good long ways if you do this.

2) You can make all the comparisons to other good starts, but the Chirp can have those too, AS WELL as the extra two prod. It's not like the map generator balances it in.

3) The first great engineer can be used to rush something like Pact of Nilhorn. Want to make the Grigori Jealous? How about a trio of strength 7 Hill giants on turn 50.

4) If the situations is right, you can also just settle the great engineer in the city to further increase your main city production lead, though I'm still not sure if it's that great of an idea. The old version of the spell that caused you to gain GREAT engineer specialists may actually have been more balanced than this version. (Since it didn't give you GPP's, but did give you about +33% science and more than double production.)

Edit: Haven't played it on Deity, but I doubt it's going to be as impressive on the higher difficulties. As an almost strict production bonus, the computers getting a much larger one will make it feel less impressive unless you've played a LOT of games on Deity.

 

[Vehem]

Yeah, I was considering that too. The Ritual will definitely still be there, but it won;t be identical to how it is now. I may change the name. Not sure if it is possible to increase the cost like that though. I may just increase the base cost. I may also raise the number of times you can use it to 3 or 7 instead of eliminating it altogether.

If you can key it off of a unit somehow you can use the iInstanceCostModifier in Unitclass.xml - or alternatively copy that mechanic within the DLL code to allow the same for buildings.

 

[xienwolf]

Yeah, nobody can ever sell me on doing Gifts of Nanto on turn 1. Why? Because I have never yet settled a Hammer. I adore being able to hand out extra strength, thus I typically aim for Orthus's Axe (wiping out another Civ if I dn't kill Orthus myself), as well as acquiring a Great Commander.

+3 which you can pass around to your troops for leveling is a beautiful thing. And with the Hammers I can actually beef up my support crew as well as the one whom I want to coddle since it isn't hard to have 5 or 6 of them.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'd have to say that settling is much better. I of course only play this civ in Advanced Start, so I have lots of cities and lots of production very early.

 

[Calbrenar]

The point of the matter is its not balanced for two civs that start near each other. Whether you use the early production or get the 3 str its still an enormous advantage over nearly any other civ in the game who either have world spells that do nothing or can't be cast until far later on.

 

[xienwolf]

You mean all the Civs who can gain experience and get promotions for the majority of their armies? Those civs?

Luchuirp are more dependant on non-XP boosts for their troops, or raw production gains than any other Civ out there. Thus they need a Worldspell which covers them effectively for it.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

Yeah, nobody can ever sell me on doing Gifts of Nanto on turn 1. Why? Because I have never yet settled a Hammer. I adore being able to hand out extra strength, thus I typically aim for Orthus's Axe (wiping out another Civ if I dn't kill Orthus myself), as well as acquiring a Great Commander.

+3 which you can pass around to your troops for leveling is a beautiful thing. And with the Hammers I can actually beef up my support crew as well as the one whom I want to coddle since it isn't hard to have 5 or 6 of them.

The main advantage to settling on turn 1 is that you get engineer over 100 turns before you could do so normally (smelting->forge->engineer), and you gain the specialist without committing any population i.e. you don't slow down growth, and you gain the specialist about 20-30 turns before you could acquire specialists in general (assuming a non-advanced start). This advantage is huge especially when combined with beeri bawl's(spelling?) spiritual trait which allows you to switch to pacifism for extra at no real penalty (for at least the first great engineer). Thus, using the world spell on turn 1 can shave off 20-70 turns in terms of early game development (lightbulb, hurry production).

On another entirely unrelated note, Is it possible to use the same Hammer more than once in one turn? In other words I have warrior 1 attack with hammer. Warrior 1 survives. I then have warrior 2 cast 'take hammer' and have him attack. Then warrior 3 does the same and so on and so forth increasing the base strength of your entire stack by 1?

 

[westamastaflash]

So by this logic, if I pop the dwarven smith event early, that's also imbalanced?

 

[xienwolf]

You used to be able to pass equipment around, but people would use Orthus's Axe for an entire stack so it was modified so as to be impossible IIRC.

And I do understand the entire concept behind the early settling for better production and an Engineer GP. I just don't value them nearly as much as I value an extra point of strength. 7 adepts do tend to learn spells oh so very quickly.