Micromanagement Automation

[formless blob]

I have been playing FFH2 on and off for quite some time now, and I just came back to it. Its looking real good.

I just played the Ljosalfar and I'm really glad that you can now cast bloom on top of old improvements, that really reduced the micromanagement and improved the game immensely. That being said, I still feel the micromanagement is a weakness of this mod, and I have a few questions in this regard:

Would it be possible to automate some of the processes, like having auto terraform, like auto workers? I'm talking about having the units automatically traveling around your empire casting Spring/Vitalize/bloom? This would also help the AI I'm sure. Also Auto inquisition and whatever else I may be forgetting.

The hell terrain expanding is a nice feature, however it can quickly degenerate the game to alot of microing. Would it be possible to have the (life) adepts either autocast every turn, or just prevent hell terrain in the area around them by their mere presence? That way you could fortify a front line of adepts and have them protect you from hell terrain without any micro at all.

All the unit enchanting spells like enchant blade/enchant arrows/Poison blade (others?), could be applied automatically to any units in the city if you have a unit capable of casting the spell, like how the bronze/iron/mithrill upgrades work.

I feel this would improve the player experience immensely.

 

[SwordofStriker]

The only issue I see is that you wouldn't always want to vitalize all of your tiles. Some people do prefer plains over grassland after all depending on the situation.

And to add one thing, the Malakim should auto-scorch since the lore states that they are so fond of deserts. They should be trying to make the whole world their preferred terrain type, even though we know by Cephalo's maps that it doesn't make any sense.

 

[Valerarren]

Perhaps there could be an alternate way to do this? If you have life mana, there could be a building you could build that could automatically (randomly) lower the hell terrain index of nearby tiles (the more life mana you have the faster it works?)

Alternately, if you have nature mana + fellowship of leaves, there is a building that randomly causes forests in nearby (unworked) tiles. If you are elf, it could cause forests in worked tiles.

Finally, if you have water mana, there could be a building that randomly turns nearby deserts into plains (and works faster if you have more water mana).

 

[westamastaflash]

Grasslands are almost always better than plains late game, since 2 grasslands allow you to work an additional tile or run an additional specialist (engineer for +2 hammers makes up for the hammers lost from the plains). Vitalize everything.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

The hell terrain expanding is a nice feature, however it can quickly degenerate the game to alot of microing. Would it be possible to have the (life) adepts either autocast every turn, or just prevent hell terrain in the area around them by their mere presence? That way you could fortify a front line of adepts and have them protect you from hell terrain without any micro at all.

All the unit enchanting spells like enchant blade/enchant arrows/Poison blade (others?), could be applied automatically to any units in the city if you have a unit capable of casting the spell, like how the bronze/iron/mithrill upgrades work.

these are my favourite ideas. though there is the problem of what if you want to cast a different spell but have already cast sanctify or enchant blade?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

100% agreed with formless blob about terraforming. it's an awesome feature, but I'm not willing to move my workers to every single tile in my empire and tell them to cast a spell. it's simply not fun. as it stands now, I just ignore terraforming, but that's sad considering it's part of the game. I had an FF game with the mazatl and it took me 3 turns of casting spring to get bored and just put them workers to autoimprove IIRC.

 

[formless blob]

One thing about the suggestions here, about city improvements and randomly doing things, it needs to actually be effective compared to doing it yourself. Also its probably best to use already existing mechanics as much as possible.

Would it be possible to use the already existing AI for the workers and modify it to teraforming spells? The sanctify spell against hell terrain could work the same way (good old autoworkers cleaning pollution like the old civ games). Even enchant spells could work like that maybe? Having the auto-enchanters darting round your empire enchanting your units. Dunno maybe it would just be best to have them auto enchant new units in the city they are stationed in (with or without it costing a spellcast, it doesn't really matter).

Surely this would be great for the AI players? They just need to know not to auto-scorch their entire empire!

The worker AI has an option to restrict it to the nearest city, that would be useful sometimes for terraforming as well. Although not an absolute must.

 

[Ahriman]

Grasslands are almost always better than plains late game, since 2 grasslands allow you to work an additional tile or run an additional specialist (engineer for +2 hammers makes up for the hammers lost from the plains). Vitalize everything.

Disagree. Hammers are hard to get; there are very few buildings that let you get an engineer (one of the single biggest FFH improvements IMO would be a couple more production buildings that can let you get an engineer).
It can be well worth leaving tiles as plains; you often don't need any more food, but hammers are nearly always hard to come by.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Gotta agree with Ahriman. I remember when I first got Genesis, and I was super excited.

Many many games into it now, and it isn't anywhere near an auto build, because very often I'd rather have plains.

Also, Plains do give +1 food in addition to their hammer, which means 4 plains with cottages = 4 food , 4 prod, 16 commerce. 2 Grass + 2 Engineer (And engineers aren't easy to get!) = 4 food 4 prod and 8 commerce. While in a few cities the 6 GPP are helping, by and large, they aren't nearly as valuable, especially lategame, as you say.

 

[Vorpal+5]

a good trick about automation, already built into the game: queue orders with the shift key to your group of workers. This way you can define work for 30+ turns in advance for each of them. You get the best of both world: they are still on manual, ie you chose what they do, but you have very few workers to check every turn, even in large empires.

 

[formless blob]

Good one Vorpal+5, I didn't know that. However it doesn't work with spells, I just tested it with priest of leaves and bloom.

About the grassland vs. plains debate I agree in that case it would be bad to use full auto, but improve nearest city would be useful.

 

[wicshade]

maybe we could add another bloom/vitalize spell that had and increase in its range. (while also increasing the amount of turns it take to cast the spells. So instead of improving tiles 1 at a time every 1 and 2 turns, we will be able to improve 6 tiles every 6 and 12 turns, with only having to cast 1 spell.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

a good trick about automation, already built into the game: queue orders with the shift key to your group of workers. This way you can define work for 30+ turns in advance for each of them. You get the best of both world: they are still on manual, ie you chose what they do, but you have very few workers to check every turn, even in large empires.

Woah... nice, how do you do this? Lets say I want it to build a road then a mine... I hold shift, click build road, then hold shift and click the mine button?

 

[Ahriman]

Yes, thats how it works.
Unfortunately the experienced worker modmod in Fall Further cancels worker queues when the worker gains a level.

 

[westamastaflash]

Gotta agree with Ahriman. I remember when I first got Genesis, and I was super excited.

Many many games into it now, and it isn't anywhere near an auto build, because very often I'd rather have plains.

Also, Plains do give +1 food in addition to their hammer, which means 4 plains with cottages = 4 food , 4 prod, 16 commerce. 2 Grass + 2 Engineer (And engineers aren't easy to get!) = 4 food 4 prod and 8 commerce. While in a few cities the 6 GPP are helping, by and large, they aren't nearly as valuable, especially lategame, as you say.

I only compared hammers / food - left out commerce (and I was thinking of running one of the infinite specialist civics). Makes more sense how you explain it. I suppose since we specialize our cities anyway, its probably better to have grass on your GPP factory and commerce cities, but plains on your hammer cities...

 

[Ahriman]

A mix of grasslands and plains are very useful because of the Agriculture civic; build farms on grasslands and cottages on plains.

 

[Aroldo]

Would there be any way of tell automated workers to build only one kind of improvement? Like "farm only", "cottage only" blablabla...

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

that would be nice but could lead to headaches cuz I'm pretty sure workers would end up building different improvements on the same tile at the same time. damn dumb workers

but if the AI could be improved it would make for a nice addition indeed.