Minor requests and questions thread

[Cylnar]

Just a little thing -- can we make the guardian vines that sometimes come out of Lairs as 'pack leaders' a little more dangerous? When you pop them from a Lair, they just sit there, right? OK, sometimes they may appear in an inconvenient location, but most of the time you can just go around them. Maybe they could shoot poison like the Goblin archers.

(Hmmm. I wonder if I can capture one with Domination or Subdue Beast.)

Nope. At least not with Subdue Beast (I never use domination as PERMANENTLY LOSING THE PROMOTION when you fail seems a waste to me - unless I misunderstand the description; I have never actually used/trained the domination promo). I had lots of rangers in my last game (popped the tech early from a goody hut) and certain beasts uch as guardian vines and treants, cannot be captured. There are probably more. Taking guardian vines out of the list of possible pack leaders might be a good idea, though.

My minor request or suggestion has to do with the Guerrilla promos. As they stand now they are quite weak, offering bonuses in only a single type of terrain (hills). I virtually always prefer to have my units learn the Woodsman promos (especially since Woodsman II can be learned by everybody in Orbis, not just followers of FoL who've researched Hidden Paths) as forest-type terrains are more widespread - at least on the maps I play on - than hills (and there are more types).

My suggestion would involve getting back to the original meaning of guerrillas - units that strike quickly to bleed and harass the enemy then fade into the surrounding terrain. I would suggest adding a withdrawal bonus to the Guerrilla promotions, say +15% or so to both. Perhaps also a decreased chance to defend the stack, as guerrillas prefer to strike when it suits them rather than stand and fight toe-to-toe with an attacker. This would actually make the Guerrilla promos worth taking, and be flavorful for recon units.

 

[The Glorious]

I was wondering how you would change the Kuriotate settlements back to the way they were in original FfH2.

 

[Valkrionn]

Lots of DLL work, I'd expect... Don't see a reason to though, as Forts basically do what settlements were supposed to do.

 

[Opera]

I played Rhye's and Fall of Civilization: Europe today and it gave me some ideas. I advise you to try it if you liked base RFC. And don't fear, it's almost like another game, not vanilla BTS

Anyway, as Orbis brought back Spearmen, I was thinking that they deserve their own unitclass, "Polearms" (thus like in RFC:E). They should be cheap units, weaker than base Melee units and powerful in cities (?) and against cavalry. Base melee units should have a advantage over Polearms units.

That would lead to some other changes, especially in the Polearm line. Actually, we have:

(Bronze Working+Hunting) Spearman, 4:strentgh: -> (Polearms) Pikeman 6

And that's all. The Spartation looks like a Polearm fighter but hasn't the expected stats. Here's what I would suggest:

[(Hunting) Early Lancer 3 ->] (Bronze Working) Spearman, 4 -> (Iron Working) Guisarme, 6/7 -> (Polearms) Pikeman, 6/8 -> (Polearms+Mithril Working) Voulge, 10/12

Warriors would lose their +25% city bonus if we take in Early Lancers who would take it.

I think Polearms should be tweaked as a name. Polearms are used by Spearmen already.

Also, "Melee units" would become pointless and should be renamed something like Heavy Infantry. Polearms/Archers/Gunners would be light infantry.

(RFC:E also has a Light/Heavy cavalry distinction which is nifty but I don't want to make everybody overheat)



--------------------



I think Caminus Aureus shouldn't give Mithril. It's supposed to be a super rare resource, not one you can gain with a wonder. The free Weaponsmiths are enough I think.

BTW, I think I'll add some more wonders. Effects I thought of: more "free [building] in all cities" (Hunting Lodges, Monuments?, Market); +X // from buildings; +100% trade route yield; +100% war weariness for the enemies.

I also tend to think that Summer & Winter palaces should get fancier names and vastly different effects. Maybe they should be of the same class so that you can only build one. Or make one national and the other world? Maybe it's already the case?

I would also like to give fancy names to each civilization's palace. I'm tired of the Bannor Palace, Malakim Palace, etc. The "Gardens of Splendor" are the Elohim Palace in FF. Such a name! So beautiful I want to hug it.



----------------------



Then I also think guilds should compete more. Or if they don't, there should be more guilds and they should compete more.

Some effects like Hansa's would be cool too. I don't think all should have the +xp or the free promotion thingie (seeing that some guilds give you some rare resource is good enough). But some, except the yields, are a bit plain (3-Field, Prospectors). I know they have unique mechanics with their units but I don't like them They make my world fall apart. If you don't have a resource, then you don't have it. That's all

Note that some resources aren't used by the Guilds. It's not imperative that they should be, it's just a note. There's six of them (I think), not counting Razorweed as we don't see this anywhere anyway.

• Duskwood
• Ivory
• Pearls
• Spices
• Sugar
• Whale

I think we can get two or three new guilds out of them. Like, {Duskwood, Ivory, Whale} for an archer units-centric guild. Or you could even have {Whale, Fire mana} giving a Light resource or similar, thus giving +1 and maybe some buildings. {Spices, Sugar} could make a good base for a cooking guild You could even use {Pearls, Whale, Crab, Clam} for a "wonders of the ocean" guild.



------------------------------


That was my ideas moment.

 

[civ_king]

Order of the Arrow!
Lighthouse-keepers union (placeholder) (combine harbor and lighthouse, simply call it harbor)(then have these guys have a building called a lighthouse, gives +1 commerce to water tiles and +1 trade route)

 

[Valkrionn]

As for wonders, I've been thinking about adding a few base ones myself... Midway through the tech tree. Things like free Harbour/Granary/Smokehouse. No military buildings, but the early infrastructure buildings would be nice.

 

[Cylnar]

I played Rhye's and Fall of Civilization: Europe today and it gave me some ideas...

Anyway, as Orbis brought back Spearmen, I was thinking that they deserve their own unitclass, "Polearms" (thus like in RFC:E). They should be cheap units, weaker than base Melee units and powerful in cities (?) and against cavalry. Base melee units should have a advantage over Polearms units.

That would lead to some other changes, especially in the Polearm line...

Warriors would lose their +25% city bonus if we take in Early Lancers who would take it.

I think Polearms should be tweaked as a name. Polearms are used by Spearmen already.

Also, "Melee units" would become pointless and should be renamed something like Heavy Infantry. Polearms/Archers/Gunners would be light infantry.

(RFC:E also has a Light/Heavy cavalry distinction which is nifty but I don't want to make everybody overheat)

I like it. I think there should be more unit types in the game anyway, unless I suppose it makes the game more unstable with larger file sizes or something. Polearms are a class of weapons mounted on poles...anything ranging from a spear to a pike to a voulge or halberd; pikes and halberds were used up until the early age of personal firearms to protect the arquebusiers as they slowly reloaded.

Pikes were used to impale charging horses (they were very long and would be planted with butts in the ground and points way out in front) while halberds were used against the riders rather than the horses, to pull knights from the saddle and engage them beyond sword range. Pikes were fairly useless in melee combat - too long to be easily employed against a mobile opponent and useful only for thrusting; a halberd's more manageable length, axe-head, hook and spike made it more versatile. However, both would typically be discarded in favor of smaller sidearms if it came to serious melee combat with mobile opponents (i.e. not heavily armored, dismounted knights).

In-game you might want to give revamped pikemen a large bonus against mounted units and a small penalty against melee/infantry units, while halberdiers would get a smaller bonus against mounted units and no penalty against melee/infantry units.

As for melee vs. infantry, basically the main distinction is the type of weapon they fight with. Melee range is face-to-face combat with hand-held weapons such as swords or maces (or even spears) while infantry, in the modern sense at least, use guns. However, in this game, gun combat (even for the Mechanos, I think) is basically Napoleonic-era in nature, at best: massed infantry firing at other massed infantry in ranks, slow reloading (two to three shots a minute if you're good), a few shots got off at best before fixing bayonets and pretending your gun is a rather unwieldy spear. Adequately, if not perfectly, represented by first and defensive strikes.

Last but not least, cavalry! A light and heavy distinction would be great. Currently the early horse units (horsemen and horse archers) represent light cavalry while the late horse units such as knights represent heavy cavalry. Maybe an intermediate form of light cavalry (mounted skirmishers? light lancers?) would be in order, and maybe an earlier form of heavy cavalry could be developed (heavy lancers?). The Hippus, naturally, would be best served by a bunch of specialized cavalry units.

A third type of cavalry unit is the dragoon, or mounted infantry, whose name was eventually changed to just "cavalry". This is actually the last type of cavalry used in our history, from the mid-1800s (U.S. Civil War era) to its last gasp in World War I. They started out as regular melee units transported on horseback but evolved into mounted riflemen. Since even a well-trained horse's tolerance for having a gun fired by its rider from its back is limited, they would often fight dismounted. Just for more fun, dragoons also had light and heavy distinctions! The Mechanos would be a prime candidate for expanded dragoon use (beyond the Dragoon horse archer UU they currently have).

I think Caminus Aureus shouldn't give Mithril. It's supposed to be a super rare resource, not one you can gain with a wonder. The free Weaponsmiths are enough I think.

While I love building the CA (for the mithril!) I do tend to agree with you. Maybe it could just give iron, since it's not so rare (though I have found myself more than once without any iron by mid to late game). However...

BTW, I think I'll add some more wonders. Effects I thought of: more "free [building] in all cities" (Hunting Lodges, Monuments?, Market); +X // from buildings; +100% trade route yield; +100% war weariness for the enemies.

If you want to nerf Caminus Aureus, here's an idea: World Wonders (or rituals) that provide resources, up to and including mithril. Make them appropriately expensive and maybe require particular resource combos, like maybe a Mithril Transmutation wonder would require enchantment mana and silver; perhaps (if it could be done) an archmage with Enchantment III (or dwarven druid with Earth III, if Khazad) would need to be sacrificed in the city (presumed to be employed enchanting/transmuting silver into mithril full-time). Or simply requires the Guild of Transmuters (or even its HQ) to be present in the city (which would make the guild more useful).

I also tend to think that Summer & Winter palaces should get fancier names and vastly different effects. Maybe they should be of the same class so that you can only build one. Or make one national and the other world? Maybe it's already the case?

The Summer Palace currently requires eight cities to build, the Winter Palace requires 12. This should be amended to read, "or must be on a different continent than the capitol or the other palace". BTW, both are national wonders. I think they work well as the concept of a "regional capitol" or regional administration center of a far-flung empire - like the investment of Byzantium as the capitol of the Eastern Roman Empire. A name change would be good, though (see below).

Actually...I've always thought that the instant recreation of a civ's capitol (fully functional) in some other city when the current capitol is conquered is kind of silly. Perhaps instant relocation could only be done to the location of a regional capitol. If no regional capitol exists the palace would have to be rebuilt with . If the original capitol was recaptured it could either revert to being the capitol or become a regional capitol.

I would also like to give fancy names to each civilization's palace. I'm tired of the Bannor Palace, Malakim Palace, etc. The "Gardens of Splendor" are the Elohim Palace in FF. Such a name! So beautiful I want to hug it.

Nice, flavorful idea, though "Gardens of Splendor" sounds almost more like something the Ljosalfar would come up with. IMHO the palace name should reflect something about the civ either lorewise or as per their outlook/gameplay. Here are some ideas:

Amurites: Seat of Kylorin
Balseraphs: The Big Top
Bannor: Sabathiel's Redoubt
Calabim: Throne of Blood and Souls
Clan of Embers: Bhall's Furnace
Doviello: The Great Longhouse
Elohim: Sanctum of the Guardians
Grigori: Cassiel's Retreat
Hippus: The Horselords' Throne
Illians: Frozen Crypt of Mulcarn
Infernal: The Gates of Hell
Khazad: The Great Vault
Kuriotates: Eurabatres' Rebirth
Lanun: Corsairs' Cove
Ljosalfar: The Summer Palace (name change needed for the national wonder currently bearing that name).
Luchiurp: Tinkers' Damn ... actual idea: Graoin's Hall
Malakim: Eye of the Desert
Mazatl: Jungle's Heart
Mechanos: Halls of Industry
Mercurians: Basium's Wrath
Ngomele: No idea. You're the one who thinks of words for this civ.
Scions of Patria: Grand Palace of Patria Reborn
Sheaim: Seed of Armageddon
Sidar: Haven of the Grey
Svartalfar: The Winter Palace (name change needed for the national wonder currently bearing that name).

Then I also think guilds should compete more. Or if they don't, there should be more guilds and they should compete more.

I think the Order of Arches and the Prospectors' Guild should compete. They don't seem to like each other, after all. Having at least two opposing guilds of each type would be good: OoA vs. PG, Circle of Eight vs. Circle of Transmuters, etc.

Another idea would be to allow some, or all, guilds to be created by hammers as well as by great people. This would allow civs that don't always spawn the "right" great person to found a guild to get it first, by brute force - or to snatch the guild out from under the nose of a competitor by popping the right great person. The Guild of the Nine could be founded by a Great Commander/General in addition to being built, for example, and the Guild of Endeavors could be founded by a Great Engineer (and maybe given guild mechanics instead of WW mechanics - which might require some rethinking).

Some effects like Hansa's would be cool too. I don't think all should have the +xp or the free promotion thingie (seeing that some guilds give you some rare resource is good enough). But some, except the yields, are a bit plain (3-Field, Prospectors). I know they have unique mechanics with their units but I don't like them They make my world fall apart. If you don't have a resource, then you don't have it. That's all

I can see where this could be considered OP. Maybe do it this way: The name of the Farmer's ability is "breed new goods", right? Not "discover new goods". Only let them breed resources the civ already has access to! So if they have Cows they can breed new Cow resources (increasing the guild bonuses and/or giving more resources for trade) but if they have no Sheep they can't breed any.

As for the Prospector, one or more of these ideas might work: reduce their chance of "finding" (creating) a resource, increase the casting time of the ability, consume the unit upon completion of the ability (whether successful or not) and only let them prospect a particular tile once (create an invisible marker indicating the tile has been prospected).

Actually, this gives me an idea for a guild to compete with the Three-Field Order: the Agriculturalists' Guild. Their ability would be "discover new goods" subject to the limitations listed above for the Prospector. Unlike the Farmer, they could find new organic resources, but only one of these guilds could be present per city.

Okay, back to actually playing now. I'm trying the Ngomele; don't know how far I'll get before the game becomes unplayable due to increasingly frequent CTDs from patch C but if I think of anything I'll let you know in the Ngomele thread.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Gardens of Splendor refer to the fact that as a young girl Ethne the White Saw Splendor (the Archangel of Nantosuelta) in the form of a blue and yellow bird in the gardens outside of her father's palace.


The Bannor Palace/greatest of all Order temples is already canonically described as The Halls of Sabathiel.

 

[Jabie]

The entry on Talos gives some indication of life in the Mechanos Palace (See http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=322571&page=6 ) Perhaps their palace could be called something like The Flywheel - a sort of play on words for The Pentagon.

I'm pretty sure FfH1 had some kind of Treehome wonder and although the two games are linked in title only, this might serve either branch of elves or Ngomele quite well.

 

[Opera]

Order of the Arrow!
Lighthouse-keepers union (placeholder) (combine harbor and lighthouse, simply call it harbor)(then have these guys have a building called a lighthouse, gives +1 commerce to water tiles and +1 trade route)

Nice ideas...

As for wonders, I've been thinking about adding a few base ones myself... Midway through the tech tree. Things like free Harbour/Granary/Smokehouse. No military buildings, but the early infrastructure buildings would be nice.

Yeah, those too would be useful. One thing I liked in RFC:E is the "Krak des Chevaliers" wonder which give the equivalent of Palisade+Walls to conquered cities. Very nice.

I like it. I think there should be more unit types in the game anyway, unless I suppose it makes the game more unstable with larger file sizes or something. Polearms are a class of weapons mounted on poles...anything ranging from a spear to a pike to a voulge or halberd; pikes and halberds were used up until the early age of personal firearms to protect the arquebusiers as they slowly reloaded.

No, that won't make the game more unstable. At least, I don't think so. More complicated, maybe.

Pikes were used to impale charging horses (they were very long and would be planted with butts in the ground and points way out in front) while halberds were used against the riders rather than the horses, to pull knights from the saddle and engage them beyond sword range. Pikes were fairly useless in melee combat - too long to be easily employed against a mobile opponent and useful only for thrusting; a halberd's more manageable length, axe-head, hook and spike made it more versatile. However, both would typically be discarded in favor of smaller sidearms if it came to serious melee combat with mobile opponents (i.e. not heavily armored, dismounted knights).

In-game you might want to give revamped pikemen a large bonus against mounted units and a small penalty against melee/infantry units, while halberdiers would get a smaller bonus against mounted units and no penalty against melee/infantry units.

Yeah, that's about what I thought. Bonus against mounted, slightly more defense than attack (at least for T2). They won't have a malus against Melee, Melee will have a bonus against them.

As for melee vs. infantry, basically the main distinction is the type of weapon they fight with. Melee range is face-to-face combat with hand-held weapons such as swords or maces (or even spears) while infantry, in the modern sense at least, use guns. However, in this game, gun combat (even for the Mechanos, I think) is basically Napoleonic-era in nature, at best: massed infantry firing at other massed infantry in ranks, slow reloading (two to three shots a minute if you're good), a few shots got off at best before fixing bayonets and pretending your gun is a rather unwieldy spear. Adequately, if not perfectly, represented by first and defensive strikes.

Hmm, I'm not sure about how to name the Warrior->Axeman->HeavyInfantry line then. "Infantry" won't fit very well.
I also think those units should be renamed. Warrior is fine, I guess Axeman/Swordsman too, but I don't really like Heavy Infantry. Hmm...

Last but not least, cavalry! A light and heavy distinction would be great. Currently the early horse units (horsemen and horse archers) represent light cavalry while the late horse units such as knights represent heavy cavalry. Maybe an intermediate form of light cavalry (mounted skirmishers? light lancers?) would be in order, and maybe an earlier form of heavy cavalry could be developed (heavy lancers?). The Hippus, naturally, would be best served by a bunch of specialized cavalry units.

You're pushing me to do this, aren't you? I'm tempted. That would make Knights a bit less powerful with less movement, less withdrawal but they would still be pretty frightening.

A third type of cavalry unit is the dragoon, or mounted infantry, whose name was eventually changed to just "cavalry". This is actually the last type of cavalry used in our history, from the mid-1800s (U.S. Civil War era) to its last gasp in World War I. They started out as regular melee units transported on horseback but evolved into mounted riflemen. Since even a well-trained horse's tolerance for having a gun fired by its rider from its back is limited, they would often fight dismounted. Just for more fun, dragoons also had light and heavy distinctions! The Mechanos would be a prime candidate for expanded dragoon use (beyond the Dragoon horse archer UU they currently have).

Have to think about that one

Also, there's the Archery/Gunpowder distinction. They're not quite the same but they're treated as if for now. I guess this distinction should exist too, even if Gunpowder units will be very late. But if I do this, I think I'll also bring back the Gunpowder resource (or Sulphur). Would make sense.

While I love building the CA (for the mithril!) I do tend to agree with you. Maybe it could just give iron, since it's not so rare (though I have found myself more than once without any iron by mid to late game). However...

If you want to nerf Caminus Aureus, here's an idea: World Wonders (or rituals) that provide resources, up to and including mithril. Make them appropriately expensive and maybe require particular resource combos, like maybe a Mithril Transmutation wonder would require enchantment mana and silver; perhaps (if it could be done) an archmage with Enchantment III (or dwarven druid with Earth III, if Khazad) would need to be sacrificed in the city (presumed to be employed enchanting/transmuting silver into mithril full-time). Or simply requires the Guild of Transmuters (or even its HQ) to be present in the city (which would make the guild more useful).

I like this! Not the Archmage thing however. No one would like to give up an Archmage like that. Perhaps Iron+Enchantment rather than Silver? I guess it would also require Reagents (to do the transmutation) and a Mage Guild. Maybe the Circle of Transmuters...

The Summer Palace currently requires eight cities to build, the Winter Palace requires 12. This should be amended to read, "or must be on a different continent than the capitol or the other palace". BTW, both are national wonders. I think they work well as the concept of a "regional capitol" or regional administration center of a far-flung empire - like the investment of Byzantium as the capitol of the Eastern Roman Empire. A name change would be good, though (see below).

Thanks for bringing these informations. I didn't know they were both national wonder...

Actually...I've always thought that the instant recreation of a civ's capitol (fully functional) in some other city when the current capitol is conquered is kind of silly. Perhaps instant relocation could only be done to the location of a regional capitol. If no regional capitol exists the palace would have to be rebuilt with . If the original capitol was recaptured it could either revert to being the capitol or become a regional capitol.

I don't know how the re-creation of the capitol works. I'll check that

Nice, flavorful idea, though "Gardens of Splendor" sounds almost more like something the Ljosalfar would come up with. IMHO the palace name should reflect something about the civ either lorewise or as per their outlook/gameplay. Here are some ideas:

As MagisterCultuum said, there's a reason behind this name. And I like it so much that I won't ever listen to any other name!

As for the names of others, that will be a long and heated debate, I'm sure

I think the Order of Arches and the Prospectors' Guild should compete. They don't seem to like each other, after all. Having at least two opposing guilds of each type would be good: OoA vs. PG, Circle of Eight vs. Circle of Transmuters, etc.

We could have:

• Order of Arches <-> Prospector's Guild
• Circle of Eight <-> Circle of Transmuters
• 3-Field Order <-> Hansa

And Bank of Vivaldi non competing with any guild. For now at least

Another idea would be to allow some, or all, guilds to be created by hammers as well as by great people. This would allow civs that don't always spawn the "right" great person to found a guild to get it first, by brute force - or to snatch the guild out from under the nose of a competitor by popping the right great person. The Guild of the Nine could be founded by a Great Commander/General in addition to being built, for example, and the Guild of Endeavors could be founded by a Great Engineer (and maybe given guild mechanics instead of WW mechanics - which might require some rethinking).

I'm not sure about that. There should be some penalty (above the time required for production) or prerequisite to build it.

A thing I thought would be interesting is to have a guild or two tied to an event in the game, like the Guild of the Nine.

I can see where this could be considered OP. Maybe do it this way: The name of the Farmer's ability is "breed new goods", right? Not "discover new goods". Only let them breed resources the civ already has access to! So if they have Cows they can breed new Cow resources (increasing the guild bonuses and/or giving more resources for trade) but if they have no Sheep they can't breed any.

As for the Prospector, one or more of these ideas might work: reduce their chance of "finding" (creating) a resource, increase the casting time of the ability, consume the unit upon completion of the ability (whether successful or not) and only let them prospect a particular tile once (create an invisible marker indicating the tile has been prospected).

Actually, this gives me an idea for a guild to compete with the Three-Field Order: the Agriculturalists' Guild. Their ability would be "discover new goods" subject to the limitations listed above for the Prospector. Unlike the Farmer, they could find new organic resources, but only one of these guilds could be present per city.

Not sure about these. I would have to check their code and to play them more to have a true idea of what I think of them.

Okay, back to actually playing now. I'm trying the Ngomele; don't know how far I'll get before the game becomes unplayable due to increasingly frequent CTDs from patch C but if I think of anything I'll let you know in the Ngomele thread.

I hope you will have some things to say

The entry on Talos gives some indication of life in the Mechanos Palace (See http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=322571&page=6 ) Perhaps their palace could be called something like The Flywheel - a sort of play on words for The Pentagon.

I'm pretty sure FfH1 had some kind of Treehome wonder and although the two games are linked in title only, this might serve either branch of elves or Ngomele quite well.

I don't think it would fit the Ngomele. The Elves, maybe, but not the Ngomele

BTW, I quite like "Flywheel", even though I don't understand the play on words

 

[civ_king]

Nice ideas...

I suck at programming and couldn't help you out that way, so that's the least I can do for such an AWESOME!!! 3mod

 

[Cylnar]

A couple more ideas I had:

1) Khazad adepts: Right now they suck because they aren't able to upgrade at all. This makes sense lorewise since the Khazad don't trust magic and don't seek to master it; however it often seems a waste to build a unit that can't ever really do that much. These fairly-useless units can be redeemed like so:

Give them an upgrade path. The Khazad adepts would be able to upgrade to a Mage UU, the Arcane Axeman: Can use metal weapons and access many combat-related promos as well as first-tier magic promos. Roughly equivalent to an Axeman, as the name suggests. Must be upgraded from a unit level 4 or above and requires knowledge of Iron Working.

Arcane Axemen could then upgrade to an Archmage UU called the Arcane Champion (has a better ring to it than Arcane Heavy Infantry IMHO), national unit (4 allowed) roughly equivalent to a Heavy Infantry. Must be upgraded from a unit level 6 or above and requires knowledge of Mithril Working.

So while these units would never be as powerful as pure combat units at the same tech level, their versatility would make them worthwhile to build (and roughly the equivalent of divine units). They would be especially worthwhile if a "more than one spell per mana per tier" system was added (see this post: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8350390&postcount=57). Heck, even simply allowing Khazad adepts to use metal weapons and access more combat promotions would be better than the current state of affairs.

2) Withdrawal: Units in this game are much too suicidal. Many units, especially those that are not heavy combat units, should have some chance to withdraw (retreat) from a fight they are losing, especially if the terrain favors them. To balance this out, fast units should have the ability to penalize the withdrawal rate of their foes.

Start with a base withdrawal rate of 25% for all units. Certain "light" units, such as warriors, axemen/swordsmen, horsemen/horse archers and the like, would receive additional bonuses, in addition to promos that already add such bonuses. Terrain should add some small bonuses (if possible, the terrain they are attacking from rather than the terrain they are attacking into, but the terrain they are attacking into would be OK too). Say +10% for forest, +10% for jungle, +10% for hills, +10% for swamp.

Add appropriate racial bonuses (+10% in forest for elves, +10% in hills for dwarves, +10% in swamp and jungle for Mazatl and Clan of Embers, +10% in snow and tundra for Doviello and Illians, +10% in plains for Ngomele, centaurs and Hippus, +10% in hell terrain for demons and Sheaim, etc.).

The terrain promotions (Woodsman I and II, Guerrilla I and II) should add +5% each to their respective terrain types, and Guerrilla I and II should each add +15% to base withdrawal chance.

Greater mobility would also assist withdrawal rate: about +15% for every move remaining to the unit. So units fighting at the end of their movement, with their last movement point, would be less capable of retreat than a unit that still has a couple of movement points left upon retreating.

Many of the above terrains, races and promotions would also work in reverse to prevent an enemy from retreating: elves and woodsmen would have an easier time tracking their enemy in forests, mounted units would have a better chance to run their routed enemy to ground before they could slip away, etc. The flanking promotions could also be used against retreating enemies. Fortification bonuses would also provide equivalent pursuit penalties (-5% to -25%) for a successful defender, due to the difficulty of leaving an entrenched position to pursue mobile, retreating foes. The Defensive promotion would not double this penalty.

To balance this, routing an enemy (forcing it to withdraw) should be counted as a combat victory. Currently, the game seems to count a withdrawn foe as a defeat for the successful unit; the combat result text is red and the winner is likely to be deprived of any experience for the battle. You can pursue your wounded foe, and get little or no XP for the battle due to their weakened state. Let the true winner of the battle get at least most of the XP they would have won if they had destroyed the attacking unit. Maybe also let the withdrawing unit get 1 XP for knowing the better part of valor.

The various numbers might be subject to some balancing, but you get the idea.

 

[arkham4269]

While I've been having issues w/my computer (i.e. it crashes when I try to play any Civ game mod or no) so I haven't had a lot to say of late, I agree w/Clynar about withdrawels. Unless your units are magical beings like skeletons, they shouldn't cheerfully toss themselves in headlong rushes at suicidal odds.

I don't know if Orbis ever will use the Revolutions mod, but playing Rise of Mankind or Legends of Revolutions got me thinking about the those mods often have cultural boundaries be affected by combat. So in border areas, winning attackers start to erode the defenders cultural boundaries.

So I'm thinking there is a game mechanic out there that tracks the affects of wins. So why can't something like that also be use to perhaps help the AI decide to keep attacking. Plus morale and the 'tide of war' is important. I think it would be nice if the affects of the battle would have an affect during the battle.

Say you have a big stack attacking a city. First you have the siege bombardment which would have a slight decrese in morale to the defender but not that much because it's a seige and that sort of thing is expected. However as troops go over the wall, the more attacking units win, there should come a point where the attackers start getting a bonus due to morale or the defenders get a minus due to bad morale. On the other hand it could work the other way. Obviously losing Heroes or import units like UU would do a lot to hurt morale. I mean in the bad old days, when your champion got whacked, you went home.

Probably way to hard to do, but I agree that to often the AI is to stupid not to dash a lot of it's forces in a hopeless seige and then sets itself up for a devestating counter-punch. It's too bad, there was one iteration of Civ that the AI seem to be smart enough to pin your troops in your city and then use other troops to loot the crap out of yoru lands. At some point you had to sally out or lose all your improvements.

 

[arkham4269]

In regard to pikes, talked about a few posts above, I always assumed that the reason pikes were so nasty, not just to horsemen, was that they represent more of the Spanish tercio formation with a combination of pikes and halberds. This way they could be pretty effective against infantry as well.

However, I've always said the anti-horsemen promotion needs to be at the level of anti-archer and the like. Yet one thing I do believe is that the anti-horse promotion should come with the disadvatange a lof of the Patrian units have in being 'slow'.

The key to pikes was keeping formation and those tercios were notoriously slow compared to other foot soldiers whose formation wasn't as critical. I mean the whole point of being able to defend against cavalry was your formation didn't have any breaks in the line (or square) for them to breach. As a Army vet, let me tell you that even units trained in close order drill, moving in formation w/o breaks is hard and those units like pikes shouldn't be allowed to get extra movement and indeed should have the 'heavy/slow' promotion to reflect the realities of their nature.

 

[Rosetint]

Does anyone here know how reaching creepers are supposed to work for the Scions? I've been trying to understand them for a while. The main problems seem to be that creepers vanish the round after they are summoned, even if you manage to give them the fed promotion by killing something. Also, you are supposed to be able to feed them with the Ghostwalkers but this never seems to work. I read that you need a Ghostwalker with 3 spare xp, Feral bond and a summoned creeper but I never seem to get the feed option. Any ideas?

 

[Mailbox]

Can someone point me to where the cooling code used for the Illians is located? I'm pretty new to .dll editting so if it's there please be specific. I'd like to add that code to a religion (guess which one ).

How rude of me, that's only if Ahwaric approves.

 

[Valkrionn]

Actually, I believe the cooling code was originally from FlavorMod, and that Jean is working on a rather comprehensive climate system atm... I'm waiting on him to finish it before I make that religion myself, for exactly the same reason.

Ah, here's the post: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8198967&postcount=370

 

[Bastian-Bux]

To make the Mithril transmutation not too easy, you could require 4 metals plus enchantment. I'd suggest gold, silver, copper/bronze and iron. If thats to hard, kick iron. Gold should definitely be part as well as silver, as both are named in most RPG alchemical texts as part of mithril.

 

[nickmandler]

Hi. I'm playing as the Mazatl (Mihuatl) and I'm having trouble creating Miquiztli. I searched through the bugs thread and also searched the forums, and didn't see anything pretaining to this, so here I go. I have a level 6 priest of Arguonn, and the requisite techs, and I cannot upgrade him to Miquiztli. I'm a bit at my wit's end because I specifically chose to play as an evil leader so I could try using Miquiztli (usually I play as one of the good leaders). My alignment is still evil, so it's not that. Please tell me there is an easy fix or that I am overlooking something obvious. Thanks!

(BTW, I love the modmod)

EDIT: Upon playing further in my game, it seems I am also unable to create Coatlann the Wyvern, despite having researched Arcane Lore. I've had no problems creating Coatlann when I've played as Hianthrogh or Khset, so this might actually be a bug affecting the hero-creation of Mihuatl. I haven't tried playing as the other evil Mazatl leader to see if I can create Miquiztli then, but perhaps I will.

Since my problem is looking like a bug, should I cross-post this in the bugs thread?

 

[Belizan]

Here's a quick little suggestion (sort of little anyway ...

With all the new buildings that provide promotions or xp, it would be nice to have displayed in the city screen, perhaps under the production bar an information bar which simply displayed the icons representing each unit type and what free promotions and how much xp units of that type would get if built in that city.