Mob Rule: of Tree Huggery

[Chandrasekhar]

raging barbs means ive done something wrong? war (in a game based around conquest and building) means you've done something wrong? the elves are better than everyone else because the game is about never being at war, and losing means someone declared war on me? and i thought units cost maintenance? i guess excessive amounts of units to cover all the tiles surrounding your city doesn't detract from your commerce somehow, and their production cost is nonexistent for this imaginary scenario.

Whether you're playing raging barbs, at war, or whatever, you have to admit that for the majority of the game, you aren't going to be repelling attacks from your city. If you want any hope at all of getting ahead, you have to put units out in the field to stop any incoming attacks before they can pillage the heck out of your improvements. In this, the Ljosalfar are superior because all of their units (especially the archers) get an additional bonus in forested tiles, meaning that they can get anywhere from +60% to +85%, even above 100% defensive bonus for the archers, all on tiles that have improvements built on them, which is more than other Civs can say. Further, they can get all around their cities without having to waste worker turns on roads.

Against an enemy AI invasion, you just have to defend against one direction. Three stacks of units put in the way of an attacking stack (assuming no natural bottlenecks like mountains and such) can blunt an attack by two or more attackers per unit in these stacks, assuming an equal tech level. Because of the increased forest movement, you should have no trouble outmanuevering the enemy stacks so that they need to fight through one of your stacks for each tile closer to your city they get. By then, I certainly hope you outnumber them, or it doesn't matter what Civ you are.

and they don't have faster early game production or tech advancement than Lanun.
1 food is better than 1 production, according to you, and according to me, as they can get conquest for production of units and several civics/religions for building from commerce or population. the elves also don't have the reliability of non-pillageable commerce sources.
and unless im missing something, their cottages don't yield any more than normal cottages commercewise, so i fail to see how they can be claimed as having more commerce (and hence more tech advancement). no, all they're getting is +1 production in forest tiles when they build a cottage there, and they miss out on the production boosts from cutting down forests.

Fine, then they have the second best early production and tech advancement if the Lanun have a coastal start, otherwise they're first. In either case, it's a long gap between the Ljosalfar and the next Civ down.

The Ljosalfar's cottages might not yield any more raw , but having cottages in forests mean that you don't need to put any laborers on mines, so you are getting from every tile.

All this put together means that they have a significant head start on T4 units (and T3, and T2), so they can easily overwhelm enemies, to the point of damaging their economy so badly that they are no longer a threat.

 

[Gezeder]

I agree that the Elves are far too powerful at the moment, or at the very least, Most other races are far too weak at the moment.

At the very least, they basically get +1 in the occasional farm/cottage square in the early game, and this turns into +1 in every square once tree planting is discovered. Then it gets to be +1 if they're lucky enough to discover or acquire fellowship.

Small economic advantage early game, large economic advantage mid-late game. And their penalty (units) is fairly minor, in my opinion.

I was thinking, regarding balance, aren't the +1 from forests partly due to selected tree harvesting? Perhaps it would be reasonable, and in the spirit of the game, to remove the elves’ +1 for forests, and replace it with +1 instead, or even +1 (If that's possible), to represent the additional 'contemplation' elves are renowned for when in their forests.

(You know, staring at lilies, finding beauty in waterfalls, the normal things elves get up to in their centuries long life spans.)

This keeps the flavour of elves liking forests, but reduces their uber-building status which tends to crop up mid game the way things are now, IMO.

This could be extended to include ancient forests as well, providing only an additional 1 or instead of the extra food.

Who knows, if this were the case, we might even see an occasional elven farm instead of just cottages in ancient forests!

Gezeder

 

[Sureshot]

you don't need forests to put cottages on every square. there is absolutely no reason any other civ can't make cottages on every square.

+1 thats it.

a mine gives +2 . and has the chance of finding resources. if you find gold, its giving +1 and +6 , and you guessed it, thats more than any cottage.

have you noticed the traits of the elves? seen any financial elven leaders recently? i sure haven't, and maybe thats why there hasn't been a single Ljosalfar civ thats pretended to be able to out tech me in any of my games. any place a Ljo can build a cottage another civ can build a cottage there as well and get a production boost from it (get a few free buildings early on), and those other civs can be financial and get extra commerce out of them.

considering it's a stretch to even claim Ljosalfar are even the best yielders (Lanun are much better and it's easier to find water then it is to find good land covered in trees), they aren't the best producers (anyone can build mines and be better, and dwarves can build unpillageables mines that will produce gold/iron/copper/mithril/gems/etc. with a greater chance than normal and +40% production), and they aren't the best commerce producers (any leader with financial is).

Lanun > Ljosalfar
Khazad > Ljosalfar
Financial > Ljosalfar

it can't even be shown that they're unilaterally better yielders than every other civ, and they already have worse drawbacks than any other civ.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Hey, if you see the elves as weak, it's not like anyone's forcing you to play them. Maybe with these modifications, they're just not the best Civ for your playstyle.

This game is all about making Civs different, and so they each have their own optimum situation. The Lanun are somewhat underpowered if they don't have a big coast, and perhaps the Ljosalfar should be a bit underpowered if they can't get any access at all to Leaves. It doesn't make them a bad Civ, it just means that they work best under certain circumstances. If you don't like those circumstances, or you prefer to play without making those circumstances occur, then another Civ is probably best for you.

 

[Sureshot]

I think they're perfectly fine, I enjoy a game of reclusive land improvement. It's not the elves that I think are weak, it's your arguments that are. You make claims that they should be weakened further based on these amazing yields which are no greater than several others.

They are not better producers, nor are they better producers, nor are they better producers, but they have obvious drawbacks (no siege engines, lowered attack strength units, weaker city defense). Given ideal conditions they can have great land, so what? A civilization isn't balanced on it's best possible outcome, its balanced on its expected outcome.

Everything they have can be gotten by anyone else. Go grab some elven slaves to build forested improvements, or just take over their cities and you've got their improvements and great lands. Then what do the elves have? a series of drawbacks with no advantages.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

They are not the best producers, they are not the best producers, nor are they the best producers, but while most Civs have to focus on one of these to beat them, the Ljosalfar can have all three by virtue of what they start with. This has already been demonstrated.

I saw as many increases in strength in the changelog as I did penalties. Further, the elven archer is being given a city defense bonus, negating the "weak city defense" argument. The only valid argument you retain is the fact that they lack siege engines. This simply means that they are a defensive Civ, not best suited to warmongering. Does this make them a weak Civ? I don't think so.

To win a war, you don't even need siege engines. Mages can handle your collateral damage issues, and a stack of powerful, advanced elven units can easily pillage everything in sight while invading an enemy territory. Enemy counterattacks will fail because of the vast amount of forest that elves have, and when you tire of war, you can simply require a large amount of techs and gold from your foe for the peace treaty.

 

[Sureshot]

So they can't out produce in any way, yet, by virtue of the imagination they can? it has been demonstrated?!? sorry, no, they can't even out produce a financial vanilla leader. +1 is even countered by the +1 you lose from forest tiles near rivers

take a look at the +25% city defense, normal archers get +50%, so no again, you've negated nothing, they are the weakest city defenders

and mages, yes, 1000 years down the line they might get a fireball spammer if they upgrade to specialize that way. goodluck getting those and getting all your other necessary ideals just to compete with something others get in the classical age.

and wheres the counter to elven slaves and conquered land? but i suppose ignoring half an argument and using the imagination to compete with the others is necessary when you are arguing an invalid point.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

So they can't out produce in any way, yet, by virtue of the imagination they can? it has been demonstrated?!? sorry, no, they can't even out produce a financial vanilla leader. +1 is even countered by the +1 you lose from forest tiles near rivers

Normally, a leader must focus on , , or to do well in any of those aspects. The Ljosalfar do quite well with all three of them without sacrificing any other yield. It has been demonstrated in this thread, and in the balance thread. I would think you'd know, as you've speant quite a bit of your time refuting the points, with varrying levels of success.

take a look at the +25% city defense, normal archers get +50%, so no again, you've negated nothing, they are the weakest city defenders

The 25% defense is trivial, even more so when you consider that the foes of the Ljosalfar almost always have to move through forests to get to their cities, or at least go around them.

goodluck getting those and getting all your other necessary ideals just to compete with something others get in the classical age.

By your standards, quite a lot of luck is needed to do anything in this game. I should point out that the other Civs are just as subject to the whims of the random number generator as the Ljosalfar.

and wheres the counter to elven slaves and conquered land? but i suppose ignoring half an argument and using the imagination to compete with the others is necessary when you are arguing an invalid point.

Must I counter all your points? Some aren't worthy of responding to, some you don't awknowledge when I do counter them, and some are actually valid points (though not valid enough to singlehandedly win the argument).

 

[Sureshot]

A point isn't valid? thats a laugh. I bet I can get elven slaves faster than you can get archmages.

and it hasn't been demonstrated in this thread, or any others, that they out produce. they've been shown to have better than typical yield, but are nowhere near the top in the yields. Lanun, and Khazad both do better with less conditionals. Khazad and Lanun both have financial leaders too, and several other civs do as well, they can all out produce Ljosalfar.

Ljosalfar gaining 1 on conditional tiles (has to be forest, can't have a river near to not lose ) is far from being better than Khazad, Lanun or financial.

But alas, you've taught me one thing:
somethings aren't worth responding to, i think i'll take that to heart and just hope the dev team doesn't listen to your invalid arguments.

 

[Xuenay]

Don't forget that while the Ljosalfar might not be as good as Khazad, Lanun or financial in their tile yield, they still have better tile yields than, uhh, Bannor, Elohim, the non-financial Luchuirp leader, Grigori, the non-Financial Hippus leader, Amurites, Doviello, Balseraphs...

 

[Gezeder]

Regarding elves having excellent economies, I will add my anecdotal evidence.

My partner and I play a lot of civ multiplayer together, and have probably played about 10-15 or so FFH games together through to about the middle of the tech tree (And several to near end, by which point one player or the other usually surrenders.). We're pretty familiar with each other's abilities, as we've been playing civ with each other for years.

(Maps range from huge to normal, always temperate, always continents)

We've had to ban either of us playing elves in our multiplayer games, because if 1 player goes them (Either player!), they are clear winners by the middle of the tech tree, if both players go them, at the very least we need to up the difficulty to around Prince instead of Noble to feel a challenge, despite the fact that one player is likely to get screwed when the other tech rushes to leaves just that tiny bit faster.

So, maths or no maths, explanation or no explanation,

Our experiences were that the elves kick ass economically, to the point where a similarly experienced player not playing elves on the same map finds the situation completely hopeless by mid game, if not sooner, every time.

And yes, I know that's nowhere near a statistical sample. Still. Thought I'd throw it out there.

Gezeder

(Oh, I should add, we both love playing Ljosalfar, they're very cool. It's just that, in our experience, they were so overpowered that they unbalance the game to the point where we have to up the difficultly levels way too high for our liking in order to feel a challenge, making the game experience too different from playing other races at lower difficulty levels.)

 

[Bad Player]

Didn't they lose the ability to build certain things on ancient forests which reduces their awesomeness?

 

[dreiche2]

First of all, let me say that I don't know if the elves are unbalanced... I don't have the time to play very often and it's hard to tell with so many civs and so many differences among them.

Second, what Gezeeder posted might be a hint that there (at least in human hands, and it least with their playstyle)) could be some imbalance, and honestly, will all these complicted advantages and disadvantages of the civs I think the only way to test this is to set up several games and look at the outcome. (unless there is some blatantly obvious imbalance, but I cannot see this here).

But concerning the ongoing discussion I have to say I'd agree with Sureshot. What annoys me is that you seem to be ignoring our main point, which is that civs should be balanced as a whole, because you seem to try to prove that elves are to strong only by taking *their* advantages into account.

Giftzwerg, your post clearly shows this: You compare elves to some generic "control civ". And then find out that elves have the advantage of being able to build in forests, but, like Sureshot said, that was clear from the beginnig. But how can you conclude they are overpowered from that?

In your setup, which civ *wouldn't* come out as winner, when comparing them to a 'control civ'? Just imagine taking the infernals, for example (especially with raging barbs...). Or the Lanun... or...

 

[Bad Player]

I noticed that the elves aren't being used in this weekend's FFH2 multiplayer and I don't think they were used last weekend either, if that gives any indication of a broader consensus of their power.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Giftzwerg, your post clearly shows this: You compare elves to some generic "control civ". And then find out that elves have the advantage of being able to build in forests, but, like Sureshot said, that was clear from the beginnig. But how can you conclude they are overpowered from that?

In your setup, which civ *wouldn't* come out as winner, when comparing them to a 'control civ'? Just imagine taking the infernals, for example (especially with raging barbs...). Or the Lanun... or...

Actually, only a few of the Civs have such a massively lucrative unique ability as the Ljosalfar and Lanun. These Civs, and Civs with the barb trait, could be shown to be far ahead in almost any hypothetical (and most real) situations, while all of the others (with the possible exception of the Khazad) are far below this.

You're absolutely right about the fact that several Civs have significant advantages over the others. The Ljosalfar are just the classic example.

Regarding the fact that the Ljosalfar haven't been used in some recent multiplayer games, this might be due to the fact that in a multiplayer game, one of the players is likely to rush for the Fellowship, which makes the Ljosalfar's advantage much less spectacular. However, in a single player game, the only Civ to rush for the Fellowship is (surprise!) the Ljosalfar.

If you really don't like the idea of making the Ljosalfar weaker, at least decrease the synergy that they have with the Fellowship. Being able to cover your lands with three two four tiles and simultaneously negate any happiness and health problems is just too much.

 

[much2much]

When I was going to join a multiplayer game I was considering using them and here is what ran through my head:

If I win I will feel like I cheated.
If I "prove" that they are overpowered I would feel really bad because the FFH team are awesome and so interactive. If I were them I would probably want to flag the issues but now is a time they are being super constructive and adding and creating is probably better than worrying about balancing out the bits the have put in.
I would like to put everybodys ass on ice with pure skill.

Having said all that I think the Ancient Forest/Fellowship combo is too powerful and any development on Ancient Forests should cost one hammer, maybe even on ordinary forests too?! Undeveloped Ancient forests are cool, a self supporting two hammer tile is great, especially when you will be cottaging a lot with the Elves the extra one commerce you might get from a lumbermill or windmill, etc. is not as useful as the production.
I believe one hammer on a two food cottage to be an advantage in itself, you can be developing cottages while simultaneously building libraries/etc.
Having this penalty would also make developing an Ancient Forest a yes/no decision as opposed to a farm/cottage one.

The other thing is Elves not having siege functionality. Levelling up happens quickly in FFH due to barbs so a lot of enemies have significant City Garrison promotions. The obvious counter to this is to level up your City Raiders, at least enough to chop up the high levelled opponents. But not being able to reduce city defense makes this next to impossible pretty fast as if you increase defending number of units, you need a ridiculously exponentially number more attackers than defenders. Reducing city defense and collateral damage causing units are all things that could be reserved JUST for spells in the case of races that are useless at it otherwise, and I think this should be an option for anybody progressing through the tech tree: go for siege warfare (where production is more important) or go for magic (more powerful but have to look after individually weak units that need to be grown). This would also make mana specialisation appealing, if you want to be able to instantly produce siege effective mages without waiting or throwing them into combat, you will need to have two or three mana nodes of that type.

 

[Bad Player]

I think the Ljo-elves can play well defensively due to the power of ancient forests but I don't think that they can play well offensively due to the lack of siege engines and also that their units tend to be lower powered.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

and it hasn't been demonstrated in this thread, or any others, that they out produce. they've been shown to have better than typical yield, but are nowhere near the top in the yields. Lanun, and Khazad both do better with less conditionals. Khazad and Lanun both have financial leaders too, and several other civs do as well, they can all out produce Ljosalfar.

Might it be asking to much to see a few examples of actual numbers demonstrating of this superior production? I'm playing the Lanun right now. I'm not seeing how 2 , 2 sea tiles (3 2 for those cities who have built the 300 Lighthouse) out-produces 2 1 1-3 forest/cottage tiles. Building construction occurs slowly if only sea tiles are exploited.

Especially in regard for the early start advantage the Ljosalfar enjoy. The 300 Lighthouse is not a trivial build in the early game. Elves can begin spreading Cottages through their Forests once they've learned Education. And this early developmental advantage exists regardless of Fellowship worship. Fellowship worship is gravy.

There's nothing saying the Elves cannot exist as a balanced civ with such advantages. But it sounds unpersuasive to pretend such an effect does not exist in the game right now. In the meantime I'll run a few more comparisons based upon different starting conditions. I'll be happy to run sets of starting conditions you supply thaty you feel will outperform the Ljosalfar production in the early game. Learning Is Good.

There is absolutely no rule stating that the Elven economy can be fine-tuned only if it can be proven they are the absolute #1 producers. Perhaps the Khazad and Lanun economies are also deserving of review? Time and testing will tell.

For instance, the next version will feature Dwarven Mines that cannot be pillaged. That's an improvement over the vanilla Mine, right? Just as the Elven Cottage can be built in Woods, and is thus an improvement over the vanilla Cottage. Games often make 'improved' versions of gamepieces cost more than vanilla versions cost. Game players are certainly used to the concept. So I don't see any design reason why, say, Elven Cottages and Dwarven Mines, both, should not take longer to build. (I don't know what programming headaches this'd cause.)

It seems to me that fans of the current elven design would rather see Cottages take a bit longer to build in Forest, than not being able to build Cottages in Forests at all. Would such a change be worthwhile, or effective, or sufficient? There's no way of knowing without at least a bit of numerical study.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Giftzwerg, your post clearly shows this: You compare elves to some generic "control civ". And then find out that elves have the advantage of being able to build in forests, but, like Sureshot said, that was clear from the beginnig. But how can you conclude they are overpowered from that?

Quote and paste my comment where I claimed the Ljosalfar are "overpowered" and I will answer this question. Since such a quote does not exist, I will skip ahead.

My post was designed to address the claims made in this forum that there is no appreceable advantage to the Ljosalfar economy, as it exists now. My post was made with a very specific purpose: to address the economic issue.

Tell me, if you knew one civ got a free University (+20 R&D) and a free Bank (+20% money) in every city they owned, would you claim this civ didn't enjoy a noticeable economic advantage? That's roughly the effect seen in the first comparison I ran. Being able to invent 6 techs in the same time the other civs invent 5 carries a pretty strong effect.

Are there more considerations to a civ's overall effectiveness than just the economic? Of course. That's why I've not described the Ljosalfar as "overpowered". If pressed, I'd say Gedzeder's post above describes the situation well. In FfH games between human players, the player runing Ljosalfar will win disproportionately.

In your setup, which civ *wouldn't* come out as winner, when comparing them to a 'control civ'? Just imagine taking the infernals, for example (especially with raging barbs...). Or the Lanun... or...

OK, I am imagining them. What tiles can the Infernals work differently than any other race? They could afford to break out their Workers to start building sooner. That can be approximated. What else do they have I should consider?

The Lunan is my ongoing civ. The Pirates Cove has interesting ramifacations for defense. But economic production? Extra in sea tiles doesn't get the opening-game civilization many s. I'll run a Lunan comparison too.

 

[Bad Player]

I think the best way to settle the argument as to whether the Ljosalfar are overpowered is to look at the results of all the multiplayer games where the Ljosalfar are used. Are the Ljosalfar winning a significantly higher proportion of games than other civs? If not then I don't think they are overpowered.