[MOD] Fall from Heaven

[Kael]

Wenn the SDK and new models become available the war strategies should be reconsidered.
Until now we have an uniform combat througout the game where primary 5 classes (melee, ranged, mage, mounted, recon) of units with different abitities but all being similar powerfull fight each other. The main difference between the tiers (and therfor the ongoing Game) is the increasing strenght of the units. In contrast vanilla civ gives several breaks in strategy, where the strongest is with the development of tanks and aircrafts, suddenly speeding up the wars tenfold.

I'd like it if FfH would provide similar Eras where combat has completly different styles. This could be archived by making one type of units especially strong in each era. For exampel this could look the following:
- In the beginning the warriors and scouts.
- Then a short period where mounted units are the best choice. Possibly there are no walls and no strong anti-mounted units yet? So this allows some short bloddy wars at the beginning of the game.
- The next time period might be controlled by Melee troops that slowly march into the enemy territory followed by strong siege engines. City defence should be quite strong at this time.
- At least one Era will be completly contolled by the Mages softening enemy cities with their spells and allowing your troops to storm the weakened cities without mercy and quite quick as you have not to wait for your sieges.
- Then there could be an time where airunits are build and very quick wars can be fought. But on the other hand magic resistant units will make mages less powerfull.
- The next Era ranged units might be boostet, possibly some more common gunpowder units that have very good defence agains air units. Thus forcing the main troops back to the ground and slowing the final progress. In this final Era all troops become valid choices as there is a counterstrategy for every unit.

Of course these ideas have to be closely examined as they need much balancing and will have to go with major redesigns of the tech tree. Additionally the promotions available to some of the units will have to be reworked.
But in combination with the races that could have UU which are in contast to the dominating unit of the respective Era it might enhace strategy a lot.

Speaking of Races.. the design doc doesnt show a race of giants... that is something i would like very much.. Very powerfull at the beginning but slow in technological advance and only a very small choice of units - primary melee - availabe.

I had hoped that when the civ's are given their UU's that they might be able to give them an era to dominate, force players into countering strategy's and encourage battle. At this point I do feel like this occurs now with the hero units. The civs that get them typically become aggresive, and they have a huge impact on battle.

 

[Chip56]

Genesis is the land improver.
I guess that Entropy unbound is planning to destroy the map, so it is the worse terrain one.
I like the dragon one, but I would prefer if dragons are just normal units that you get a limited number of each game.

Not like Genesis: build, instant improvement off all terrains, but more like improves 5 tiles per turn (Like rejuvination in AOW)
Entropy is destroying it, im talking about a lsser version that only makes terain worse (I want to have at least SOMETHING left to conquer).
I think dragons would be to strong for normal units (even national) so I would like to see them as anArmagedon wonder, which enables them like nukes in vanilla civ4.

 

[Kael]

I think it was diskussed before but is there a kind of space-ship victory planned as this is the victory type the AI is best able to handle?

While flipping throug the code for the victory-conditions screens i thought of an Spell of Mastery like in good old Masters of Magic. You might have to build a spellcomponent for some selectet - or even all - magic spheres that combine to the powerfull spell of mastery granting you controll of all magic in the world and therfor the victory....
Of course it shall be quite hard to archieve the needed ressources and prerequisites but the danger of someone else finishing the spell of mastery will speed the endgame up and possibly provides a good reason to fire some armagedon spells.

I do have a tech victory in my notes for phase 2, though I don't know what it will be yet. It is against my nature, but I do realize that some players prefer to play peaceful games. And you can always turn it off if you don't want to play with it.

 

[Kael]

Not like Genesis: build, instant improvement off all terrains, but more like improves 5 tiles per turn (Like rejuvination in AOW)
Entropy is destroying it, im talking about a lsser version that only makes terain worse (I want to have at least SOMETHING left to conquer).
I think dragons would be to strong for normal units (even national) so I would like to see them as anArmagedon wonder, which enables them like nukes in vanilla civ4.

There is an improvement planned that will pop new bonus's, but not improvements. I think I will probably reserve it just for the magic nodes though, causing new ones to pop up around the map.

 

[wazward]

I've been thinking about the vampire civ and i don't know if anyone has read the necroscope series of books by Brian Lumley but i feel we can incorprate,borrow or steal some of his ideas. I would love it if you used the idea that a vampire is infact a parasitical being that attatches itself to the spine and lives in a symbiotic state with it's owner. The idea of using city population in production of vampires is a good one i was thiking you could sacrafice 1 population for 3-5 weak vampire units but in keeping with the books a vampire lord can only once produce an egg to pass on his knowledge as a vampire lord. This would work as a promotion where you recieve double experiance from every kill. When a vampire lord reproduces then he reverts back to a weak vampire. This way you can have a vampire lord who starts off as a warrior and then passes his egg on to an axeman, maceman etc. the new vampire lord would also recieve half the experiance of the previous lord in knowledge passed down. In battle honour dictates that the only type of weapon allowed to a vampire lord is his gauntlet an over sized glove with razor sharp hooks to deal with enemies. I'm not sure it would be possible ie not sure ai will get it but vampire lord's should only be able to be illed by having there heads chopped off and then burned. So you could weaken them with gunfire etc and then would have a swordsman, axeman to finish them off coupled with a fire caster. It would also give a use for swordsmen and axemen in the later game. I figure the vampire civ would start out with one vampire lord and only max one or two more during play. The vampires would also have an Ærie building which they would have to build before they were capable of sacraficing pop. an Ærie is a living tower of protoplasm and living humans stretched and glued together to form an extremley thick and strong hide for protection this would provide defense bonuses in line with the cities size the larger the city the stronger the Ærie is.

 

[JDexter]

I'd like it if FfH would provide similar Eras where combat has completly different styles. [...]

IMO it already is that way. When I read your example I was seeing each and every game that I have played going like that. Of course you will use horse units when you research them and they are stronger than warriors - just like you will use mages as soon as possible or the national units. It already is the way you describe it.

Sure, there could be a more direct principle, but that would dumb the combat system down unnecessarily. Adding an early siege weapon would be good though in my opinion.

Regarding vampires: Sure, a vampire unit would be cool for the necromantic civ, but what the above poster writes... phew, it goes way out of bounds of what I think FFH is supposed to be - and I wouldn't be happy about it personally (you could make a complete spin-off mod with that background, it's that much! ). Of course that's only my opinion, not Kael's.

*waiting for a new version with fantasy civs inside *

 

[Kael]

IMO it already is that way. When I read your example I was seeing each and every game that I have played going like that. Of course you will use horse units when you research them and they are stronger than warriors - just like you will use mages as soon as possible or the national units. It already is the way you describe it.

Sure, there could be a more direct principle, but that would dumb the combat system down unnecessarily. Adding an early siege weapon would be good though in my opinion.

Regarding vampires: Sure, a vampire unit would be cool for the necromantic civ, but what the above poster writes... phew, it goes way out of bounds of what I think FFH is supposed to be - and I wouldn't be happy about it personally (you could make a complete spin-off mod with that background, it's that much! ). Of course that's only my opinion, not Kael's.

*waiting for a new version with fantasy civs inside *

1.0 has all of Haarbal's civ's built in. They are really cool. I almost cut the Halflings (there are no halflings/hobbits in FfH, sorry Mr Tolkien) but in the end I decided to just leave Haarbal's Civs as is. He did such a great job of them I hated to touch them.

I did add 3 new traits (Arcane, Magic Resistant and Seafaring) that I gave to a few of Haarbal's civs, but outside of that they are the same.

 

[wazward]

I'd love to make my own mod but am computer illeterate, the necroscope books not only have all this amazing vampire stuff but also incorporate cold war psychic spys, with all sorts of cool abilities (remote spotters necromancy the evil eye etc) alongside a strong sci-fi feel with the mobium continuem providing time travel and teleportation for the hero who can talk to and manipulate the dead. I urge people to read necroscope 1-5 you will not regret it. I was only trying to provide a flavour to the vampire civ kael plans. what do you think kael you genius you

 

[Jono]

I did add 3 new traits (Arcane, Magic Resistant and Seafaring) that I gave to a few of Haarbal's civs, but outside of that they are the same.

What will the traits in phase 2 do?

 

[Kael]

I'd love to make my own mod but am computer illeterate, the necroscope books not only have all this amazing vampire stuff but also incorporate cold war psychic spys, with all sorts of cool abilities (remote spotters necromancy the evil eye etc) alongside a strong sci-fi feel with the mobium continuem providing time travel and teleportation for the hero who can talk to and manipulate the dead. I urge people to read necroscope 1-5 you will not regret it. I was only trying to provide a flavour to the vampire civ kael plans. what do you think kael you genius you

I think the flavor has kinda a sci-fi feel, which isn't fitting for the mod, and the concept is so deep that it may be confusing to casual players (who typically don't read pedia entries and such and may not understand why the ability moves from unit to unit). It would also be hard to get the AI to understand.

That all said, I would love to see a mod set in the environment you describe. I haven't read the books but it sounds pretty cool. None of us had any directions on how to mod when this began, we all just had to try to teachourselves how to mod (though there are some very good tutorials out now). So I wouldn't sell yourself short.

Im impressed when I make a change and it works the first time. When I started I used to count my failures to see how many times it would take before I would get whatever feature I was working on to work. My theroy was that my chances were about 1 in 1000 that I would be able to get something right by guessing. So I just had to guess 1000 times. Fortunatly Im a better guesser than I gave myself credit for and the farthest I ever got was in the 40-50 range.

 

[Kael]

What will the traits in phase 2 do?

This is my "brainstorm" list of traits that I keep. Nothing is final for phase 2 yet, this is just what I have jotted down in the design doc for ideas. So don't worry abotu balance issues yet, they are just concepts.

+Aggressive
Free Combat 1 promotion for all Melee Units
½ cost Training Yard and Drydocks

Agnostic (negative trait)
Can’t adopt State Religions, cities resist religious spread

+Arcane
Combat 1 and Extension 1 promotions for all Adepts
-25% production cost of Adept Units

Barbarian
At peace with the barbarians, -10% research

+Creative
+2 Culture per turn per city
½ cost Obelisk and Theatre

Dark Elven

Dwarven
-33% cost of Dwarven units
Can’t build Town
Starts with the Dwarven tech (+1 Hammer from mines and Quarry’s)

Elven
Can’t destroy Jungles or Forests
Can build improvements in jungles and forests
-33% cost of Elvish units
Can’t build Town
Starts with the Elven tech (+1 food from forests, -1 food from farms)

+Expansive
+2 Health per city
No Upkeep on Health Care Civics
½ cost Granary and Harbor

+Financial
+1 commerce on spaces generating 2 or more commerce
No Upkeep on Economy Civics
½ cost Market and Moneychanger

Gypsy
Every city starts a free Carnival
Can cage elves, dwarves, and humans for their carnivals

Hidden
Territory always covered by fog of war to other civs
All recon start with the Drill I promotion

Horsemen
Can build 6 knights and War Chariots
All mounted start with the Shock I promotion

+Industrious
+50% Wonder production
½ cost Forge

Orc

+Organized
-50% Civic upkeep cost
Can build the Command Post
½ cost Courthouse and Lighthouse

+Magic Resistant
All units gain the magic resistant promotion
Adepts gain a -40% strength promotion that applies to their spells

+Philosophical
+50% Great People birth rate
No Upkeep on Education Civics
½ cost Elder Council and Library

Raiders
+300% Gold from pillaging
Ships Carry 1 more unit
-1 Trade Route per city
Idea from Loki1232

Scorched Earth
Must Raze all Cities
All Specialists give +2 Commander points
All Units start with the City Attack I promotion
Idea from Loki1232

+Seafaring
Free Mobility 1 promotion for all Naval Units
+1 Gold from Fishing Boats
Starts with the Seafaring tech (+1 food from water tiles, -1 food from farms)

+Spiritual
Free Mobility 1 promotion for all Disciple Units
½ cost Temples
No Anarchy

Summoners
All adepts gain the Conjuration promotion (even non-conjurer mages can summon)
Conjurers cost 25% less

 

[Jono]

This is my "brainstorm" list of traits that I keep. Nothing is final for phase 2 yet, this is just what I have jotted down in the design doc for ideas. So don't worry abotu balance issues yet, they are just concepts.

+Aggressive
Free Combat 1 promotion for all Melee Units
½ cost Training Yard and Drydocks

Dark Elven

Dwarven
-33% cost of Dwarven units
Can’t build Town
Starts with the Dwarven tech (+1 Hammer from mines and Quarry’s)

Elven
Can’t destroy Jungles or Forests
Can build improvements in jungles and forests
-33% cost of Elvish units
Can’t build Town
Starts with the Elven tech (+1 food from forests, -1 food from farms)

I thik giving Aggressive a free Combat I promotion to melee, dwarven and elven units would work better. Or you could give it to the Dwarven/Elven
traits... About the Elven/Dwarven civs getting the Fellowship and Runes founded straight away, you mentioned 2 or 3 civs of each race, so will they both have an equal chance of founding?

+Seafaring
Free Mobility 1 promotion for all Naval Units
+1 Gold from Fishing Boats
Starts with the Seafaring tech (+1 food from water tiles, -1 food from farms)

You mean Navigation I, right?

 

[kevjm]

does anyone else find that after your 6th great commander, they become a little useless? I found myself getting nothing but great commanders in my last game, I really think they should get a great specialist option- anyone else agree?

Thought I'd mention this after seeing the scorched earth trait.

 

[Jono]

does anyone else find that after your 6th great commander, they become a little useless? I found myself getting nothing but great commanders in my last game, I really think they should get a great specialist option- anyone else agree?

Thought I'd mention this after seeing the scorched earth trait.

Still good for rushing Armaggedon spells. GEs are still better for that and I do recall saying something about it not being the best idea to allow them to rush production... If you're going to rush production you shouldn't be using a Commander, but if you give the Commander equal productivity you might aswell replace the GE...

 

[Samael]

Likewise, I felt I was getting way too many Great Commanders. I believe I got a total of three Engineers, two Prophets, three Bards, two Sages, two Merchants and at least six Commanders at minimum in my last game.

Speaking of engineers, I do feel they could be toned up; if not normally then by a wonder. With Prophecy of Ragnarok, normal Engineers looks rather poor in comparison to Priests who out-do them easily in use.
That said, of course, the Great Engineer is still very much useful.

On the matter of traits, seeing as how Expansive, Philosophical, Financial get reduced/free Health/Education/Economy civics, wouldn't it perhaps make some sense for Industrious to grant the same benefit for Labour and Spiritual perhaps for the Religious civics? Though I do understand this might affect balance, somewhat.
Also, as 'Organised' gets access to the Command Post, mayhap other traits would get access to other buildings or, alternatively, units?
Finally, since Agnostics recieve no state religions (and, potentially, no heroes and 'religious' units), mayhap they should gain a bonus to scientific persuits or, owing to their 'rational thinking', they may gain a bonus to Great People (perhaps Sages if they are skeptical scientists or Merchants if they are lean towards money and mathematics)
Similarly, since Humans are in some fantasies, regarded as being innovative (though I personally don't know why), they may gain a bonus to GreatPeople or Science in their insight or simply a bonus to culture with their innovative little ideas that crop up all over the place.

One very last thing- is there any chance of seeing naval improvements at all? I'm sure someone previously mentioned a naval variety of road for the blessed wind ( or 'divine wind' ) that would speed your boats up a bit?
In addition to this, the depths could be mined for minerals and ores ( 'searching the abyss' - contributes to productivity or perhaps science? ) or deeper fishing could be done (essentially, 'farming' the sea ).
Additionally, I'd personally like to be able to build large bridges so that land units can traverse small continental gaps and so that I can more readily protect islands without having to spend two turns getting them across a single gap (a turn to get into a boat which has to be readily placed and a turn to unload them and, if the city isn't there, another turn to get where I'm going). The bridges could also become important strategic points and could be razed in the name of defense (providing the unit time to get away, spontaenously delivering them to one side of the bridge or another or spawning a 'raft' unit so they don't drown? ) Bridges may also boost commerce in the form of tolls with the right technology, but may cost a point of food in the location built and cause the area to cost 2 or 3 points of movement for a ship to move through (if possible at all). With the advent of teleportation using the 'gates', people may well avoid bridge tolls and it might nullify the commerce bonus from it. I don't know, of course, how the AI would handle it.

As it stands, I enjoy a good Terra or Continental game a lot but the sea, having few units and little strategy involved (consisting of building fishing boats, fighting with privateers and transporting with gallies) is a little... dull.

Edit:
Oh, and with the talk of limiting Large Animal Stables and so forth, perhaps the Large Animal Stables could require a certain number of stables to be built in your empire to be able to build one (much like the vanilla Civ's Cathedrals requiring several temples per Cathedral)

 

[Fragment]

Hi,

in stock cIV, the fortress is next to useless, because 1) the enemy can ususally just walk by, and 2) because you can't build fortresses on existing improvements, thereby fortresses can protect nothing at all except the troops inside it.

I've got about a million ideas about that problem, just some:

- it should be possible to build them on existing resources - since you can build forests in cities, that may be easy ;-)

- defenders in the fortress should additionally gain city defense bonus

- attackers which attack out of a fortress should get bonuses, too, to reflect the function of the fortress in reality, it's controlling the area around it

- attackers which attack out of a fortress should lose no movement point, only the attack, so that they can get back in, which is also reflecting reality

- enemy movement around the fortress should be limited to 1/turn (ex.: an enemy moves into a fortress-controlled area, set movement 0)

- 25% bonus defense is waaaay too weak, units should get much more than the simple entrenchment bonus (compare entrenchment fortifications, like palisades, to fortresses)

- OTOH fortresses should be destroyable by some rounds (8?) of cat bombardment

- fortresses should be buildable outside the cultural borders, so that they can control barb incursions (also reflecting reality)

- if neccessary, make them cost gold, 20+inflation or so would be OK IMHO with all above functions enabled

Useful fortresses would be GREAT!

That would stop stupid tricks like farming the borderlines to make the AI spend 1 turn pillaging.

Regards.

 

[Lightzy]

Well, um, financial is INSANELY overpowered.
it should only get the +1 gold bonus and even that is way strong

creative is very underpowered.. its only good for starting out new cities. it'd be a lot more effective if the obelisk building gave a bigger negative. maybe -1 science too.
or maybe just add free civic line to the creative trait.

arcane is likewise pretty weak.
maybe if you gave all their adept/conjurer/etc line of units free mobility 1 or gave their mages (not archmages) twincast and greater spell range.

but no, I'm just thinking of ways you can up traits to come closer to matching financial, when in fact its better if traits are never as powerful as that.

edit: I agree with the above poster about making forts useful.
only my idea of useful is more in line with civ3. making enemy units unable to go into fortress controller area or giving units in fortress free attacks with very high first strike chances on units crossing the fortress controlled area (starting at 2 hexes all around, perhaps growing with tech).

As it is nobody ever bothers with them and in a fantasy setting like this fortresses should really play a big part.

borders between civs should be heavily fortified
of course this is the work of several years prolly, requiring access to lots of deep buried code and AI work

 

[Czar II]

Additionally, I'd personally like to be able to build large bridges so that land units can traverse small continental gaps and so that I can more readily protect islands without having to spend two turns getting them across a single gap (a turn to get into a boat which has to be readily placed and a turn to unload them and, if the city isn't there, another turn to get where I'm going). )

You can pass units from one ship to another several times in the same turn loading the unit to the ship with movement capacity. In this way troops can be moved from one island to anothe far apart i jist one turn.

 

[Samael]

True enough, but that involves faffing around with several ships at once and, though it gets the job done, it can be an inconvenience at times. By 'small continental gaps', I actually meant a square or two of coast seperate landmasses. Its something I wanted to see with Civ 3 as well.

Which reminds me of another thing providing something similar, only in reverse; canals - man made rivers capable of transporting small boats or potentially larger canals akin to the Panama canal. It sure beats saling around a whole continent. Building such things, however, may cause some Apprentices/Workboats involved in such tasks to have a chance of dying (accidents involved in construction and so forth for instance).

 

[Lunargent]

I am trying to work on the tech tree here too. I have cut Pottery and Music in 1.0 (pottery boosts went to agriculture and music boosts went to drama). Also Code of Laws requires Religious Law instead fo Priesthood, so the whole Code of Laws line (constitution, liberalism) comes earlier and is cheaper.

The and's are intentional, otherwise you would be able to get to the t4 units after researching 4 techs.

I will play with your diagram and see, its good timing because I am trying to improve the tech tree for 1.0 anyway.

I'm playign with your chart and I like it (man are the techs a mess). I removed the unneeded summoning requirement on arcane knowledge like you suggsted and Im still playing with it.

Good, I thought music and drama were a bit redundant as well. Following the tech tree, I found slightly amusing that you needed to know music before you could research Armageddon. Such things are not readily apparent from the in-game chart or the civipedia. I'm glad that you were able to find some use for it.

I still think you could do with a few OR statements. I never meant to imply that you should replace all ANDs with ORs. (though upon re-reading what I wrote, it sure looks that way ). Particulary in the case of Currency.

I think one way to lengthen the tree is to lower the number of starting techs from 12 (11 when you remove pottery) to about 6-8, and have more techs chain off of those. If you narrow the base, the whole tree will become longer and narrower, allowing you to add in a few OR statements here and there to add more variety to how you can get to a certain place without making teir 4 units available too soon.

Another thing I think the tree needs is a bit more techs that chain off of the religion techs. Each religion has 2 techs in its line. The rest of the techs are common. I don't think that they should be exclusive except in rare cases though. Such as Ashen Veil and Druids. Maybe make one tech only excluded from each line.

I'm going to work on a revamp using what you've told me and my own ideas and try to see if I can't make it a bit less messy.