Multiplayer Balance

[GEFORCED]

Hey, just starting a thread on my findings in the multiplayer aspect.


unbalance/

Tech huts

i know all the single players are going to argue this one but huts are VERY unbalanced in multiplayer, couple of games ago i popped iron working, a teamer before we popped fishing -> sailing -> optics -> astro with 4 huts on inland sea, tell me thats balanced! this is even worse in classical starts! Unfortantly only warlords has the option to turn huts off, so the best fix would be to completely remove them or make them just give money and maps, at worst give the first few starting techs.

Always War

Mostly teamers, always war is set on because the first team to declare war gets alot more war weariness than the other team. Problem is when you have it switched on it ruins the barbarian trait, and summoning infernal, by forcing you to declare war on them. Fix could be to make the option not force war on these specific civs, or just reduce the war wearness for the declaring civ so that its even.

Skull Cats

If anyone has played civilzation 4 online competitively they will know that catapults are 80% of your stack, they are just too powerful, skull cats take it to a whole new level, not only are they really early in the tech tree they are 6 str, very strong compared to any other units for the first half of the tree, 80% withdraw and colat damage...they have no real counter, fix could be to have another tech attached to them ie, necromancy or give them weaker defence for ex. 6/3

Doviello Beastmen

A civ starting with 3 city attack warriors is rediculous, a weak tactic has been to use your settler to scout with its massive range and rushing your 3 beastmen to the closet civ in the first few turns and attack 3v1 or in some cases 3 have beaten 2, i understand they get 3 beastmen because they dont start with a tech, but 3 starting units is a huge advantage in multiplayer, if your Ljosalfar and you start near doviello your screwed. At a minimum they shouldnt have 25% city attack..

Attacking allied hidden nationality units

In teamers you cant put your units on the same tile as your team mates hidden nationality units or they are killed, only thing we can do is reveal nationality at the moment.

Slavery!

Slaving out huge stacks of units wil be very familar with the online community, with the agriculture civic turning those few food tiles to mass amounts of hammers is even easier, nevermind the free workers you get from killing units, combined with skull cats slavery is completely unbalanced. Only one team getting slavery is a sure win as its inpossible to keep up with the amount of units being pumped out, its argueable that both teams could use slavery by researching the tech and getting a missionary but having every city viewable by the enemy doesnt seem a very smart decision. fix? maybe reduce agriculture by 1

Scout Attack!!!

Its great scouts being able to attack units in this mod, but your starting scout being able to capture cities is a bit much.

Bugs/

Sync

Game goes out of sync when a player chooses to take over another civ, fixes if the player just quickly rejoins but can be quite anoying.

Patches

Games dont show up in lobby if you download the mod and the latest patch, in this case F, the player has to download patches A, B, C etc and install in order to be able join games in the lobby, if they join by direct ip with just the F patch, the game will keep going out of sync.

Strange Odds?

ive seen more 99% loses and barbs winning 1% odds in 1 hour playing this mod than i have in a year playing civ4 ^_^ the out comes of battles seem very odd and players consistently lose good odds - you could say its alot of bad luck but i think theres a problem here.

il post some more thoughts the deeper i get into multiplayer.

 

[jense]

Don't forget this is a beta. No one can garant for balance. Well, the game seems to be nearly finished but there is still a lot to be done, I think. For multiplay I would suggest you to wait for a later version.

 

[Xuenay]

There can be no improvements in the later version if the team isn't told what's wrong, though.

 

[Gutus]

My 2 cents:

barb villages (I think thats what you think by huts): It depends on luck. I do not think there should be anything nerfed. One game you have science, next game you get nothing than gold and experience (actually on Prince I had no luck in finding tech in a hut yet).

Always war: I think it may be abug, but on the other hand, who would summon Infernals and not switched to them? Also they are not good boys if you know what I mean, they would start war against you anyway. Peace with barbs trait - yes its a definite bug.

Skull catapults: I never played Doviello, so I do not know how well are they balanced, but then you can get Pact of Nilhorn after Cartography and summon 3 giants. I think there are ways to deal with doviello catapults. But the idea of having them 6/3 is not a bad one.

Doviello beastmen: As I said, never played them or against them, not much to say.

Hidden nationality: I think it was mentioned somewhere that it is indeed bugged and is going to be dealt with in shadow.

Slavery: Hmm, I have yet not developed a way to use it properly. Not much to say.

Scouts: As each civ has starting scouts, and they have 1 power and most likely get mass killed by animals/barbs, I do not think that may be an issue.

Strange odds: I have never experienced such strange situation (I lost a couple of units on 97+ win chance, but not that much). I think it strongly depends on the pseudo-random number generator characteristics, and as such I think there is not much what may be done (thats the risk of warmongering and its good not everything is expectable).

 

[marioflag]

About Doviello Beastmen,this civ is supposed to be really powerful after Ice Age ended, so IMO it's good to give them a huge advantage at the beginning.They are compartable to the Clan of Embers very strong at the beginning, becoming weaker after.

About Slavery i think that Slave should give less hammers to be balanced but i don't find them so overpowering as Agriculture civic

 

[feydras]

What i'd love to play is a pitboss game of FfH. We tried a few months back but ran into all kinds of problems, mostly due to the buggy nature of the original Civ4 pitboss. From what i understand the Warlords pitboss is much more stable.

Has anyone got FfH to work in pitboss?

- feydras

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Are you saying you can whip more than 1 unit per turn with slavery? Or just huge stacks over several turns?

 

[GEFORCED]

My 2 cents:

It depends on luck. I do not think there should be anything nerfed.

excellent post for a balanced thread,

gutus no offence, but why comment on somthing you obviously know nothing about?

Scouts: As each civ has starting scouts, and they have 1 power and most likely get mass killed by animals/barbs, I do not think that may be an issue.

all it takes is one multiplayer game of fall from heaven to understand this..

i recommend playing a few multiplayer games, you can find a few of us in the civ4 vanilla lobby ( where the mod multiplayer is held ) and we can discuss these issues again

About Doviello Beastmen,this civ is supposed to be really powerful after Ice Age ended, so IMO it's good to give them a huge advantage

sure, keeping with the storyline, but imagine playing a 8 player balanced, standard map and having somone run 3 city attack warriors to you ( and they do run straight to you because your scouted by a 4 view settler ) in the first 7 turns and attack your civ 3 vs 1 or in some cases u manage to get another warrior out and still lose 3v2, sound fair?

 

[marioflag]

sure, keeping with the storyline, but imagine playing a 8 player balanced, standard map and having somone run 3 city attack warriors to you ( and they do run straight to you because your scouted by a 4 view settler ) in the first 7 turns and attack your civ 3 vs 1 or in some cases u manage to get another warrior out and still lose 3v2, sound fair?

You are right.Main problem is that the theme of this civ is just to be powerful at the beginning, making it weaker would mean that Doviello wouldn't get any flavour, it is the same problem of Incas Quechuas they can seem overpowered, but they will also lose soon their advantage, referring to the mod it is a similar situation of Clan of Embers they get discounted units so rushing is really easy but if you fail well it's harder to win.BTW I agree in multiplayer it can be not balanced in some situations but IMO the only solution would be or removing Doviello or make Doviello as they are now instead of nerfing them.

 

[katika]

Goodie Huts
By their very nature they're all about luck. I can see how that is a problem in multiplayer because I have certainly gotten some very lucky techs from them. An option to disable huts would be ideal, but I don't know if it's possible. I'm pretty sure that you can control them in the map scripts (so customize a few mapscripts for multiplayer... you'd probably want to anyways for more balanced starts) otherwise you could find the XML file that controls them and edit it for each version.

Always War
The war with barbarians thing sounds like a bug that needs to be fixed.

Skull Catapults
I agree about skull catapults, but how do you feel about catapults in general vs mages (with Fire II)?

Doviello Beastmen
I definitely wouldn't want to play against the Doviello on a small map. Maybe they could start with 2 warriors and a scout or maybe the starting settler should lose its vision promotion after a turn or two.

Slavery/Agriculture
Agriculture is too strong right now, IMO. I'm not sure how slavery would be with agriculture being weaker.

Scouts
Str 1 vs. Str 2 +25% city defense, +20ish% culture, +(up to)25% fortification. I'm not seeing the problem with this. Personally, I'd think that worker stealing would be a bigger balance problem. I love my Forest Stealth scouts.

Patches
I think Kael said what the problem was in another thread. One of the original 2.20 downloads had an extra unnecessary file that was later removed, but patches only add files. So you can have the same patch but a different set of files.

Odds
Kael has already checked in a fix for the combat calculator for the next version (2.21). Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until then.

 

[Uberness]

I agree on tech huts, to luck based to gain 10 to 20 or more turns of teching for the extra expensive FFH2 techs

Skull catapults for being -just- after masonry > construction a less then 400 research tech and pretty cheap at 76 production is pretty strong for being so early agreed, needs to be brought to 6 attack 2 defense, or 5 attack 3 defense, anything to make the catapults require protection since we no longer have horse archers with bonus vs catapults around the same time like in civ4.
Also think gutus, a 200 production wonder for 3 units, which anyone could just as easily build including the doviello (who can be industious) -just- to have a 50% chance of beating the first catapult before the collateral damage and numbers beat you?

Barbarian trait needs to be fixed, add to work like the great wall and they stay outside your borders forever perhaps?

Easy way to solve the problem with hidden nationality units in teamers, you reveal nationality, its not like they don't know its your mercenary heading to them or your spider going inside there borders

Can't be said enough, lowering agriculture would fix so many exploits and insane strategys and make none farm strategys and land more viable, it also makes so much sense, your farms would break even under aristocry and agriculture until sanitation.

I'v also said scouts shouldn't be able to capture cities just like gunships in civ4 they should still be able to attack and hunters should be able to capture, just not those starting scouts, hurts your early scouting online when you need to keep your warrior sitting in the city

And Gutus, think for a minute man, the religion should be valueble without the need to change to them, and if your in a teamer, why would you change to hyborem 1vs3vs3? but it should be fixed decently next verison when there moved up a tech, as long as the tech also doesn't include some must-have bonus or building or civic that makes the religion useless without summoning them along side it.

 

[Bad Player]

What i'd love to play is a pitboss game of FfH. We tried a few months back but ran into all kinds of problems, mostly due to the buggy nature of the original Civ4 pitboss. From what i understand the Warlords pitboss is much more stable.

Has anyone got FfH to work in pitboss?

- feydras

I'd be up for it if it works.

 

[Bad Player]

Regarding hidden nationality: something needs to be done to make the Black Wind not obviously Lanun! Perhaps hiding or lying about its strength. If it is 6 str and regular ships are str 5 then perhaps just show 5 str on other players' screens (but 6 str on the Lanun's screen).

 

[Master_Hugian]

Regarding hidden nationality: something needs to be done to make the Black Wind not obviously Lanun! Perhaps hiding or lying about its strength. If it is 6 str and regular ships are str 5 then perhaps just show 5 str on other players' screens (but 6 str on the Lanun's screen).

That would mess up with odds a bit, rather it might be better to have an unknown strength on hidden nationality ships and such.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I don't see what the issue is. Sure, you know that the Lanun are screwing with you, but it's up to you what you're going to do about it. You can try to kill the ship, you can declare war on the Lanun and punish them, whatever. The value of the HN on the Black Wind isn't so much that you don't know who's attacking you, it's that you can't stop them from attacking you.

 

[Blakmane]

What i'd love to play is a pitboss game of FfH. We tried a few months back but ran into all kinds of problems, mostly due to the buggy nature of the original Civ4 pitboss. From what i understand the Warlords pitboss is much more stable.

Has anyone got FfH to work in pitboss?

- feydras

Just use hamachi. I think there's a link around here somewhere for games on hamachi....

 

[onedreamer]

Hey, just starting a thread on my findings in the multiplayer aspect.

I play FFH only multiplayer (mixed with AI) and I must say I don't agree with any of your findings on multiplayer.

unbalance/

Tech huts

i know all the single players are going to argue this one but huts are VERY unbalanced in multiplayer, couple of games ago i popped iron working, a teamer before we popped fishing -> sailing -> optics -> astro with 4 huts on inland sea, tell me thats balanced! this is even worse in classical starts! Unfortantly only warlords has the option to turn huts off, so the best fix would be to completely remove them or make them just give money and maps, at worst give the first few starting techs.

Why would this be a multiplayer unbalance ? It can happen in SP as well. The fact that you play teams doubles its effect. The real fix to the problem is not to play teams. Btw what level have you been playing to be so lucky ?

Always War

Mostly teamers, always war is set on because the first team to declare war gets alot more war weariness than the other team. Problem is when you have it switched on it ruins the barbarian trait, and summoning infernal, by forcing you to declare war on them. Fix could be to make the option not force war on these specific civs, or just reduce the war wearness for the declaring civ so that its even.

Always war ruins a lot more stuff than what you mentioned (eg diplomacy). I think it's just a cheap option for warmongers to not have to deal with war weariness. What is unbalancing and crappy is this option itself, along with the Team feature. You're just hurting yourself by using them, and this applies to Vanilla Civ all the same.

Skull Cats

If anyone has played civilzation 4 online competitively they will know that catapults are 80% of your stack, they are just too powerful, skull cats take it to a whole new level, not only are they really early in the tech tree they are 6 str, very strong compared to any other units for the first half of the tree, 80% withdraw and colat damage...they have no real counter, fix could be to have another tech attached to them ie, necromancy or give them weaker defence for ex. 6/3

Yeah this has been reported more than once already. Skull catapults should definitely have lower defense. But it's not a multiplayer issue, it's a general issue.

Doviello Beastmen

A civ starting with 3 city attack warriors is rediculous, a weak tactic has been to use your settler to scout with its massive range and rushing your 3 beastmen to the closet civ in the first few turns and attack 3v1 or in some cases 3 have beaten 2, i understand they get 3 beastmen because they dont start with a tech, but 3 starting units is a huge advantage in multiplayer, if your Ljosalfar and you start near doviello your screwed. At a minimum they shouldnt have 25% city attack..

Again not a multiplayer specific issue. This is just beta IMO, or even alpha, as it's an attempt to balance the fact that Doviello's AI will declares war to the first civ they will meet, even if they risk to be wiped by this very civ. I think that the fix should not be to add units at start to Doviello, which is unbalancing especially in the hands of the human player, as you reported, but to make so that they declare war with some reasonable thinking (reasonable for the AI). Anyways this belongs to the Balance Feedback thread.

Attacking allied hidden nationality units

In teamers you cant put your units on the same tile as your team mates hidden nationality units or they are killed, only thing we can do is reveal nationality at the moment.

I really want to repeat myself saying that the team feature stinks, anyways if a unit is hidden nationality, then it has no nationality, hence it's not your allies' allied. You may call it issue but it's neither a bug nor a balance problem. Again this is a general issue and not multiplayer specific, since teams can be played in SP too.

Slavery!

Slaving out huge stacks of units wil be very familar with the online community, with the agriculture civic turning those few food tiles to mass amounts of hammers is even easier, nevermind the free workers you get from killing units, combined with skull cats slavery is completely unbalanced. Only one team getting slavery is a sure win as its inpossible to keep up with the amount of units being pumped out, its argueable that both teams could use slavery by researching the tech and getting a missionary but having every city viewable by the enemy doesnt seem a very smart decision. fix? maybe reduce agriculture by 1

Not a multiplayer issue again... anyways I might agree to some extent, certainly not as far as saying that it's a sure victory. Of course if you combine 2 different things like skull catapults with slavery you make things bigger, but you can have Slavery even without skull cats...
In any case I think religions are pretty much balanced. Slavery is powerful but Octopus Overlords priests are not as powerful as other religions. Coupla flame pillars and your huge stacks of slaves are gone, not to mention that you have to support them at the same price of a normal worker (not sure though, but I think you do) though they are twice slower.

Scout Attack!!!

Its great scouts being able to attack units in this mod, but your starting scout being able to capture cities is a bit much.

uhm... why ?

Patches

Games dont show up in lobby if you download the mod and the latest patch, in this case F, the player has to download patches A, B, C etc and install in order to be able join games in the lobby, if they join by direct ip with just the F patch, the game will keep going out of sync.

never happened to me. But I haven't played patch F. We're at patch H now.

Strange Odds?

ive seen more 99% loses and barbs winning 1% odds in 1 hour playing this mod than i have in a year playing civ4 ^_^ the out comes of battles seem very odd and players consistently lose good odds - you could say its alot of bad luck but i think theres a problem here.

Yep I've noticed this too and others have reported it, but until now it has been dismissed as just our own impression...

il post some more thoughts the deeper i get into multiplayer.

Overall, I strongly suggest you to try to play RoM (Rise of Mania) with multiplayer.

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

onedreamer: Altho he is doing it in a very bad attitude and manner he knows his sh|t. Yes, much of his points are also normal balance issue also for singleplayer but you see the game different playing multiplayer. That is why he is used to play teams and always war. He hasn't made it up, ppl are actually playing and it is common! Maybe even more common than without those options. He is being constructive so no biasing about it pls. Lets keep this forum CIVILISED, shall we? :>

GEFORCED: Could you pls not go 'I am multiplayer pro, bla bla' on us here. You will only create a bad stench around your arguments and even if they are valid ppl will be attacking you. Be more diplomatic. Take notice that here are ppl who are playing a game, only a game. For some it is fun, for some a hobby, for some an industry and a way to fulfil him self.

I play competitively in a different game and till I started to play against other humans that game was a whole different for me than it is now. Therefore I especially respect words from players like GEFORCED cause civ IV is only single or double-teamed against AI for me. I propose if you have a problem you could lab test it, play a match against each other exploiting that what you think is unbalanced and then switch.

Also lets all keep in mind that every one can have his own opinion. EVERYONE

Peace

 

[onedreamer]

So well, he reported issues, I mostly reported my OPINIONS, why would I be uncivilized ?
I actually tried to suggest him to
1- scrap teams
2- scrap always war
3- play with RoM
The bottom line is that if you choose to play with odd features, you will have odd results. Teams haven't been implemented in a proper and balanced way IMO, but this is a Civ4 problem. Always war has been put there to make happy a host of warmongering players that were shocked by the differences Civ4 brought to they play-style. There is a reason why these options aren't the default. I too have messed with them and decided that since they are poorly implemented and most importantly not suitable with my play-style I shouldn't use them. Keep in mind that FFH is a very particular mod, and you can't pretend that any side-option can work well with it.

 

[Gutus]

I think that balance in means of civilization game isnt a very obvious thing. As all of you mentioned everything depends on the options you have selected. There are (at least I think there are) some options against FFH2 was balanced. Apparently some of the others may introduce some unexpected imbas. But hey, then you have all the shiny options to balance them out.

I have given myopinions in regard to that. Its like some of the RTS games I also like to play, there are options like quickstart, etc, which will never be balanced and was not intended to be (just as quick or marathon gamespeed of civ).

Regarding those huts, they really depend on the pseudo-number generators, so they base on pseudo-luck. The higher the level the lower the odds on getting something good (like free tech). Now I have revised my standpoint and I think there really should be an option to turn them off.

As for those scouts, could you please give me some examples of imba, because I really cant find them being a problem, unless you are leaving your citites undefended (which is not a good option), so that they can get to them w/o fight.