My biggest complaint about FfH II

[val13]

Ok, first the props; great idea... great music (except for songofthedead? which isn't found)... good graphics overall (except combat, where at times both units stand still and one dies).

Now...

My biggest complaint; the unbalanced units.

I already brought out in another thread about Loki being unkillable. Sure, if you can get him locked into that ONE last city, surround it... yada yada...

But, Pyre Zombies? A 4str unit that acts like a catapult???? Get a stack of 3 of them with 3 melee units, and even your double power units are helpless... and your lower units... they just die.

That was one of the great things about Civ4... the unique units weren't overly powerful (ok ok, the Prats... we allll know about Prats). You could defend your territory reasonably well.

But, with FfH II, you can literally take over the world with ONE UNIT if you build it up fighting little barbs until it's a Str 5, Melee II, March, and whatnot... you just go off from the start and hit civ after civ when they have 1-3 warriors in their one or two cities... and voila... game over.

I had to play on normal speed (at the slowest) just to SEE the higher level units... and yet... I declare war on (whatever civ) and I get a SoD coming at me with 7 Pyre Zombies, another 10 or so melee/hunter units, and after I kill 3 or 4 of the Pyre Zombies, my defending stack is dead.

It's just too unbalanced power-wise.

An 18 Str Barbarian sea unit that spawns before you can get anything higher than Trireme????? O...M...G... you can't even build your sea resources or units before you get Privateer with that monster attacking you.

 

[Kael]

This is actually pretty common request from new players, but it varies depending on what they ran into in their games: "the Hippus dominate everything, Saverous is to powerful, Magic is out of control, a giant king kong sized gorilla started trashing my cities", etc etc.

I think what you will find is if you play 10 different games you will find 10 "broken" things. In fact everything is broken, at least in comparison to Civ4. The Sheaims Pyre Zombies are incredible. But are the Sheaim more powerful than the Khazad, the Ljosalfar, or the Calabim? Probably not.

The world is more dangeorus, so you will occasionally wander into something well before you can handle it. The focus is more on individual units so a unit has a lot more power than in Civ4. Its a different paradigm.

 

[smjjames]

yea for some reason the disciple units don't have an attack animation.

The AI does need work, which is in progress.

As far as Loki, why don't ya try playing as the Balseraphs?

 

[3141592]

For a while there was a time when every couple of days a new thread would come up with the proclemation that this civ or that stratagy is overpowered and breakes the game. Sometimes that was true (ring of flames) but most of the time any given stratagy in human hands was no more unbalanced then any other stratagy. In human hands any civ is unbalnced against the AI.

Since FFH is so much more intercate then civ there are many more ways to lambast a clueless AI. To even it out you may need to up your difficutly level.

And a note about loki, he is nearly unkillable, but so what? He's a hero unit that can't attack and serves only to delay and harass the enemy, he needs all the help he can get.

 

[val13]

This is actually pretty common request from new players, but it varies depending on what they ran into in their games: "the Hippus dominate everything, Saverous is to powerful, Magic is out of control, a giant king kong sized gorilla started trashing my cities", etc etc.

I think what you will find is if you play 10 different games you will find 10 "broken" things. In fact everything is broken, at least in comparison to Civ4. The Sheaims Pyre Zombies are incredible. But are the Sheaim more powerful than the Khazad, the Ljosalfar, or the Calabim? Probably not.

The world is more dangeorus, so you will occasionally wander into something well before you can handle it. The focus is more on individual units so a unit has a lot more power than in Civ4. Its a different paradigm.

What about lowering the EX threshold to 25 for Barbs (or 30, etc)... so that you can't take a little warrior (3 Str), and turn him into a 3 Str, +100% Str V, another +80% for Melee... you're talking a little warrior that is suddenly around 9 or 10 Str... and if you add that axe from the Barbarian... you can whack out 3-4 warriors in a city by yourself even with 30-40% culture defense bonus.

I understand that the world is a dangerous place.

But, everytime I've played where the sea monster barb spawned, if I put out a work boat, it was right there to destroy it and then wandered off. I wait 10-15 turns to build another one, and it's right there again... like it's waiting for ME to build, whereas, it should have been running around the map after hitting me.

I know I'm not a Civ guru. I can't play higher than Warlord without getting my butt whooped as 2 or 3 Civs gang up on me in the later stages. I normally play Chieftain or Warlord, no tech trading, and we all tech right about the same.

Anyway... I love what ya'll have done... it just gets frustrating when you are 100-200 turns into a game and suddenly, you meet some low level unit that kicks your Lv 13 Champions collective @rses.

 

[seZereth]

well, instead of lowering the xp cap, i´d suggest exxaggerating the xp ramp, so almost no xp for weaker units, but from even and better units you get a lot more xp.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I think what you will find is if you play 10 different games you will find 10 "broken" things.

Unless you play the Bannor or the Elohim, in which case you'll win, and forever more think of these two factions as 'good enough'. (Sad but true).

 

[Caradoc]

What I have discovered about Mr. Monkey is that he will chase the nearest unit, making it easy to lead him away from your territory with even a single Scout. And if you lead him through a Barbarian city, he will park there.

 

[Milosrdenstvi]

Pyre Zombies are really annoying to deal with. Sure, it would be nice if they were toned down a touch (specifically if they damaged their stack when exploding), but that's part of the challenge.

The biggest stack of Pyre Zombies I had to deal with was somewhere around 20. As I recall I only dealt with them at a rate of around three or four a turn using Chalid Astrakein (Crown of Brilliance, Pillar of Fire if two squares away, and Heal) and some mobility Centaurs that could get in, attack, and get away to avoid collateral.

 

[DemonMaster]

Strange. I have seen these complaints every now and then too about unbalanced civs, but I think it all depend on playing style. Take me for example, I have played civ since civ1 most of the time the same way (I do play differently from time to time, but I constantly fall back to the old way) and when I saw FFH and Kuriotates I said yes finally someone that had made a civ for me. This is how I usually play civ. The problem now for me is that I had to stop playing them (I usually quit around turn 3-400 or so because I was to much in the lead, no matter what the difficulty level) and have just recently started to play the clan (which according to me is just the opposite) and yes, puh, I had to go back to Noble. But you know, eventually I will fix this and probably think that even the clan is a good civ.

Just the other day I played K. and I really felt sorry for my self (damn my bad luck) because on a struggle of a perfect city spot I was loosing becasue of that that axe wielding orc, that protected that area all the time, making the spot clear for "his folk" meaning the clan. Had to build alot of warriors and go hunting which made me loose the spot, but hey I got (eventually) a nice axe and with a nice axe you can do a lot of things. So I decided not to curse the game but instead look at the other side of the coin and see the potential of new tactics instead (I won by the way, by points since I didnt felt like building a large fleet to move to another continent. (not K. strong point, expanding to new continents that is)).

Damn do I rant, don't I?

 

[orgonebox]

val13, you have yet to encounter that <1% chance in 99%+ combat odds that ends your combat V, drill IV, hero's run of good luck from the RNG. I've had a fully powered, level 12 gilden silveric die attacking an unpromoted wolf rider on a plains tile. Did I save beforehand? No. Dumb stuff like that usually ends a game for me, although it truly doesn't have to. Like regular civ, you can also win through numbers, unit types, and catapults.

I've also had raging barbarian games where I was so pinned down by fighting barbs that I didn't have a chance to expand more than once every fifty turns. Capping experience means raging barbs wouldn't be viable. Raise yr difficulty level, set it on raging barbs and aggressive AI, and remove the AI building requirements. Then see how easy of a time your high-level units have. Thanks to the new patch and the team's excellent work, the "no building requirement" is not as necessary anymore.

 

[Fetus4188]

Pyre Zombies are really annoying to deal with. Sure, it would be nice if they were toned down a touch (specifically if they damaged their stack when exploding), but that's part of the challenge.

The biggest stack of Pyre Zombies I had to deal with was somewhere around 20. As I recall I only dealt with them at a rate of around three or four a turn using Chalid Astrakein (Crown of Brilliance, Pillar of Fire if two squares away, and Heal) and some mobility Centaurs that could get in, attack, and get away to avoid collateral.

How can you NOT like that? You've just got to look at it in the right light. Imagine it as what it is meant to be, an enormous army of necromancers and sorcerers marching through your lands with legions and legions of burning undead. Do you attack them straight up? Hell no! You should harass them. I don't want more of the one dimensional CIV combat.

 

[smjjames]

Just the other day I played K. and I really felt sorry for my self (damn my bad luck) because on a struggle of a perfect city spot I was loosing becasue of that that axe wielding orc, that protected that area all the time, making the spot clear for "his folk" meaning the clan. Had to build alot of warriors and go hunting which made me loose the spot, but hey I got (eventually) a nice axe and with a nice axe you can do a lot of things. So I decided not to curse the game but instead look at the other side of the coin and see the potential of new tactics instead (I won by the way, by points since I didnt felt like building a large fleet to move to another continent. (not K. strong point, expanding to new continents that is)).

Sometimes the key is to kill him quickly if you can. In one game as the Svartalfar, he spawned close by and I had killed him with a lowly unpromoted hunter. Yea the hunter had the sinister promotion, but still, it shows that it's possible to deal with him quickly.

@orgonebox, I had one game where my level 20 vampirized and immortal Losha Valas got the 'hero goes on an adventure' event and ended up with her dying in the dungeon. but she had the damn immortal promotion!! why didn't she appear again in my capital?!? It sucks to lose a powerful hero like that....

 

[onedreamer]

Pyre Zombies? A 4str unit that acts like a catapult???? Get a stack of 3 of them with 3 melee units, and even your double power units are helpless... and your lower units... they just die.

Not exactly, Pyre Zombies also do collateral damage when dying defending, plus cause fires in forests, hence they are much more powerful than catapults. A stack of Pyre Zombies is a real nightmare, whether you attack or defend, win or loose the battle, you're always at loss against them. I do agree that they are overpowered, not in the strict term (many units / spells are overpowered) but because they don't have a real counter, at least not that I found. They should not cause collateral damage when defending IMO.

 

[onedreamer]

How can you NOT like that? You've just got to look at it in the right light. Imagine it as what it is meant to be, an enormous army of necromancers and sorcerers marching through your lands with legions and legions of burning undead. Do you attack them straight up? Hell no! You should harass them. I don't want more of the one dimensional CIV combat.

Define harass.
And they don't wander happily through your lands. They come for your cities.

 

[Aurore]

I support kael's point. The game is designed to be more dangerous and more extreme than civ 4. This isnt just the nce and predictable empiricism of earth, theres heaven and hell out there and they are coming for YOU

I *like* having just built my 2nd city and seeing Ortus turn up with his axe and know that none of my cities can actually stand against him if he attacks them. I like the frantic dance I have to do to survive, having to lure him to more defensible terrain with whatever units I can while I build a few warriors and sit them on defensive terrain to weaken him enough to kill him.

Often I've had my civilisation threatened by waves of undead, animals or barbarians before even encountering another civ. That is fun and reminds you that to survive, you have to fight even the world, not just the other civs. It also seems quite unpredictable. Some games you just start normally and expand with little problems from the environment, sometimes its the opposite. One game I was playing Lanun on a thin continent with a few choke points. I had built 3 cities when huge hordes of undead and barbarians came. I lost my latest city to them, and couldnt retake. I then fought to keep but failed another city. I ended up having to build a city on top of a hill at one of the choke points to stop them taking my capital. I managed to hold that city and then take back the ones I had lost - eventually. And I hadnt even yet met another civ. That was a great game

if everythign was toned down and balanced it would be boring

 

[Mortenart]

I do agree that they are overpowered, not in the strict term (many units / spells are overpowered) but because they don't have a real counter

I agree with Aurore. If everything had a natural counter in FFH, there would really be no need for intelligent tactics. When you are faced with challenges that have no obvious counter, you are forced to adapt new tactics and ways to cope with them, and this, for me, is what games like Civ are or should be all about - not just an epic game of paper/scissors/stone, where one thing will always negate or defeat another.

 

[Ecofarm]

They should not cause collateral damage when defending IMO.

They should cause collateral damage to the tile they are in when defending. aka, don't hang out with pyre zombies, it's bad for one's health. I can understand them splattering outward when attacking, but when defending? I think then they pretty much just splatter.

 

[pimparel]

IMHO, the promotions are the villain here... Combat I-V giving 100% + Weapons promotion (which give absolute bonuses plus relative towards other weapons).

Add... Shock I or similar, you can have a puny warrior STR3 + cbt5 (100%) + shock2 (80%) + bronze (+1) = STR11 vs melee... just need to farm around.

Add Mobility, which everyunit can have!!! and... Everyone else is doomed.

Promotions, should have a -50% power reduction.

 

[Zhahz]

I love the hero units. I love getting tons of promotions and making a unit highly valuable and powerful. I like the "unbalance". If I wanted more balance and generic everything, I'd be playing vanilla.

Don't change a thing!