New player, some thoughts/questions

[Yutani]

So, i've played civ to death but this is my first time playing a mod of it, I really love the idea and some of the mechanics but a couple of things made me want to post:

1 - health. It seems very difficult to keep cities healthy (2 bad health per pop), although it's not the biggest issue as I seem to be able to grow things to a reasonable size still. Am I overlooking a trick?

2 - ranged combat. I played a couple of games of FFH2 before moving onto rise, and i've not really enjoyed this side of the modmod so far. Combat just seems to end up in standoffs where everyone is just pinging each other backwards and forward, enemy attacks are more of a nuisance than an actual assault (quite often they just stand on one tile and don't even spread out to pillage). Farming barb camps for xp with ranged attack didn't seem like the most fun thing in the world either.

I was wondering if, again, there was a trick I was missing, or maybe this is just a part of the mod i'll just have to accept and get used to.

3 - enemy AI. The enemy seems very passive, even the Clan. It's still my first mid-game run at rise (rerolled random civs / starts a few times), i'm at turn 400 and playing as Luchuirp - basically nothing has happened at all in the game world yet. Is this just because the mod is more late-game focused, or does the AI just struggle with it?

Hope none of this comes off as too much of a harsh criticism, it's a lot of fun to play and learn, it just feels like I may be missing things and not realising!

 

[Valkrionn]

So, i've played civ to death but this is my first time playing a mod of it, I really love the idea and some of the mechanics but a couple of things made me want to post:

1 - health. It seems very difficult to keep cities healthy (2 bad health per pop), although it's not the biggest issue as I seem to be able to grow things to a reasonable size still. Am I overlooking a trick?

2 - ranged combat. I played a couple of games of FFH2 before moving onto rise, and i've not really enjoyed this side of the modmod so far. Combat just seems to end up in standoffs where everyone is just pinging each other backwards and forward, enemy attacks are more of a nuisance than an actual assault (quite often they just stand on one tile and don't even spread out to pillage). Farming barb camps for xp with ranged attack didn't seem like the most fun thing in the world either.

I was wondering if, again, there was a trick I was missing, or maybe this is just a part of the mod i'll just have to accept and get used to.

3 - enemy AI. The enemy seems very passive, even the Clan. It's still my first mid-game run at rise (rerolled random civs / starts a few times), i'm at turn 400 and playing as Luchuirp - basically nothing has happened at all in the game world yet. Is this just because the mod is more late-game focused, or does the AI just struggle with it?

Hope none of this comes off as too much of a harsh criticism, it's a lot of fun to play and learn, it just feels like I may be missing things and not realising!

Welcome to the mod!

1. It'll be a bit easier next version, but the intent was never to prevent cities from reaching those sizes. It was to slow that growth.
2. Really, I use archers as city defenders, and have them weaken enemy stacks as they get close.
3. AI is being worked on actively. Snarko is currently trying to get them to tech effectively.

 

[Meldon]

I only use archers as city defenders or fort garrisons, but the AI puts them in offensive stacks a lot. In my last two games, all stacks attacking my empire had archers in them, and the AI decides that it just wants to have his archers fire at my archers then move back a tile, moves forward a tile the next turn, I fire, he fires, he moves back, wash, rinse, repeat. I've learned to keep some swordsmen in my cities so that after my archers weaken their stack I can send in some guys to mop up, otherwise the stack never leaves my land or kills itself on my walls.

 

[Yutani]

Thanks for the replies, good to hear what you have planned!

Re: Ranged combat, I think what was happening was I kept diversifying my research too much - Spreading that thin around tier 1 + 2 techs meant although I had archers myself (so could take part in the arrow-tennis) I didn't have any of the upper level melee / recon that could actually kill the archers after I softened them up.

One other question - I've seen Fireball repeatedly mentioned as a really strong spell, but when I've used it (to attack stacks or lone enemies) it seems to do little / no damage. Is the strength of the spell mostly in erasing the city defense bonus?

 

[MaxAstro]

One other question - I've seen Fireball repeatedly mentioned as a really strong spell, but when I've used it (to attack stacks or lone enemies) it seems to do little / no damage. Is the strength of the spell mostly in erasing the city defense bonus?

Are you using it mostly against barbarians or the Orc civs? For reasons I do not completely understand, orcs are currently 100% immune to fire damage, making fireball pretty pointless against the savages right now.

Oh, a note on the unhealth thing - The huge amount of unhealth tends to result in my cities highly prioritizing healer specialists, to the extent that I often can't get the city to stop creating healers unless I pull it off of automation. This can be a little bit frustrating when I am trying to focus on other great people and great healer points keep getting into the mix... (and I have learned that with my luck, 97% Great Sage 3% Great Healer means I am getting a healer...)

That said, I do love healer specialists and great healers. Anyway, sorry for that OT rant.

EDIT: Oh, arrow tennis reminds me. I ~HATE~ Zircasz. So much. Seems to never do anything but sit on the nearest forest hill he can find and constantly shoot my city and/or kill any workers that stray over there. He has so many first strikes and is so smart about picking defended terrain to sit on that I'm not sure how you are supposed to bring him down at the time he tends to show up...

 

[inuyashasama]

2 - ranged combat. I played a couple of games of FFH2 before moving onto rise, and i've not really enjoyed this side of the modmod so far. Combat just seems to end up in standoffs where everyone is just pinging each other backwards and forward, enemy attacks are more of a nuisance than an actual assault (quite often they just stand on one tile and don't even spread out to pillage). Farming barb camps for xp with ranged attack didn't seem like the most fun thing in the world either.

I was wondering if, again, there was a trick I was missing, or maybe this is just a part of the mod i'll just have to accept and get used to.

3 - enemy AI. The enemy seems very passive, even the Clan. It's still my first mid-game run at rise (rerolled random civs / starts a few times), i'm at turn 400 and playing as Luchuirp - basically nothing has happened at all in the game world yet. Is this just because the mod is more late-game focused, or does the AI just struggle with it?

Hope none of this comes off as too much of a harsh criticism, it's a lot of fun to play and learn, it just feels like I may be missing things and not realising!

2. I actually quite like the ranged combat. Never liked having to sacrifice the pults to get that collateral damage.

3. Try starting a game next to the Hippus. One of my first games was as the Kuriotates next door to the Hippus. Did not end well xD.

 

[Meldon]

Fireball is a versatile attack in that it can be used to soften up defenders like an archer or destroy defenses like a catapult. It functions pretty much the same as a catapult for most people; it gives people that focus on the arcane line the chance to actually capture cities.

 

[Tsathoggua]

So, i've played civ to death but this is my first time playing a mod of it, I really love the idea and some of the mechanics but a couple of things made me want to post:

1 - health. It seems very difficult to keep cities healthy (2 bad health per pop), although it's not the biggest issue as I seem to be able to grow things to a reasonable size still. Am I overlooking a trick?

Civ-dependent, but, settle your capital next to fresh water and try to have 2 or 3 food resources in the working range of the city. Prioritize workers ASAP and the techs necessary to hook up those resources. Assign a priest specialist early on to start accruing GP and settle your first Great Prophet -- settled early, those are a huge boon to pretty much every metric relevant to city performance.

You just have to understand all the tools available to keep ahead of pop-related unhealth. As Archos recently, I didn't even settle near fresh water, but got my Nest up to a high enough population that I'm cranking out Spider Armies nearly every turn, which are the strongest field units of any civ I've seen so far in the game by a good 2 or 3 strength points. Mother is also running around wreaking havoc in the world, and if I wasn't stuck on an island I think I could crush the world with her alone at this point.

I'd personally advise *not* trying to found FoL or RoK. Even before the new health changes, this was a crapshoot on the more challenging difficulties, but now doing so will probably seriously hurt your early-game growth. If you want to found a religion, go for a mid- or late-game one, but bear in mind that, for example, RoK is quite nice even if you don't own the holy city.

2 - ranged combat. I played a couple of games of FFH2 before moving onto rise, and i've not really enjoyed this side of the modmod so far. Combat just seems to end up in standoffs where everyone is just pinging each other backwards and forward, enemy attacks are more of a nuisance than an actual assault (quite often they just stand on one tile and don't even spread out to pillage). Farming barb camps for xp with ranged attack didn't seem like the most fun thing in the world either.

The sheer boredom of ranged farming should be sufficient to discourage its abuse. The XP gain falls off pretty rapidly, anyhow, and only when those units are camped and doing literally nothing else is it a good use of their turn.

As others have said, the right way to deal with the AI doing nothing but skirmishing with ranged is to always have an enforcer unit in the city. Depending on the civ I usually keep a 2-move melee unit in town along with the defending archer so that any harassing units can be hunted down.

In general, you'll find some mechanics in the game that *can* be abused, but it is obviously not intended. The AI generally does not abuse these, so you lose little by simply choosing also not to.

3 - enemy AI. The enemy seems very passive, even the Clan. It's still my first mid-game run at rise (rerolled random civs / starts a few times), i'm at turn 400 and playing as Luchuirp - basically nothing has happened at all in the game world yet. Is this just because the mod is more late-game focused, or does the AI just struggle with it?

The enemy's motivation to go to war depends on three primary factors, by my experience:

1. Border conflicts. A great way to instigate early wars is to build lots of forts at your neighbor's borders.

2. Military weakness. This probably rarely happens with all the defensive units that must be built early on just to survive, but many civs will crush you early if they think they can.

3. Religion. And, to a lesser degree, alignment. If you want war, embrace a religion your neighbors don't follow.

I've had 3 or 4 civs declare war on me over the course of maybe 100 turns in some games -- and not all of those civs were allied or even friendly with one another. It sounds like maybe you're just playing too nice.

 

[Valkrionn]

Are you using it mostly against barbarians or the Orc civs? For reasons I do not completely understand, orcs are currently 100% immune to fire damage, making fireball pretty pointless against the savages right now.

Oh, a note on the unhealth thing - The huge amount of unhealth tends to result in my cities highly prioritizing healer specialists, to the extent that I often can't get the city to stop creating healers unless I pull it off of automation. This can be a little bit frustrating when I am trying to focus on other great people and great healer points keep getting into the mix... (and I have learned that with my luck, 97% Great Sage 3% Great Healer means I am getting a healer...)

That said, I do love healer specialists and great healers. Anyway, sorry for that OT rant.

EDIT: Oh, arrow tennis reminds me. I ~HATE~ Zircasz. So much. Seems to never do anything but sit on the nearest forest hill he can find and constantly shoot my city and/or kill any workers that stray over there. He has so many first strikes and is so smart about picking defended terrain to sit on that I'm not sure how you are supposed to bring him down at the time he tends to show up...

I do not understand those reasons either; Was not me who added it. It's been dropped back down to 50% in 1.31.

And healers will be a little less vital next version as well....

I really need to finish lairs.

On Zarcaz - Yeah.... He's going to be weakened slightly, but just wait till spawngroups are in. Shall be... fun.

 

[Calavente]

Oh, a note on the unhealth thing - The huge amount of unhealth tends to result in my cities highly prioritizing healer specialists, to the extent that I often can't get the city to stop creating healers unless I pull it off of automation. This can be a little bit frustrating when I am trying to focus on other great people and great healer points keep getting into the mix... (and I have learned that with my luck, 97% Great Sage 3% Great Healer means I am getting a healer...)

I don't understand how people are enervated by auto-healers :
early game you have 1-2 cities so it is not really micro intensive to manage the city without automation.
mid-late game you should have enough ressources that your new cities do'nt auto-assigne healers.
so how can it be so frustating ???
(it's a rhetorical question)

 

[Andvare]

I don't understand how people are enervated by auto-healers :
early game you have 1-2 cities so it is not really micro intensive to manage the city without automation.
mid-late game you should have enough ressources that your new cities do'nt auto-assigne healers.
so how can it be so frustating ???
(it's a rhetorical question)

You can easily get health problems mid-late game. There just ain't enough health resources in the game to cancel out 30 pops.


Non-great healers are not worth anything except if you are looking for a great healer.
Why?
Well, if you are having health problems, each extra pop effectively eats 4 . But each healer only cancel 3 , and as = when you are unhealthy, each extra healer gives you a net -1 .

I actually like the system as it is now, but the non-great healers are just too weak.
Incidentally, this new system also makes agrarianism useless IMO.

 

[odalrick]

Just to show how awful the manager is at evaluating healer specialists.

I've had the governor assign a healer when I didn't have any problems.

 

[Calavente]

30 pop ... wtf is 30 pop ?

how one should be able to have that in normal cities in cIV ?
in former RifE /Wm I can understand but even in normal cIV (BTS) it is not a common size. (especially mid game. late game it's another pair of shoes)

I don"t understand how it is "frustating" to have to manage healers in city of size 30 !
One should be happy of having city this big and stop the wimpering.
You're not supposed to have cities this big without a lot of effort.

 

[Sarisin]

This can be a little bit frustrating when I am trying to focus on other great people and great healer points keep getting into the mix... (and I have learned that with my luck, 97% Great Sage 3% Great Healer means I am getting a healer...)

I still maintain that the percentages on GPs have a problem. It always seemed to me that I had a much higher chance of getting the GP with the lower (or even lowest) percentage possibility the highest. It is very frustrating to plan your GP production in your cities only to be thwarted time and again - the example you give happens to me in just about every game, and not just with Healers.

Anyway, since I have been playing 1.30, I've been keeping track of this and can say that there is enough of a problem here to suggest something might be awry.

So far in the nine games I have played I have received 127 GPs (I'm not counting the 'free' ones I got from lairs, techs, etc.).

Of those 127, only 15 of them have come with the highest percentage of type, yet 67 came with the lowest percentage. The other 45 fell in the middle somewhere.

I know the odds/percentages in FFH/RiFE are laughable in many cases and should likely be ignored (combat odds especially come to mind here), but this is a strategy game, and when you plan strategically, in this case to have a certain city produce a certain kind of GP, getting this is a little disheartening.

I've been told there's nothing in the code that can produce this. However, here are the numbers. Just like with Blight, I was told there was nothing in the code to give the results I was getting. However, as a player, all I can do is report what I am seeing in my games and, well, question it.

I realize the answer is to just get odds of getting a certain type of GP at 100% and that will work. However, it usually is not practical so you do your best to get the wonders, buildings, etc. that help you get the best odds possible for the type you want in that city. Still, a few GP points will likely leak in, and you get the GP with the 3% chance.

PS. There is a cheat to work around this, but I think I'll keep it to my self - I'm sure most of you geniuses know it already anyway.

 

[Valkrionn]

That is simply the laws of probability. Get a larger sample size, and it will work out as it should.

The random numbers in Civ are NOT random... In fact, no computer produces random numbers. Ever. They follow a formula involving a 'seed'; each new rand is in sequence from the old one. Based on your seed, you may consistently get unlikely results.

That's the whole point of 'new random seed on reload'; Each time you reload the seed is reset based on the system clock. If you have that on, and reload, say, 100 times, the results should reflect the odds the game gives you.

 

[dunedainjedi]

Just to show how awful the manager is at evaluating healer specialists.

I've had the governor assign a healer when I didn't have any problems.

I'm pretty sure that this happens a turn before your cities grows and becomes unhealthy.

The 2 per pop is obviously a problem, but frankly guys it's been discussed to death. Hopefully they tone it down too 1.5 per pop, or find some other way to balance the health system. But there really isn't a new point or idea here. As players we don't want too pollute the GPP with healers, and don't want cities that only grow to size 4-6. And the Rife team doesn't want the super cities we used to have. All we can do is wait for 1.31. Yeah we can until it gets here, but that doesn't change anything. Just play the game, be mindful of your city placement, watch your cities to fix and turn off healers, and whatever you do, don't check end of winter in the custom game screen.

 

[Calavente]

That is simply the laws of probability. Get a larger sample size, and it will work out as it should.

The random numbers in Civ are NOT random... In fact, no computer produces random numbers. Ever. They follow a formula involving a 'seed'; each new rand is in sequence from the old one. Based on your seed, you may consistently get unlikely results.

That's the whole point of 'new random seed on reload'; Each time you reload the seed is reset based on the system clock. If you have that on, and reload, say, 100 times, the results should reflect the odds the game gives you.

Valk : I think 127 Gp is a large enough sample for probability to be represented. IMO, his numbers are interesting. And the laws of probability should have kicked in.

On the Healer note : I noticed in on ecity I captured that had a great healer settled : +6 so a GH gives you health for 3 more populations points... meaning having a GH is well worth a GS or a GM... (3 pop is as a mean rule : 2 2 + 1-2 food:or more ) 2 are not to be counted as they are for the pop. a GH is worth AT LEAST 6 + the bonus food:or more ) times 3.

 

[Andvare]

Valk : I think 127 Gp is a large enough sample for probability to be represented. IMO, his numbers are interesting. And the laws of probability should have kicked in.

On the Healer note : I noticed in on ecity I captured that had a great healer settled : +6 so a GH gives you health for 3 more populations points... meaning having a GH is well worth a GS or a GM... (3 pop is as a mean rule : 2 2 + 1-2 food:or more ) 2 are not to be counted as they are for the pop. a GH is worth AT LEAST 6 + the bonus food:or more ) times 3.

127 GPs says nothing about any probability, as we don't know what chances each had.
To see if a certain outcome is random, you would have to know the individual chances.
Besides, 127 isn't really enough to do anything but get an idea (no definitive answer, and you can't actually prove that anything is random, only that it most likely is or is not).
The RNG of CivIV have been tested on these boards several times, and none of those have shown it to be screwed (Even though Obsolete claims that Great Bards are favoured). I don't think anyone have tested the GP distribution though.

A great healer isn't that good.
If you are above your health limit, each pop (man, I've been playing too much Victoria 2 ) cost 4 , so a Great Healer amounts to a net gain of 1.5 pop.

It's frustrating to micro GP/specialists, mainly because there is no "avoid or ban this GP/specialist" button.
It's annoying in vanilla CivIV, and it's annoying in any mod, and that is a feature that should have been included in the game the moment Great People were introduced.

 

[Calavente]

I disagree : 127 is large enough that a majoritary GP (more than 50%) should appear at roughly 50% chances, and minoritary (less than 20% should appear at 20%.. and middle means if I understood correctly : not the best GP (higher %) but not the least (smaller %).
but
Sarisin reported :
15 of them have come with the highest percentage of type, yet 67 came with the lowest percentage. The other 45 fell in the middle somewhere.

It means : more than 50 % were of the lowest percentage comprised between 45 % at best and 5% with a mean of 20% (taking my games into account to have a rought value for percentage)
less than 12 % were of the highest percentage, comprised between 100% and 40% at minimal value.
then , 35 % for values between 10% and 35 % (when you have 3+ gpp types) seems ok.
Anybody can see that 40-100 % giving 12 % of GP and 5-45% giving 50% of GP is broken.
and 127 GP is a high enough population to apply the law of statistics.

A great healer isn't that good.
If you are above your health limit, each pop (man, I've been playing too much Victoria 2 ) cost 4 , so a Great Healer amounts to a net gain of 1.5 pop.

you are almost right but not totally.
in your calculus a GH PAYS IN FULL for 1.5 pop. meaning it pays AT LEAST (2, 1, 2) x 1.5 = 4.5/ + 3 that is better than a settled GS or settled GC.
But in reality a GH pays the of 3 pop, meaning it allows your city to rougly grow 3 pop more so that you can again fall into your 1 pop = 4 equilibrium...
you have for 12 pop, + surplus food so a 15pop city can be reached: with a settled GH your pop can almost always grow to size 17-18 depending on the city terrain.

The only way my reasonning is wrong is when you don't have any more tile to put a new citizen to work. Then a new pop cannot pay for its own 2. So there, a GH is worth only 1.5 specialist. and depending on the civics and wonders it might be worth less than a GC/GS but it might not be as a GH still brings some in.
BUT in any case, when your city cannot work any more tiles, I don't think one has to be angry that the city cannot become so much bigger. It is normal IMO.

 

[tokala]

Sarisin might be up to something there.
According to this strategy article, "the number of GPPs will determine when a great person will be generated, and the number of sources will determine what type it will be".
But the tooltip/progress bar percentage prediction in Rife is not working this way, but reflects the proportion of produced GPPs of each type.
This could easily explain the discrepancy observed by Sarisin, as "minority" GP types tend to be sourced by buildings and settled Great People with 1/2 GPP each, which therefore would be underestimated by the percentage prediction.