New tech tree suggestions.

[Darkform]

Ahriman does have a point I do play Civ 4 to build a Civ. (I usually build and tech till I got the units I want then war.) but combined arms is a must I would like to see every unit tabletop can use in this version. (except maybe less Heros.) but every core special and rare Unit.

I don't care if Sylvania and Lahmia are the same except for leaders, Hero s and flags, if I play one I want to be able to make all units that one can put on the tabletop. (you might want to keep them as 2 civs for balance no matter how strong they are the other one can match them and for rise and fall senario.)

 

[Squirrelloid]

For the record, I really dislike FfH - its fantasy setting is generic and lame, and I can't say I was impressed by its tech tree either.

Now, while I agree its a civ mod first and a warhammer mod second, we do want to steer people towards combat. So, there's some changes from the base Civ IV that I'm really confused about.

(1) Barracks (or Training Yard) gets nerfed to +2, only affects melee, and now requires multiple technologies. This discourages warfare because it makes it hard to get promoted/highly promoted units. Restore Barracks (and equivalents) to the basic CivIV functionality (+3 xp to all land units) and give it a single tier 1-2 tech pre-req. Yes, that means it will stack with stables and archery ranges - and that's fine.

(2) Slavery needs to come earlier. And I'm not just talking for player use - I had a computer beeline bronzeworking and immediately revolt to slavery in my current game. Being pushed far down the tech tree is messing up the computer. If mining is going to remain tier 3 make slavery require mining. Or possibly give it a technology of its own (its good enough for one).

(3) Why god why did you separate out forest and jungle promotions? Also, they're worthless if you can't get them at the start - these are low value promotions most useful during the exploration period because it can give you a 2-move warrior through wooded terrain. If you have to research technology for them they'll never get used (same goes for the guerilla tech line).

(4) If you want to keep contemplation, move Wandering Scholars to it instead of Festivals. I don't see it as being so powerful as to require it being made available only later - I tend to prefer mysticism to it anyway.

I need to think some more about the actual tech tree before I try to restructure it, but there is a lot of weirdness coming from things being pushed later than they should be.

 

[Ahriman]

(1) Barracks (or Training Yard) gets nerfed to +2, only affects melee, and now requires multiple technologies. This discourages warfare because it makes it hard to get promoted/highly promoted units. Restore Barracks (and equivalents) to the basic CivIV functionality (+3 xp to all land units) and give it a single tier 1-2 tech pre-req. Yes, that means it will stack with stables and archery ranges - and that's fine.

It is *very* easy to get highly promoted units. Barracks gives +2 xp, settled great commanders gives +2xp, crusader, standing army and vassalage civs give free xp, chaos temples, temple of destruction give free xp. Coven/magic colleges/stables/joust/archery range/seige give free xp.
Particularly with the charismatic trait, it is *very* easy to get highly promoted units off the bat...

Imagine under your proposal: barracks + stables + joust + standing army civic = 11xp knights and cavalry, level 4 units. And thats without the War College or a settled great general or a temple or charismatic trait. I'd rather leave it as it is.

It would also mean that *non*melee units would start with more xp than melee units.

It is very easy to get highly promoted units in this mod, arguably too much already.
Making too much free xp for starting units also detracts from vampires and heroes, and from aggressive and protective traits.

I also reject the premise that more free xp encourages war. If anything, its just the opposite; with free xp hard to come by, you have to go to war and fight stuff in order to get highly promoted units. With tons of free xp, you can get heavily promoted units without having to fight.

(2) Slavery needs to come earlier. And I'm not just talking for player use - I had a computer beeline bronzeworking and immediately revolt to slavery in my current game. Being pushed far down the tech tree is messing up the computer. If mining is going to remain tier 3 make slavery require mining. Or possibly give it a technology of its own (its good enough for one).

I'm fine with slavery coming slightly earlier.

(3) Why god why did you separate out forest and jungle promotions? Also, they're worthless if you can't get them at the start - these are low value promotions most useful during the exploration period because it can give you a 2-move warrior through wooded terrain. If you have to research technology for them they'll never get used (same goes for the guerilla tech line).

Guerilla is pretty worthwhile, because hills can't be chopped down, and because you can use it as a defensive trait for a city defender.
Forester and jungle techs are most useful for wood elves and for amazons/lustrians, or people attacking them, who will have forest or jungle on many/most of their tiles, even in the very late game.
Arguably the bonuses on these could be increased slightly though.

(4) If you want to keep contemplation, move Wandering Scholars to it instead of Festivals. I don't see it as being so powerful as to require it being made available only later - I tend to prefer mysticism to it anyway.

I don't really care either way. Its a pretty boring tech though, I'm fine with merging the dwarven and elven religious techs together and dropping festivals altogether.

 

[Darkform]

(1) (2) and (3) was bugging me also. (1) was bugging me the most, I see making it Melee only and maybe +2 instead of +3 or 4 but it takes way to many techs excpecaly with it nerffed to +2 melee only.

 

[Squirrelloid]

It is *very* easy to get highly promoted units. Barracks gives +2 xp, settled great commanders gives +2xp, crusader, standing army and vassalage civs give free xp, chaos temples, temple of destruction give free xp. Coven/magic colleges/stables/joust/archery range/seige give free xp.
Particularly with the charismatic trait, it is *very* easy to get highly promoted units off the bat...

Imagine under your proposal: barracks + stables + joust + standing army civic = 11xp knights and cavalry, level 4 units. And thats without the War College or a settled great general or a temple or charismatic trait. I'd rather leave it as it is.

And this is different than normal civ IV how? Ok, its a little easier to get free xp on some unit types - seriously not a big deal. Further, once you hit 11xp, getting 17 isn't easy. And after 17 you need 26. Sure, charismatic makes this a little easier - and its still not a big deal. Accelerating xp costs bounds any difficulties from more free xp.

It would also mean that *non*melee units would start with more xp than melee units.

And mounted units potentially start with more xp than non-mounted units in the base game. Not a problem.

It is very easy to get highly promoted units in this mod, arguably too much already.
Making too much free xp for starting units also detracts from vampires and heroes, and from aggressive and protective traits.

Seeing how there is no in-game documentation on heroes that I can find and no obvious way to make them, I can't really say this bothers me because it certainly hasn't impacted my play experience.

The amount of free xp as it stands isn't really that much more than the base game. You've upgraded the pentagon from +2 -> +4 effectively, but removed the +4 xp national wonder. You've given many unit types a +2 xp building. So +2 (building) +4 wonder vs. +3 barracks + 4 nat wonder + 2 wonder means that the base game has more potential free xp for most units right off the bat. Great generals/commanders are a wash (available in both games). I haven't looked at the other sources too closely, but many of those aren't available to all factions and thus not relevant from a general perspective.

The base game also features up to +4 from civics choices (theology/vassalage), which isn't remarkably less than the mod.

I also reject the premise that more free xp encourages war. If anything, its just the opposite; with free xp hard to come by, you have to go to war and fight stuff in order to get highly promoted units. With tons of free xp, you can get heavily promoted units without having to fight.

It costs money to support troops. Less promoted units means you need to deluge the opponent with units. I warrior rushed a computer one game - it can be done - it also almost bankrupted me supporting that army. (Fortunately he had built a second town I got to pillage). Thus more promotions encourages warfare because you need fewer units (and thus a less developed economy) to achieve the strategic aims of the war. No one fights a war just to promote units, and doing so with relatively unpromoted units mostly means wasting hammers on units that die softening up targets. Ie, you're asking people to tank their economies and squander their productivity to fight wars - that encourages people to build rather than fight.

Guerilla is pretty worthwhile, because hills can't be chopped down, and because you can use it as a defensive trait for a city defender.
Forester and jungle techs are most useful for wood elves and for amazons/lustrians, or people attacking them, who will have forest or jungle on many/most of their tiles, even in the very late game.
Arguably the bonuses on these could be increased slightly though.

Is it a problem being available from the start in the base game? No. Is it that worthwhile in the base game? Only if you use it on city defenders where there's a city on a hill - and even then its only marginal vs. promotions like CG (which should also be available earlier) as its a 5% advantage at the 2 promotion level, and a 5% disadvantage at the 3 promotion level (CGI/II/III vs. Guerilla I/II CG I in the base game). I haven't checked to see if you've changed the numbers, but assuming you haven't Guerilla is a rather marginal promotion.

I really don't understand the desire to make basic promotions require technologies that are 4 and 5 deep down the tech tree. It makes the early game even more boring than it usually is. And it mostly serves to make people more inclined to choose the combat promotions because they're available early and apply all the time rather than in really limited situations. With the exception of garrison troops, overspecializing promotions for relatively rare events is a waste of time, which means CR is about the only alternate line worth pursuing (because you will attack cities with high frequency).

 

[Ahriman]

And this is different than normal civ IV how?

You can easily get units starting with 11-17xp in vanilla civ? Tbh I haven't played it in a while, but that seems excessive.

Accelerating xp costs bounds any difficulties from more free xp.

No it doesn't; massive free xp means that you can get high level units from the start, without any combat, and that extra combat won't make your units much better.
I prefer a system where you have to earn heavily promoted units through warfare, rather than just instantly getting them from having lots of structures.

Seeing how there is no in-game documentation on heroes that I can find and no obvious way to make them, I can't really say this bothers me because it certainly hasn't impacted my play experience.

Heroes aren't yet implemented in the mod, but they will be (similar to how they are in FFH; units with a couple of special abilities, and the hero promotion that gives them free xp every turn until they reach 100 xp).

I warrior rushed a computer one game - it can be done - it also almost bankrupted me supporting that army.

Oh noes! Beating down the AI in the extremely early game before you had an economy wasn't the ultimate strategy; it had a downside as well as an upside!
Sounds good to me.

No one fights a war just to promote units, and doing so with relatively unpromoted units mostly means wasting hammers on units that die softening up targets.

Sounds good to me. And encourages you to use green troops as cannon fodder to preserve your well-developed highly trained crack troops. Whats the problem with this?

Ie, you're asking people to tank their economies and squander their productivity to fight wars - that encourages people to build rather than fight.

Offensive wars *should* be economically costly. Otherwise the game is a walkover. There should be an advantage to the defender in a war; they pay lower maintenance costs, and they need relatively fewer troops to defend than to attack. Thats standard military strategy; an attacker (particularly someone attacking cities and castles) needs a superior army, and it costs them economically.
If you're worried about the costs of a wartime army, then pillage more.

Is it a problem being available from the start in the base game?

I'm relatively indifferent about whether they should have a tech requirement or not. I like the flavor of it, and it can encourage the recon techs if the promotions are useful, but I see the point that they tend to be more useful in the early game.

I definitely like city-raider having tech requirements; a highly specialised army is one of the advantages of research. It also slows the ability to steamroll the AI in the very early game before they have a chance to build up a little.

I disagree in general about your take on promotions though; it is very useful to have a mix of shock, cover and formation units as stack guards.

Basically, I don't think the very early game is about conquest, so I don't really care one way or the other.

 

[Masada]

Lets, no play around,

Completely disagree. There are lots of fans of the warhammer universe, many of whom have never played the Tabletop game. There are tons of people who like the "feel" of the universe, and the entertaining fluff, and the fantasy earth setting (ie not just Tolkein, but also HRE, Spain, Arthurian Britain, Russians, Renaissance Italy, Egyptian mummies, India, Imperial China, Shogunate Japan, etc.). There are people who liked Mark of Chaos (though that game was pretty bad) and who played its recently release expansion. There are people who will have got into Warhammer from Warhammer Online, the new MMO which has received good reviews and could generate a huge player base. There are people who liked Dawn of War and its expansions and want to give the fantasty setting a try. There are even people who played the warhammer roleplaying game decades ago.
And there are tons of general civ and FFH fans who are tired of the FFH lore and want a fantasy game in a different world, still with an established lore, but to roleplay different factions. I can't roleplay a backstabbing ratman game in FFH.

Your right, people don't need to play the tabletop to get it's a bloody gothic, dark humour, wargame... this is the universe where the bloody wood elves are nasty, fey and xenophobic bigots, where the generic Knights are tyrannical bastards, where the greatest bastion of humanity has a church of moral bankrupts, and where the god of diseases is called "Papa Nurgle"... there are lots of non-tabletop fans, but find me a builder/peaceful warhammer game, there are none. It isn't "Fantasy Earth", it's a twisted darkened parody of earth which isn't Tolkien or any of that boring stuff, its Gothic Fantasy. Mark of Chaos, wargame, actually only a wargame. Warhammer online PVP. Dawn of War, the most builder of games that warhammer has ever made, guess what it's a wargame. I refuse to bow because some FFH players might want a peaceful builder game, or whatever that is not a Dark Gothic Horror Fantasy Wargame... the name Warhammer is not a joke.

This is a Civ mod. Civ players, fundamentally, like more than just killing stuff and blowing things up. There's no reason to alienate such a huge portion of the fanbase; it dramatically reduces the scope of the mod.
If you just want to get into killing things with warhammer units, play an advanced start or scenario (I'd argue for a "present day" version of the warhammer map with established cities/empire/armies and nearly all techs researched).

Your right, me personally I say screw them, you play warhammer to kill stuff no questions asked. All this extra stuff we have if FFH ish, not warhammer, its basically a generic fantasy mod with some mildly interesting stuff tacked on... It's meant to be a wargame, with some nice buildings to help, the difference you have with warhammer is we can make it smart combat, we have such a scope for different play styles... we don't handle that at all well.

War is *encouraged* in the warhammer mod by having lots of civics that allow for low unit support costs, and by having units be very cheap. Hammers go a lot further hear than in FFH, its much easier to construct large armies to fight with.

******** war is encouraged, what we have now is a paraody, i can sit for an infinity of turns and not be attacked and just build the utterly useless +health and +cash etc buildings, which were bloody stop gaps because we never figured out how to balance the mod... they're ugly and ungaily and unwarhammerish (it's cool to have buildings, it's not cool to have so many peacenik builder buildings,

And lets face it, many MANY of the complaints you have could be entirely fixed by starting in era 2, and using advanced start, with all the initial techs researched and a few cities.

Yes they could, but do you honestly think i'm arguing for my sake, i'm not, the average player should not have to do this because our opening tech tree is so ********... (i'm surprised most players don't look at our tech tree when they roll a game, and go WTH? ./quit)). Starting techs are there to allow you to setup your empire, and not waste a 100 turns to get a bunch of cities in tier 2 so you can make progress researching...

What do you lose by having a few peaceful things to do? I want a fantasy civ mod in a cool setting.
There are only a handful of techs I think we should add; an advanced archery tech for longbowmen/crossbowmen, a militiarism tech so that feudalism doesn't give you everything, and an arcane lore tech for archmages (so that you don't have college mages and archmages both having the same tech requirement, because the college needs a university to build).

You don't lose anything, but lets face it this is a warmod, we have to much peaceful stuff to do.

Tech Stuff: I don't disagree with having an advanced archery it makes sense, but it shouldn't just be a "advanced archery tech" leading of, archery, it should lead of archery (and give you a tier 3 archer unit), and lead into something else to give you a tier 4 archery unit. And even better, you want advanced archery to feed into something else further up the tree, so you need to get it, no leaving vast swathes of the tech tree open.

Feudalism is a mess, it needs to be sorted, but our aim should be no net increaese in techs, and a net decrease in techs overall (for the moment till we can sort out the nasty specialisation end techs cripe).

I don't see why we need to keep techs seperate, when we can just shuffle up the buildings in the tech tree... one complaint is the speed at which we research, Masada's solution move up the tech buildings and kill any early tech bonuses... (Also cut the bloody amount of +health and +happy buildings we have... that alone is screwing us, we can also have nice chaotic events for unhappy and unhealthy cities etc )

There are a few buildings I wouldn't mind losing (tailor, circus/festival, merge inn/tavern, maybe merge castle/citadel), but by and large I *like* buildings. Once again, incremental progress is fun. They add flavor.

Great, lets kill tailor, circus, festival, and merge inn/tavern, no problem. They are not flavour, or fluff or anything they are FFH nice fantasy world stuff... I'm all for getting rid of the requirments to have building X for unit Y (except for special stuff), just to speed up unit building and instead have those buildings offer cool promotions for those units, I was thinking of say getting Huntsman Lodge, and making it give "Ambush" for all Skirmisher units built (+25 attack in forests, jungle, etc).

And lets fix our stupid +XP buildings... they are just weird and terrible, i'm all for brining back a barracks for melee units, a range for all range units, and a lyceam (whatever) for cavalry, and maybe if were feeling charitable one for light infantry.

strip one unit away from there full roster and they are not high elves anymore

Entirely true, ask PL if you took one unit away from Wood Elves what it would be, he couldnt tell you... same for me with Empire and Kislev I would be umming and arrring for a long time and they probably tell you to **** off.

But is the AI? It is important to make sure that design is something the AI can handle; war is no fun if the AI is just a pushover even on Immortal/Deity. Removing access to techs that don't do anything useful is a pretty good and simple way to steer the AI into being effective, by not wasting resources on low value techs.

So, I'm ok with a combined arms military design philosophy, as long as we can still make the factions play differently. I'm fine with some tech tree simplification, but not with a skeletal tech tree so that I only get a new tech every 25 turns. I completely reject the idea that this mod can be only about war. Its about flavor and setting, too.

At the end of the day, this is a mod of Civilisation, not Total War.

The AI is crimped by the tech tree, it doesnt know what to get, simple answer cut down the early tech tree to substantionally the same as BTS (because no faction is really different down there) and use the strenght of the BTS AI (don't say it isn't canny, because it is, with the latest patch it can be quite darn nasty, coming from play at highest difficulty in Civ 2, 3 and vanilla 4 me...). Removing techs just makes it easier for the AI, giving them some strong links so the AI has to pick up most of the tree is also a good move... as it is the AI is utterly clueless as to what is useful it'll pick up science and religious techs and have no military if we can mix them up abit and link them together this should end... its hard for the AI to mess up if it needs bronzeworking for future techs it's tier 2 and doesnt have to get 2 techs up the list to get it like the current tree...

You agree on combined arms! Great. Half the problem is gone. That is the tech tree we can expand into, its skeltal because it needs to be, and we need to resist the urge to graft things onto it... like we have been doing since that tech tree started (it was a nice tech tree back in the day, before stuff started getting added). The mod doesnt need to be totally about war, but our victory conditions should be as follows, Conquest, Domination, Faction Victory, and Nation Victory there should be no timed, peace etc victories...

Warhammer is total war, there is nothing else but war... the non-war stuff is hardly touched in warhammer canon.

I'm all for allowing the spice route to allow the recruitment of Orge mercs, and doing the same with every building that serves no warfare purpose...

@Darkform

I think I like Masada. I'm sorta flustered how Sylvania and Lahmia currently are getting pieces of the Vampire Counts and not everything they can normally get. (based on ideas of what they will get. I know they are not completed yet but the talk of what they get after complete made me sad.)

I totally agree, I was about to lay into that, but feel free to do so, i'll happily assist... Lahmia and Sylvania are totally different.

I agree. FFH does many things well; it is NOT a model for every other mod out there, though. There's really no good reason to force the player to choose one specific branch of the tree.

Totally agree.

 

[Ahriman]

Your right, people don't need to play the tabletop to get it's a bloody gothic, dark humour, wargame...

Yes, its a dark gothic world.... but why does that mean that you have to be constantly at war with everyone else, and that you can't increase your power by building some structures that give you more money to field units, or more research to get more powerful units, or higher defenses to hold off an invasion?

Your right, me personally I say screw them, you play warhammer to kill stuff no questions asked.

Yes they could, but do you honestly think i'm arguing for my sake, i'm not,

Wow, what a tool. And, uhh... yes, I do think you're arguing just for your sake. Screw all the other people who want something different to you!

******** war is encouraged, what we have now is a paraody, i can sit for an infinity of turns and not be attacked and just build the utterly useless +health and +cash etc buildings, which were bloody stop gaps because we never figured out how to balance the mod... they're ugly and ungaily and unwarhammerish (it's cool to have buildings, it's not cool to have so many peacenik builder buildings,

What, exactly, is ******** about the current system? If you're not being attacked, then play on a higher difficulty, or put the aggressive AI options on, or argue for cranking up AI aggression for various AI civs. You don't get attacked at Noble difficulty in regular civ either. If all the buildings are so useless, why are you building them? There is nothing stopping you from just building military units and going on a rampage.

You don't lose anything, but lets face it this is a warmod, we have to much peaceful stuff to do.

If you don't lose anything by having some peaceful options... then why do you want to remove them? How can having "too many" peaceful things even be meaningful? No-one is forcing you to build them. Why do you insist that everyone follow only your own playstyle? I like the idea of building up the Empire and holding off big chaos invasions.

Tech Stuff: I don't disagree with having an advanced archery it makes sense, but it shouldn't just be a "advanced archery tech" leading of, archery, it should lead of archery (and give you a tier 3 archer unit), and lead into something else to give you a tier 4 archery unit. And even better, you want advanced archery to feed into something else further up the tree, so you need to get it, no leaving vast swathes of the tech tree open.

I don't really understand what you are saying here. There are a limited number of units in the tabletop game to put into the mod. There really aren't enough units to fill out an entire new tier of units. IMO, the unit tiers are currently:
Tier 0: Warrior, scout.
Tier 1: Ancient horseman, axeman warband, archer warband, spearman warband, hunter, catapult, chariot, troll.
Tier2: Militia swordsman, Militia bowman, Militia spearman, light cavalry, boltthrower, ranger, giant, mage.
Tier3: Longbow, crossbow, Knight, pikemen, cannon, handgunner, war chariot, beastmaster, dragon, steamtank, archmage.

I don't think there are enough units to provide another tier4 on top of this. But, glad you're ok with an advanced archery tech.

Feudalism is a mess, it needs to be sorted, but our aim should be no net increaese in techs, and a net decrease in techs overall (for the moment till we can sort out the nasty specialisation end techs cripe)

I count thus far losing techs from brewery/crafting, herblore/naturelore, contemplation/chronicles, festivals, maybe steampower/flight could be merged. And maybe we could drop or merge bloodbowl.
My proposal adds: tactics, arcane lore, advanced archery. And separating Eternal life/necromancy.
So... sounds like a net decrease to me. And the purpose of Tactics is to fix Feudalism (so its not in the unit lines anymore).
I also haven't proposed any new buildings, and I'm happy to lose a few, so I count a net decrease in buildings too.
I'd be fine with merging dungeon/gallows - they're basically the same.

I don't see why we need to keep techs seperate, when we can just shuffle up the buildings in the tech tree... one complaint is the speed at which we research, Masada's solution move up the tech buildings and kill any early tech bonuses... (Also cut the bloody amount of +health and +happy buildings we have... that alone is screwing us, we can also have nice chaotic events for unhappy and unhealthy cities etc

Once again it isn't really clear what you're saying here. I think Literacy and Education are very different things, and that libraries and universities should have different effects. It sounds like you want to cut elder councils? Those are the only science boosters in the game (along with alchemy lab, which is pretty weak, and a few of the temples).
Keep in mind that eliminating too many buildings also removes the ability to run specialists at all, which kills another interesting aspect to civ. (Though, elder council doesn't give a specialist slot atm IIRC).

As for happy/health buildings; I think there is still probably too much happiness in the mod in general. But there aren't really that many happiness buildings, and unhealthiness is still a problem even with the health buildings. Many of the happiness/health buildings are because the happiness/heath effects have been removed from the base resources (eg cotton) in order to reduce the availability of happiness and healthiness. Would you prefer to cut the building bonus and restore the base luxury good bonus?
I'd be fine with cutting sewers (or cutting aqueduct, sewers are more flavorful . Both of them (and provided from the same tech) is probably too much.
We could cut the customhouse too (its pretty boring).

I'm all for getting rid of the requirments to have building X for unit Y (except for special stuff)

Have you even played the mod? There are very few building requirements. I think the only units with build requirements are: chariot, war chariot, knight, handgunners, giant, dragon, longbowman, crossbowman, steam tank, and some naval units. None of the core units do; they just get a benefit from having the building by getting bonus XP.
I'd be fine with letting the chariot not need wheelwright (and just get the xp bonus).

And lets fix our stupid +XP buildings... they are just weird and terrible, i'm all for brining back a barracks for melee units, a range for all range units, and a lyceam (whatever) for cavalry, and maybe if were feeling charitable one for light infantry.

This is basically what we have: a barracks for melee, an archery range for bowmen, stables for cavalry, and a hunter's lodge for recon. The only other ones are: breeding pit for monsters, siegeworks for siege, cannonworks for cannons, shipyard for naval, joust for knights and wheelwright for chariots.
So, you want to cut all but the first four, so that none of these units can get an xp bonus? I don't see why, and I like having some gains from city specialisation... but I don't feel strongly about it.
We could drop the cannonworks and joust without any difficulty. We could also make chariots mounted units rather than chariot units, so spearman units work against them, and they just get the bonus from stables.

Also, a Lyceum is a school/academy - not sure why they would help cavalry??

The AI is crimped by the tech tree, it doesnt know what to get, simple answer cut down the early tech tree to substantionally the same as BTS

I think we are in near total agreement on the early tech tree. Only question: should roads/wild paths need to be researched? or should everyone just start with one of these techs? I'd be ok either way.

Does anyone know exactly how the AI goes about choosing techs? Does it have AI weighting for each tech coded into it, or does it optimally choose techs based on what they offer. I'm ok with broadening tech requirements slightly to , but too much of this can just get stupid; I wouldn't want completely illogical tech requirements (eg there is no reason why ironworking should require horseback riding).

You agree on combined arms! Great. Half the problem is gone.

I'm fine with the idea, I'm not yet convinced of the best way to do it. What do you think is the best tech way to encourage combined arms? You just want to force it through tech requirements?

but our victory conditions should be as follows, Conquest, Domination, Faction Victory, and Nation Victory there should be no timed, peace etc victories...

Not exactly clear what you mean by nation victory or faction victory (are you talking only about a Rhyes scenario?). I do really like the idea of the proposed chaos awakening victory (opening a great chaos gates and destroying the world, http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=290994 ). Do keep in mind that the problem with just conquest/domination victories is, well, that they suck - they're really really boring. There is a huge gap of time between the point where I have "won" the game (ie I am the most powerful faction by far) and when I actually finish mopping up all the remnants of weaker civs. Particularly on a large map this can take ages, and its really boring. I hardly ever finish games, because the game becomes tiresome long before that point.

I totally agree, I was about to lay into that, but feel free to do so, i'll happily assist... Lahmia and Sylvania are totally different.

Wha...?
My design is trying to *make* them different. I am interested in suggestions that will help make them even more different.
Darkform's suggestion is just the opposite; he wants both factions to have access to everything that a Vampire Counts army could field.... ie making both factions the same, which is boring. Giving them access to different vampire bloodlines is one way to differentiate them, hopefully there are others too. I'd rather have Sylvania have a more gothic feel, and Lamia a more Egyptian feel.
But suggestions in the vampire counts thread are very welcome.

Despite a massive disagreement in theory and basic design principle, we seem to agree on most of the specifics. So lets focus on that.

The next few days are busy for me, but when I get some time I'll try to put out an updated proposal that trims a few techs and buildings, and see where we can go from there.

 

[Darkform]

@Masada

6th edition Sylvania and Lahmia was very different but we are going by 7th edition and they are the same except for unique Characters (Hero s) in 7th.

 

[Ajidica]

I feel that there should be a fair number of buildings that arent war related. I realize that Warhammer is all about war, hence the name, but the group that likes 'war all the time' is more likely to play C&C or Total War, not a fairly slow paced turn based games. IIRC, Ploeperpengels design statement is to 'immerse into the Warhammer world' there has to be more to warhammer than war. It also maintains another 'interesting choice' to quote Sid. If you drasticly reduce the tech tree and buildings, then there is no bad side to waging war. In every game I have to decide, war or economy first. I am inclined to trust what Kael siad in his tutorial on how to design a mod, when in doubt of something, trust Firaxis.

 

[Squirrelloid]

You can easily get units starting with 11-17xp in vanilla civ? Tbh I haven't played it in a while, but that seems excessive.

So, assuming you (1) build a barracks, (2) and the military academy in the city, (3) own the pentagon, (4) have theocracy and vassalage civics on: your units from that city start with 13 xp. You can increase this with great generals settled there as usual. Starting with 17xp isn't especially hard at that point in the game if you plan for it.

snipping the rest

Ultimately, the point of free xp isn't to field a better army than your opponent (who has all the same opportunities for free xp that you do) - its to allow for better role-specialized units. As it stands, magic and the way you've implemented siege engines actually make taking cities ridiculously easy, because you can just bombard them to irrelevancy and walk over them.

This certainly isn't about the early game though. Its about turning hammers into buildings that provide free xp, which takes time.

In terms of when promotions become available, the early game should have more options than just hit enter. And guerilla/forester are worth more for their movement benefits than anything else - something which only matters if you can acquire them off killing animals in the first 30ish turns of the game.

 

[Squirrelloid]

FWIW: the wheelwright doesn't actually give xp to chariots (or at least not to chaos chariots). The stables do however. So the game already seems to think they are mounted units.

In terms of emphasizing combined arms: we need real axemen back for the Tier 1 ages, and to set up similar situations later on. Ie, the axemen +50% vs. melee/spearmen +100% vs. mounted/chariot +100% attack axemen created a use for all four Tier 1 military units in the normal game (archers = #4, to resist axemen attacks).

Now, there are two ways you could handle such rock/paper/scissors arrangements. The first is using actual historical performance data - which leads to some different arrangements than civ IV uses. (Also, some different classes of units - you end up with Heavy Infantry, Light Infantry (ranged), Heavy Cavalry, Light Cavalry (ranged mounted) as your standard classes which have a well-defined performance metric relative to each other - given equal tech LC > HC/HI, LI > HI/LC, HC > LI, HI > HC. Of course, certain portions of this require assumptions about the nature of engagements - ie, LC sucks on the defensive if it needs to protect non-mounted units because they avoid losing to HC/HI by running away.)

The other option is to base it on table-top performance of various WH units - which is probably closer to historical data than civIV's system anyway. And as the historical data is actually less subjective... (Quite honestly, the civ IV medieval units are a mess and make little sense in historical terms.)

 

[Ahriman]

So, assuming you (1) build a barracks, (2) and the military academy in the city, (3) own the pentagon, (4) have theocracy and vassalage civics on: your units from that city start with 13 xp. You can increase this with great generals settled there as usual. Starting with 17xp isn't especially hard at that point in the game if you plan for it.

Eh; thats still less than in this mod. That requires 2 civics, and a national wonder, and a world wonder. If we're going that far, try (under your proposal) barracks + stable + joust + War College + standing army + Dogmatism = 17xp. And then several temples will give another +2xp.
But yeah, they're similar orders of magnitude.
Still, feels a little too much. The problem with all that free xp off the bat is that it makes xp won from battle very weak in comparison.

And guerilla/forester are worth more for their movement benefits than anything else - something which only matters if you can acquire them off killing animals in the first 30ish turns of the game.

Why is double movement in forest or hills only useful in the first 30 turns? But I'm not averse to a slight buff for these promotions (maybe make them 30% strength).

 

[Squirrelloid]

Eh; thats still less than in this mod. That requires 2 civics, and a national wonder, and a world wonder. If we're going that far, try (under your proposal) barracks + stable + joust + War College + standing army + Dogmatism = 17xp. And then several temples will give another +2xp.
But yeah, they're similar orders of magnitude.
Still, feels a little too much. The problem with all that free xp off the bat is that it makes xp won from battle very weak in comparison.

Which temples are these btw (Ok, I found the chaos World Wonder...).

If the War College is going to remain a world wonder, can it become the pentagon instead of the equivalent of a normal national wonder. That reduces the xp by 2, and it feels more like a world wonder - one of the things that bugs me about this mod is so many of the world wonders only affect the city they're built in - hardly 'world wonder' material. Alternately, make it a national wonder like it is in the normal game so everyone can take advantage of it. (Decreases net impact of getting it).

Why is double movement in forest or hills only useful in the first 30 turns? But I'm not averse to a slight buff for these promotions (maybe make them 30% strength).

Because it helps with rapid exploration - which means you need to get it before you can see your entire continent. After that there are better, more general, promotions you can use (if nothing else, combat I-V) instead of them. The +strength boost is irrelevant, that's not the reason anyone ever takes them in the normal game.

Edit: In fact, reading some game reports by some excellent players at RBC I've seen people give away Forester II promoted units after they finished exploring to foist the upkeep/upgrade cost of the unit off on an AI rival.

 

[orangelex44]

Hmmm.... well, I guess the thing the modders have to ask themselves is whether they'd rather model off of regular BTS, or FFH. Masada seems to be a staunch advocate of the BTS style of warfare - long slogs of attrition, generally long wars, and economies that tend to be war-oriented. Ahriman, on the other hand, prefers the style that FFH pioneered - short wars, wars of movement over attrition, and economies that can be a way to victory in and of themselves. Honestly, neither way is better or worse than the other; they're just the result of different design decisions that end up producing entertaining games either way.

Now, FFH looks flashy, and many people (including myself) enjoy it a lot. However, it does have it's drawbacks; it's rather complicated, it emphasizes small scale border combats over giant world-spanning wars, it makes war less necessary to win (I've played games where I never decaler war at all), and it isn't necessarily the most balanced game. It does have positives; FFH is generally more exciting than Civ, everyone can use their strengths and minimize their weaknesses, and it is generally more flexible for players to try "something new".

Now, without truly being a long-term contributer to this forum, and without knowing too much about the canon lore, it appears to me that Warhammer is in the unique position of being able to become either kind of game. Even better, Warhammer has a small possibility of being able to being some of both.

IMHO (not that it really counts for anything, but I like to type), I think Warhammer should lean more towards FFH - let economic styles be viable and give each civ unique traits to encourage wars of movement. However, Maseda made several very astute points. Warhammer is much more conflict-oriented than Civ AND FFH, and as such, this mod definately should allow for massive armies and gear players toward that playstyle. That means some aspects of the main Civ game are very much desired in the mod - an integrated, relatively simple tech tree being one of them. A general parity of units across the board is another - while it may be cool to give one civ a 60 Str. unit, that will in principle force that civ to eschew combat unit it accesses it - which isn't what the mod should be about, it should force players to go to war early and often just to survive.


Now, after that not really-relevant monologue, on to really addressing stuff....

More starting XP is nice - it allows for much more flexibility for armies - but too much means that there's no reason to try to get veteran units. As it stands, the best balance is probably what the vanilla game uses; I'd recommend copying that as much as possible in this instance.

Most of the economic buildings need to be nerfed, or more of the benefits integrated into civics or techs. Making the civics more powerful allows for better economies (i.e., bigger armies) without forcing the player to devote time to making buildings instead of units. Some of the really obvious ones (mostly the regular BTS ones like Markets, Lighthouses, Harbor equivalents, Libraries, yadda yadda) are necessary; whether or not they should retain their boost is a question for a later, more balanced mod date. I'd generally favor making all the "default" economic buildings a little stronger, but that's a tough call at this point since the whole system is a little messed up.

I'm a definate advocate for ditching building restictions; having to wait fopr my Catapults while researching a tech should be enough, there's no reason to force me to wait while I make a building, too. Some XP-granting or cost-reducing buildings are nice to have, though.

Easiest way to encourage combined arms is with a combined tech tree; players will use whatever unit they have that is best for the situation, which means that is archers/melee/cav/etc. are all unique enough to be useful sometime, a player that can build them, will. Simply allowing him to always have one of each type available tends to encourage a combined army.

I'm neither qualified nor interested in talking about the Lahmia and Sylvania, ya'll have to muddle along without my words of confusion on that point.

 

[Squirrelloid]

Economic play is perfectly plausible in BTS, and I've played a number of games without ever having been in a war. That said, its often to your advantage to go to war occasionally, especially against rivals that could overwhelm you if given the chance. But diplomatic, culture, and space race wins are all possible without ever getting involved in a war.

BTS wars tend to be decisive if you let the computer generate a large power discrepancy with you. The BTS AI generates huge Stacks of Doom including many siege units and can roll over you if you aren't prepared. BTS is also much better about overseas wars - I've seen stacks of 10-15 full Galleons pull up on the turn war is declared and amphibious assault the target city of their choice. Needless to say, if you didn't see it coming you're probably losing the city. They are not generally long drawn out economic affairs unless you blunt the initial assault and then fail to counterattack. (At which point the AI may trickle units into your territory if you let them).

Which is of course why most combat occurs at cities - the AI will try to decisively take a city early on in a war dec, and will generally do little fighting defensively unless you threaten a city (or expose weak units to its garrison troops).

 

[Ahriman]

FWIW: the wheelwright doesn't actually give xp to chariots (or at least not to chaos chariots). The stables do however. So the game already seems to think they are mounted units.

Really? Interesting. I'll test that at some point. I am fairly confident that the spearman/pikeman bonus vs mounted units does NOT apply vs chariots, nor does the bonus from formation promotion (thats being changed).
I think some of the design intention is that spearman are a cavalry counter, but not a great one; you need cavalry (horsearchers in particular) as a defender vs chariots.
So, maybe spearmen should do +50% vs mounted units, and +25% vs cavalry? Similarly give every other unit with a bonus vs mounted units a half-strength bonus vs cavalry.

In terms of emphasizing combined arms: we need real axemen back for the Tier 1 ages, and to set up similar situations later on. Ie, the axemen +50% vs. melee/spearmen +100% vs. mounted/chariot +100% attack axemen created a use for all four Tier 1 military units in the normal game (archers = #4, to resist axemen attacks).

This is an interesting point; is it worth separating anti-melee melee units from city attack melee units. My gut instinct is no; we have recon units (which civ lacks) and chariot units (that function differently from mounted units). Too many unit types adds clutter, and there aren't really enough canon units (or art!) to supply units for all these slots. Its already pretty tough for some factions; skaven core melee is clanrats and stormvermin. Its pretty hard to divide that into 2 separate tiers of city-attack, anti-melee and spearmen units (6 units total). Similarly for dwarves, and many other factions. I also feel that having the knight slot as heavy cavalry and then the light cavalry/horsearcher slots works fine.
I also think that trying to base stats directly off tabletop stats is doomed to failure. There are too many differences between the tabletop model and the civ combat model for this to work.

Which temples are these btw (Ok, I found the chaos World Wonder...).

They're not all implemented yet (check the design threads). But temple of khorne (and various other chaos temples) give xp bonuses to particular unit types, temple of destruction will give xp bonuses to all unit types, skaven clan hqs will give xp bonuses to particular unit types. We haven't decided yet on the various spirituality, elven gods, eternal life or old ones temples.

The +strength boost is irrelevant, that's not the reason anyone ever takes them in the normal game.

The strength bonus is NOT irrelevant when a) some factions (wood elves, amazons, lustrians) will have forests or jungles on most tiles in their empire even in the very end game, b) some factions (dwarves, skaven) can only build cities on hills.

Masada seems to be a staunch advocate of the BTS style of warfare - long slogs of attrition, generally long wars, and economies that tend to be war-oriented. Ahriman, on the other hand, prefers the style that FFH pioneered - short wars, wars of movement over attrition, and economies that can be a way to victory in and of themselves.

I don't know that this is quite accurate... I just don't want a mod that only warmongers can enjoy.

it emphasizes small scale border combats over giant world-spanning wars

I disagree with this; I tend in FFH to often have a single war per enemy; attack them and keep conquering cities until they are willing to capitulate, and then extract their palace mana from them in tribute.
Things change in Fall Further with the Curse the Lands ritual, which forces you to end wars pretty quickly (or lose access to all your mana and resources).

Warhammer is much more conflict-oriented than Civ AND FFH, and as such, this mod definately should allow for massive armies

I agree with this, which is why I support having so many civics that pay for massive free unit upkeep, and truly godly war civics like Tyranny, and cheap hammer costs for units. Big armies are a key part of this mod (and the regimental unit graphics rather than a group of 1-3 guys also helps this cosmetically).

having to wait fopr my Catapults while researching a tech should be enough, there's no reason to force me to wait while I make a building, too

.... catapults don't have a building requirement. I think its pretty reasonable for cannons to have a building requirement though (though maybe something not as expensive as the cannon foundry?).


Another interesting discussion to have is on the role of metals. It used to be that almost every unit required metal in order to be able to build (so it was gameover if you started without copper nearby). This was really bad design, and it was changed. Now, nearly every unit in the game is buildable without metals, but nearly every unit in the game benefits from metals (only monsters and siege units don't). This makes the metals line really key, and still tends to screw any player who doesn't get bronze/iron nearby.
We're working on changing this. The current proposal is to keep melee and cavalry units as they currently are, to remove the ability to use metal weapons from archery and recon units, and to increase tier1 archers and hunters by 1 strength (as if they had bronze weapons) and tier2+ archer/hunters (militia bowmen, crossbowmen, longbowmen, rangers) by 2 strength. So, archers will be 3/4, hunters 4/4, militia bowmen 5/7, crossbowmen 7/7, longbowmen 6/8 rangers 6/6.
Thoughts?

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

O_O wow thats a lot of dicussion...

first of all, i agree with both Madasa and Ahriman on certain things. i agree with Ahriman in that we should NOT exclude the builders from the mod (you would be excluding me here, im a builder and i almost always play defensivly) we should simply make aggressive games for attractive. there is no real harm in having a few peacful wonders and a couple of peacful buildings.

i also agree with masada that if you remove one unit from a civ (ie removing the Forest dragon or tree kin from woodelves, then they are no longer TRULY woodelves. it took me a long time to induce ploep to add in tree kin and still the woodelves dont feel *right* to me, wheres my bleeding toxic-gas-breathing forest dragon??? *cry*

i also agree that the tile improvements are all scattered a little too far into the tech tree, they should be brought forward a little bit.

i also agree that diversification of unit types is a must, woodelves dont ONLY have archers, they also have very powerful recon, magic, mounted, beasteal and... not so much powerful as Unique... melee units.

on the note of EXP providing buildings, i dont really see an issue in what there is now. sure another national wonder that gives a couple extra EXP wouldnt go astray, but the +2 from barracks wasa balance decision to shift the reliance away from Melee units and to make other unit types equally interesting... which still hasnt really been achieved.

regarding tech merging, i fully agree with most of what has been said.

regarding victory conditions, there needs to be more than just conquest and domination, there should be individual religious victories (chaos: Gate victory etc) there should be some civ specific victories ala Rhyes and Fall of civ... and some more generic ones that i havent thought of yet

I just don't want a mod that only warmongers can enjoy.

you have my vote on this

 

[Squirrelloid]

I'm going to fork combat/unit structure into a separate thread.

 

[Masada]

@orangelex44

Very astute observations.

@Darkform

I’ve been playing and watching warhammer for a long time, we use the 6th edition rules, since the 7 edition Vampire Counts rules were patently for Sylvania all other non Von Carstien players got screwed by generic lists.

@Everyone

Don’t get me wrong I want to gut the tech tree, especially the starting bit, and I want to cut buildings. I don’t want to cut it down to the BTS style tech tree, far from it, I’m certainly all for stealing vanilla’s early game tech tree because ours is bad. To me the BTS tech tree works the best at the early levels, we quite simply don’t have anything interesting to put there, besides non-canon things which are not all that interesting, *queue* generic warrior, swordsmen, axeman etc… we want to get past those as quickly as possible (every other mod has them).

The gutting of the tech tree is only a short term proposition, just to get the early game functioning, and to get to the interesting stuff reasonably early on in the playing timeframe. I want to ban any net increase of techs (and preferably aim for -10 at least) till we get that sorted, so we don’t end on padding out the tech tree (like what happened with this one, PL knows what happened as do I). To me the BTS tech tree works the best at the early levels, we quite simply don’t have anything interesting to put there, besides non-canon things which are not all that interesting, *queue* generic warrior, swordsmen, axeman etc… we want to get past those as quickly as possible (every other mod has them).

Now as to the economy, I want to cut buildings, I’ll grant that, but I want to keep the original buildings from vanilla for the moment with the ultimate aim of warhammering them up at a later date. Think of each building having a military function in addition to having a civilian function if any, the Silk and Spice roads are a good example I would like to just have the Silk Road (or Road to Cathay) wonder, which allows Ogres to be recruited as well as its other functions.

There is to much happiness in the mod, I agree that cutting the base buildings out and returning the bonuses to resources is the best move (most of those were added over time to make up for some problem which never got fixed, and required a proper fix, that never got done and the buildings were just added as a stopgap for the moment&#8230. I prefer Sewers to Aqueducts, which can be cut.

Yes, I’ve played the mod more collectively I’m sure than any of you (except PL and maybe Kai when he gets back)… and I’m still convinced that there should be no building X is required for unit Y at all, they should give experience and maybe a special promotion (something not available anywhere else) to players who build them (Squirrelloid has hit on the problem of poorly placed promotions in the tech tree, which should be fixed with a cutting of techs). But you should not be forced to build them, someone mentioned that good on them.

As to roads/wild paths, just give everyone one of the techs, it isn’t a game breaker since everyone gets it. It’s by weighting, but if the early game is simple there will be less problems, notice there wasn’t much branching in tech in the example tech tree, only a little bit, just so you can’t ignore a massive amount of the tech tree.

For combined arms, I think broadening the tech requirements of units, and spreading out the middle-later of the tech tree might work best, we don’t want a slew of units to appear on any single tech (it gets annoying).

Faction, I mean good, evil or neutral team victory, so you can ally up with your team members and win through a group victory (not quite sure of the mechanics, perhaps requiring a wonder, then a vote, then a destruction of all non, good, evil or neutral nations.

National victories would be individual team victories (think Rhyes rand), where you can win from fulfilling a set of conditions.

I was actually going to go further, I was going to differentiate between races, and teams. So elves would have slower pop growth, but better more expensive units which do not upgrade from the start they get better with time (XP up over time, as well as promotions through the tech tree, and maybe even a specialised couple of techs that allow them to choose between promotion A or B for units one would give say +2 str, the other 1 first strike +1 str etc). So Elven armies would start with access to all there units at the start which are better slightly (say str 4 at the start) which get progressively better with time, from free XP, and from free promotion’s through the tech tree. That would mean that you have an expensive army at the start, which you don’t have many of, which become highly specialised and very good. Very Elven in character, along with the differentiation between units.

Humans would have normal pop growth, cheaper, less effective units, along with the different units basically the same as vanilla, with differentiated units.

Orcs and Goblin units would not upgrade with tech, they would gain different promotions through the tech tree, and would upgrade to a new class of units with experience. So Orc boys would upgrade after 5 XP, to the second grade of Orcs all the XP would go away and they would upgrade to the next level after 10 XP. They would gain XP from fighting and every turn would gain XP.

Lizardmen wouldn’t build units; they would have them spawn with different buildings, but would research very slowly to make up for the fact that they have a constant stream of troops.

Etc, there would be other factions which would be halfway between this or completely different.

That’s what I’m talking about with differentiation, I’m not talking about just having different units, I want a different play style. The best means I can see of heading towards this is to get all the teams units sorted, and the tech tree reduced ready to accept changes in the form of new techs for different factions and as a general thing.

Rhye’s is also impossible without a simple tech tree…

Despite a massive disagreement in theory and basic design principle, we seem to agree on most of the specifics. So lets focus on that.

Yes.

PL is more than aware of what I want, alot of what's been done is my fault and the result of stormy arguements late at night...

EDIT: I'm not knocking builders, I like to build every now and then, but you should if you want to be a builder be fighting even if you only fight defensive wars... If i'm not charging around with 2 move units in BTS, I'm not fighting anything but a defensive war...

And I strongly disagree with the idea that I should just amp up the difficulty... it doesnt change much.