Patch 7.3x : General Suggestions Thread

[[to_xp]Gekko]

post general ideas and suggestions here

Malakim Lightbringers could get "better deals from tribal villages"

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

the improved barb AI in 7.3x kicks ass, I'm walled into my capitol with goblin archers bombarding the hell out of my warriors

one thing the AI tactically still needs to learn though is, imho, never to attack across rivers when avoidable. maybe it's just barbarians that are careless enough to do that, but it's weird to see units suicide on your walls when they would have had better chances by just moving across the river BEFORE they attacked

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

since raising the purity counter for the Elohim becomes increasingly difficult as you go on with the game, could the Hallowing of the Elohim increae purity counter?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

edit: double post

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

there's some debating on the FFH forums lately about changing some base stuff... right now the one that seems most absurd imho is that Animal Mastery needs Iron Working, I.E. you have to research most of the melee line to get the T4 recon unit, so why would you waste time researching recon stuff?

most reasonable thing imho would be to get rid of the iron working requirement for animal mastery and raise the cost of the AM tech itself.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

Possible bug and Graphics issue:

1: Was the Disciple of Ancheron left out on purpose?

2: The Frost Maiden is still using her old graphic that has been usurped by the Illian mage unit. This will cause some confusion as to what unit is what on the field of battle. See this link for the new version http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=241320&d=1264803566

 

[Sephi]

Avahz:
thanks, do you remember the creator of the new Forst Maiden Art so that I can give credit? I want to add the Disciple of Archeron but no idea yet on what AI it should have. Any ideas? Is it a unit that can randomly spawn, or is it connected to the city of Archeron?

Gekko:
Lightbringers are no scouts . I agree on the AI river issue but I doubt it's worth the effort to teach the AI when to cross the river and when not.
The Elohim Ritual lowers the AC and indirectly increases the purity counter that way

Interesting thought on the AM tech. Any idea on numbers and what tech could replace iron working as prereq. I am thinking about Alteration. recon+magic is an interesting combo and mind/nature magic is related to master of animals/magical beasts

 

[Valkrionn]

Avahz:
thanks, do you remember the creator of the new Forst Maiden Art so that I can give credit? I want to add the Disciple of Archeron but no idea yet on what AI it should have. Any ideas? Is it a unit that can randomly spawn, or is it connected to the city of Archeron?

Gekko:
Lightbringers are no scouts . I agree on the AI river issue but I doubt it's worth the effort to teach the AI when to cross the river and when not.
The Elohim Ritual lowers the AC and indirectly increases the purity counter that way

Interesting thought on the AM tech. Any idea on numbers and what tech could replace iron working as prereq. I am thinking about Alteration. recon+magic is an interesting combo and mind/nature magic is related to master of animals/magical beasts

Esvath created both Frost Maiden units, so credits would remain the same.

Disciple of Acheron spawns in just Acheron's city.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

odd my above post was supposed to be put in the bug thread sorry about that... The Disciple of Archeron is a unit that randomly spawns in the city that Archeron is built in.

 

[Fafnir13]

Whatever happened to goblins? All I see are the archers running around. Even before that, all I ever saw were scorpion clan goblins. What are we supposed to kill to gain xp in the early game? Seems like all that can be done is to hunker down and get xp defensively or make use of suicide troops.

@ [to_xp]Gekko: Yikes. I'm glad I don't play with ranged attacks enabled. Archers are annoying enough without being able to inflict free damage.

 

[kavark]

the improved barb AI in 7.3x kicks ass, I'm walled into my capitol with goblin archers bombarding the hell out of my warriors

This "new" feature is actually making my experience with 7.3x painful. On the previous two games that I played (Amurite, Monarch, Normal speed, Ranged warfare on!) I've had the unpleasant experience of having 4~6 goblin archers (3+1 poison) literally camped outside my capital by around turn 30. Workers couldn't get much improvement done and I was forced to build three times more warriors just to make sure that the defense of my only city would not be compromised by the sheer number of ranged attacks per round.

So I got to thinking a few things about Ranged Warfare and Barbarians:

1. Ranged warfare should have very minimum effect on troops stationed in a city or troops sitting in forested or hill tiles.. I am not sure if ranged warfare is modified by the defense bonus, but IMO a massive amount of archers shouldn't be a "poor man's substitute" for catapults or fireball mages. In my previous game, I was seeing range warfare from the goblin archers doing almost max (max being 25%) damages on my warriors that are stationed in the city. Range warfare has its place, but bombarding cities shouldn't be one of them.

2. Units that have range warfare ability should not be able to cast or move in the same turn if the unit has already engaged in range warfare. Currently the Amurite Firebow is one formidable opponent. He can bombard a stack with his fireball then hit them with his range attack all within the same round.

3. A 4 str (3+1 poison) goblin archer at the beginning of the game is just tooo damn hard to counter. Not to mention that these goblins USUALLY will end up getting 2 to 3 levels fighting wildlife before they arrive to cities to open up a can of whoop ass.

At first I tried to beeline to stable as a viable counter since I happened to discover horse in my capital's fat cross. That turned out to be an epic fail because these goblin archers not only have troop quantity on their side, troop quality was also far more superior. 40% v.s archery unit from the horseman units means very little when most of the goblin archers are about three levels higher (usually with 3 star promotion), 1 first strike, and the fact that they hang around hill/forest tiles very intelligently (thanks to the new AI code, Yay!).

My thoughts on the goblin archers? Make them 2/3 str (1/2 + 1 poison), retain the 1 first strike ability. It would be good to also see a more diverse line of goblins. All I am seeing are 75% goblin archers and rest are raiders. My old favorite goblin warriors have now completely disappeared.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I've also noticed that there's lots of goblin archers and no regular goblins... btw shouldn't archers have 3 atk 5 def instead of 4 for both?

re: Animal Mastery: actually I'd just remove the IW prereq and up the tech of AM seeing as it is very very cheap for a t4 tech, and bring it on the same beaker level as other T4 techs. I have other ideas as well, but I will come up with a longer post later

 

[Breez]

The gob archers are not so bad.

Not leaving trees next to your city helps a lot. When they hold up and fortify sometimes an undefended worker 1 step further away than they can walk in one turn is enough to pull them out of their defended square and into a more favorable fighting position.

2. Units that have range warfare ability should not be able to cast or move in the same turn if the unit has already engaged in range warfare. Currently the Amurite Firebow is one formidable opponent. He can bombard a stack with his fireball then hit them with his range attack all within the same round.

They already can't FULLY move and fire. they can partially move and fire, and I am ok with that. I use my defensive archers up to 4 squares away from my city when I have haste available. Run out attack and run back all in the same turn.

The Amurite Firebow is supposed to be a formidable opponent. That was the point. If they couldn't attack and cast in the same turn then they would lose the edge over any other archer unit that they have always had.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

is WM still using the default FFH behaviour for Guardsman? if so, it would be better to change it to the system used by FF/Orbis or the one by denev.

IIRC the default FFH behaviour for Guardsman is crappy: all it takes to negate marksman to attacking units is ONE unit with guardsman. the unit will have higher chance to defend, but still the most powerful defender will defend.

with the alternative systems, it works in a way that guardsman units will always defend against enemy marksmen, but won't have suicidal tendencies caused by the "increased chance to defend the stack" . that way having lots of guardsmen is actually useful, making the Bannor Civtrait meaningful. denev's version also makes the promo available at combat 3 instead of 4 , to counterbalance the fact that a single lonely guardsman is no longer enough to neuter a whole stack of enemy assassins

speaking of which, why is the promo that gives a bonus vs mounted only available at combat2 instead of combat1 like shock and cover? that could also use a tweak imho

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

The War Machine could get moved to the metal line, construction line is very un-Doviello-ish to research and machinery is very expensive. perhaps it could be moved to Iron Working and make weaker?

Doviello focus on melee, yet their champions are both more expensive and worse than regular champions. a decrease to their hammer cost, making them cheaper than champions, would seem fair. increased tundra strength sucks compared to bonus vs melee, it certainly does not justify a higher cost

more units should be set to neverobsolete in order to allow ingenuity trait leaders to get the full benefit out of it. Mahala for example, whose warriors/sons of asena obsolete as soon as you get access to sons of asena/battlemasters, which then leaves freshly captured cities only able to build higher tier units which take looooots of time to build early on. imho no unit should ever obsolete, let the player free to choose. also goes well with the multiple production modcomp

 

[tesb]

The new Items (Gear) are great, but there are too few.
I suggest more flavor Items for dicipline units (Monks, Devouts) and Angels (like purity seals, angelic Armor/Swords, gloves for Monks ect.) they could have effects like:
-decrease armageddon counter whenever this units kills a demon
-increases the purity counter whenever the unit kills an undead
-Sun,Life;Law;Spirit -aptitude


Similiar Items could be created for evil civs like Inferno, Sheaim

If i could code i would drown this mod in Items
Elven Armor/Weapons; Buyable Spellstaffs; Cloaks for Esus (=Blurlike effect); Tome of Expierence; Dshin in a Bottle (one time summon); flying Carpet for mages; ...

 

[Sephi]

Goodgimp wanted to add some more equipment

If you want to create equipment, you don't have to code much. Basically just copy existing equipment and change a few numbers/names. Some fancy effects would require a bit of python coding, but not much.

Some feedback on the existing equipment would be good (gold cost too high, too low, etc.)

 

[tesb]

hm the only equipment that feels wrong are the spell tomes:
1. a mage (channeling II) can learn tier 3 spells
2. i hate the randomness for 1k gold i would like to choose the spell (maybe increase it to 1,5k or 2k if you can choose) or maybe have a diminishing return effect on the price (first tome 1k gold second one 1,2k gold ...)
3. you can learn spells without having mana for them
4. if you keep them random please don't let them go wasted (i.e. when you already have some tier 3 spells most books won't add a thing) 1k gold is a lot of money

other items:
if you are svartvellar (or however you spell them) and have esus council you can get two items with poison researched that add like 10 firststrikes together (don't have the exact number in the head right now), this makes assasins quite powerfull, since they are immune to first strikes.

the heavy plate (-1 strength +2 defense strength) should be +1Defense +increased movement cost (like the tar deamon)

i would give the cursed weapon (+1 attack -1 Defense) an other bonus (+2 attack, -1 Defense, periodicly enrages units with this promotion)


is there a tutorial (or could you create one) for moding new items, i am not at all familiar with civ4 modding (what files, where are they)?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it would be great imho to have Orthus tag along with some other barbarians instead of wandering around alone, it makes him too vulnerable ( dangerous, but vulnerable ) . I see he usually waits until he has combat 5 and some drill promos ( due to AI_HERO I guess ) , but that also means that by the time he arrives, you've long known he's coming and set up suitable defenses which usually slaughter him kinda easily.

I'd much rather see him attack sooner with some friends, and then retreat as soon as things don't go as planned for him, to come back later stronger

 

[Sephi]

speaking of which, why is the promo that gives a bonus vs mounted only available at combat2 instead of combat1 like shock and cover? that could also use a tweak imho

to make mounted units better.

made it so that Goblin Forts will spawn less Goblin Archers and more normal goblins. I guess if you are unlucky and have lots of goblin forts around, a start is a bit too tough right now.

@tesb
the file with the equipment is Assets\Modules\Normalmodules\Equipment\Equipment_civ4promotioninfos.xml
I guess there are lots of tutorials on how to edit XML for CIV4, you can also always ask questions in one of the modding threads.