Preserving the wildnerness

[Ekolite]

To acomplish the second point you could probably increase the amount of goblins that spawn and make them spawn earlier. These would probably be enough to kill your scouts early on, but too weak to attack your cities and win, and would be easilly beaten by hunters. Alternately more animals would do the job.

Using the settings you suggest it is probably near impossible to delay the loss of wilderness. You will probably only have enough room for one or two cities per player surely? Also, if you are using the Erebus Continents mapscript prepare for many of the civs to be grounded for most of the game in crappy starting locations. That seems to happen quite often if you play with more players then is recommended for the map size. I personally quite like this as I think it's more realistic. In RL, there are/were civilisations which ''started'' in the middle of some jungle, desert, or icy wilderness, and for much of history these people were woefully unadvanced until the Europeans arrived and traded some techs for their luxury resources. Why shouldn't it be the same in civ/FFH?

 

[lumpthing]

Well my tech requirements for settlers and no-barbarian-cities guarantees the preservation of the wilderness until the techs are acquired. Long enough to satisfy me. I play on Marathon so the pre-settler period will feel quite long. (this is also why I'm taking such care with the preparation, it's going to be a long long game)

It's possible to increase goblin spawning relative to other types of barbarians? How would I do that?

Yes I agree with your comments about crappy terrains being realistic. I'll also be having "increased" desert so it will be a particularly horrible world for some unlucky civs.

I'm using low sea level and there is actually room for about 5 cities per civ crowded in, more if they build in remote areas.

 

[WCH]

In RL, there are/were civilisations which ''started'' in the middle of some jungle, desert, or icy wilderness, and for much of history these people were woefully unadvanced until the Europeans arrived and traded some techs for their luxury resources. Why shouldn't it be the same in civ/FFH?

Apologies for derail... but seriously? Is that what you think happened IRL? Europeans came in and "traded some techs for their luxury resources?" I'm just going to go point form here for simplicity... since it was an off the cuff remark, I'll believe you if you say that you already knew and agree with any of the following, but the fact is that a lot of people don't seem to get this at all and your post seems to exemplify a false, and very dangerous, conception of history and global politics which is shared by far too many, so I feel like I need to point them out:


1) "Europeans" are not now, nor have they ever been, the only colonizers
2) Colonized people have almost never had any real say in whether the colonization would take place, or how it did take place
3) Colonization has almost never worked out to the benefit of those colonized
4) Resources in colonies are not typically traded for so much as extracted wholesale by the colonizing power, generally under false pretenses, with extensive and often irreparable damage done locally as a side product
5) Colonization often involves the erasing of knowledge among the people being colonized, not an increase in it.
6) There is no ultimate standard or perfect society toward which anybody is "advancing."

In actuality, just like in Civ, what almost always happens when a civilization with a powerful military discovers a civilization who are unable to effectively defend themselves is that the latter ends up either destroyed or enslaved. Occasionally either the colonists or the indigenous population gain some degree of political independence, but generally only if the colonizers can no longer afford to enforce their rule, possibly because of decline in the empire or because of an expensive war being waged somewhere else.

In both real life and Civ, you don't have trade of one thing for another thing, you have one empire that comes in, takes everything it wants and expects to continue to receive it into perpetuity, and another which was going along, doing its thing until someone else came in and removed from them their ability to do anything meaningful in exchange for some theoretical "protection" which probably won't actually be followed through on.

If, in FfH, some superpower came in, captured all your good cities and demanded all your mana in exchange for not destroying you completely, would you want to continue playing?

 

[lumpthing]

If anyone wants to carry on talking about historical colonization please could you do so by starting a new thread in the world history forum and pasting a link to it here. Otherwise this thread risks getting irretrievably off-topic.

 

[Ekolite]

Apologies for derail... but seriously? Is that what you think happened IRL? Europeans came in and "traded some techs for their luxury resources?" I'm just going to go point form here for simplicity... since it was an off the cuff remark, I'll believe you if you say that you already knew and agree with any of the following, but the fact is that a lot of people don't seem to get this at all and your post seems to exemplify a false, and very dangerous, conception of history and global politics which is shared by far too many, so I feel like I need to point them out:


1) "Europeans" are not now, nor have they ever been, the only colonizers
2) Colonized people have almost never had any real say in whether the colonization would take place, or how it did take place
3) Colonization has almost never worked out to the benefit of those colonized
4) Resources in colonies are not typically traded for so much as extracted wholesale by the colonizing power, generally under false pretenses, with extensive and often irreparable damage done locally as a side product
5) Colonization often involves the erasing of knowledge among the people being colonized, not an increase in it.
6) There is no ultimate standard or perfect society toward which anybody is "advancing."

In actuality, just like in Civ, what almost always happens when a civilization with a powerful military discovers a civilization who are unable to effectively defend themselves is that the latter ends up either destroyed or enslaved. Occasionally either the colonists or the indigenous population gain some degree of political independence, but generally only if the colonizers can no longer afford to enforce their rule, possibly because of decline in the empire or because of an expensive war being waged somewhere else.

In both real life and Civ, you don't have trade of one thing for another thing, you have one empire that comes in, takes everything it wants and expects to continue to receive it into perpetuity, and another which was going along, doing its thing until someone else came in and removed from them their ability to do anything meaningful in exchange for some theoretical "protection" which probably won't actually be followed through on.

If, in FfH, some superpower came in, captured all your good cities and demanded all your mana in exchange for not destroying you completely, would you want to continue playing?

It was attempting to paraphrase humourously for comparitive effect. Obviously you didn't get it.

No, that is not what I really believe happened. Nevertheless I think you could argue that colonisation did bring more advanced technology to Africa and the Americas, and some parts of Asia too, either directly or indirectly through the pressence of Europeans.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Just a pity that FFH's terraforming powers means that everywhere ultimately gets homogenized and looses character.

Yay! Someone else that dislikes the concept of terraforming!

I'm thinking of modding the terraforming out altogether, except Bloom spell.

 

[lumpthing]

I'd support modding out terraforming. I would have attempted it myself but I was concerned it would leave some schools of magic too weak.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I would have attempted it myself but I was concerned it would leave some schools of magic too weak.

Some substitutes are needed. I guess Nature III should be Summon Guardian Vines, as per MagisterCultuum. Spring, however, pretty much needs to be weakened. Scorch and Bloom can stay.

 

[Ekolite]

I would also support modding out teraforming. I make a point of never using it in the game as it is.

 

[lumpthing]

Does the AI use terraforming?

 

[Lone Wolf]

Does the AI use terraforming?

In Wild Mana, yes. But I still don't like it. And I am not planning on playing Wild Mana so far anyway.

 

[Andostre]

See this thread: [MapScript] Erebus Continent

Great, thank you!

 

[Andostre]

Scorch and Bloom can stay.

I like the Illians' Temple of the Hand ability, too.

Honestly, I'd keep Spring, but not keep it as a 1st tier spell. Or maybe just have Spring only add something minor like an extra or to the tile. Water II could still be Water Walking, and then drop the elemental you get at Water III for the full terraform.

This thread has some pretty good suggestions for all the magic trees, if someone is thinking of substituting out some of the terraforming spells.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I like the Illians' Temple of the Hand ability, too.

Ah, that I'll keep, of course, since it's a civ-specific advantage.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Personally, I prefer changing the Temples of the Hand to temporarily change terrain to Snow each turn rather than permanently terraforming when the building was completed. That means it will go away after being captured, that terraforming from spells and events will have no lasting effect, and that Temples of the Hand created in worldbuilder will still have the effect.