so? now what?

[daladinn]

i have been thinking about things for a bit and find myself growing ore and more frustrated about certain parts of the game lately (last few months since 31).

we have now completely dumbed down the arcane tree because the AI had no idea how to cope with the diversity. instead of adding flavor to the game for multi-player applications we tried to make the AI better for single player games.

sadly i can understand the changes that were made ....

but , i have to ask...

can we NOW merge the archery line and the combat line together and resort it into something that makes at least a little bit of sense?

for soo long the trees for industry , foot troops , archery , and warfare have been so mixed up and set in no logical order despite people coming forward with ideas to help fix it. would now be a good time to really look into this?


since i got off on a rant i would like to also mention a few other issues....
1- a wonder was removed that made workers invisible because it was too exploitive and powerful. now we have a wonder in its place that is MORE powerful because it applies to EVERYTHING and not just workers
2- when creating a game some of your options are retained while others are not, is it possible to get them all retained from game to game? or if needed have them all wiped?

 

[smjjames]

for number 2, are you talking about a custom game? I think it's always been like that, including starting a normal game.

 

[onedreamer]

smjjames, options can only be chosen in custom games (hence the name custom).

 

[Kael]

i have been thinking about things for a bit and find myself growing ore and more frustrated about certain parts of the game lately (last few months since 31).

we have now completely dumbed down the arcane tree because the AI had no idea how to cope with the diversity. instead of adding flavor to the game for multi-player applications we tried to make the AI better for single player games.

The lines were combined because the complexity wasnt worth the value (individuals have differing opinions on this). The biggest reaosn is that dropping from 100 common spells to 60 spells (or whatever the number was) allowed us to cut 40 spells that weren't taht good/useful.

The fact that it made the AI's job easier (or our job to teach the AI to use these spells) is secondary, but a nice side effect.

sadly i can understand the changes that were made ....

but , i have to ask...

can we NOW merge the archery line and the combat line together and resort it into something that makes at least a little bit of sense?

for soo long the trees for industry , foot troops , archery , and warfare have been so mixed up and set in no logical order despite people coming forward with ideas to help fix it. would now be a good time to really look into this?

Id love to hear some specific suggestions on things to change. I dont know that I support a global attempt to merge these lines. But start giving specifics for the community to check otu and lets see what comes of it.

since i got off on a rant i would like to also mention a few other issues....
1- a wonder was removed that made workers invisible because it was too exploitive and powerful. now we have a wonder in its place that is MORE powerful because it applies to EVERYTHING and not just workers

Core of the subtle wasnt cut because it was to powerful, it was cut because we hadnt brought the dynamic invisibility system over to BtS yet.

2- when creating a game some of your options are retained while others are not, is it possible to get them all retained from game to game? or if needed have them all wiped?

I wish I could figure out a way to do this, so far I dont know how. If anyone figures out a way Id love to hear it.

 

[smjjames]

smjjames, options can only be chosen in custom games (hence the name custom).

yea, its definetly been like that as far as I know, even back to Civ3 I believe.

 

[Pike the Hands]

Id love to hear some specific suggestions on things to change. I dont know that I support a global attempt to merge these lines. But start giving specifics for the community to check otu and lets see what comes of it.

The main problem as I perceive it isn't so much that there is anything inherently wrong about the archery line versus the melee line- one excels at offense (thanks to City Raider and high strength, particulary when metals are taken into consideration), the other at defense (thanks to high defense strengths). The problem arises from the fact that much more than vanilla, Fall From Heaven is a game that heavily favors offense over defense- by attacking offensively, you gain much more XP which can be used for the incredibly powerful promotions that we all know and love. It is for this reason that the most popular archery line units are Marksmen, simply because they are the best on the offense. Metal upgrades further mess things up, of course, but this topic has received a lot of discussion already by a lot of people more eloquent than I.

However: Under the philosophy that if a feature doesn't add anything meaningful, it should be cut, the archery line might need cutting. Most people simply focus on the melee line for both offense and defense, and why shouldn't they- metal upgrades and high strength make the melee line a much cheaper and more efficient use of precious beakers than trying to specialize in two directions at once. I don't think that archery and melee should be merged, but I think most people would agree that something should be done to make archery a more attractive, interesting choice. If nothing can be found, then the archery line should be cut- make archers into elven UUs or something.

2c

 

[Fenboy]

And what happens to the dozens of units the art team has spent ages designing? I can understand ditching Summoners & Conjurers on that front there wasn't much call for 40 extra 'robed magical guys', but the number of Archers, Longbowmen and Crossbowmen in the game with unique art is colossal.

I'd far prefer to see archery units get a big fat boost (and the AI builds them just fine, unlike some other units I could mention).

 

[Pike the Hands]

Oh absolutely- if archery units went away I'd be as sad as anyone, for flavor purposes as well as the impressive amount of truly awesome unit art. I would infinitely prefer archery units to receive a large boost or unique function of some sort, to make them worth building and using. My talk of cutting them entirely was not a suggestion so much as a statement of unfortunate circumstance; what good is all that wonderful art if no one ever builds the units?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

In my modmod Archers can attack from 1 tile away. Only Marksmen can actually kill from a distance though. In the old, released version this was a spell like in AoI, but in the next version it will simply be "air combat" for land units like in some of the mods that came with BtS. This allows targeting, an the AI understands it.

Since Kael has stated that he doesn't like this approach (he thinks it infringes on magic, and would mitigate the Khazad's intentional weakness), something else might be called for. Can we simply allow as much more xp from defending as attacking?



I wouldn't mind if the tech lines were more closely related, but it should be mostly though OR prereqs.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

I would just suggest making the tech lines co Dependant on one another. Once you get Axemen/Swordmen Line your next option before you get champions you would have to study the archery tech. Kinda like in history when one tech became stronger than the other and a new one was learned. As such when archers are added to the battle field the next logical order would be to build units with shields and other armors to counter act the arrows. Then maybe the study of longbowmen to counter the swordsmen and then champions with their upgraded armor and tactics to counter longbowmen and so on...

(I am also still and advocate of removing building requirements for all basic units. Those being Axemen, Horsemen, and basic archers lines (not units such as champions, longbowmen etc) as those can be trained in the field. It wasn't until tactical combat was required that training facilities was required. The native Americans learned archery from hunting etc. not an official archery range. Once you get official standing armies do you start to see military training facilities. This would also help the AI without giving them the option/advantage of no building requirements)

 

[JanusTalaiini]

yea, its definetly been like that as far as I know, even back to Civ3 I believe.

Actually, in civ 3 your custom options were saved. So, if you had them set a certain way with particular civs, etc, the next time you wanted to play a custom game the options would be the same until you changed them. This has actually been my biggest pet peeve from the moment I started playing Civ 4. I often will want to play a similar scenario multiple times, and having to manually reselect the same options over and over (especially when using wonderful mods that give you many, many more options than vanilla civ) is a bit tedious.

As far as I'm concerned, finding a fix for this would be my personal holy grail.

 

[schlalex]

I would recommend to give Achery Units the Collateral Dmg Promotion. It is just logical, that an attacking archery unit would damage all units of an enemies army.

P.S. I would give Dragon Units the Collateral Dmg,too and delete the curious meteor.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Hmm...I was thinking that I'd change the Dragon's breath Fire spell to work like Pillar of Fire, but it might be better to just give them a large AirCombat strength, range, and collateral damage. That would be less odd in Drifa's case (I don't think the Ice Dragon should use the weapon of her Old Enemy, Bhall), and (I think) would let the Dragons gain xp when they attack this way. Thus, it would be easier to get a captured Acheron the mobility promotion.

Too bad AirCombat strength isn't divided into different damage types. Ranged Fire damage would be more appropriate for most dragons, but Drifa should do Cold instead. It might be appropriate for Abashi to do a mix of Fire, death, unholy, and/or poison, and let Euabatres do fire and holy.

(I'm also considering letting the Dragon promotion allow multiple attacks per turn. Would that be too much? If I give them flying and almost double their strength as I was planning it might be.)

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

(I'm also considering letting the Dragon promotion allow multiple attacks per turn. )

Well they do have bite, claws, tail, breath...

 

[westamastaflash]

(I am also still and advocate of removing building requirements for all basic units. Those being Axemen, Horsemen, and basic archers lines (not units such as champions, longbowmen etc) as those can be trained in the field. It wasn't until tactical combat was required that training facilities was required. The native Americans learned archery from hunting etc. not an official archery range. Once you get official standing armies do you start to see military training facilities. This would also help the AI without giving them the option/advantage of no building requirements)

I agree wholeheartedly. Axes, Horses, and Archers should not have building requirements - have the buildings be required for the more advanced lines. I think training yard / stables ought to be buffed a bit too, perhaps +1xp / unit built, and then +1 from Aggressive and +1 from Organized?

 

[Kasdar]

2- when creating a game some of your options are retained while others are not, is it possible to get them all retained from game to game? or if needed have them all wiped?

if you want to set your options to be default you could always edit the CIV4GameOptionInfos.xml file. all of the defaults are set in that file. I have changed them myself in my game. Got tired of having to set the options every time. these changes also take place for the Play Now option.

Now I just need to figure out how to set which victory conditions are default and then I could just use the Play Now button to play a game.

 

[Maniac]

I think an airship or some big birds should be included in FfH. Then archer units could have an interception chance against them.

 

[Fafnir13]

One way to make archery a little easier on the user would be to decrease the beaker cost of the line. That way, builder civs could gain stronger defense faster and be able to focus more on building their economy up. At least it works in theory.
There might also be something worthwhile in giving archery units that do their job (sitting in towns) XP. Remove the archery range as a requirement, then make it so that archery ranges give archer units XP every 10 or so turns that the archer remains stationed in that town. Leaving the town would reset the timer for the unit. Not knowing how such code works, I don't know if this would be something easy to do.

 

[Pike the Hands]

I would recommend to give Achery Units the Collateral Dmg Promotion. It is just logical, that an attacking archery unit would damage all units of an enemies army.

This is a very interesting idea. Collateral is mostly the domain of siege weapons and fireballs (and berserkers, but only in the very late game). Archers having a lower collateral damage cap and withdraw rate than siege engines, yet still being living units (and thus eligible for Haste and other fun spells) would likely give them a bigger role in the field. I don't actually know this for a fact though.

I think an airship or some big birds should be included in FfH. Then archer units could have an interception chance against them.

I also think this is an interesting idea, though I suspect that if Kael feels that ranged barrage with archery units would take away from the focus of mages, this would suffer from a similar design problem.

 

[Kasdar]

I think giving the archers Barrage like they have in Age of Ice would be the way to make them better.