Thanks for the mod and improvements

[ArkhanTheBlack]

Hello there,

this is my first post here and I wanted to thank the creators for their amazing work on this mod. It feels like a complete and professional expansion or even rework of the original Civ4. Actually, I only bought Civ4 because the mod looked so promising. Somehow I lost interest in Civ after Civ2 because it was pretty much always the same, and I prefer Total War for the medieval part. FFH2 feels very refreshing here. Unique races with a nice dark fantasy flair and a lot more diversity than the normal game.

However, the mod also shares some weaknesses with the normal Civs: The tech and building overflow! At the moment I've reached a point where the game slowly turns from 'fun' to 'work'. I've dozens of buildings to build in each city and the research list is almost endless. But if I researched everything, it feels a bit like I've already seen everything. The unique races definitely help to increase the replay value, but it would be even better if some researches would be more unique to specific races. For example it's a bit odd to be able to research holy stuff with Calabim and necromancy isn't really the Elohim style.

Therefore, wouldn't it be better to make unique tech trees for good, neutral and evil alignments? They could share some basic stuff, but certain religions and spell spheres would be unique to each tech tree. The restricted researches could be still available via tech trade.
This would reduce the tech spam problem and also reduce the list of available buildings. In addition, some buildings could require other buildings first (MoM style...) , so you don't get the building list of doom with a tiny size 1 village. An XOR research system (MOO2 style...) would also be great, but I don't know if it's possible.

Just some ideas...

 

[Nikis-Knight]

We do cut things fairly regularly. But you don't need every building in every city, certainly not every tech. Focus on your goal, culture, offense, magic, money, happiness, etc. Everyone can choose the selection of buildings and techs that they think are helpful for their strategy, with only a few blocked by religion/alignment.
In the end, that's probably a better approach than pre-defining what the player has access to, although I'm sure it is over-whelming at first.
(Some scenarios might be limited in such a way, but not the main game, imo.)

 

[cabbagemeister]

You know, it's always possible to reduce building micromanagement by turning on the governors and telling them to auto-build things. This is probably the best way to handle those late-game situations where you have 30 cities and it won't make one turn's worth of difference what your newest 10 conquests build before you win.

And yet I never turn those governors on. Why?

The reason, of course, is that I mostly set build orders through the popups at the beginning of each turn ("Hexam has built a courthouse! What do you want to build next?"). Probably I should go and set Hexam's governor if I don't care what Hexam builds next, but I'll never remember to do that when I subsequently have to wade through 8 more cities who need build orders. And then when that's done, I have units to move around and such...I'll never remember about Hexam until it finishes its next building, at which point I'll just be irritated again that it needs more build orders.

A suggestion to fix this: allow me to activate the production governor through the "what do you want to build next" popup! This way, the irritation and the solution to the irritation arrive at the same time, and I'll never forget to turn on the governor. It would still be easy to keep my 7 core cities on manual control, while letting the AI handle my new conquests that I don't care about.

Honestly, if one of the options in the "what do you want to build next" popup was "I don't care, stop bothering me about this city (Activate Governor)", how many of you wouldn't bother using it?

 

[Jean Elcard]

Would be a nice option for the late game indeed and it's not too difficult to implement.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

You can save build orders. On any city in which you have buildings queued up, open the city screen and hit ctrl and a number. Then in another city press just that number key to load the queue. I have been using this lately for new cities I acquire in war to load up an oblisk, courthouse, market, & palisade and get it self supporting before I bother it.

Another option is to, from the map screen, press ctrl+left click on a city's name, then add buildings or units to the queue. It will add them to all cities (either before or after depending on if you push, um, shift, I think). Useful after researching code of laws, for instance, or when you get surprised attacked to build a warrior everywhere.

In either case if you try to build something that that city cannot, due to insufficient tech or building prereqs not met, it will simply not add that one item to that city, but otherwise fullfill the rest of your command (building the rest of the list or building the unit in other cities).

 

[xienwolf]

Holding Shift while you order something built sends it to the bottom of the list (last item built), holding Ctrl sends it to the top of the list (next item built, and bumps the current build down instead of replacing it). Holding Alt will make the item be a recurring order (marked with an * on the left -- Means that once it is built it will be added again to the bottom of the build order). You can hold Alt + Shift or Ctrl to combine the two commands (and holding Shift + Ctrl probably doesn't do much of anything)


I personally love to set up build order Hotkeys for the cities so that they won't bug me at all until they are very productive (and usually they are such slow builders that they never reach that point). Tend to go with almost the exact same list that Nikis posted actually. And when I play RoK and have an overflowing surplus of cash I often rush quite a few orders every couple of turns so that the cities do wind up being useful eventually.

 

[seZereth]

A suggestion to fix this: allow me to activate the production governor through the "what do you want to build next" popup! This way, the irritation and the solution to the irritation arrive at the same time, and I'll never forget to turn on the governor. It would still be easy to keep my 7 core cities on manual control, while letting the AI handle my new conquests that I don't care about.

Honestly, if one of the options in the "what do you want to build next" popup was "I don't care, stop bothering me about this city (Activate Governor)", how many of you wouldn't bother using it?

I think it is not really very inconvenient to press the "examine city" and then choose the automate governor button? I mean, that is just one step more, which actually gives you the chance to look which governor is best for the city and after that you will not have to bother about it anymore.... cheers.