The Splintered Court feedback

[Sofista]

Playing as the Ljos, I discovered the little pop-up that, should the player get to Faeryl before her allies,

Spoiler :

details her escape and sanctuary among them.

Curious about Arendel's version, I re-played as the Svarts, but got a TXT_KEY for my effort.

 

[First]

Is there any particular reason why this scenario doesn't use the standard FfH2 terrain graphics?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Kael just wants to annoy us

He said that he liked having different areas of Erebus look different, and thought that using both normal FfH terrain and Blue Marble was the easiest way to do so. I agree that Blue Marble probably fits better in The Grand Menagerie, but I think it loks horrible under Ancient Forests and so should not be used here.

 

[Y T]

Both times I got the even that let me purchase units the units appeared in a city nowhere near the one where the event occurred. The first time the event happened in my third city and the unit appeared in my second, and the second time (after my third city was captured by Arendel Phaedra) it appeared in my capital.

The game got pretty easy with alazkan + fellow assassins and nyxkins. Didn't get a message after winning though Also when i get these immigrant events, the units i get spawn in other cities.

With patch L I confirm this, playing Arendel.
Also I liberated a teammates city that went from barb to his & then Svart control; had to reload before that action (I can ohso barely live with teammates building Heroes before me, but NOT when its about the only druid I can have as a good civ leader! <frustrating>), anyway had to reload & liberated the city, but no option to give it to my mate, it fell under general Ljos control, thus directly to me (didnt want it!).
It seems that it isnt saved which member of the team had control over the city!

On monarch difficulty the Svalts are doing very well, Amelanchier seems to be the prime target for them & just lost one of his cities to them & he got control over one of theirs, but all in all the teammates progress seems to be just fine (Thessa seems a bit cautious & Amelanchier builds a tad bit much priests IMO!). I wont even have it about the usual AI behaviour to roam distant regions & razing barb cities, well, thats a problem here: Cities cant be razed!
So mostly the control falls over to the side being nearer to the object of interest, being able to pull more units there in less time, but oh I will praise the day when I finally see an AI taking more interest in its vicinity, instead of wasting ressources to its usual behaviour... dang, I did it & stop now!

We are having friendly terms with the Calabim & the Baron, not much action to be seen there, in fact havent seen a single Duin unit! I think the Calabim isnt very much fixed on us elves as enemies, the AI loves weak targets & as I eventually checked the Lanun area I could see the markings under the fog indicating a seablockade. I didnt bother to check it in the WB but Im pretty much sure it was a Calabim unit, as I said: The AI loves banging on the weak!
Might be interesting to tweak a bit there or all the nigth&day sharade was worth nothing!

As for some reports with Yggdrasil (I had a copper under it), first I was puzzled myself expecting the fruits & etc, but then I remembered about the change of it a couple of months ago. I dont fully remember but I expect the Worldtree to function as intented, I just missed a clarification in this already six pages long thread.

Gonna hit the sack now, but cant await the notorious ending, ty for all the spoiler tags!
Expect a final statement later!

 

[Love]

well you can leave your captured cities unguarded so it will be taken by barbs, or you can gift it

 

[Y T]

After finishing the scenario I must say Im not fond of teamplaying with an AI in the near future, not if you tend to be a friggin controlfreak like me. I mean Im happy that you're able to tell them what to research, where to attack & it works, thats a good start!

I continue from my last post:
So I tried a couple of things to get Yvain but to no avail, Arendel comes after Amelanchier in turns, no can do & I dont cheat via WB. Later on I wanted to build the Celestial Compass to boost GPP output for Altar/disc EPs, some of the dudes was faster again.
They build a lot of wonders, only having three wellproducing cities & the enemy at the door, but one of the cities is building a wonder & 1/4 of the military worldwide on the loose capturing faroff cities!

I played on normal speed, monarch lvl until about turn 280 winning a domination victory.
I got four Immigrationevents, two of them between turn 250-265, none of my Ljos allies ever took a settler out, Faeryl build a 4th city as I saw in the history & shortly before I conquered Rivanna the Wraith Lord, she tried to escort one extra settler out. The calabim seemed to have the same three initial settlers, Lanun & the Baron were fixed (in the history it looked like the Baron would get more cities for the start, there was room enough in the corner, but I think he didnt.).

The Baron:
He went FoL pretty early from the start, never made any fuzz, I traveled a lot via his borders & only once at night I saw one unit of him, he had a werewolf out a few squares off his borders. It seems somethings blocks him from moving deeper into the map. I mean, look at him at turn 256, first time I ever saw an AI using bloom (veggiewolfie?), I guess theres not much else he can do right now.
Units 'nuff & a barb city by his side, I presume he has the barb trait:

The Calabim:
Alexis is furious with me at the end with only -6 relationship, has open borders with the Baron & ups! Lanun (guess I was wrong in my previous post!) & no worst enemy. She seems to be having the standard AI, roams the map, gets a barbcity occasionally but isnt really agressive or suicidal enough to start a war! Kept quiet, never wanted tribute, only thing I noticed: somewhen between turn 200-250 she switched to Aristocracy.

(Well, Im sortta glad I didnt need to wage war with Alexis &/or the Baron too, would have taken much more time, but then: Wheres the fun with the night&day cycles?!)

The Lanun:
When I got contact with Falamar I saw he had a boat out & thought: great, lets see his map a bit later & traded it for FoL, also wanting him to adopt it, before he got access to CoE! Turned out well, I got what I wanted! Someone asked before why Falamar was implemented in this scenario. I say maps for techs, didnt acquire his services very often though!
Only strange thing: He & the Baron never met.

The Svalts:
Rivanna the Wraith Lord adopted FoL pretty early & stayed with it almost until the end, CoE never spread to her southern cities & founded by Volanna Nox Noctis was build fairly late, very late, about turn 220 maybe.
Rivanna also was born as a great commander, if she really gets implemeted as colony leader she should get outta the list.
Oddity: Got a msg midgame near or in the Barons border, that the Black Mirror was killed, Alazkan was build a couple of turns before, but I never saw him or got the msg he was killed (sometimes not all msgs are displayed)!

The Ljos:
As mentioned before, Tessa & Amelanchier never used extra immigrationsettlers, maybe they got killed, we wont ever know.
Both emphasized the Priests a bit to much, but all Armytypes were there, small to midsized mixed stacks tried to seize cities.
Oddity: After Yvain was build & killed (for sure!) I happen to pass along near his graveyard & was astonished to see Amelanchier had an almost fresh Gilden in the vicinity despite the fact I build him, he was in my army & never died. I lost eyesight with the double having 2 EPs never to see or read about him again! I checked his cities if he maybe had a Shrine of Champions anywhere, since I read there could be an Issue, but no!
I'm not sure if Gilden as a national Hero can be build by each teammember once, but it shouldnt be so, hes a worldunit, one allowed!
(btw: his strategyinfo in the civopedia is out of date)

The Warfare:
No cityrazing, slow XP, my initial plan suddendly came to an halt after I found that out. I planned to take a midsized stack down south to exterminate Rivanna fast after scouting & building up the basic economy, and I also knew I needed mages lateron & techwise the Ljos & Svalts were pretty even, with us Ljos being a bit better.
I probably should have taken a small stack with Gilden out for a walk in the beginning, as some wrote having trouble with him. But being the builderturtle I am, I wont leave the house until the base is established & secured, what I did & needed, since I was probably the Ljos with the highest barbrate. I lost time but it did pay out & slowly added up my Stack of Doom. By the time it was near completion & Adepts impatiently awaited their xp, Rivanna took some of the southern barb cities & had her own SoD coming up my border, full with Assassins & some Nyxkins too.
I never experienced a full elvenonly war but read enough what to expect from the Svalts & with ending this Scenario I wont ever underestimate them now. I yearned for deer & cursed every Assassin & Nyxkin! Gilden & Kithra nearing the 100 EPs were mostly only good as def strikers, Kithra is pretty much useless against Nyxkins! I retreated the Channelers out of the SoD & fortified, forests were of not much advantage to me here & the one who attacks has almost always the higher casualities & I wasnt fond of loosing more time to rebuild troops!
Going south taking lightly defended cities with no risk in a fast pace, I was able to build up xp & integrate early Beastmasters as Jokers. I kept the Adepts in a seperate stack behind occasionally taking a barb out to finally get Mages & when i reached the original lands of Rivanna they got ready one by one with careful planning: spreaded out cities with a high culture output allowed my goal of Air3 Fire3 & Nature3, the adepts could concentrate on Combat, Mobility & Spellextension promos.

Without the Mages it would have been a tedious battle, I saw that with my teammembers! They hurled midsized stacks against the enemy towns only making the defenders stronger & the awful thing was, they loved priests & they loved their free tigers; tigers against sinister recon units, Rangers mostly but near the end the Svalts had Beastmasters too, so I really had to pressure things.

Resumee:
Except team/general AI issues the map seems to be very well designed, clever usage of sparse mountainridges & a good patchwork of forests, jungles & open lands allows for a wide variety of wildlife, getting the Menagerie in no time & allowing many extra cages for surplus cultural output, deminishing the barb threat & aquiring quite a lot mananodes.
I love the storywriting too & sure the end is sad, but well, it fits the theme!

Get Alexis & the Baron running this scenario could get really awful.
Thanks & keep up the good work!

yours truly

 

[Izmir Stinger]

Yggdrasil was not on top of any other resource on my map, like many people have reported, but it did not bear fruit for me. The resource yield of the tile was correct, and the city near it was receiving it's "We love our national parks" happiness boost, so otherwise it was working normally.

 

[ichbinsehselber]

I am playing as Ljosafar 0.40m, epic monarch.
I have got the impression that the AI is very weak using the workers properly. So, in general I think people can use higher difficulties in this scenario than they use normally. I am playing builder style and giving us a tech headstart. My allies captured 2 cities from my foes, but I do not think this is any good, because they do not connect their cities. Even the cities they built themselves are not all connected.

Does the AI also get Immigrants?

There is a problem with the Werewolf good and werewolf bad events, the text of the events is not propberly displayed. Instead TXT_something is displayed.

The scenario is surelya lot of fun at the right difficulty level, (maybe Emperor or Immortal)

 

[megamanx06]

i got an offer to take over the calabim because of my amazing empire-building skills (jk-it was the first time i've been on top on noble). I doubt this is supposed to happen? I turned it down, but that would have been an interresting thing to do.

 

[Kael]

i got an offer to take over the calabim because of my amazing empire-building skills (jk-it was the first time i've been on top on noble). I doubt this is supposed to happen? I turned it down, but that would have been an interresting thing to do.

Thanks, Ill disable that in scenarios.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

minor issue: the tile with yggdrasil also has cotton, looks kinda weird.

 

[Yashkaf]

I was in the middle of executing a perfect sneak attack at the back of the Ljos empire with two dwarves from ruins, volanna and 4 bears, when Amelanchier pops March of the Trees and sends me crashing to the desktop at the beginning of my next turn. I've tried a couple of earlier reloads and the game always crashes when Amelanchier ends his turn in which he cast MotT. I'm playing patch L I think.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

this one was nice, but way worse than I expected. night&day cycles looked totally useless since Duin had 1 city locked in the corner all the time, so I've never seen a single werewolf. plus, the map is kinda big and tends to slow down my pc at end-game. luckily I ended it before it became unbearable

there's both a Ljosalfar and a Svartalfar leader with green cultural borders. that should be changed as it's hard to tell whose territory it is when you look at the minimap

I was able to build Gilden Silveric, but not Yvain. it seems that my allies started him before I had the chance to >.<

playing as the Ljolsalfar, there's no deer around. this makes Stirrups pretty useless since you can't get Fyrdwells

 

[Go Boks]

I played this as Ljos, patch p and I have a few comments/questions (some have already been mentioned):

Why does only Thessa start with some pre-explored terrain?

I played as Thessa...

Spoiler :

As the Svar were miles away and Amel was the main buffer, I decided to turtle to help my allies on point (research and build all-city wonders) until I'd developed an unstoppable economy. Alexis couldn't resist, as expected. A decent-sized Calabim army appeared on my borders and I got ready to click the March of the Trees button. She declared, which obviously crossed the threat tolerance on my allies, as they all casted too. It didn't stop me from casting and wiping her out before all my Treants disappeared, but Amel and Aren completely wasted the spell (and destroyed their economy for a few turns for no reason as well). It's not the end of the world, but Aren is currently getting rolled by the two Southern Svarts while I'm busy conquering Volanna for Amel, and she could really use the spell right about now. If you can fix the AI to only cast when they are threatened by an army they aren't equipped to handle, that would be great. If you could get them to disband superfluous Treants, that would be even better (or simply make them zero maintenance units). You could also make the spell single use for the entire team (i.e., if anyone casts, it auto-casts the same/next turn for the other two), so you using it deprives the other two of using it when it suits them, and not helping your allies potentially loses it for you as they may cast.

City names: it would be nice if they were organized. Aren should have Evermore for obvious reasons and maybe all the "E" cities. Maybe Thessa should get Hyll since she starts on a hill, etc.

I happened to be granted the Leaves holy city. It would be nice if one of my allies sent one of their Great Bards my way to build the Song of Autumn.

Aren started with quite a few goblin forts around her. She responded by building tons of workers and waiting almost 200 turns before destroying them and actually letting her workers leave her cities.

I got a Thane of Kilmorph from a dungeon. It seems kind of silly since you can't found Runes. Grey out the spread religion button at least, or simply disallow all non present religions' units from being a reward for lair exploration.

Maybe turn off map randomization. Yggdrasil is on corn for me, which has been mentioned, and there is not a single deer on the entire map, which hurts considering the Svar have plenty of Nyxkin.

In general, there seems to be a lot of silly combat. Amel will send a stack of 3-5 units into Svar territory and lose them all. Svars will respond with the same tactics. Each Svar civ would send a small party to Amel, so they would hang around his lands for a while, but they would rarely if ever pillage. They are currently having success against Aren, but that is probably because Gibbon and Alazkan have joined that party.

Aren seems to have the worst AI of all. I was getting a lot of immigrants, so I built her a couple cities and gifted them. She generally left them undefended and lost them to barbs until March of the Trees was casted and she took them back. I've gifted cities to Amel as well, and he sends defenders immediately. She also went on this crazy expansion south towards Baron chasing barb cities, which is why the two Southern Svarts are picking on her.

The most annoying thing in the scenario is the hero stealing. I don't think the PC should get all the heroes, but the AI isn't great with them either. If I research the tech, in its entirety (i.e., I contributed every single flask to its discovery), I should have first crack at building. I'm not sure how you can fix this, but setting the PC to having the first turn would work. Maybe you can just have the AI set to wait a few turns before building heroes and wonders, although both solutions do allow the player to get all the heroes.

Maybe the best solution to heroes is to randomly assign them once the tech is researched? Or make them entirely event based? For this scenario at least, that is probably the best solution as you can balance their arrival or at least make their arrival dependent on certain interesting conditions being met.

 

[CladInShadows]

I just won as the Rivanna on Diety, and I have to say that this whole scenario played wonderfully! I received 2 extra settlers via immigration over the game, and Faeryl and Volanna both got one each. I simply used these main cities to build up and army, including Gibbon and Alazkan, and sent it after Amelanchier, gifting each city that I captured to Faeryl because I couldn't be bothered with taking care of them or the cost. This also boosted her power, and by the time I was fighting Thessa and Arendel I barely had to do anything, both my Alies had such massive armies doing the work for me that I just had to sit back and watch

As for the the Ljosalfar ending, I think it's perfect, and entirely suited. Infact I had to smile at Faeryl's intelligence.

 

[Go Boks]

Oh, I forgot to mention, for some reason, no on can use Iron. I have Iron, as do all my allies, and my Swordsmen only have bronze weapons, Iron does not show up in my city resource box, and Iron does not show up in my allies' trade screen.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'd guess you don't have the tech needed to connect the resource yet. Smelting makes Iron visible, but Iron Working is needed in order to use it.

 

[Go Boks]

Thanks MC. Will research it next. I got smelting ages ago. Surprised my two team mates didn't go after it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Teammates have a habit of researching the same thing you are researching unless you tell them to switch to something different.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

actually, playing as Arendel, both my allies desperately wanted to research Necromancy. I kept telling them "no way, you'll do what I want!" , but in the end I got distracted for a couple turns and indeed they researched it and built a couple death nodes in their territory. that is SO not-elven!