Too Happy

[Ahriman]

I think one of the problems with this mod as it stands is that there is just way too much happiness, such that from the midgame onwards happiness becomes largely irrelevant. It is just too easy to get 20+ happiness in a city through a combination of luxury resources, building bonuses and religion. I like that healthiness is more of a big deal than in regular civ (at least, except for the wood elves - and maybe amazonian types, haven't seen how Vehem's lizard/jungle code is implemented yet), but the high amounts of happiness reduce the costs of War Weariness (I have never had War Weariness matter in this mod, where as in FFH it can be insane) and reduce the gain from investment in infrastructure, which should be needed in order to support large cities.
It also weakens the value of the Hereditary Rule civic (don't need units to keep happy) and the Sylvan Ways civic.

I would suggest the following;

a) There should be large penalties for multiple religions in a city. Warhammer should be all about Intolerance. As it stands, I'm glad if I get corruption in my city or if I capture cities with foreign religions, because it just means I get extra cheap happiness from the temples (and relatively hard to acquire Influence).
I'm thinking +2 unhappiness from non-state religions in a city.
This also helps boost racial abilities like that of the greenskins, who butcher out foreign religions on conquest.
Also makes Inquisition worthwhile since they are otherwise worthless.

b) Reduce or remove some of the happiness bonuses from civics and buildings. Eg reduce barracks/courthouse etc to +1 happy with the appropriate civic.
Remove some of the luxury resources; make them either just tile bonuses, or strategic resources with some other benefit. As it stands, there are all the luxuries from FFH PLUS: Brightstone, Olives, Silver, Barley, Pipeweed, Premium beer plus some others I'm probably forgetting.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

again good feedback. I wasn't even aware olives give happiness

anyway I'll switch some boni to health instead happiness.

It's definitly planned to introduce some more unhappiness with religion and that's probably something I work on pretty soon.

 

[Ahriman]

Alternatively, have some resources that just give a tile production bonus. I like that health is hard to come by. I almost never need to build high-end health buildings like aqueducts in FFH, but here they are absolutely necessary.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Yes, that is good. Health should be hard to come by. But happiness needs to be reduced. Make it harder to come by.

 

[Ahriman]

I still find happiness pretty widespread from the midgame onwards, but that may be partly because I use the vassalage civic so much, which in addition to bonus xp and unit support gives +1 happy per mil unit.
Possibly slightly too strong? Increase the unit support bonus and kill the +1 happy per unit.

Maybe also disallow the possibility of building non-state religion temples.
I dislike how multiple-religions-friendly FFH is, and its just as bad here.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Maybe also disallow the possibility of building non-state religion temples.
I dislike how multiple-religions-friendly FFH is, and its just as bad here.

i agree with this. perhaps make a civic that cancels out this, such as free religion.

 

[Ahriman]

Free religion? In Warhammer???!?
Feels out-of-theme.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

hehe true...

 

[Ahriman]

Enemy religions should give up happy, but we this we wouldn't want them to spread so fast.

Instead, you could reduce religion spread-rate and give a free missionary unit or two when you research the relevant religion tech (for your religion only).
This might mean that you have to be very very careful who you sign open borders with, lest they flood your empire with missionaries. You'd have to train the AI to do this though; make them very wary of signing open borders with members of a religion different to their preferred one (not just their current one).

Also have some spread by event;
Requires Corruption shrine to have been built.
"A chaos cult has been found in your city. Do you:
a) Let them lie for now (adds corruption religion to your city)
b) Try to capture the cultists involved (50% no effect, 50% adds corruption to city and 4 turns disorder)
c) Exterminate the cultists and anyone near them... its the only way to be sure (4 turns of unrest in the city, -2 population)
d) Welcome brothers! (Adds +1 happy to city for 20 turns, +50 gold).

 

[rocklikeafool]

Also have some spread by event;
Requires Corruption shrine to have been built.
"A chaos cult has been found in your city. Do you:
a) Let them lie for now (adds corruption religion to your city)
b) Try to capture the cultists involved (50% no effect, 50% adds corruption to city and 4 turns disorder)
c) Exterminate the cultists and anyone near them... its the only way to be sure (4 turns of unrest in the city, -2 population)
d) Welcome brothers! (Adds +1 happy to city for 20 turns, +50 gold).

I really like the idea of an event coverin religion spread. Frankly, I've always disliked how no one ever did this before. Jus never was too good at events myself. I do think that your event needs an option that allows the Chaos Cult to be killed without a loss of population, say maybe imprisonin and hangin all members. It would naturally cause some unhappiness, but it'd keep Corruption out with loss of population.

 

[Ahriman]

Oh, and the last option of those was supposed to require Corruption of Chaos as state religion.
There *is* an option that gets rid of the cult without pop loss; the second one. But it might not work.... losing pop is the only way to be sure. Fits the attitude of the Inquisition pretty well (and fits in an Aliens reference). If you could pick an option that guaranteed removal of the Corruption without any pop loss, why would you ever choose the third option?

Remember that you can still use an inquisitor to remove the Corruption, so getting Corruption isn't forever.

The idea I is to consider Corruption something like the Cult of the Dragon.
Actually, adopting the Cult disorder mechanism directly probably isn't bad either. Any city with Corruption religion in it has a chance of going into disorder for 3 turns, unless the civ has Corruption as its State Religion.

Spreading religions (Corruption in particular) by event also helps get around the problem of being a chaos race but never getting the religion to spread to you. If you're Norsca and the Chaos Dwarves found corruption (as they tend to do) then its never going to spread halfway across the world to get to you.

No Corruption in any cities should also be a partial victory condition for the Empire and High Elves in the Rhyes style scenario.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Oh, and the last option of those was supposed to require Corruption of Chaos as state religion.

I gathered that.

There *is* an option that gets rid of the cult without pop loss; the second one. But it might not work.... losing pop is the only way to be sure. Fits the attitude of the Inquisition pretty well (and fits in an Aliens reference). If you could pick an option that guaranteed removal of the Corruption without any pop loss, why would you ever choose the third option?

That's wat I meant. I think at the least it should be a -1 pop loss.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

The idea I is to consider Corruption something like the Cult of the Dragon.
Actually, adopting the Cult disorder mechanism directly probably isn't bad either. Any city with Corruption religion in it has a chance of going into disorder for 3 turns, unless the civ has Corruption as its State Religion.

great idea.

 

[orlanth]

Wow, I just started playing this mod and I am actually very impressed..!

I like the fact that there are a lot of different resources and that this enables larger cities late game.. Although I haven't experienced a big happiness imbalance so far, a good way to tweak things for balance would be to have some resources with little or no initial empire-wide bonus that later gain one with a specific building or technology (e.g. Dye could initially have just the bonus to tile yield with no empire-wide +, and later get extra bonuses from Tailors). It would be great if some resources could also have minor unique empire-wide boni that don't necessarily relate to or (like how several of the Mana types in FfH give a small 3% to 5% bonus to research or or influence, or healing rate inside culture borders, etc.)

As long as it doesn't cause too much micromanagement I'd definitely be a fan of seeing chaos cults become a danger that has to be rooted out.. Apart from pop loss / unrest, there could also be rare events that require you to destroy a Coven or Elder Council etc to prevent spread of Corruption.