Two radical suggestions for enhancing the evil Civs

[Hypnotoad]

The basic proposals are this:

For at least some evil Civs/religions (at least Orcs, perhaps Octopus Overlords), the health modifiers should be reversed: so that they hate forests and love jungles and flood plains, giving them an incentive to rip your forests out after they have taken over your cities. Similarly, they don't build aquaducts; rather, they happily wallow in their filth. And they settle in the areas that others consider disgusting. What's healthy for an orc is unhealthy for a normal, well-adjusted person.

Second proposal:
For at least some evil Civs/religions (at least the Calibim, perhaps the evil religions), there shouldn't be any focus on happiness; rather, just on stopping unhappiness. It seems weird playing as the Calibim and spending time building a brewery for your people. Rather, you should just eat anyone who has the nerve to try to not work. Fear should keep them in place, not luxury. Or things along the line of the Tower of Complacency -- that also feels right. My people should never spontaneously declare "we love the despot day."

I'm not sure that the happiness thing should work for all the evil civs (Balseraph, at least, seem preoccupied with anything that makes them happy). But it at least seems right for the Calibim.

Here's a possible mechanism (but I don't think it is great):

You can't build any of the normal things to keep your people happy. However, each unit in the city prevents two citizens from rioting. Similarly, the governor's mansion (and perhaps the dungeon, etc.) prevent two citizens from rioting.

 

[thealien_83]

The first bit seems a bit hard to implement effectively, since it's a lot easier to have bad health than it is to have good, and you would also be penalizing yourself by building certain improvement and acquiring resources, which is a bit..huh. Also, you would penalize yourself by cutting down jungles since they give you bad health, but you'd still want them gone because they are useless for every other purpose.

So while the idea is interesting in a way, it might be hard to do, or so it seems to me.

As for the Calabim, that depends a lot on how iron you envision their grip on their people to be. It could be a total evil malicious tyranny where the mortals are indeed completely powerless and have no hope or ability to rise up in protest because they will be brutally victimized if they do.. Or it could be that there are a lot of stinky little mortals to go around compared to relatively few vampires, and as such they rely on more subtle (still cruel, oppressive and evil, but not quite so blatant) means to control them, and as such might actually entertain the thought of providing some cheap entertainment for the filthy masses to keep them content enough to work, breed, and thus provide labor and manpower for their undying overlords to use as they see fit. Occasional protesters will no doubt 'disappear' mysteriously, but wholesale slaughtering thousands and thousands of discontent mortal citizens might not work because it could potentially spawn an uprising the likes of which the fewer vampires might not be able to contain.

Who knows. I certainly don't know exactly how Kael and the folks envisioned the Calabim rule. But if you want them to oppress rather than "make happy" then try to focus your civics thusly. Build Dungeons instead of Carnivals, use Hereditary Rule and have your troops keep the populations down, etc and so forth.

I personally don't really feel it would be worth the trouble to revamp (haw, haw, haw) the whole system just for the Calabim. It's all about how you perceive it. Perhaps the Brewery is there to provide cheap alcohol for the mortals to keep them too stupefied to ponder the misery of their situations (worked just fine during hundreds of years of european history!), perhaps the 'Carnival' is more akin to an elaborate execution grounds where the Order of Blood demonstrates to the populace what it does to malcontents. Just apply a little of your own fantasy to it and it all works out!

As for "we love the despot".. Perhaps the mortal citizens of that city are just so damn duped that they actually think the rule of vampires is a good thing. "Of course our masters care for us you soddin' git, if dey didn't dey wouldn't 'ave stuck by us so long 'ave they? Oy, me grandpappy even said that once when he was young.."

Or.. consider this. Perhaps the happiness/unhappiness of a Calabim city doesn't really represent the mortals at all, perhaps it rather represents the vampires / ruling caste of the city. If a city is rife with unhappiness perhaps it is because the noble house that runs the city are discontent with how you run things. Perhaps infighting is just boiling over and keeping the city from running effectively. If you build a Brewery to keep them happy, perhaps instead of churning out cheap ale for the mortals it is instead used to store blood and provide "spiced up treats" for the decadent vampiric nobility? Perhaps the Carnival is closed to mortals and instead used to run macabre plays to entertain the Calabim rulers of the city?

It works for me. But perhaps I just have an overactive imagination. ^^

 

[Hypnotoad]

Thanks for the reply, Alien.

I agree that the first one would be hard to implement. I wasn't thinking that the health benefits of resources should be reversed, although of course that could be considered. I don't really understand how hard it would be to implement, though, since I've never done any modding myself.

I think one thing that's great about FfH2 is how different it is to play the different civilizations and religions. You don't need to use your imagination to think that the elves treat the forest in a special way -- it's built into the game. This fosters your imagination further. Ideally, each of the civs and religions would have a different feel. I was suggesting something like this to get the feel of orcs and overlords (whether octopus or vampire) right.

Another option would be to enhance the octopus overlord slavery civic. Make it so that none of your cities become unhappy but you need to do something or you will have serious revolts on your hands (like, where you actually have ot fight against your citizens).

 

[thealien_83]

When I say it would be hard to implement I don't mean it would be hard to code it, because I don't imagine it would be that hard, though I confess I don't mod any myself so I don't rightly know. I mean it would be hard to implement it in a game-balance aspect so that it doesn't totally rape any pretense of a balanced game. After all, keeping good health requires a lot of work, bad health requires hardly any, so it would be pretty easy for those Civ's to just sit and wallow in their filth and grow strong for it while the normal Civ's have to toil and toil to keep their health good. Health is supposed to limit the size of cities after all, if you want them to grow you have to tend to them, because when they grow they bring ill health with them. If a Civ thrived on bad health they would just have to sit tight and let their filthy cities grow on end. Sure, they'd still need the food for it, but even so..

And of course, I agree FFH is rich for it's diverse Civ's, but even as I love them for their diversity, I'd warn against trying to make each of them too unique, or it's going to be very hard to do that balancing. And more to the point, I'm not positive a change like this one is really that necessary when it mostly entails a lot of work, for what is in effect just a little tweaking.

But keep the ideas coming. FFH thrives on them. And simply because I don't outright love an idea doesn't mean Kael and the folks won't.

Cheers!

 

[khanjackal]

look at doctor doom, he's as evil as you can get, but his people love him

if the vampires occasionaly eat people, and are evil, you might think the people would distrust them, but not so!

what you describe would work for a small city state, but not a vast multi-city nation, one to compete with the bannor, kuriotates, and lojosfar

for such a large state, the vampires would be VERY interested in keeping most of the smallfolk well-fed, happy, healthy, and productive

a civ doesn't live on UUs alone, they need catapult operators, adepts, forgemen, and all the other various smallfolk to keep them competitive

and as for the orcs, they're all orcs, i think they should get, rather than bonuses to happiness, a reduction in unhappiness, being accustomed to everyone in the village a vile cruel jerk, but beyond that, they're just another civ