v6 feedback

[Maniac]

No.
There need to be some more ways for the Terraformers to reduce the Flowering Counter. One way would be to let the farm upgrades reduce the Flowering Counter at an exponential rate (so one Eden reduces it much more than four Farms). I was also thinking of adding some super-fungus-destructive weapon in the tech tree, but I have no idea yet how this could look in concrete.

Shameless plug from FfH, but another option could be 'fungus fires', similar to FfH forest fires. I'm not sure this is realistic science though. But IIRC Chiron has a lower percentage of oxygen. So this might mean initially fires have the tendency to quickly die out. (Or am I completely mistaken here?) As Terraformers add more oxygen to the atmosphere (by planting forests etc), and fires can last longer, simply setting all the fungus ablaze might become a good tactic to destroy the fungus. This option could be opened up by a late game Terraformer tech.

A major problem though for a balanced Flowering Counter system is the growth speed of fungus compared to the expansion speed of human factions. To have a balanced system, the fungus growth rate should be affected by map size and by how many civs start the game. Eg IIRC you play on large maps, so this means human factions will for a long time occupy a smaller percentage of the map than on standard or small maps. Meaning fungus has more time to grow uncountered, and the flowering counter will tend to be higher in all your games.
I have no idea right now how such a formula dealing with map size and # of players should look.
(I've already changed it so it takes gamespeed into account, for the record)

 

[Pfeffersack]

No.
There need to be some more ways for the Terraformers to reduce the Flowering Counter. One way would be to let the farm upgrades reduce the Flowering Counter at an exponential rate (so one Eden reduces it much more than four Farms). I was also thinking of adding some super-fungus-destructive weapon in the tech tree, but I have no idea yet how this could look in concrete.

I assume this means that farms already fight the FC, right? Farms upgrades fighting it more isn't a bad idea, but it might not be working to good in practise (because before it can work you might need to grow farms, which is currently very difficult when facing a quickly rising FC)

Shameless plug from FfH, but another option could be 'fungus fires', similar to FfH forest fires. I'm not sure this is realistic science though. But IIRC Chiron has a lower percentage of oxygen. So this might mean initially fires have the tendency to quickly die out. (Or am I completely mistaken here?) As Terraformers add more oxygen to the atmosphere (by planting forests etc), and fires can last longer, simply setting all the fungus ablaze might become a good tactic to destroy the fungus. This option could be opened up by a late game Terraformer tech.

Sounds like an interesting idea, given that it can be properly implemented. Reading up the AC manual again, I found out that Alpah Centauri has indeed much less oxygen (only 8,92% of the atmosphere). As you said, the key might be forests here. How effective the fires are, should be determined by the number of forest squares on the map. Forests could also have a more direct way on the FC - perhaps each forested tile could "eliminate" one fungus tile in the FC calculation? Don't know if this is already the case (haven't met the prequesites for being able to build them too often), but forests should be also able to expand like in original AC (though slower then fungus)

A major problem though for a balanced Flowering Counter system is the growth speed of fungus compared to the expansion speed of human factions. To have a balanced system, the fungus growth rate should be affected by map size and by how many civs start the game. Eg IIRC you play on large maps, so this means human factions will for a long time occupy a smaller percentage of the map than on standard or small maps. Meaning fungus has more time to grow uncountered, and the flowering counter will tend to be higher in all your games.
I have no idea right now how such a formula dealing with map size and # of players should look.
(I've already changed it so it takes gamespeed into account, for the record)

As long as there are 7 players default, I think the game should be balanced around that values. Even if the SMAX factions enter the planet on day (and that only matters, if then more then 7 factions are allowed in one game, means the FFH path is choosen, to make civs appear in a game), it is still to be taken in account that those are AI factions, which aren't very good at dealing with the FC.
Map Size is of course more tricky, but I think the standrad size you recommend makes for the best gaming experience.


I have kept for my v7 game track of the FC increases and will post them with my other comments.

 

[Pfeffersack]

What could also help would be introducing an option in the game setup to create a map with more or less fungus coverage (so games with different starting values for the FC would be possible). SMAC had such an option.