What would you cut?

[jimi12]

cut elephants. i dont like the idea of only being able to have a war elephant is if u capture one.

DO NOT combine sorcery and summoning. maybe combine their techs but i like customizing my casters. i would also not want any more spheres than dimensional cut. i also think there is a lot of potential with the dimensional sphere if you were to add more teleportation spells then just escape. also DO NOT get rid of fireballs. maybe remove collateral damage but keep them in. do remove their effects on war weariness tho. the spell system is the single most unique and fun feature in ffh. its complexity is intended and i dont think it discourages new players but makes them excited to learn and try more.

i think inn, dungeon, grove, bear totem, could all be either improved or deleted. bear totem only lets you build a national unit and provides no other benefits. you may build one in your whole empire. thats pointless.

crime rates are pointless. i wouldnt be sad to see them go.

make the specialized defense against fire, cold, etc either way higher to make it worth taking the promotion or make it so you can get the promotions by another way than just xp, like adding it to a building. right now, nobody would take +20% vs cold but somebody may take +80% vs cold. if not, remove them as options and give them on specific units.

remove blight. it is nothing more than an irritation. change with something like, i dunno, imps popping up everywhere and pissing you off.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I say remove Dungeons, or better yet move them to a higher tech, change their graphics, give them a large defensive bonus, and rename them Keeps.

I still say make all the buildings worthwhile, but don't cut them. You might want to make civs than can't use their units, etc, not be able to build them though.

Don't cut any spell spheres or combine sorcery or summoning (I might be ok with combining the techs, but definitely not the units)

I personally want to change Alchemy Labs to be national wonders, which would be able to create almost any resource from other resources, with some downsides. Of course, this would actually be adding a lot more to the game not cutting anything, since the only way I know how to do that would be to add a plethora of new require-caster-buildings for each alchemy experiment.


I don't think that you should remove Blight or any other Armageddon event, but they should only have a chance of happening with a minimum AC, not always occur as soon as it hits the value. It is illogical, annoying, too much of a bonus for experienced players, and hurts the AI. I'd rather there be other equally devastating but very different events that might happen instead.

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

I like the variety of late game units and buildings. It gives the opportunity for further specialization in the end game and forces more priority decisions on research and infrastructure. Moreover, all of the fine work you blokes have done on diversifying the look and feel of the late game units for each civ would go to waste if things started getting cut needlessly. I still get some enjoyment out of checking out the units in the civpedia when I start a new civ ("Oh, so an immortal looks like *that* for the Doviello. Neat."). These things matter. The cosmetic and functional variety between civs is a large part of FfH's charm (and re playability).

If you do decide to remove some of the late game buildings, please consider making them civ-specific buildings instead (with altered features). For example: The Bear Totem is no longer required to build a berserker, but instead becomes a temporary promotion to melee units produced in the city and +4 experience to a berserker built in the city. The Bear Totem becomes a unique building for Clan of Embers and Doviello. Doing things like this is preferable to simply removing buildings. It has the dual effect of both simplifying the game, on average, and adding more diversity.

My 2 cents.

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

Things that I figure you could cut:

Crime Rate
Ratcatcher's Guild (cool ideas that have nearly no effect on the game)
Under-used/powered spells (hopefully to be replaced with alternatives)
Scripts and Python calls that get create large burdens on the system

I would like to put heavy emphasis on the last point. In terms of concepts implemented, I think that FfH is pretty close to ideal. Balance, AI integration, and performance is the main issues now. I read in another thread that the function used to create treants from ancient forests runs every time a unit moves. If that's true, that would be what I'm talking about. Certain functions should be reworked to make the mod run a bit smoother.

 

[Demus]

elephants can probably go, that or change them (they're just wandering walls at the moment).
Dungeon and alchemy lab should be changed. Maibe add additional beneficial events for them?
Same with ratcatchers guild and crime rate: their events should pop up a lot more often (crime rate / 5 chance of occurring?). Ratcatchers should be able to spread if the crime rate gets to high, to cities nearby with a high crime rate, just to make them more interesting.
The murder event is just redicilous, get it right once and you'll always get it right. Eighter remove it or make several versions of it.

 

[eerr]

seige workshops, catapults are kinda useless-you invest production like magic, but it keeps taking more, more, more to get more catapults

instead, either have catapults not require a siege workshop "or"

have several diffrent siege units produced, depending on what level of "siege" workshop the city has, the more the upgrade-the more powerful the unit!!

(levels 0-4 maybe?)
a single huge production city can take production to the extreme!

 

[Ekolite]

I'd like to see more variety with the siege engines. Things like ballistas, maybe rams etc.

Some could have emphasis on city bombadment, some collateral damage etc.

 

[kumquatelvis]

Wow, all you people that hate dungeons must never get war weariness in the 40s and 50s (or higher). I find them quite useful in those situations.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I would rather have all the functions of Dungeons included in Keeps, which would be a later game defensive structure.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

remove building requirments for basic units like axe men and archers. Keep the building, but let them give xp to the units. Historicly(sp) you didnt need a training yard to become a swordsman, but it sure helped out on the battle field. Even now the AI doesnt use them well so a game option had to be done to let the AI build them instead of a bunch of teir 1 priest and warriors.

 

[Ringtailed]

what would I cut? Weapons promotions >_< Actually I'd probably just reform them (ie: none for warriors, bronze only for axemen, iron for champions and mithril for T4)

I'd also cut the Vitalize spell or somehow remove the micromanagement aspect of it. I really don't like terraforming.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'd probably cut them from the SDK (actually, I already have), mostly because I want to make more weapons promotions with different kinds of bonuses (not all base strength) and different costs (probably applied through spells). The SDK was getting in the way (well, I could have just changed the xml global defines, but I figured I could make the game a little faster by cutting the code)

I really don't think that you should be able to get the weapons before the logical prerequisite techs.

 

[jwin]

The boat line after sailing: require sailing to build all ships. Other ships would come available at construction, engineering, and blasting powder. Deception would allow either pirates, or better yet, the pirate promotion to any ships.

Ability to buy multiple slaves in a turn with the slave market: a horrible exploit that allows you to rush building super cheap. Also makes slavery civic fairly useless. I would only allow one slave per city per turn or something like that.

Capturing animals with the current method: It doesn't really make sense that you can capture a lion, then whisper in its ear to rest in a spot until healed, then walk all the way accross the continent by itself and climb into a cage. I would rather see the animal become an item that a unit has to transport back to a city to cage.

Golden age from great people: This encourages the AI to hold onto GP and not use them very effectively.

One aspect of raider trait: It gives extra xp, combat and movement bonus, and extra money. I think this makes it quite imbalanced against aggressive, and would be just fine with one less of these. See below.

Automatic xp for heroes: Heores should be doing heroic things, not sitting in cities. Take the 1xp/combat from raider trait and give it to heroes to replace the auto gain.

One aspect of fireball: Direct damage, collateral damage, and bombardment are too much for a desposable unit. I would take out bombardment to make seige useful, decrease the power but increase to collateral damage.

Summoning and divine for Ashen Veil: Makes them by far the best priests. Either remove one, or give Ashen Veil 2 priest units. Or give summoning at tier 3.

Resource requirements for proests: Annoying if yoiu are a religion and can't find the resource. Make it give a bonus to divine units instead if you do have the resource.

Availability of higher promotions: I think it is too easy to over specialize units, especially with city raiders and city defenders. I would make combat 1 required for raider1, combat 3 required for raider2, and combat 5 required for raider 3. Otherwise, you can easily make throw away units able to bring down seasoned units. The same with mobilites, I think you should have to be high level before you can move 2 or three times as far as another similar unit.


I know you meant what to cut as in what to remove, but I will also gove suggestions for what to cut as in power or rate.

Weapon promtions: Getting iron early makes your warriors too strong too fast. I would rather see it as a percentage, like 10%,20%, and 40%. For a tier4 unit, it would result in about the same increase (I know it would stack with other promotions differently, but the base value would be about the same), but it wouldn't make one civ's warriors more powerful than another's tier 2 units.

Passive spread of religion: Too often, most of the worl becomes the same religion because of the passive spread of religion from one civ to another. If another religion is not founded within 20 turns or so, it usually has spread enough that most civs are switching to it.


Thanks for letting us put in extra input, I'm on my way over to the summoning/sorcery discussion now.

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

Golden age from great people: This encourages the AI to hold onto GP and not use them very effectively.

Have you noticed the new Svartalfar recon ability (Will be in .31)? It allows them to 'kidnap' Great People from other civilization, at a chance of war. If the AI did not use Golden Ages, there would be no to kidnap.

 

[xienwolf]

I like a lot of jwin's ideas. Especially the idea about the Techs past sailing, and the hero XP gain

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Lightbringers are pretty pointless.

 

[TheCowSaysMoooo]

The boat line after sailing: require sailing to build all ships. Other ships would come available at construction, engineering, and blasting powder. Deception would allow either pirates, or better yet, the pirate promotion to any ships.

Very much diggin' this, piracy from a promotion at Deception especially. Similar to HN in that you can attack anyone, but not HN, then impose a diplomatic penalty for those you've attacked (-x You sponsor pirates!). This also gets rid of the annoying problem of not being able to carry non-HN units on an HN privateer/pirate ship.

Getting rid of Optics/Astronomy also manages to cut some techs that, aside from a couple wonders and abilities that can be moved to other techs, head only toward a very narrow use line of units... and a line of units that the AI is pretty mediocre about using properly.

Ability to buy multiple slaves in a turn with the slave market: a horrible exploit that allows you to rush building super cheap. Also makes slavery civic fairly useless. I would only allow one slave per city per turn or something like that.

Definitely. I built back-to-back wonders in 2 turns with slaves... I had cash, but if I recall correctly, it wasn't enough to normally rush even one of the wonders.

One aspect of fireball: Direct damage, collateral damage, and bombardment are too much for a desposable unit. I would take out bombardment to make seige useful, decrease the power but increase to collateral damage.

If they end up going with the merging of sorcery and summoning as listed in that thread, there'll be no more meteors, which will help cut some of the bombardment problems... I'd hold off on this until after any magic system changes, and the new city defense changes, then revisit fireballs and see how they stand.

Resource requirements for priests: Annoying if you are a religion and can't find the resource. Make it give a bonus to divine units instead if you do have the resource.

Depending on if/how the magic system merge goes through, perhaps the appropriate resource would grant one of the spells that the divine unit would get... if you don't have the resource, you have to get the promotion to cast that particular spell.

 

[westamastaflash]

Lightbringers are pretty pointless.

How about just make lightbringers a Unique Scout with movment 2 and sentry for the malakim?

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

They need a unique spell too, maybe 'scry'. It would reveal a 3x3 area in a random area of the map, but costs 5 xp.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Man, I seriously can't agree with most of jwin's list. Feels like a big bunch of pointless nerfs that would make the game more generic and boring.

Ability to buy multiple slaves in a turn with the slave market: a horrible exploit that allows you to rush building super cheap. Also makes slavery civic fairly useless. I would only allow one slave per city per turn or something like that.

Oh come on. Slave rushing requires a civic, a holy shrine, and only works on buildings. It should be much better than normal rush buying for what it works on. Much, much better. And since when is making the slavery civic useless a bad thing? We need that bit of spite for the morons who think that civic's any good in regular BtS.

Capturing animals with the current method: It doesn't really make sense that you can capture a lion, then whisper in its ear to rest in a spot until healed, then walk all the way accross the continent by itself and climb into a cage. I would rather see the animal become an item that a unit has to transport back to a city to cage.

It works fine as it is. I mean, what happens if the carrier unit dies under your suggestion?

Golden age from great people: This encourages the AI to hold onto GP and not use them very effectively.

So then what are human players supposed to use GPs they have no other use for? GP GAs are great because they're a standby option all GPs can use if none of their unique functions do you any good. I'd be pissed to see them go.

One aspect of raider trait: It gives extra xp, combat and movement bonus, and extra money. I think this makes it quite imbalanced against aggressive, and would be just fine with one less of these. See below.

Aiming to balance the traits among each other is stupid. You have to look at entire civilizations: Their uniques as well as their full trait combos. Some traits SHOULD be better than others; the balance comes in giving out varying levels of power in uniques to compensate, as well as balancing the full trait combos (I.E 2 mediocre traits = 2 crappy traits along with 1 mediocre trait = 1 good trait alongside one crappy one)

Automatic xp for heroes: Heores should be doing heroic things, not sitting in cities. Take the 1xp/combat from raider trait and give it to heroes to replace the auto gain.

Forcing the heroes to risk themselves to become, ah, heroic, is stupid in a combat system like Civ4's where luck plays such an important factor. One of a kind units NEED a safe way to become really strong before they start getting in the thick of things (that, or sick base strength like what Duin's got)

One aspect of fireball: Direct damage, collateral damage, and bombardment are too much for a desposable unit. I would take out bombardment to make seige useful, decrease the power but increase to collateral damage.

Fireball sucks at all of those except bombardment though. That's the worst thing you could take away from it, especially because in this game siege is more for collateral (80% withdrawal rate makes it incredible for that)

Summoning and divine for Ashen Veil: Makes them by far the best priests. Either remove one, or give Ashen Veil 2 priest units. Or give summoning at tier 3.

Ashen Veil is horrible and needs all the help it can get.

Availability of higher promotions: I think it is too easy to over specialize units, especially with city raiders and city defenders. I would make combat 1 required for raider1, combat 3 required for raider2, and combat 5 required for raider 3. Otherwise, you can easily make throw away units able to bring down seasoned units. The same with mobilites, I think you should have to be high level before you can move 2 or three times as far as another similar unit.

I don't really object to what you said about the city raider lines, but mobility out of the gate isn't that bad. You've got to give up a combat promotion for it, a big deal considering how good combat promos are in FfH.

Weapon promtions: Getting iron early makes your warriors too strong too fast. I would rather see it as a percentage, like 10%,20%, and 40%. For a tier4 unit, it would result in about the same increase (I know it would stack with other promotions differently, but the base value would be about the same), but it wouldn't make one civ's warriors more powerful than another's tier 2 units.

That last bit doesn't happen as is. Anywho, Smelting and Iron working are expensive commitments that aren't guaranteed to pay off (you might not have iron), so the rewards should be godly.

Passive spread of religion: Too often, most of the worl becomes the same religion because of the passive spread of religion from one civ to another. If another religion is not founded within 20 turns or so, it usually has spread enough that most civs are switching to it.

This I can actually agree with though. People should be forced to take a more active role in spreading their religion.