What would you cut?

[jwin]

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

I'm happy to look at both sides of the arguments, and can see where you are coming from on all your points except this one. AV is the most powerful religion, STW is the most powerful civic. Getting a better hero in Hemah (or whichever religions you see as more powerful) doesn't make up for the benefits of STW plus summoning priests with ring of fire. Especially since two of the evil civs who are likely to pursue AV have sommoning trait. 4-5 priests can take on the world. Just ask Daladin.

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

In the meantime, you've got to deal with hell though....

 

[psychoak]

Hell is a minor nuisance. Assuming you get spring, it gives you death damage boosts to your units in return for lost health. The nukes going off as the AC go up can be a bit of a problem, but you're not the only one that gets tagged when they hit. Since you're running stw, heath is largely irrelevant, you'll hit your happiness cap before you run out of food unless you've got plains hills on most of your tiles, in which case stw is the only civic you'll be able to use them with unless you go fol and wait for ancient forests.

The real drawbacks to AV are the religious units. Yes, ritualists are really powerful. They also take reagents. If you really need a life and you play games to use optimized build orders to win in the best way possible, this isn't an issue and you'll avoid the religion when you don't have reagents. For anyone playing for fun, it means no high level magic if you go AV without accessible reagents. All other religions give you an alternative to the requirement needed for archmages and summoners. Diseased corpses are nice too, but they have one . .. .. .. .. . of a drawback. If you're on defense with them, you're screwed. That 30% drop is real nice once you transfer it to the enemy stack, but it hurts like hell when your corpse dies again because it sucks compared to a stygian guard, and can't even compete with a drown till it has some experience racked up.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Alrighty, it seems that people are proposing detailed suggestions, so I'll propose mine. Don't want to miss out now do I?

- remove armoured cavalry and domesticate elephants tech
- elephants and tortoises replaces knights for certain civs
- remove building requirements for horsesmen, chariots, horse archers
- move chariots back to horseback riding
- stables gives +5 experience for all mounted units, and enables knights, war chariots
- archery requirement removed for stirrups
- stirrups enables knights, but requires a metal resource

- combine mithril weapons into mithril working
- remove weaponsmith (mithril is hard enough to find; we don't need a building to use it!)
- remove building requirements for melee units.
- training yard gives +5 experience to melee units and enables phalanx, immortals, berserkers

- remove dragonship and galleon
- Remove building and resource requirements for ships.
- move shipyards to sailing. +10 experience to all ships

- remove building requirements for archery units
- remove bowyers
- archery range gives +5 experience to archery units and enables marksmen, flurries

- remove building requirements for scout units
- hunting lodge gives +5 experience to scout units and enables beastmasters
- combine feral bond into animal mastery
- commune with nature requires animal mastery
- combine poison tech into tracking

- remove machinst shops.
- archery range experience benefits crossbowmen
- remove building requirement for catapults and cannons
- siege workshop gives +10 experience to catapults and cannons
- bowyer tech requirement removed for machinery. Crossbowmen still requires bowyers tech.
- iron working requirement removed for blasting powder and precision
- gunpowder resource removed

- move the Inn from trade to guilds
- shadows moved from guilds to deception

- remove rage and bear totems. Berserkers enabled by fanaticism.
- feral bond requirement for commune with nature removed

- combine divine right into theology
- divine essence is placed after theology (don't need mithril working anymore)

If we're doing away with the summoning/sorcery concept as Kael suggested:
- sorcery enabled by KoTE
- move ring of warding into sorcery
- move beasts of agares into malevolent designs
- Remove soul forge.
- move rites of Oghma into arcane lore
- move obsidian gates into omniscience
- disciple units have abilities, not spells that require mana nodes

Oh and one more thing: if Kael is planning to give all priests cure disease and heal, would you please also give that ability to Grigori medics?

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

Psshhh... can't find it now, but I think someone in this thread speculated about removing crossbowmen (redundant). I'd like to disagree with that. It is nice to have one elite defencive unit in the late game.

 

[gibbon_malus]

1. Remove the Tracking Tech: its just an empty placeholder ATM. Move the Sentry promotion to Hidden Paths. Increase the beaker costs of Poisons and Animal Handling to compensate.
2. Remove the Dungeon Building: alternatively, just remove the from dungeons.
3. Remove the Summoning Tech: move Gibbon Goetia to Arcane Lore, make the Illusionist and Puppeteer into mage or archmage UUs with special abilities (e.g. the illusionist might be able to summon phantoms and/or give all his summons HN)
4. Remove the Soul Debt Tech: move the Reliquary to Religious Law; move Beasts of Agares to Strength of Will.
5. Remove the Soul Forge Wonder: its pretty useless.
6. Remove the Pass Through the Ether Tech: move Obsidian Gates and the Nexus to either Strength of Will or Omniscience.
7. Remove the Ethereal Call Tech: move the Rites of Oghma to Strength of Will, make the Eater of Dreams into an Archmage UU.
8. Remove the Divine Right Tech: move Inquisitors to Theology. Make it so that one can have up to 6 archmages but only 3 inquisitors and 3 high priests. Alternatively kill inquisitors and give all High Priests the command and purge religion abilities.
9. Remove the Bear Totem Building: it now does exactly nothing.
10. Remove the Mercantilism Tech: move the Great Merchant to Taxation, move both civics to Guilds.
11. Remove the Tavern Building: make the Grigori Tavern a Grigori UB of the Inn, give Inns +1 with Consumption and increase their trade income bonus from +25% to +50%.
12. Remove the Theology pre-req from Divine Essence: makes the tech too expensive. Alternatively have it require Priesthood or Religious Law.
13. Lower the cost of Mithril Working: Mithril Working is currently 4800 making it just as expensive as Armored Cavalry, Strength of Will and Precision (and 2X as expensive as Righteousness or Theology), but it grants no T4 unit. It should be reduced to 2400 .
14. Reduce the cost of Mithril Weapons and Divine Essence: lower them both to 4800 . They would still be as expensive as the better T4 granting techs like Strength of Will and Armored Cavalry.
15. Remove Purge the Unfaithful: its not a very good project, kind of like a very expensive poor man's inquisitor.

 

[OzzyKP]

Yay! Cuts! I definitely think some smart cuts are needed. It is very easy for mods to add more and more stuff till they are bloated with unnecessary crap. But no matter how much excess there is, people will usually still demand more. So don't be afraid to annoy some folks to keep the game streamlined, fun, and interesting. Mod-mods like magister's can add in all the excessive stuff that people like.

My recommendations for cuts:

Buildings:
- Market (but lower the inflation/upkeep rate so your economy doesn't automatically go to hell after you get like 3-4 cities)
- Elder Council
- Pagan Temple
- Herbalist
- Tavern (or make it a Grigori UB)

Get rid of building pre-requisites for units altogether. They are just an annoyance and hinder the AI. So remove/change the following:
- Hunting Lodge (or just have it provide XP)
- Mage Guild (or just have it provide XP)
- Archery Range (or just have it provide XP)
- Bowyer
- Stables (or just have it provide XP)
- Hippodrome
- Large Animal Stables
- Weaponsmith
- Training Yard (or just have it provide XP)
- Siege Workshop (or just have it provide XP)
- Machinists Shop
- Bear Totem

Wonders:
- Mokka's Cauldron
- Catacomb Librarus
- Temple of Temperance (or give it a more interesting bonus)
- Hall of Kings (or give it a more interesting bonus since it is similar to theater of dreams)

Units:
- Lightbringers
- Trojan Horse
- Dragonship (or cut any one of the dragon/trieme/galley trio)
- Crossbows
- Berzerker

Techs:
- Tracking
- Rage

Promotions:
- Scourge (for the same reason elf/dwarf slaying was removed)
- Demon Slaying (for the same reason elf/dwarf slaying was removed)
- Undead Slaying (for the same reason elf/dwarf slaying was removed)
- Mobility (I agree with what the others have said about mobility. Get rid of mobility II altogether and make mobility I only available to mounted units (and disciple units for spiritual civs)

Game Mechanics:
- Terraforming. I'm sure I'll be roasted on a spit for suggesting it, but it is tedious micro-management and the AI struggles with it. I know there are many players who love crafting perfect cities and want every bell & whistle imaginable, but I think it hurts game play. It takes away strategic choice. Instead of making a difficult choice over where to place cities it doesn't matter anymore. Any spot on the map will, eventually, become a paradise. Terraforming is so powerful there is just no decision, everyone will do it. I recommend keeping bloom for druids, maybe keeping Genesis, but getting rid of scorch, spring, and vitalize. I think it would be very good for the game. I know it'll never happen, but cutting terraforming is my strongest recommendation.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

gibbon_malus: I mentioned a lot of cutting back on technologies and building requirements, and we share a lot in common, with differences being minor points that are best left to developers or irrational fans that don't think things through. But we both agree on the general way to trim the complexity of the game. Remove confusing features, mostly requirements but also a couple units and spells that nobody ever uses, to make it easier for beginners to learn. Great minds think alike.

But... "cutting back on techs" does NOT mean lowering the beaker requirements for technologies. As a matter of fact, one thing that people have been complaining about is the lack of specialization in the late game, when a strong economy could clear the tech tree anyway. Number of techs have been reduced, but the beaker costs of the techs must actually INCREASE, and by a LOT. Sure, reducing the beaker cost of early, worker techs I can live with (doesn't mean I like it though), but the late techs should be prohibitive, to the point where you can only have a couple of them. In return, the rewards should be a lot greater than just 3 national units. My general proposal is to push all the goodies to the late techs, forcing you to focus on a particular branch and stick to it.

Details-wise, I see one thing on the list that worries me a little: Eater of Dreams as an archmage UU? Sounds a *little* scary. Just a little.

 

[Demus]

Details-wise, I see one thing on the list that worries me a little: Eater of Dreams as an archmage UU? Sounds a *little* scary. Just a little.

just be glad they're cutting the meteors EoD's always were scary, basically under any summoner player. I can't see normal spells having the same type of effect when cast multiple times

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Remove the Soul Forge Wonder: its pretty useless.

I like this wonder; we don't have so many wonders anyway. Cost could come down, though.

 

[gibbon_malus]

gibbon_malus: I mentioned a lot of cutting back on technologies and building requirements, and we share a lot in common, with differences being minor points that are best left to developers or irrational fans that don't think things through. But we both agree on the general way to trim the complexity of the game. Remove confusing features, mostly requirements but also a couple units and spells that nobody ever uses, to make it easier for beginners to learn. Great minds think alike.

Indeed, except I like most units having a building pre-req.

But... "cutting back on techs" does NOT mean lowering the beaker requirements for technologies. As a matter of fact, one thing that people have been complaining about is the lack of specialization in the late game, when a strong economy could clear the tech tree anyway. Number of techs have been reduced, but the beaker costs of the techs must actually INCREASE, and by a LOT. Sure, reducing the beaker cost of early, worker techs I can live with (doesn't mean I like it though), but the late techs should be prohibitive, to the point where you can only have a couple of them. In return, the rewards should be a lot greater than just 3 national units. My general proposal is to push all the goodies to the late techs, forcing you to focus on a particular branch and stick to it.

Well, perhaps I wasn't clear with my suggestion on costs. What bothers me isn't so much the absolute costs but the relative costs between high end techs. That is, it wouldn't matter much to me if Mithril Weapons where 10000 rather than the current 7200, but only if Strength of Will costs around the same amount too. When you have a situation in which some T4 techs cost as little as 1200 (beastmasters) or 2400 (high priests, druids) while others (immortals, phalanxes) cost 7200+... well, thats a bit unbalancing. Phalanxes are not 3 times stronger than High Priests, or 50% stronger than Archmages. If anything they could very well be weaker.

The costs are so high (relative to the strength of the techs) that I routinely win the game via Archmages or High Priests long before I bother getting Phalanxes.

Now, I understand that the tech tree might be a little short for people playing on large maps (since you can research faster due to the larger number of cities). And further, I understand that this might warrant making tech in general a little more expensive so as to keep the total number of beakers constant even while the number of techs declines. But, regardless of whether that is done, I feel that the tech cost of T4 melee units needs to come down relative to the cost of T4 magic, recon and disciple units. It doesnt matter much whether thats achieved by decreasing the cost of Mithril Working / Mithril Weapons or increasing the cost of other T4 techs.

Details-wise, I see one thing on the list that worries me a little: Eater of Dreams as an archmage UU? Sounds a *little* scary. Just a little.

True, it sounds quite strong. But its a wonderful unit, and it would be a shame to scrap it. Besides, its already one hell of a scary unit, it would simply gain a couple new tricks in addition to its existing summons. If it does turn out to be too strong, the team could always nerf it later, say by limiting its ability to eat population to once per turn (as was done with Vampires).

 

[eerr]

building requirements for units are not fun, cut most of them-if not all!

 

[gibbon_malus]

Buildings:
- Market (but lower the inflation/upkeep rate so your economy doesn't automatically go to hell after you get like 3-4 cities)
- Elder Council
- Pagan Temple
- Herbalist

Actually I like all of those. They provide strong bonuses at the beginning of the game, and give early specialists. They should stay.

Get rid of building pre-requisites for units altogether. They are just an annoyance and hinder the AI. So remove/change the following:
- Hunting Lodge (or just have it provide XP)
- Mage Guild (or just have it provide XP)
- Archery Range (or just have it provide XP)
- Bowyer
- Stables (or just have it provide XP)
- Hippodrome
- Large Animal Stables
- Weaponsmith
- Training Yard (or just have it provide XP)
- Siege Workshop (or just have it provide XP)
- Machinists Shop
- Bear Totem

I like those, and besides, thats half the buildings in the game!

There is something to be said over building pre-reqs crippling the AI, but I think that changing the buildings to grant xp is not a good idea, at least not for all buildings (there is probably enough xp out there from other sources already). Perhaps its best to simply make the "no AI building requirements" option be enabled by default (I always turn it on at any rate).

Machinist Shop, Bowyer and Hippodrome are already decently useful, but the latter two could use some beefing up. Bear Totem and Weaponsmith can probably be removed though (they arrive late and provide no meaningful benefit). Alternatively, the team could make those buildings useful:

• Weaponsmith: increase the unit production bonus to say 20-25% and give it some sort of economy malus (say some )
• Bear Totem: make it a Doviello UB, grants melee units the Savagery promotion (+1 offensive strength, +10% city attack). It would help to give the civ a little more flavor near the end game.

Wonders:
- Mokka's Cauldron
- Catacomb Librarus
- Temple of Temperance (or give it a more interesting bonus)
- Hall of Kings (or give it a more interesting bonus since it is similar to theater of dreams)

The first three are cool IMO. Although, now that the graft flesh spell is gone, it might be a decent idea to change Mokka Cauldron so that instead of its current effect, it allows living units in the city to be turned into Flesh Golems as per the current spell. It would be a big buff to the Cauldron.

Good point about the Hall of Kings though. Might be a decent idea to change it so it works like the Sistine Chappel in BTS (+2 culture per specialist, and +5 culture per religious building). Maybe even remove the bonus to specialists and make it a plain +5 bonus to state religion temples and shrines (maybe include basilicas, asylums and the like too).

Units:
- Lightbringers
- Trojan Horse
- Dragonship (or cut any one of the dragon/trieme/galley trio)
- Crossbows
- Berzerker

Techs:
- Tracking
- Rage

Promotions:
- Scourge (for the same reason elf/dwarf slaying was removed)
- Demon Slaying (for the same reason elf/dwarf slaying was removed)
- Undead Slaying (for the same reason elf/dwarf slaying was removed)
- Mobility (I agree with what the others have said about mobility. Get rid of mobility II altogether and make mobility I only available to mounted units (and disciple units for spiritual civs)

Game Mechanics:
- Terraforming. I'm sure I'll be roasted on a spit for suggesting it, but it is tedious micro-management and the AI struggles with it. I know there are many players who love crafting perfect cities and want every bell & whistle imaginable, but I think it hurts game play. It takes away strategic choice. Instead of making a difficult choice over where to place cities it doesn't matter anymore. Any spot on the map will, eventually, become a paradise. Terraforming is so powerful there is just no decision, everyone will do it. I recommend keeping bloom for druids, maybe keeping Genesis, but getting rid of scorch, spring, and vitalize. I think it would be very good for the game. I know it'll never happen, but cutting terraforming is my strongest recommendation.

I don agree with any of those (except removing tracking). Interesting reasoning on terraforming though.

That said, it might be a good idea to make terraforming more difficult. In particular, maybe Summon Treant and Vitalize should switch places so that Vitalize becomes a FoL-only spell and Nature III Archmages gain a summon.

That would help to restrict terraforming somewhat, making it available only to FoL players (and non-dwarven neutrals via Druids).

 

[Nimbus]

I would cut the Philosophy Tech.
It provides no civics, no buildings and no units. All it does is provide access to the Bone Palace wonder and an Altar of Lounnattar wonder, both of which can be moved somewhere else on the tech branch. It is is tech you dread having to research, with for some reason, costs 400 beakers while the next 2 techs after it Way of the Wise and Way of the Wicked only cost 300 beakers.
It is a no fun, little reward tech.

 

[Gray-Z]

Someone needs to make a modmod that implements all the cuts in this thread.
I know a prefect name for it already: Uninstall Fall from Heaven 2.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I may end up un-cutting most of these in Magister Modmod. Or I might come up with yet another system of cross sphere spells.

If I were to create an uncut modmod I'd want to uncut almost everything that has been removed since Light. Unfortunately, I don't have any version but Shadow on my computer (since my hard drive had to be replaced around Christmas), so I wouldn't have access to most of it.

 

[OzzyKP]

I like those, and besides, thats half the buildings in the game!

There is something to be said over building pre-reqs crippling the AI, but I think that changing the buildings to grant xp is not a good idea, at least not for all buildings (there is probably enough xp out there from other sources already). Perhaps its best to simply make the "no AI building requirements" option be enabled by default (I always turn it on at any rate).

Machinist Shop, Bowyer and Hippodrome are already decently useful, but the latter two could use some beefing up. Bear Totem and Weaponsmith can probably be removed though (they arrive late and provide no meaningful benefit). Alternatively, the team could make those buildings useful:

• Weaponsmith: increase the unit production bonus to say 20-25% and give it some sort of economy malus (say some )
• Bear Totem: make it a Doviello UB, grants melee units the Savagery promotion (+1 offensive strength, +10% city attack). It would help to give the civ a little more flavor near the end game.

Good ideas regarding the weaponsmith & bear totem. I think those are good and would make keeping the buildings worthwhile. But I definitely think building requirements for units is an unnecessary complication both for the AI and players and should go. If some of the above buildings can be given a more interesting role than just allowing the building of X unit, then keep them, otherwise give 'em the ax. The more axed the better.

 

[sylvain5477]

By the way it would be nice to have more types of lairs (I know nothing to do here but he!...) speading the too fast disappering animals (I'm modding python for map creator and only 4 lairs are not enough IMO).

 

[Fenboy]

The CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml still contains the following:

<MemoryType>MEMORY_NUKED_US</MemoryType>
<iMemoryAttitudePercent>-200</iMemoryAttitudePercent>
</MemoryAttitudePercent>
<MemoryAttitudePercent>
<MemoryType>MEMORY_NUKED_FRIEND</MemoryType>
<iMemoryAttitudePercent>-100</iMemoryAttitudePercent>
</MemoryAttitudePercent>

Seems a little odd...

 

[Caradoc]

In general, I'm hoping for less redundancy and more flavor. Ideally, there would be a core of basic, essential elements and wide diversity across civilizations. I'd like to see each civ have 3 or 4 special buildings (besides the capitol), 3 or 4 unique units (that are more than reskins), and a special tech. I'd like other elements available on a racial or religious basis. And even more available through events.

As to magic, let's start with a core of elemental and alignment schools available to everyone. Then add others as 'prestige' schools tied to races, alignments, religions, or technologies. Provide additional spells along the same lines, as well as to specific heroes.