Why windmills or Earth mana too powerful

[Gromblmompf]

I like windmills... first of all, they add some variety and secondly, they look pretty. Getting 2 food out of a hill makes sense for some cities, especially if you build those windmills on a hill thats next to a river. Fully improved windmills gave a bigger net income (2/2/2) compared to a mine (1/3), tho you had the small chance of finding a resource with your mine. A fair tradeoff imho.

However, i feel that in FfH, they are vastly inferior to a mine, especially when you happen to have an earth node or two. In a recent game i played as Khazad with the Kilmorph Holy City, by turn 400 ALL my mines ad found a special resource... add the extra hammers from Arete and Blasting Powder and there is simply no reason anymore to build a windmill.

So either reduce the odds of earth mana finding extra resources or give windmills an extra food with a late tech...

 

[Demus]

i'd rather see windmills get an additional commerce bonus... 3 food from a hill tile would be to much.

besides, in games where you're not a dwarven kilmorph player, the mines are a lot less powefull. dwarfs are supposed to prefer mines over windmills

 

[seZereth]

i'd rather see windmills get an additional commerce bonus... 3 food from a hill tile would be to much.

besides, in games where you're not a dwarven kilmorph player, the mines are a lot less powefull. dwarfs are supposed to prefer mines over windmills

thats the point.
And if you are Khazad, you got your other drawbacks, like not having spells.
otherwise you could start the old elves and FoL discussion, there are some synergies and there are others. In the end, its a fun thing discovering synergies and trying new crazy ideas with the endless possibilities of FfH, while I believe when we are done with Shadow, you will always be able to counter strategies with some creativity and experience.

 

[Gromblmompf]

In a game where you dont have earth mana, mines are a lot less powerful maybe... but then, earth mana is easy to get. In my last game as Flauros, only HALF the mines hadnt produced an extra resource by turn 400. I still got an extra resource every 5th turn or so... with only 1 earth mana. And even without Arete, mines outshine windmills. By far.

Dont get me wrong, i love the game, i just dont see what windmills are for.

 

[Sureshot]

now this might make too much sense, but why not have it so that windmills give extra commerce and production based on how much Air mana you have? heh

and watermills getting extra based on how much water mana you have

i mean, if you have lots of control over water or air, you could really make your mills more productive

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Windmills are for massively hilly terrain, the places where you can't even support all the mines even if you farmed every farm-able tile, even with sanitation. They exist, they sometimes are situated near critical resources, and sometimes they are there as critical locations. Windmills are never something you want to build, but when you need them, nothing can really replace them.

 

[Mailbox]

Windmills are for massively hilly terrain, the places where you can't even support all the mines even if you farmed every farm-able tile, even with sanitation. They exist, they sometimes are situated near critical resources, and sometimes they are there as critical locations. Windmills are never something you want to build, but when you need them, nothing can really replace them.

Windmills are also nice for grabbing tundra and ice resources without water but with hills.

 

[.SinClaire.]

now this might make too much sense, but why not have it so that windmills give extra commerce and production based on how much Air mana you have? heh

and watermills getting extra based on how much water mana you have

i mean, if you have lots of control over water or air, you could really make your mills more productive

noyce,

Spoiler :

10charblehblehblahHI!HI!HI!

 

[EvilBob22]

I don't know if it is something on my setup, or if it is because I'm still using 0.22h, but the AI seems to LOVE windmills (and farms). They may have a few cottages, but any where that has access to water ends up getting farmed. Non-elf nations even chop down all their trees for more farm land.

My usual setup is huge fractal map, default number of civs, epic speed, prince difficulty.

 

[Demus]

I don't know if it is something on my setup, or if it is because I'm still using 0.22h, but the AI seems to LOVE windmills (and farms). They may have a few cottages, but any where that has access to water ends up getting farmed. Non-elf nations even chop down all their trees for more farm land.

My usual setup is huge fractal map, default number of civs, epic speed, prince difficulty.

this is probably due to the BTS AI, trying to run some specialists. If you don't like how the AI is running your improvements, check the "workers leave forests" and "workers leave old improvements" options in your option menu, and do the most important ones yourself. The few farms that are built are atleast better than an unimproved grassland, and you can always manually change it if you prefer a cottage/watermill/workshop

 

[Calavente]

another fact detrimental to windmills is the power bestowed on farms...

with irrigation (+1), sanitation (+1) and using agriculture (1-2?) :
+3-4 per farm ... + 1-2-3 from the spot.
so 5 to 6 food due to farms on grasslands, 6 to 9 for farmable food ressources or floodplains...and if you add terraforming floodplains or plains into grasslands...
in comparison, 2F/2H from windmill is very small in term of food, unless you cannot build enough farms to sustain your mines...

in vanilla, you had 3F for farmed grasslands, 4F in end game, 5-6F on farmable ressources. so getting 2F/2H for windmill is good enough.

maybe windmill needs upgrading in term of commerce or 1more food ?
furthermore, with 3 earth mana I played a (luirchip==> used mines everywhere) game with only 1-2 popped ressources in 350 turns and 20-
30mines used daily empire wide... so I don't think it is too powerful.. there are game with and games without.

 

[Demus]

i personally still think 3 food for a grassland-hill would be to much. I'd rather see the windmill get an additional 2-3 commerce, distributed throughout various techs. This would mean it's still got it's uses in your commerce-towns, possibly even when running RoK (even though under RoK you'd probably gamble for gold/gems to pop up instead, but i can't see dwarfs using wind-energy anyway).

 

[onedreamer]

this is probably due to the BTS AI, trying to run some specialists.

how can it be BtS if he mentioned he is playing FFH2 0.22 (based on Vanilla) ?

In regular Civ Windmills get boni with time, a further +1 production with Replacable Parts and +2 commerce with Electricity (and a further +2 commerce with Environmentalism). These make of windmills viable alternatives to mines, but I don't remember if FFH2 has these boni too.

 

[Bringa]

Well, to be honest, Dwarven Windmills are silly. I mean, the dutch tend to be pretty tall, you know.

 

[Bringa]

now this might make too much sense, but why not have it so that windmills give extra commerce and production based on how much Air mana you have? heh

and watermills getting extra based on how much water mana you have

i mean, if you have lots of control over water or air, you could really make your mills more productive

Those are actually really good ideas, but it'll be hard to balance them. I'm sure you see the problem: imagine someone with five air mana who can suddenly build windmills that get +5 commerce. His research would be unstoppable. Maybe 0.5 per mana? So that only 2 mana give you a noticeable effect? I don't know if that's possible.

 

[Calavente]

that will be a hard investment think about it : 5 air mana !!! it is not as 5 earth (for the popping ressources) or 5 nature/fire for the mana resonnance, 5mind/spirit for the science/gold/gp effect.

if 3 fire or 3earth/water are not uncommon, 2air nodes is still very unprobable.

so 5 commerce per windmill after 5 air node investment is not too much. but it's true it's a lot... let say ... +1 per mana node until the 3rd ?

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

Unlike earth and Water mana, no religions have their shrine producing, few civs start with it, and it isn't a very good sphere. Maelstorm is awesome, but it isn't quite good enough to waste a promotion on fine winds. HOwever, air does make impregnable cities.Try using a mage with tornado(?) to prevent enemies ever coming near to the walls.

 

[Dora190]

now this might make too much sense, but why not have it so that windmills give extra commerce and production based on how much Air mana you have? heh

and watermills getting extra based on how much water mana you have

i mean, if you have lots of control over water or air, you could really make your mills more productive

Now thats a bloody good idea! But I can see an issue with balance. Could it be done in a staged manner? 1 for the first, 2 for maybe 3 manna and so on. They'll be a point for having some mana of the pre-requiste type but diminishing returns will start to creep in.

However with I do think that something needs to be done. anyone with earth mana ends up developing resources at a really silly rate.

 

[westamastaflash]

Now thats a bloody good idea! But I can see an issue with balance. Could it be done in a staged manner? 1 for the first, 2 for maybe 3 mana and so on. They'll be a point for having some mana of the pre-requiste type but diminishing returns will start to creep in.

I see it as a trade-off - for every additional air node you use, thats one node you can't use for something more valuable. And for god's sake, windmills come at Engineering! When you finally get engineering with most civs, your towns are producing boku commerce (if you're running a cottage economy)

In general, I've found that windmills are incredibly weak. I think they could be improved somewhat to bring them up to the level of the other tile improvements.

I'd suggest moving the ability to build windmills to Construction, but initially only give +1 for the windmill.

Then, add to commerce with these technologies:
Trade: +1
Engineering: +1
Machinery: +1

Grassland Hill Final Yield: 2 , 2 , 2

We could add the following civic modifiers:
Slavery: +1
Mercantilism: +1

Then have each air mana add +1 to windmills.

If you really want to generate commerce on the hills though, put cottages there instead.