Winning strategy (too powerful)

[Valkrionn]

I'm in the middle of a D'Tesh game and summons (specifically skeletons) work with Gift Essence. Also, fort spam is great for One City Challenge (or civs where you might play one city anyways). Currently I think the fort system is great, especially with the Jotnar.

The only downside is that if another civs culture is encroaching on your fort (which you likely put down to claim some resources), there is no way to fight back. Furthermore, when founding a city with the Jotnar by upgrading a Herredcarl, the culture radius shrinks back down.

I'll block summons from doing it. Just have to check if the unit has a Master; If so, don't allow it.

Next version any improvement which has a sufficiently high Cultural Control will put out actual culture next version. Meaning if you have a fort that's been there long enough, city culture will have to fight it.

 

[joemag]

Gotta say, Valk, you do a great job of responding to your fan community's concerns.

 

[Valkrionn]

I read every post in the FfH ModMods forum, so all of the posts in the RifE forum (try to respond to all of those, too), the Orbis forum, and the Wild Mana forum.

 

[mythmonster2]

Dang, that's dedication!

 

[tatva]

Sorry if I insist with the forts, Valkrion, but in the other post (feedback on war system...) you said you could defend any tile without the need of a fort. Well that is NOT the same thing. A fort commander has the fire power of a hovitzer, you know, that late game siege mechano unit. Seriously: I saw them get enemies down to half life, and not 1 but 7 in 1 shot. And you get him for free, and he can be "resurrected" if they take your castle, you retake it and voila: there is your commander again.

Its like having a free city, that develops without effort, and its defenses cannot be taken down with siege units, like the real cities. The only difference is you cannot produce nothing on them.

They say if enemies take the fort they have a free post to reheal... Well, if enemies take your cities, they have a post to reheal. The point is: dont allow them to take your fort. Put some units on them not only the commander...

By the other hand, this makes you put troops outside the cities, which is the goal of civ-V, as it seems. So is not all bad.

What I suggest is: take of the bombarding ability of the commander and instead make him function like a great commander, boosting the units garrisoned in there. That makes more sense. And make it cost some money to create them and to upgrade the fort -> castle -> citadel.

I will not insist on this topic, all is said for my part.

 

[Valkrionn]

Sorry if I insist with the forts, Valkrionn, but in the other post (feedback on war system...) you said you could defend any tile without the need of a fort. Well that is NOT the same thing. A fort commander has the fire power of a howitzer, you know, that late game siege mechano unit. Seriously: I saw them get enemies down to half life, and not 1 but 7 in 1 shot. And you get him for free, and he can be "resurrected" if they take your castle, you retake it and voila: there is your commander again.

Its like having a free city, that develops without effort, and its defenses cannot be taken down with siege units, like the real cities. The only difference is you cannot produce nothing on them.

They say if enemies take the fort they have a free post to reheal... Well, if enemies take your cities, they have a post to reheal. The point is: dont allow them to take your fort. Put some units on them not only the commander...

By the other hand, this makes you put troops outside the cities, which is the goal of civ-V, as it seems. So is not all bad.

What I suggest is: take of the bombarding ability of the commander and instead make him function like a great commander, boosting the units garrisoned in there. That makes more sense. And make it cost some money to create them and to upgrade the fort -> castle -> citadel.

I will not insist on this topic, all is said for my part.

As I said in this thread, I'm going to nerf how many units can be attacked at once by a Fort Commander.

As for your proposed system... I just don't like it. As it is now, the AI would not really use it, either. Would have to write entirely new code telling them to defend it (will eventually regardless; Difference is free time. ).

Upgrading forts costing money would make it a spell, and IMO would be worse for balance... Because there's no real way to limit how fast you can do it. Pay for fort->citadel in three turns.

 

[inuyashasama]

I wouldn't mind seeing forts, citadels etc. kill all tile yield completely, but really, I don't find the forts overpowered. The make defending your borders more structured, but when you have 40 units coming to attack you, they make little difference.

 

[Endovior]

Forts should not weaken tile yield at all... in fact, I'd be of the opinion that they should give a minor boost. This isn't to help the players, mind you; it's for the AI, who tends to put Forts in inappropriate places. AI needs all the help it can get, and forts with minor benefits would be a help to that.

 

[Evalis]

Erm.. don't fort commanders suck balls against recon and summons? Their bonus is only against mounted and melee. Seems like sending in an invisible 2 movement shadow to take care of the fort commander would work. Also.. the computer really should be programmed to build forts at least 1 tile away from a city. Reasons for this should be obvious.

 

[inuyashasama]

Forts should not weaken tile yield at all... in fact, I'd be of the opinion that they should give a minor boost. This isn't to help the players, mind you; it's for the AI, who tends to put Forts in inappropriate places. AI needs all the help it can get, and forts with minor benefits would be a help to that.

Good point, I didn't think about that.

 

[Tsathoggua]

I just want to mention that getting a Great Commander early on (say, in the first 100 turns of an Epic game) is basically a guaranteed win. Even if you have to use workers to build them, there's still a number of reasons to spam them, rather than not to.

Fact is, if you lay down forts on the borders of your nearby opponents this does two things: First, it prevents them from sending in settlers to claim nearby territory you have your eye on, which is one of the things that has always pissed me off about every Civ game ever. Nothing is more amenable to victory than laying down a perimeter which you are totally free to fill in with cities at your leisure, and if you have to found cities on top of forts to get optimal placement then so be it. Also let's not forget that crucial early resources like Horses and Copper appear randomly, and "owning" a larger chunk of the continent early on translates into vastly improved odds of having these resources right away.

Second, a three-turn build time for forts on Epic means that virtually every resource you scout can be almost instantly claimed, because a Commander is more than capable of defending against most units (besides gruesomely overpromoted animal units, which will be going away soon).

Third, because forts = military units, enough forts means your military might will be significant enough to deter all but the most opportunistic warmongers from bullying you until you have an economy capable of making them wish they hadn't.

Basically, fort spam is a risk worth taking because if it pans out, you are essentially able to expand your empire in an effective vacuum without caring much about what the other civs are doing or what demands they're making of you.

Also, fort spam as the Mechanos is utterly crucial. Why? Because having a network of mobile fortresses that are fully promoted along the siege combat line means you have ranged point defenses capable of instantly killing any non-hero units with bombards. These things do 100% bombard damage almost every time, by my experience. And against hero units? Well, let's just say that when I crushed the Frozen and jacked up the Armageddon counter by 30 points in one go (from 30-ish to 60-ish), I popped 3 of the 4 horsemen at once. I now have Feris with a Crown of Command and a highly-promoted Techpriest wielding War and Athame.

Oh, and a Goliath with Alazkan's Mirror. Because I crushed the Svartalfar shortly after they built him. Which I could do because I could invade them without consequence because I had their perimeter surrounded by forts that had earned free XP from invading Hidden Nationality Svartalfar units from them burning their world spell earlier in the game.

 

[Tsathoggua]

Upgrading forts costing money would make it a spell, and IMO would be worse for balance... Because there's no real way to limit how fast you can do it. Pay for fort->citadel in three turns.

Sure there's a way to limit it. I see lots of spells in RiFE that were not in vanilla FFH with casting times. Goliath, for example, takes 3 turns to switch between seige and melee mode.

 

[drayath]

I you wanted to reduce fort spam could you not just remove the free upkeep from the fort commander unit.

early/mid game 1 gold per commander should mean they are only used where required, and late game units and smash straight through them anyway.

Ideally if this was done fort would not gain upgrade points (fort->castle etc) while there was no fort commander (and no/reduced culture?)

 

[Cyrusfan]

I like that idea of making fort commanders require upkeep. I never really understood why they were free (particularly since, in many cases, they're better than anything else you could man the fort with). To Tsathoggua's points, maybe delayed spells could be scaled for gamespeed (when all the spells are redone for 1.4 or 1.5). And to prevent early spamming, maybe the GC fort spell could be delayed until you have the construction tech.

 

[Valkrionn]

Sure there's a way to limit it. I see lots of spells in RiFE that were not in vanilla FFH with casting times. Goliath, for example, takes 3 turns to switch between seige and melee mode.

That mechanic is not suitable here, or I would have mentioned it.

Basically: Delayed Casts prevent the caster from performing any action. This leaves you with two alternatives:

1. Short casts, high costs, so your Fort Commander is not rendered useless by long upgrade times. I don't like it.
2. Long casts, simulating the standard upgrade time. This makes the Fort Commander meaningless, however, as it will never perform any other action.

In short: There will never be a gold cost to upgrade the forts, and it will not be an action; It will be an automatic upgrade, as it is now.

I you wanted to reduce fort spam could you not just remove the free upkeep from the fort commander unit.

early/mid game 1 gold per commander should mean they are only used where required, and late game units and smash straight through them anyway.

Ideally if this was done fort would not gain upgrade points (fort->castle etc) while there was no fort commander (and no/reduced culture?)

Removing it's free-unit status is fine with me.

Syncing it that heavily to the stats of the fort may not be a good idea however. Lots of code would need to be written.

I like that idea of making fort commanders require upkeep. I never really understood why they were free (particularly since, in many cases, they're better than anything else you could man the fort with). To Tsathoggua's points, maybe delayed spells could be scaled for gamespeed (when all the spells are redone for 1.4 or 1.5). And to prevent early spamming, maybe the GC fort spell could be delayed until you have the construction tech.

the GC fort spell can be delayed, or limited in some way.

 

[Dissonance]

Since discovering RiFE recently, i've been really enjoying the forts. They seem to work just fine - very strong to the unwary, nothing but a bump to a prepared army.

I do find them very strong in early game, though. And some things about them don't make sense - particularly, the commander.

My personal ideas and recommendations?
- Give the fort commander maintenance. It's nice to have them free, but unnecessary.
---- Maybe make the cost scale with fort growth?

- Free commanders are a little bit strange. I think you should have to "promote" an existing unit into a fort commander. Without the promotion, no cultural control for you.
---- As an added bonus, why not use the unit type? Say, if you promote a "melee" unit, the new commander grants bonuses to melee minions.

- In ancient times, fortresses and citadels often became centers of settlement. How about spreading hamlet-like improvements around the fort, that given time to mature cancel out the effects of the maintenance? Sounds like hell to code.
---- If coded though, could be done to grant additional benefits to some races, i.e. Jotnar, Kuriotates, Khazad etc.
---- Those improvements should be pillageable, and give you a reason to defend a fort more actively
---- In fact, why not force a road to be built to the fort before the settlements happen?

Cheers!

 

[Valkrionn]

Since discovering RiFE recently, i've been really enjoying the forts. They seem to work just fine - very strong to the unwary, nothing but a bump to a prepared army.

I do find them very strong in early game, though. And some things about them don't make sense - particularly, the commander.

My personal ideas and recommendations?
- Give the fort commander maintenance. It's nice to have them free, but unnecessary.
---- Maybe make the cost scale with fort growth?

- Free commanders are a little bit strange. I think you should have to "promote" an existing unit into a fort commander. Without the promotion, no cultural control for you.
---- As an added bonus, why not use the unit type? Say, if you promote a "melee" unit, the new commander grants bonuses to melee minions.

- In ancient times, fortresses and citadels often became centers of settlement. How about spreading hamlet-like improvements around the fort, that given time to mature cancel out the effects of the maintenance? Sounds like hell to code.
---- If coded though, could be done to grant additional benefits to some races, i.e. Jotnar, Kuriotates, Khazad etc.

Cheers!

Maintenance we can and probably will add. Would even be easy to scale it with the level of the fort.

Won't happen. In short: a specific fort commander unit allows many (eventually all) civs to have UU commanders. It brings a lot of flavor to the civs, in an interesting way. I won't be removing them.

May actually happen, kinda sorta, not really. Bout all I'll say.

 

[Cyrusfan]

Those were some interesting choices for examples. The Jotnar currently can turn a fort into a city once the FC is high enough level. The Kuriotates' settlements are eventually going to be mini-cities, which differentiate them from forts. And the Khazad, IMHO, should almost never build regular forts as they interfere with placing Dwarven Mines, which are a kind of habitation (Or at least I assume they do since they function as forts-I've never tried it as the DMs are all the cheap defense I generally need).

As to the upkeep, maybe that could be tied to the promotions that improve the FC's strength rather than the development of the fort? It seems to me (DMs notwithstanding) the imbalance is the FC itself, not the underlying defense bonus.

 

[Dissonance]

Glad to hear!

...Won't happen. In short: a specific fort commander unit allows many (eventually all) civs to have UU commanders. It brings a lot of flavor to the civs, in an interesting way. I won't be removing them...

I don't see how this conflicts. What prevents the "promoted" unit from becoming the unique commander? As a matter of fact, some races can get free commanders as a bonus.

The reason I put "promoted" into quotation marks is because I mean the unit would be upgraded, via a spell. The original is killed, and the commander unit is created, perhaps with all/some XP of the original unit, and, as per the extra idea, unique promotion from the original unit's type to add even more strategic planning to forts.

////

EDIT: I probably should elaborate. Say I build a fort. Then, I make a warrior in my capitol, which gets 6 starting XP. I march it over to the fort, and on the fort square there's a spell "Assign Commander". When I do that, the spell deletes the warrior, creates the race's appropriate commander, gives it (6*50%) 3 xp, and a free Battle Command I promotion for being a melee unit. A 2nd tier melee unit, say Axeman, could grant Battle Command II. An archer would give Defensive Stations promotion, a Recon unit would give Scouting promotion, a mounted unit would give tactics promotion, and a Great Commander unit would give Command Limit/Command Range promotions. So on for Arcane, Disciple, and maybe even Animal/Beast units (when applicable)

This could make it very complicated to code for, and to teach the AI to use it, though. I realized that as I typed it out

///

The thought behind this relates to early game forts. A lucky scout/hunter can make it across the map, and suddenly I have a large cultural hold across the globe. In this mechanic, you have to either sacrifice the scout or march another unit across the aforementioned globe. This also makes them more of an investment, and less of a spammable object.

Those were some interesting choices for examples. The Jotnar currently can turn a fort into a city once the FC is high enough level. The Kuriotates' settlements are eventually going to be mini-cities, which differentiate them from forts. And the Khazad, IMHO, should almost never build regular forts as they interfere with placing Dwarven Mines, which are a kind of habitation (Or at least I assume they do since they function as forts-I've never tried it as the DMs are all the cheap defense I generally need).

That's right! They do benefit from them differently, meaning that their forts may get/need varied bonuses from a Bannor or Goblin fort.

 

[Valkrionn]

Those were some interesting choices for examples. The Jotnar currently can turn a fort into a city once the FC is high enough level. The Kuriotates' settlements are eventually going to be mini-cities, which differentiate them from forts. And the Khazad, IMHO, should almost never build regular forts as they interfere with placing Dwarven Mines, which are a kind of habitation (Or at least I assume they do since they function as forts-I've never tried it as the DMs are all the cheap defense I generally need).

As to the upkeep, maybe that could be tied to the promotions that improve the FC's strength rather than the development of the fort? It seems to me (DMs notwithstanding) the imbalance is the FC itself, not the underlying defense bonus.

Forts do not interfere with Dwarven Mines at all.

And yes, that is pretty much how I'd do the upkeep; Those promotions are already reliant on fort level as it is, no need to add new promotions.

Glad to hear!



I don't see how this conflicts. What prevents the "promoted" unit from becoming the unique commander? As a matter of fact, some races can get free commanders as a bonus.

The reason I put "promoted" into quotation marks is because I mean the unit would be upgraded, via a spell. The original is killed, and the commander unit is created, perhaps with all/some XP of the original unit, and, as per the extra idea, unique promotion from the original unit's type to add even more strategic planning to forts.

////

EDIT: I probably should elaborate. Say I build a fort. Then, I make a warrior in my capitol, which gets 6 starting XP. I march it over to the fort, and on the fort square there's a spell "Assign Commander". When I do that, the spell deletes the warrior, creates the race's appropriate commander, gives it (6*50%) 3 xp, and a free Battle Command I promotion for being a melee unit. A 2nd tier melee unit, say Axeman, could grant Battle Command II. An archer would give Defensive Stations promotion, a Recon unit would give Scouting promotion, a mounted unit would give tactics promotion, and a Great Commander unit would give Command Limit/Command Range promotions. So on for Arcane, Disciple, and maybe even Animal/Beast units (when applicable)

This could make it very complicated to code for, and to teach the AI to use it, though. I realized that as I typed it out

///

The thought behind this relates to early game forts. A lucky scout/hunter can make it across the map, and suddenly I have a large cultural hold across the globe. In this mechanic, you have to either sacrifice the scout or march another unit across the aforementioned globe. This also makes them more of an investment, and less of a spammable object.



That's right! They do benefit from them differently, meaning that their forts may get/need varied bonuses from a Bannor or Goblin fort.

Specifically: The AI. As it stands now (by which I mean 1.3), the AI actually understands how to claim forts, what the benefit is, where to build them, etc.