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FfH Paring Questions

[SIZE='7']Latest Version of Balance Mod[/SIZE]


Some Background:

I really enjoy FfH but sometimes the mod feels a bit cumbersome. I've played around with the idea of cutting some of the features/content and trying to repackage into a FfH-Lite, basically to streamline the mod. I figured before I started in on it in a serious manner to see what people thought were the weak links, what should or shouldn't be cut, especially with an eye to multi-player.

The Questions

So, if you're feeling charitable, answer these two questions for me please:

  1. What one feature or characteristic of Fall from Heaven would you keep, and why?
  2. What one feature or characteristic of Fall from Heaven would you cut, and why?

Please try to be as aggressive as possible.

For example:
I would keep the spellcasting system as is, it's a very visible feature which differentiates FfH from the base game and reminds you constantly that you're living in a fantasy world while opening up mana-management as a serious strategic decision.

I would merge the mundane warfare unit trees together into Recon/Archery and Melee/Cavalry, there are a lot of techs which don't do all that much for the player and seem to just take up space. I ignore them most games anyways and wouldn't miss them at all.


Feel free to talk about other people's choices as well, including the two above. I may not have put a humongous amount of thought into both of those statements, but I thought it a good example of what sort of feedback I was looking for.
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What I would keep :
  • Tech tree forcing choices. I would streamline said tech tree ( cheaper worker techs, gathering mounted and economy techs into separate distinct branches, splitting melee and metals and moving latter to economy ) and seriously consider price ( Hunting, Iron Working ) and access points ( OO, CoE ) for certain techs.
  • Mana and magic. It provides a lot of flavour and alternatives for certain necessities like siege, collateral, fortifications etc.
  • Armageddon Counter. But I'd make it more important, especially at low figures ( Have it skew ratio of good / bad events? Have it influence lair exploration ? Barb strength / numbers / mutations / hostility ?), at the moment it's a non-issue until the Blight hits and after that it becomes a non-issues again until high 70s.
What I would cut :
  • Financial, Adaptive, Raiders in their current form. Three overpowering traits that seem to be a must have in every MP game so far.
  • Command Posts monopoly for Organised.
  • Free level 2 spells on staple units ( vampires, golems )
  • Aristocracy. Agrarianism. God King. Just to show that beyond these three civics there's not much else for most of the game.
  • Terraforming micromanagement. This should spread automaticaly, like hell terrain. If you have appropriate mana deserts within your culture should Spring, ice and tundra Scorch ( and trees bloom if you're an elf ) etc. All with a mid-high chance.
  • Cleric/Arcane spell split. That's pretty forced and unnecessary.
  • Current spell organisation. Schools are not balanced in usefulness ( clear winners like Death vs clear losers like Nature ) and spells are not balanced in power ( see Dance of Blades vs Rust ). I'd preferably have an adept limited to one school, mage to two and archmage to three. But I'd make each school offer much more possibilities having few separate branches ( like summoning, combat, buff, debuff ) and few levels along each branch.
  • Metal use as implemented now. Having copper or not can make or break a game. Copper warrior makes early war nigh impossible and causes axe/sword and champion to look ridiculously expensive both in breakers and hammers.
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I think the main problem with the tech tree is the absurd beaker cost of many techs. How many times have you ever played a game where you had beastmasters, knights, archmages, and phalanxes that wasn't either a scenario or you purposely prolonging an already won game to try out different units? At present the inability to grab at least half the techs in a normal game does force some interesting strategic choices for a player, but it also really hurts certain civs such as the Khazad, who have a really cool UU (the Myconoid) that almost nobody ever seriously uses because it requires three very expensive and otherwise mostly useless techs in the recon/nature line.

The Illians and Balseraph are other examples of civs with units too widely dispersed in the tree. The Illians have a dragon hero following the magic / immortal line, a snow giant hero down the melee line, priest heroes in the divine line, and snow III archmages in the arcane line. The Balz are almost as bad, with special unique units in the recon line, melee line, and arcane line.


So, I'd cut beaker costs a bit. The finance line of techs is also rather extraneous. It's hard to justify researching an expensive tech to just get taverns when you could be unlocking super units instead (unless you're the Grigori, anyway).


The thing which I think needs to be either cut of modified the most though is Homeland. 10% defense within your own borders is significantly weaker than base BTS Protective, which says volumes about how useless this trait is. 10% withdraw is okay if you intend to exploit the heck out of it, but it's still worse than pretty much every other major trait. If Homeland isn't cut, it should at least be considered a "minor" trait like Agnostic or Ingenuity, so that it doesn't gimp a half-dozen leaders with essentially only one and maybe-a-half traits. It shouldn't be any surprise that many of the leaders left for FFH PBEM V are Homelanders.
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Really most of the content should be kept, the interesting characters, UUs, spells and so on together with their civopedia entries are what makes the mod. I think balance tweaking is more the issue, here's what I'd change. The worst civic balance problem is undoubtedly aristofarming:

Financial trait -> doesn't work on farms
Aristocracy -> Loses the 40% maintenance discount OR move it back to feudalism
Royal guard -> Unit makes no sense. Cut. Move the hope effect to some Order unit, that religion is overshadowed by AV/EMP and needs help
Mercantilism and other techs that unlock late game civics -> Cost reduced

There is still some broken general stuff:

Snowfall -> damage cap 80% -> 60%
Chalid -> keep the pillar, lose crown of brilliance
Nox Noctis -> invisibility effect needs to be detectable
Vampires -> shouldn't be able to get channeling II before Sorcery
Mistforms -> aren't allowed to spawn during the "barbarian grace period"
Great People from Lairs -> also aren't allowed to spawn early, same as above. Both are really swingy.
Theatre -> Way too expensive for no good reason at all. Reduce cost back to BTS level and give Creative discount

Then there's the stuff which should be removed due to not adding much to the game:

Too many filler spells and functionally identical summons -> cut some and merge realms. This would probably be my #1 "content removal/streamlining" option
Acheron's stupid minions -> removed, give the dragon pillar of fire instead
Defender -> useless trait, cut
Lame events such as religious golden age which fail to do anything 90% of the time -> cut
Gunpowder -> boring
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I agree with a lot of what uberfish said: the variety, complexity, and backstory are what keep this mod appealing to me. I think the best goals of any modmod would be to buff the AI and remove the situations where there's One Right Answer. The AI weakness is part of the problem causing people's complaints about slow teching: most experienced players find themselves playing at Immortal or Deity to make the AI at least somewhat competitive, and suffering from severe cost problems.

AI fixes and balancing was the original goal of the Wild Mana mod, and I enjoyed it until they went too far down the road of "let's add more cool stuff!".

- For Aristograrianism: make Aristocracy and Agrarianism High cost civics. As uberfish said, remove the -40% maintenance.
- Financial - gives +1 commerce for 3+ commerce tiles. Nerfs aristograrianism and Hannah.
- Make warriors unable to use bronze weapons. Make axemen unable to use iron.
- Vampires are a problem: available a lot earlier than firebows or fireballing golems. Cut them back to Channeling I, maybe? Not sure the other two need to be nerfed: they're available late, and their civs don't have the big mid-game advantages the vamps do.
- Pyre Zombies: limit damage to 90%, so they can't kill units with splash damage.
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I would make Tower of Mastery and especially Altar of the Luonnatar a little bit easier to get. Right now conquest and domination are basically the only ways to win.

Maybe move some of the required techs for the altar, so it isn't spread over the entire tech tree
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Bobchillingworth Wrote:I think the main problem with the tech tree is the absurd beaker cost of many techs. How many times have you ever played a game where you had beastmasters, knights, archmages, and phalanxes that wasn't either a scenario or you purposely prolonging an already won game to try out different units?

This is mostly correct but a little off, and actually illustrates the point even more. I rarely have phalanxes. I have beastmasters all the time because their tech is comically cheap compared to the multiple techs needed for phalanxes. Yes phalanxes are better, somewhat, but not at all in proportion to the beaker cost. I'll even look it up (! for me):

*Beastmaster path requires sucky 1800b Animal Handing, non-sucky 2200b Feral Bond (Baron), and 1800b Animal Mastery. Total cost is 5800b, marginal cost for the top-tier unit is 1800b.

*Phalanx path requires 7400b Mithril Working and 9600b Mithril Weapons. Total cost is 17000b, marginal cost for the top-tier unit is 9600b. Yes, Mithril Working is useful since it both reveals the resource and allows the unit promotion (seems like a bug since it's different than copper and iron), but even if you totally dismiss that tech cost and totally dismiss the value of rangers and the Baron, phalanxes are still almost double the cost of beastmaters.

Phalanxes are strength 12, 25% bonus versus cities, can us metal promos, and are 240h. Beastmasters are strength 14, cannot use metal promos, and are 240h. In the open they're just as good as phalanxes with iron. Considering the total tech cost is 1/3 as high and you gain the awesome Baron unit I think the beastmaster path is much stronger.

Sciz Wrote:I would make Tower of Mastery and especially Altar of the Luonnatar a little bit easier to get. Right now conquest and domination are basically the only ways to win.

Agree.
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I agree with uberfish that the game mostly needs balance tweaks. The best place to start would be in boosting up some of the weaker economies in the game.

Civic Changes

Government
1. Aristocracy: Remove Royal Guards - Lower maintenance reducer to 25% from 40%.
2. City States: Remove war weariness penalty
3. Republic: Remove happiness bonus, Give 100% cottage growth
4. Theocracy: Add -25% war weariness

Cultural Values:

1. Pacifism: Add Worker improvement speed +25%
2. Social Order: Add -25% number of cities maintenance
3. Liberty: Add +50% great person points
Labor:

1. Caste System: Redesign - Unlimited Engineer, Merchant, Sage, and Bard specialists. +1 Free specialist in every city. All specialists +2 culture. Can spend gold to rush production. Medium Upkeep.
2. Guilds - Redesign: All villages and towns +1 hammer and all cottage types +1 commerce. Can spend gold to rush production. High Upkeep.

Economy:

1. Foreign Trade: Remove -10% gold. Add +25% trade route yield
2. Conquest: Add +50% pillage gold
3. Mercantilism: Add Unlimited Merchant Specialists. Add all merchant specialists and great merchants +3 gold, +1 hammer, +2 culture.

One idea I had was to make later civics more powerful than earlier ones so that they will be worthwhile investments.

Traits and Leaders:

Defender: Redesign: -50% enemy movement in your territory. All archery and melee troops gains the Homeland promotion. Faster construction of palisades, walls, and archery ranges.

Homeland: +1 Defense strength while in your territory.

Industrious: Add +25% worker production.

Charadon: Remove or Redesign: Aggressive, Ingenuity

Sandalphon: Redesign: Philosophical, Industrious

Auric Ulvin: Redesign: Charismatic, Arcane, Agnostic (Still gets Aggressive from Letum Frigus)

Promotions:

Guardsman: Requires only Combat I

Victories:

Altar: Get rid of the Omniscience requirement and make a final religion line named Deliverance that as the Alter 7 requirement. Also reduce its cost to 2500 hammers.

Tower: Just reduce the hammer cost to 2500
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3. Republic: Remove happiness bonus, Give 100% cottage growth

I've nothing against boosting republic, but given that its placement in the tech tree (taxation) the 100% cottage growth boost will not be as effective since cottages will have already grown quite a lot when you get to the required tech.
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The idea was to let it be useful for people who were using Astroagarian /w specialists to get to Republic then switch their econemy from many hybrid cities to more specialized ones.
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