FfH Paring Questions

[Sareln]

I was thinking of dropping defender whole hog, leaving Ingenuity as the only minor trait around and giving Khazad Magic Resistance as a CIV trait. What does that do to your leader suggestions?

[Bobchillingworth]

I was thinking of dropping defender whole hog, leaving Ingenuity as the only minor trait around and giving Khazad Magic Resistance as a CIV trait. What does that do to your leader suggestions?

"These are some lovely leader suggestions you got here... would be a shame if anything were to happen to them!"



Well I'd probably end up substituting Creative and/or Industrious for Magic Resistance and Defender on leaders were I gave them the latter two traits just to boost them. Hafgan would go back to being a minor leader. I don't know whether Defender should be dropped & Magic Resistance made Khazad exclusive. Defender is just a filler / lore trait, but I naturally recoil at the thought of taking options *away* from the player and making the cast of characters a little less diverse.

[DerWille]

On Hanah - I figure Spiritual/Raiders would be perfect for a Lanun war monger because it seems like the generally accepted aggressive Lanun strategy is to use their economic advantage to found Octopous Overlords, Empryean, or the Ashen Veil. Then skip their weaker unique units for better religious ones. I figured Hanah would be a great leader for specializing in that strategy.

About Defender - I'd like to keep defender in, but I think it needs a complete redesign. I'd like to see it as enemies have -50% movement speed in your territory (minimum 1). It would be like the anti-raiders. However this might be too ridiculous. Another idea is to have it give the Guardsman promotion to all melee/archery units (which is stealing from the Bannor unfortunately).

On Baron - I think it's a neat idea, but it does seem unnecessarily complicated. I like that the Baron is a neutral hero that anyone can potentially recruit.

A Possible New Trait - How about we give the Recon line a bit of love and let some leaders be able to specialize in the recon line? Here's a couple ideas:

Decisive - All recon units gain City Raider I on creation. Double production on Hunting Ranges and Smokehouses are half priced.

The idea is to have these recon focused leader skip over the penalty to attacking cities with recon units.

Assassin - All recon units gain +1 Poison combat strength on creation. Double production on Hunting Lodges and Smokehouses.

This would add alot more punch to recon units (I could see an Assassin Dark Elf as crazy) but it should be fine for the early game with the -25% city attack and no pillaging. A Svart Assassin hunter would be 6 strength on attack, but only 4.5 when attacking a city (Copper Warriors would be 5 strength).

[DaveV]

One comment on Volanna: once she has Animal Husbandry, she can make animal-capturing scouts by gaining 2XP; once she has Education, they can be born with subdue animal. 3 strength + 95% is good enough to capture most animals, especially since scouts are dirt cheap so she can send out a stack. Can you say, "Grand Menagerie"? I thought you could.

[Irgy]

I'm just going to state what I think the biggest risk this project potentially faces: Becoming "yet another mod-mod", which changes stuff around based on the whims and preferences of the author(s), and is more balanced in some ways but then less balanced in others.

I think the goal of balancing multiplayer is a really good one, but it's also a really very difficult one. The thing we're lacking particularly is real data. On this board at least, we have only a handful of multiplayer games, only one of which is actually even close to completion. Without data, all we really have is a bunch of people with opinions.

What worries me particularly is going back to an old PM I got from someone on CFC back when I was looking for FFH multiplayer but before I found my way here. There I met a player who's been involved in a fair bit of FFH multiplayer, of the one-session, direct connection variety (which I unfortunately rarely have enough guaranteed-available consecutive time for). In it he says "things considered OP are as follows->", and lists three things - which I'll hold on to for the moment because they're partly beside the point. None of them have been mentioned in this thread at all. Whether he's right or we're right, the point is that there's no correlation between his multiplayer group's thoughts on what's OP and ours. Were his group to pick up the results of this, they'd likely say "It's still got X Y and Z in it, and Z is even worse now.".

It's a great idea getting all our opinions, but people can speak a lot of garbage sometimes. And I certainly include myself in this. I've got strong opinions on what's overpowered and what's worthless, but in all honesty I've never even played half the civs in the game for more than a few turns. So what do I know? All I've got for multiplayer experience is a couple of 2-player games against Lord Parkin, various self-play games (though only one FFH one completed) and what's on these boards. But then again, who else have has particularly more multiplayer experience than that either? We can argue about it, but we won't really know if we're even in the ballpark without some data.

Anyway, don't let this be a criticism of anything anyone is doing, because it isn't at all. I'm just pointing out the difficulty of the task at hand and the shortage of real data to base our understanding on.

All this also has no impact on the other important stated goal of the project of cutting things down and simplifying them a little. That you can do without needing "data", it's more of a creative task. So don't let my rant discourage you.

[Sareln]

...

We can argue about it, but we won't really know if we're even in the ballpark without some data.

Anyway, don't let this be a criticism of anything anyone is doing, because it isn't at all. I'm just pointing out the difficulty of the task at hand and the shortage of real data to base our understanding on.

All this also has no impact on the other important stated goal of the project of cutting things down and simplifying them a little. That you can do without needing "data", it's more of a creative task. So don't let my rant discourage you.

I worry about this constantly Irgy. I really want to do the streamlining and accessibility, but also want to build onto a base that has no one "obvious" correct play for practically every situation. I want to preserve the driving questions of the games, and hopefully put some new ones to the player as well. We'll see how it goes I suppose.

Right now I'm on my 3rd/4th pass of the religions tree, trying to work Honor/Deception into it without breaking flow. We'll see how successful I'll be. So far I've been trying to do it by just monkeying around with the techs, but I'm beginning to get the nagging suspicion that I may need to make a list of the units/abilities in the tree and start from there instead.

[Azoth]

Streamlining FFH is a great idea. Kudos for taking the initiative, Sareln.

I'm just going to state what I think the biggest risk this project potentially faces: Becoming "yet another mod-mod", which changes stuff around based on the whims and preferences of the author(s), and is more balanced in some ways but then less balanced in others.

I know exactly what you mean. My favorite FFH mod-mod was Wild Mana. It's main goal was to improve balance and AI performance. But, inevitably, new features starting creeping in - new civilizations, more color for existing civs, corporation-like guilds - and now it's Master of Mana, a complete FFH remake with some good ideas but little of the original charm.

That said, I'm going to add my whims and preferences to the mix. Hopefully they all cancel out. =)

Religious Techs:
A good place to start streamlining! I support keeping flavor prerequisites, not only for lore value but also so that the various tech branches are not completely independent of each other. Thus, Trade ---> Honor/Deception, Fishing ---> Message of the Deep, etc. Also, I worry about Hidden Paths ---> Commune with Nature. Would that become the easiest way to get Tier III units, Druids who can cast Vitalize? Dwarves would have an interesting choice: adopt FoL (temporarily?) to unlock Dwarven Druids super early!

Civics:
How about boosting cottages thus: Republic, +1 hammer on towns/enclaves; Foreign Trade, +100% cottage growth; Crusade, +1 hammer on villages. This boosts the relatively weaker Republic and Foreign Trade civics against City States/Aristocracy and Agrarianism/Conquest, respectively. It also forces elves to choose between +100% cottage growth and Guardianship. Aristocracy-Agrarianism might still need taming. Changing Financial to +1 on tiles with 3+ would help, along with removing the -40% maintenance or raising civic upkeep to High.

Leaders:
Some general thoughts:
1. I really like Magic Resistant as a Khazad civ trait. It adds depth and compensates somewhat for the crippling vault mechanics. Of course, there's no reason Magic Resistant can't be both a civ and leader trait, like Agnostic.
2. As a matter of taste, I feel no two leaders should have identical traits.
3. Raiders is nothing without Commando; free Mobility on Mounted/Recon units is underwhelming. Instead, why not just allow units to pillage roads in friendly territory?
4. Changing Financial to +1 on 3+ commerce tiles would help balance out some leader pairs, especially Hannah v. Falamar; and Flauros v. Alexis/Decius.
5. I like Command Posts as a niche building for Organized leaders. Double speed Basilicas/Walls/Palisades seem blah by comparison, given that Basilicas are religion specific and even more late-game than Command Posts. Is there any way for Great Commanders to be born in battle, like Great Generals in Warlords/BtS? That would fix the imbalance.

Simple Balance Changes:
These have been touched upon by others:
1. Warriors should not get Bronze Weapons. Bronze warriors are far too (cost) effective well into the mid-game and overshadow Archers, Horsemen, and even Axemen on defense.
2. Hawks need to be reigned in. Shorter range (half as far as Floating Eye, say) is a good idea. Some way to defend against hawk scouting would also be useful. Maybe hawks can be Hidden Nationality, and all Archers/Longbowmen have a chance to intercept? Archery units could use the versatility.

Well, that's enough for one post. I'm looking forward to see where this is going.

Edit: Hidden Nationality hawks would also be unable to fly to foreign cities under Open Borders. I assume Hunters could still carry them: anyone know if you can load Hidden Nationality units on a transport?

[Bobchillingworth]

I agree with most of the changes Azoth suggests, although I think the town hammer boost from republic should be +2 instead of only 1, assuming Aristofarms are left unchanged.




Random suggestion- give half-priced libraries back to Creative like it has in BTS. Right now it's one of the weakest traits, and its current discounts are mostly useless.

[Irgy]

Most hidden nationality units can be revealed anyway, it would be unusual to have one that was forced to be. Peace time scouting surely isn't the problem anyway, and during war hidden nationality doesn't matter. Personally I think hawks are really good, but I don't see why that's such a bad thing?

[Cyneheard]

Edit: Hidden Nationality hawks would also be unable to fly to foreign cities under Open Borders. I assume Hunters could still carry them: anyone know if you can load Hidden Nationality units on a transport?

No, you can't put HN units on a non-HN transport; I'm not sure if it's possible on an HN transport.