EitB 0009 Wishlist

[Ilios]

Proposal: Reduce the number of turns of the Illian worldspell (7 turns on Quick - 10 turns on Normal?).

I think 7 turns of Stasis would allow the Illians to be picked again.

[uberfish]

Well the controversial bit is that the slow early game pace is a deliberate design decision from the original FFH dev team, which I am arguing is bad design.

[Serdoa]

Proposal: Reduce the number of turns of the Illian worldspell (7 turns on Quick - 10 turns on Normal?).

I think 7 turns of Stasis would allow the Illians to be picked again.

Could that maybe be coupled with a GA for that time? Because quite honestly, when I played the Illians in FFH12, the full duration worldspell was just barely enough to keep me in first place. And I really invested much time into that game at the start, so I think it was not because I played bad that I did not get a bigger lead, but because Illians do not have that much going for them otherwise (I had them coupled with Varn even, with Auric I'd probably have been just a footnote to this game, no matter 14 turns of Stasis or not).

Whatever you do, please keep in mind, it is not only about the Illians being pickable again (without everyone else crying) but also about them being viable to be picked. And 7 turns of Stasis is not really anything special. Especially as they are not having many other goodies imo and playing for their "specialities" means making the game harder (several rituals-stuff I mean, though I am not sure if EitB has changed anything on that).

[Selrahc]

Could that maybe be coupled with a GA for that time?

I like that suggestion. The issue with the Illian worldspell is that it is annoying, not overpowered. So if it's going to get some sort of big nerf to duration, it should get *something* to make up for it.

It's slightly unfluffy, and it means the spell needs to be kept until the GA actually means something, but I think it is an elegant way to keep a similar power level while reducing the annoyance factor.

[Mardoc]

Seconded. That's a clever way to balance the WS - puts it at about the level of Revelry, but still has some flavor.

[uberfish]

I dunno if it's Stasis as much as the White Hand rush that is causing the problem tbh.

somewhat unrelated to that, but I played a couple of SP games to get a better feel for it and one thing about FFH that EitB amplifies is a really weird feeling economic growth curve

It starts very slow, and then you can unlock a whole lot of economic techs in rapid succession (Writing Sanitation Trade CoL Currency Taxation) and go from ~100 to ~300 breakeven research in about 20% of the time it took to get up to 100 research

I feel the economic bonuses are actually crammed in too close proximity on the tech tree with the Trade tech which unlocks 2 civics in addition to giving +1 trade routes just for researching it being the worst offender.

rebalance suggestions:

Civic: Foreign trade no upkeep -> medium upkeep, the cottage growth aspect is very powerful
Overcouncil/undercouncil -> either remove the economic aspects again, or move them back to Honour/Deception
Currency: Reduce cost of money changer to 180, but move the free trade route back to Guilds or Mercantilism

The following techs are too cheap in light of the mid game commerce explosion: Iron Working, Bowyers

[Gaspar]

I actually agree with uber, had similar thoughts when I've played SP game: Slow, slow, slow, omg everything.

[NobleHelium]

I third the uberfish changes...

[Kyan]

[Sareln]

Proposal: Reduce the number of turns of the Illian worldspell (7 turns on Quick - 10 turns on Normal?).

I think 7 turns of Stasis would allow the Illians to be picked again.

Implemented this as 7/10/15/30 for the gamespeeds.

As regards pacing, I agree. FfH I think really shines in the early game when life is "tough", the wolf is untamed, and it's really hard to expand. Then it becomes much more like CIV as the game progresses.

Let's adopt Uberfish's suggestions for now and see how it plays.

Incidentally, I think I'm going to push a build sometime next week, probably missing the bugfixes and tholal's Rev694 but with everything else just to get some feel for it.