(December 24th, 2022, 13:34)Qgqqqqq Wrote: were there any aspects of EitB you think warrant a balance pass before we kick off a game? I have some time but it's been literal years since I played EitB - when I have spare time I tend to play ExtraModMod for the BUG integration and better AI, so I'm not certain I'm across everything.
Not really a balance change, but I'm a strong advocate for removing flying camera. I don't think it's fair for people with lots of spare time and good mouse skills to be able to learn about the unknown areas of the map.
(December 24th, 2022, 13:34)Qgqqqqq Wrote: were there any aspects of EitB you think warrant a balance pass before we kick off a game? I have some time but it's been literal years since I played EitB - when I have spare time I tend to play ExtraModMod for the BUG integration and better AI, so I'm not certain I'm across everything.
Not really a balance change, but I'm a strong advocate for removing flying camera. I don't think it's fair for people with lots of spare time and good mouse skills to be able to learn about the unknown areas of the map.
This is unfortunately far beyond my ability. However, I'm happy to agree to a house rule that we don't exploit matters like this (or any other bugs).
In terms of balance changes beyond v12.1, here's some of my thoughts:
Foreign Trade seems too powerful even at +25% TR commerce. To be fair, in EMM, which I have been playing, it also gives +1TR in coastal cities, so I may be overreacting to that. And I don't want to push things back to Aristograrianism being the only game in town. So I'd be happy to either make it high maintenance or leave it unchanged.
Others have suggested removing Elven workers malus to work rate, which I think is reasonable. Whilst building on forests is fun, it already adds work turns.
People have commented that Calabim seem over-nerfed in the current version. I'm inclined to agree. I'd be happy to either undo some of the v12.1 nerfs (moving GM's earlier in the tech tree), or undo an earlier change that separated GMs from being a courthouse replacement (i.e. giving them back -20% or so maintenance) - at the time I didn't see it as a nerf, but I think it's pretty clearly proven to be.
People have complained about the Balseraph worldspell for a while. I'd be happy to make it normal length (I believe it's currently half again or double length), and leave them unchanged. Note that I consider the hall of mirrors on barb animals to be a bug exploit. I'm also happy to reduce puppets strength to 0, as some have argued, though I don't consider this particularly game-breaking.
Personally, I believe the suite of water changes (to harbours and shipyards) have made coastal cities too powerful late-game. I'm happy to leave this unchanged for now, but I do think it means the Lanun warrant a slight nerf. Perhaps, as suggested, slsightly reducing the commerce of coves.
(Long-term, I believe changes to OO and the Lanun worldspell around saltwater are reasonable, but that's beyond my abilities.)
Warrens gain -1gpt, lose +10% maintenance (or go to +20% maintenance?)
Bannor do need a buff, though this might not be the time for it. Others have suggested Courage, but honestly I think they need something that affects the economy. Perhaps +1cpt to hamlets and above (i.e. hamlets are +3cpt, villages +4, etc.?). Could also see that as a hpt. Or, as others have suggested, faster cottage maturation (I'd need to look into how to implement this, possibly through a civic). This is probably too wacky to change for this game though.
Again, this may be too radical to include here, but too my mind the balance of the tier 2 units is way off. It's unclear why Axemen are 45h whereas Hunters are 60h. But far more agregious is the cost of the religious units - Drown, a axemen replacement, are a crazy 90h! Fawn are 75h, which also seems a little high, but diseased corpses, SoK, and radiant guards are 90h, and crusaders are 80h. This is a really tough knot to untangle, but I'd suggest at least: (1) Drown ->60h, (2) radiant guards/SoK/Diseased Corpses ->75h (SoK hammer gain is adjusted accordingly), (3) Fawns->70h. I'd even consider Axes->50h. Again, this is a tough tangle, so happy to receive pushback.
Slightly more radically, and again happy to hold off on this for this game, I'm increasingly inclined towards bronze warriors being too strong, and wondering whether removing their ability to use bronze weapons would solve many of the problems.
Is Stasis too powerful? Beyond being annoying, I could see the argument for removing the golden age aspect entirely.
Yes/no on level 5 for Sidar being too easy?
Morbius Witches - as mentioned happy to explore options but they do seem a bit OP to me. I've proposed removing Channeling 1 or making a limit on how many can be trained.
Wew! Apologies for the wall of text. As said, happy to do any or none of these for this game, if it's easier to just use EitB as-is. I'll follow-up with a post on suggested settings.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
No opinion on foreign trade, I've never used it. Maybe I'm missing out. I agree that coastal cities become too strong in the late game; I'm stalled in my current Vampire game that has a city with 8 trade routes, generating 95 commerce, and that's nowhere near maxed out (currently building Nexus for another route, no Great Lighthouse).
Agree on elven workers having 100% workrate.
Calabim are a tough balancing act. They get probably the best tier 3 unit, and a ridiculously overpowered unique building. Move that stuff too early (i.e., where it was in the base game), and they're too strong. I'd agree that they are too slow off the blocks now, but I'd recommend a light hand on adjusting the nerfs.
On tier 2 units: don't forget that the religious units don't need buildings, just religion, so you save 100 hammers on training yard/hunting lodge construction. Also, fawns are better than hunters in several ways: no city attack malus, free woodsman I, forest attack bonus. The other religious units all have their unique strengths as well, but I agree that costs should be more consistent. Axemen are probably too cheap, but I recall they were reduced in price (from 60 hammers) because they're such a marginal improvement over bronze warriors. This whole evaluation hinges on the later point about removing bronze weapons from warriors, I think.
Octopus overlords is another one that's hard to balance, because its strength is so map dependent. On a watery map, tsunami is hands-down the best stack collateral; on a very dry map it's pretty worthless.
As I recall, a golden age was added to Stasis to compensate for halving its duration. I hate that world spell, as well as the other Illian projects; any game with Auric in it is going to have a lot of not-fun aspects.
For mobius witches, I think the whole concept of planar gate units being buildable is most of the problem. Are you able to select promotions on mobius witches now, versus having them assigned in olden days? If possible, I'd advocate making planar gate units unbuildable again, but have higher odds for the first few, then diminishing odds of unit generation as you gain more of them (e.g. 10% odds for first, 9% for second, 8% for third, etc.). This lets you play with your unique toys without having vast numbers of them.
Wildlands (enjoy in SP, but understand if we'd rather not)
Strongly prefer Living World but would be fine if we'd prefer not
Unique features? No strong preference, they can be fun though sometimes unbalanced (specifically Yggdrassil or if you prefer no lairs)
Map:
Based on our mapmaker, I think I'd prefer generated, lightly edited. In terms of settings, I like the script/settings used in PB64 (though given balancing through civs there might be issues with lack of terrain)
Size, perhaps slightly more than PB69 per player? Not sure quite how much that is.
I'll add a bunch of notes about how to balance for FFH2 later (e.g. managing coast etc.)
Climate? No preference
Blessings of Amatheon? I don't mind - FFH2 MP tends to leave this on by default but I've been playing a few games with it off and enjoying it.
Have I missed anything?
In terms of start, as I see it there are three options (assuming we don't want to fool around with late-game start):
I would modify Discovery to: remove Hunting, Bronze Working, Archery (as these give tier 2 units - I think the rationale for including them is to allow all tiles to be modified). I can also see an argument for adding a warrior and/or scout, and a worker - both these would just speed up the game by 20ish turns. I could also see an argument for removing Mysticism, as it makes it very fast to get a religion, and everyone just revolts to Godking T1. For a similar reason I could see an argument for adding Hunting, as otherwise FotL is artificially further away than the other two religions.
In terms of picking civ/leader, as discussed earlier I would favour picking from three randomly generated.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
I'm happy with most of those rules, though I think Yggdrassil, the Remnants and the ice mana unique features should be off the board. In terms of thr balace change ideas, I'm happy to playtest them, provided implementing them doesn't stall out the game too long.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
There is, mackoti, but I know I for one am not interested in playing one.
Quote:No opinion on foreign trade, I've never used it. Maybe I'm missing out. I agree that coastal cities become too strong in the late game; I'm stalled in my current Vampire game that has a city with 8 trade routes, generating 95 commerce, and that's nowhere near maxed out (currently building Nexus for another route, no Great Lighthouse).
Yes, I think more needs to be done to the late game balance in that area.
Quote: On tier 2 units: don't forget that the religious units don't need buildings, just religion, so you save 100 hammers on training yard/hunting lodge construction. Also, fawns are better than hunters in several ways: no city attack malus, free woodsman I, forest attack bonus. The other religious units all have their unique strengths as well, but I agree that costs should be more consistent. Axemen are probably too cheap, but I recall they were reduced in price (from 60 hammers) because they're such a marginal improvement over bronze warriors. This whole evaluation hinges on the later point about removing bronze weapons from warriors, I think.
Agreed. Do you have thoughts on that?
Quote:Octopus overlords is another one that's hard to balance, because its strength is so map dependent. On a watery map, tsunami is hands-down the best stack collateral; on a very dry map it's pretty worthless.
Agreed - I personally think this is best balanced through careful map design, which I believe was lost in the last couple of games.
Quote:As I recall, a golden age was added to Stasis to compensate for halving its duration. I hate that world spell, as well as the other Illian projects; any game with Auric in it is going to have a lot of not-fun aspects.
Yeah, that was the source, I just don't think it was very justified.
Quote:For mobius witches, I think the whole concept of planar gate units being buildable is most of the problem. Are you able to select promotions on mobius witches now, versus having them assigned in olden days? If possible, I'd advocate making planar gate units unbuildable again, but have higher odds for the first few, then diminishing odds of unit generation as you gain more of them (e.g. 10% odds for first, 9% for second, 8% for third, etc.). This lets you play with your unique toys without having vast numbers of them.
The latter may be too difficult, but I could make mobius witches specifically non-buildable? I don't think there's a reason to do that to succubi or manticores or chaos demons.
@Brian, my hope would be to quickly implement whatever changes we agree, rather than waiting for a patch. My abundance of free time to do this will pass in mid-Jan anyway.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
• Soldier of Kilmorph and Paramander swap art assets (this is a EMM aesthetic change I'm fond of)
Some points on why these changes were made:
I wanted to try the tier 2 fixes, and gauge reaction to them, especially as there wasn't much in the thread. I felt that the slight cost differential of the Drown matches closely to the role that Moroi and Pyre's play as axemen+, whilst the other units have more significant gimmicks.
I'm much less confident of the bronze warrior change, but thought if I was posting this I might as well include it for others to test. Please give feedback on this before we start as it does substantially alter the balance of the whole mid-game.
Bannor changes - I tried to do something that would fit their economy and their strength, without breaking them. Note that if they ever go for Overcouncil they have to leave Bannor State behind.
I felt that the Governor's mansion would still leave the Vampires militarily weak as they were before, but able to access their key toys a little easier.
In other areas, I went for middle-of-the-road changes in general, e.g. to Foreign Trade and Revelry.
Let me know any feedback! To play, simply paste over your assets folder.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
