Post ideas and suggestions here. I will also post any proposals here as well, and report on the progress to date.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
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EitB 0011 Wishlist/Discussion
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Lairs
Premise: In their current form, lairs are decidedly unbalanced from one to another. Goblin forts are so well garrisoned they are almost impossible to kill until very late in the game. Ruins are easier to pop, but spawn two-moving high strength lizards, which are easily the strongest barbarian possible to face naturally for a long time into the game (as strong as axeman and twice as fast, and can spawn from the start). Skeletons just suck. Proposal:
Result: Suddenly we have a balance of lairs. Goblin forts are harder to get rid of - but not ridiculously so - and spawn units with poison (which is more annoying then anything else). Barrows give the strongest enemy, but it is slow moving (although if they win they can become spectres, which is a concern). Lizards are the only two-moving barbs to spawn for ages, but are no longer as strong. This does weaken lairs ability to threaten (which I personally like as I think the landscape is a bit too easy to tame in FFH) but it makes up for that by making it more likely that lairs will be placed and/or considered in our games. Another change I am considering: Lairs are not poppable outside of your culture. This would help prevent people killing themselves off/gaining big benefits early and reduce the lottery of things and moving away from close lairs being a gimme to their intended use working, whilst strengthening the oft-neglected idea of garrisoning with a unit. The disadvantage, of course, is reducing the fun/challenge of exploring the map in the early game. I would like feedback on this idea.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
I really like the second idea.
As for the first change, I don't think it's problematic that goblin forts can't be cleared until later in the game. I wouldn't mind making lizardmen a bit weaker (note though that they already have a penalty to city attack, so they're not as dangerous as they look at first), but I don't think it's a good idea to make skeletons any stronger. Especially in a balance mod: level of harassment by barbarians is hugely dependent on luck, so better to keep it more of a flavor thing and less something that you have to really focus on defending against.
Unsurprisingly, I am opposed to changing lairs. We've currently got a community split on them- some people don't mind them, others detest them- but I think more because you can get all sorts of crazy results from exploring them rather than the regularly spawned barbs being too powerful. After all, you can always get your map maker to prune excess lairs back. Just save yourself a lot of time and leave them alone- they're already a game option, so we can just continue to vote on an individual game basis whether we want them around or not.
Also Strong Skeletons is a really bad idea- they'll promote to Spectres after one combat, and those Grim Reaper things after two or three more.
Bob, do you object to the second change there? I can't quite tell.
As to the first change, whilst I hadn't really considered the skeleton-to-spectre change, in EitB spectres are the same strength as skeles, and don't have fear, so they would be very similar to the current lizards, except that they cannot spawn on their own. (And the wraith threshold in EitB is significantly higher so probably isn't an issue.) However, I would be willing to leave them as-is if it looks like that would be a problem, I simply hoped that we could make it so each lair had something to fear. I also don't think that weak archers are too easy to get past - they're still defence 5, +25% fortify, +whatever defence the fort itself gives and any base terrain beneath, so I don't think they're going to be easy, just possible and less ludicrously high. Lizards do have a city malus but are still easily the most dangerous unit. Gaining weak would let them keep the scary, worker-sniping two-move factor without ever being an existential threat.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
I don't like any of the lair changes except making goblin fort archers weaker, which would make the Clan a little better balanced for lairs maps with gobbo forts.
I think if you want to balance lairs, the best way to start would be to delay some of the game-changing lair-exploring events so they'll never trigger (i.e. get replaced by less-earth-shaking events) until a later-game era (or game turn if that's easier). Restricting exploration to lairs within your borders will have some weird unintended consequences (one of which you mentioned, in relation to early exploration) and I don't think it really solves the underlying problem.
The actual creatures spawned (as currently constituted) seem to me to represent a much smaller potential swing in game balance than the results of exploring a lair. Since they're a map feature, they can also be balanced by the mapmaker (much like strategic resources, marble, etc.) so I don't think there's any need to balance them against each other. So for balance purposes, I think the question centers more around Clan of Embers than anything else. I'll defer to Bob on the Goblin Archers, as he knows the mod much better than I do, and add that if you want to tweak Lizardmen without nerfing them into the ground (Poison Goblins and Skellies are both strictly better than Weak Lizards when they have to move through rough terrain) you could just give them Rusted instead. (But note that a Warrior defending a city already has odds on a regular 4-strength Lizardman, without taking fortification, terrain, or city defenses into account.)
I agree that a different nerf would probably be better balanced, but most don't seem appropriate flavor-wise (why are they diseased? Why are they rusted? And so on) and strong /weak are easy to associate without feeling like clutter. As is, there doesn't seem to be a lot of support for that so I will re-evaluate. I would like to give some buff to barrows, but will reconsider what that should be.
And yes, a much greater balance issue is the balance of lair pops, exploration and results, but the reason I not to look into it here is that it id rather not get into that, rather controversial topic. There are quite a lot of opinions as to how lairs should be handled and I'd rather chase the low hanging fruit. Just quickly whilst its on my mind: What should be done about chariot balance?
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
(June 20th, 2014, 02:59)Qgqqqqq Wrote: What should be done about chariot balance? Make them require Trade, like in base FFH. A few other thoughts: 1) I think Keelyn is a little too weak now. Her whole shtick was the synergy between puppets and Summoner. Rather than remove that completely, I'd suggest making it so that the puppets themselves don't benefit from the Summoner trait. So a Keelyn arcane unit can have two puppets going at once, but units summoned by the puppets only last one turn... she still effectively gets twice as many summoned combat units (rather than 4x), but can get other utility out of long-lasting puppets (doubling of other spells, extra range, etcetera). 2) I'd also suggest preventing exponentiation with Twincast: either Twincast shouldn't apply to puppets, or the puppets shouldn't inherit it. 3) I like the idea of Overcouncil/Undercouncil being available to Agnostic civs, but I don't like putting them at Trade. Why not bring back Way of the Wise and Way of the Wicked from base FFH? If I understand correctly, those were removed because they weren't particularly interesting techs by themselves. Put them back in the tech tree with Overcouncil at Way of the Wise and Undercouncil at Way of the Wicked (maybe requiring Trade as well for the civics; makes sense that these civics should require both Trade and Philosophy), along with the goodies that used to be there. 4) Fawn nerf hurts all elves rather than Volanna specifically. I don't object to the change (fawns are really good units) but I think the synergy between Aggressive and Sinister is really strong. If you're going to keep that, I'd suggest the following: Remove Rivanna (who I don't understand anyway), change Volanna to Aggressive/Summoner (parallel to Faeryl's Raiders/Arcane). 5) Why does EitB remove the free trade route at Currency? 6) Druids seem underpowered for non-Dwarven civs now. Which maybe brings Commune with Nature in balance with other prereqs for Divine Essence (Righteousness, Malevolent Designs, Theology), none of which seems like a particularly good deal. I'd suggest a big price cut for all of these techs (bringing them in line with Arcane Lore).
Even with requiring Trade, you're still going to pretty much always rather chariots than horse archers - they're cheaper, Trade gives other bonuses, and the defensive strength doesn't much matter. If you're getting attacked in this era, the attacker ought to have collateral and your stack's gonna die anyway. How about changing the units so that they fill different niches? I can think of a few possibilities:
I'm sure there are other possibilities that I'm not thinking of.
EitB 25 - Perpentach
Occasional mapmaker |
