EitB v12 Wishlist/Progress

[Bobchillingworth]

You don't need to reply at all.


I was going to on your behalf, but then I realized, what's the point? It would be more fun and enlightening to debate a preschool.

[Ellimist]

Eh, he has some good points and some bad ones. It's worth analyzing and responding to.

I'm going to have to ask you this, Q- what drawbacks does the Clan have that currently even remotely justify their huge advantages (everything from Wolf Riders and Ogres to Warrens and an Expansive leader- Expansive currently being the most powerful trait in the game).

If you can't answer that question in good sincerity, then they aren't a balanced faction. Their main drawback is tech-rate, but do you honestly feel that balanced their other strengths? Look at their actual record in PBEM's...

You are correct that their main drawback is tech. The other significant drawback is the substantial investment cost of building warrens in each city.

The tech drawback is complex; they have less tech than other civs do but need more tech than the average civ does. Most civs are comfortable ignoring Masonry early on, but the Clan can't build warrens without it. Most civs can (approximately) match their expansion rate to their acquisition of worker techs, but if the Clan want to be competitive they are *forced* to expand faster. In my Clan games, I usually end up working a few unimproved tiles despite having plenty of workers.

Now, I don't dispute that Expansive is a powerful trait, but there is a reason I chose Sheelba in my current Clan game rather than Jonas. I realized that EXP doesn't actually help the Clan as much as it helps other civs. The reason for this is that Clan cities have high setup costs in addition to the initial settler price.

• The expansive trait doesn't affect workers and the Clan demand for workers tends to equal or exceed their demand for settlers. Rapidly settling cities is pointless and potentially even counterproductive if those cities end up working mostly unimproved tiles. This is because...
• Maintenance costs can be substantial for rapidly settled small cities. Total maintenance costs for any civ will tend to increase at a parabolic rate as more cities are added, so that the tenth city settled will cost more than the ninth did and the eleventh will cost even more than the tenth. (This is actually the place where I think EitB has benefited the Clan, since trade route commerce is easier to obtain and can be used to offset the maintenance disadvantage.)
• The Clan doesn't have very many good options for producing culture. 40 hammer monuments are very expensive in a new city, and compete with the Warrens for early hammers. They are very unlikely to win the Drama race against human opponents, and it's not worth the beaker cost without the Great Bard. In addition, if they prioritize researching toward Drama, they are delaying a lot of early techs that they ought to be pursuing.
  
  The ideal option that I tend to try for is religion, but the religious techs are expensive and compete for priority with all of the other important technologies. In addition, Runes of Kilmorph is the most commonly chosen Clan religion, and simply spreading RoK to a city doesn't help it to gain any culture. This means that free religion spreads won't give culture and Thanes of Kilmorph must be used for a one-time gain of 13 culture. While this is doable, it certainly isn't cheap in either hammers or techs, and it's not available early enough to eliminate the need for several monuments.
• 80-90% or more of Clan cities should build a warrens prior to producing any units. The opportunity costs of delaying the warrens are usually just too high to make it the correct choice. This usually results in a 10-20 turn (or more) delay before the city can actually start producing something of value to the empire. (This essentially means that a Clan city is founded with a "debt" of 160 hammers for monument and warrens alone!)
• All of the above points assume that the Clan player has unlimited(or at least abundant) unsettled land to expand into. This has been true of most of our recent games, but is not guaranteed by any means. Expansive is a powerful trait primarily because any expansive leader can take advantage of a large map.

As to their actual record in pbems, they have done well in some games and poorly in others.

The other issue that's been brought up tangentially but not really discussed is the interaction of the Barbarian trait with a late era start - does the later tech baseline negate some of the drawback of Barbarian?

How could reducing the length of the tech tree and putting all factions on an equal initial tech-footing (correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the Doviello also start w/o any starting tech like the Clan?) *not* benefit a Barbarian civ? Also, my opinion is that if it breaks Barb civs to have them start on an equal tech-footing (and I think it does) those civs should properly be banned or somehow be nerfed by the mapmaker rather than trying to code around it (which I agree would probably be a nightmare).

You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding the process of setting up a FFH game. It is absolutely not the mapmaker's job or place to decide which civs are banned based on the settings the players decided on. Sometimes a mapmaker will recommend that a certain civ be banned based on map decisions they made, usually Lanun, but the final bans are determined by the players of that game.

Now, I agree that the Clan have an advantage on a later-era start. If I were signing up for such a game, I might suggest that the Clan be banned or else try to choose them for myself. What you seem to be missing is that nobody asked for the Clan to be banned in 39 and nobody else(other than potentially Q) was aware of how powerful they might be.

Something that is true of basically every variant we try is that some civs or leaders are going to be advantaged over others, but it can be *extremely* difficult to realize ahead of time which choices are advantaged. An example of this is FFH-12, which was unrestricted leaders. Mist and I were on a team, and we discussed our options at length and decided to play as Varn Gosam of the Sidar. Immediately afterwards, we discovered that our opponents had ALL chosen very aggressive civs. There was a possibility, we thought, that Varn of the Sidar would turn out to be the best civ to choose in the game. We thought we could do something powerful that our opponents wouldn't be able to match. Obviously, we were wrong. If we had been right, would our opponents have been justified in using hindsight bias to complain that Varn and/or the Sidar should have been banned?

Deciding which civs to ban from the game is something that can only be legitimately decided or discussed during the setup of the game. If you don't realize that a certain civ is overpowered in a situation and somebody else does, that's a perfectly legitimate advantage for them to gain. If you do propose banning it and are overruled, you are free to withdraw from that game entirely if you feel strongly about it.

Monks don't benefit from the Favored promotion (I think this might be a bug- none of the disciple units other than the ones that can actually spread a religion do from Single Player testing... The Crusader, Monk, Host of the Einhejar- none of them benefit from the Favored promotion, unlike IIRC they once did from the Potent promotion...)

I have noticed this as well. I am not sure if it's intended or a bug, but the way I understood it was that certain disciple units were just not intended to gain passive exp at all. (I am pretty sure that they didn't benefit from the potent promotion either.)

Can we focus on other worthy topics, like the planned buffs to the Elohim Monks you mentioned? Specifically, what are they? And why would Monks upgrade *INTO* Priests? They have higher base-strength than priests and are close enough in hammer-cost that the hammers you save would be highly unlikely to be worth the gold you spend unless the upgrade-costs were *very* cheap...

Could I suggest you do it the other way around? I.e. have the Priests upgrade into Monks? After all, they unlock at the same tech, and this way they could act like early Paladins- direct combat units that Priests could upgrade into and keep their divine spells...

I'm not sure which of these two options I favor, monks upgrading into priests or priests into monks. There are some pros and cons with each I think.

Could I suggest focusing more on the Reliquary? Instead of giving a free March promotion (which I've been thinking about, and wouldn't really help the Elohim at all- the March promotion is only really more than marginally beneficial when carrying out invasions, but if the Elohim are so weak that they're always on the defensive to begin with then that's not really useful...)

It's true that March is primarily beneficial for aggression, but I think you're underestimating the ability to freely give both March and Spirit Guide to an entire army. I'm interested in giving it a shot, and can definitely see some worthwhile possibilities.

What about giving reliquaries +1 food or +1 hammer instead?

I don't think that's really the direction we want to move the Elohim. A minor insubstantial boost equivalent in value to an Elder Council or Market isn't going to turn them into a respectably powerful civ. The rest of what you wrote about this is concerned with flavor, which is a minor consideration compared to playability. I am open to the possibility of additional buffs to the Elohim, but I don't think +1 food or hammer per city will do enough to matter.

In short, I'm trying to clue you into something here Q- the Elohim are a builder civ, NOT a conquering civ. Buffing military units that they never get the chance to get proper use out of, except perhaps defending against invaders as a supplement to the normal baseline of Warriors and Archers, is not going to help them much- especially when the promotion you're suggesting (March) is a promotion basically designed to help armies on the move heal in enemy terrain, NOT to help defenders heal between attack waves (any half-competent player will make sure to attack with enough force that they will outright wipe out most of the defenders in a city anyways, even if there are a couple survivors in the end...)

The Elohim are supposed to be a builder-civ, but are currently one with such a weak economy that they are practically useless in this regard.

The Tolerant civ trait defines the Elohim and does literally nothing unless they are capturing cities. The Spirit Guide promotion does nothing unless their units are being killed. Einion Logos's Charismatic trait is wasted if his units aren't seeing combat. Ethne's Organized trait lets her build Command Posts. The Sanctuary worldspell provides a military advantage. Corlindale is an assassin-immune heroic archmage.

They aren't a builder civ. The reason they have very little in the way of economic advantages is because their advantages are militaristic in nature. The problem has been that they don't have enough of these advantages and factors such as their palace WW multiplier are contradictory to warfare.

The Sidar are also intended to be an aggressive civ if they wish to make use of Shades. The incredible mobility offered by the Sever Soul spell and the waning mechanic are both designed for prolonged hit-and-run style warfare.

Iskender won FFH-5 with the Sidar against a very strong field that included both Sons of the Inferno and Keelyn the Ridiculous, and his capital ended up having 29 waned great merchants by the end of it.

That was a long time ago. And equating player skill and luck to civ strength is not a good trend to set...

Iskender won FFH-5 specifically by exploiting the unique advantages of the Sidar. He supported the Clan in a prolonged and bloody war against the Balseraphs and gained a significant number of Shades from it. Later, he used the mobility of Divided Souls and other recon units as an incredible force-multiplier against an otherwise superior foe.

Yes, his victory was very skillfully achieved in that game, but it was achieved by fully taking advantage of the tools available to the Sidar(base FFH, even.)

I'm pretty sure the Sidar can't even settle Great Prophets from Shades (at least they can't in my current Sidar SP game- maybe it's a bug...) Or did you mean the actual priests specialists? I think the idea was to intentionally *not* give them Altar synergy, as that would be unflavorful (they sold half their souls for indefinite lifespans- how could they save the world with religion?)

They can't settle shades as prophets; that's true. That might be worth revising as well if the Sidar palace buffs are extended to priests.

I understand that it is somewhat anti-flavorful, but it's not excessively so. Even so, flavor is secondary to gameplay value and Altar synergy can fit right into a Sidar gameplan that is based on producing shades from disciple units.

Another potential change that would affect more than just the Sidar would be to restore the GPP counter increment to what BTS has. I believe on normal speed, BTS increments 100-200-300-400 while FFH/EITB increment 100-300-500-700.

I've been thinking about this some more, and it might be better to move to 100-250-400-550 at first. There are likely to be a good number of unintended and unexpected consequences. I still support reducing the GPP increment, but the amount that it is reduced should be carefully considered.


EDIT: I just thought of a potential economic buff to the Elohim. What does everyone think about making Ethne Adaptive(creative) and Organized? Right now she's ORG/CRE, but the Creative trait seems a bit redundant with the current reliquary focus.

[Qgqqqqq]

Thanks, Ellimist! Exactly what I was hoping for. One quibble:

I have noticed this as well. I am not sure if it's intended or a bug, but the way I understood it was that certain disciple units were just not intended to gain passive exp at all.

Intended. There's a passive-xp field, which is liberally unchecked. I think it's only enabled for units that can cast spells (with the exception of level 1 disciple units). That is by design (though not my design).

[Ellimist]

There's a passive-xp field, which is liberally unchecked. I think it's only enabled for units that can cast spells (with the exception of level 1 disciple units). That is by design (though not my design).

Yeah, I first noticed this with Paramanders in FFH-20. I don't really agree or disagree with this function; it's just the way things are.

[Ranamar]

EDIT: I just thought of a potential economic buff to the Elohim. What does everyone think about making Ethne Adaptive(creative) and Organized? Right now she's ORG/CRE, but the Creative trait seems a bit redundant with the current reliquary focus.

I assumed that the value of Creative on Ethne is that the reliquaries she builds are nice and cheap for building them for military reasons. I guess that isn't much to offer, but it beats paying full freight if you were going to run a religion with priests putting up temples anyway.

Incidentally, I had a brainstorm about specialist economies the other night. The specialist-boosting tech that's easiest to get is actually Caste System, for +1 beaker +2 culture. Feudalism is much cheaper than Arcane Lore (about half as much, right now), and you kinda want its prereqs (trade, code of laws) anyway whether or not you're pushing for specialists. I'm not sure it comes early enough to really let you get around monuments much, relative to religion, unfortunately, so I'm not sure how much the culture helps, but it gives the same +beaker as Scholarship with the one disadvantage being a possible shortage of extra specialist slots. I'd appreciate someone more experienced investigating this idea, though, since I'm not exactly the strongest civ player.

[Qgqqqqq]

There are proposals on the matter of Caste System earlier in the thread, which I intend to respond to in roughly two weeks.

[Qgqqqqq]

Proposals:

1. Guild loses +1h to workshops. +1h added to workshops by default.

2. Guarded lairs take 3 turns just like regular ones.

3. Windmills buildable at Mathematics (not engineering)

4. Aristocracy moves from -40% maintenance to -10%

5. Galleys lose 1 move (to 2 moves base, 3 with longshoreman)

6. Naval promotions are switched up. Longshoreman now loses 1 combat, Buccaneers now loses 1 cargo, and Skeleton Crew loses nothing.

7. Eurabates, Drifa, and Abashi gain the Hero promotion.

8. Foreign Trade loses +1 trade route everywhere; gains +50% trade-route yield.
- Should this be +25%?

9. The Great Library gives +2b per specialist (from +1b)

10. The Dragon's Hoard gives +2 cpt, +100% cpt, +10gpt, Gems, Enchantment Mana, and Gold. (Instead of all other affects)

11. Pacifism gains infinite sage, infinite merchant slots.



Go nuts.

[Bobchillingworth]

1. Yes

2. Don't like this change, the point of the three turns is to prevent people from ninja popping lairs on their opponents borders in the early game, or at least make it more difficult. Lair guardians already accomplish this.

3. Sure. Probably still too late in the tech tree tbh, I forget what bonuses they provide though and if anything boosts them further.

4. That's a pretty harsh nerf, and I'm not sure it's needed. It was with an earlier version of the modmod, but XXXVI actually saw half the players running cottage economies IIRC- maybe even 4/6.

5. Why?

6. I remember chatting about this with you, but I can't remember what the rationale was.

7. Lol okay why not.

8. Sensible. Sounds pretty strong, actually. Might be a pretty big buff, but I don't think the civic sees a ton of play currently.

9. Good change, but it's problematic if an entire economy type (specialists) is only viable if you land a wonder.

10. Alright.

11. Great change. Half of what would make specialists a viable economic option for non-Sidar. See #9 above for my issue with the complementary half.

[Qgqqqqq]

2. The point of it is to stop making early popping before they spawn a protector a thing. But I forgot that the rules for that are changing, so you can probably disregard this one.

3. Windmills get another boost at machinery, which I don't think I'd want to move. I suppose I could put them at construction instead, but I don't like the overcrowding of techs, particularly when some are relatively dead.

4. Yeah, I go back and forth on aristocracy. Very happy to be convinced either way.

5. (Galleys lose a move): this is for two reasons. Firstly, because I want people to play naval more, and I think this is one of the reasons it doesn't work, because galleys are just too fast - they can already boost to way beyond BTS levels even with 2->3 moves, and that has sort of the right balance with other factors - I think that setup is much more playable. Also because galleys are just better than tiremes, (and even galleons) and I want the two to be balanced against each other.

6. Basically, the priority of these things is Movement>>Combat>>Cargo. Movement makes everything faster, better for pretty much every circumstance - economy gets things planted sooner, war means you can hit out of sight/have better control, and so on. Combat is probably second just because cargo is kinda lame - you can normally make do with 3 instead of 4 cargo pretty easily, just plan things slightly differently (because economy-wise 3 is plenty for settler+garrison+worker). In the past I've actually suggested Skeleton Crew be +2 cargo, -1 combat.

But honestly, how often do you use anything other than longshoreman? And has anyone ever used skeleton crew?

9. True. But how else to manage it? My only real thought is moving Scholarship into the GK line, changing it, and putting it at writing. And what do you do with tGL, then? In any game, you can't expect many people to be going for an economy-specific wonder, so do you compensate for that, or what?

[Ichabod]

Perhaps make Scholarship avaiable if you build TGLibrary (+2 scientists or something and no +beakers for specs). This way, it works like Pyramids and Rep in BTS. If you land the Mids, you get REP faster, but everyone will get there eventually, if they want.