FfH Paring Questions

[Bobchillingworth]

Thankfully that doesn't work. If it did, the Poisons tech would be almost entirely superfluous, among other obvious balance issues.

[Tasunke]

Thankfully that doesn't work. If it did, the Poisons tech would be almost entirely superfluous, among other obvious balance issues.

to what are you referring to?

[Katon]

You could get as many assassins as you wanted without researching Poisons, just by deleting rangers in the Mokka's Cauldron city; you could also get ritualists without being in or even necessarily having Veil. Some of the other troop switches would also be nice to get at will, but those are the two I can see offhand that flat-out circumvent normal tech and civic requirements.

[Ilios]

You can't delete your own units to trigger the effect?

Thankfully that doesn't work. If it did, the Poisons tech would be almost entirely superfluous, among other obvious balance issues.

You could get as many assassins as you wanted without researching Poisons, just by deleting rangers in the Mokka's Cauldron city; you could also get ritualists without being in or even necessarily having Veil. Some of the other troop switches would also be nice to get at will, but those are the two I can see offhand that flat-out circumvent normal tech and civic requirements.

Ok, what is it now, can or can't you delete units in your own Mokka city and get the appropriate unit back?

[Bobchillingworth]

I thought it was clear- no, you cannot. Deleting the unit gives you nothing.

[Tatan]

What about "sacrifice your own stuff" effects, like thane culture-bombing, Demon's Alter sacrifices, Arenas, and flesh golems?

[Bobchillingworth]

Good questions. Test results revealed that culture bombs, in-city death via Grimoire, Arenas, and Flesh Golem sacrifices all failed to produce any units via the Cauldron. I could not get the Demon's altar to work for some reason, despite trying it in a city with the Veil and a Veil Temple and the Infernal Pact tech. Not sure what was up with that.

[Selrahc]

Problem: Withered, Plagued and Diseased are easily gotten rid of by priests. This renders late game spells like Wither, unit abilities like Vile touch and powerful units like Yersinia at best situationally good. Right now, Yersinia is something of a joke of Horseman. Wither is one of the worse level 3 spells. I think this does constitute a gameplay balance problem.

Solution: Cure disease becomes a spell with a 2 turn cast time, akin to bloom.
This means that if you have the time to sit and heal up a unit, you can do. Disease can be fixed, by the same tier of units that currently fix it. However, it can't be done in the heat of battle. If a stack gets gets withered by an archmage or plagued by Yersinia, it becomes a serious problem. It might even become standard practice to not cure all your diseased corpses so they have a chance at spreading infections to powerful enemy defenders.

Thoughts? Do people even agree that this is a problem?

[kjn]

Problem: Withered, Plagued and Diseased are easily gotten rid of by priests.
(snip)
Solution: Cure disease becomes a spell with a 2 turn cast time, akin to bloom.

A two-turn cast time seems extreme, and multi-turn casts are IMO unfun. A simpler way could be that the priest can only heal one unit at a time. Or require a two-turn cast for curing plague or withered, but not for disease.

Or make it so that the use of Cure Disease blocks Medic II - yes, you can heal the plagued axeman, but then the rest of the stack will have to stay wounded.

[Bobchillingworth]

Eh. Granted, Diseased et al. don't really cripple attack stacks except for the AI, since most players by the time you have stuff like Wither will be including Cure Disease units in their stacks. But those spells do substantially soften up units for your attack, if you move right after casting them. Is that not enough?