FfH Paring Questions

[Mygdala]

I agree that a HN attack would be difficult to pull off, but I also think it would be doable. The direction of attack, the unit composition--these are all issues that could be dealt with by a clever player (who could even set a patsy up to take the blame!). And I think even a relatively small force could be extremely disruptive, if the goal is not to take cities but to delay/damage a rival.

The alternative idea of giving Esus Hidden is also a really neat one. I still doubt it would make Esus a viable option, but it's a step in the right direction. However, it would steal some thunder from the Sidar (who need all the thunder they can get).

I really dislike the idea of being able to get gold from Esus, either through the religion-in-a-city effect or through some other means. Lore-wise, it's almost the exact opposite of what Esus is supposed to be. Esus followers want to take short-cuts by paying money for miracles. Making money is rightfully the mechanic of RoK, which emphasizes the value of hard work.

[Bobchillingworth]

Some very interesting suggestions. I like the extra layers of secrecy regarding other players knowing that you're following Esus, although that might be difficult for Sareln to code. There will still need to be announcements (but disguised) when the religion, shrine, and Gibbon are built. Otherwise players could actually be put off from researching Deception (since who knows if someone else already beat you to Gibbon or the shrine), and I think it's preferable that the religious victory still maintain a degree of transparency for all faiths. Also players will still be able to track fairly accurately when anyone they know researches Esus, since it will be reflected in the tech trading screen. Not much can be done about that, though.


I question the utility of a HN army, though. Recon units can't pillage, and HN units can't take cities (plus recon suck at taking towns anyway). You'll be able to chase workers and scout terrain, but unless your units are invisible they'll be awfully vulnerable until you have poisoned blade rangers or something comparable. Mistforms / captured giant spiders work just as well for that sort of harassment, if not better.


Hidden is a much more deadly promotion than HN, but you have to be careful to not unbalance the game while trying to buff Esus. There's very few counters to invisible units currently, which works because there aren't that many invisible units to begin with. How could an Auric or Grigorii player lacking a metamagic node deal with an invisible Esus rush? Trying to get perfect sight on enough recon units isn't practical.


As for the lore stuff about Esus & money, I think it's debatable. Esus is the paying for miracles religion, sure (hence the justification for Sareln adding "pay-per-use" healing & other spells to certain Esus units), but it's also the faith of thieves, blackmailers, charlatans, and confidence men. Really there should be some sort of Mammon-based faith, since Kilmorph is sort of stepping on his territory too, but alas there is not.

[Mygdala]

A couple of small suggestions:

Giving Os-Gabella Spiritual is a nice idea. So Tebryn spams death mages and Gabella spams ritualists? It works. The problem is that NEITHER of them rely on the Sheaim unique mechanic, the Planar Gate spawns. It's easy to see why: Planar Gates are absurdly expensive (300 hammers! That's half the cost of most FFH wonders!), to the point where building them in every city (which is what you need to get maximum spawns) is completely unfeasible. I suggest
1) lowering the Gate costs to something like 150 hammers, and
2) making Gates half-cost with Industrious, or Spiritual, or whatever Gabella ends up with.
This pushes Gabella towards an Ashen Veil/AC raising/Planar Gate strategy, which is a nice feasible alternative to Tebryn's endless mage spamming.


If we're looking to improve the Sidar, why only focus on Sandalphon's traits? One thing the Sidar desperately need is more military punch. I propose giving the "Divide Soul" ability to Sidar Rangers and Beastmasters. This ability is one of the most tactically useful in the game--it lets you move 2 squares after your movements points are used up, plus you can cross mountain ranges--and it's ridiculous that you lose this ability when you get more powerful units. I sometimes avoid researching Animal Handling just to keep building Divided Souls! Giving Sidar Rangers this ability would better focus the Sidar research goals to the Recon line.

[Irgy]

As for Esus stuff I like the idea of hidden more than hidden nationality. Actually doing both would be fine too, but I'm still not convinced of the value of hidden nationality. Even with all that extra secrecy stuff, which is an awesome bunch of ideas mind you, it's not really going to be that hard to figure out who's doing it most of the time. It's got niche uses, sure, but at the end of the day having to make a state-religion commitment to do it is too much. If hidden nationality is going to work it needs to be something that doesn't require big, potentially visible (no matter how much you try and hide it) commitments (which is obviously a problem for the Svartalfar as well).

To me, stealing a UU and UB or two from elsewhere and giving them to CoE is still the best idea I've heard so far to make CoE a viable religion. That and making Shadowriders state-religion-only. The only downside to it now is that the other religions get more heroes and more, well, stuff, that they can do with their religion. So give a couple of interesting build options and it's fixed.

Otherwise, maybe it's just not that big a deal that people don't actually run CoE as their state religion. It still plays an important part in the game. Half the problem really is that too many of the benefits are given without the state religion, not that it doesn't have enough to offer. And it still needs to be the state religion for the (Impersonate Leader + Seven Pines + An Ally = Destroy 1 Civilisation) combo, which some might say is an overpowered (if somewhat narrow) option anyway.

I'm not saying don't add any hidden nationality stuff, I'm just saying I don't really see it as fixing anything.

By the way, does anyone want to confirm or deny my understanding of how invisibility actually works? Here's what I can gather
* Hidden is the same as invisible, except lost when the unit casts a spell or is involved in combat.
* Invisible units can be seen by:
- Various Empyrean spells, and the Empyrean shrine
- Revelers
- Hawks
- Mage Eyes

That hawks and can see hidden/invisible units makes any use of them a bit of a niche thing already, as it's really not that hard to build a few hawks and scout around with them. But if you take it away from hawks there really needs to be a replacement that people can access a little more easily than Mage Eyes.

Giving Os-Gabella Spiritual is a nice idea. So Tebryn spams death mages and Gabella spams ritualists?

Can I just say I like Os-Gabella as Industrious. She has the perfect Tower Victory traits. I honestly think both her and industrious in general are under-rated, and wish I'd picked her just to make that point in FFHPBEM3. Actually I think I've said this already. Maybe I should have another duel to try and make my point here Not that the Calabim one is making my point all that well so far.

The problem with Ritualists is that they're just not that good a spam unit. Ring of fire is great, sure, but you only need three unpromoted ritualists to get maximum damage out of that. The fact that they level up faster with Spiritual isn't reason enough to make them a better spam unit than, say, pyre zombies.

Profanes are good, but you only get at most four of those. That you can't take spell extension to give Balors more than 1 movement really hurts too.

The problem is that NEITHER of them rely on the Sheaim unique mechanic, the Planar Gate spawns. It's easy to see why: Planar Gates are absurdly expensive (300 hammers! That's half the cost of most FFH wonders!), to the point where building them in every city (which is what you need to get maximum spawns) is completely unfeasible. I suggest
1) lowering the Gate costs to something like 150 hammers, and
2) making Gates half-cost with Industrious, or Spiritual, or whatever Gabella ends up with.

I... don't agree with your analysis of the gates cost. They're quite good value for hammers already at that cost. Just think how much you'd pay to build four of the sorts of units you'd get out of them.

If we're looking to improve the Sidar, why only focus on Sandalphon's traits? One thing the Sidar desperately need is more military punch. I propose giving the "Divide Soul" ability to Sidar Rangers and Beastmasters. This ability is one of the most tactically useful in the game--it lets you move 2 squares after your movements points are used up, plus you can cross mountain ranges--and it's ridiculous that you lose this ability when you get more powerful units. I sometimes avoid researching Animal Handling just to keep building Divided Souls! Giving Sidar Rangers this ability would better focus the Sidar research goals to the Recon line.

I really like this idea.

[Mygdala]

I... don't agree with your analysis of the gates cost. They're quite good value for hammers already at that cost. Just think how much you'd pay to build four of the sorts of units you'd get out of them.

Hm, Gates can be seen as a net hammer gain if you just compare them to the hammer cost of the units you will eventually get from them. The problem with Gates as I see it is that the units you get from them spawn randomly, which is another way of saying, they don't really spawn when you need them. Two hammers spent on a unit you want now is much better than one hammer spent now to get a unit at some undetermined later time. Especially when the hammers spent now go into pyre zombies, and the ones spent later might go into unwieldy trash like tar demons.

My point I guess is that I'd really like to be able to play the Sheaim with a Gate spawn-focused military. Unfortunately, for even reasonable effectiveness at AC 50 or so, this would mean building a Gate in every city I own. I balk at the cost, especially in less-developed cities, and my military ends up being Pyre Zombies with a few Revelers and Witches thrown in for variety. Maybe I just expect too much from Gates.

[Irgy]

Hm, Gates can be seen as a net hammer gain if you just compare them to the hammer cost of the units you will eventually get from them. The problem with Gates as I see it is that the units you get from them spawn randomly, which is another way of saying, they don't really spawn when you need them. Two hammers spent on a unit you want now is much better than one hammer spent now to get a unit at some undetermined later time. Especially when the hammers spent now go into pyre zombies, and the ones spent later might go into unwieldy trash like tar demons.

My point I guess is that I'd really like to be able to play the Sheaim with a Gate spawn-focused military. Unfortunately, for even reasonable effectiveness at AC 50 or so, this would mean building a Gate in every city I own. I balk at the cost, especially in less-developed cities, and my military ends up being Pyre Zombies with a few Revelers and Witches thrown in for variety. Maybe I just expect too much from Gates.

I kind of agree with what you're saying, just not on whether it's a big problem. Nor on the solution.

As far as the hammer costs go, I agree with your point about discounting the value because the units appear later. But the fact that they eventually double in value does still make up for that a little. You don't want to build them too early, but at some point they become worthwhile.

To me, the gate units simply aren't designed to be the core of your military. They're units which supplement it in interesting ways. Witches give you access to new spheres, and early access to channeling II, but are ultimately less promoted than mages of the same level. Succubi give you charm, but you don't need a stack of it. Revelers see invisible, but you only need one unit in a given stack capable of doing that. Tar Demons and Minotaurs defend cities but again there's only so much of that you want. Manticores are nice to harass with, but a stack of them would be overpowered if anything. Marauders aren't good for much except filling space either way.

My point being that the gate units are already specifically designed to supplement your force in interesting ways, rather than make up the core of it. I think this is the way it should be.

I have had (single player) games where I did build both gates and support buildings in the all of my cities, thanks to the whip mostly. Even then it's only pulling in a couple of units per turn across the empire, nowhere near what I could produce conventionally. It's doing that in addition to conventional production, so it's still good, but even with them in every city they're not a substitute for built units.

So, I don't think changing the price will actually change the situation. The hammer cost prevents them being built very early on, but later the cost is not a significant factor and the spawn rate becomes the limitation. The gate units are still always going to be a supplement not a main force even if the gates were free. But they're designed to be a supplement so it's not really a problem.

If you wanted to change that I think you'd need to make some quite substantial changes to how it works, but I think although it's an interesting area to explore it's not something broken that needs fixing, so it's a lower priority area to look at.

By the way if you're interested in my more detailed thoughts on the Sheaim feel free to read my FFH2PBEM3 spoiler thread - although I warn you it's a little long-winded (like this post).

[Mygdala]

My point being that the gate units are already specifically designed to supplement your force in interesting ways, rather than make up the core of it. I think this is the way it should be.

Yeah, we agree on the current effectiveness of Gates, but I think we disagree about their original design intent.

I look at Gates and see THE unique mechanic of Sheaim play. No one else gets free spawned units (except for Infernals, Mercurians, and Bannor in crusade), no one else is so incentivized to aggressively play with the AC, and no one else has such deficits in their ability to build mid/late-game military units. Frankly it's a more interesting and unique mechanic than most other civs' special features (certainly more interesting than "look, we have fast horses!" or "look, we have pirate coves!"). And yet, while every other civ tends to focus their whole gameplay around their unique features, in practice the Sheaim do not focus around planar gate play, because it's just not that effective. As you say, it's an interesting supplement (or, if you find yourself popping lots of chaos marauders / revelers, a lame supplement), but not something you can base your gameplay around. To me that is a shame. Ideally I think the Sheaim should be driven to build gates and raise the AC to the same extent that elves are driven to adopt FoL.

But I will concede that it's probably less of a "balance" issue than a flavor/design issue, and so perhaps outside the scope of this mod.

[NobleHelium]

Yes, yes it is.

Just a quick note, he released a bug fix update for 1.6.

[Sareln]

Just a quick note, he released a bug fix update for 1.6.

Cool, thanks.

[Caustic Soda]

Maybe I just missed it, but what did you end up deciding about Aristograrianism? I don't have base FFH installed right now, so I can't just dl your mod and doublecheck.