FfH Paring Questions

[spellman]

I'm sure being a student also puts a damper on things.

[Tasunke]

well, personally, the nerf to Spectres does the nerf to Vampires without my needing to contribute anything else to the argument.

So, is the only nerf to the Lanun ... the nerf to Financial?

[Tasunke]

Well, I must say that my proposed idea for Boarding parties is as following

built from Training Yards

5 strength

boarding and amphibious promotions

25% vs melee

50 - 75% vs naval.


while we are on the subject ... is the Lanun worldspell still as powerful as Auric Ascended?

(and while talking about worldspells, I think Illian stasis should be more like 30-40 turns of no research rather than 20 turns of outright nothing)

hmm, maybe Stasis as 30 turns of no research and double hammer cost for everything? (for non Illians during Stasis)

[Krill]

30-40 turns of no research is just retarded. Barbs alone make that stupid, but have you any idea of how big an advantage that would give the Illians? Atleast 1 worker, a size 5 capital and a second city plus workers and warriors techs versus...a size 5 city and a bunch of warriors?

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh God, the early game in FFH is slow enough already. 40 turns of no research at all would be unplayable.




Can Raiders please go back to working like it used to, please? Decius totally sucks without it


Also I can't recall anyone actually arguing or demonstrating how it's overpowered in its vanilla form.

[Mardoc]

So, is the only nerf to the Lanun ... the nerf to Financial?

We're not convinced the Lanun need to be nerfed, honestly. The food bonus and pirate ports...let them get almost as much out of a coastal city as they can get out of a landlocked city.

[Amelia]

The fact is that a landlocked city will always be stronger than any coastal city, EVEN A LANUN ONE. Both me and Mardoc found that out first-hand... to our lost.

[fantasticsid]

The fact is that a landlocked city will always be stronger than any coastal city, EVEN A LANUN ONE. Both me and Mardoc found that out first-hand... to our lost.

When I've played Lanun (not very well, I'd note) my cities tend to be almost entirely mines/workshops fed from ocean tiles and obviously pirate ports. (one 'normal' 3/0/[2-3] sea tile can feed a grassland mine/workshop or half a plains one.)

What exactly is lacking with this approach? I mean, you have less land tiles to work, but the payoff is you don't need to work ANY of them for food. Is the issue that the hammers aren't there AT ALL, or that they come too LATE?

If we're still thinking that the Lanun lack hammers, maybe unlock a heron-throne style benefit (that stacks with the heron throne for 2h/tile) with one of their unique buildings (the Sea Haven perhaps?). Alternatively, would a lanun-specific bonus on conquest be unbalancing? This would force the lanun player to seriously evaluate a choice between conquest and foreign trade, which could lead to some interesting decisions.

[Mardoc]

What exactly is lacking with this approach? I mean, you have less land tiles to work, but the payoff is you don't need to work ANY of them for food. Is the issue that the hammers aren't there AT ALL, or that they come too LATE?

No, the issue is mainly that aristograrianism is so strong that it overshadows the Lanun. Using Hannah for comparison, an aristograrian riverside farm is guaranteed, under the worst circumstances (plains) to be the better payoff than an ocean tile, 3/0/4 to 3/0/3. Under the best circumstances, aristo post-sanitation, you're comparing a floodplains 5/0/4 tile to the 3/0/3 one. Usually happy cap comes into effect early enough that it's the per-tile effect that matters most.

And the Lanun don't even get to that point until they build lighthouses, using new city hammers, while landlocked cities can improve the land using workers built in already developed cities.

Add in one more detail - Lanun start off with neither worker techs nor Fishing, so they can't start improving their land until after most everyone else is well begun.

Really the problem with the Lanun is that you're tempted to play an ocean based strategy, when even for them, it's a loser compared to simple aristograrianism. I think they could do better if they focused on a land strategy, and then filled in all the ocean gaps that no one else wanted with half-decent cities.

Hammer production, on the other hand - Lanun can do that as well as anyone else, maybe a bit better if they get some hammers from coves.

[Amelia]

Hammer production wasn't a problem. Both me and Mardoc outproduced our enemies when we needed to. I did it by conquest / cash rushing buildings, Mardoc slaved everything with excess food.

The following are the main problems with Lanun that means that they aren't overpowered:

1. You start with Seafaring. This is insanely crippling, since you need to take like 16 turns before you can even research fishing (it's a 2nd tier tech). And since you start with Seafaring, it can be said that you don't start with any tech at all... and unlike Doviello/Clan you don't have anything up your sleeves in case of emergency.

2. Coasts are 3/3. Plains are 3/4 with farms. Grassland are 4/4. Yeah... suddenly those coasts don't seem that hot anymore. Sure, ports might make up for it, in the early game when you can only work 3 or 4 tiles. Once you reach cities of 8-10, you're suddenly earning less food, hammers and commerce compared to inland cities.

3. You need an extensive amount of hammers to get every city up. You need a lighthouse (60 H), a workboat for the sea resource (most likely), yet another 2 for the coves... that's another 45 hammers. In comparison, a land-based city only needs workers from another city to get those farms up.

4. You need some form of culture for the sea cities. A non-cultured city has no chance in working 2 coves, unless you have help from another city. (And sometimes fish/clam/crabs are in the sea tile, not the coast tile. Even worse.) By comparison, an inland city without culture still has several good tiles to work normally.

What it basically means that for every civ, land-based cities are always better than sea-based cities. However, i admit that Lanun is good in several things:

1. Rushing Hyborem. Since you don't need to research CoL or Calender, you have a huge head-start in that direction.

2. Beeline of CoL. If you're fast enough and have enough cities inland, you'll probably be the first reaching CoL with your coast-based economy.

3. Lakes reachable by a city next to coasts. Really unlikely, but when it happens it's a monster. A lighthouse lake is 4/3, a lighthouse cove lake is an insane 6/2/7 . (This was how i managed to catch up on economy against the others in PBEM2, using 2 cove lakes and 6 lake tiles all reachable by boats).

So basically, Lanun might seem overpowered, but in reality when compared to the other civs out there they're just another civ. Sure, they have their strengths, but their weaknesses make up for it.