EitB v12 Wishlist/Progress

[Qgqqqqq]

For World spells, would it be in place for all civs or just the casting civ? Also, would it only be visible while the spell is active, or at all times? If it was visible to all civs, but only for the duration of the spell then I think I'd support it. Visible all the time means it would be clutter for the majority of the game, and only visible to the casting civ limits the utility.

All players, and only for the duration, I'm pretty sure. (Although that has issues of its own for Khazad/Grigori.)

Dragon's Hoard - low culture + multiplier seems reasonable, although would that interact too strongly with the Lyre as a movable source of Culture? Mithril seems strong, but then again you still have to get the right tech to have Weapons, don't you? In which case it's not overly broken. Whomever suggested Enchantment Mana I think had a nice thematic idea; there's not another "unique" source of Enchantment, is there?

It's currently serving a a similar purpose to the Lyre anyway. No, you don't need a tech to equip them if they come via a wonder (same as Mines of Gald-Dur). Enchantment mana...eh. It works, but it's not very thematic, and it wouldn't make me jump to get it (particularly at that stage in the game).

Queens of the Line don't accidentally obsolete Galleons (as in, you can no longer build any)

*scribbles notes*

As to the production economy. I'm not sure how viable that is to FFH. Remember that Gol/Research/Culture all have their values halved. Besides, windmills aren't very strong in that regard, currently. I'd be very happy to see specialists come forward as an economy type - does anyone have any ideas? Perhaps a boost at Aristocracy, if we nerf it.

[HidingKneel]

I drew it back to +50% to make it less cut and dried. Currently, a cultist can murder a galley on the attack (with tsunami), but they don't inherently win defensively.

I don't see why Galleys should have an edge on Cultists on the offense, though. Cultists require much more investment (a specific religion, they're unlocked at a more expensive tech, and they're more expensive to build).

If I give it to Eurabates, it goes to Drifa as well. I was a bit less certain on that, simply because they each have heroic units - I doubt it will break anything, but the necessity is less there.

I don't think anything you do with such late game units is going to make a big difference in the MP games we play here.
But I'd be in favor of giving it to Drifa too, for the same reason. (IIRC technically the game counts Eurabatres as the Kuriotate hero rather than Herne, in the sense that he's the one that can get Resurrected).

Not easily, is the simple answer. It's important to remember, though, that Mithril only affect Champion-plus units, so it wouldn't matter much for barbs. The main issue is if everyone is okay with such a pan-civilization boost being available at Dragon's Horde - especially given Mithril isn't that strong a line, anyway.

Claiming the Hoard requires a big investment and happens late in the game. I think mega-rewards are appropriate at that point.

Re:Aristocracy. I'm not sure I want to get rid of it entirely/nerf it so heavily. As is, I think there's to reasonably equal economic options for civs to pursue.

Do you mean "different civs, by pursuing their optimal economic options, are balanced with one another"? Or do you mean
"each civ has a choice of economic options to pursue, and these are reasonably balanced with one another"? I guess I feel like the second one is definitely false. EitB boosted cottages a lot, but (in my opinion) aristofarms are still almost always better.

Crush Aristocracy, and it hurts some civs (Calabim, for example) more than others.

True, but the Calabim aren't exactly underpowered as it stands. Governor's mansions alone are plenty of reason to head to Code of Laws.

Besides which, it's on many levels integral to the mod. Currently I feel like EitB offers more options economy-wise, alter that, and we offer different ones to base. That's a path I'm...cautious of, ro say the least.

Agreed. It'd be a big change (I'm generally of the opinion that EitB has changed too much, rather than too little; just not in this case).

I like the workshops idea, particularly the +1 at construction. One idea that other mods do is to put it at a civic (apprenticeship). Any thoughts there?

I'd be happy to put windmills even earlier than that, tbh. Construction? Archery?

Prefer not to tie it to a civic. My thought is that the game would be more fun if people had more interesting choices to make about what improvements to build on what tiles, so limiting those options would defeat the purpose.

Windmills at Construction would make sense to me. My only objection would be that Construction already gives so much.
Though: if the aristofarm economy was nerfed, chain farming wouldn't be quite as valuable an unlock.

[Aurorarcher]

What about removing the -40% maintenance help from Aristocracy (if not the the other things HK suggested). Or maybe even add maintenace penalty or something different to make it not so great economical civic compared to others? This could put cottage economy and maybe even TR economy on the same line. Also I would really love to see a boost to traderoutes - currently it's hard to get over +1c from one TR unless you invest a lot of hammers to get multipliers (or have overseas/foreign traderoutes, the latter probably doesn't happen in MP games very often?).

I very much agree with HKs thoughts on improvments as well. Workshop definitely need a boost and windmills earlier makes sense to me as well. Heck, maybe even make all (or most) improvments buildable from the start, but also make it so slow to build those improvements that it's not worth it untill you research certain techs. Then say at certain techs (like at Construction for windmills) you get for example 200% workrate to build a windmill - the same logic could be applied to other improvments as well.

[Old_Lion]

Hello,

I have not read all of it, but I have a suggestion about lairs :
Since the mod is Pbem oriented, is it possible to make it so that popping a lair takes a full turn ?

meaning : you start popiing it on one turn, and know the results only when you receive the next turn save from your opponents?
It would prevent a lot of temptations.

Any thought ?

[Bobchillingworth]

Hello,

I have not read all of it, but I have a suggestion about lairs :
Since the mod is Pbem oriented, is it possible to make it so that popping a lair takes a full turn ?

meaning : you start popiing it on one turn, and know the results only when you receive the next turn save from your opponents?
It would prevent a lot of temptations.

Any thought ?

It's a good idea, but EitB actually already does this for all non-guarded lairs (i.e. ones that don't automatically spawn barbarian units).

[The Black Sword]

I wouldn't be convinced that Aristo is straight up better than cottage. Certainly in 33, I felt the cottage path was stronger.

It would be nice to give some more options though. I've thought a bit about a specialist economy before, because it seems like it should be really good in FFH; lots of food, easy access to pacifism. What always pulled me short was the lack of easily accessible specialist slots. I think that's the number one thing you'd need to fix.

Earlier access to useful workshops and windmills would also be a good thing IMO.

[Bobchillingworth]

My analysis of why specialist economies are currently weak in EitB-


* There's no reasonably accessible way to boost specialists so that they're comparable with villages / towns. The Great Library gives scientists +1 beaker IIRC and some late-game civics give another beaker or two, but there's nothing comparable to the Pyramids in BTS or even just the Representation civic in general, doubling the output of most specialists and available before most games have been decided. Even regular, non-aristocracy farms are often more appealing at the happiness cap than a specialist if you're in Conquest.


* As TBS points out, there's no early infinite specialist civic. Some of the civics do allow for infinite specialists of certain types, but they're late in the game, and by that point the player has already committed to a cottage or aristofarm economy and will likely not be in a position switch over.


* The point costs to generate a great person are really steep.


* Great people tend to have very rigidly-defined roles in FFH; teching through sage specialists could backfire if it costs you a Drama Bulb. Great Sages in general are kind of lousy... they bulb only arcane techs, and alphabetically at that.

[Tasunke]

One thing other mods have done to make Non-Elven cottage economies near-equivalent to Aristograrian is to allow a Civic at Engineering called "Urban Planning" ... this adds +1 food for Village/Town and gives +1 happy,+2 health per city. This Civic is in the same section as Agrarianism and Guardian of Nature, so it cannot be used by the elves as a double bonus, but it can still be used with the bonus from Republic.

[Qgqqqqq]

So I've been mostly away for the past few days, but I plan on getting a comprehensive reply up for everything by ~ midday tomorrow.

However, in the meantime, I'll give you one more little thing to chomp on.

Starting turns for EitB eras.

I posted the exact breakdown of each era here, but basically:

In FFH eras were split into Ancient, Classical and Medieval, a translation kept from base. This led to some massive jumps in what each era provided, and so when Sareln did his conversion to a heat-map of FFH tech costs, he split up eras in a way that naturally resulted from that, something which is a considerable improvement.

However, there are still substantial problems in the setup of these eras, which have led to no previous games being run on them (or the converse effect - no changes have been made because no games have been run). I feel this is an area where substantial improvements can be made, in an attempt to bring it up to BTS-levels of late-era playability.

...that's a long post for the small change I'm bringing forward today Still, it needs to be made at some point, so why not now?

Anyway, the change I'm bringing up is that of starting turns. Currently, all the eras start at t0, (with maybe one or two exceptions) which leads to interesting scenarios with Orthus jumping out and being hammered by starting longbows. Given that FFH has a maximum of a ridiculous 720 (normal-speed) turns, and given that eras give a spread of techs, I think we can space those out considerably.

The two big things to consider with turn numbers are a) Orthus and b) Adaptive trait swaps (there's some smaller stuff with lair spawns, and I'm sure some other stuff DaveV will point out, but those are the biggies). IMO Adaptive players should get the opportunity to change pretty early on, and getting earlier for each era in.

So here's my (brief) thoughts on the matter:

Discovery t50 normal (t35 quick) - 15 (quick) turns till Orthus, easily enough time to prepare. 40 (quick) turns till the ADA swap is a bit harsh, but it's better then normal and, if we break it down, seems appropriate for each one (40t as CRE is weak, but about the same amount of time as it would take to research/build another source of culture, PHI is good for a GP or two, especially with other priorities, IND is just enough time to help along a wonder or two if you push it, plus some workers).

Expansion t180 normal (t120 quick) - bit of a jump, but needed to get close to the next ADA change (t145).

Innovation t300 normal (t200 quick) - same again. (t215 IIRC)

Mastery t500 normal (t335 quick) - same again. (t350 IIRC)

It's probably clear I put far more effort into the Discovery move than the others Still, I think they're all decent approximations, and less than 2mins of thought makes me think they're the right spots. Still, feedback?

[Bobchillingworth]

Please allow War Tortoises to receive defensive boosts. They'll still probably never be built, since slow + defends well remains worse than fast + hits hard, but at least they won't suffer the humiliation of being potentially worse at defending late-game cities than Archers.