EitB v12 Wishlist/Progress

[RefSteel]

Beware unintended consequences.

The problem addressed by #6 is actually slightly worse (the game doesn't actually convert anything to gold as intended; hammers beyond the allowed overflow are simply lost) but can be easily managed via the build queue, except perhaps for a tiny number of the most productive cities.

Managing it by changing the game's core rules as you propose though would have enormous implications. Here's one exploit: Build one of each possible military unit to within one hammer of completion, then whip each and every one of them on the same turn, spacing them in the build queue with additional military units so as to complete half a dozen or more units in each city, generating an unstoppable army out of thin air, with no advance power-curve warning, in a single turn.

(I doubt if #7 would be seriously exploitable except under a few rare circumstances, but the limit of one tech per turn is not intrinsically a bug or even a problem; it's just a design decision that some like and others don't.)

[Kragroth]

On Quick, 1 pop gives 20 hammers to a production that already has at least one hammer ( you get less if you don't have that). The really powerful units start costiig 120 hammers or more. 6 Population would need to be sacrificed in order to get 120 hammers.

The most you could do would be to whip a size 7 city down to size 1, 1 whip at a time for 6 units that were already nearly complete. So for - 6 Happiness and all the time it took to gain production on 6 different units, you could whip a 120 hammer unit prematurely (you'd normally need a size 12 city to do that.

That doesn't seem like a big deal to me, in my opinion. Slavery is already underpowered in EITB.

[RefSteel]

No, you're just talking about using slavery normally. I'm talking about planning and building a surprise attack over the course of several turns. I micromanage a city to put 119h into a 120h unit, then 79h into an 80h unit, then 59h into a 60h unit, then whip all three for one pop each, adding a fourth unit to the queue that will also complete at EOT. Of course, I don't strictly need to be in slavery (which I suspect you underrate; its utility isn't as universal as in base BtS, but it definitely has its uses) since I can complete multiple nearly-complete units with just a few hammers anyway.

The point is that the ability to produce multiple units per turn in one city becomes incredibly powerful when an intelligent human can plan to make it happen simultaneously in every city of a large empire. Well-planned surprise attacks (at least in base BtS) do a variant of this already, but at least there's a small window of warning since cities can only produce one unit at a time. (The higher mobility of FfH units also reduces the window already.)

[Qgqqqqq]

There is also several unpleasant interactions courtesy of ffh mechanics - breaking Prophecy of Ragnarok, buffing Kuriotates considerably (which may or may not be right), changing the dynamic of tall vs wide in general as well as cheap vs expensive. I may implement this, but it isn't cut and dry, easily.
Multiple research is, as Ref said, a design decision, and not one I have any intention of changing.

[Kragroth]

I don't know what you mean by "design decision". Both of these are modifications to BTS.

For production. They were somewhat redundant there because eras would change and you couldn't build old units anymore and normal was the default speed and cities were much more limited in size compared to ffh2.

For research: save a few religious techs, you had to get most everything before mocing on. In FFH2, there are plenty of indvidual techs and whole tech lines, that you could delay potentially the whole game for: cartography, masonry, drama, FoL, RoK, OO, archery, etc.

The slightly more complicated code for the above was not necessary because the design was significantly different. Ffh has easily achievable super cities and blood pets which don't obsolete. It has plenty of 40 hammer (quick speed) units which you still want to make / have to make because the national units have limits. The game designs and assumptions are significantly different.

As far as queuing lots of production for slavery: after some turns in the queue, you start to endure hammer decay which will decrease your efficiency, moreover you'll need each building type to take advantage. If you want to build every type of building in one city, be my giest. You're not going to actually produce the units faster, just get them all at once. Perhaps saving unit cost for a few turns.

Prophecy would be more of an issue sure with a military state civ with military epic making scouts. Kurios I'm not concerned about per se. I don't think they oe anyone else should be punished for building 40 hammer units.

[Terkhen]

As I have been playing with Multiple Production lately, I would like to give some feedback on how it plays and feels ingame.

Mostly, it goes unnoticed. Only in the very late game it starts taking effect. It mostly favours players who followed a tall strategy, giving them a better fighting chance. I felt that going tall was somewhat underpowered against just expanding like crazy, and this feature helps in closing that gap a bit. Besides this and the Kuriotates, it is somewhat invisible.

This feature introduces some measure of weirdness, though. As already mentioned, the Prophecy of Ragnarok can become a gamebreaker. I implemented some code to make sure that its effect is only applied once each turn. This is not a perfect solution, as it will force the player to micromanage when building powerful units.

Besides that, there is also some weirdness in the Clan where the Warrens stack with this feature in a somewhat weird way.

I briefly considered enabling multiple production only for some civilizations (something done in Rise from Erebus, where this feature is enabled only for some leader traits) but in the end I thought that it would be confusing to make something as key as production work differently.

In summary; although I think that the benefits of this feature outweight the weird side effects, I'm not entirely satisfied with how it turned out because of the issues I mentioned.

[Kragroth]

A couple of more things:

1. Game Option to have no guardians of pristine pass spawn gargoyles

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=334448

2. Button to raze one's own city.

Yeah, sometimes you build too many cities and there's nothing you can do about it. You should be able to abandon / raze your own city without depending on someone else taking it. I'd say a button on the city or on a unit and after you press it a pop up asks you if you're sure you want to raze. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144423

[RefSteel]

On tech overflow: By "just a design decision" I mean that it isn't constrained to be one way or the other by other mechanics (i.e. it's not broken, but changing it won't break anything either). One could change it with little impact, but Q apparently prefers to just leave it.

On the efficiency of my build queue example: No in-game action (short of rushing the Tower of Mastery) is more efficient than conquering an unprepared neighbor. No (remotely sane) in-game action is less efficient than trying to conquer a well-prepared neighbor.

On the most recent proposals:

1) Good idea: Having an option to remove Pristine Pass is definitely good if you don't have a human mapmaker to place/move/remove it manually.

2) The problem is not just that a "raze my city" button (a hilarious misclick too, even with an "are you sure" popup) would allow me to cheat an opponent who's about to take my city by force - it's that this might well be the only circumstance in which a remotely competent player would ever use it.

[Qgqqqqq]

1. Is covered by "no unique features", imo. Like Ref said with tech overflow, there isn't a problem there (as overflow is infinite) and it works fine as is, so I won't be changing it. 2...could you better explain a situation where that would come up?

[Kragroth]

1. Tech overflow doesn't work fine as is, I should be able to get the techs in one turn, I shouldn't have to wait for two or kore.

2. Sure, you over expand before getting relevant economy techs and now you're crippled. You capture a bunch of cities instead of razing them. You use some of your captured cities as bait for thr enemy civ to recapture. When they get close you raze it anyway.


You capture enemy cities instead of razing them. You later realize your economy is being crippled by them. And you raze them.