EitB 13 planning thread

[DaveV]

Since we've been doing a lot of bans in our recent games, I thought I'd start a discussion on some balance changes to let us play with the full toolkit.

Ritualists: change Tsunami so it can only be cast if adjacent to salt water, rather than any water, and so that it only affects tiles adjacent to salt water. This would still leave it as a strong spell for attacking coastlines, but avoids having the spell affect inland fresh water lakes. The same change should probably be made to the Lanun world spell.

Balseraphs: set the "can't attack" flag on puppets (or reduce their combat strength to zero). Part of the strength of the Balseraphs is that they have an infinite supply of disposable summons to wear down defenders. Change their world spell so the golden age only lasts a single turn; this would allow strategic civic changes, but wouldn't give the usually game winning economic boost.

Lanun: nerf the coves? Maybe -1 commerce, -1 food, and -1 hammer? Change the world spell so it only affects salt water, not fresh water.

Bannor: they need something extra besides Guardsman, since Fanaticism simply isn't going to happen in an MP game. Maybe a free Courage promotion? That seems like it would be thematic. You would have to be an idiot to pick this civ as it currently stands.

Elves: remove the workrate penalty? They're already going to be slow with their improvements, since a lot of them are going to be built on top of forests.

[Mr. Cairo]

I think only a 1 turn golden age is too much of a nerf. But I'm not sure if a regular length ga, or even a shortened one (4-6 turns) might still be too powerful

[mackoti]

i think if you nerf pupets its ok to let the baseraphs to have a full GA.Remember the Ilians have stazis and a 7 turn GA which in my opinion is more powerfull then  2 GA.I realy belive pupets are  the problem and the long GA is making even worse .This is my opinion from reading and watching  other playing i never played as them .

Dont forget if posible to repair the monk so they upgrade to all priests.

Totaly agree about Tsunamy or maybe reduce the maximum damage which can be done 30% and remove the destroying improvings and buildings.

[superjm]

If the problem with Bannor is that Crusade is never available in MP, why not just move it to an earlier tech?

Perhaps alternatively they could get a natural bonus to cottage maturation speed which would be a decent indirect economic bonus and synergize well with their world spell if nothing else.

[Mardoc]

So, question one: is there an actual coder in the house? Can any of these happen? Qgqqqq was too busy to update EitB a while ago and I don't see any evidence that's changed.

Balseraphs: set the "can't attack" flag on puppets (or reduce their combat strength to zero). Part of the strength of the Balseraphs is that they have an infinite supply of disposable summons to wear down defenders. Change their world spell so the golden age only lasts a single turn; this would allow strategic civic changes, but wouldn't give the usually game winning economic boost.

I could agree with the world spell, but if you're attacking with Puppets you're just milking the game. Anything you can do with Puppets you can do with some other summon, and if you're close enough to attack with Puppets then you're close enough that you should be counterattacked. If you're able to attack with a meaningful number of Puppets from close range, it's because you're attacking someone who didn't build an army at all.

I mean, go ahead and prevent Puppets from attacking, just don't expect it to matter.

Lanun: nerf the coves? Maybe -1 commerce, -1 food, and -1 hammer? Change the world spell so it only affects salt water, not fresh water.

Sounds like making them into Bannor. How about nerfing something less thematic, like land tiles or Foreign Trade? Maybe make Lanun trade routes internal only, to reflect their piracy theme?

Bannor: they need something extra besides Guardsman, since Fanaticism simply isn't going to happen in an MP game. Maybe a free Courage promotion? That seems like it would be thematic. You would have to be an idiot to pick this civ as it currently stands.

What about something analogous to Hyborem: every time they kill an Evil unit, they spawn a free warrior or Fanatic or some such. Or maybe every time they kill, period, something analogous to Slavery except it spawns a warrior?

Elves: remove the workrate penalty? They're already going to be slow with their improvements, since a lot of them are going to be built on top of forests.

That would be good. Another thing that would be good but may not be feasible: give them the ability to upgrade forests as a worker action. Ancient forests are nice, but they'd be nicer if you could plan to have them when and where you needed.

[mackoti]

I think if I am not wrong tech paths to vampire is more costly than crusades.beeing to ealy could be game breaking, crusade i meant.But then there are lots of this stuff on FFH ...

[DaveV]

So, question one: is there an actual coder in the house?  Can any of these happen?  Qgqqqq was too busy to update EitB a while ago and I don't see any evidence that's changed.

*Raises hand*

I'd prefer not to mess with the C++ code, because I do enough of that at work, but I could certainly modify the python and XML files.

[DaveV]

I think if I am not wrong tech paths to vampire is more costly than crusades.beeing to ealy could be game breaking, crusade i meant.But then there are lots of this stuff on FFH ...

But the vampires have moroi and governor's manors before vampires come into play. The Bannor have ... the Guardsman promotion?

But I agree that moving the game-breaking stuff earlier just, you know, breaks the game.

[Aurorarcher]

Thanks for the thread, Dave! (and for taking over the implementation)

Bannor is like playing FFH with regular BtS civ. Just not good enough, and crusade comes to late to matter. No other stuff to play with earlier and I always felt crusade and their WS was a bit meh. So they need a change for sure. I'm not sure what. Courage is thematic but would that alone make them appealing? Not really imo. Faster cottage maturation was a decent idea. It could come as a civ trait (+50 or 100 % cottage growth, like mini foreign trade civic) or some building (Courthouse?) could give that boost to all cottages worked in the city (is this even possible to do?). 100 % as civ trait might be too powerful.

[Bobchillingworth]

I agree with moving the Bannor special civic to an earlier tech. You'd still have to age up cottages to get full use out of it. Maybe Military Strategy.


Controversial suggestion of the day: Boarding Party gets a small cost reduction (or possibly a substantial one, and -1 attack and -2 defense over Champions), but the Lanun can no longer build Swordsmen or Chariots.


Can the Calabim please be slightly un-nerfed? I get that they were widely agreed to be too powerful even after earlier version of EitB nerfed Flauros and made it so they couldn't draft Vampires, but they're just awful now. As it stands they're unlikely to be able to last long enough to use Vampires, Manors, or even their WS. They have nothing going for them save Moroi, which cost 25% more than their default counterparts.


Also, Luchirup could still use those buildings Qg was going to implement to give constructed Golems Light or Heavy promotions. I'm still not sure why vanilla FFH removed them.