Interesting suggestions and discussion so far. First, my comments on some of the suggestions. My own proposals at the end of this post.
xist10 wrote:
Quote:Anyway, I saw 4-6 problems in the last game.
0. Quite a few missing/wrong tooltips/pedia entrys
1. Lanun Eco (on water maps)
2. No good counter against chariot (mages) first strike outside own first strike
3. Units too fast to allow any hope of rebuilding an army - Auro needed 2 turns to conquer my 13 city empire
4. Too much speed difference through promotions since start (quite restricted in FFH) and restricted unit access
5. Mages on ships
6. Units unloading from ships and moving 2-3 tiles inland
Ship speeds itself seems fine ? If we reduce land speed, you should think about reducing ship speed too and I also think we should match ship speed with visibility from hawks/floating eyes (which could be reason to nerf it a bit already).
I mostly agree to these observations. The question is then how severe changes are needed to improve balance. As Cairo mentioned too, one of the things to consider is that in the previous game Aurorarcher of Lanun had a very decisive economy advantage, so he was able to get all movement bonuses (haste spell, extra xp wonders for added mobility promos, engineering road movement bonus, etc.). Despite this, other empires defended themselves reasonably well, until Aurorarcher was able to achieve a successful first strike combined with blinding light, to prevent the opponents from retaliating with full power. So based on this game experience (with small changes applied already to mobility), I wouldn’t go too “heavy handed” yet with corrective changes.
Then comments by Aurorarcher:
Quote:To me the main problem is the massive advantage of the first strike in general. Compared to base civ4 where you can't use collateral from the fog (in most cases, cats are slow etc.) here the defender gets hit by so many spells that it makes it hard if not even impossible to attack back after the first strike. Maelstrom, Fireballs, other summons and even Blinding Light all can be used from a very far distance especially with high mobility. And after that the mounted units jump in.
Some ideas:
1a. Make it take 2 turns to cast some of these spells but it could be exploited as well (using the spell 1 turn before going in).
1b. Or this idea I like maybe more: If one uses a spell then the unit cannot move during that turn anymore. This could apply to certain spells or all of them. I think I would put Haste and all tier II and III spells to this category at least. With this one would need to risk moving his Mages close enough to cast spells but can't run back to safety on the same turn. Which could offer a chance to attack back. This doesn't of course prevent first strike at all if it's successful but would make losing Mages a lot more likely.
1c. Make some sort of combination of 1a and 1b.
These fall into the “heavy handed” changes category in my opinion. Could be interesting to try, but I would apply only smaller changes to next mod version and see how things go from there. I do agree with the importance of first strike and especially when the attacker can use powerful spells to support it (maelstrom, rust, dispel opponent regen, blinding light…). So perhaps the argument would be to reduce max damage from collateral spells and add more resistance chance against blinding light/slow/charm spells?
Bing suggestions:
Quote:How about these:
Move Haste to Body3 (why is Body1 spell far far more powerful than Body2 and Body3? and far more powerful than every other 1st level spell? HELLO??)
Add a "Rune Walls" building that grants defensive bonus against summons, and/or damage reduction vs spells. Give it to forts too. Or make city defenses/fort bonus effective against spells.
maybe even make it impossible for Summons to enter cities with Rune Walls completely
Instead of nerfing Lanun, buff every other national pick to have some other similar economic bonus. Like hiking the food bonus of the Calabim breeding pit and so on.
Increase Optics vision range bonus
Disable damage spells / summon spell while embarked
I don’t like the idea of moving haste away from Body 1 to later tier. This just makes the arcane line even more important to every strategy. Knowledge of the Ether and Alteration techs aren’t that expensive, especially with the boosted start that accelerates economy development, so by mid game all players should have access to haste if they choose so. Rest of the suggestions would be more difficult to implement by code (I think, no personal experience there), except for the added vision on sea with optics.
Then finally, more specific discussion about the haste spell and potential changes there: I’m not entirely convinced that adding casting time to all spells or just haste itself would solve much. It just means that players have to keep their doom stacks more concentrated in order to be ready for making the first strike against an opponent. Or delayed casting could render short range collateral spells almost useless, as potential targets could just run away from them? Or did I misunderstand the proposed concept here?
My proposals for general balance changes:
- Correct civilopedia entries regarding spell effects etc. -> fine by me!
- Small changes to mobility promotions: Mob 1 requires combat 1. Mob 2 requires combat 2. Mobility 1 still unlocked at HBR, and mob 2 at stirrups. Note that siege weapons will be dreadfully slow if they can't pick mobility 1 as first promotion.
- Reduce chariot base speed to 2 (from 3). Add city attack malus of 20%. We have seen that chariots are the go to unit for mid game invasions, overshadowing other next tier non-caster units (champions, rangers, assassins, longbows). Horseman and horse archers should keep base speed 3, as they don’t benefit from metal weapons.
- And maybe this is too “heavy handed”, but could work: Move +1 road movement bonus from engineering to machinery tech.
- Remove the optional ship promotions or change them a bit, to remove the longshoreman +1 movement bonus.
Lanun balance changes:
- Remove added commerce to water tiles from harbours and similarly remove added hammers from shipyard (these apply to all civs, not just Lanun)
- Increase the time that pirate coves need to grow (overall increase of 25-30%?)
- Make that foreign trade civic cottage growth bonus is halved for coves.
- Change the EXP trait of Falamar to something else. One of the overpowering combinations of Lanun economy is expanding fast and spamming pirate coves. Falamar is perfect for this strategy.
- Make the free starting tech of Lanun (seafering?) cost similar amount to fishing, so it has to be researched instead of free? Still exclusive to Lanun.
- Or just ban Lanun from water heavy maps?
