f13.net

The last version of FfH for Civ 4 is coming out Tuesday, which adds the campaign game: 17 linked scenarios. Concentrated awesome!

(http://kael.civfanatics.net/images/ice6.jpg)

Full changelist: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=301834

I think I need to change my pants.

There go my Christmas holidays.

Fuck me. I'm in the middle of DoW Dark Crusade, Animal Crossing, LotRO Yule + Moria, Penny Arcade ep 2, and Defense Grid already, with Persona 4 waiting on the TV.

GODDAMNIT PEOPLE, I'M ALREADY PLAYING MORE GAMES AT ONCE THAN AT ANY POINT SINCE 1999! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME???

Yeah, this season has been pretty great. Fallout 3 alone has been amazing, I'm still going strong on that one. And then I have RE4 sitting unopened on deck. And Space Rangers 2. And I still have to grab GTA4. And Saint's Row 2 comes out in January. Sheesh. That more gaming than I do in most years, all in a couple months. Good times.

I am unsure as to what I should do with myself.

The last full version I DL'd was .34.  There's so many new and nifty things and changes in this I'm completly lost but loving it.

 "You explore the dungeon and find an Adventurer who agrees to join your cause"  Wtf is ths? A Hero Unit with 2 Attack? Eh why doesn't he have any promotions?  Ooohh.. I can upgrade him to ANY unit and have an instant 100xp to spend if I let him mature.  Awesomeness.

Those adventurers are actually something the Gregori civ gets naturally.  They generate from their Great person points (or what ever their called) and actually generate pretty fast for them.  The "explore a dungeon and find somebody" event can give you a pretty wide range of results.  Things like Great Prophet's, or my favorite,  a priest for one of the various religions.  Which is amazing if you get it right off the bat, because you can walk over and found the religion in your capital, and it suddenly becomes the founding city for the religion.

Anybody know how to play the scenarios?  I click on the play scenario option, but all I see are stuff for normal civ.....

Oh, and also THANK GOD they put the ability to clear forest in with mining instead of bronze working.  That will make me a lot more viable when I get dropped in the middle of a massive forest when I start a game.

You can start the scenarios with the rightmost icon on the top side of the screen once you are in a game. At least in theory, my game crashes every time I try that. Its a known bug though, so it should be fixed soon.

I have an unhealthy relationship to this game.  I have yet to run a vanilla civ game after downloading FfH a year+ ago.  So very  :awesome_for_real:.

I did play through Civ4 once again when I got BtS (for FfH2, of course). Then back to the upgraded FfH2. Was down with a stomach bug the last couple days and played through a game as Ljos Ljof elves.

I've been playing through the early stages of the game as a few different races.  Bannor, Orcs, Dark Elves and Dwarves so far.   The game feels a LOT slower than I remember it being on the tech side.  Since I'm such a expand-then-hold slut, I find this really gets me bored quick as I click "Next turn" way too often as I wait for techs or buildings to complete.

I also learned that Orcs are "not for me."  I need to build up a big army sooner than I'd like so I can crush those around me, but my brain winces when I throw away 12 orc warriors against fortified archers (how the hell did those elves get archers so early anyway) just to try and take a city.  One measly ass city and I've nearly obliterated all my troops.  Fuck that noise.   :angryfist:

Generally you have 4 ways to crack the nut of fortified cities in FfH:

1) Overwhelming numbers. By overwhelming, I mean, a 5-1 or 6-1 advantage in numbers, and you will lose most of the attackers. Sometimes is the only way to win if you're Doviello or something and have a significant tech disadvantage. I don't usually play as the Orcs because they can't actually hold cities, but that may be the 'intended' way for them to seize cities. It certainly works for barbarians! Assassins are REALLY helpful in zerging city sieges since they can gank the unit you just damaged with a throwaway unit. However, you *have* to destroy any defenders you try to zerg kill, or else they will rack up the promotions from all your dead cannon fodder and become well-on nigh invincible.

2) Siege weapons (the "traditional" Civ 4 city-busting style). Soften up with bombardment to lose the defensive modifier, then just attack over and over. Catapults have a huge retreat percentage so even at 0.1% success chance you'll wear the defenders down and eventually follow up with other units (catapults in FfH can't kill units by themselves). This is the *only* way to kill Acheron the Red Dragon - build 15 catapults then hammer him until he's 4 or 5 strength, then follow up with a hero or a unit with a Courage buff (Acheron has a Fear effect that keeps most units from being able to attack him)

3) Magic! Fire wizards are catapults, only they're called fireballs. Summoners can send endless cannon fodder at no risk to themselves, and archmages can summon fire elementals which aren't cannon fodder any more but cannon monstrosities. Archmages are the only way for Ljosofar (the good elves) to take cities and helpful for the dark elves as well (though they also get a hero that's a good city killer due to being able to summon a doppleganger of himself).

4) HOLYCRAPWHATWASTHAT. Get a unit that just stomps everything in its path. If you have that you already won the game but hey, it's fun to play out. Candidates for this including level 20+ heroes, dragons, Vampire Lords, Auric Ascended, Meshabber of Dis, etc.  The AI tends to fortify itself in Erebus maps in the late stages of the game to the point you pretty much need an unkillable god to win. Good thing you can build those.

Archers also got a pretty monstrous buff this version which may get toned down.

Winning in FfH in general:

1) Take and hold a territory. You'll be overwhelmed by barbarians (literally overwhelmed, unable to develop land at all) until your land is colonized and explored out to your neighbor's borders. So your first steps should be researching up to Festivals (where you can build Marketplaces) and sending out Settlers escorted by 2 Warriors. Once they plant a city, build a Palisade (the first level wall), Monument, then Marketplace. Do this until your claim is staked and the barbarians die down. On Erebus maps (the default now) you'll run into clear natural boundaries (oceans and mountain ranges); if you can clear away enough territory to a choke point it might be worthwhile to stop there, garrison the chokepoint and build your economy; uncontrolled expansion will eventually shut down your economy.

2) Pick a tech line and specialize. If you try to learn everything like in vanilla Civ you'll fall behind in a key tech and die. Your choices are Economy (if you want to be a peaceful builder) which will eventually end in hyper-expanding cities with tax and science benefits, Military which will eventually end in Mithril Weaponry, Religious which ends in powerful priests, and Arcane which ends in powerful mages. Each nation works better with a given line - Malakim should ALWAYS use religious and abuse the hell out of Chalid Astrakhein, Kuriotates pretty much have to use Economy, etc. Resources are crucial here as well - wizards are useless without mana, a military strat won't help a whole lot if you have no iron, etc.

3) Pay attention to the religious wars. Depending on how religions spread you'll see either stasis (everyone the same religion) or conflict (Ashen Veil vs. Order/Empyrean). If stasis, pick off the weaker nations but make sure they don't have powerful allies. If conflict, that will have a pretty clear set of alliances (the founder of the Mercurians is always at war with the founder of Ashen Veil, it's hard coded).

4) If you have a technical advantage, take advantage of it. If you have Mithril and no one else does, don't build up 30 champions, take what you have and go NOW. Eventually the AI will catch up. Eventually you'll get to the OhmygodIjustwonthegame unit for your race, at which point the rest of the map is your bitch. This is different for each race: the Illians LITERALLY have a "OK, everyone else give up now" unit - Auric Ascended, literally a god. (Of course, the #2 nation gets a unit with a instakill-Auric weapon, just to make things fair) wheras the Ljosofar get... um, a tree. Yeah. Well, they're elves. (Actually their endgame I-Won units are probably Druids, which have a huge Nature mana affinity - in other words for each Nature mana node you have they gain combat strength, and if you founded Fellowship of Leaves you probably have at least 3 nature nodes)

FfH generally is a lot more cutthroat than vanilla Civ, that's one reason it's so fun.

Civ-specific strats (yes, I play FfH THAT MUCH). This should give you an idea of the insane scope of this mod.

Amurites: Mages mages mages. They get XP bonuses, you can make buildings that give more XP bonuses, and you can make archers that shoot fireballs. Pump the mages, level them up, have fun with fire elementals. Not much of a late game, so go aggressive early. Their Civ specific hero is a pretty powerful mage (notice a theme)

Balseraph: either you love playing this civ or you hate it. Balseraph is the ultimate screw-you civ. Their hero is free to screw with people from the first turn it's built and can devastate weak colonies. They have really, really powerful early units that can mutate into some powerful monsters, and if the mutation goes badly, hey, throw em in the arena! It's like a circle of life. It's hard to get a coherent strategy with these guys which is kind of appropriate. If you ever wanted to conquer the world with a vanguard of evil clowns, these are your guys. No real late-game strategy, but you should have a pretty strong start.

Bannor: As close to generic as FfH gets. Found the Order (it's in the rules, I think), declare a Crusade and enjoy your free units as you purge the world of heathen (helpfully you get to decide who's heathen). Military strat helps with Bannor so all your free Demagogs get metal bonuses when they appear. No real strong endgame units so purge the unworthy early.

Calabim: Vampire Lords. Done, game over. Eat the world, have fun! NOM NOM NOM Their hero is a weaker vampire lord (has to get a kill before gaining an immortal promotion) which you get early. Don't forget that you can bite higher level units to turn them into vampires which give them combat and regen bonuses. For added perversity go Empyrean and make Chalid Astrakhein a vampire. Just because.

Clan of Embers/Doviello: ZERG RUSH KEKELA. These two civs play fairly identically. Both Clan leaders and one Doviello leader can start at peace with the Barbarians, which gives you a huge early advantage (and to compound that, Doviello starts with a hero from Turn 1), and they can't tech worth crap. Both races are all about the early game rush, and die off in midgame.

Elohim: if you turtle, have I got a civ for you. Weak in combat, but lots of defensive units and a national spell that kicks everyone out of your territory for 30 turns. Economic victory is probably your best option - make sure to found a religion so you can get some good heroes, Corlindale is kind of useless.

Grigori: Grigori have a huge disadvantage (can never get a religion, which blocks the entire Religious tree and most of the best units in the game) and a huge advantage (they get Adventurers, which are free heros that can upgrade into any standard unit, but with Hero-style advancement and free XP). They can make pretty good mages, especially if you upgrade your adventurers into mages, but that's about it, so you're pretty much commited to the arcane line but don't have any advantage for doing so other than the Adventurers. Still, Grigori Archmages can be game-killers (twincasted Fire Elementals are just wrong).

Hippus: I don't play these very often so don't have a lot to say - they struck me as pretty weak overall. If you like mobility to the exclusion of all else your mileage may vary.

Illians: they were the last civ to be fully implemented so have some interesting play mechancis. As Illians your job is to leave the refrigerator open and make the world useless to everyone else (kind of like Hyborem and hell terrain, but with ice instead). Your tech path is pretty well committed to arcane/religious since that's how you unlock your late game killers - the White Dragon and the Draw. The Draw does two things: makes the whole world declare war on you (whoops) and allows you to build a 30-strength flying, spell-casting god (oh, it's ON). You know, in case the dragon wasn't enough.

Khazad: Another turtle civ, the entire point of the Khazad is to found Way of Earthmother and get rich. You can't build strong mages, and your national rules (bonuses for a huge treasury) dictate an Economy push. No strong endgame units and one of the weaker civs in general (turtles do poorly in FfH).

Kuriotates: You can only build a few cities (number dependent on map size), but they are all supersized and your cottages can develop to 'enclaves' which means your economy will boom. You can build size-1 settlements beyond that and there are some cheaty ways to make them productive (planting great people in them, building high level acolytes and force-planting temples) but they don't build or grow normally. As Kuriotates you turtle up, buy everyone else off, out-tech everyone, and oh, build a dragon and eat the world with it. Since resources are going to be scarcer for you, your best bets are economy and/or religious paths.

Lanun: everybody loves pirates, amirite? Well, since Erebus became the 'default' map for FFH Lanun kind of get boned since water's sparse and Lanun get bonuses for shoreline cities. They are a gimmick but an amusing one (and Guybrush Threepwood actually is a pretty decent hero) but it's a challenge going anywhere with them. I usually go Octopus Overlords and get Hemah to spearhead the military, but that's not really civ-specific.

Ljosafar: HOT NUDE ELF ACTION. Found the Fellowship of Leaves and make your lands a verdant paradise of green (elvish workers don't clear forests when improving tiles, so you get forests + farms or forests + mines). Ljosafar cities can outpace the Kuriotate core cities for sheer population outrageousness. You get no siege weapons and weak miltiary units, so arcane is a good way to go or religious if you're neutral (you can't build druids if you're good alignment).

Luchiurp: another builder civ. Luchiurp are all about golems; as your hero Barnaxus levels up, all your golems gain free promotions. Nice in theory but blocking golems from other XP gain is pretty crippling and the Luchiurp are usually knocked out early.

Malakim: A fairly generic version of the Bannor, which gain benefits for fighting in the desert. Their hero and base mana encourages founding Empyrean and building Chalid Astrakhein who is probably the strongest hero in the game (not counting the god version of Auric).

Sheaim: Hi, I want to destroy the world, k? Sheaim units gain more power as the world careens towards Armageddon, so they're the ones founding Ashen Veil and summoning Hyborem and generally screwing it up for everyone else. As a Sheaim player you can safely ignore building units for the most part because your portals will summon everything you need (and as the Armageddon counter goes up, they'll start spewing out more). Oh, and you can build a dragon, just in case the world wasn't already screwed, although just having an economy survive to the endgame may be difficult since your entire empire is probably flaming hellash from Hyborem coming in and saying howdy (luckily, the portals are still working even when all your cities devolve back to 1 pop - and they will). Pyre zombies are fun in the early game -- Fall From Heaven's version of suicide bombers.

Sidar: a late-developed civ that I haven't experimented with much, it's dependent on turning higher-level units into great people which seems a bit of a waste of higher level units to me.

Svaltarfar: As everyone remembers from DAOC, this is FRPspeak for Dark Elves. Svaltarfar play basically identically to Ljosafar in the early game (and get elvish workers + Fellowship of Leaves synergy as well) but in the later game get lots of sneaky assassin style units including their hero so founding the Council of Esus and building their unique units is a good way to go. Or you can keep Fellowship of Leaves and play as regular Elves, but with 32% more emo.

Hyborem/Mercurian: you can't start the game as these civs, and it's probably a bad idea to switch to them as they're always be also-ran. They both power-up depending on the death of 'allied' units, so can potentially get powerful, but in practice tend to die off quickly (though Hyborem entering the world means that evil players will shortly have hellfire in the place of useful terrain improvements).

Hippus is good for early game if you rush to horse archers.  Typically strategy against non-barbarian NPC is to pull up close to one city and raze some improvements, then quick move to a now-undermanned city and take it.  Otherwise you get tied down in your need for seige (or wizrds+fireball) and Hippus, as you mentioned, is all about speed speed speed.

Game is awesome, I play it almost as much as you.  I like that they streamlined the buildings required (no more Bowyer or Colliseum) in this latest push.

Little things I'd like to see them work on:

I dislike that the Arquebus basically replaces the use of any other non-special units in the late game (read: Champions).  Replace them with a teir three archer and ditch the blasting powder.

I'd like to see another "neutral" religion option, something targeted toward the magic... or make Octopus Overlords (OO) more targeted to magic (as Earthmother seems targeted at economy and Fellowship seems targeted toward growth.  Hell, make OO an evil religion, and add a neutral religion targeted toward magic.

Deceit (Esus) religion needs to suck less, or I need to figure out how to use it's strengths... ok, first I need to figure 'what' it's strength is.

This is probably a complaint against Civ 4, rather then FfH, but shipping needs to play a bigger role in the game.

Edit: changed "Followship" to "Fellowship" and other, little stuff, like sentences making sense to someone reading them

I always thought OO was targeted towards magic simply because it has Hemah which is the most powerful mage in the game. That's enough magic all by himself. OO really should be evil, though... come on, you're worshipping Cthulhu and drowning your flock and driving them insane, these are generally not good things to do.

And the slavery thing may have some rough edges, good versus evil-wise.  But other then that, OO is practically good!

An idea for Esus that seems to fit in with it being the counter for the Empyrean (who have an abundance of anti-stealth units) would be to make this religion proficient at causing trouble between cultures.  I'm thinking a unit that can choose it's nationality.  Then you use it to generate negative influence between to cultures.  Seems brokenly overpowered, but I think you get where I'm coming from.  Yes, Belseraph + Esus would be disturbing.

The first game I played, that totally hooked me, was as Lanun + OO. Peanut butter and chocolate! I've played a few as them since. Then I think I did one as Balseraph, which I really enjoyed. Then one as Bannor, yay crusades. Now I'm playing the elves and somehow didn't notice the workers didn't cut the forests, mostly because my normal playstyle is to leave forests intact and just road them. Dizzam. Going to have to fire it up tomorrow and pump out some new workers, I had just finished improving my entire island.

My favorite strategy is to turtle early on an island while using privateers to keep everyone else in line. This game I've got some ridiculously upgraded privateers out there messing with people. Also somehow ended up with a massively powerful scout, can beat just about anything shy of a hero.

Love how versatile and different FfH2 is, firaxis would be foolish if they didn't hire the team and publish a full commercial version. Especially when they release what is apparently a weak Col remake (and I was asking for a Col remake!).

I got a totally awesome map last night for my new elves game.   My entire eastern and southern border is mountains, my north and west border is the ocean.  I've got a one square access on the southwest to another section that's mountains on the east north and south, and ocean on the west  with a 3-tile wide causeway to the rest of the civs.  THe walled-off areas have let me build up a total of 10 cities unmolested and with no worry of being attacked.   

Sure, I was sitting at 0 tech budget and -10 gold per turn for a while, but dungeon exploring and the idiot dark elves who obligingly declared war so I could pillage their improvements for gold meant that didn't hold me back.   Now that my cities are large enough to support themselves and I've gotten some better techs via trade and library/ council research points I'm the biggest badass on the block.  Booyah!

Quick derail. How long does a multi player match take? Real time, LAN. Say, between 4 people? (i know it depends on the players for the most part, looking for an average commitment time)

Um, they did (http://pc.ign.com/articles/796/796807p1.html). Most of the Illian rework first appeared in Age of Ice.

So this sounds really good and I love Civilization, but I'm definitely not big into the military side of things.  My Civ games always involve teching, and economic/cultural dominance.  Is that style of play not really viable here?  Not that I don't love the idea of stomping around the map with god units at the endgame, but to I have to be smacking shit around the whole time?

Nah, just pick a turtle civ, like Kuriotates or Elohim. Kuriotates hard-caps your expansion so if you ordinarily don't spam all over the map anyway that plays to your strengths.

Note that the barbarians are far more aggressive and numerous than in vanilla Civ, though, so your initial empire-settling will be somewhat frenetic, but afterwords peaceful buildup is quite viable. Unless you have a crazy demon at your doorstep or something.

Don't make me call you Sherlock, Shirley.

I meant something like "Sid Meier's Civilization: Fall from Heaven 2", a standalone release like Colonization was. Because FfH2 appears to whip the shit out of the Col release.

Love love love this mod.  A couple of random thoughts on things said here (but bear in mind I haven't played the latest version yet)

Teching: Lum, when you say you head to Festivals for marketplace, is that before or after you hit Mysticism/Education?  I generally go for a resource tech (crafting if I have wine, for example), usually exploration, then Mysticism for Elder councils and Education to get my cottages going.  For a lot of civs, especially elves, my economy just dies if I don't get those cottages up.  Festivals is great but I don't rush it. 

Council of Esus:  It's got one main strength that most people don't realize - when you declare war on someone, if you're following the Council, then your units aren't removed from within their borders.  That makes it fairly easy to take/raze half of somebody's empire in a single turn, or all of a smaller empire.  Also makes slow-ass catapults actually worth using.   

Elohim aren't necessarily a turtle civ, IMO.  Their tolerant trait is pretty badass - nothing like taking a few cities from Balserpahs and building your own freaks  :awesome_for_real:  Beelining to Priesthood for early monks is also doable in many games. 

Clan of Embers: doesn't anybody like these guys? I love teching up to ogres and popping out two at a time with warrens.  Although I just read in the latest patch notes that ogres are replacing orcish champions as, um, the clan champions.  Starting 8 strength and can use iron, though, so possibly stronger than the old version, and a lot faster than teching up to stirrups with barbarian research.

Awesome new game setting: High to Low.  Starts like a regular civ game, but when you have the top score, the game switches you to the civ with the lowest.  Then you struggle to stay alive, claw your way back up to the top... and you get switched again.  The second time you switch (to your third civ of the game), you finish the game with that civ.  It can sometimes be difficult to do much with the third civ since it tends to be late in the game when you get there, but it's so satisfying working your way out of a crap spot. 

I generally play Emperor, Aggresive (or whatever setting makes civs more likely to declare war), with Fractal or Pangea maps (hate dealing with navies and the AI can't attack another continent worth crap), and hope I don't start next to the Doviello.  Lucian is :ye_gods: 

Now for my own question - I keep seeing people talk about fireball-weilding Luichirp golems, but I have no idea how to build those.  Anybody know?

Not sure if this is what you are talking about but with flesh graft you can change any unit into a golem (and they keep their enhancements), so you create a wizard, then use flesh graft to create a fireball-weilding golem.

All Luchuirp Golems built in a city with a Blasting Workshop have the ability to throw Fireballs. Yes, even their workers.

Any defense against Assassins?  They killed my hero, they killed my catapults over and over, they killed a SETTER on a BOAT in my town!  Gah!

Also, how the heck do you get rid of withered and diseased?  Is there a monster thread somewhere with all these newbie questions in it?

I love this mod.  Love.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=190

that's to the forums for the FF2 mod at Civ Fanatics.

Disease can be removed with the Cure Disease spell priests get access to with (I think) life mana.  I think Herbalists can also remove it, but I'm not certain on that either.  I haven't encountered withered yet.

Assassins are a bitch, but a unit with see hidden will spot them.

So going on the revelation about elvish workers (man I feel dumb for missing that one), I started planting farms and town in the forests. Then I started running my druid around growing new forest and removing some ice so I could build north a bit. Which brings me to a protip: It's sometimes best to upgrade a unit from the lowest form. I made the mistake of making another Druid directly, and he couldn't create forests, because it's a priest of leaves skill. Create the priest of leaves and then upgrade him to druid, voila, a unit that can upgrade terrain (with nature magic upgrades) and also plant forests on them. Which for elves is  :drill:

Got that project far enough that seeing an evil faction flip to Ashen Veil went from  :ye_gods: to  :why_so_serious:

Holy crap the dragon has taken over the lands across the mountains, and all lizardmen tribes are on his side! Fortresses of mages will hold them at bay until I can call my hero.

This game is a lesson on emergent gameplay, and should be required playing for, like, everyone. And what most fascinates me is how the game world's lore and history actually fit into a civilization-building game. I once made an Ultima mod for Civ, and about half the game concepts had to be shoe-horned into the gameplay. Meanwhile Fall From Heaven is its own thing, and is designed around the idea of building units, cultures, cities, and governments. Few game worlds fit into gameplay so well.

There is a skill that I'm going to guess is called, "Guardian", which is a defense against assassins.  I'm not sure what the prerequisite it though

I haven't played in months, so I just dl'd this a few days ago. None of you warned me about Stasis. Bastards.  :tantrum:


In my current game, I'm playing as Malakim and everyone else besides Khazad (who hates me, for some reason) is evil/AV. I was able to hold out until I got Chalid and  a gang of Luridus (no idea how to spell that; the level 6 priests). Now I'm gonna see how many fronts I can maintain at once.  :grin:

Stasis isn't NEARLY as fun as Sanctuary.  Turtle long enough to build up a massive army, move it to your border then charge in on those evil fucks blocking you from your resources.  Tear through a few cities, half the world declares war on you via alliances and then cast Sanctuary.  Who needs defenders in captured cities? Not me, fuckers, you can't enter for the next 30 turns. More than long enough to wipe out several nations and subdue the others.   And if that doesn't work, Mr. Hero Mage (Corelian?) can be sacrificed to force peace.  Buahahhaha.

I've yet to play as Elohim. I've only played a handful of races and currently I'm getting cheap lulz from destroying armies 6x larger than mine with helm + pillar + radiant guards.  :why_so_serious:

Started a new game as the dwarves yesterday, golems rock! Fireball-tossing golem workers!

It's funny after playing a couple games as the elves, now I'm used to all the bennies they get from the forests, and as the dwarves I'm clear-cutting my entire nation :)

So, y'all have gotten me curious enough to go find my civ 4 disks again, but I have a question about the requirements.  Do you need both expansions to run this, or just the second one?  I bought the game when it came out, and was unimpressed with it enough to not bother getting either.

Just BtS. I believe they also include the game changes from Warlords but not the units & leaders. Or maybe it's all of Warlords. Anyway, you only need BtS (which is actually a decent addition to vanilla civ based on the one vanilla game I played after buying it).

Excellent mod, plays better than civ4.  I like how each race has a unique feel and the choices between religons and civics are more choices and not just one clearly outperforming the rest.

Now this is interesting.

Soren Johnson, the lead designer of Civ4, has published a massive three-part interview with Derek "Kael" Paxton, the lead designer of FFH.

A History of Fall from Heaven (Part I) (http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=120)

A History of Fall from Heaven (Part II) (http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=121)

A History of Fall from Heaven (Part III) (http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=122)

Okay, ended up picking up the expansion and got started on this tonight.  Played for a few hours, until the elves decided to chain rape me with a single fawn.  It didn't look like it should have been violating me as bad as I was (had multiple slingers, and a warrior in the city), but they didn't even dent it.  Am I missing something obvious?  Was playing as the dwarves, can't remember the name.

best to consult civilopedia.
I've no experience with this game but the in game wiki is good enough to explain basic concepts of spells and promotions.
Also: go play summoner and straight to Portal units. Nothing like summoning 3 spectres and 2 Fire Elems per turn.

Fawns are fairly powerful units in the early game, and one reason to rush for Fellowship of Leaves. I've never played the dwarves, so I can't compare slingers. Warriors would be cold meat in a one-on-one contest.

My first question would be, did it have a lot of promotions? If your units have no experience, and they're up against a more-powerful unit with a lot of experience, it's a recipe for disaster.

oh just recalled a neat little trick i used last year. Whenever you're taking over towns during War, they always have that x number of turns before the citizens calm down a bit and operate normally right? Well, you can send a culture generator unit, something like an artisan to immediately END the uprising and expand the borders with 20 culture pop. I love using zealots like this, especially with my warp portal wonder in every town, I can settle my conquests quicker without wasting turns. Even better, drop a zealot first to quell the uprising then drop a cultist to build a temple. 20 culture & +2 culture gen/turn + 1 happy face =  :awesome_for_real:

The warriors had a bunch of promotions from barbarians.  The slingers didn't, since I was mass producing them for another war I got suckered into with someone else.  Slingers are basically the dwarf archer analog.  I'm just more annoyed that this one unit managed to scythe through all my cities like a knife through butter.  The fawn wasn't heavily promoted until it decided to decimate my cities, the initial one it sacked had 3 or 4 defending units in it, from the convoy chain down to my staging point.  None of them even seemed to damage it, even though it looked like they were getting hits in.

Suppose I'll go double check the encylopedia tonight to see if I missed something obvious.

Walls and palisades are a must for defense and should be at least the 2nd thing built in cities when you have the capability to build them.  Without them you're throwing away about a 50% defensive bonus.

Now, what you REALLY need to watch out for is the fucking priests of leaves.   Goddamned elves had stacked 9-10 in each of their cities, then cast "Summon tiger" and proceeded to wipe my advancing 10-stack army of level 5 and 6 Champions, mages, Archmage, 2 crossbowmen and both heroes off the planet.  Yeah, big army of big guys, but nobody can withstand 20-30 attacks in one round (I was within 2 turns distance of 3 of his cities) Wtf.   

Yeah, I put up the palisades first, didn't have the research done for walls at that point, was futzing around with other things.

I guess the part that bothers me, is that I hadn't seen any other units in the game yet that'd given my army any problems, other than a solitary barbarian tiger that as promoted through the roof.  Then this fawn appears, and a literal "I'm in ur base killin ur doodz" happens.  I'm used to getting raped when I don't know the tech tree and whatnot in civ games, but I was higher score and with a bigger army, at the time, than the AI that did this, and it wasn't more than like 150 turns into the game, on like the second easiest AI setting.  Just made me feel like a tard.

Don't forget tile bonuses for defense, too. Early FfH2 is pretty brutal, I usually build palisades /first/ and also locate on a wooded hill if possible. Don't fight elves in the forest, if you border with them start clearcutting the border now, burn out a nice strip so they don't get bonuses coming into your territory. Elves are nasty, I had the whole priest summoning tigers things going in my last game and it's devastating when you've got a few leveled-up priests running around.

Still, it's odd. The slingers defend at 5 and a fawn is attack 4. Hmm.

It's possible I missed something obvious.  I haven't played Civ4 since it was initially released. 

so at what difficulty does the enemy start to get tricky?
i think i put mine on prince, and wasn't really challenged so far with Clan of Ember double military production bonus (Build 1 get 1 Free) mid game with iron weapons.

I blame the random climate I guess. It's quite strange why the random map Erendil generator decides to put impassable mountain range with 1-3 tiles of choke point, making it really easy for me to plan expansions and grabbing resources. Then place me in semi jungle area that made grabbing Jungle clear tech priority, but the plantations are a boon for research. But the neighboring civs seem to fail to grasp that concept. I keep seeing Dark Elves in below 5 pop cities still mired in jungles. Then there's the dwarves being made to start in TUNDRA? Wth. I'd love a challenge but the map seems too 'Hard' for the AI to play in.

I don't know that the AI ever knows how to properly build and improve terrain, modded or not.

But I won't go on my usual AI rant, since apparently nobody gives a fuck about improving AI.

There is an option for the AI not the be restricted by building requirements for their advanced units.

For what it's worth, I think you are entirely wrong. :awesome_for_real:

I'm beginning to wonder if it was a bug of some sort or if, like Sky mentioned, you were on woods.  That gives fawns some big combat bonuses, IIRC.   OB question, you did have the slingers Fortified and not just in sentry mode, right?  If so, I can't see a reason the fawn should have ever won. 

Fuck, and this happened to me last night too now, right outside my capital.  I'm the one that stupidly picked the fight this time, but I was having a good run until I did that.


It's very likely the city was built on a forest, I hadn't had time to clear the surrounding areas in that game.  And yes, I fortified the archers, and they'd been there for like 20+ turns, so they had the full bonus.  I'm just going to chalk that one up as a "I'm a retard", and just slash and burn any woods near me if there are elves around.

That's one of the things I love about FfH2, the way it does stuff Will Wright would kill to do, create goals and narrative out of the gameplay elements. Secret is having good elements, I guess.

I think it's a great fantasy element, elves show up....GET OUT THE AXES, BOYS! Treehugger? More like Stumphugger, bitches!

Yeah it's funny, it felt like a classic RPG mixed with empire building. Sometimes I can't help but just end the game right there when I'm satisfied with the state of my empire. Letting a bunch of Dwarves living in Tundra (with closed borders and culture blocked their only exit  :why_so_serious: , turning another civ into my vassals while having a pet Angel Civilization under my command. It felt complete.

True story: I hadn't played the elves in awhile, but after seeing the Balseraph spam a bunch of  tigers and reading this thread, I figured what the hey. There's a hard limit on the number of tigers you can summon. I didn't do the math, but it's enough that I didn't need fire mana until late game.  :awesome_for_real:

One thing I dislike about druids is that they get a poison ability that doesn't work on neutral units. Umm, only neutral civs can build druids :/


Btw, from what I can tell, druids are cool if you just build them, but if you upgrade them from Priests, they can also summon treants. I didn't think it was possible to take cities faster than I did as Malakim (with all the goodies like cannons, mages, and oh yea Chalid) but Treants + tigerzerg =  :why_so_serious:

Part of the problem is vanilla Civs is constrained by being politically correct.  Take religions as the best example. There is nothing in Civ IV to make you take one religion over another other than the fact that you founded it.  When you read the background info Sid talks about not wanting to promote a "Best" religion for a style of gamplay as it could be interpreted as a commentary on that religion.   It's damn stupid and ties the hands of the designers to the point that a possibly stellar feature (As shown in FFH2) is now just fluff in vanilla.

Always upgrade if you can, rather than building fresh units. I try to make my non-sacrificial units after I get Apprenticeship and Conquest, which are fairly early civics. +4 xp per unit, plus any building bonuses, is pretty nifty. I was talking earlier about terraforming with Druids, because in one game I had two druids I had upgraded and one I had built. The one I had built lacked one of the terraforming abilities the upgraded units had.

The Treant hero unit is pretty badass, too.

You can just drop the cultist for the same effect. Force-building a temple will quell unrest. I usually send cultists (or the equivalent) behind my conquering hordes for that reason.

A lot of higher level units are like this - Eidolons (the golems for evil religions) especially. Never build an Eidolon, always upgrade it. I usually upgrade it from a cultist/ritualist so they get passive health bonuses and a conversion chance. Plus, hey, evil high priest robots.

This is actually a pretty key thing that'll get beaten into you if you play the Balseraphs.  You pretty much always want to build a Freak first for mutations, and then upgrade it into another unit type.

That said, it's a great idea for that race, but shitty in implementation since the race is built around cultural takeover, not military.

Also, patch 'o' is out now, just came out in the last day or so.  Was patch 'n' when I installed Sunday.

edit:  finally found some notes, it's mostly cosmetic changes

It will not break save games and makes the following changes:
1. New Amurite Palace by C.Roland (old Amurite palace model moved to the tower of complacency).
2. New Bannor cityset art by C.Roland.
3. New Bannor Palace by C.Roland.
4. New Dwarven Settler model graphics by seZereth.
5. Fixed a CtD that could happen if Koun split from a barbarian trait leader.
6. Updated German translation (thanks to Kontrollator and the German translation team).
7. Tech recosting (in general early techs become a bit cheaper and later techs become a bit more expensive, but the major effect awas to smooth out a lot of the weird tech cost jumps).
8. New Dwarven Druid model by seZereth.
9. New Dwarven Slinger model by seZereth.
10. New Dwarven Warrior model by seZereth.

Yeah I nornally play a good civ, so I always upgrade to paladins using a priest or radiant guard for the lulz. They must have changed something recently, because I don't remember being able to upgrade rathas to knights.

I was just surprised by the druids, since the base priests couldn't summon treants.  This makes me think it's a bug, but not one I'm inclined to report.  :grin:

Complete FfH changelog: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=302590

Calabim don't get elder councils?  :ye_gods: That puts a serious tamper on how I tech. Do you go straight to writing ASAP or am I missing something?

Hmm, yeah something like that. That civ is quite hard to play with, I suspect the key here is to tech rush to unlock Vamps and achieve high food production on your cities.. I'm more comfortable with early power civs like Sheaim's summoning & fireballs and Hippus Raider horsemen.

Oh and the AI seems to be more aggressive in Monarch difficulty. I was having hard time surviving in a middle of 3 way battle as Hippus, but man it's fun being the founding Ashen Veil while being sandwiched by 3 Order Civs. Ring of Fire is the awesome stack killers.

Education and cottage spam works very well. 

If the Erebus map isn't giving you a challenge, try Pangaea.  The AI isn't bad at all if it doesn't need to worry about navies or getting over mountains. 

Sky, I think your Druid could summon Treants because it suddenly had access to Channeling III, along with FoL.  Priests can only cast Channeling II (divine) spells. So if you take a fresh FoL druid and teach it Nature I, II, and III, it should be able to cast Vitalize as well as make treants. 

And I was pretty sure that building a city destroyed any forest that was previously on the spot?  Therefore no defensive bonuses or pluses for attackers?  If the fawn just got extremely lucky on its first attack, then it would get a big exp bonus as a result - the worse the odds, the more exp you get from a battle.  And then he pwned you with his new promotions over the next few turns. 

Calabim gain a very cheap extra pop-increasing granary to counteract, and their courthouse (vampire governor) grants production bonuses for unhappy citizens. Teching as Calabim = huge teeming cities with lots of improvements. Calabim are one of the easiest civs to win with, actually - vampirism is broken in general and vampire lords are game-winning units.

Pretty sure it does as well.  My point was, there was forest all around that city, and all the way up and around all my cities at that point in the game.  There's no way I could have preemptively stopped it if I'd tried, and apparently nothing in my cities could stop it either.

I don't know about vampirisim in general (I don't make enough units vampires) but I'll agree on vampire lords.  Get a few of those going, build The Nexus and it's time to start a new game because all that's left is clean-up. 

(http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m20/r3dknight/ac100.jpg)  :why_so_serious:
hahaha, map's turning into hell literally with flames going out of control. I tried to use water magic to put out the fires but I gave up micromanaging it after it kept popping everywhere. Good thing the evil civics are perfect for this sort of situation. 1 food per citizen is perfect and i can just sacrifice some population to rush buildings. The moment the counter hit 100, I think 1/3 of the world population dies as well as most of my military units. Good thing Magnadine is still alive, I blitzed a neighbouring civs who only had 2-3 units left per city. Took 2 of their coast town, 1 razed, and capital city taken. Turned them into a vassal state by the 5th turn.

The southern part of the map is nothing but burning plains with barbarian states with Avatar of Wrath standing on a city (33 STR wtf). I don't think any of my units can scratch him. I'll come back for him with Demon slaying promotion. But at the moment I'm having fun kicking neutral kingdom asses who were allied with the Mercurians.

Yeah I'm playing Sheaim right now and pushing hard to tick away that 'geddon counter. 

Is it me, or did patch 'm' make elves tougher to play? :ye_gods: I'm struggling to found FoL before turn 200 now, mainly because the price is so outrageous, it makes more sense to go for the simpler techs. Do you guys recommend going straight for it or after getting stuff like Education, Calender, etc?

I just made a mad dash to Ashen Veil in this game and I'm suffering for it.  I've decided making a mad dash towards anything is going to hurt you in the end, and you'll be wiser to research the shorter techs as you go along.   Hit a wall where your current tree is going to be 55 days for the next break-through? Go back and get some of the filler techs, or trade with your philosophical allies for them.  Not having bronze working in the early game really fucks you over as there seem to be more barbarian shades out there than before and warriors simply don't cut it for defense against them. If you can get warfare for the city defense promo, even better.

Hmm rushing in monarch is hard. But I just finished a prince game on standard lakes size as Hippus (Tasunke)
It's too imbalanced imo. Start by teching animal husbandry to gain mounted combat. Quickly build a second warrior. or a worker if you want to take the risk since they can irrigate off the start. Then found a second city, continue garrisoning with warriors. Usually 2 per city should be enough with a 3rd in one city as buffer.

Once you've unlocked animal husbandry pop a stable quickly. I got lucky and discovered Crafting off villages. And I immediately went for Mining to increase hammer productivity. Once your first town finishes a stable that's it really. Continue building horse men like crazy. Then tech to cottages asap to get more coins to support your soon to be massive army. 3-4 Horsemen if sufficient to raid a 3rd town. These 3 should have stables and at least 3 warriors garrisoned while pumping Horsemen.

Raid, pillage your nearest civ. Once you topped off your bleeding gold supplies (someone has to feed the horses), capture their towns but DO NOT hold it. Focus on pillaging most improvements and capturing workers. But leave the roads alone. Your leader ability makes your units able to use roads in enemy territory. This is overpowered with 4 movements horses. The enemy wouldn't be able to counter this since the AI only builds warriors / archers to defend (Too slow)
Once you ran out of stuff to pillage / capture (don't kill them too fast) declare a cease fire and return their captured cities back to them , since they don't produce  enough gold to make it worthwhile. Use their workers to build a road network connecting your territory to theirs.

Now you can farm them every 10 turns. Making good spare time to rebuild / scout other civs for future pillaging. I was on 20-30% tech research since my army and empire grew too fast (hence I learned to return their cities back). So with the remaining tech ups should be focused on getting Cottages and spam it on a river.

Mad dashes aren't necessary - home cities for religions are *nice* to have but not essential and not worth crashing your economy. Better to just, you know, take the home city from whomever else made it!

My tech order is usually:

Exploration -> Agriculture -> Crafting -> Mining

(by this time I have a worker out and am developing the first city)

Ancient Chants -> Fishing

(monuments for first colonies, food on water)

Mysticism -> Calendar -> Festivals -> Education

(God king to boost initial city, markets and elder councils, villages)

That's where my same-every-game build order stops - at this point it's dependent on if I'm fighting off barbs, in a land grab race with other civs, or both. If barb fighting or otherwise threatened militarily (hint, don't block off the Doviello from further expansion), I'll make a beeline for Archery, Bronze Working and the other early military techs. If land grabbing I'll start moving towards the first religion to boost culture and happiness and then move towards whatever specialization my civ benefits from.

A key thing with barb fighting in FfH is to keep expanding. Don't worry about workers since barbs will just raze what you build anyway - instead send out well escorted settlers and start putting out fortified colonies. Clearing the fog of war from the map will kill barbarian spawn quicker than trying to build a lot of units, plus you end up with territory as well.

Don't expand so far your territory crashes. If you've reached 50% tech or less, STOP. Below that and you can death spiral to 0% pretty quickly.

Killing Acheron (the big red dragon) is a good mid-game challenge. Assasins to clear the other units in the title, and then fireballs backed up with a summoned elemental (you should have at least one archmage or hero mage by then) works well. If you don't have mages for whatever reason catapults will do the job, but about 5 times slower...

You play a lot like I do in the initial game, Scott.  I just wanted to try this "rush" thing everyone always talks about doing.. yeah, it sucks and throws you way back in the long-term. 

Without my legions of pyre zombies to defend I'm stuck relying on planar gates to get defenders and all I keep getting is fucking mobius witches. Yeah, they're great for summoning hordes of skeletons, but their def. sucks so I just lost 3 cities to the damn tree huggers.   Ah well, this gives me opportunity to sneak one up there, cast smoke in a few tiles and burn down all his goddamn forests.  Buahaha.

The main reason I wanted FoL is for units and defense. Since the early hero is in Archery tho, it makes more sense to go that route.


I do things a bit different (I wait on fishing and mining). I'll try your way and see if it improves. All I know is I'm used to waiting for goodies playing Malakim/Empryean but I'm frustrated right now playing ljos/FoL because it used to be so easy. Now I actually have to work up a sweat, which can not stand.  :-P

tried FFH on Earth Map. Wow.
Epic European & Asian land grab between no less than 6 sides with 2 casualties. I built a mercurian gate and migrated my angel civilization to america.  :drillf:

Well I tried it Lum's way and it worked out about the same. Luckily I got FoL just as my neighbors decided to attack me. :awesome_for_real: Too bad the treants only last 5 turns. Is there an easy way to make it 10 turns + no charge for units?  :why_so_serious:


Oh, and now I have to try the Earth map.