Merry Christmas: Fall From Heaven Final to release 12/16

[Merusk]

- vampirism is broken in general and vampire lords are game-winning units.

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. 

[rk47]

 
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.

[Merusk]

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

[Raguel]

Is it me, or did patch 'm' make elves tougher to play? 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?

[Merusk]

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.

[rk47]

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.

[Lum]

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...

[Merusk]

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.

[Raguel]

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.

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. 

[rk47]

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. 

[Raguel]

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. Too bad the treants only last 5 turns. Is there an easy way to make it 10 turns + no charge for units? 


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