Civ 4 - Fall from Heaven 2 (version .33) = 8/15 Release (aka BIG ONE)

[Murgos]

It can also be quite useful to have multiple religions in a city. It means more temples which means more happy faces (with incense/gold depending on religion), more culture and each religion's temple also has some sort of bonus like more culture from OO, gold from RoK, military production from Order (iirc)

This depends on your civics.  With the proper civic you can get bonuses from all the different temples, with the wrong civic you will get hammered for not enforcing the one true faith.

Edit: I have Civ IV off discs and BtS off Steam and I dl'ed the 0.33 and patch 'b' for FfH last night and installed it.  I needed to do nothing to the install the make it work, all the paths were set correctly (I'm using Vista YMMV) and the only change I needed to make was to the short cut because the part after mod= needs to be in quotes ie mod="\...".

[Engels]

Thanks for the info, Murgos. I'm going to be in the same situation as well soon.

Anyone have any tips on how to easily do troop group movements? Also, do people have 'auto promote' option on for military units? I do, and it doesn't seem to work, at least in vanilla Civ IV

[Murgos]

Autopromote is a bad idea IMO.  The bonuses can add up very quickly if you are paying attention but you have to be aware of what role you are intending the unit for and use it appropriately.

A scout unit with bonuses to movement.  A defense vs artillery unit.  Etc...

One well prepped unit in the right situation can be extremely powerful.

[Merusk]

This is about FFH.  Completely different beast - start your own thread if you wanna discuss BtS.

Fair enough. Yeg was asking about some vanilla stuff and I got carried away. 

Anyone have any tips on how to easily do troop group movements?

You mean other than the "Move all units in this stack" and "Move all units of the same type in this stack" buttons?  Nope, but I'm not entirely sure what you're after here, either.

[Cheddar]

This is about FFH.  Completely different beast - start your own thread if you wanna discuss BtS.

Fair enough. Yeg was asking about some vanilla stuff and I got carried away. 

Eh, wasn't being a dick.  FFH and vanilla Civ are 2 completely different games. 

I would get wtfpwned in normal BtS these days!

[Yegolev]

This is about FFH.  Completely different beast - start your own thread if you wanna discuss BtS.

Fair enough. Yeg was asking about some vanilla stuff and I got carried away. 

I didn't mean to give that impression, since I have not played Civ4 without the FfH2 mod.  At this point, playing a non-modded game would just confuse me.

My state religion is Council of Esus but it's only present in my capitol.  My two other (standing!) cities are Ashen Veil, which I'm not getting any music notes from.  I'll be happy enough to allow religious freedom if I can make it benefit me.  Wow, I sound like a world leader already.

[Cheddar]

I am not a big fan of the new council religions; I think the original 5 were more then plenty for a flavorful game.  You get various bonuses from the different types of temples along with other perks per religion.

Ashen Veil:  Science/Evil oriented; summon demons for fun and profit!

Order:  Military/Good oriented; angels + lots of combat/units!

RoK:  Money money money money, moooooooneeeey (1 of my personal favorites)

FoL:  Defensive/Nuetral/Healthy.  Trees are good, mmmkay.  FYI, they will come alive and eat you if you cross my border!

(psuedo kthulu one):  Demon/Nuetral/holyshitCULTURE; mind staple the peasants so they do not revolt!  This one is brutal if you go the religious route (able to make super melee warriors with magic powers).  This is another favorite of mine.

[Yegolev]

Wow, I have no idea how to do any of that.  I'll have to check it out... one of the others, that is.  I don't know how to milk the Council of Esus for anything.

[Stormwaltz]

(psuedo kthulu one)

Octopus Overlords

[Cheddar]

Wow, I have no idea how to do any of that.  I'll have to check it out... one of the others, that is.  I don't know how to milk the Council of Esus for anything.

Council of Esus allows special units and heroes - not sure of the exact bonuses beyond that.  You can also pass amendments that the other members have to abide (world vote type tool).

An example of using a religion to your advantage:  Ashen Veil allows some powerful demonic units along with the ability to sacrifice live ones for Science gain.  A side benefits of spreading the religion is that its temples produce science as well.  Be warned - spreading evil raises the Armageddon counter; this can be good or bad (extremely WTF awesome if you are at peace with Barbarians!).  In addition you can summon the Demon race leader and get a civic that halves the bread cost of population.  

[GenVec]

Unfortunately halved bread cost is of little use to Hyborem, as he also comes with the trait "Fallow" - meaning that city population neither rises nor falls because of food. It IS useful for Hyborem if you adopt the Conquest civic, as that much more food is going towards building your army units.

But anyway, only way for Hyborem's cities to gain population is through the death of units with the Ashen Veil religion or by razing cities.

Also Hyborem's Whisper is just pwn.

[Cheddar]

Unfortunately halved bread cost is of little use to Hyborem, as he also comes with the trait "Fallow" - meaning that city population neither rises nor falls because of food. It IS useful for Hyborem if you adopt the Conquest civic, as that much more food is going towards building your army units.

But anyway, only way for Hyborem's cities to gain population is through the death of units with the Ashen Veil religion or by razing cities.

Also Hyborem's Whisper is just pwn.

Kuriotates + Ashen Veil = UBER cities.  Just sayin'.

[Lum]

Council of Esus is pretty weak overall... it doesn't spread naturally (you have to move a unit with the CoE promotion to a city and spend money to spread it) and its only hero is a one trick pony - Gibbon Goetia is weak in combat but can infiltrate and run an opposing civ for a few turns... then he dies.

Empyrean on the other hand is a powerhouse - with the new patch its temples have the same research bonus as Ashen Veil, and its hero Chalid Astrakein is one of the most powerful heroes in the game... a +2 Sun Mana affinity means he gains +2 strength for every Sun Mana you have. And if you founded Empyrean and have the shrine, you probably have at least 2 sun mana before you've built a single mana mine...

Still, the easiest by far method of winning Fall from Heaven 2:

1) Select Calabim
2) Select Order for your religion
3) Play nice with others until you research Divine Essence and have teeming metropolises
4) Create 4 Vampires
5) Feed on your huge teeming metropolises
6) Promote 4 Vampires to Vampire Lords. Vampire Lords are level 12+ units that CANNOT DIE.
7) Eat the world.

[Cheddar]

Council of Esus is pretty weak overall... it doesn't spread naturally (you have to move a unit with the CoE promotion to a city and spend money to spread it) and its only hero is a one trick pony - Gibbon Goetia is weak in combat but can infiltrate and run an opposing civ for a few turns... then he dies.

Empyrean on the other hand is a powerhouse - with the new patch its temples have the same research bonus as Ashen Veil, and its hero Chalid Astrakein is one of the most powerful heroes in the game... a +2 Sun Mana affinity means he gains +2 strength for every Sun Mana you have. And if you founded Empyrean and have the shrine, you probably have at least 2 sun mana before you've built a single mana mine...

Still, the easiest by far method of winning Fall from Heaven 2:

1) Select Calabim
2) Select Order for your religion
3) Play nice with others until you research Divine Essence and have teeming metropolises
4) Create 4 Vampires
5) Feed on your huge teeming metropolises
6) Promote 4 Vampires to Vampire Lords. Vampire Lords are level 12+ units that CANNOT DIE.
7) Eat the world.

There are faster, easier ways.  For example - start as Tebryn.  Shoot straight towards the Pyre zombies (aka, rolling DEATH).  Turn into a military economy; proceed to steam roll your neighbor or two.  Now, after you have doubled (or tripled) your landmass play the economy game; make sure you pop at least 8 adepts. 

Shoot for Archmage tech, take over world (4 Eater of Souls, 4 Liches = Rolling death).  Remember - Eater of Souls can eat 1 population point then recast.  It is not unusual for me to have 30 str. 11 Wraiths with double strength + 4 move.  Oh, as a bonus, they have fear and grant wither on death.

[Lum]

Another sick/broken combination is promoting the Octopus Overlords mage to lvl 4 combat, lvl 3 fire magic, and twincast.

2 fire elementals a turn will kill anything (str 14 I think, plus collateral damage), especially considering how early you can pull this stunt. Except, you know, Vampire Lords. Because THEY CAN'T DIE.

What was REALLY sick was when Vampire Lords didn't have to wait a turn per eaten pop point, but could just eat an entire city in one turn. It made conquering other nations sick endless loops. NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM +300 XP NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM

[Yegolev]

So, uh... does the AI do this?  You know: NOM NOM NOM CAN'T DIE?

[Merusk]

I don't know if anyone else came across these two incredibly broken bits, but I thought I'd share.   If you ever get the PBEM game going, or a hotseat you'll need to be aware.

I've got patch "B" of this version, and the Phoenix wonder is so fucking broken it's not even funny.   Any time you upgrade a unit that has the immortal promotion, you get not only the upgraded unit but the original.   I was trying to figure out why I had so many warriors showing up in my capitol.  "I didn't build warriors there.. and why are they at almost 0 health?"  Then it dawned on me.. and I gave it another test with an archer.  Heh.

The vampire lords are equally broken, albeit in a different way.  If you manage to capture some "Black Mirrors" from the dark elf race, you can then use them on your VL.  This lets you cast an illusionary version of the unit that dies after a turn.  Well, VLs can't die and will always respawn back at your capitol and apparently the game does the same thing with the illusionary ones, but they don't respawn with the illusion promotion (which kills them at the end of the turn.)   I now have an army of about 10 Vampire Lords who are fucking everything up.  Combined with the Portal wonder all I need is one city on a continent and it's mine.  I stopped playing this game through because it's just a ROFLSTOMP with only 4 VLs.  10 of them at level 20+ (I love Feast) is just fucking sick.

[Sky]

I may be naive, but I'd hope in a gentleman's game among friends, things like that would be noted, lolled at, and units deleted by the owner.

[Lum]

Fall from Heaven .34 is out. Illians are playable now, they have their own storyline involving summoning OMGHUGEAURIC and stomping everyone else into snow. Also lots of other changes (including moving a lot of features from the Fall Further modmod, such as lootable dungeons).

[Cheddar]

Fall from Heaven .34 is out. Illians are playable now, they have their own storyline involving summoning OMGHUGEAURIC and stomping everyone else into snow. Also lots of other changes (including moving a lot of features from the Fall Further modmod, such as lootable dungeons).

We wait for second patch, same as with your games.  Asshole.

[Tebonas]

Couldn't wait because I wanted to try the Illians and the RPGish dungeon exploration feel. But after two crashes I will give it one or two patches as well. But what I saw I really really liked (yet again).

Good that Hinterland had a free content patch this weekend as well so that I have something to do while I wait. :)

[Cheddar]

Couldn't wait because I wanted to try the Illians and the RPGish dungeon exploration feel. But after two crashes I will give it one or two patches as well. But what I saw I really really liked (yet again).

Good that Hinterland had a free content patch this weekend as well so that I have something to do while I wait. :)

I have to fight the temptation.  But I refuse to have my heart broken again!

[Raging Turtle]

Patch G is out for .34, so it's fairly solid at this point. 

I haven't played since .32 - I like the UI changes.  Explorable lairs look fuuun but they all get popped so quickly... maybe I'll kick up the difficult a notch and quit playing Pangea maps. 

Haven't tried the Illians yet, not sure if they're my style as I tend to cycle through the forest elves, Luchurip, Calabim and Amurites.  Damned if they didn't get some nice toys, though.