Civ 4 - Fall from Heaven 2 (version .41N) and more - Updated 6/3/2010

[rk47]

Yep. Take the blandest kingdom with the most obvious description - like the super horsemen which name escapes me at the moment.
Skip weird ones like Balseraphs to avoid frustrations.

Once you get better at it, you can start RP-ing a bit to squeeze more fun out of it. 'DIE UNHOLY EMPIRE OF EVIL BEFORE THE MIGHT OF ORDER!'
This is why FFH is infinitely better than plain vanilla Civ. There's more flavor and variety to devour in every play.

[Raguel]

I dl'd Wild Mana. It's cool and all, but I had problems with saves, and eventually with Civ itself (even on lowest settings, it ran sluggishly). I ended up having to completely uninstall Civ Mods and saves :(.

[koro]

After several games of nothing but floundering, I'm beginning to get the hang of how FFH works compared to normal Civ. I'm still having a lot of trouble figure out what to really focus on for each civ. Like, I'm not sure which civs have a big religious focus for me to shoot towards, for instance.

[Sky]

There are strategy threads on the ffh2 forums. Once you get into things and want to know more "I'm playing Lanun, what's a good religious match?", you're at the point to start digging. Between the in-game civopedia, the manual, and the forums you can start getting an understanding of the game. That's one of the awesome thing, we've been playing it for years and still find out new stuff, and there are entire civs/religions I haven't touched yet. Still want to do Sidar/Esus or actually play the Infernal civ.

[koro]

I'm also finding that there's a lot of stuff that you don't really know until you actually get into the game and try it out. Like the ship promotion that lets you carry units in it. I had absolutely no idea that was in there until I built my first non-work boat naval vessel and saw the Skeleton Crew promotion.

My main problem right now with someone simple like Hippus is that I see that a large part of their strategy revolves around being offensive, pillaging, and working toward their mecenary-hiring hero unit. So I start positioning myself toward that. But then I see my treasury is low and I start fretting and then switching my tech focus towards something that'll let me start building wealth in an economic city. I just have a lot of trouble committing to one path of action.

[Raguel]

I don't know about anyone else, but I do about what it sounds like you do: specialize until it's not feasible. You need both science and wealth in order to get want you want (which for me is usually a religion, or civ wide Wonders, like Guild of Hammers, Nexus, and the one for mage guilds).

[Sky]

But then I see my treasury is low

If you're playing Tasunke, low treasury means you need to be more aggressive for plunder bonuses. The other leader is a bit more buildery. My hippus game I was in the hole like mad but still ended up with over 2k in the treasury after four or six wars because of the rampant plundering. If you see a town, civ or barbarian, it needs to be plundered.

[lac]

It's good to have goals and you need to beat opponents to certain techs but if you don't keep stuff balanced you'll gimp yourself because of the lack of cash/happiness/military power.

I installed fall further, the mod of the ffh2 mod, and had some great games with the scions - who have no use for either food or religion - but unfortunately the mod crashes my game a lot. I'm in this one game where I can't enter the borders of another civ or the games crashes...

[koro]

But then I see my treasury is low

If you're playing Tasunke, low treasury means you need to be more aggressive for plunder bonuses. The other leader is a bit more buildery. My hippus game I was in the hole like mad but still ended up with over 2k in the treasury after four or six wars because of the rampant plundering. If you see a town, civ or barbarian, it needs to be plundered.

Yeah, I was playing with Tasunke. My main problem was that I started in what turned out to be a pretty shitty location, with barely enough room for three cities that have no workable tile overlap, and didn't know that most ships could be upgraded with cargo space. A couple map rerolls later, I didn't have a greatly improved start position, but I at least had some barbarians and neighboring civs to harass.

But I started a new game as the Lanun. Wow I love this civ. They're probably considered overpowered, but man they're fun. Raced to Runes of Kilmorph, got their first hero early on, expanded hard for the early game, and with the exception of having some unhappiness/unhealthiness issues, it's been smooth sailing ( ). I currently have the mostly-land-locked Hippus who already hates me blockaded with a bunch of pirates, even more pirates raiding patrol vessels from other civs, and two patrolling armies simply slaughtering the ridiculous amount of barbarians to my north for easy xp. I've been slacking on ground unit production, but I've started to pick that up since I now have two cities that are worthy production centers.

I'll probably build up my army a little more, crank out a couple more frigates, bombard the two well-defended Hippus coastal cities into powder, then roll in and wreck up the place, take their third and last city, and have a lot more resources for my own.

[Megrim]

Would someone be kind enough to do a bullet-point list of things to do, and to avoid in this game? And some general tips?

I'm playing a Noble, randomed Khazad game, on Fractal. So far i have three (well, 1 and two half-cities really), founded the runes of Kilmorph and have developed most of my land with the typical Cottage and resource building mix. I have the pink human to my left, sea below me, Hippus scum (who've declared war on me because i wouldn't give them ale. Ha, fat chance!) to my right and a dragon or something above me (i think he has taken over a barbarian city). The war so far has consisted of him capturing a couple of workers and me sending a retaliatory dwarf raiding party to pillage their lands.

Oh and i also killed the orc hero guy by burying him in dwarf bodies till he coughed up his axe.

[Kail]

Would someone be kind enough to do a bullet-point list of things to do, and to avoid in this game? And some general tips?

Tips for the game in general, or Khazad in particular?  I don't generally play Dwarves myself (I lean too heavily on Archmage cheese, and Dwarves can't make Archmages), but from what I understand the basics of the Khazad are:

-Strong economy = more money in vaults = more happiness and production = more buildings = strong economy.  Always try to have positive cashflow, the bonus from vaults can get pretty crazy (something like +40% hammers, I think).
-Most of the Khazad special units are siege weapons, I think, which is good since without Archmages, they'll need a lot of siege weapons to bring down cities and stacks.  You can also make siege weapons in forest tiles with the "Battering Ram" spell.  Mostly your siege is going to be paired up with melee units since you can't make longbowmen.  Stonewardens work, too.  Dwarves also get some weird druid that I haven't played with much but seems kind of gimp compared to the regular druid.
-Your world spell is pretty crap.  I have no idea when the ideal time to pop this thing is.
-Just a general impression: I don't think Dwarves are a "finesse" race.  They're not like the Calabim or Amurites where a handful of elite units are going to destroy an entire enemy nation while the rest of your army is there to support them.  Dwarves, I think, in order to conquer anything, have to throw a lot of soldiers at anything and take a lot of casualties.  I don't know that there are any "easy" tactics for the Dwarves, aside from out-producing and outnumbering your enemy.

Again, though, I don't know too much about them, that's just my impressions.

[Megrim]

I think i meant more general tips (stuff like, casting Summon Skeleton on a Graveyard tile will summo three Skeletons instead of one), but thanks for those. The Khazad game died in a few turns anyway, since i made peace with Hippus only to be run over by a massive stack of Doviello.

 * Edit:

Started a new game with Sheaim, seem to be doing better now. At war with Balseraph, but creaming them with Pyre Zomies and a hero (someone or other The Fallen. Is it me, or are heroes really strong?).

[Tebonas]

Depends on the hero. Some are almost overpowered (mostly casters and Endgame Heroes), some are little better than standard units, with the only advantage being you can train them up without endangering them.

Rosier the Fallen is nice when you get him because he starts quite strong, fast and doesn't die that easily (he starts with withdrawal and can improve his chances). Basically he is an improved Mounted unit (comparable to the Horse Archer, Stronger but with less Withdrawal Chance and no First Strike). He is ideal for the Sheaim because the rarely go beyond Pyre Zombies in Unit Tech and heavily go for Magic Users (and Planar Gates).

The final tech for Horse Archers is Stirrups (1600 Research) which basically is a dead end tree (it just gives you stronger units) for increasingly large research costs.

Rosier needs Corruption of Spirits (900 Research) which also gives you Temples with more research, a state religion and disciple units with a fire damage spell. And ultimately one of the three big Endgame one-man-army heroes (27 str total). This is countered by the fact that you need the Ashen Veil religion, which is bad for most civilizations. The Sheaim love the Amargeddon Counter though, which makes him even more awesome for you.

[Sky]

Sheaim are about the planar gates. Having free mages popping out of your cities is pretty cool. Tar demons are decent defenders (for free), but I like the Mobius Witches. Building catacomb liberalus puts a mage guild in every city, which means any planar gate can pop an arcane unit. You will still want to build your core arcane units to be archmagi/liches so you can have more control over their promotions, but the witches can serve to cover holes in your mana types because they spawn with random mana schools. The higher the AC, the more units per gate.

I don't think I've ever had Revelers, Manticores or Minotaurs, though.

[koro]

Finished my Lanun game with a surprise religious win. Now I'm trying something completely different and going with the Ljosalfar (using Thessa). I wanted something more mage-y, but couldn't decide between Grigori (I spent nearly an hour internally debating whether I wanted to go the summoner adventurer route or use magic purely for Adept/Mage support), Amurite, and Ljosalfar. The latter won out due to their defensive turtling nature which is a style of play I tend to fall in to at times (the fact that I'm also running Raging Barbarians has nothing at all to do with it, nosiree).

My main problems are how to tech them up and how fast/where to expand. I want to try to found the Circle of Leaves but in the quickie test game I ran, following that route while expanding to three cities didn't get me Archers until over turn 100.

With my current game I have what I think is a pretty good start position (that's an Yggdrasil tile if you can't see it, and hill tiles are the ones that look like the tile just to the west of that south-central mountain), but I'm unsure how to go about really exploiting it to take advantage of the Ljosalfar peculiarities with forests. Will the non-forested tiles be a problem? Will the lack of resources in the middle be a huge thing? From everything I've read I'll likely be going for an Aristocracy/Agrarian economy, so would I just plop farms down on every irrigated tile, mines on hills, and lumber mill the rest once I get Archery? Choosing good city locations is something I've never gotten the hang of in Civ, and the Lanun spoiled me with their easy city location decisions.

Start position:

[Megrim]

I'd comment, but i can't see the screenshot.

[K9]

Nor me, I get a 403

[koro]

Fuckin' Dropbox, how does it work?

Imageshacked instead.

[Megrim]

Works now. I don't know anything about the faction you're playing, but it looks like you won't be able to get much production from your first city, with that start. Money and food should not be a problem though.

[Merusk]

The lack of forests in the middle won't be a problem because you can get units that cast a spell to build a forest.   I just raze the existing improvements, cast the forest and rebuild when it's available.

As far as "good" city locations, I always just matrix them as close as I can.  When spamming settlers I start out by counting 3 up/down and 3 over from the previous city center to allow maximized production squares then adjust to avoid mountains/ deserts/ etc.   More cities is better than a few high quality cities, imo.

[koro]

Wouldn't 3 up/3 over cause overlap with the outer work ring of a city?

[Merusk]

D'oh, yes.  It's actually 3 over 4 up/down.  (Or 6 straight across if building in a line)  Just use the settler's outline  to determine the actual placement and  extend everything one square out.  I've forgotten how to count, apparently.

[Megrim]

I've, um, "Founded the Undercouncil". What does this actually do? I can apparently adopt it as a religion, and my Nightwatch guys can spread it to other cities through gold. Can it be used for anything else?

What do the Great Generals do/how do i use them?

How does the Infernal Codex (or whatever that thing is, the casts random spells) work?

A Tower of Necromancy raises my Skeleton summoning max to five. How many could i summon before? How can i tell?

Am i limited to one hero in play at a time? I have the techs for a whole bunch, but i can't build any. Is it because i already have Rosario Dawson in play?

[Kail]

I've, um, "Founded the Undercouncil". What does this actually do? I can apparently adopt it as a religion, and my Nightwatch guys can spread it to other cities through gold. Can it be used for anything else?

It's kind of like the UN (so is the Overcouncil).  Every few turns you vote for a president who can table motions.  I have no idea what half of them do ("Fund Dissidents" for example) but "Establish Slave Trade" lets you buy slaves, I think, and "Enlist the Nightwatch" lets you manufacture Nightwatch units.  The Nightwatch guys are generally Council of Esus religion, which is different from the Undercouncil, which is a civic (Anyone who's researched it can join the Undercouncil, doesn't have to have Esus as their official religion).  Esus is weird in that it has no churches and no priests, any unit which follows Esus can spread the religion to a city they're in, but it costs 25g to try.

EDIT: You're generally not limited to one hero at a time, but they are limited to one per "world" so if someone else has built the Fellowship of Leaves hero, you can't build another one of him, for example.

[Megrim]

Ah, so they are Unique per game. If i kill one they have, can i rebuild it?

Some units have their strength listed as x/y. What does this mean? Also, some units have the caveat "will abandon civilizations that don't maintain civic or religious requirements". How do i tell what those are? Figured this part out.

[Kail]

Ah, so they are Unique per game. If i kill one they have, can i rebuild it?

Some units have their strength listed as x/y. What does this mean? Also, some units have the caveat "will abandon civilizations that don't maintain civic or religious requirements". How do i tell what those are?

Generally, dead heroes are lost for good (hence my foaming in the Civ 5 thread about losing battles with 95% odds).  The level 3 life spell "Resurrect" can bring them back, but they come back at level 1, and it only works on Civ specific heroes, not religious heroes, as far as I know.

Strengths listed as x/y means that the unit is treated as a strength x unit if it attacks, and a strength y unit if another unit attacks it.  Archers, for example, are something like 3/5, so they make better defensive units than offensive ones.

Heroes with civic or religious requirements are usually tied to a specific religion.  If you're not sure which, you can check the Civilopedia under "Heroes."  If it's a religious hero, it'll say that the religion is required.  For example, Rosier is tied to the Ashen Veil religion, so his "Required" box has both "Corruption of the Spirit" (the tech that gives you Ashen Veil) and "Ashen Vale".  Another way to keep it straight is to remember that your civ has only one or two civ specific heroes, generally, and any others are going to be tied to whatever religion you're practicing when they start being produced.  For the Sheaim, I think their hero is the Black Dragon, so other heroes are generally going to be tied to their religion.

[rk47]

Despite how much the game changes, there's still some basics that you need to keep in mind when building up:
1.Don't try to build everything in the city - specialize.

2.If it's a city at the back which hardly gets attacked, turn it into commerce producer with cottages & structures in favor of hammers / forges. Coastal cities are hardly under threat since the naval AI sucks dick.

3.Front line cities need defensive structures and majority of garrisons should be seasoned vets. Build them next to a river. The AI sometimes kamikaze across rivers (-50%), making it easy to defend. Same deal with production facilities, don't build stables/siege engines everywhere, only build what you need.

4. If you have a city with lots of farmland, designate it as worker/settler producer.

5. Just popped a new town? Trying to build an obelisk for culture pop? Why bother? Grab a disciple unit and sacrifice it to spread culture. Tadaa, instant border pop. Also, removes disorders from hostile takeovers / unhappiness INSTANTLY.

[Sky]

A Tower of Necromancy raises my Skeleton summoning max to five. How many could i summon before? How can i tell?

I don't think it affects the max # of summons, but it does give you a death mana (and grants the strong promotion to your summoned undead +1str). Did you build another adept? Total number of skeletons is based on the total number of arcane units with death magic (death I is summon skeleton). That doesn't mean each arcane unit can only summon one, if you have five adepts with death magic, you could have a single adept summon five skeletons if you wanted.

1.Don't try to build everything in the city - specialize.

Also pay attention to your city summary screen to see where to build wonders, you can order the list by production. Order it by food to see where to build settlers, money to build economics, beakers to build research, etc.

[rk47]

Yep. Always do that when you have a Great Scientist to build an Academy. Check which city has the most research produced - and plop it there.

[koro]

I think I expanded a wee bit too far a wee bit too fast before getting Aristocracy. I just plopped my fifth city down before I noticed that - oh shit - I'm down to 5 gold and I'm losing 7 per turn.

Economy's finally back on the upswing, but it almost bit me there for a minute.

[rk47]

I just had a long snoozefest over a Noble Difficulty, Clan of embers game. I founded Rune of Kilmorph and pumped Soldiers of Kilmorph. Wonder-blitzed to everything. I've only got 5 cities, but fuck, it's hard to justify conquering when everyone's too scared of pissing you off, and it's more productive to wonder rush.

Unchallenged so far 600 turns in - even the barbarians didn't break peace.

The Orcs unique building, Warrens, doubles land unit production as in, build one and get one free. Double settlers, double workers, and double army! I think I might just expand peacefully to break the monotony. But let me just finish building Aqua Sucellus and Wonder Theatre in my Orcish cities.

[Khaldun]

Just finished off a really tough Khazad/Basium opponent with Calabim. I fucking love the Calabim Feast animation. I do it just to see the little screamy face, forget the promotions.

Also a huge stack of Spectres is kind of scary to listen to when you summon them.

[Kail]

Just finished off a really tough Khazad/Basium opponent with Calabim. I fucking love the Calabim Feast animation. I do it just to see the little screamy face, forget the promotions.

It always bugs me, because it's a global sound effect... the same global sound effect that accompanies losing a city.  "Oh, hell, what did I lose now, dammit dammit dammit..." "Sorry, that was me, feasting again."  Still, less crazy than the "drowining" sound byte, at least.

Speaking of which, anyone having much luck with this game in multiplayer?  I'm getting a lot of OOS errors in vanilla FFH, and so many in Orbis that it's basically unplayable (every combat has about a 20% chance to throw the game OOS it seems).  Anyone know what's causing it, or how to work around it, aside from save-exit-restart-reload every time it happens?

[Khaldun]

One thing that was really interesting in my Calabim game was taking Council of Esus as a religion, which I hadn't done before, and using the special power of the Esus hero to take over another civilization.

I eventually used it to try and finally break down Basium's resistance, since he's really tough to pin down and finally wipe out given how fast he can pop out Heralds and Angels of Death and Seraphs and strike at your cities way behind your defensive perimeter with the Angels of Death. At the time, I had been in a cease fire with Khazad/Basium for about nine turns and had several stacks-of-doom poised at the borders to the remaining Basium cities which were to the south of my territory, squeezed in between me and my subjugated allies even further south. I was in a classic aristograrian setup with the map covered in farms, most of my cities had at least two longbowmen defending, and along the defensive perimeter, around four in most cities. Quite a few worker stacks on the board, most a long ways from the frontier.

So I pop the special ability from the hero who is hidden in a Basium city. I didn't know that you'd actually switch completely to the enemy civ and lose control of your own to the AI for a few turns. I notice that the AI *immediately* switches the Calabim civics to Republic and Military State and sigh, because that's going to be bad when I get back in control. I also notice that you can't delete units in the civ you've taken control of, which seems like a good idea, otherwise that hero would be a total "I win" button. I just evacuate all his cities of all units, sending them way south. After a turn of that, I send one of his units to cross the border of one of the Calabim allies and bing! we have a war. The AI obligingly sends my armies to capture the empty Basium cities, but can't get to the ones furthest south before I lose control of Basium again and revert to Calabim.

So I take stock and--well, the AI has done so much damage to my empire through mismanagement that it *almost* wasn't worth it to trigger the special ability. I'm bleeding money now because my territorial development is entirely cued to aristograrian, the AI has totally bizarrely decided to make every...single...city in my empire produce a Worker, it has split up my doom stacks and sent them off in weird little clumps all over the place (taking a huge stack of attrition-killing skeletons and sending them one skeleton at a time to cities as defenders. In the end, the whole gambit helped me kill Basium a bit faster than if I'd ground him down, but the mess the AI left took a lot of cleaning up.

[Megrim]

That's actually quite hilarious. Reminds me of a card in the L5R ccg.

Kail - a mate and i have been playing ffh2 over Direct IP through Hamachi just fine. Crashed once the first time we ran it, but i suspect that was my system acting up (i was tabbing through approximately 15 million windows at the time).

Also, after having played for a while i've come to the conclusion that apparently, fireballs > everything. Seriously, what the hell.