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

[Stephen Zepp]

It's funny how the civs are so tied to play styles--for example I rock at vamps, and kuriotites, but damned if I can figure out those pesky elves.

The AI keeps beating me to FoL[/i], and I'm the only elf in the game. My production and research rate sucks, and they are all out expanding me as well. Gotta be missing something!

[Merusk]

It's funny how the civs are so tied to play styles--for example I rock at vamps, and kuriotites, but damned if I can figure out those pesky elves.

The AI keeps beating me to FoL[/i], and I'm the only elf in the game. My production and research rate sucks, and they are all out expanding me as well. Gotta be missing something!

Got enough forests? Elves w/o forests are pitiful.  Also, job #1 early-on is expand, expand, expand.  Build a few token defenders in a city then start cranking settlers, planting cities in heavily-forested areas first.  When you finally get FoL Priests > Adepts since they can improve the land and then forest it.   I didn't develop magic as elves until mid-game.  Getting to longbowmen first was the key to the defensive strategy.

Elves are a very defensive/ builder play style.  If you're typically the warmonger/ aggressive type it'll be quite difficult to do well as elves.  I use pacifism and militaristic as my early civics.  Pacifism seems to keep other civs from seeing you as a threat, and militaristic helps cover some of the gold penalty for having defensive units, while upping settler production time.

[Raging Turtle]

It's funny how the civs are so tied to play styles--for example I rock at vamps, and kuriotites, but damned if I can figure out those pesky elves.

The AI keeps beating me to FoL[/i], and I'm the only elf in the game. My production and research rate sucks, and they are all out expanding me as well. Gotta be missing something!

Even if another civ gets FoL first, you still get a missionary once you finish researching it - it even gives you a contact to the founding civ when you convert over.  Guardian of Nature (or whatever the civic is) helps out a LOT with how the elves are typically played. 

Also, I've found that I often *need* to use Gilden, their early hero unit, to raze/conquer a city or two in the very early game and get some breathing room.  A defender/builder kind of sucks when you have three cities and everyone else has five.  Then I usually research up to Rangers (ignore bronze working and beyond) and go knock down a few more cities... and then get bored and start another game before the late game starts.

Of course, I play on Noble, so you're on Monarch or something you can safely ignore me 

[MrHat]

I was thinking how one of the civ's that are barbarian would play well on higher difficulties when the barbarians are ridiculous.

[Sky]

Even if another Civ gets a religion first, you can still snag the Patriarch if you level up a priest early enough. I don't know what's happening in my current game, I shoot for Octolords and lock down my civ so no new religions can spread and then purge. But...no new religions popped up! I think I've got Kuri, Embers, and ol' Auric as playmates. They all adopted Octolords so far except Auric, who's just an ornery old cuss. So I sent the Black Pearl Wind over to pay him a visit, loaded with a couple mercs. Apparently mercs can't take over cities or pillage. The pillage part kinda bummed me out, I was hoping for some lewtz, but at least he's basically a non-threat now because they're smashing his army up pretty nicely.

Built a couple pirate coves to base out of, playing as Lanun is fun. The food bonus in the sea is incredible on an archipelago map, especially since the only mithril is in the arctic regions. And gunpowder is on the exact opposite side of the planet. Grr. I plopped some units on it and sentried a bunch of pirate ships around it.

Another oddity, I sent some Drown over to a jungle island so the lizardmen would attack them...and they left them alone. I fortified on a hill, though that made them too unpalateable, so I just sat outside the ruins but they ignore me. I can't really attack them because they're equal strength and the lizards edge out my drown with their 10% jungle defense bonus. Grr.

[Raging Turtle]

Such a good mod.

I'm really getting into the Sheaim/magic tecs.  Started a Standard size Terra map, added a few extra civs to make it crowded, and promptly got held down by a single bears den that was right next to my capitol, limiting my initial land grab.  I slowly build up my three cities, get some conjurors, get Ashen Veil --> Infernal Pact, and the Hyboreom show up... on the uncolonized continent.  They're currently spreading like wildfire (hellfire?) over there.  Still early in the game though, going to be a good one.

[Cheddar]

I was thinking how one of the civ's that are barbarian would play well on higher difficulties when the barbarians are ridiculous.

Barbarian civs are extremely dificult.  You have to stay at war constantly or you fall waaay behind.  If you are the production type this civ is not for you.


BUT if you play to crush...

[rk47]

yep. Grab irrigation for quick growth, then just rush for bronze working etc for better weapons and start rushing down your nearest neighbour. Kuroites died to my Orcs that way. Then I tried to take on Lanun but my strikeforce got wiped by 3 ogres from their wonder. The bad thing is my civ auto-raze a captured city, so I can't really profit much from the improvement, so I pillage everything with my marauding stack.

[gimpyone]

Does anyone play with the baslaphers or whatever they are called?  Can you win through culture?

[Lum]

More details of the FfH version included with the next expansion are out. It's a completely different version.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/796/796807p1.html

[Strazos]

It doesn't sound as good either....sounds more like a single scenario than a full-blown, total-conversion mod of the game.

[Raging Turtle]

Bleh.  I'd much rather chip in a few bucks for them to keep updating the current mod than to play what that sounds like.

[Lum]

They've said they're going to be continuing to update the current mod as well.

[Hoax]

After about 5 games fuciking around I'm sort of kinda getting the hang of things again.  Still playing like a super n00blar but really I was never super into Civ although i did play the early one a ton on SNES and I played the futuristic one at a internet cafe for awhile back in HS.

So I've got a starting to mid strat I like w/ the Agnostics (Grigori?) anyways, the wolves thing is fucking weak.  It ruins some games so bad.

[Tairnyn]

The mod has 4 milestone versions. Currently they are on Fire + a few patches.

"Light"- Introducing Talchas's new spell system, Mana nodes and 16 new civilizations.

"Fire"- Introducing Hell, the Armageddon counters and the Infernal and Mercurian civilizations.

"Shadow"- Introducing Quests, Equipment and the Sidar, Svartalfar and Illian civilizations.

"Ice"- Introducing the FfH scenerios.

The development team does not accept donations, instead directing you to UNICEF if you want to give money. The 'official' mod looks to be similar only in name and doesn't have anything to do with the design team other than borrowing a few concepts.

[MrHat]

Tonight, I discovered the joy that is Loki and his traveling circus.

[Stephen Zepp]

Tonight, I discovered the joy that is Loki and his traveling circus.

Heh..I spent some time working with the custom map scripts--trust me, it's worth it. I played with landmasses, but found SmartMap--ffh to be the best, by far. They are pretty damned easy to get running, and only require you to create a custom game to use, and give some pretty cool ways to adjust the maps that are generated.

[rk47]

Hmmm, I like it. I'm not really patient type so it took a while to get a good game going, but damn when it's good going it's hard to stop. The one more turn syndrome just keeps kicking in. Add in the 'hmm what does that do?' factor when encountering new units, I'm hooked. I spent 6 hours already in a day glued to a Standard size map with 12 random civs.

The best part is when I switched over to Evil, whacked the Belsiums (damn angels keep knocking on my front door) then I noticed the lava and forest fire spreading...very very awesome feature. I deduced that it's gotta be that Hyborum demon town that causes it, (I was Ashen religion after capping a holy city, maybe that's the cause of the lava spread?) Anyhow I switched over to neutral after kicking their super unit with my own. Fantastic. And the land tiles gradually turned back to normal. Just when I thought the worst was over suddenly there's a time trigger where all farms disappeared...woooot. Back to rebuilding again 

[MrHat]

I want to try a solid landmass type game with Loki just culture pwning people.

[climbjtree]

It took four pages of commentary for me to download this, but I did.

I started a game using the neutral seafarers(Lunen?). I'm doing alright so far, Octopus Overlords and all. However, every other civ has converted to OO. I'm also at peace with all the evils, and haven't found any good guys yet. I tried to snuff out the weakest civ on my island, but to no avail. I focused too much on seafaring stuff, and not enough on regular military. Maybe once I have some mages, or something, I'll be more effective.

[Sky]

I'm finally getting close to the endgame of my Lanun game. Lanun kick ass with mercs+pirates, it fits their theme imo. I knocked the shit out of Auric as I had begun in my above post, and with my Air-buffed ships it was a matter of a few turns wiping up all his cities. Having had a time getting some barbarian cities to adopt my culture, I just razed all his and teleported in settlers with the (zomg overpowered) Nexus.

Now I've got Guybrush (singing shanties ftw) with his mage buddies and a buffed contingent of mercs ready to deal with Ashen Veil and it's game over, man. The good guys are stuck on their island because of those nasty, nasty pirates. Gotta be careful sailing the seven seas, eh?

On development, Shadow is slotted for after the official Civ4 expansion's release. They're still updating Fire like mad (check for patches often, up to h now).

[Tairnyn]

The trick with Mages is that they start out as Adepts with no real offensive power, then can be promoted to Mages (enabling Fireball) once their level is high enough. They do gain experience over time, but it's pretty slow. If I plan to use magic heavily I build a bunch of Adepts as early as possible and save up some money to pay for their promotion. They are only strength 2 to start so leveling them via combat is pretty tough. Once they get Fireball they are nice for bombarding defenses, but the collateral damage seems to cap at 4 units, so heavily defended cities (6 or more units) tend to heal units back to full unless you have more than 3 fireballs hitting them each round.

I started a game with the Luchuirp and the golems are turning out to be unstoppable. They are significantly stronger than units of their corresponding tech level and can gain a +50% attack bonus out of the gate if you get Barnaxus up to Combat V. For reference my Iron Golems, which require Iron Working tech, are strength 9 (+50%) while it seems that the best that can be built at that tech level is around strength 5. I just loaded up 3 ships from my starting continent with them and I'm getting ready to unleash some automaton terror on 'Evil Island'. Their only real weakness is that they regain life about 4x slower than normal units, but I sent Bambur (a Hero with the Repair ability) along to keep the momentum going.

I am in love with this game.

[rk47]

So what difficulty do you guys play at? I've been repeating the usual copper rush strat with 2-3 different civs ( I like randoms) and it seems like even Prince AI does stupid things like building a crap load of weak defenders and teching up to non-military stuff that becomes XP fodder by my STR 4 early stacks. I just cleaned up 3 neighbouring civs in the same continent on Prince with no sweat, grabbing the Pact of Nihon to get 3 Ogre that functions as city bombarders are awesome too, plus they are STR 6. Maybe I'll up the difficulty up a notch to see how things turn any different.

[Roac]

The best part is when I switched over to Evil, whacked the Belsiums (damn angels keep knocking on my front door) then I noticed the lava and forest fire spreading...very very awesome feature. I deduced that it's gotta be that Hyborum demon town that causes it, (I was Ashen religion after capping a holy city, maybe that's the cause of the lava spread?)

Hell terrain spreads in Ashen Veil nations automatically.  It will spread in evil, neutral, or good depending on the armageddon counter. 

[Stephen Zepp]

So what difficulty do you guys play at? I've been repeating the usual copper rush strat with 2-3 different civs ( I like randoms) and it seems like even Prince AI does stupid things like building a crap load of weak defenders and teching up to non-military stuff that becomes XP fodder by my STR 4 early stacks. I just cleaned up 3 neighbouring civs in the same continent on Prince with no sweat, grabbing the Pact of Nihon to get 3 Ogre that functions as city bombarders are awesome too, plus they are STR 6. Maybe I'll up the difficulty up a notch to see how things turn any different.

Monarch tends to have a good chance of kicking my ass rapidly if I'm not very careful.

[Roac]

They've said they're going to be continuing to update the current mod as well.

v0.22 is the current (as of this posting) version.  v0.23 will be the last vanilla mod; after that, the mod will require BtS.

[Sky]

v0.23 will be the last vanilla mod; after that, the mod will require BtS.

Best marketing tool evar.

[pants]

Having a hoot with this playing as the Sheaim - through my process of summoning demons and razing cities managed to crank the armageddon counter up to 100 - the world now consists of 2 big continents, my nicely Sheaim one, and a smoking, barbarian-racked, hellfire infested ruin which used to contain everyone else.  I am a bit disappointed that even though the Sheaim exist to destroy the world, it appears I won't get any victory until I finish off the last good civ, and then turn on my demon allies to get a conquest victory.  I won't get largest %age of the world, due to my razing strategy, and the same for legendary cities, since most of them are smoking, demon-infested ruins.

Still, lots of fun, and already planning my treehugger elf game.

[Strazos]

v0.23 will be the last vanilla mod; after that, the mod will require BtS.

Best marketing tool evar.

Will I have to get Both expansions to continue updating?


Also, finally starting to clean up my little island with the Bannor. One of my commanders got cheapshotted attacking a city with a 98.3% success rate, but it's ok. I can now pump out mages and Paladins (having the Dragon's Horde in my capital to boost production is helpful), and still have one of my good heroes, plus Sphener. Once I clean off my island I just need to concentrate on cranking out fireballing Mages and more Paladins/Crusaders to clean out the Land of Evil (ie the other island).

[Roac]

I am a bit disappointed that even though the Sheaim exist to destroy the world, it appears I won't get any victory until I finish off the last good civ, and then turn on my demon allies to get a conquest victory. 

Mmm, I don't think you have to destroy Hyborem so long as you summoned him.

[Stephen Zepp]

I am a bit disappointed that even though the Sheaim exist to destroy the world, it appears I won't get any victory until I finish off the last good civ, and then turn on my demon allies to get a conquest victory.

Mmm, I don't think you have to destroy Hyborem so long as you summoned him.

Yeah, unfortunately I don't think is an actual win condition associated with the AT...however, theoretically you should get a religion win once you own 80% of the cities in the game?

[Merusk]

v0.23 will be the last vanilla mod; after that, the mod will require BtS.

Best marketing tool evar.

Seems kind of odd they're requiring BtS when they explicitly stated that Warlords didn't add anything they saw fit to include.  What's BtS adding that's so special? Or is it simply the $$ from Firaxis including their mod in the pack.

[Cheddar]

v0.23 will be the last vanilla mod; after that, the mod will require BtS.

Best marketing tool evar.

Seems kind of odd they're requiring BtS when they explicitly stated that Warlords didn't add anything they saw fit to include.  What's BtS adding that's so special? Or is it simply the $$ from Firaxis including their mod in the pack.

Functionality.  New expansion allows modders a loooot more tools and things they can add.  The guy who heads up FFH had to get extremely creative (example, sir who cannot be named unit) to get half the things working.  The new expansion should allow them to clear out a lot of clutter from the code and also allow more flexibility to what they can implement.

[Stephen Zepp]

v0.23 will be the last vanilla mod; after that, the mod will require BtS.

Best marketing tool evar.

Seems kind of odd they're requiring BtS when they explicitly stated that Warlords didn't add anything they saw fit to include.  What's BtS adding that's so special? Or is it simply the $$ from Firaxis including their mod in the pack.

Functionality.  New expansion allows modders a loooot more tools and things they can add.  The guy who heads up FFH had to get extremely creative (example, sir who cannot be named unit) to get half the things working.  The new expansion should allow them to clear out a lot of clutter from the code and also allow more flexibility to what they can implement.

I think one of the specific things mentioned was a quest system, but I would bet/hope the tools get a lot better as well. Ironically, Civ IV's modding tools are really bad--the FFH team had to make a spreadsheet that auto-generated XML just to have some type of relatively easy balancing mechanism, and I've definitely seen better world/mission editors.

[pants]

I am a bit disappointed that even though the Sheaim exist to destroy the world, it appears I won't get any victory until I finish off the last good civ, and then turn on my demon allies to get a conquest victory.

Mmm, I don't think you have to destroy Hyborem so long as you summoned him.

Yeah, unfortunately I don't think is an actual win condition associated with the AT...however, theoretically you should get a religion win once you own 80% of the cities in the game?

I think so.  Due to armageddon hitting 100 all the countryside in my lands is going to pot - so my population are starving as the world burns around me as I cackle maniacally hahaha!   I'll see how it goes tonight - right now the good guys (Bannor) have some really big cities so my pop isn't that much more than his, but once I go on another bout of razing I'll see what happens.