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

[Cheddar]

Orbis is addictive also. 

[Thrawn]

Huge thanks to Hoax to for pointing me at this mod, think I may get back into Civ 4 for a bit and will be sure to have my wife check it out as well.

Also the obligatory screenshot post for me. 

[Soulflame]

I feel as though I'm missing something.  The only thing that really seems to work for me is to tech up through the metals, and then slowly grind through stacks of 15+ city defenders.  Even with focusing on expansion at the start, I seem to stall out at 4 cities before my neighbors have me boxed in.  I haven't seen much in the way of magic so far, and typically it's a complete mismatch of some poor wizard getting run over by a legionnaire.  Plus the forced reliance on taking a few siege if you want to capture an enemy city, and the utter uselessness of carting around your own mages, because an assassin will pop them off.

Where's the Master of Magic?  So far, it's really playing like Civ IV, with some different names for techs and units.

[Lum]

So it sounds like you're skipping the magic trees completely, and unsurprisingly finding that armies not supported with magic resemble World War 1.

Assassins targeting mages - have a high defense unit take the Guardsman promotion and keep him with the mages. Units with Guardsman take the hit from assassin strikes.

1st level adepts are useless (death 1 has a cheap summon, others have mildly useful buffs). Promoting them to 2nd level (mages) requires a tech and experience (mages get a trickle of XP every turn since if you use them in battle directly you're doing it wrong). At 2nd level a lot of useful spells show up - death 2 can summon spectres, which are cheap and effective cannon fodder. fire 2 can summon fireballs, which are better than siege in almost every way. At 3rd level (archmage) which requires more XP and a high level tech they become among the most powerful units you have, through monstrous summons mostly.

Also don't neglect priests. You *need* healing in this game to keep offensives moving quickly.

You also need "supercombatant" heroes - every nation/religion should have at least one. Get it up to level 10 or so and they will be your armored spearhead, cracking the nuts of defended cities so that weaker units can follow up without dying.

[Murgos]

Dominions 3 is far closer to MoM than FfH2 (IMO).  FfH2 has the 4x part down a bit better but the Dom3 has more of the pieces overall.

[Typhon]

I feel as though I'm missing something.  The only thing that really seems to work for me is to tech up through the metals, and then slowly grind through stacks of 15+ city defenders.  Even with focusing on expansion at the start, I seem to stall out at 4 cities before my neighbors have me boxed in.  I haven't seen much in the way of magic so far, and typically it's a complete mismatch of some poor wizard getting run over by a legionnaire.  Plus the forced reliance on taking a few siege if you want to capture an enemy city, and the utter uselessness of carting around your own mages, because an assassin will pop them off.

Where's the Master of Magic?  So far, it's really playing like Civ IV, with some different names for techs and units.

• Rush Pact of Nilhorn and get Curly, Larry and Mo who have siege early on (and are nationality hidden to boot).
• Rush to Wizards with fireballs (suggest as least three fire mana nodes) and you don't need to take siege (which is slow).  you need some method of keeping the assassins from your mages.  Scout units can see hidden.  If you get the Honor religion (I forget the name) you get units that cast a spell that exposes invis units.  DO NOT move your Wizards right up to the city, fireballs have a nice range, use that range.
• Take the mage civ and rush to Firebows, which are that civ's upgrade to Longbowman.  They get fireballs, and therefore act as both a good attacker and siege all in one and assassins crap their pants when they see them.  Upgrade them to a str 10 fireball-casting bad asses who ignore walls for the ultimate "screw you" to defenders behind their walls.
• Take the world-ender civ and rush to the Pyre Ghouls.  They are, all by themselves, dementedly good.
• Choose to play a completely different game by rolling the Balseraphs and wage social warfare with Loki.

Rushing to a particular tech is as important as having a good base so your cities don't suck.

The meta-point here is this:  this game is awesome because I only listed a couple of different options to get around the need for siege or the frailty of mages.  But, at the end of the day, mages are frail... lichs, on the other hand...

[Sky]

If you want a great early expander, try a Clan of Embers game. They begin the game allied with the barbarians and have a hero that can take over barbarian towns bloodlessly, you can buy units at goblin forts. My most recent game was the Clan and it was scary powerful in the early game (lagged behind in the mid-game, slow tech, but caught up to dominate the end game militarily).

These guys like fire mana, I'm all about death mana, as outlined previously in this thread. I guess if you're a good guy fire mana is a better option :)

[Soulflame]

I typically have one mana node in my entire tiny empire.  Am I expanding too slowly, or am I having some bad luck?

[Sky]

You start with 3 mana types, and a couple buildings can give more, and some unique features will give you a single mana. Generally nodes are pretty sparse unless someone casts the ritual that spawns more. That's generally how you work your way up the arcane strategy, very dependent on what you have available. Getting multiple nodes is a bonus (free spells, allowing your mages to take non-spell upgrades, or get more spells), as long as you have a single source of any type you can learn all the spells from that school (as long as your mage unit has the appropriate casting level, of course).

[Hoax]

I've been playing only Illians and I've finally made some progress, I'm currently in a game where I wiped out my nearest neighbor on a warrior rush + priests of winter + stasis (world spell).  I took over most of his cities which was nice since I didn't need to expand.  I then expanded, taking a Barbarian city and moving quickly to Bronze to get more out of my warrior based army.

I jacked up the Calabim when they wardec'd me dropping them to a pair of cities and taking one of their best cities for myself but then the Daviello (sp?) wardec'd me on my western border (the Calabims were all the way on the eastern border) so I forced the Calabim into peace, moved west and just finished mud stomping the entire Dav civ into the ground driving them into the sea and securing my western flank.  Just in time as now the pirate civ has 2 vassal states including my eastern buddies the Calabim and has declared war on me and wont even talk to me about it.  My priests are marching east, Wilboman (big ass hero unit) is almost done and I have iron now so I think I can raze this bitch to the ground as well.

I really fucked up my mid game transition as for awhile I was at 0% research since my armies and conquest cities were draining so much gold.  I've adopted currency and gold is now pouring in only to be met with unhappy citizens all over the place.  Dungeons for everyone and I'm trying to sort it out.  Mostly its because my empire has been cut into 3 pieces so I'm not getting all the special resource trade I should.  Once I wipe out the pirate civ's lackeys it will be time for a big ugly war with the Dwarves (who the game score says are in 3rd place I'm in 6th).

I think I'll quit after I see how a war with the dwarves goes, I see now some bad mistakes I made and I want to try this opener again with them in mind.

Ice mana is the shit, slow just lets you tactically abuse the fuck out of people and once I get the religion tech (around 30 turns to go now that research is running again) I will have the tier 3 ice spell which sounds awesome.

All of this is on Monarch and for someone who hadn't played Civ4 until 2 weeks ago I think that is ok.

[CmdrSlack]

Well, you're doing better than me. I just upgraded to Noble after owning the map with the Mechanos (orbis mod) and am now back to plain old FFH2. I'm really trying to figure out the Sidar, but may be forced to swap to another civ as I think their special units aren't that special. The shade thing is nifty, but I need units, not dudes I can convert to GPs.

I may have to use the Sheiam (sp) because I was zerg rushed by Pyre Zombies and now I want the firey death action as well.

[Arinon]

Are people using the Erebus map type generally?  In my first few games I though it was amazing but as I play some more civs and get a handle on the mod as a whole I'm liking it less and less.

The main reason for this is that both initial civ location and the nearby terrain features play a HUGE part in how the game plays out.  The difficulty swing going from Noble to Prince to Monarch seems to have been dwarfed by geography.  I got smoked by a civ on Prince that was given about 1/3 of the map uncontested and yet totally dominated a Monarch game because a couple of civs were stunted by chokes with barbs or nasty red dragon placement.  I may also be bitter because I'm trying out the Malakim and Erebus refuses to start me anywhere but in some insanely unproductive desert expanse.

I'm hesitant to pop over to a Pangaea or Continents map for fear of messing up the feel of the game but may start doing that.

[Kageru]

To be honest I use Erebus but have a quick peek around with the world builder. It's a waste of time starting out your empire to discover you are boxed in to a tiny patch of desert with the "Guardian of Pristinus pass" on the exit. All the resources are pretty rare and some of them, such as having lots of mana nodes and summons with affinity or mithril make a big difference to the game. Really rewards expansionism or dumb luck. Also not sure if building a town on top of a hidden resource destroys it... that would suck.

Won a "Boredom victory" playing Elohim by building the tower of luonnar. Trying to maximize great prophets and fortifying my position since I'd read that all the AI will attack when you get to the last stage. Turned out they don't so while they're having a jolly little war, and each of their turns is taking a minute or so, I'm just watching the little grey bar fill up.

I also really want the Svartalfar / Esus / Recon combination to work. It sort of does but Esus comes so late and you can't give religion to experienced units. That and I'm just not sure they can achieve enough for all the micro-managing. Easier just to make military units and go pillaging. Still, good practice for overcoming my tendency towards playing very defensively.

[Hoax]

Well, you're doing better than me. I just upgraded to Noble after owning the map with the Mechanos (orbis mod) and am now back to plain old FFH2. I'm really trying to figure out the Sidar, but may be forced to swap to another civ as I think their special units aren't that special. The shade thing is nifty, but I need units, not dudes I can convert to GPs.

I may have to use the Sheiam (sp) because I was zerg rushed by Pyre Zombies and now I want the firey death action as well.

We will see, things have gotten a bit more dicey.  I smashT the Calabim like I figured I would, they only really had assassins and archers and the assassinate your catapult trick only caught me off guard once, after that I just slowed the shit out of them and it was gg.  A human could have made it more costly for me by keeping the assassins in his towns since my catapults don't have commando, move 2 and I don't have haste atm I think I'll get haste from now on for that kind of situation.  Sadly though the dwarves are trying to win through religion and have been converting my cities to the tree hippie shit and they are literally expanding along every one of my border.  Also they aren't really Dwarves they are Luichurip they just have a leader that looks like a dirty Dwarf and their color is brown so they confused me.  Meanwhile some upstart fucker tried to sneak a city onto the coast only a few tiles from my border and despite it causing war between me and literally everyone but the Brown Luchirp elf-dwarves I really wanted to kill I took it out instantly.  So now I'm going to have to beat up on the other major power bloc and possibly buy off the pirates (last time I checked with them it was costing me 200 gold for a 10 turn peace).  To make shit more interesting right before I saved for the night the fucking blight Armageddon event hit and my cities are all super fucked, dealing with that tomorrow.

[Thrawn]

Starting to read through manuals and such and learn to properly play this.  A few quick questions that will maybe help me out.  What should I look for in a starting city and how early should I worry about making settlers to make more cities and how many?

[Arinon]

For starting location I just look for some place where I will have at least two resources that I can develop early like Wheat, cows, fish, gold, etc.  Rivers are also very good.  If I haven't found a decent site by turn three I just restart but that's rare.

Early game is all about the land grab so you want to build new cities as fast as you can without bottoming out your economy.  Each new city will incur maintenance costs that can cripple you if you go too fast.  I imagine strats differ more here but I will generally try and keep my cashflow in the black at around 70% research.  Another way to keep the costs down is to expand all around your capital instead of striking off in a particular direction.  Alternatively you can move your capital to a central location once you have most of your cities placed.

[Cheddar]

Starting to read through manuals and such and learn to properly play this.  A few quick questions that will maybe help me out.  What should I look for in a starting city and how early should I worry about making settlers to make more cities and how many?

Food is vital in early game, along with commerce.  Focus on techs that will let you expand ASAP (agriculture for example).  Early land grab will complete set the stage for mid game; if you slack off on this you will have a much harder time surviving.

A river is ideal in most cases, though you can be strategic and use oceans affectively (especially if you are Lanun).  Heron Throne is good for an ocean starting strategy.

Generally I grab the basic techs then beeline towards whatever religion I decide would be effective.  Being the founder of a religion really pays the bills by end game along with mana bonuses!

[Sky]

Are people using the Erebus map type generally? 

Never used it. I've gone for continents the last couple games to get more war out of them, but traditionally I like islands (1 large per civ) with archipelagos and running naval/marine battles. In those games Privateers become some of the most important units in the game, and Lanun really has an edge with water walking.

For early land-grabbing, I look for food resources. If you can set up a couple really productive food cities to pump out settlers then workers, you can get a nice solid base set up and hopefully still have time for that second wave of settlers to grab more advanced resources/strategic points. My last game as the Clan was entirely set up by my food-based expansionism, plus rushing fishing because my capitol was built on a peninsula with four (!!) ocean food resources. Despite most of the rest of the peninsula being desert, the initial food producers plus a galley were the keys to setting up the later stages of the game.

[Thrawn]

I tried the Erebus type map this morning, I like the idea of it but I ended up in an almost unplayable position. Pretty much on a sizeable island, but is was largely desert, almost no resources anywhere. Not even fish on the coasts and a couple hill giant barbarians trapped with me wrecking anything that left a town.

[Merusk]

The Erebus map routine seems to suck of late. I've had the 'zomg no resources' problem you mention.  I've also seen the blocked-in thing for the first time when I installed the M patch and tried Orbis a few months ago.   Plus on a few giant maps I've had only 8-10 mana nodes for the whole damn map.  Rites of Oghma gave a whopping additional 2.    Ran a map using one of the vanilla civIV routines and there were a LOT more resources that were a little better distributed.

[Hoax]

I've been running huge cold Pangea with low sea level and natural shorelines and its generated good games. Erebus is far too imbalanced in terms of starting location for my liking.

[GenVec]

For two or three months last spring I was hosting an RP game of FFH2 with whatever CivFanatic people we could dredge up on their FFH IRC channel. The quality of the games ranged from mediocre to  . What was amazing was that, after a few weekends, we consistently managed to find nine or ten people to play in line with the fluff for their civ and religion choices - Clan of Embers players were hyper aggressive and preyed upon the weak, Elohim spread their cities across the world next to holy sites, and the Illians would brood in their northern wastes and generally act like has-been conquerers with chips on their shoulders. In short, it was awesome.

Unfortunately the game is extraordinarily poorly balanced, takes five or six hours to get going (hard to find that much time, even on a Sunday afternoon) and will invariably be dominated by "pave the world" types.

[Cheddar]

I generally play Pangea maps.  Currently running Mechanos civ.  Got the Sheim south of me, gonna invade them tonight and get some more sweet, sweet mana nodes to fuel my army of destruction!

Its going to be brutal, but if I can pull off the invasion will provide my frontline army with +4 strength (they have 4 mana nodes that I can see).   

[Soln]

playing Orbus this weekend.  Just terrific.

[Hoax]

I'm not really thrilled with the Armageddon counter, all its done to me so far is delay my inevitable victory and drag out games.  If I can win a couple more in a row I'll move up from Monarch.

[Kageru]

You can switch it off in the options when you start up a game. I generally turn the red dragon (Acheron) off because having it roost next to me is a pain. It's there for ages, making a dreadful noise, for an awful long time.

[Soln]

I have to RTM , but is it at a certain point that a bunch of all the other civs are suddenly supposed to always declare war on you?  That's happened to me in FFH2 and Orbus no matter my faction.

[Merusk]

Some things trigger all-out war, yes.  Illians casting their world domination spell, trying to build the tower of mastery. (or rather, having all the towers so you CAN build it, it seems.)  Being the last evil bastard in a world of goody two-shoes seems to do it as well.

[Cheddar]

I have to RTM , but is it at a certain point that a bunch of all the other civs are suddenly supposed to always declare war on you?  That's happened to me in FFH2 and Orbus no matter my faction.

You probably are not maintaining a large enough military.  Even your friends will eventually declare war on you if the land you own are easy pickings.

[Sky]

I generally turn the red dragon (Acheron) off because having it roost next to me is a pain. It's there for ages, making a dreadful noise, for an awful long time.

I started a game as Sheaim now that I have the Steam version installed. I find that the second time I play a civ I have a bit better idea of what I'm doing, so this one has been wicked tough but much more fun. Went with the continents map with islands, got Bals, Illians and Calabim on mine. Shit economy because I was rushing for Ashen Veil, and just when I hit the point of researching Corruption, a great person showed up and gave it to me! My expansion was stunted, I got two cities and Archeron decided to move into my corner of the continent.

Then I did my old trick of isolating expansion from the other civs, I got lucky that Illians (at my southern end of the continent, in the west; south east corner is the dragon) were close by on the other side of a bottleneck, with their weak culture I've already flipped one. The Calabim and Balseraph are at the northeastern part of the continent. and I was able to barely rush to get a couple cities in the jungle there, securing the central continent for my expansion. I'm pretty sure Calabim is going to go to war, we literally had a race of settlers. I had dropped the two cities that would cut off the bottleneck and, being in a jungle, they didn't expand the culture border fast enough and he slipped a massive stack through. I barely got a city founded between a mountain range and lake without a single turn to spare.

And right about then I built Rosier, got a tar demon, and my army shifted its core from warriors to pyre zombies and diseased corpses, many of whom were vet warriors from the ridiculous amounts of barbarian generators all around me. Rosier is finally cleaning those out now, but sheesh. Slowed my workers, too, because all the workers needed warrior escorts and still had to run and hide from lizardmen and the stream of stacks of 4 orc axemen from multiple barbarian cities.

To echo what Ched is saying about military, Calabim shifted to war civics just before I cut off his expansion and he was sending a stack of axemen (whatever the 4str Calabim units are) to take out my two bottleneck cities in the jungle, which were defended by single warriors initially. Then Rosier and my zombie/corpse reinforcements showed up to bolster and he turned tail back into his territory. We're still Friendly, but I know what he's up to.

[Lum]

I have to RTM , but is it at a certain point that a bunch of all the other civs are suddenly supposed to always declare war on you?  That's happened to me in FFH2 and Orbus no matter my faction.

Civs get more aggressive as the armageddon counter goes up, especially vs. opposing alignments.

[Cheddar]

Decided to do something different with Patria.  Instead of doing a zerg city spread I am going to create a super city based on military happiness (the civic that gives +1 happy per troop).

Theory is I can pop settlers out lickety split by mid game and completely dominate.  I did build a second city to bottleneck the Mechanos civ south west of me; they started on an isthmus so cannot spread now.

[Sky]

Didn't have much time to play last night, but I noticed Calabim went all naval, a few triremes and galleys, and thought "Ah, shit, he's end-arounding my bottlenecking!"

Then I gained Optics and started work on my privateers while rushing some settlers up the land route I had lain in. I'm still stretched pretty thin, but I can see the way through if my workers can handle the massive jungle I inherited...and if Auric doesn't decide to bash down my back door. And if we can keep the goodies over on their continent and maybe buy Khazad out and send him after the goodies during the middle game.

[Cheddar]

Super city plan has gone riculously well.  Hit around 26 pop then zerged all the surrounding land.  Next goal will be building up those populations.

Originally I planned to offset my army of destruction with the money civic (unlimited merchants, +1 gold per specialist) but ended up switching to religion one (unlimited priests).  Still have plenty of cash rolling in plus huge production boost.

[Khaldun]

Going to try Clan next. Won my first Tower of Mastery victory with Elohim on Monarch. Had a hilarious sequence of finishing the Tower of Necromancy, getting attacked by Khazad + Basium, which would have been hard to hold off with the rest of the world also attacking, so did Sanctuary. Was able to take a few cities of other enemies while knowing I couldn't be invaded on my vulnerable frontier, was pulling 2k gold per turn so I had about 40-50 turns to survive to buy the Tower outright. When Sanctuary dropped, I sacrified the Elohim hero to force global peace. Had Birthright Regained in production before any of this started, so it was about 15 turns from completion when I forced peace. When peace ended, I fended off invaders on all boarders for five turns, finished Birthright Regained, hit my second Sanctuary, and there was nothing anybody could do about my completion of the Tower.