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

[Sky]

My Sheaim game is getting vicious. Keelyn went after Flauros, so I was bought a bit of time there. But I forgot privateers require a metal, and I've none. Since I'm ignoring the metals tree and have no copper, I'm kinda screwed. Keelyn at one point offered me some copper for death mana and all my treasury  I fought a named fire elemental from a dungeon...but not until he had lit the jungle on fire. Didn't notice it smoking until it caught fire and had spread smoke, but I made a nice fire break and now the jungle is burning down and new forest replacing it 

Auric went nuts with culture, when I finally got a caravel out exploring, he's only got three cities and some good resources. Might have to knock him off before he gets any more troublesome. 4 death nodes now, ready to start pumping out my death mage army and get to work, supported by those sweet demons from the planar gates.

Elohim is being a real bitch putting down the AC, it was low anyway (15) and she's got it back to 7, dammit. She's also rolling over her continent, so I've got to get my stuff together for the later stages of the mid-game. And Tsanuke as usual is pissed off and wants to kill everyone, no idea where he is, though. I love this mod.

[Sky]

Culturally stole Calabim's horses and traded them to Bals (who he's warring with) in return for copper, which allows me privateers to hound his fleet. I love passive aggressive war options, letting Bals get bled during the war effort to weaken Calabim for my invasion.

I think I like the continents map with islands turned on. You get nice localized intrigue without having to deal with a ton of civs all at once. There are two continents in our local group, with war raging on both, but separate. I just ran into the second continent group which is also warring, yet to explore the whole thing, though. So at least three separate mini-campaigns going on and about to ratchet up as we get more navies floating.

[Cheddar]

Patch N released, mostly bug fixes.  First post updated if you need the link.

1. Fixed a CtD caused by a conversion in a stack with enemy units.
2. Fixed a CtD caused by taunt causing a unit that can't attack to attack.
3. Fixed an issue that caused the AI Balseraphs to build freaks endlessly.
4. Disciples of Acheron start with Loyalty.
5. Sons of the Inferno start with Loyalty.
6. Fixed a CtD when the Bannor cast rally and an enemy unit is on a town.
7. Fixed a CtD that can be caused when a player founds a city in a plot with enemy units (the fun of invisibility).
8. Fixed a WoC from summons (found by Snarko).
9. Fixed an error in the Order vs Veil random event.
10. Fixed an issue with applying the POISONED_BLADE promotion through explore lairs events.

[Sky]

I think I like the continents map with islands turned on. You get nice localized intrigue without having to deal with a ton of civs all at once. There are two continents in our local group, with war raging on both, but separate.

Correction, it's the Hemispheres map with continents and islands. I had continents set to 2, but might try random.

[Cheddar]

Scions if easy mode if done right.  Going to try Illians next.

[Khaldun]

Was having fun with Clan--cleaned out an entire continent of factions early with two stacks of goblins before they bled me dry of money (goodie huts + graveyards + sacking other faction cities keeps the fires burning for a good while) so it was only five factions left when I got Bronze Working. Concentrated on money techs while I sent the Clan hero over to the empty huge continent which was now loaded with barbarian cities. Conversions galore. The only thing I didn't know was that at some point, the barbarians decide you're too civilized. This didn't happen until I'd flipped the whole continent, more or less, but it did lead to a really epic thing where the Clan hero was surrounded by a shitton of dispossessed barbarian troops out for vengeance against him, and he fucking killed every single one in a single turn of defending himself.

Unfortunately the surviving factions are relentlessly driving up the Armageddon Counter, so now the Wrath has appeared while I'm midway through crushing the Balseraphs. Most of my cities are pretty heavily defended and I have the Nexus, so I can load up heavily on D in a single turn if Buboes or Wrath show up on the horizon. But I don't have an endgame hero capable of taking them on, and also a lot of my units are scurrying around with the Wrath thing trying to kill leftover barbarian elephants and such.

[Sky]

Bals and Calabim got tired of my shenanigans and they made nice with each other and attacked me...when I rushed my troops to the border, Auric decided to invade my southern flank. Calabim had a sick army of summoners and Auric had been sitting back pumping out weenie units for years. Someone somewhere was keeping the AC too low for me to get much through my planar gates, and I had just started my future lich army (meaning I had a couple of crappy low level death adepts). I got totally smashed. 

Using the same map format, I like it. Changed continents from 2 to random and upped civs to 13 total. Usually play random civ, got Bannor. Luchuirp are my neighbors, but there is a raging set of barbarians that have been slowing things down so far. Thanks to upgrades from defending my cities, I was able to grab Orthus' Axe pretty early on. Seems most of the civs have cast their world spells, the one that summons Mokka and the frostlings dropped a metric fuckton on our continent for some reason, luckily I had just parked some archers in my cities and converting to Order had given me a bunch of low level priests for some minor healing. When I next was able to scout the continent, there are at least four barbarian cities, luckily Archeron chose another home this time.

Beeri Bawl is getting pissed at my normal tactic of finding a choke point and dropping a city there, cutting him off from the majority of the continent (but also saving him from the barbarian ravages!). When they switch to the Warfare tactics, you know they're not happy. Pumping out tons of wood golems....so I just keep the trade open and gift him with techs, the short peace treaties you get when you make trades/gifts/demands has kept him pent up long enough to send a massive army of very upgraded archers and priests to the chokehold, not making the same mistake I did last game!

Khaldun - Clan are one of my favorites. Get your shamans leveled up and use the nexus to pwn. Clan is kind of weak end-game, but if you can get enough mana nodes you can go for my super mages of death strategy. Some like fire, I like death! With a few stoneskin ogres (or even summoned units if you pump their affinity high enough) to guard the mage/lich stack, it's all over but the cleanup on aisle 5. That's actually kind of how Calabim crushed my front lines, but with vampires rather than liches.

[Khaldun]

Buboes is max promoted and I can't do much besides pour defensive units into a city ahead of his attacks and let them absorb it. I keep trying to get some stoneskins and mages set up enough--I think maybe I'll go around and reset some of my nodes, maybe. When the Apocalypse hit, I lost all my promoted mages, which was painful.

[Cheddar]

Buboes is max promoted and I can't do much besides pour defensive units into a city ahead of his attacks and let them absorb it. I keep trying to get some stoneskins and mages set up enough--I think maybe I'll go around and reset some of my nodes, maybe. When the Apocalypse hit, I lost all my promoted mages, which was painful.

This mod is extremely brutal but replayable.  I highly recommend Orbis.

[Sky]

Finally got the barbarian raids toned down a bit and sent my hero unit out to clean up the lairs (which is how I found the barbarian cities all over the damned place, I've never seen so many pop up so quickly). Then who does my galley run into on a scouting mission? Hyborem. What the hell is he doing on an empty continent in the early game? And he's got a whole gaggle of units, including several Champions that are almost as buff as my hero unit. But the big man himself, nothing I can really do about that now, and he's just sent a train of settlers out, ffs. Should be able to get up to a war footing pretty quickly, but with the amount of midgame units he has in the early game (with one city) and settlers he's sent out, he'll have half the continent before I can even start to retaliate.

How the heck did he show up? Crazy.

[Khaldun]

Buboes finally ate it when he had a couple of bad rolls against my alpha stack-guarded city. Still took three stoneskin ogres, Chalid Astrikein and an assassin to bring him down once he was wounded badly during the previous turn's attack. Then it was a race against Grigori to recolonize the continent that Buboes and the Avatar of Wrath had scoured clean, but I swarmed it with settlers and got a domination victory finally.

I managed to rush to Ashen Veil really quickly in one game with Lanun, going super-heavy on tech progress, and got Hyborem in the game when most civs were in their early development. But it's rare to see the AI do that.

[Hoax]

Just lost one because the map was insanely wide open.  There were 2 civs on the coast myself (Illian) and Bannor along with two goods to my west.  I opted to kill off the kuriotates first, which was easy with Priests of Winter but he had built so many cities I wasted too much time.  Meanwhile I discover bronze and realize Bannor has it and he quickly goes to Axemen before I can come back and take it from him.  He expands out and had me at insane disadvantage.  Fucker.  I think my early tech order and handling of my first city did me in also I'm just not used to so much goddamn open land I must have changed my map setting and it caught me off guard in the actual game.

[Sky]

Ok, looking over the manual I guess he just spawns /somewhere/ when an npc civ gets to Infernal Pact. Maybe it just caught me off guard because it was nearby and I had already explored that area and knew it was empty of npc civ cities (except the mad barbarians, of course). Going to be a tough one.

[MrHat]

Auric Risen or whatever is awesome.

60 Str hero unit? Supported by Druids and Priests of Winter?

GG Rival Civ.

[Hoax]

Auric Risen or whatever is awesome.

60 Str hero unit? Supported by Druids and Priests of Winter?

GG Rival Civ.

Druids? Aren't they leaves religion units how did you get those just on the 10% chance of taking over defeated living units?

[Cheddar]

Druids? Aren't they leaves religion units how did you get those just on the 10% chance of taking over defeated living units?

Nope.  Nuetral civs can build them.  The dwarf one is pretty sweet (Earth affinity) and the Scions of Patria (Orbis only) are insanely powerful.

[Khaldun]

I'm realizing that one reason I'm grooving on this expansion besides liking a lot of the elements it adds to Civ IV in terms of gameplay is precisely that the factions are so different, and that they didn't get too hung up on "balance". About the only weakness Civ IV has for me is that the factions are so blandly similar and that there is such care taken not to really make them be too much like their source culture. FFH2 factions are *really* different to play. Yes, some of them are absurdly easy to play once you get them figured out, others aren't, but it makes every game feel different beyond just the random map and placement on it.

(I use the Big & Small map always: I like the results better than Pangea, usually.)

[Sky]

Khaldun, that's exactly it. If the civs in Civ4 had the flavor the civs in FFH2 have, I might actually play it. I haven't played vanilla civ 4 since I played a single game when BtS was released. Before BtS (well, FFH2), I had sadly discounted the game as a vanilla game that didn't have much to pull me back to it. It was fun and replayable, but always felt so bland and unfinished. I think BtS finished it, more or less, but it was still bland.

So...loaded up my Bannor game last night, expecting the worst. I had the feeling I had when my Sheaim game hit the crux point. Bought some peace with Beeri by giving him some cheap techs, then BLAM great person shows up and we go into Golden Age #1. That finishes off Fanaticism, which is pretty great for Bannor. Pump out some settlers, confessors and archers and make a quick line in the sand in front of Hyborem. Still don't know that it will hold, but my production centers are up and running and I have access to units that can at least stall him when he gets around to invading, and it will stop the spread of hell terrain across the unsettled lands (which I'm about to settle post haste).

Also built a couple privateers, one to keep Beeri from landing a settler in the unsettled lands and another built for speed to circumnavigate. Again on the hemispheres map(islands, random continents), came across four or five more continents that were settled. All the good leaders jumped into the overcouncil and we all traded our techs with each other, bumped most of us ahead of the evils in the score list, the neutrals are doing well, too, though (12 AI civs). Signed a defensive pact with Beeri, unlikely he'll get invaded but I wanted an ace in the hole in case (inevitably) Hyborem invades me.

And depending on the balance of expansion/military production, I'll probably end up invading him with my crusaders rather soon.

[K9]

You should really write this up as a radicalthon Sky, with pictures!

[Sky]

You should really write this up as a radicalthon Sky, with pictures!

Eh, I'd have to think about it while playing. I write these up the next day at work :)

Took a break for a few days, some GTA4, some APB  , finished most of the trim staining for the living room, rewarded myself with a couple hours of FFH2!

Ok, so I should jumped on Hyborem when he first spawned and my first Order hero could take him. I forgot he's a hero unit and he leveled up to where I could maybe take him with my two Order heros, but would lose one. I thought I would nab some Paladins as backup at that point, so rushed for them (and Sphener!). Got Sphener, which is awesome because a) he's a great unit and 2) he can clean up any hell terrain that I gain from culture. Hyborem split the end up the continent, my Crusaders are split into two armies now, both fairly weak excepting Sphener.

So about shoring up Sphener with some paladins...yeah, I've got no iron. So I look around...NOBODY has iron. Well, three civs do. Two are evil and hate my guts. One neutral civ has two deposits...and isn't mining either! I was thinking about gifting him some techs when BAM, one of my mines discovers an iron vein. Woohoo! Paladins rolling out now, the Crusade is almost in place.

Next step is declaring on Hyborem and then building a navy to go visit Os-Gabella. Fight her over there, so she doesn't come over here!

[MrHat]

I was really kicking ass at my game last few turns because of Auric Risen and his 40%-100% Snowfall spell just wrecking anything.

Killed off the nearby continent and basically doubled my land mass, but had enough gold tech to keep myself positive while this rolled out.

Then as I started to take over some of the lose island civs with Auric (flying ftw), I lost the game.

Hell ftl :(

[Sky]

My games are always epic because I turn off all victory conditions except conquest :) There can be only one!

[Khaldun]

Doing a Bannor game on Emperor. Basically I'm finding that if I can get Pact of the Nilhorn + Guild of the Nine it's close to fucking game over for the AI players. Nilhorn is early or nothing, but if you get it, you are almost guaranteed to be able to absolutely nuke the shit out of your closest neighbors--the three giants once they're promoted a bit are as devastating in the early game as Auric is in the late game. The only challenge is to get gold techs fast enough to keep up with your conquests, but it just so happens that along the way to doing that  you can pick up Guild of the Nine usually. This time the only surprise so far was that the dark elf lady got together a respectable fleet of trieremes while I was mopping up barbarian cities on my large continent and then managed to seduce Khazad in the south of that continent to join in an attack on me (I was best buddies with Khaz before he attacked). Wasn't really ready for that and had to fall back a bit to consolidate an alpha attack stack. But they didn't have enough to hammer down archer-defended cities, so they only made a bit of a bite in--and then I got Fanaticism and the crusade began. After the dust settled, I went poking around the rest of the map almost hoping that there was a big evil empire out there that had taken advantage of the distraction to grow, but there's just the Malakim over in one corner diddling along.

[Der Helm]

This thread made me reinstall Civ 4 and installing the mod. Are there any decent starter guides out there ? This seems to be a lot more difficult than vanilla Civ4.

[Sky]

Definitely more of a learning curve, there's still a lot I need to learn. Check out civ-specific stuff at the civfanatics forum for FFH2, the manual isn't bad for learning some concepts, the civopedia isn't too bad. Between those you can get most things figured out after a while. Best just to jump in and try to learn one civ at a time, each plays differently.

I found out a nifty trick last night - Sphener has a spell to quell unhappiness in whatever city he is in, for as long as he's there. I had him clean up a barbarian city at the outskirts of my empire and decided to see what that spell would do on a freshly captured barbarian city. Quelled the unrest and popped the border out to 1 square wide without the intervening time normally needed. Nice! Not sure if it sticks when he leaves, have to play around with that.

Anyway, you have to watch out for out of date info, but start here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=222845 and that subforum in general.

[lac]

I did a few games without going for pact of the nilhorn. It seems to be a bit of an early game cheat mode.
I only went for crusade recently, got a bit of a surprise with 113 units extra all of a sudden. That's a lot of extra work. I only did a few turns but am I right in assuming the crusaders don't heal?
As to healing the ent hero, I think he's called Yvain, you get while going through the hippie/elf path has a heal stack spell that doesn't seem to work. Is that a bug?

[Arrrgh]

I did a few games without going for pact of the nilhorn. It seems to be a bit of an early game cheat mode.
I only went for crusade recently, got a bit of a surprise with 113 units extra all of a sudden. That's a lot of extra work. I only did a few turns but am I right in assuming the crusaders don't heal?
As to healing the ent hero, I think he's called Yvain, you get while going through the hippie/elf path has a heal stack spell that doesn't seem to work. Is that a bug?

Crusaders upgrade to paladins, but champions upgrade to four or five high end units so you'd want a few crusaders for heals and the rest in champions. 

[Sky]

Confessors are a better upgrade to Paladin imo. I've let them auto-level a while, grab some priest upgrades, then pick the best four to make paladins. The crusaders are just my freebie town guards, they spawn within a turn or two of making a new city in my current game. Building paladins or upgrading crusaders misses several free levels confessors bring to the table, especially if your troop town has the Altar (mine has lvl 2).

Totally crushed the shit out of Hyborem with a three stack death punch, a hero + confessor + paladin with a few crusaders for insurance, had arbalest guarding the towns on the border. Popped Sphener in to quell rebellion the same turn I took his towns, sad and quick end to the demonic infestation. Up next, Ride of the Nine Kings finished in my troop production town, so the army moves on to Os-Gabella with some badass Knights riding along. Or at least whoever has the closest vein of mithril.

[rk47]

This is true. With 10% conversion chance upon defeating a unit and medic promotion, Confessor > Paladins is much better. On one game I managed to convert that Ember Priest who could spam fire ring and turned him immediately into a Paladin. 

[Paelos]

I've been playing as the Lanun, and the Pirate sea-faring coastal city style really appeals to me. You can dominate a continents map by setting up tons of Pirate raiding ships, and your unique abilities make sea tiles even more profitable than land tiles. It's tons of fun to tool around the early game kicking ass with a STR 10 heroic ship that can rule the waves.

[Sky]

Don't forget to blockade everyone's ports once you've weakened their navy. The trickle of money from each port can really add up, and it's income you can get if you're shut down economically by revolution.

[Kageru]

The sound effect for earning money was killing me when you have multiple ports blockaded... wish it would just play it once.

[Sky]

True. One game I had so many ports blockades my turn would end before they finished listing them.

[MrHat]

Is my game bugged? As far as I can tell, for Domination Victory I just need 30% world population and 62% land ownership.

I have 87% world population, and like 64% land ownership, but it doesn't give me the win :(

[Kail]

Is my game bugged? As far as I can tell, for Domination Victory I just need 30% world population and 62% land ownership.

I have 87% world population, and like 64% land ownership, but it doesn't give me the win :(

Maybe?  I'd wait a bit and grow my culture a bit.  Generally for me it takes 64% land to trigger.