I've yet to get to Hell terain in any of my games, and I can't find it written anywhere so I thought I'd just ask, what is the actual advantage/disadvantage of having Hell terain around?

I've yet to get to Hell terain in any of my games, and I can't find it written anywhere so I thought I'd just ask, what is the actual advantage/disadvantage of having Hell terain around?

Its awful, Tortanick. It kicks your pets. It hides your car keys when you're late for work. It makes rude noises, which of course your wife blame YOU for.

Nasty stuff, that hell terrain. :mischief:

When hell terrain spreads to a tile t destroys all the improvements there. It destroys some resources and converts others to a hell version. It offers a defensive bonus to demons and undead. I think it typically offers less food. I believe the burning sands is always on fire, is impassible to units without fire resistance, and does some fire damage to units on it per turn.

Cool! Thanks for the info.

It is quite cool. Never had any spread in my turf when I wasn't playing the infernals though. It slowly spreads like cancer when you are the Infernals... I believe you loose some of your pastures, which become toad resources, and you loose out on corn and wheat, which are now defunct. The burning sands (firey tiles) used to be deserts.

All Infernal territory quickly becomes Hell terrain. Over a certain AC threshold (20?) it spreads in other evil civs' territory, then over another threshold in neutral territory (50?), then finally in even good territory (75?). I believe Basium's territory will never be hell terrain. It all disappears when the Internals are destroyed. You do lose some resources, but you gain some. Shuet stones give all your units +1 unholy damage (or is it +1 death?), but make them weaker to holy damage.

I've often had it spread to my territory playing as AV Calabim, but very rarely as a good or neutral civ.

Actually, I think it goes like this. I could be wrong, though:
To AV Civs and Infernals: Always
To Unowned Tiles: AC>25
To Evil Civs (Overlords, Leaves, or Agnostic): AC>50
To Neutral Civs: AC>75
To Good Civs: Never

It used to be like MC said I think. I remember reading it somwehere, but yea, it's now as MrUnderhill said.

Dosn't it do anything special if you're worshipping the Veil?

and I'm not too keen on that spreading mechanic, the idea of the world slowly turning into Hell is too cool to just be a side effect of the Amageddon counter. I think it would be more fun if player could directly affect the spread of hell by building defences against it, and launching raids to take out it's sources.

and I'm not too keen on that spreading mechanic, the idea of the world slowly turning into Hell is too cool to just be a side effect of the Amageddon counter. I think it would be more fun if player could directly affect the spread of hell by building defences against it, and launching raids to take out it's sources.

Sanctify spell.

I think (not that anyone cares) that the counter should grow as hell spreads, and decrease as hell disseapears.

Actually Thomas, thats not a bad idea. And fully in reverse as well, which I don't think there is a mechanic for yet... so that when the AC counter is dropped Hell Terrain recedes. That might be a tough one to do, but it would make the feel of the war against Hell more dynamic.

Cheers!

Definantly.

Hell, right now, only grows: it does not recede.

Except that It recedes completely when the Infernals are gone. I think it should recede slowly based on AC instead. Banishing the demons alone should not heal the broken lands, it should just help the process.

Hell terrain? What the hell is that? :confused:

Turn 400ish again. This game, Perpentach founded the veil around 250. He had also founded Overlords earlier, so what I did was to worldbuilder and remove overlords from every single city he had and put in the veil. A few turns later he converted and I thought- finally I'll get to fight Hyborem!!

I just crossed over turn 400 and still no Hyborem. Now the map is nearly 100% settled- he'll just get slaughtered as soon as he comes out I'm sure.

What can be done about this? I'm really getting frustrated. Is there any way to see what the AI is researching? To change it?

This stinks- I am doing really good in this game. Huge, epic, inland sea, 16 civs, raging barbs. I got my area settled and well developed. Orthus popped near the Luchirp- I sent my Gilden Silveric that direction as soon as Orthus came out. He demolished the Luchirp 3 turns before I got there- all his the former cities were barbarian, I captured 4 and Perpentach one. So I have almost twice the area and cities as any of the AI, I figured I was doing well when the Veil was founded and was hoping to take on Hyborem. :gripe:

I do still have the game saved back around turn 250- is there any way to force perpentach to summon Hyborem? I'd rather go back 150 turns than start all over.

Oh- I am playing patch "c" with the .py fix somebody posted that was supposed to make the AI rush Hyborem. If I undid that change, and installed patch "d" would that possibly help? Or would it break my save game?

Whenevr that's happened to me, i go into worldbuilder and give the AI infernal pact.

Definantly.

Hell, right now, only grows: it does not recede.

It recedes if the area it is in doesnt fit the qualifactions that Mr Underhill posted. If you convert to good it will leave your lands, if the AC counter goes beneath the AC spread in neutral lands amount and you are neutral it will recede. If a good players borders spread into hell terrain it will reced, etc etc.

Thanks for clarifying that Kael...
Once it gets up that high, its damned hard to get it back down, so I may just have never gotten back under that threshold to notice.

I don't know if it changed in Patch D or not though, but one of my other games(patch B or C), I was a good civ, settled Land that had once been settled by Hyborium, and I had to sanctify to get the Hell terrain out of my borders... I know I hadn't hit the 4 horseman yet, so the counter was below that point. Does the cultural decay/increase percentage have anything to do with it?

Cheers!

it does not immediately dissapear it slowly shrinks

Sanctify spell.

I wouldn't call that "fighting the spread of hell", more like a chore, like cleaning pollution was.

sanctify is not emant to stop hell spread its meant to get it out of newly conqured lands quickly

Here (http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/FfH_Hell_%28Feature%29)is some detail on the subject.

Hell doesn't spread in good lands anymore? What's the point in having it then, it doesn't supply any major bonuses, just detriments =/

it's a serious issue atm IMO. Increasing the armageddon counter doesn't really help evil in any meaningful way. All it results in is you losing all your food resources and forests, getting swamped by barbs, and all the good civs dogpiling you.

I definitely think it should be able to spread in the good lands.

Personally I'd like a totally different method of spreading hell, one where players can directly encorage or fight the spread of hell rather than indirectly fighting it through the Armageddon counter.

I'd always envisioned it as having certain things encouraging the spread of hell, veil worshipping cities and specially built terrain improvement (lets call it obsidian towers)

And on the opposing side you would have order worship and silver towers.

At first defending you're lands from the spread of hell would be easy, build silver towers or encourage the spread of order, but as the Armageddon counter rises it becomes harder and harder until with a high Armageddon counter you cannot stop its spread without destroying whatever is spreading hell into you're lands.

I'd like it to vanish after destroying Hyborem - but it is always growing, even, where I've sanctified already (I'm Evil) - also I'd like to have it only in VEIL territory, so changeing religion would help - furthermore it should give very good boni to Evil Veil players.

just using twenty adepts to fight it like pollution spoils the rhythm of the game [for me].

btw: Ashen veil on a standard pangaea map is a bit owerpowered, isn't it? so you could say "ok, if using ashen veil you have to handle hell" - great but then I want to have the ability to change to fellowships to fight it.

the twenty-adept-sanctify method isn't fun.

what about water terrains?... i noticed that nothing ever happens to the coasts as the evil takes over the world. I vaguely remember in vanilla civ (could have been other game i havent played vanilla since last summer) the coastal tiles became polluted and black as portcities become more populous and industrial. How about the coastal tiles becoming more suitable for the hellish and undead as they populate the world too?

Hell terrain does vanish when the Infernals are vanquished. I personally don't think it should. It i fine for it to stop expanding, but there is no reason to think that the broken lands could heal themselves that quickly.

Hell does spread in water, and it destroys the improvements there (fishing and whaling boats), however there is no separate Hell terrain for coasts of ocean, so you cannot know where it has spread. I think that a hell version of water terrains is currently on the wishlist.

Hellishness does spread along the seafloor, though there is currently no change in the sea to reflect this. Eventually it does show up on the far coast and start wreaking havoc.
I'm torn on the issue of hell-terrain impacting the lands of good-aligned civs. Perhaps it should have some sort of modified culture battle with them, so that young settlements/cities on the edges of empire would be more imperiled but have a better chance to withstand it than neutral, evil, or AV ones.

Hell terrain does vanish when the Infernals are vanquished. I personally don't think it should. It i fine for it to stop expanding, but there is no reason to think that the broken lands could heal themselves that quickly.

Hell does spread in water, and it destroys the improvements there (fishing and whaling boats), however there is no separate Hell terrain for coasts of ocean, so you cannot know where it has spread. I think that a hell version of water terrains is currently on the wishlist.

I defeated Hyborem, but hell terrain still exists and continues to grow. Now the only spot I'm aware of is a patch of neutral land surrounded on one side by Basium, and the other by another good civ, but I can still see the volcanoes. Just haven't bothered to send my sanctifying liches over there to take care of it, they are too busy vitalizing as the counter hit 40 and desert all over the place in my once great civ... :)

Oh and the loss of farms, I had a vampire in every city so they had a feast until the cities were small enough to sustain themselves again :mwaha: Lots of leveling that turn!

Now they are growing back pretty quickly as I rebuild all my farms/pastures/etc.

I am in agreement that right now Evil civs don't seem to benefit from Hell terrain as much as they should. I wonder if its just the lack of resources available in Hell terrain that makes it that way? Looking at the raw stats, Broken Lands have the same base resources and improvement bonuses that grasslands do, and Fields of Perdition the same as plains(according to wiki data anyway).

Anyway, I am in conflict about Hell spreading to good lands too, but I like the idea of it working differently depending on cultural decay. Perhaps it should spread to Good lands if thier cultural percentage on that tile is less than..? 75%, 50%? It would make sense if the Good civ doesn't have full influence on that area, evil could spread in it.. but how high/low should that influence be?

Cheers!

Hell terrain does vanish when the Infernals are vanquished. I personally don't think it should..

It may or it may not. If, for example, any Hell lands are taken over by someone with The Ashen Veil as their state religion, Hell will continue without a care. On the other hand, if any Hell lands are taken over by a Good player, those plots will last 8 turns or less as Hell.

Detail is in the page linked by my post above.

I am in agreement that right now Evil civs don't seem to benefit from Hell terrain as much as they should. I wonder if its just the lack of resources available in Hell terrain that makes it that way?

Interesting, I love Sheut Stone (http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/FfH_Sheut_Stone_%28Resource%29). Particularly if you're Infernal, Hell gives direct combat bonuses for many of your units via Demon (http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/FfH_Demon_%28Promotion%29). The main disadvantages I've encountered are Burning Sands - Spring no longer works on them (Unless you sanctify them first), so they will never improve, and Burnt Forests (They don't re-grow even with a sub -Hell terrain Hell Count).

But in any case, I agree. At least any one with The Ashen Veil should find Hell terrain to be at least a mild bonus overall, on average. Personally, I'd change Hell to be more food-poor than the base terrain, and increase production or commerce (or give more completely alternative bonuses, like Sheut Stone) to compensate.

I am in agreement that right now Evil civs don't seem to benefit from Hell terrain as much as they should. I wonder if its just the lack of resources available in Hell terrain that makes it that way? Looking at the raw stats, Broken Lands have the same base resources and improvement bonuses that grasslands do, and Fields of Perdition the same as plains(according to wiki data anyway).

Anyway, I am in conflict about Hell spreading to good lands too, but I like the idea of it working differently depending on cultural decay. Perhaps it should spread to Good lands if thier cultural percentage on that tile is less than..? 75%, 50%? It would make sense if the Good civ doesn't have full influence on that area, evil could spread in it.. but how high/low should that influence be?

Cheers!


yeah that's a good idea, so cultural influence evil/good would make a difference regarding the spread.

but after all I'd like to have hell vanish when the hyborem are vanquished (english language is so funny :) ) - maybe it's like that now, I've played patch a when it was still spreading after defeating the hyborem? have to test it under patch d.

maybe it *should* still spread after hyborem have vanquished, but then i'd like to have the ability to build an improvement e.g. "life tower" which can be used to stop it spreading around 9 tiles or a city building which makes it stop like around the cultural border of it's city. Using adepts is a bit tedious..

but then if there were more resources it would be nice to hope for hell.

after all what's the idea behind hell? should it be like it is, to reduce the strength of the evil players especially because the Ashen Veil is very strong thanks to it's advance bonus? Maybe it's just not the idea behind hell to sanctify it at all, unless by good borderlines...? but if that's the case, there should be something for the neutral non-ashen-veil civ's to be safe of it (but not a hoard of adepts..).

Hyborems death doesn't effect the spread of Hell directly. Its all based on the AC counter. Hyborems death does lower the AC counter so you would see Hell retreat if killing him gets the AC counter low enough, but thats not a direct effect of his death.

thanks for explaining! now it makes sense to me.

I wish the hell terrain can transform the sea into blood or black waters

I wish the hell terrain can transform the sea into blood or black waters

Me too, unfortunatly i cant find a way to have 2 different river graphics. I would LOVE to switch hell rivers to blood red or lava streams. But until I do that I cant change ocean colors (because blue rivers flowing into red water looks to goofy).

Interesting, I love Sheut Stone (http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/FfH_Sheut_Stone_%28Resource%29). Particularly if you're Infernal, Hell gives direct combat bonuses for many of your units via Demon (http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/FfH_Demon_%28Promotion%29). The main disadvantages I've encountered are Burning Sands - Spring no longer works on them (Unless you sanctify them first), so they will never improve, and Burnt Forests (They don't re-grow even with a sub -Hell terrain Hell Count).

But in any case, I agree. At least any one with The Ashen Veil should find Hell terrain to be at least a mild bonus overall, on average. Personally, I'd change Hell to be more food-poor than the base terrain, and increase production or commerce (or give more completely alternative bonuses, like Sheut Stone) to compensate.
It seems like the bonus that the AV unique tech gives to serpent pillars could be spread to some other Hell features. Maybe burnt forests could get their hammer back, some resources could be more profittable, etc.
Me too, unfortunatly i cant find a way to have 2 different river graphics. I would LOVE to switch hell rivers to blood red or lava streams. But until I do that I cant change ocean colors (because blue rivers flowing into red water looks to goofy).
Maybe it would be better for the water to just be dark and putrid. Some sort of visible cue would be nice, even if it's not extreme.

I think that the hellish seas should be a big bonus for OO players. There is no reason to have it be made of blood (although bloody rivers would be cool). Some Civilopedia entries already mention an ocean in hell.

I agree there should be some change to the seas when hell spreads. Perhaps as Chandrasekhar suggests they should just be made darker. You could call them something like 'Cursed Seas', and if you like, you could have them deal unholy damage to ships passing through them. And if you really want to go over the top, ships destroyed in this way could return as ghost ships to haunt the seas (they are, after all, cursed). But at the very least, there should be a visible change when the oceans go to hell...

I would like more sailor's dirge-like ships floating around as hell comes to the seas.

The Wraith entry already mentions the Black Sea coming to hell during the age of magic. Perhaps this should be added, and wraiths should spawn near its shores. This entry gives its description as black and waveless, reflecting stars that are not of creation.
The rumors about it making specters lose their memories reminds me of the water of the river lethe in Hades, which made souls forget. Perhaps units near the shores could have a chance of forgetting who commands them, turning into barbarians. Or perhaps they should just forget some of their promotions.

I still would like the hell water terrain to be suitable, or at least more bearable, for OO civs and for the land of Hell to be better for AV.

I still would like the hell water terrain to be suitable, or at least more bearable, for OO civs and for the land of Hell to be better for AV.

Agreed. Some special features for OO would be nice but none come to mind now.

I've got an idea for giving Ashen Veil players the ability to use the hell terrain better: for elven settlers there are completely different rules than for standard settler. Why not make a special settler for Ashen Veil religion, which can do something as special as farms in woods for the elven. now, what would this be? Ashen Veil has a huge advantage in advance. hell terrain shortens health output due to destroying the appropriate resources. maybe the ashen Veil Settler should NOT re-balance the food and health output but build: villages, that provide beacon instead of gold, buildable only in hell!

this would make the Ashen Veil players of course even better in research. But that IS the main feature (aside of demon) of the Ashe Veil religion isn't it? So they will have problems with building many units, because they haven't got the resources in hell, they have not the biggest and healthiest city's due to lack on resources, but they WILL have the best and deadliest units and spells in the game...

It strikes me as funny that when an Ashen Veil Civ has researched the entire research tree, he gets to research Future Tech which increases health and happiness...doesn't particularly strike me as keeping with the Unethical Research thing of the Ashen Veil, they don't really care much for people, just knowledge.

Another problem is that when there is nothing left to research, the Ashen Veil bonus rather sucks..

So, why don't we concoct some additional Future Techs that grant accumulative bonii?

How about noe for each alignment or religion? and maybe put tem earlier in the tree

I apologize if this has been posted somewhere else already--but is there a (easy) way to modify the existing armageddon counter code so the count rises every turn or at least much faster than normal?

I've never even seen it reach above 10-12 or so. I've been playing on quick lately, just trying to incur some wrath so I can check out the effects, but I just usually win before any hell actually breaks loose.

The biggest bonus for AV civs with Hell is Sacrifice the Weak. Thanks to this civic, they won't suffer from the loss of health resources, or anyways it will only be a minor nuisance, while other civs that aren't AV and therefore can't adopt this civic will suffer from Hell much more. I think it is right that Hell causes some or big troubles to anyone, because after all it's... well, Hell.

But I agree that some more advantages for AV followers or evil players are in order. Rather than giving boni to someone though I think it should give more penalties to good/neutral civs and less to evil civs (as it currently stands). Fine with defensive boni for daemons, but at the same time I think that any unit of a non AV civ entering Hell terrain should receive a negative healing promotion (-10% ?). Furthermore, there is a tool to fight Hell terrain (and other things) called Sanctify, would be nice to have its counterpart.. maybe as someone suggested some evilish tower that increases the Hell value of plots in a radius of X squares and that can be built with Infernal Pact and Sacrifice the Weak.

I apologize if this has been posted somewhere else already--but is there a (easy) way to modify the existing armageddon counter code so the count rises every turn or at least much faster than normal?

I am another person here, that would like to know if it is possible(and how to do so) to code the AC back to the settings it first had when fire was released.

The fastest way I know of to raise the counter is to raze a bunch of cities.

I am another person here, that would like to know if it is possible(and how to do so) to code the AC back to the settings it first had when fire was released.

In CvEventManager.py, in the function onGameStart, the last line of code is:

CyGame().changeArmageddonCounterLimit((-4 + iPlayerNum) * 5)


If you remove that line, the actual armageddon counters and the displayed one will match, which (if you have more than 4 starting players) will make events occur faster.

If you change the formula, to, say:

CyGame().changeArmageddonCounterLimit((-4 + iPlayerNum) * 5 - 50)

You should see it rise faster on any number of players.

_Valis;5320621']Agreed. Some special features for OO would be nice but none come to mind now.

How about a tiny chance of an "Old one" (or Kraken) coming out of the Ocean when the Tile owned by an Octopus Overlords civilization is entered by a non-OO unit?

I'd tend to make it a Barbarian unit, but it one were going for an actual advantage, it could be owned by the civilization owning the tile. Depending on the desire, it could be temporary (Summoned) or not.

It sounds very much like the way FoL Treants appear from Ancient Forests (I don't think it technically requires FoL, but others rarely have enough of this terrain for it to matter). I'm ok with the idea, but some may think that it is too similar. The chance would have to significantly low, since oceans are much more common than Ancient forests.

Perhaps monsters should spawn in the hell terrain for ocean.

In CvEventManager.py, in the function onGameStart, the last line of code is:
Code:

CyGame().changeArmageddonCounterLimit((-4 + iPlayerNum) * 5)

If you remove that line, the actual armageddon counters and the displayed one will match, which (if you have more than 4 starting players) will make events occur faster.

This sets it back to the way the AC originally ran? Thank You very much for letting me know.

Perhaps monsters should spawn in the hell terrain for ocean.

I like this idea, anything to make the seas or the barbarians more challenging