Use this thread to post feedback on the Black Tower scenario.

This is one of our massive scenarios, it is intended to be long and tough. Let me know what you think.

The nationality of my cities seems to randomly switch. when I tried to found my third city as hippus it instead made the city lanun and my lanun capital hippus. Also, there seems to be little point to making a city bannor since they have no unique buildings or units.

I helped Beeri in the Momus, but my cities cannot be Luchurip.

I just started a game and haven't gotten very far. I chose Lanun for my first city, Bannor for my second, and Hippus for my third. The second one turned Bannor but when I tried to make the third one Hippus the Capita turned Hippus instead.

Could you stop automated units that cannot heal from waiting around and trying to heal?

I have this very same issue issue with the city nationality. Everytime i found a new city now, the chosen nationality gets implemented in my capital. In the attached save, there is a settler ready to found, just plant him and choose bannor or hippus. Hope you can solve this, because i want my later cities (esp inland ones to be non-Lanun, but all my coastal should be for the unique harbor.
Btw, is there a way to heal units in the end, or is the high priest spell the only way around, because this is a very severe penalty?!

The problems with cities switching to the correct civ will be fixed in the next patch.

Also civs under a specific leadership get the advantages of civ specific traits (for that civ) as well. So bannor melee units will start with guardsman, hippus mounted units will start with horselord, etc.

I defeated Terbryn (using WB, just to get the trophy), but it didn't acknowledge it.

Defeating Tebryn using Worldbuilder directly? That's shameful. Why couldn't you just be like me and wait for Auric to ascend to godhood and show up personally to destroy those who sought to destroy his new domain? :p

Defeating Tebryn using Worldbuilder directly? That's shameful. Why couldn't you just be like me and wait for Auric to ascend to godhood and show up personally to destroy those who sought to destroy his new domain?

Shameful? At least I didn't use AA at all. Besides, I didn't win, so I guess cheaters never prosper?

Btw, is there a way to heal units in the end, or is the high priest spell the only way around, because this is a very severe penalty?!

There is actually another, easier way around. Build all cities as Luchuirp and use the repair spell to heal all your golems...

Yeah, but that requires getting an event in the Momus that I have yet to see.


I was disappointed to find the absence of Vaghan of Lugus from this scenario. Based on Abashi's pedia entry I was expecting him to be leading an Empyrean expidition, perhaps as Falamar's ally. For the unit himself, I pictured a uniquely named Paladin of the Empyrean religion with Sun II and Life II, plus probably Divine, Channeling II, and maybe initially Crown of Brillance. (Why is Brilliance misspelled in this promotion's name?)

Now that I think if it though, since Abashi is already awake at the beginning it might be more appropriate to instead have references to him and his expedition of holy warriors failing before Falamar got there. Perhaps the vision in the pool of tears should be specifically referenced in this scenario as how they found out about the perils of the dead lands. You could change it so that Condatis instead of just telling Falamar what to do lead him to the Pool of Tears and that he was the one who received this vision. Alternately, you could just have the player stumble across the remains of this failed attempt to stop Tebyrn. It would be an especially dark twist to find a man as holy as Vaghan of Lugus now among Tebryn's undead minions whom you must defeat.

Yeah i wanted to do it, but cant pick Luchiurp. Thing is they got diogpiled first in the momus, so no alliance there...

Magister- Beeri's offer in the Momus scenario triggers when you, Perp, and him are the last 3 remaining civs.

I couldn't build any Svartalfar city's, After beating The Splintered Court scenario as the Svartalfar. Haven't done the Ljosalfar yet.

A lot of fun. However, while I like the idea of no unit healing, it has some problems. A new player might not know all the different ways to get around this (high priest heal spells, golem repair spells, summons, undead units, and maybe other ways like the cannibilize promotion) and it could be confusing. It limits the players options to one of the above plans. Also, since ships could heal, and only my ships were getting damaged for a long time, I totally forgot about the no healing rule, and initialy thought it was a bug.

For my game I went Octopus Overlords, and built cultists and stygian guards (not sure on spelling). Healing wasn't a problem since the guards are undead and had march as well, and I crushed every city by the water with cultists with minimal loses.

Also, I didn't see any of my units that died turned into skelitons. Can the enemy promote them up to some other unit? Or do the skelitons not appear if you fight them on water, or with undead units?

But all in all, this was one of my favorite scenarios, right after the retrieving barnaxus one.

I'm not sure if this is just me, but I've found reload/loading save games in this scenario takes really really long, compared to other scenarios. Is it because it's much bigger, and more stuff going on in this scenario or something on my end?

It seemed to load decently well until I discover the Sheaim civs.

I would say OO is probably best for this scenario, as it seems demonic units don't get raised by the Sheiam

By the way, can you build other civs heros? It would be very useful if you could...

Magadine's Hire Unit spell sends the unit to a different city than the one he's in during this scenario.

Yes, and the units also appear as the UUs of the civ whose nationality said city has. I had a couple Longbowmen appear as Gargoyles on a different continent. The city where they appear seems random.

Thanks guys, I'll fix magnadine in the next patch.

Your golems don't seem to get promotions from Barnaxus' Combat Promos. Is this intentional?

Your golems don't seem to get promotions from Barnaxus' Combat Promos. Is this intentional?

Thanks, I'll fix it in patch i.

This scenario has imbued in me a deep, deep hatred of pyre zombies. I need to do a little dance with my "squishy" units running out of my stack of golems (hallelujah for the Luichirp) every time I see one. Unfortunately "i" breaks save games so I can't get my golems empowered. :sad:

So I've eliminated all of the Sheaim.... but nothing has happened..... does this mean I need to wipe out the Infernals too???? :mad:

There is nowhere that says this is required.

Not sure about this but even if get Ljosalfar workers you can't build on forests. I know that in normal games its tied to the player and not the worker, but shouldn't this scenario be an exeption?

Also a river a bit north of your starting location would be nice.

I thought the start loc is good for your capital, you can build Heron Throne and also have three pirate docks for a large amount of hammers and gold early. WIth Conquest, it becomes a unit producing monster...

Yes it is a nice city location. But my point is:
No city north of it has any fresh water-> no farms.
A single tile with a river would solve this.

I think it would be pretty cool if building in forests was possible only near elven cities under tolerant trait leaders.

Yes it is a nice city location. But my point is:
No city north of it has any fresh water-> no farms.
A single tile with a river would solve this.

But Lanun don't really *need* farms nearly as much as other Civs, since you get 3 food / ocean tile, plus your pirate towns all around the island...

It would be great to have a river or a lake up north though...

Ähm what are the rules for building pirate coves?
I started a new game and found a lanun right on my starting location. Build 3 workboats there and created 3 coves (2 tiles free between them).
Then I build a workboat in a luchuirp city and couldn't create one.
198594
So I thought: Ah it really must be lanun boats and build them in my capitol and send them north. Nope, couldn't build one either. Now I wondered a bit and thought: Can I really only build in lanun cities coves or is there a maximum of 3 coves?
I went into WB and deleted one of the coves and send my workboat back. I could built one where my old cove was and south of it.
198592
However I was unable to build one west of it?
198593

Pirate Coves now need 3 spaces between them. I just found this out too :)

Then I couldn't have build in the old location nor the second one you see in the 2nd and 3rd screenshot.

Coves also must be built on Coast.

Just finished playing this map, and I most say I enjoyed every minute of it. From the great lay out of the land, to the huge armies of pyre zombie blowing things up :D.

As for the difficulty of this map, it's maybe just a bit too easy compared to the previous maps, the AI could do with some sort of bonus, perhaps a timer on how long you got to finish before they bring Armageddon down on you. Even better would perhaps be to actually use the Armageddon counter in this map having 4 evil AI's all with Ashen Veil should be able to bring it up a good deal.

Also I never interacted with the Clan's, they never did anything in the entire game, and as such I didn't bother with them either. I don't know if this is intended or not, but would be fun to have some interaction with them possible, perhaps even being able to recruit them as your allies, or as said earlier to make the map harder have them raid your start island on a more or less regular basis.

The Inferno AI also seemed kinda pointless to have there, I guess they do add a bit to the enemy team but not a lot, and since you don't have to defeat them, I just left them alone as well.


Not having played any of the other scenario "sets" through and not getting the alliance with the Luchirps the only available factions where the Bannor, from The Radiant Guard scenario and the Hippus, so no golems for me. What i did was go for the Order religion, giving me plenty of happiness through Social Order, but more importantly some easy available Crusaders, all with +40% against demons, which is more or less the entire enemy army. Being a charming leader means you get those levels faster which means you can get those high priests (Priors) quite fast, and with the Order religion you get Sphener as well giving you a 5th healer.

Of course it takes some time to get the techs needed for the healing and while researching you will just have to grind them down. By the time I got my hands on iron and champions along with my already huge army of crusaders the AI hadn't even researched smelting yet, still building cottages on the iron. It was a simple matter of just steam rolling them down, the not healing was a bit of a hindrance but much of one as such. Apprenticeship and the Form of the Titan meant that all my units started out as level 3, so with a base strength of 7 or 8 along with a huge bonus from promotions and them being demons a single unit could take out two or three of theirs before it was on too low health to be useful. I found it quite easy to keep a huge tech lead on the AI, so by the time they did bring forth pyre zombies in large numbers I had several heroes, paladins and mithril wielding units ready to kick their asses.

I found it quite easy to keep a huge tech lead on the AI, so by the time they did bring forth pyre zombies in large numbers I had several heroes, paladins and mithril wielding units ready to kick their asses.

What difficulty were you playing this on? I found that on emperor, they build a big empire rather quickly...

Depends on the AI. I'm a Prince (for the first go, anyway), but of the four main enemies only one of them has any kind of empire at all - the island guy is stifled, the northeast guy inexplicably stayed small, and the central guy doesn't appear to build Settlers at all...

I'm not quite finished, though.


Also, I agree that the Clan needs to have more of an impact. They don't do anything, good or bad.

Umm, there is the Clan onm the map too?? Did he come with a new Version? i played it on patch b or c, the one with the bugged tolerant trait. Never seen the clan anywhere?? Mhhh, but i had to kill the infernals too, so maybe this version was not quite final...

What difficulty were you playing this on? I found that on emperor, they build a big empire rather quickly...

Played it through on emperor as well, but like orangelex44 said the island guy don't really do much, had the Black Wind down by him making him useless, he was also the first to go, as he had my precious iron. Next was the one to the NE, and finally the one to the NW, who had managed to build a small empire for himself.

If I judge it correctly you start out with a tech lead, so use that advantage and rush them down before they get too big seemed like a good plan.

mm, there is the Clan onm the map too?? Did he come with a new Version? i played it on patch b or c, the one with the bugged tolerant trait. Never seen the clan anywhere?? Mhhh, but i had to kill the infernals too, so maybe this version was not quite final...
On the south east island. However if you finished babarian assault he gets deleted.

I thought that completing the Splintered Court with Svartalfar unlocks Svartalfar in The Black Tower, yet I have no option for them. I already finished it twice with Svarts as I thought maybe it didn't work the first time but it's still not an option. How can it be fixed?

Also civs under a specific leadership get the advantages of civ specific traits (for that civ) as well. So bannor melee units will start with guardsman, hippus mounted units will start with horselord, etc.

If my knowledge is up-to-date, the above example of tolerant gaining the civ specific traits, horselord/sinister/etc, is different then the Elohim tolerant which only keeps the cities buildings and units original nationality excluding the civ trait for the city? Last time I checked on tolerant if a Svartalfar city would be captured it would have avaliable nyxin, swordsman, etc, but the units built in the Svartalfar city weren't gaining the civ trait Sinister. So has tolerant (Elohim) been updated to include civ traits now, or is it just in the scenario The Black Tower it includes civ traits?

Edit: I realize that was probably longwinded, so in short I'm asking Does the Elohim tolerant now keep the original civ traits for the cities like in Black Tower or is it still Elohim tolerant still just buildings and unit?
I'm hoping Tolerant in epic-game works as it does in The Black Tower.
Edit2: Question answered on next page: Yes it has been changed as a whole

And on the subject of Tolerant since Magister brought up.
I think it would be pretty cool if building in forests was possible only near elven cities under tolerant trait leaders.

I don't think that would be hard to implement, keeping the forest building within the city cross. It certainly makes sense from mechanics and lore, and I think that it should already be included in Tolerant as it's completely logical that captured Elven cities under tolerant would remain elven and keep their forest building (at their elven cities only).
Hopefully more idea of yours will be noticed Magister.

I'm hoping Tolerant in epic-game works as it does in The Black Tower.

It does, it was changed in one of the 0.40 patches for Tolerant as a whole.

Thanks for the speedy answer. And it's great to know Tolerant now works that way.

As for Svartalfar and Ljosalfar not unlocking for Black Tower, is there a way to ensure they be unlocked? I've not yet seen a solution posted about it.

You could edit My Documents\My Games\Fall from Heaven 2\Trophies\Trophies.cfg directly. Changing the I0 below sS'TROPHY_WB_THE_SPLINTERED_COURT' to I1 makes the Ljosalfar availible, and changing the I0 below sS'TROPHY_WB_THE_SPLINTERED_COURT_SVARTALFAR' to I1 makes the Svartalfar available.

And yes, you could change them both so as to have both elven courts aid you in The Black Tower, which isn't supposed to be allowed.

First of all, thank you all very much for the scenarios. They got me through this dark and annoying holiday season quite nicely. Some scenarios were very well planned, some a bit half-finished.

Some notes on this one..

Because I was expecting hardships of epic proportions, and because it was a large map, I started on Emperor difficulty. But turned out it was perhaps the easiest scenario of all the 'big' ones.

Like some have pointed out previously, also I noted that at turn 250 the Sheiams had only 3 or 4 settlements each. Most of which were small and poorly developed. My monstrous Stygian Guards just stomped over everything. Did not even need the Cultists.

I got the feeling the Sheiam brothers either started with no techs or they did not share teching like a proper team does? The 'Lanun on a coast' is a notorious teching monster, so perhaps some time limit, like an armageddon clock going up a notch every two or three turns, would be appropriate. There should be the 'The end of the world is coming!' feeling in this scenario, right?

The Overlords, which is so powerful in special circumstances, was really needed in the Momus. But here it was too much. Auto-healing melee monsters where no-healing was supposed to be the flavour of the scenario.

Perhaps it was intended that the player finds this out and thus the key for victory, but then by adding the time limit you could get a proper ending for this scenario line.

Yes, I could start in again on Deity and all that, but the lack of suggested difficulty setting at the start of each scenario was really causing problems for me. Some were clearly more difficult than a regular non-scenario game and some not. An indication on what level the designer thinks it should be played would help.

I got the feeling the Sheiam brothers either started with no techs or they did not share teching like a proper team does? The 'Lanun on a coast' is a notorious teching monster, so perhaps some time limit, like an armageddon clock going up a notch every two or three turns, would be appropriate. There should be the 'The end of the world is coming!' feeling in this scenario, right?

The Overlords, which is so powerful in special circumstances, was really needed in the Momus. But here it was too much. Auto-healing melee monsters where no-healing was supposed to be the flavour of the scenario.


I had the same two thoughts - the lack of AC counter struck me as being a missed opportunity - even if the AC counter didn't trigger standard events - it could simply increase every X turns and decrease based on the size of Sheaim/Infernal cities you defeat or raze. Reaching AC100 could mean instant loss (Tebryn succeeded in casting the final Armageddon spell) or could just be "A Very Bad Thing(tm)". Definitely adds urgency to what is potentially a long and fairly straightforward extermination job...

For the non-living healing (including Saverous) - perhaps the Black Tower holds a certain appeal to the Undead/Demons. Any under your control would have a small chance per turn (via promotion) to betray and join either the Sheaim or the Barbarians. That should fairly quickly put an end to the cannibalizing undead armies of soggy doom(tm) which seem to be by far the optimal method of attack.

The other issue of note is that razing every Sheaim city is definitely the most effective tactic, but the game is far more interesting when you try to hold them. The Sheaim are poor at attacking across the sea (as the AI generally is), but are very good at fighting cross-continent to retake captured cities. It was actually great fun to mount a desperate defense of one colony (originally captured to get the incense for High Priests) - much more so than when I eventually lost it and decided "oh well, I'll bring Magnadine back around at the end" (by that point, he was strong enough to attack 6 times a turn and still defend the stack). Given the multitude of heroes that are potentially available, it may pay to give a greater incentive to holding those cities. Perhaps Tebryn's sanctuary will only fall if the player controls all 3 sub-capitals at once (as they form the spell that protects Tebryn's own lands)? Neither side would be able to raze those cities, but it's upto the player whether he wants to eliminate each Sheaim sub-civ (extermination mission) or just to hold their capitals and strike at Galveholm directly to destroy the Black Tower once and for all... (guarded by Abbi of course...)

The latter option is potentially a lot quicker, but far more risky and requires more planning due to how effectively the Sheaim are able to counter attack. It would however make the final scenario more exciting and "hard" rather than "hard work".

Definately seemed a bit easy once I got some drowns and a cultist up. Played a Monarch game. Only Hyborem attempted a landing, he brought 5 caravels, 1 made it through my net and he dropped a lonesome diseased corpse.

I basically built up 2 drown and a cultist to eliminate two of the the Sheiam stooges, of course transported with Black Wind. When they eliminated the two civs up north, I brought that group back, one of the Drown died to a 98% win chance ;( While that expedition was underway, I was working on a second army for the southern expedition. I got a lucky event that gave me a Stygian guard, so I sent him to the southern islands to nab some xp then when I got Saverous and another cultist I grouped them up and went to finish off the game. I did lose Saverous to Abashi with an 88% chance to win but the Stygian guard with him had a 75% chance to win before Saverous damaged it, fortunately he didn't damage him too much so I got a 99% chance to win vs Abashi after Saverous died, after killing Abashi it meant it took a few extra turns but despite 4 Balors & 5 Longbows it was 99.9% chances to win.

I only encountered one extremely dangerous situation apart from Hyborem's attempted landing which was easily crushed only 1 diseased corpse landed; as I approached the Sheaim that started on the island, with a Drown, Stygian, Cultist and a fair winds adept I got within 4 tiles for his stack of caravels to attack my Black Wind, fortunately after killing 5 of his caravels he retreated back to my capital area with the entire army intact...it was a loss that only cost me healing time and the trip back out there. Of course when it happened, it was also quite Ideal as Saverous had 4-5 more turns to complete...so three to heal up two waiting for Saverous so I could swap out the Drown.

Although I will say, I used to prioritize Ritualists...I certainly fear Cultists more now...fortunately however AI's tends to attack with them recklessly before using their spells. I reckon starting cities should be place inland so you can't clear the map with a cultist. Yes I got Saverous and a Stygian guard but I could have done it just as easily with exclusively drown as my attacking force, though it may have taken a a bit longer if I'd done so.

Fun game nonetheless, I rarely play OO in my normal games and only did so to avoid the healing issue in this map, it was far more effective than I possibly could have imagined.

I decided to not try for cultists, since it seemed too easy.

I beelined for druids and Runes of Kilmorph. 4 Dwarven Druids with Crush made each city a simple matter of walk up, Crush, then kill the city with alakazan, guybrush, magadine, barnaxus, donal, bambur and arthendain (who was a stack defending monster with all the defensive strike upgrades). By then end of my Monarch game Tebryn had reached crossbows, but it didn't matter even though he could build boatloads of them.

I got quite bored...

In the game I played, I managed to wipe out the very northwest guy by not defending my original city and just bringing those two bows to attack, which meant one less guy for almost no penalty

Was I supposed to be able to do that?

The free national units Tebryn gets are really a pain. It can make it quite hard to capture a city when fully-healed xbows and death knights pop up just as you run out of fireballs.

Hiring units with the Hippus hero creates the new units in the first hippus city i built rather than the city the hero is in...

I guess I'm one of the few who's never gone for OO in this one. I tried Order for Valin and more importantly, Sphener (and his healing). I landed a settler on the island from the start and made it Ljolsalfar. I was pleasantly suprised by Gilden popping up, and I used him to wipe out the Sheaim leader there. Maybe the Sheaim should start a bit more developed, right now they're really easy to wipe out if you rush them.
That would probably also make the game more challenging once the player gets their hero's and tier 4 units. Once I got Sphener, I just steamrolled with him, Valin and Gilden.
Still, it was a fun game and there were a few scary moments (right before Tebryn's last city was about to fall, a massive stack shows up next to my wounded heros. with pyre zombies. not good )

promoting heroes with magic+fire resistance makes pyro zombies a lot less scary.

i second the idea of giving the infernals a better defense in the beginning. if you happen to have the ljosalfar you have a hero unit from the beginning and can take out at least one leader.

Since the patch with changed heal, going for druids no longer is nearly as strong since they can't heal. I'll have to try the OO method.

Also, is it just me or do your units die over time without anything happening to them on this map? My starting archers eventually went down to 0 life!

A question about the healing: Will the Shrine of Sirona still work? I'm currently playing on Deity with RoK, I could use any help.

It does, I used it.

I have to figure that when everyone was complaining about how easy this scen was, it was a previous patch. Because I am playing it emperor now, and went right for OO for cultists and stygian, and am still getting dominated by them. The pyre zombies, and other undead are bad enough, but they are coming with tons of arquebus, assassins, and crossbowmen besides, so when they are not near the water, I have no chance, even now that I tried getting a bunch of mages with fireball and Hemah. Unfortunately, I rushed to get The Cultist upgrade, only to find that there was no way I would be able to get and hold incense so I could upgrade.

Unfortunately, I rushed to get The Cultist upgrade, only to find that there was no way I would be able to get and hold incense so I could upgrade.

I find that if you don't have Incense or Gems in this scenario, then it's just crazy difficult. Sphener can heal, but the fact that druids no longer heal makes it a HELL of a lot harder.

Maybe its a feature of the scenario but I got the benefit of 2 palace at the same time. I started the 1st city as Lanun then build the Bannor palace in the 2nd city then I build again the Lanun palace and end up with the 2.

I found a bug in the scenario (and perhaps with the Elohim world spell mechanism). I had a stack roaming around killing the blue guy. I destroyed a city and instantly was closed in by the main Sheiam's borders. Their borders surrounded by stack in every direction and I couldn't move at all. The game didn't eject them either. The stack is just stuck there... sitting ducks waiting to be destroyed... :(

I am just about finished with this scenario (I think).

The biggest problem so far is that the plot did not advance properly. After I eleminated all three of the initial targets the updated goal was to eliminate Terbryn. The Great Wall disappeared as designed and I could now attack her. Unfortunately, after I killed her off, the text for the goal still reads "Defeat Terbryn" and has not updated. I am going after Hyborem hoping that a Conquest victory will trigger the victory for the scenario.

One other (minor) problem I experienced was the inability to retake a city that I had lost. Since the player is banned from attacking Terbryn early on, any cities that she "liberates" from the player cannot be retaken until the plot allows. It is annoying to lose a city and not be able to take it back.

I found an exploit around the no healing dilema experienced by many. By upgrading my Cultists to Druids I got Druids that could cast Heal (and Tsunami). I'm not sure if this is intended or not. I am also not sure if this will be disabled by the recent patch that makes Heal attach to the Medic III promotion. I did not update yet because I did not want to replay the hours invested in this scenario.

I must say that Terbryn is one of the toughest AI fights that I have had in FfH. She kept getting free Crossbowmen just as I was about to finish off a city. She used Ring of Fire with Ritualists and Fireball with Mages a lot to soften up my stacks. I actually lost one of my SOD to a well coordinated counterattack on her part. Too bad I had two more SOD on the way to make quick work of her puny empire...muhahaha!

Nice job on this scenario. I see that there have been updates, but due to the length I will probably not play it again. Hopefully the Conquest will give me the trophy.

I guess I won't be able to finish the game. I ended with a CTD last time I played. I reloaded the save and the CTD has occurred 4 times now. As soon as my stack tries to attack one of Hyborems cities I get a CTD. I am attacing the save game file which has the CTD and the broken plot with "Defeat Terbryn" listed even though she is gone.

I just got event that Sheim has shown mercy with my troops. I believe this one can force peace with one option. Doesn't belong into scenarios I think. Rather not tried it though.

If you select it you go to peace for half a turn and then right back to war. It was interesting in my game, one of the Sheim had landed troops on my land, and I got the event and accepted peace. The units were booted off the island and then we went back to war again, haha.

I had that event happen to me as well. I seem to remember it being from vanilla Civ4, but at the time I thought it was an intentional triggered event for the scenario so I decided to accept the peace offer... and the deal was immediately cancelled! Talk about your short-lived cease-fires...

I started this scenario playing on patch L and even at year 132 could not build any units! I quit and installed patch o (since with no units I imagine it would be a little harder!) and will continue trying, did this happen to anyone else?

FYI - Tebryn is a "He", as far as I know.

Thanks, I figured that out later. With a name like Tebryn, he must be at least partly gender confused. That is probably part of why he wants to destroy the world. After getting beat up in highschool he decided that he hated everyone and wanted to send them to Dis as Manes.

Tebryn is actually a pseudonym he used after Ceridwen brought him back to like. His real name is Ram. When I play as him I typically use the name Ram the Damned.

Is the flood of Tebryn's Crossbowmen intended in this scenario? I think that, as per scenario rules, every living Archery unit that dies is reborn as Demonic Crossbowmen (the strongest Archery unit) under Tebryn's controll. Since his team is now on the tech level where AI mostly goes for Arquebuses, I think they are all being reborn as Crossbowmen.

Wouldn't it be more manageable if living units were reborn as the same units that they were when they died?

Wouldn't it be more manageable if living units were reborn as the same units that they were when they died?

It is. The problem is AI mostly goes for Arquebuses and Arquebuses is Tier 4 :(.

Two things.

Completed splintered court, can't select svalts.

Oh and hyborem still exists, even though i killed him in radiant guard

Two things.

Completed splintered court, can't select svalts.

Oh and hyborem still exists, even though i killed him in radiant guard

Gotta defeat Hyborem in Lord of the Balors to kick him out.

Gotta defeat Hyborem in Lord of the Balors to kick him out.


BUT you forgot to mention that :mischief: it isn't officially unlocked yet...

BUT you forgot to mention that :mischief: it isn't officially unlocked yet...

You can still play it though, if you open C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Scenarios\Lord of the Balors.CivBeyondSwordWBSave directly.

Ok, maybe I'm totally missing something, but how do you build pirate's coves? My workers (even the ones built in the lanun city that I have) can't build them...

Ok, maybe I'm totally missing something, but how do you build pirate's coves? My workers (even the ones built in the lanun city that I have) can't build them...

You build them on coast using workboats. It consumes the unit and you can't have them less than 3 spaces from each other. In an earlier version they were built using workers and terraformed the coastline though.

Ah, got it. I think I must have missed that change (from workers to work boats). Thanks!

I enjoyed this scenario a lot, it got a bit scary at the end though when every time I killed a Sheaim unit got reborn as a demon but over all it was pretty fun.

I had the same issue as others with not being able to select either elven civ despite beating the Splintered Court.

I like that the starting island is big enough that you can conceivably complete the scenario without expanding onto other continents, but small enough to create a real incentive for settling cities you have to defend.

Regarding national units, are you supposed to be able to build 4 for each civ type (e.g., 4 lanun knights, 4 hippus knights, etc.)? I didn't really get to play with this since Stygians were working so well, but am seriously considering replaying this scenario on Immortal or (*shudder*) Diety.

I thought it would be cool to have other objectives on the map to discover, e.g. another civ you could find any ally with provided you rescue them from one of Tebryn's cronies. Or even a source of healing salves to patch up those human units. You know, something to make it feel like you have to look around and unravel the 'secrets' of the Black Tower rather than just a straight contest of arms.

Overall this was a terrific scenario. My tier 3 units have never feared Pyre Zombies like that before!

I think no one posted this yet, but there aren't nearly enough rivers on the map. The island to the southwest has no rivers at all (I think), which really handicaps that spot; more importantly, Tebryn's starting location consists almost entirely of broken lands with no rivers (and therefore basically no commerce or, in fact, any good tiles). Hyborem may be similarly handicapped.
Like the player's own starting location, no rivers or fresh water also mean no farms...and that's a pretty cruel handicap.

It sounds like most players started on the island in the northeast, but based on everyone's play experiences, would starting on the mainland have been a better position? The single Galleon limits your ability to get your units to the mainland in a timely fashion, but your expansion options are better there.

Thoughts?

Also, the scenario description and intro text doesn't explain the new options for building cities under the Tolerant trait. Even as a long-time FFH player, I am not familiar with the mechanics. I recommend that this is added to the description, as well as a list of scenarios that could affect this one (albeit without explanations). I think the interconnectedness of some scenarios will be lost on some players, but they will appreciate them more with this awareness.

Ok, I've been away for a while, but this scenario irritated me enough to the point that I've come back to rant at it. (And hopefully stay a bit longer if my workload permits) I was playing on Patch "R" at the time.

I usually play on Emperor, and I tried the scenario at the same. At the time, I had freed the Luchuirp in the Momus, helped the Bannor in the Radiant Guard, and beaten Barbarian assault, but had not done the splintered court.

Now, I want to say right off the bat that this isn't the most impossible scenario I've ever played. It certainly ins't like the Momus or Back to the Wall (or whatever it's called) where you have to scrabble for your existance. In fact, I'm sure I can hold off the Sheiam (and that token force Hyborem has) indefinitely.

I had made a few scouting expiditions to the Sheim continent, to find that the whole place had been swarmed over, so maybe I delayed a bit too much for the counter push. I finally went in at around turn 350 or so with all the national heroes, sphener, Valin, a bunch of confessors (I was researching theology so I could turn them into Priori and heal), with the bulk of my force bieng Iron Golems, but backed up with a quartet of Liches, some archmages, priests, etc. (I won't go into detail about two previous games where I attacked too early and got plastered.)

Finally, it seems like it was going to work. My fleet kept away counterattacks, my 75ish unit stack of doom was trampling, my wonder lock (I was teching like mad) gave me the nexus which meant I could funnel in more troops quickly and I was churning them like butter. I thought, finally, I was going to win this stupid scenario.

I land in the Blue minor leader's territory, (forget his name) him being the weakest and closest to my main northern island. I start crushing his forces (knocked over 35 ritualists in one turn. Who makes an army out of just ritualists?) only to find, that Tebryn had been settling. And what do you know. Tebryn's culture completely envelops one of his cities. I can't go through Tebryn to take it, and I can't get at Tebryn until he knocks out his allies. I could see a bunch of humans pulling a stunt like this, but with AI, I think it was just a settling accident, exacerbated by me knocking out all of Blue guys culture.

I admit, to my regret, that I deleted my save files in a fit of pique. I was really quite annoyed at the scenario, and thus don't have the screenshot to show the dilemma as my glorious crusading army of killing is stopped by the invisible wall.

To be honest, I don't know if I can work up the will to grapple with this one again. Maybe on Settler and just breeze through.......

Am I doing something wrong? Or has a recent patch made this scenario *much* harder? I've completed about half the scenarios with absolutely no problems, all on Monarch. Then I hit this one.

My first game, I dilli-dallied around with exploring all the oceans, looking for secrets and such, and eventually settled a few cities on the main continent (in the jungle area just to the southwest). Within 50 turns or so, there were stacks of dozens of nasties marching steadily across. I eventually succumbed -- especially since realizing that while I might be able to hold on to these cities, I'm never going to make any headway.

A few days ago I decided to tackle this one again, with a more serious effort. I settled three cities on the home island, then quickly launched an invasion of Drowns to take over the Clan of Embers island in the south. That went quick, and I settled five cities there. With eight cities doing well, several high-level heroes, eight mages, and eight cultists, I began attacking one of the weaker civs, the dark blue guy. Took about three coastal cities with no problems, looking good -- and then I got absolutely splattered. Stacks of 20+ tier-3 units, with a good support mix (arquebuses, recon units, Ritualists, assassins, etc). Shadows running around, invisible, picking off my mages and cultists. Fleets of ten or so galleons, stacked with privateers, attacking both my home islands (though I think each galleon was only carrying one unit; still, this was annoying to deal with). I lost each of my beachhead cities on the continent almost immediately, along with all my heroes and whatnot. I was able to save some mages and cultists by parking them on ships, but there's so many privateers (and now man-o-wars) running around that they won't last long.

Obviously, this is a huge improvement in the AI, so I'm not complaining about that. However, now the scenario is too hard. :) I'll try it again for a third time, but I'm not optimistic!

Foul

When fighting against demons and undead, think Order. Forget about OO. This is my advice.

Edit: And don't forget destroy undead. If you have many invisible enemy units, you can go for Empyrean, or get that promotion that can see invisible.

tbh, i won this scenario using just a small stack consisting of magnadine, some longbowmen and a few high priests (were some other units in there, but they didn't do much). Gave magnadine magic resistance + fire resistance to cancel out pyre zombies and ritualists, added blitz, and started rampaging. Add the black mirror from alzakan, and you're looking at 5 dead tier 3 city defenders per turn.
Oh, by the way: i raze cities, i don't capture them. Allows you to take down civs with a lot less troops. 2nd note: Take the captain on the southern island out first, using the black wind to keep the coasts clear.

Could someone get me a more or less comprehensive list of what will and will not heal?

Any non-living unit will heal, that I know.
It would appear some races will as well (undead as nonliving, I presume, and demon?)
Healing *spells* appear to be working?

Does picking promotions heal your unit?


..Will stacking a pile of medic 2 units in your stack work? Ie. is it just that all "non-healing" units get a major -%healing, or are units just not healing as if they moved this turn and not have march (ie. no healing "check" is applied) ?

..Yes, I'm at a loss as to how I'd have to play this.. (for example, how am I going to have high priests in time to NOT face stacks that will overwhelm even a stack of heroes?)

Could someone get me a more or less comprehensive list of what will and will not heal?


I think in this scenario no units can be healed.

all non-living units heal like normal. Heal spell works, healing promo's and march don't. Makes OO quite a nice religion for this scenario (stygian guards heal like normal)

When fighting against demons and undead, think Order. Forget about OO. This is my advice.

Edit: And don't forget destroy undead. If you have many invisible enemy units, you can go for Empyrean, or get that promotion that can see invisible.

I forget about destroy undead so badly that I am actually unsure how to get it... :( (Hardcore evil player ftw!) :D How does one go about getting the destroy undead spell? :confused:

Life II.

Foul

Life II.

Foul

Thank you sir! :D

I beat this one before the patch that boosted destroy undead, so I did a hit and run approach with Iron Golems, a couple mages, Bambur, Magdanine, and Guybrush. I would land, fireball a city to pulp, raze it, and reembark to by ships. By this method I was any to whittle away at all of Tebryn's supporters and when I finally confronted him, I made sure to have Dwarven Druids and a huge pile of iron golems. Even so, I had huge trouble dealing with the free xbows the Sheim kept getting.

I assume you were able to use the Luchiurp because of completing one of the other scenarios? I'm only able to use Lanun, Bannor, or Hippus.

In any case, I'm throwing in the towel on this one. Spent several of the last few days desperately attempting to complete this, and failed again, miserably.

Some points:

1) I'm playing on Monarch, and picked the Lanun. Pirate Ports are sweet, and Guybrush is a big help in capturing enemy ships, especially since I always fail to score gunpowder on my home island.

2) Yes, I know you get the other civ choices' heroes too. Donal is fairly worthless (he's human!), as is Magdanine, though he's a bit better.

3) I've tried out the other two civs, as well as tried out some other religions. However, it keeps coming back to two things: humans don't heal (most units in the game are human), and you really, really can't beat the Overlords' Tsunami spell. Therefore, since the best non-human grunt you can get is the Stygian Guard, and Tsunami is a must, then Octopus Overlords is a must-have religion.

4) Yep, I know about the Heal spell. But it's only avail late-game (when you're probably getting pounded pretty good), it doesn't heal that much damage, and it's only avail to four units anyway (your Speakers / High Priests). It's enough to keep one stack going, but not multiple stacks. And if you don't have multiple stacks, you can't raze cities fast enough to keep up with the settlement of new cities. Like playing whack-a-mole.

5) Have any great strategies for taking out an interior city guarded by a dozen crossbowmen / longbowmen? It's probably on a hill? It's got another twenty various support units in there? Another five to ten units are arriving each turn? I don't. Mages' fireballs to bring down the walls, but that takes two or three turns, and meanwhile you're getting pounded by Ritualists' fire spells and whatnot. Cannons? They're too slow. Maelstrom spell? Yeah, only knocks them down to about 30%; they're still tough. And each high-level unit you commit to attacking the city is one less high-level unit defending the stack against the counterattack.

Here's my current game, the one I'm giving up. Turn 431, and I've defeated the Clan of Embers guy in the southeast (though his island is lousy), defeated the Orange support guy (Avernax?) because all of his cities are on the coast, and easily beatable. The problem is the interior cities! You can take one or two, but very quickly some serious stacks of doom start showing up, and you can't make any headway at all. I've circled the continent and razed every city there, but by the time I'm ready for lap #2, the cities I razed first have pretty much rebuilt themselves (size 17, pumping out high-level units, etc). I went after the light blue guys' interior cities to try and take him out, and that's where my Stack of Doom got ground to halt by about city number 3.

Some of the noteworthy numbers from my statistics screen (these are my kills):

76 Arquebuses
22 Assassins
2 Hyborems (Two! The computer promoted an Eater of Dreams to Life III, and resurrected him! I even managed to whack the Eater with the Life III promotion!)
185 Pyre Zombies
17 Beasts of Agares
23 Beastmasters
11 Balors
77 Champions
27 Crossbowmen
204 Diseased Corpses
18 Eidolons
90 Galleons
179 Man-o-Wars
33 Ritualists
75 Privateers
52 Queens-of-the-Line

... and with all those kills, you'd think I'd be in control of the game, but I'm not even close. I held on as long as I could, but have been ground down.

If you read this far down, here's my challenge: complete this scenario on Monarch or higher, and post your save. No altering of starting scenario parameters. Pick whatever civ you want (assuming it's a legal choice for this scenario). Game must be completed with one of the more recent patches (T or so).

I'm really impressed with how the AI has improved, at least in this scenario. HUGE change over previous games, and I've been playing FFH2 for probably over a year now.

Best of luck, General.

Foul

I assume you were able to use the Luchiurp because of completing one of the other scenarios? I'm only able to use Lanun, Bannor, or Hippus.

In any case, I'm throwing in the towel on this one. Spent several of the last few days desperately attempting to complete this, and failed again, miserably.

Some points:

1) I'm playing on Monarch, and picked the Lanun. Pirate Ports are sweet, and Guybrush is a big help in capturing enemy ships, especially since I always fail to score gunpowder on my home island.

2) Yes, I know you get the other civ choices' heroes too. Donal is fairly worthless (he's human!), as is Magdanine, though he's a bit better.

3) I've tried out the other two civs, as well as tried out some other religions. However, it keeps coming back to two things: humans don't heal (most units in the game are human), and you really, really can't beat the Overlords' Tsunami spell. Therefore, since the best non-human grunt you can get is the Stygian Guard, and Tsunami is a must, then Octopus Overlords is a must-have religion.

4) Yep, I know about the Heal spell. But it's only avail late-game (when you're probably getting pounded pretty good), it doesn't heal that much damage, and it's only avail to four units anyway (your Speakers / High Priests). It's enough to keep one stack going, but not multiple stacks. And if you don't have multiple stacks, you can't raze cities fast enough to keep up with the settlement of new cities. Like playing whack-a-mole.

5) Have any great strategies for taking out an interior city guarded by a dozen crossbowmen / longbowmen? It's probably on a hill? It's got another twenty various support units in there? Another five to ten units are arriving each turn? I don't. Mages' fireballs to bring down the walls, but that takes two or three turns, and meanwhile you're getting pounded by Ritualists' fire spells and whatnot. Cannons? They're too slow. Maelstrom spell? Yeah, only knocks them down to about 30%; they're still tough. And each high-level unit you commit to attacking the city is one less high-level unit defending the stack against the counterattack.

Even though i've played on prince, not monarch, this scenario was practically a cakewalk for me. After gaining the basic economy techs, use the black wind to gain naval dominance early on, especially in the southern part (near the island, there shouldn't be a single AI ship alive in those waters), while going for the OO units (priests +saverous/drowns). These should be enough to take out the AI on the southern island. Settle a city on the far right of the island to gain control of the incence located there, you'll need it for high priests later. Then, head warhorses -> poisons -> theology, with a possible detour for mages. Your goal: magnadine using the black mirror, supported by a stack with a few protectors (stygians for example, maibe eidolons later on, guybrush and donald), maibe some mages, alakzan to take out enemy spellcasters and weakened units, and 4 high priests for healing. Use the magnadine illusion to weaken the toughest defenders of a city / stack, then the real magnadine on the next toughest units, with alakzan for the ones weakened by the illusion. Heal at the end of your round if possible, so enemy assassins can't take out your weakened units.
The main promo's are drill (for less damage and blitz) and fire resistance (against pyre zombies and ritualists). Your priests can cure the diseases from the corpses.

Note: i won this scenario with just the hippus, the lanun, the bannor and the Svalts, didn't need the golems, even though they, supported by a few repairing adepts, could be a great addition as stack defenders.

Huge stacks of Fireball Golems + late game Dwarven Druids is the way to go!

<..>

2) Yes, I know you get the other civ choices' heroes too. Donal is fairly worthless (he's human!), as is Magdanine, though he's a bit better.



I got a lot of mileage from Donal's Recruitment spell to replace wounded/killed men & therefore allow a fair amount of successful campaigning before getting healers.

Yeah, but he only summons crappy units (and all human, of course). They help a bit with fodder, but die quickly.

Foul

Well, on my sixth try, I finally beat this scenario. I'm happy to post my save for confirmation, but I'm sure no one cares.

As with my previous attempts, it was an epic battle, and lasted almost 500 turns. I once again went with the Lanun and the Overlords, as other choices are simply not viable. However this time, I didn't dilly-dally at all, I went for the throat - wiping out the light blue guy with Saverous and some Drowns. The dark blue guy was next, and he was quite a bit harder, as he was entrenched at that point. The orange guy was last, as he's on that island and quite easy to take out. Even moving as fast and aggressively as I could, I was still left with Tebryn having settled most of the continent, and marching truly epic stacks in waves towards me. One of Tebryn's main cities had over three hundred units in it, including 65 crossbowmen, 44 Arquebuses, and 48 longbowmen. Good luck with that. And, his heal rate was nothing short of miraculous (not sure how he was pulling that off, as he didn't have any high priests).

I mention this because I am absolutely, positively convinced that no one is going to win this scenario "easily", or with a stack of ten golems and a hero, or whatever the magic combo is. I realize many of you have completed this scenario, but I do doubt that many people at all have completed it recently (since patch T or so), on monarch or higher. Absolutely not. This was the most challenging game of Civ I've ever played, both in terms of the extreme disadvantages you start with (for instance, I had neither iron nor mithril on my home island, and no mithril on the southern island, either), as well as the improved play of the AI. The AI was maxed out on technologies and launching seaborne invasion forces at me *continually*, as well as using spellcasters and other support units intelligently.

My challenge is still open for someone to post an endgame save -- haven't seen any yet. If you haven't tried this scenario recently, I hope this motivates you to take another look.

Foul

Maybe it's just me, but I didn't find this scenario very challenging, just LONG. I had every productive city belong to the Luchuirp and built tons of Golems with Fireballs backed up by dwarven Mages with Enchantment I and Life II. Fireballs weren't much use against Pyre Zombies, but they destroyed everything else, and stacks of Mobility I Mages take out Pyre Zombies with Destroy Undead--four shots destroys an entire stack of fifty or more PZs.

I went with Order for Sphener, but religion really didn't end up mattering much. I barely used Sphener at the end, since by that point my stacks of Iron Golems were huge (three different stacks of twenty Iron Golems and ten dwarven Mages with Mobility I, Enchantment I, Fire II, Life II). But Unyielding Order was good for getting cities online as soon as I conquered them.

I turned over some cities on the main island to the other civs to get their heroes, but most of the heroes are pretty useless since they don't heal. Barnaxus was obviously the exception; I sent him down to the Clan island to pester them early on to get him the full Combat V; he eventually captured Renegade Hill and just sat there the rest of the game.

The most annoying part was dealing with Tebryn while cleaning up the other Sheaim leaders since he could send streams of units after you without you being able to retaliate until Malchavic and Averax had been dealt with. (I wiped out Gosea pretty early.) It might have been a bit more of a challenge if Hyborem had been around, but I beat Lord of the Balors before this scenario, so he wasn't there.

The key is probably going on the offensive very early on. Too late and the Sheaim have stopped spamming Pyre Zombies and begun building late-game units which can't be taken out with Destroy Undead.

I didn't have a choice of either the dwarves or the elves, which I guess you get from completing one of the other scenarios. I suppose since they're not human, that they can heal? (Although there's plenty of other critters that aren't human but don't heal either, like Krakens, off the top of my head).

Agreed, the key to the scenario is moving quickly. Destroy Undead is an invaluable spell (but be careful not to cast it when you have Liches in your stack, as I learned to my sorrow!). As you mentioned, though, once the AI stops building Pyre Zombies and switches to high-level units, its utility wanes.

Hyborem was around in my game, but I pretty much ignored him. He sent some support units into the fray, but Tebryn was by far the main difficulty.

Foul

Foulfoot, I'm just wondering. How did Tebryn get 65 Crossbowmen? I was under the impression they were a national unit?

I'm not sure if they are a national unit anymore or not (I think I built four of them myself, but I can't remember if I could build more). Regardless, Tebryn had 65 Crossbowmen, in one city.

Foul

Whenever living units die they come back as a demonic unit. Those crossbowmen came back from living units dying.

Actually, I've come to report a problem with the scenario, specifically around crossbowmen.

I am posting the save of my current game. If you'll notice, two spaces to the left of my SoD, Tebryn has a pair of crossbowmen, and a few to the right he has another one. You'll have to take my word for it( I didn't save at the start of the turn) but magnadine was just over playing with them, and slaughtered two more crossbownmen. That makes 5. Now, I know people have siad that the computer gets my dead as demonic units, but glance at my tech tree. I don't have machinery yet, and cannot build crossbowmen. While I've had a few regular archers get offed, he shouldn't be able to get above 4 at one time. Something is screwy here. (I might take a peek with worldbuilder to see if Tebryn has any more)


Edit- Yep, take a peek with the WB. Tebryn's hellish turf is *crawling* with crossbowmen. Waaaaaaaay more than 4. What gives?

When a living unit that is both tier 4 and Archery class dies, Tebryn gets a demonic crossbowman.

I'm invincible...

I have half a dozen units with 300+ experience. One crossbowman with fire arrows, defending on a hill city, has killed 100+ enemy units since it last took damage. I'm not even sure I really need the prior sitting there to heal them. Even the other crossbow has only gotten to engage a couple units over the past twenty turns. Twenty turns of 50+ units attacking each time, nearly all crossbowmen themselves.

The mass crossbow assaults are really killing the AI off, it literally can't deal damage, let alone casualties. I'm running out of promotions. I've got three thousand experience on my killer stack between the heroes, paladins, knights, two remaining priors(one is seeing zero activity on the starting island) and archmages. My phalanx haven't gotten to attack yet, the cities die to my blitz, C5, 5 and 6 speed cavalry units. I don't even need to zap them anymore, 99.9% combat odds against undamaged crossbows defending their cities. I can kill 30 units a round just with the six cavalry units, and defense is absolute. The assassins don't even get any kills.

The difficulties this scenario presents are themselves a destructive force on the fun factor. It was awesome the first time I set food on the mainland for more than a couple turns at a time, and got bushwhacked by a massive army. I'm up over a thousand kills now though, it's repetitive.

The free crossbowmen have made my units godlike titans, the healing penalty meant I had to wait quite a while before I could do sustained combat operations with important units without going OO and violating my own principles regarding character. I've gotten my ass kicked once, I sent a group of boarding parties up into the mainland because it was too much effort to run another army around the island to get a satellite the last of the tripod had put up there. My main attack force is flat invincible. I'm not even getting to use Mokka's cauldron, the city I stole to get mithril access came with it, I got one whole Eidolon.

It's taking forever, like 15 hours forever. It's not fun anymore, it's not even amusing at this point. The poor AI just just throwing hordes of national units at me without doing damage. I'm writing this post during AI movements... The ching of bounty income is going off in the background. If it wouldn't be too tedious to build a massive army up and wipe them out all at once, I could save myself another couple hours by abandoning the place and letting them just sit there for a while as I built.

The turn is still going...

If you are right then something is not working right since all I see are non demonic crossbowman that he got when I killed non demonic crossbowman...look like an infernal pyramida to me lol...

Psychoak -- sounds like you waited too long to take the fight to them. I had a similar experience in my first play-through, and restarted the game awhile later with a new strategy. Beeline Divination & Sorcery for Life II mages, and invest heavily in Luchuirp cities. As soon as you've got a few golems and a small stack of Destroy Undead, Maelstrom, and Repair mages, send them out on the attack. If you give Tebryn and his lackeys a chance to tech past Pyre Zombies and Diseased Corpses, you're likely in for a long, arduous slog.

It isn't long and arduous, it's only tedius. I go and do something else while the ai sends it's waves of troops. I'm not taking casualties. My knights are 5 move, max combat, drill, blitz, fire resistant... I can kill 31 units a turn with my four knights and the two cavalry heroes. I took out Abashi with Magnadine at 99.9% odds, then took out five more guys with him that same round. The sheaim capital was the hardest nut to crack so far, it took two rounds from my six cavalry. The one crossbowman I have defending the first settlement on the mainland just ran out of promotions, the joys of having over a thousand xp.

The problem is they have massive power, and it's all defensive. Crossbows aren't going to kill me, not even when there are fifty of them attacking one city in one turn. Also, Luchuirp cities is practically cheating, they aren't available without completing the other scenario.

Edit: I finished! 19 hours and 50 minutes. Ignoring everything under three digits, my kills: 400 arquebus, 240 assassins, 102 axemen, 283 pyre zombies, 230 champions, 355 crossbowmen... 252 diseased corpses, 365 manes. I lost under 100, even including the workers I was capturing and leaving where they landed.

It isn't long and arduous, it's only tedius... The problem is they have massive power, and it's all defensive. Crossbows aren't going to kill me, not even when there are fifty of them attacking one city in one turn.

Edit: I finished! 19 hours and 50 minutes. Ignoring everything under three digits, my kills: 400 arquebus, 240 assassins, 102 axemen, 283 pyre zombies, 230 champions, 355 crossbowmen... 252 diseased corpses, 365 manes. I lost under 100, even including the workers I was capturing and leaving where they landed.

Sorry, I must have missed your point. I thought you were arguing that the scenario is boring/tedius due to a design flaw. Hence my response that there are different strategies other than just massing the most awesomely invincitastically, most super-duperist army ever (ever, I say!) and bashing heads against Tebryn for 19 hours and 50 minutes. Apparently I misunderstood.

Also, Luchuirp cities is practically cheating, they aren't available without completing the other scenario.

Wait, what?

You don't have access to Luchuirp cities without getting them as allies, they aren't a foregone conclusion. I had access to three sides, my own, Hippus, and Bannor for dropping the port city in time. If you need Luchuirp for the scenario to be reasonable, it's a poorly designed scenario.

Your wonderful sarcasm at the invincibility of my army is misplaced. It's not my fault that a single crossbowman with the first two city defender promos can kill 20 units a round. Normally, a single crossbowman is simply a nice unit, not an impermeable defense.

Once they reach arquebus, they screw themselves into the ground. They build almost all arquebus, all the arquebus turn into crossbowmen when they die, and you have a massive spam of good defenders that can't deal with first strike because their attack strength sucks monkey nuts. If the AI was sending eidolons and knights at me, I'd have actually had something to do besides click promotions for the last eight hours.

Even mithril champions would have been twice as good at the task, at least champions can get city attacker promos. Unfortunately, as soon as I started attacking, there was a massive sucking sound as all their research went into a black hole so they could pay the upkeep on the massive numbers of units there were getting off each other. They never got even got mithril.

Psychoak -- I don't mean to get into a flamewar (and, yeah, I did lay the snark on a bit thick in my earlier message, for which I apologize), but I fear I still may not be understanding what you're getting at. As I understood, you were either, A) arguing that the scenario is poorly designed because it inevitably devolves into a tedious slog where the player must generate a ridiculously powerful and experienced army and battle through thousands of enemy defenders, or B) you wanted to tell everyone how awesome your army was. Hence my suggestion that there are other ways to win the scenario (even without the Luchuirp, the Destroy Undead rush is a pretty powerful and efficient way to school the Sheaim in this scenario as long as you can get it rolling early enough).

My point is that any game on any larger map can easily turn into the type of scenario you present in your post -- I fail to see how a high-production-capacity AI sending hordes of ineffective units against your experienced defenders is a problem unique to this scenario, as you seemed to be proposing ("The difficulties this scenario presents are themselves a destructive force on the fun factor"). I made the assumption (apparently incorrectly) that you might be looking for an alternate strategy that might change your experience the second time you play, and tried to provide one. I guess I was wrong.

My apologies for misinterpreting your meaning.

I wasn't aware it was that complex...

There is a common flaw with the AI choice regarding unit selection. Once it hits gunpowder, it goes crazy building arquebus. They're a decent city defender, and they have their uses on offense as well, but they are not that good a unit for taking cities. They haven't the raw strength of the T4 units, and don't have access to the very important city attacker line.

Basically, they suck at taking cities unless you're not negating the defense values before you attack. When it's already zero'd out, champions are vastly superior for the job.

This scenario compounds that rather irritating problem by then turning each and every arquebus you kill, into a crossbowman. Crossbowmen being even worse a pick for attacking a city. The massive spam of weak attackers slaughtering themselves against my units just gives them insane experience. Bragging doesn't factor in, the AI owns itself in a monumentally boring manner.

A fair point, and clearly explained. Now that we're on the same page, I agree with you, and understand how the conditions of this scenario magnify an existing AI problem.

Glad we could get that sorted!

Played with patch w and I got stomped by Tebryn and his lackeys! All I can do was sweating (and swearing) while defending my cities. The life mages are useless, no wood golem able to attack crossbowmen, even my Barnaxus, Gilden and Donal are almost useless. Maybe I took too long but well, many demonic crossbowmen are more than scary SoD... I hate Tebryn very much now...

Gotta start it from the beginning... :(

Finally beat this annoying (insert expletive of choice)

I seem to have played a similar strategy to Psychoak, with the "build up until you have the SoD of SoDs, and then annihilate everything in your path". A lot of the same slogging through, but this time I avoided my last mess up and didn't leave Gosea with a city trapped in Tebryn's culture bubble. (I still think something should be done about that. In some ways, it makes more sense that if a "lieutenant" gets too battered, that Tebryn absorb their remaining cities and units. Helps puff up the big baddy at the end.

Due to my compulsive need to take cities as opposed to razing them, I wound up with a massive, massive border force, to protect the perimeter. Was somewhat pleased to see that the AI was smart enough to attack at different points along the border, although not so much to see the same thing that Psychaok did, namely, colossal stacks of Arquebuses marching to their death, followed 5 turns or so later by those same guys back as demonic crossbowmen. (They get to raise their own dead too!? Totally unfair!)

I will admit though, the turn after I knocked out Malchavic was one of the most satisfying I'd ever seen. Tebryn is surrounded, and I have huge armies placed in every border city to prevent his demonic hordes from breaking out while his sanctuary was holding. I was having Donal Lugh popping in and out of combat and back to one of my home cities, which had a population of 24 when I was doing most of my recruitment drive, and a temple of order. That's 16 units recruited for each demon killed, which I was achieving essentially every other turn. Granted, they're weaklings, but they're still bodies...... Anyway, when the barrier fell, I essentially had 5 armies, any one of which would have given Tebryn a hard time on its own. And I am not counting with that group either Sphener or Magnadine, who had both achieved insanely high numbers of promotions and were essentially invincible. (I had literally bought every possible promotion with Magnadine.) Abashai ate a few of my guys, but that was only because I was feeding him weaklings so my beastmasters could take him down. Then I found out he's still held when you capture him. Laa-ame.

But that first turn, when suddenly that inviolable bubble that Tebryn had all game being violently burst from every direction possible.... You don't often get to do an envelopment of a civ with 20ish cities and attack along every front. It made all the hassle and irritation and grime of the scenario, the three defeats, wonderful.

It's on to Mulcarn reborn for me. Great work Kael!

Unfortunately, I have not finished yet this scenario (monarch, epic), and I refrain from reading other messages as I do not want to read spoilers... (There are many spoilers, but almost never mentionned as **** spoilers *** . pity...)

- I would love to play the Losj/Svart/Lech ... but the choice is greyed out. Only Bannor/Hippus/Lanum. I have no idea why.

- It seems that Luchuirp should offer something in a scenario? In the one with Perpentach, he got wiped out right after the 1st war (and not by me...). Before dying, he should be offered a chance to make his "offer", whatever it is...

- It is not clear what is the impact of the choice in the Radiant Guard when you kill the 100. If you choose to attack Basium, do you have Loj/Svar/Luch enabled?

- heroes should heal. perhaps at a slow rate (ex.: always at the rate as if they were in enemy territory, with no bonus possible from priests and other promotions, and "march" not working either)

- missing some krakens for not having the sea looking likea Lanum's private Highway

- I would love to play the Losj/Svart/Lech ... but the choice is greyed out. Only Bannor/Hippus/Lanum. I have no idea why.

To play as Ljos/Svart, finish Splintered Court as one of them. The civ you play (and win) at this scenario will help you at Black Tower


- It seems that Luchuirp should offer something in a scenario? In the one with Perpentach, he got wiped out right after the 1st war (and not by me...). Before dying, he should be offered a chance to make his "offer", whatever it is...

Beeri will give you the choice to overthrow Perp when only you, Beeri and Perp are left. If you want to play Luch badly, just restart the Momus and keep doing that until you got the event :D


- It is not clear what is the impact of the choice in the Radiant Guard when you kill the 100. If you choose to attack Basium, do you have Loj/Svar/Luch enabled?

AFAIK, no. If you betray Basium, Hyborem will be on your side in the Black Tower.

Thank you ESVATH for the detailed answers! (and thank you for the option to hide them as spoilers... well done...)

play the Losj/Svart/Lech ... but the choice is greyed out : finish Splintered Court
??? I do not understand the sequence.
I play following the story line, unlocking scenarii in the ascending order, which is
Grand MenagerieThe MornusThe Radiant GuardBlack Tower
Nothing in the story line gives a clue about this non-logical sequence as "Splintered Court" is way down in the list, and the description text does not mention anything about its interaction with an other scenario... Confusing ...

I wonder if it is intended by the FFH team: it seems to me as if the full scenarii setup/links are still in the process to be improved. There is already a tremendous job done (art, storyline, ideas), and it can become a full Campaign! With time, I think the scenarii will get more and more flesh and turn all interactives!

... it would be also so nice to have some units you managed to create/rescue in a scenario be made available into the next one. If you are an horrible murderer and sent most of your troops to death for getting a "quick and dirty" win, the poor strategy would then be lethal in the next scenario as you would do it with less "reinforcements".
This could work by unlocking some units. Ex.: if in a scenario you have not created this type of unit, it is NOT available to you in the next one! A positive - or negative - cascade ...

What is required to play Bannor in this scenario? They are greyed out for me :(

What is required to play Bannor in this scenario? They are greyed out for me :(

Obviously, you didn't help the Bannor in Radiant guard. You have to capture the Infernal city within the time limit they set to you.

I think, in the Radiant Guard scenario, you need to
destroy the city where Capria waits with her Fregate. In exchange she should give you some units and, I guess, open access to the Bannor.

It is also possible that if, in the same scenario, you choose the defeat Basium, the Bannor won't be available (you choosed the "evil" path)...

only suppositions, sorry for this ...

I did not know that it could be useful to support the Luchuirp in the Momus. Now i have serious trouble in the Black Tower, the Deity AI really sucks with these rules. If i play The Momus again and help the Luchurp, will i be able to count on them in the Black Tower? Or did i only have one chance when completing the Scenario first?

only suppositions, sorry for this ...

This is exactly what needs to be done.

I did not know that it could be useful to support the Luchuirp in the Momus. Now i have serious trouble in the Black Tower, the Deity AI really sucks with these rules. If i play The Momus again and help the Luchurp, will i be able to count on them in the Black Tower? Or did i only have one chance when completing the Scenario first?

If you play the Momus again and save Beeri you will be able to use him when you start the black tower.

I've finally beaten the thing...or at least I've got Tebryn down to one city with one unit in it, which is totally surrounded. Unfortunately, when I take the city, I get a CtD. No matter who I do it with, how many turns I wait to pull the trigger, etc, I get a CtD.

I'd love to hear if anyone has any ideas on salvaging it (zipped save game: 209782), but I'd settle for knowing how to manually update the trophies file to just get credit. I really don't want to start this one over.

I've finally beaten the thing...or at least I've got Tebryn down to one city with one unit in it, which is totally surrounded. Unfortunately, when I take the city, I get a CtD. No matter who I do it with, how many turns I wait to pull the trigger, etc, I get a CtD.

I'd love to hear if anyone has any ideas on salvaging it (zipped save game: 209782), but I'd settle for knowing how to manually update the trophies file to just get credit. I really don't want to start this one over.

I will fix that in the next version. To win the scenario go into the Worldbuilder and delete all of the units out of Tebryns capital before you attack.

Thanks! I'm glad to hear my bug discovery has led to a permanent fix.

But just in case anyone else runs into this problem, it turns out the worldbuilder might not help - deleting the unit there caused a CtD for me as well.

However, killing the units in the city with a HN shadow before conquering it DID work.

Wow, this one really is pretty crazy. Maybe I should have attacked right away or something, because the entire continent is overrun with Sheaim. I've killed about 500 units so far, and I've only razed 7-8 cities. And they rebuild the cities the instant my army moves away. Once they rebuilt a razed city the very next turn with my army standing right next to it. At the current rate this game it going, I'd estimate it would take 30-40 hours for me to win at this point. Sorry, I don't have that much patience. :lol:

After studying hint's in previous post's I managed to defeat this scenario on Emperor by turn 350, on the first attempt. But what a rumble....

I settled 5 cities on my initial island, 3 Lanun and 2 Luchuirp (cities with any decent production potential were made Luchuirp). The Lanun palace importantly provides air & water mana (enabling Maelstrom & Spring\Water Elemental).

Initial start-up island:
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/4338/startisland.jpg (http://img27.imageshack.us/my.php?image=startisland.jpg)

I gave my first Adept the 'Spring' spell to change the desert tiles to plain's. The Lanun cities pump the commerce, the Luchuirp cities pump the Golem's and repairing Dwarves. It's a boon that Luchuirp cities can benefit from Coves built in them by the Lanun! I was lucky I ended up with copper and iron on this island, but had only 1 mana node, which I converted into Enchantment (mainly so Dwarves could initially repair, and cast Enchanted Blade).

I knew that I'd have to act fast and decisively to try get on top of things before it got out of control. No human's healing, and being reborn after death as enemy Demon's, made up my mind tactically from the outset. OO religion for water walking Drown's, self healing Stygian, Saverous hero and Tsunami casting Cultist's. Repairable, fireballing Golem's would seal the deal!

The Clan island:
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/1706/clanisland.jpg (http://img25.imageshack.us/my.php?image=clanisland.jpg)

The island in the south-east corner has the Clan of Ember's on it. It can basically be taken over whenever you choose. I initially was'nt going to even bother with it, but found it held 3 mana resources! I needed these nodes for Life (Destoy Undead), Fire (fire-ball's are alway's handy) and Metamagic (Dispel Magic; for node changing & bonus to spell damage\resistance). I ended up keeping the 6 captured cities, although they did'nt make prime use of the limited, marshy land. I felt I did'nt have time to raze and rebuild; just get the thing's online quick and adding to the war machine! Though taking this island early double's your civ's capacity, which is important to keep up with your rapidly expanding opponent's. Got 1 decent Lanun and 2 Lucuirp cities; the rest were filler's. It had mithril on it too!

The world map:
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/6034/sc4maptactics.jpg (http://img25.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc4maptactics.jpg)

I did'nt want this large map to get deep into the 'crossbowmen spam' stage I'd read about, so I formulated a decisive plan from the outset and basically saw it through with good success. I did not want to have unhealing, mortal unit's adding to the bonfire and thus stretching out this scenario. With the 'classic age' start you get, thing's get going real fast and you can quickly slingshot, so I thought I'd be clinically ruthless from the outset!

My tyrannical plan involved initially sending out the galleon with a couple of the starting Archer's over to hassle Gosea and maybe grab a worker, while I was developing my island. I got a couple, which held her up, while I got Drown's & Saverous over to quickly take her out when she only had 3 cities. I did not wish to take over any cities on the mainland and so razed them. I had a thought that Tebryn would expand into the vacant area and help crash his economy, so he'll keep spamming the predictable Pyre Zombie fodder. I still only had the starting Galleon at this point, so Mobility1 promoted, water walking, undead OO freak's must be the quickest way to zerg on this map.

From here this initial army withdrew and swung out and down to the Clan island. It was replenished with bee-lined Stygian's and Cultist's as they come on tap. These unit's formed the core of my armies to the end. I never built a single Lunatic or Wood Golem. The Tsunami spell proved to be just magic on this map (excuse the pun).

With the Clan island added to the realm, I merely built it up to a level where it was economically viable (courthouses, Summer Palace etc.) and just ended up spamming OO troop's, Iron Golem's & Assassin's. I used Zealot's to crash build OO temples rapidly in all cities. It did'nt need to build boat's to defend it, as the main army here, spearheaded by The Black Wind, just went straight for the ocean choke point in between the island of Averax and Tebryn and they could intercept anything trying to get out of the bunch of port cities there.

This main army quickly, but clinically, razed every port city in this area. That meant poor Averax was wiped from the map, even though he had founded 3 more port cities on the mainland. I did not worry about Hyborem (he seem's to get a slow start or something?) and just consolidated this force to block the boat's Tebryn was starting to spam, especially from the narrow sea passage that snakes up to his capital.

While the initial army performed it's mission's (now getting reinforcement's from the closer Clan island), my main island had been building improving it's cities to keep the economy afloat, and getting building's up for some of the better unit's I'd need for the mainland assault. I first built Styg's/Cultist's, then Frigates, to solidly defend the northern coast sea-pass, between the mainland and the ice-bergs, so Malchavic could'nt get nothing to harass or invade me while I got thing's in place. Then I basically replicated another port-city-razing-army to sail north over to Malchavic and hit him hard.

This northern army was knocking as the southern had finished up the other general, leaving Malchavic as the last. He had flourished on the large, flood-plained river and had many inland cities as well. He was actually larger than Tebryn! He had cities in the north, right down to the southern coastline where I had just removed General Gosea. My first army was still there, destroying the enemy boat spam, while being steadily built up for a big push inland. So it was these 2 main armies that began a truly epic pincer movement that eventually crushed the last general, while simultaneously fending off minor incursion's by Hyborem and Tebyrn from both sides. Thankfully, there were lakes dotted around to help progress!

When the 2 main armies, aided by a few smaller raiding parties that I kept feeding into the fray (to flank, pillage resources, kill worker's and freshly rebuilt cities) met up and converged onto the raging Tebryn, he had just starting getting into that "demonic crossbow 11/15" stage! But by then Saverous, Guy, Hemah, and to a lesser extent, Barnaxus were unstoppable with their stack's of Iron Golem's, Gargoyle's, Shadow's, Assassin's, OO Troop's and mages. Tebryn seemed to respond with a lot of Assassin's thrown at me, but my armies were too well balanced to be blunted that easily! :king:

Some game stat's:

* built 32 work boat's (Lanun farm that damn sea!)
* razed 62 cities
* Notable Kills
- 228 Pyre Zombie's
- 114 Diseased Corpses
- 83 Arquebus
- 91 Assassin's
- 67 Crossbowmen
- 23 Galley's
- 55 Caravel's
- 44 Privateer's
- 41 Frigate's
(I'm glad I went for the throat and did'nt piss around, as these kill's would have been totally off the scale!)
* got a Final Score of 41,000: Cthulhu


Point's of Interest:

* my GNP was alway's close to double my nearest rival's.
* with 'human' unit's, I tended to save a promo or two, just so I could heal them when needed.
* tsunami and/or maelstrom with destroy undead kill's P.Z's cleanly at 1 tile away.
* tsunami and/or maelstrom with fireball kill's P.Z's cleanly at 2 tile's away.
* get Guy instantly upon studying Iron; don't need to actually build him.
* could not get a Beastmaster on a boat if it's got a parrot attached?
* inanimate, fireballing, repairable Golems make life easier.
* Hemah with the early WaterIII spell Water Elemental was pure wicked. What a spell!!!
* I'm not sure if I could handle this madness on Deity......actually I'm very sure!

Other than that, the scenario was bug-free and went smoothly. End message came up as soon as Tebyrn was destroyed, all good....


Wow.......epic post for a truly epic scenario! :crazyeye:

as you say ... Wow...

I love the word map with the arrows, as if it was a D-Day map !!
Where were dropped the para troopers?

You put so much work in this post! It is indeed a warm congratulation for the team behind the scenario (and scenarii in general)

It took me a while to get around to writing feedback for this scenario, mostly because I wasn't sure how to put to words what I wanted to say. After a while, I decided that the best way was just to be plainly honest. I found that, in my opinion, the Black Tower is the least fun of all the scenarios, and the worst designed. It is the only scenario that I could not bring myself to complete without cheating, due to the sheer tedium.

It has a problem very similar to Splintered Court, only worse. Like Splintered Court, it has special rules that conflict with other special rules and the goal of the scenario. It gives something that promises to be fun to play with, but in reality is just a trap or a non-factor.

We are given Tolerant and the option to choose the civ of the settlements we make, which in and of itself is a wonderful idea. An epic battle of good versus evil (well, neutral versus evil anyway) with an alliance against the evil Sheaim is wonderful. The problem...all of those civs except the Luchuirp are utterly valueless due to the prevention of healing on humans. As I was playing through this scenario, I was not playing some epic alliance, I was playing the Luchuirp with Unrestricted Leaders. It would have been great to make full use of tolerant and make Bannor melee, Hippus cavalry, etc. But the simple fact is, the scenario punishes you for doing so. The special rules are in direct conflict.

The healing restriction is the main problem, but the fact that living units that die turn into undead just amplifies the problem. It's another reason to never use living units for your grunt-work (a living unit would have to kill *at least* three units of equivalent power, without ever healing, to be worth the hammers put into it - The unit, the unit again when it's undead, and the equivalent of *itself* after it perishes. That's all not counting the fact that the Sheaim *outnumber you*). Besides the Luchuirp and OO demons, there's only one way around the healing restriction, and that's High Priests (or, say, Sphener, which is just as bad.) But High Priests are T4, and if you wait that long before you begin to attack the Sheaim will have settled their entire continent and have a huge army, that you have to kill not once, but TWICE (Pyre Zombies excepting.)

All of this causes the scenario to go beyond the difficult and into the realm of sheer tedium. It's not impossible, that much is obvious. You could even say it's not that *difficult*, as you can just use the Luchuirp for everything, but that makes for a huge missed opportunity. What this scenario is, in my opinion, is just not at all fun and too tedious. I'm convinced that the healing restriction adds absolutely nothing to the scenario due to the presence of the Luchuirp and OO, it only takes away. It's a scenario that promises a lot but fails to deliver, and a huge missed opportunity.

I liked the scenario, although it got a little relentless at the end. Perhaps the Sheaim could have a little less room. I played it through at deity and it was tough. I won at year(?) 388 for a score of 147000. The ideas in this form were very useful, so if anyone wants a bit more:

-at the beginning I built cities (6 all Lanun - pirate coves rock!) wonders and tech speed. I got Heron Th, Gr Lib, Gr Light, Bone Pl, in my capital I think before I built a single unit -- marble is a must.

-then I went for the must haves for attack; sorcerers, stygains, and cultist. I didn't have any iron on my island but this was a good thing, as it stoped me from making frigates, fast caravels (with double expanded hulls) are better. A caravel with two cultist and a stygain sinks anything. Then I razed everything on the coast and was never really challenged on the seas for the rest of the game.

-once I had Astro I expanded in the land right below the start island but didn't start to really attack until I had Speakers and Dwarven Druids (their crush spell is a must)

-Stygains were 90%+ of my units, the hippus and bannor were pretty much useless except for their heros.:p

Hope thats useful

I found the scenario very interesting due to its unusual rules, which forces you to adopt different paths for victory.
As was posted before, going through it with Luchuirp golems and/or Octopus Overlord demons really increases your chances. That's why I refrained myself to use them. So I went for a more disciple oriented army. Rushed Empyrean religion, went for Theology to get those Luridus' (making sure to have some Incense resource close by) and Fanaticism for Chalid. After The Radiant Guard Scenario I felt it'd be fitting.

My early main army was made out of Radiant Guards backed with Vicars and Luridus, Chalid and Guybrush leading them. I had no idea I could get heroes of every allied civilization, that's why I got Donal, Magnadine and Alazkan much in the late game, when all Sheaim generals were already defeated.

I disagree that the Bannor units were useless. Their free Guardsman promotion was essential in keeping my Disciple and Siege units alive; I had not much use of Hippus cavalry though, but I'm sure there must be a strategy that makes use of them.
Svartalfar Radiant Guards (and later, Champions) were awesome. Very useful in ambushing units in wooded areas (Blinding Light and Elven trait).

Razed almost all the cities I've captured.
I maintained only a few captured Sheaim cities close to Tebryn's capital, guarding them with two Luridus and lots of Radiant Guards. That way, Tebryn kept wasting time and resources bashing on my defenses, while my assault army was taking care of his unassisted generals.
Even the generals's armies were focusing on attacking my few possessions on the main island, leaving their home cities poorly defended.

I thought this scenario was a blast (on Monarch). I think the key is to go as fast fast fast as possible. I know a lot of people like to build up a giant stack of crushing invincible doom before going to war, and I like to do that in the epic game too, but I think it’s the wrong tactic in this scenario. If you wait until you have an unbeatable stack before you attack, the Generals will have T3 and T4 living units for you to kill, and Tebryn will be a monster with a billion Crossbows by the time you get to him. But if you catch the generals when they have only PZs and Diseased Corpses, Tebryn doesn’t get fed any units and is weak when you get to him. And let’s be honest, while we all love making SODs, you don’t NEED them when you have access to cultists and you’re attacking coastal cities. You barely need warriors for that purpose.

Here’s my strategy: First, I built my cities to get the absolute maximum pirate-cove commerce at the expense of production. My reasoning was that, with plenty of lanun-boosted seafood and coves, lots of health, and few happiness resources available (only Gold, Incense, and Whales), I would have a massive food surplus far in excess of my happy caps; thus, I could make up for my poor production cities by running Conquest. Focusing on cramming in as many pirate coves as possible, I was able to get 3 cities with 3 coves (capital spot, north near the iron, and the island off the west coast), two with two coves (desert gold in the northeast, and southeast corner of the island) and one with one cove (the coast west of the pigs). I teched these coves like crazy, focusing GP production on scientists for academies.

Tech path was very focused. I went: Writing (for insta-libraries from the Supplies), Message from the Deep, Priesthood, Warfare (for Conquest), HBR, Compass. I spit out the Black Wind and some supporting caravels and easily achieved naval superiority. I then started spitting out small attack groups that would be a staple of my game, consisting initially of two double-cargo promoted caravels carrying two Cultists and four Drowns. All Drowns were initially promoted CR and Mobility. I then went around razing every coastal city in classic OO style. Attacks would go like this: Cultists Tsunami from 2 squares away; Drowns get off the ships and attack the city one at a time (to avoid PZ damage as much as possible). If any Drowns get red-lined, the ships pick them up and move back to two squares away before anyone else attacks. After all four drowns have attacked, the ships pick them up and move back to avoid Ritualist retaliation. When the Drowns are healed in two turns, repeat the process. Cities were all razed (with the Mobility Drowns scooting back to the coast to avoid attacks), because there’s no way Drowns could hold a city. Essentially EVERY coastal city can be razed this way; importantly, no SODs are needed, so you can attack as many cities as you can spit out iterations of this force.

While this multi-front razing spree was underway, crippling the Generals’ tech pace, I further teched Mind Stapling (for Saverous—I didn’t even try to take any non-coastal cities until I got him), Fanaticism (for Stygians), and Iron Working and Astronomy. The last two gave me Frigates and Galleons, which cemented my command of the seas and let me move my strike forces around much quicker, respectively. After I got some Shipyards rolling, my ships all came out with 3 promotions (CIII for Frigates; Cargo and Nav1 for Galleons, giving them 5 cargo and 7! Movement, before I even got adepts for Fair Winds). After I got Stygians, the pace started picking up a LOT: the Stygians were unstoppable, since they could attack every turn with their March promotion. I diverted just one of my attack groups to annihilate Jonas, which it did with no trouble. By the time all the Generals were dead (with Saverous doing the heavy lifting in the interior of the continent), Tebryn had only just gotten to Longbows and only had 7 cities. Tebryn foolishly decided to make his stand in Galveholm behind Abashi, which (whoops!) was coastal. Since Dragons’ magic immunity got taken away in a recent patch, Abashi and the rest of the demonic army didn’t hold up well to my 20 Tsunamis. And that was all Tebryn wrote. I never even got to Eidolons or Speakers (I had researched Theology, but all my best Cultists were busy razing Tebryn's last cities and never got upgraded)--probably the first time I've ever won a game without any T4 units. This was a thoroughly enjoyable scenario, though I have no idea how I would have done it without OO.

I don't get it, I've beaten both requisite scenerios, but I still can't play this one. WWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!
(Please help me!!!)
-Thanks

Building the Shrine of Sirona was a big help for me in this game. I built a Life node to get Destroy Undead, but then I realized that Shrine of Sirona might work in the game, so I went for it. Woohoo!

Also, I noticed that I only ever got Great Priests even though I was only about 30% chance for priests any time I hit the CP threshold. Was this on purpose for the scenario or did I just get really crazy results from the Random Number Gods?

I guess I thought this was my favorite scenario so far, I’ve now played them all except Mulcarn Reborn! Wow! Thanks to the development team! It was amazing.

I usually don’t like large boards; I usually find them a little tedious; for some reason, that didn’t happen for me here. I think the reason is the unusual setting, the fact that the game was, de facto, a ‘duel’ on a large map, the special rules, and the tightness of the game. Even thought I saw that the game took 52 hours, I was engaged. I suspect the key is that I thought it was the most ‘epic’ – large, powerful, without dragging.

Obviously, there was a challenge here; no healing for living units, units killed come back for the enemy; and not the least, the inability to directly attack Tebryn. So, instead of most games where you just move forward, here, after defeating Gosea, you have to swing around to the back and defeat the others first. But we should also note that we have a big advantage; playing against the Sheam without an Armageddon counter is a very large benefit. This requirement makes you change the way you set up attack and defense. Furthermore, the game had a powerful naval element that is too often ignored in other games. I think much of the epic feeling comes form having something like 7 powerhouse heroes; but again, the clever design makes it hard to use them at least immediately.

I played on Emperor. I lost my first game; actually, I probably still had a chance but decided to try it over. My second game was a fairly easy win but it was fun.

Strategy

Big Picture

I see there has been some discussion about attacking early or attacking late. I went for the ‘pretty late’. I launched the attack around turn 300 and won around 450. The ‘Orc’ island to the south was empty for me; of course, in my second play I had an unfair advantage in that I knew the island was there and that it was empty.

Clearly, the idea for a late attack is to build up. For me, I wanted to wait until I could heal before attacking, which ultimately meant getting high priests. I went for the overlords because I thought naval superiority was crucial and Stygian Guards are probably the best unit – they can heal and use weapons. .

Naval Superiority

Indeed, my first game I got badly hurt since the AI crushed me with Privateers early. My pirate coves were smashed, as well as my sea resources, and this crippled my economy. I played on for a while, but never got true naval superiority. Later, Tebryn build a 10 – 15 15 ship invasion fleet and attacked the Southern island! I didn’t know the AI could plan this! They took a key city (which I now cannot counter-attack!) and I started over.

My second game, I got Optics as my second tech after writing (to get the supplies into Libraries). This allowed me to build the Black Wind and some caravels. I did manage to keep naval superiority the whole game, but I obviously I spent a lot of resources on it. I also got Octopus priests and raising parties, and stole his fleet. Guybrush probably took about 6 ships.

Wonders

I think the wonders were the key to victory for me. I know many people feel in a regular Civ IV or FfH games that building wonders can be a mistake; it slows down building troops, or settlers and workers, which can be more important. But The Black Tower is different!

First, in a standard Epic game, they can indeed slow down expansion. But in the Black Tower, if you do a late attack, your expansion is pretty much limited to the two islands anyway and fairly soon they will all be settled. Secondly, if you are playing with 7 opponents, your getting the wonder keeps one of 7 players from getting it; you get the benefit of the wonder if 5 -10 cities, and more later, and keep one player from getting it. Here, every wonder you get keeps the other side from getting it. Especially for wonders that impact ‘every city’, once fighting started, on a large map, I can get the benefit in very may cities and keep the Sheaim from almost as many.

So, in my second game, I started by building the Heron Throne – my capital was going to be my wonder city and it gives a hammer boost. Since I build the Black Wind, I got a level 6 unit quickly, and I got Form of the Titan. Again, I probably build some 400 – 500 units and Tebryn maybe as many; I bet it impacted over 1000 xp’s.

The Big Three

Three wonders were dominant.

The great Lighthouse: With intercontinental trade, I probably was getting 5 - 6 GP/trade route later in the game (I admit having Inn’s and Tavern’s). With maybe 40 – 50 cities in the mid turn 300’s, this gave maybe 500 gold per turn and probably kept the Sheaim from earning very large amounts. Between the gold it generated for me and it kept Tebryn from getting, it may have generated 100,000 gold or more. Get that lighthouse!

Guild of Hammers – OK, we all know how good this is!

The Nexus – This was also absolutely critical. Without it, holding territory and deflecting attacks is very difficult. Now, wherever a threat comes, just Nexus in an army. I also got the Guild of the 9, with my outrageous economy it allowed me to build many mercenaries. With the Nexus and the guild, I took cities instead of burning them

The Next Most Important Wonders

I was lucky that Gosea had built Nox Noctis; I captured it very early. Although this isn’t equivalent to Tebryn’s ability to strike without retaliation, it is probably the next best thing. I can kill people straggling outside of cities and not get hurt; workers can work any tile with impunity. With naval superiority and Nox Noctis, I had only to defend my borders, and with the Nexus, I could move ahead.

The Shrine of Sirona – Normally a secondary wonder, here it lets you HEAL! I was then really pissed when I found the Sheaim had built it!! Fortunately, again, Gosea built it and I took it early. It is especially useful for healing living units that aren’t in the main stacks with the high priests casting Heal.

Form of the Titan – Mentioned above

Tower of Eyes – I didn’t get bad war weariness. By the end of the game I was still on city states with a 20% luxury slider, but it can help to have the dungeon in every city.

Guild of the 9 - It is more useful once you start attacking and winning, because by then you should have a lot of money and the mercenaries can help.

Others

I got most of the religious shrines; these were useful early when I needed mana sources and later for general power. I got a bunch of the others, but these were the crucial ones.

General Strategy

Originally I thought I would do my attacks with my non-living units, my main armies were maybe 70% Stygian Guards and 30% Iron Golems. I got Barnaxus to power 5 and then sent him to my capital. But the Guards were stronger.

Nonetheless, I did wind up having my main attacking stack living units; the haste ability is just too important. I would bring up slower troops, by the end of the game I had about 170 Stygian Guards and 60 Iron golems. But these would largely be ‘assault’ troops and hold my cities and Nexus in. My main army had my heroes, 2 high priests, and my most powerful mages and archmages. (Not my liches).

Like everyone else, with naval superiority, I used my ships to bombard the city defenses, and my cultists to cast tsunami form the sea, and coastal cities were easy to take.

My main army in the Gosea area was subject to the most attacks. This army was maybe even stronger than my main stack. I had to spread between 3 cities. By the end of the game I had very strong Stygian guards, many 10th level or higher. The key to defending is to have 2 mages who can cast Maelstorm and maybe destroy undead. This defense was repeated as I defeated the other Sheaim.

Get a temple of order in your biggest city (I had one city with the Tower of Complacency and about 30 people). Use Donal’s ability, and you get about 20 units/kill. I would kill a baddie, nexus him out, cast rally, get him back, etc. The hardest part was the logistics of getting all of these unit to the front. You have to move them to other cities so you can nexus them out fast. Later in the game, perhaps form laziness, I would just rally in a local city to avoid the logistics problem.

I had one high priest on a secondary front. I would take wounded units, nexus them off to him, he would heal, and they would go back.

Magic

It is hard to get a lot of mana before the big attack. Here the shrines and the wonders can help – I got the soul forge to get an early death mana which is necessary for liches.

Your units that are earmarked for liches cannot be in the main attack because of the need to cast destroy undead. Therefore, they need death to become liches, but get spell extension, maybe SE II, so that they can stay behind and summon killer units. I used them mostly for defense, they can’t be hasted and keep up with the main army anyway.

Another wonder I got was Catacomb Libralus, but I don’t know if it is needed. Most of my mages were from the Luchiurp, I was spamming them. Just as your living units cannot heal, your ships and golems can be instantly healed with a bunch of Luchiurp adepts casting repair.

The ‘ideal’ fleet set-up was to have a Cultist and a Luchiurp adept with repair and fair ewinds and you will rule the seas! Unfortunately, real life games and ‘ideal’ play aren’t always the same thing.

As always with a game where the attack will be late, and there is time to set-up, build the adepts early. You need a lot of mages here.

The biggest risk at high levels is the mindless damage from the pyre zombies. Therefore, you always want to get the two maelstroms and lots of destroy undead spells. Fortunately, you start with air mana. Therefore, early mana builds are enchantment (happiness, repair, enchanted blade) and life.

For the archmages and especially liches, get metamagic. By the end of the game my Djinns had a strength of 30! It’s a big map and if you start to take territory, you get a lot of mana sources.

Your defense stacks should be packed with these magic users and watch the attackers melt away!

Civics

Although it is considered bad form, I ran god-king for a long time. Why? It is the wonders and the need for some speedy builds. Once I got the Guild of Hammers, I had most of the Southern Continent build up and I needed City-states.

I went for the moolah; consumption, guilds (apprenticeship earlier), agrarianism and then guilds, and undercouncil.

By the time I could attack Tebryn, I had 5 armies circling. I doubt it took more than 10 -15 turns to finish him off.

The big attack

In my second game, Tebryn also came after my southern Island with a 10 – 15 ship group; but this time, I was ready. I had about 5 -6 units in the facing coastal cities; but more important, I was watching. I had sentry ships out in the ocean! As he was one turn from landing, I cast Raging Seas! I then clobbered them. Conclusion

I lost the first time, and learned a lot. I then had a fairly easy but hard-fought victory. The scenario is a builders’ advantage. It takes a lot of logistical skill to get everything to work. I do think the wonders here are critical.

So, in all, it was probably my favorite scenario. I’ll probably try it on immortal at some point! Thanks, as always, to Kael and the gang!


Best wishes,

Breunor

I think the south Isle is empty when you beat the Barbarian Scenario where you kill the Clan of Ember.
But anybody knows if I can build Svartalfar Cites when I finished the Splinter Court Scenario?
I really want have Illusionist for this Scenarios. Also is there a good way to use Bannor cites in this scenario. Ii doesn't get to me that their buildings nor units are a great help here.

Yes you do get Svart cities if you beat the Splintered Court but only if you won with them.

I built a Bannor city just so I could get Donnal Lugh, they really don't have much other use/

Yes you do get Svart cities if you beat the Splintered Court but only if you won with them.

I built a Bannor city just so I could get Donnal Lugh, they really don't have much other use/

Clearly Donal is awesome; with a Temple of order, and so many demons, I think he recruited dozens of units for me and he is a killer on his own!

However, I built decent number of other Bannor units to have the guardsman promotion automatically, it really helps to make all of those assassins practically useless! Of course, you don't need that many, maybe two for each major stack.

Best wishes,

Breunor

I can't get the scenario to start, the game crashes EVERY time that I try.

I can't get the scenario to start, the game crashes EVERY time that I try.

Same here, and I don't know if it has anything to do with the game-freeze ending to "The Radiant Guard."

The Scenario launcher is unreliable.

Start the secenarios directly from
.../Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Scenarios
folder.

Same here, and I don't know if it has anything to do with the game-freeze ending to "The Radiant Guard."

It doesn't; I just tried to load the scenario and I got a crash. The error message said it was a memory error.

Best wishes,

Breunor

quick question - if you build the other civ's palace in another city does that change the actual lanun capital? in other words, can you still only have one palace?

I believe it used to be that you could get 2 palaces a palace of another civ does nto get removed when you built yours elsewhere, but the last time I played it I saw it had been changed so that the palace would not be replaced by that of the civ whose nationality your capital city had.

I also cannot get this scenario to load. Every time I try it boots me out with an unexpected error. Anyone else have this problem and is there a fix? I'll try directly from the scenario folder, but if that doesn't work?

EDIT: Ok got it to work directly through the worldbuilder save, but here's the next question... If I go back and do the Momus again and preserve the Lurchip will it modify The Black Tower (even though I slaughtered the Lurchip last time?) Also how do I get the elves???

play the splintered court scenario.

I played this one through quite far before accidentally installing the BTS update. (I was trying to fix some issues I was having). Anyway, I had to start over. However, in the interim, I beat the Infernal and Barbarian scenarios. I was surprised to find that the Clan of Embers and Infernal factions were non-existent in the replay. I found it really impacts the challenge and enjoyment of this scenario, which is one of the better ones and really plays to the strengths of the Lanum civ.

Anyone know how to get the Infernal and CoE civs back in the scenario?

I tried this one, I really tried, but... The "no-heal" thing was far too annoying for me to enjoy. It would be one thing if they healed slowly, or maybe didn't heal at all unless there was a unit with Medic in the stack, but no healing period? No, just no.

I ended up giving myself 30 Iron Golems, despite not getting the Lurichuip event. They took care of Abashi nicely.

uh oh never mind. had a problem with launching the scenario but found out that i should run it under the scenario folder.

I'm about to undertake this beast. It looks like OO and fast rushing is really the best option because of the lack of healing. I will only have the Bannor and Hippus available to me so we will see how it goes.

I loved starting on a little island with room for three cities, and then getting to decide where I wanted to go from there. Early game skirmishing with barbarians and the other factions is good for preparing your experienced pseudo-heroes (i.e. upgraded warriors and axemen who serve you right through the game), but it's tedious and in The Black Tower it won't really work anyway – you can't heal, so those pseudo-heroes will die early on 1.

With no healing, early game skirmishing would have been nothing but tedium and I wouldn't have enjoyed it. Instead I found I was free to set my three cities up and charge through the first few turns without anything in my way. It was a nice feeling. This is also the one Lanun scenario that really shows you the Lanun's power, because while the island has room for three cities it doesn't sport the best land to support them.

It does, however, let you build three coastal cities which each have two pirate coves. The coves are really amazing thematically and mechanically and I've fallen in love with the Lanun because of this scenario. I especially like the little island to the southwest with one workable tile. You can fit a city on it with three pirate coves and far from being useless, as I'd expect from a city that can only work the sea, it's quite a good commerce centre 2.

Going on the offensive was a little tricky. If you run Octopus Overlords I expect you can make an early push and then keep going until you've won, because the Stygian Guard can cross the sea, heal inbetween and stick around 'til the end. With The Order it was a bit more tricky. I founded three more cities in the southeast peninsula and discovered that Guild of the Nine is unsurpassed at defending new colonies.

Conquering the northeast Sheaim would wait until I had mages with Destroy Undead. Much of their army was undead, and more than once I emptied one of their cities without having anyone actually attack. After beating them and taking their cities I changed my mind about continuing on anymore though – it was all I could do not to lose the cities I had.

I wonder if I'm missing a trick for healing. I waited until I had Sphener and arranged to have Priors a bit after. With Sphener and an army of Crusaders (which, when available, I prefer to Boarding Parties even when Medic I won't help) backed up with mages and siege engines I was able to deal with the rest, although it took a long time and Guild of the Nine saved more cities than I can count.

I didn't bother much with being able to assign a city to a different faction. I didn't have the Luchuirp, and they're the only ones that would've made a real difference. The Bannor should have one city so you can add a few Guardsmen and a flagbearer to your armies and one Hippus city is worth it for the free Magnadine later on, but otherwise I let everything be Lanun. I probably would've been better off with Champions instead of Boarding Parties, however.

I found this very enjoyable, and it's especially interesting how the game can be very different depending on what you've done in other scenarios. I didn't see the Clan, but I also couldn't get the Luchuirp and had to kill Hyborem.


1 Under no circumstances would I run Ashen Veil or Octopus Overlords for Falamar's Lanun (the latter in Hannah's, absolutely). I'd ideally run Fellowship of Leaves or Runes of Kilmorph as Falamar, but in this case The Order seemed appropriate. I think whenever a nation goes to war with demons, The Order will prosper amongst its people.
2 It also led me to discover that a Lanun city at sea can have a large population, and that Pillar of Chains will then turn it into a competent production city. It's only a one-off and you might not manage to produce the Pillar of Chains in it, but it makes for an interesting city.

Wow, just wow. That was ... Epic!

Great fun, but I gotta say: HOW many Crossbowmen!?!?!? I mean really!? The last time I could be bothered to count, Tebryn was wandering around with >30 of them at the same time!

Then again, Valin with >1000xp and run out of promos was kind-of walking all over them. :)

I could use some help, the last sheim city (on the north-west part of the continent) seems to be hidden. I can see its borders, and can actually see it using WE, but cannot see it in normal mode, I really don't know what to do and I'm stuck.

Does anyone know the answer for that please?

Thank you in advance!

This scenario is destroying me! The first time through, playing as just the Lanun and the Hippus, I realized after a couple hundred turns that it was hopeless.

So I went back to The Momus, kept Beeri alive, and ganged up with him to defeat the puppetmaster. So for my second try at The Black Tower, I made all Luchuirp cities, except for one Lanun.

It's now turn 452. I have wiped out everybody except Tebryn (including Hyborem). So now it's just me against the evil purple guys.

I'm WAY ahead in population, with lots of size 28 and 27 cities. I'm way ahead in gold and manufacturing. Because this is so hard, I'm even playing on the warlord level, whereas I usually play at monarch. I've only got about five more techs to research. I have total control of the seas.

And still, right at the moment, it looks hopeless!

I just tried to attack my first purple city, a crummy little size 5 coastal city. My fleet of 15 ships showed up and reduced the city's defenses to zero in one strike. I landed an army next to the city with: 3 Dwarf Hornguards, 1 War Tortoise, 4 Crossbowman, 1 Clockwork Golem, 12 Iron/Fireball Golems, and 4 mages. (These are reinforcements I plan to merge with my major stack.) These guys bombarded the heck out of the city.

Next turn, they bombarded the city again. And I went to attack. The city's defenses were zero. There were only four defenders: 2 infernal crossbowmen and 2 others. The crossbowmen were down to about 8 or 9 strength. But for even my best units--the hornguards or clockwork golem with attack 15, the game showed chance of success on each attack at less than 1 percent! The crossbowmen had such high bonuses, and the city is on a hill, that it looks hopeless!

Right now the games says I have about "4 million" in my army while the enemy has about "15 million." And with every unit I lose, they get more. To win, I have to wipe out about 20 cities of theirs--and they're still expanding. Is this possible? My level 12 Archmages can take out four defenders a turn--but that's it. Am I really going to have to assemble a stack of something like 300 Iron Golems???

EXTRA QUESTION: I've only been playing FFH2 for about a month, but like a fanatic during that time. I keep learning new things about this fabulous game. One thing I can't figure out: frequently at the start of a turn, an enemy undead or infernal city will send out flames in all directions, greatly toasting any units one tile away. It's not Pyre Zombies blowing up, but something else. I can't find it in the spells list. What is it?

Last question first: Ring of Flames. It's the level2 Divine spell for Ashen Veil - Ritualists will be casting it.

Taking them out is important - Assassins may be your best bet.

Which heroes do you have, and how powerful are they? The best way to crack cities is to take off the top defenders with your highly-promoted Hero units. I ran Order and had Valin Phanuel at >1000xp by the end of the scenario (and he'd run out of available promos); when fully healed, he had >99% on anything he could meet, and even when nearly dead, he could kill most things out in the field. I'd recommend sending them down the Drill line first to enable Blitz (multiple attacks mean faster XP gain) and then going down Combat. If you've got as far as Warhorses, you'll need a Hippus city to spawn Magnadine - should also probably have a Bannor for Donal.

If you've killed Hyborem, you must have Gela available. Have the equipment on your strongest Hero, and then after they've attacked move it to the next unit before they attack.

Rust - level1 Entropy spell - will strip off the enemy's weapon promotions - which is 4 in the case of Mithril - and if they get the Rusted promo that's a bonus. This brings Crossbowmen back down to size.

As you say, every Living unit that dies gives them additional forces. That means you either have to use Golem, Catapults, summons and other non-living units or your forces have to not die, which means healing them or pulling them back. With just two strong defenders though, you may just need to sacrifice 2-3 Iron Golems to weaken them enough for another unit to take them out.

EDIT: Also Destroy Undead (lvl2 Life) is your friend against Pyre Zombies. When the spell kills them they don't explode, so don't cause the damage to your troops.

for immediate and informative answer! I have some hope again.

Gosh this game is complex, with 18 types of magic, etc. I'm marching through the scenarios from top to bottom. I bet I'll still be playing this a year from now.

I'm playing Runes of Kilmorph, and I just realized a few turns ago that I should have been building pirate coves everywhere (and I'm doing that now). I'm rich!

But as for heroes, all I have are Bambur, Arthendain, and Barnaxus. None have been in combat, so they're to the end of their natural promotion tree. And I probably didn't do it very smart. Valin with blitz certainly sounds good! But I do have Gela, and I should soon have healing, so time to bring my hero dwarfs into the fray.

To get Rune Wardens (dwarf high priests) so that I have healing spells, I need gems. There are only 4 gem squares on the whole map in my game, bunched together in Tebryn territory in the middle near the coast. My plan is to build a city there defended with everything I've got and hope to cause some attrition of the purple guys.

Thanks for tips on assassins to take out ritualists and Destroy Undead against Pyre Zombies. I've been going to great pains to kill PZs from a distance! If I could build more than 4 archmages, the game would already be over.

One more question: Does it make sense to take everything I've got and to try to take out the Black Tower itself first, before attriting all the smaller evil cities? Do they lose the ability to get evil resurrections if you take out the Black Tower?

You don't even have Guybrush? Definitely get a Lanun, Bannor & Hippus city down - though I don't know if you can get the civilisations' heroes retroactively (when I played they were gifted by discovering the tech which enabled them).

When I played this scenario, I spent a long time defending a couple of key city locations on the mainland. Tebryn would send his stacks against them, I would Maelstrom (lvl2 Air), Rust, Cat & Fireball them down until my heroes & other units could take them out. This way I built up a lot of experience on my key units. (Mainly, I was waiting for my healing to come online - Sphener & then Priors - and using only the Shrine of Sirona and promotions to keep my army healthy. A lot of injured units retreated to safe cities to wait for Sphener to make it all better!)

I'm not sure that taking out Tebryn's capital would make much difference (apart from lots of troops getting slaughered by Abashi), I'm guessing you need to wipe him out completely to achieve victory - I took the cap last after wiping out all his other cities.

I would also recommend Xienwolf's manual http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=265888 I keep it open and ALT-Tab to it for info & some strategy, and it's generally faster than using the Civlopedia.

Oh my memory is pathetic! Yes, indeed, I have the dashing Guybrush too, guarding my largest city, plus of course The Black Wind.

Thanks very much for your tips!

Alt-Tab doesn't work for Civ4/FFH on my computer, but I'll definitely study that guide.

I finally won last night, on my third try. One of the best scenarios I've ever played on any mod or any game. I appreciate the help from Dreylin and others on this thread.

Playing on warlord level, I won on turn 402 (remember you start on 79, IIRC), and was rated Cthulhu level (the very top)! Knowing what I know now, I think it's definitely doable at higher levels, but I don't have the stamina for that. I spent about 10 hours on my first try, 30 hours on my second try, and the final successful try took 21 hours.

The northeast island you start on has room for 8 or 9 cities. I made 7 to make optimal use of resources. There is also a one-square island near your capital that can become a powerhouse. So that's 8 cities in the north.

Incidentally, I started on a northern island that had both reagents (needed for Archmages) and incense (needed for Priors, your only healers until you get the angel whose name starts with an S). You HAVE to have those resources and you CAN'T hold them on the mainland. So I suggest rerolling if your starter continent (or at last starter continent plus southern island) lacks these resources. Trust me on this.

The first strategic goal is to QUICKLY conquer the Clan island in the southest corner. I did that with just the one galleon ferrying a couple of loads of confessors and archers. When I took out the Clan, they had only 3 small cities. You should have this continent conquered by about turn 150 or sooner. This south island has room for 9 more cities.

So that's all you need: 17 cities on those two islands. You'll only ever keep one more city--when you start attacking Tebryn, you need one fortified city on a hill to do some attrition. Best city is the orange guys's city just a little to the SW of the Tebryn stronghold.

I doubt it is possible to win this scenario without the Luchuirp, so make sure to help Beeri in The Momus. I made all of my cities Luchuirp, except for one Lanun (to get Guybrush Threepwood) and one Bannor (to get Donal). However, I never ended up needing Donal, so if I did it again I'd do one Lanun and all the rest Luchuirp.

Also, I agree with Dreylin that you HAVE to go with The Order religion for this one.

Your build up before you start a-conquering the evil vassals is about 200 turns. It's VERY important to build wall to wall pirate coves, on every possible square. I must have had 40 of them. The island city near your capital can support 3. It's also VERY important to spread Order to all 17 of your cities. These are key infrastructure points.

Magic. As the Lanun, you start with Air, Chaos, and Water in your palace. I never used any of those very much. But the Lanun have the best palace IMO so I didn't change that. It's good to have Air and Water, because if you add Fire and Earth, you can build the Tower of the Elements and have extra strong elementals. I know a lot of people swear by Maelstrom (Air II), but I don't use it much. I only ever take one Water upgrade--your first adept should take Spring to turn all the desert squares on the northern island into grasslands. You don't need that for the southern island.

Okay, you have Air, Chaos and Water. You also get Law eventually from the Order holy building. You have two nodes on the n. island and three on the s. island. What to do with them?

You have to have Enchantment to repair the robots (golems). And you have to have Fire to give the fireball to the robots and to your mages. So that's what you build on the northern island.

What to do with the 3 nodes on the s. island. You HAVE to have Life for the Destroy Undead spell. It also gives a good health bonus. The final two are optional. I took Earth, so that I'd have all 4 elemental magics, so that I'd have stronger elementals. For the last one, I took Entropy, since Dreyil said this was necessary for the Rust spell (which is said to be useful for knocking down the bonuses of the evil Infernal Crossbowmen at the end of the game). However, every single time I cast Rust it was resisted, probably because I made generalist mages and didn't just make a few that specialized in Rust plus combat strength. Therefore, Rust was useless to me. If I played it again, I'd pick Metamagic, to boost all the other magic.

So my final magic lineup was:

Law - from Order holy bldg. (tablets of Junil)

Air - from Lanun palace
Chaos
Water

Fire - n. island
Enchantment

Life - s. island
Earth
Entropy (but I now recommend Metamagic)

As you can see from my note above, I wish I had more carefully specialized my mages. The key mage spells for this scenario are: Fireball, Repair, Destroy Undead (and possibly Rust if specialized for this). If you try to get each mage to do all of them, they're all weak. You only need 3 or 4 repair mages in your killer stacks, not 20 or 30 or more as I had. You also only need maybe 4 or 5 destroy undead mages in those killer stacks, not the many I had. Specialize. Build up strength and mobility.

Assassins. Dreyil was very helpful in advising to build assassins, so you can pick off Ritualists in close-by enemy stacks. I completely agree. But I built way too many of them (about 20). You could win the game with only four or five of them.

Heroes. Playing this way, you get Valin (from Order). Guybrush (from Lanun). Black Wind (from Lanun). And Donal, if you make a Bannor city, but I now think this is not necessary. The Black Wind is good for early dominance of the seas, but not needed in the late part of the game. You could get by the whole game with nothing but Valin. Make sure to take drill all the way down, and mobility, so that Valin can end up attacking several times every turn! At the end game you get Sphenor (sp?) the angel, a super unit. You could win without him, but he is VERY useful.

Healing. You can't heal the robots, but you can repair them. To heal living units, there are only three things I observed: (1) they heal a little when promoted; (2) you can build four Priors (high priests) if you have incense, plus Sphenor (sp?) the angel also heals; and (3) confessors have the useful feature called Spirit Guide that heals all units in their stack if they are killed. I found this very useful in the very early parts of the game.

Your armies are mainly lots and lots of fireball iron golems backed up by mages. That by itself is enough for everything up to the final battles.

I started attacking the mainland by the time I was about one-third done with my development of the south island. My main army quickly destroyed the Gosea (the blue ones to the east). It then swung north and attacked the light blue guys up there.

A second big army was then simultaneously sent from the south to attack the orange guys plus Hyborem.

The northern army swept south, and the southern army swept north, in a giant pincer movement, destroying everything.

I highly recommend wiping out Hyborem to get the +2 weapon Gela (which I gave to Valin) and to remove irritations on your flanks.

Keep the orange guys alive until you finish off Hyborem. The last orange city you conquer will be the strong one on a hill on the coastline just a little ways to the west of the stronghold of Tebryn's evil purple forces. This is the ONLY city you will ever keep or found on the mainland. Stick BOTH of your main armies in there for awhile to withstand the onslaught, because as soon as that city falls, and the border barrier is lifted, Tebryn will send wave after wave.

In my second try at this scenario, I was overwhelmed. I'd waited too long and there were simply way the heck too many evil guys, plus I didn't have proper preparation (such as Destroy Undead mages).

Dreylin said he got Valin to the end of the promotion tree. He spent a long time hunkered down on the mainland, protected by his own Crossbowmen, killing hundreds upon hundreds of evil forces. This didn't happen to me. My Valin was only about level 13 at the end. In my game, I only stayed in that orange city for maybe 15 turns while repelling Tebryn's hordes and gathering reinforcements of my own.

Then I went and wiped Tebryn out.

I found it surprisingly easy to wipe out Tebryn's forces--until I got to the core of his territory in broken lands.

I had my main army with about 40 units parked in a citadel bombing the Tebryn capital of Galveholm every turn. I sent about 30 units in a second army, nearly all golems and mages, up north to park in another citadel and bomb the city of Frost, three squares NE of Galveholm. Finally, a third elite commando group led by the angel took out all the Tebryn cities to the east.

I was planning to wipe out all other cities and then to attack the Tebryn capital from three directions with three armies. But it didn't work out that way.

Galveholm and Frost have some kind of unbelievable defense bonus plus an unbelievable regeneration bonus. Galveholm is on the coast, so my fleet reduced its defense bonus to 0 every turn. I razed surrounding citadelas. And still, I'd bomb it every turn with something like 25 fireballs and 4 fire elementals and never kill a thing!

Meanwhile, my golems and mages attacking Frost had the same problem. Hundreds of fireballs, and no progress at all.

After being frustrated by this for about 10 turns, I moved my major stack (with Valin and Guybrush) up from Galveholm to join the forces attacking Frost. The combined army had more than 70 units, and I was able to use Valin every turn (since the citadel is right next to Frost, while the citadels near Galveholm are 2 squares away).

That was enough. After about five turns I destroyed the city of Frost.

Then something amazing happened! The spreading blight of the infernal lands began to lift. Broken lands tiles started randomly turning back into normal lands every turn. (I forgot to check if my ability to self-heal came back.) PLUS, destroying the neighboring city of Frost DESTROYED THE DEFENSE BONUS in the capital! Once Frost was gone, it was RIDICULOUSLY easy to defeat the huge dragon Abbasi and the remaining defenders of the capital. Indeed, I bombed them from long range as I approached, and I had them all dead when I was still two squares from the capital! Once Frost was gone, Abbasi became vulnerable to fireballs! So I never got to see the epic battle of Valin vs. Abbasi that I'd pictured.

From all of this, I surmise that the eponymous Black Tower is actually not in the Tebryn capital at all! Instead, I think it's in Frost. Or in any event, there is SOMETHING in Frost that gives unbelievable bonuses to Frost and Galveholm.

Whew! What a brilliant scenario!

P.S. Just want to add one detail: At the end of the game, I had a HUGE population, despite only 18 cities. I had a 31 (my capital), a 30, another 30, a 29, and a 28. All of those were still growing. Lots of Great Merchants.

Cordelayne, glad I could be of some help, and congrats on winning through this one!

Rust actually has 2 effects; the stripping of the metal promo, and the addition of the Rusted promo. One or both can be resisted, so you probably were getting most of the effect.

Sanctify (lvl1 Life) should be used to clear out the Hell terrain - many of the Sheaim units get bonuses for being on it.

I actually completed the scenario without the Luchirup, but it took me a good while longer than you!

This game is so deep. Interesting about sanctify. I didn't think to use that. Also didn't realize that my Rust casts probably were actually doing something! I've got rather poor eyesight, so it's kind of hard for me to read the little micro promo icons on enemy units.

I also didn't bother with pillaging in this game. That requires spreading out lots of melee units like skirmishers and I didn't want to take the time. I had plenty of money from the pirate ports, etc.

Dreylin, I'm in awe that you finished this as non-dwarf. That's really pretty amazing.

One question: what do you think about my description of Frost and Galveholm? Did you also have the experience that once one of those super-hard nuts was cracked, the other was easy? Did you also have the experience of the lands starting to heal after Frost was destroyed, even though the capital of Galveholm, with Abbasi, was still there?

I'm not sure what to make of it tbh. I don't think that Frost is a pre-set city, because in my game the city named Frost belonged to the blue faction in the East and I captured it quite early in the game.

I certainly don't remember seeing any of the Hell terrain randomly turn back to normal, but I also don't really remember seeing it spread earlier in the game.

As for Galveholm, I didn't really have any trouble with it; by the time I hit it, it was the last city Tebryn had left and I had three armies pincering in on it. Magnadine led one in from the South, Donal the second from the North, and Guybrush and Sphener the main army from the West. Valin just ran around wherever he wanted to and picked off vulnerable units pretty-much at will.

I actually wiped the Blues out pretty early, and took a foothold on the main continent. I managed to stop Tebryn expanding Eastwards and he focused his attacks on one particular city - stack after stack came at it. There was a long period where I played a defensive game there; shredding each stack with magic and Cats then picking the injured units off with Valin & other units. Using the single heal per turn of Shrine of Sirona, and healing from promos to keep the best units available. Many more injured ones fled to back-line cities to wait for healing and were replaced by others. Once Sphener came online, I could divert some healthy troops to take out the Clan (should have done it sooner, but really couldn't be bothered!) and then Priors allowed me to go on the attack.

You did it the HARD way! Even worse than I realized, since you waited till you had Sphenor until taking out the Clan. Wow.

I hope somebody else, hopefully Kael, might comment further on my observations about Galveholm and Frost. Since Frost was not fixed like that for you, it must be different from what I thought I saw.

Nonetheless, for about 10 or 15 turns I bombarded Galveholm with scores of fireballs and fire elementals every turn and didn't kill a single purple unit. But as soon as I took out the neighboring city, suddenly the units in Galveholm were vulnerable and I wiped them all out in about four turns, entirely by bombardment. Something is very unusual, and delightful, in the programming there.

Now I'm on to Fall of Cuantine, or however it's spelled, since I'm marching through all 18 scenarios from the top. Looks like this one will be a piece of cake compared to the black tower.

Great write-up of your victory! I really enjoyed reading it. However...

I made all of my cities Luchuirp, except for one Lanun (to get Guybrush Threepwood) and one Bannor (to get Donal). However, I never ended up needing Donal, so if I did it again I'd do one Lanun and all the rest Luchuirp.

Also, I agree with Dreylin that you HAVE to go with The Order religion for this one.


One of the wonderful things about FFH is that there's so many different ways to do so many different things that there's pretty much no such thing as "have to". I won this scenario without Beeri or the Order by going OO, which gave me an army of Stygian guards (who can heal) and Tsunami to annihilate all coastal cities (and this scenario has a TON of coast). I think any strategy with non-living units is a viable one.

Yeah, this scenario is one of the ones that have about 200 different ways to win. For example, I just sailed over to the main island with my starting settlers and rushed all the minor leaders with Valin and Donal. I actually found Donal to be quite useful, because if you play it right he can recruit every turn in a city under attack. That bonus can stop the Sheaim armies in thier tracks.
I never did this scenario with the Luchurip, but found that rushing the Sheaim early on with your heroes that you get from all the factions cuts down greatly on the lategame slog and makes Tebryn very easy to take down once you get Sphener to kill Abashi.

I'm not sure if this is the place for it, but The Black Tower crashes my game every time I load it. I've played and beaten every scenario up to it, and some after. I was running .41d and then just loaded .41i and it still isn't working. Any ideas? The scenario looks sweet and I can't wait to play!

I'm playing the scenarios from top to bottom. Immediately after finishing the Radiant Guard I was able to start the Black Tower, and fortunately I saved that game on turn 1 - because afterwards the game crashes every time I try to start the scenario.

Anyway, my feedback for the Black Tower (noble diff.): Great idea and setup, but easily exploited by building Saverous. He is a demon and thus heals. I sent him with the galleon counterclockwise through the infernals. Beelined his promotions to march and blitz, then combat & CR. Frankly he was absolutely unstoppable, and never took a turn to rest and heal. When reaching the dragon, he won the battle at >90% odds, while only 212 of 288 accumulated xp was spent (I always kept enough xp to heal the big wounds by promotions).

Momus & Radiant Guard were way harder. I suggest to block every player unit from healing, not just humans. And probably take both march and blitz out of FFH completely - these promos are just too powerful when combined with heroes.

Hello -

First off, I loved this scenario and ffh2 in general. Great work guys!

In regards to this scenario, I tried to styles, one was much better than the other. First style was building an army of cannons, plus some good regular troops with healers. This was too slow and cannons are just too weak. So I don't recommend it.

Next I read many of the posts here and decided to go for Octopus Overlords. I played a few games and eventually beat Immortal on turn 325. I beat deity similarly, but I employed some "light cheating" via world-builder.

Here are my thoughts:

#1: This game is about tech. So tech up quickly and build your empire before trying to attack. Pirate coves and lots of cities (7 in the starting island) are needed. I played starts with marble so I could build the heron throne and great library cheaper. On the higher levels getting the bone palace is too hard.
#2: Go for Octopus Overlords. Cultists and Stygian guards are great. You can use them to beat any coastal city easily. I didn't bother with Saverious. He is equal to a stygian guard (+25% melee vs. march) but requires a different tech. Getting him early isn't too useful (I got him around turn 280) at higher difficulty levels since your opponents are too powerful to have him walk around and kill everyone.
#3: Back-up your units with fireball iron golems. This way you don't need weak catapults. These are longer-term so you'll have to conquer without them (or with only a few).
#4: Run slavery. With the lanun and huge food stocks you want lighthouses everywhere and whip various improvements. this is how I built my empire so quickly. I got this tech early (after writing and message from the deep)
#5: Get the black wind early. On immortal and deity ships comes quickly so you need a strength 11 black wind early (change his crews to give him +1 strength and -1 move).
#6: Settle the island to the SE (see other posts for how to make sure it is empty). If you get the great lighthouse, trade and run foreign trade, you new cities will get 7-8 traderoutes. This is enough to make them profitable (run city states not god-king) which means you can spam cities and increase your tech rate by 10-15 bulbs a city to start off with (they get more later).
#7 Attack the orange guy on the island in the south first. A few frigates, 3 cultists and 5 stygian guards are enough to conquer and settle the island. In my games he only settles 2 cities, but I build ~3 more which provided some late game production.
#8 Healers and mages are useful but not very important. I barely needed them and only got them after I had already pretty much won. Mages with life mana (for destroy undead) would have been good if I could figure out how to get mages faster.
#9 Get the key magic spells though: rust (hurt crossbowmen), blazing sword (I forget what it is called, but all your units get a permanent +20% strength), repair (dwarven only). Destroy undead is good but I could not get mages fast enough (it is a level 2 spell) to make it worthwhile.
#10 Conquer the enemy nearest you and settle there. This way your opponents will throw small armies at you which you can beat piecemeal and it raises your research and production. It also reduces the chance your enemies empire will grow (since you are nearby) which is really important for the purple guy since you can't enter his territory.
#11 Research mitheral working early - it is a huge bonus and makes stygian guards strength 11 out of the box plus a bonus versus iron. It's all you need. If you are fast enough you can beat most of your enemies before they have lots of crossbowmen (which they only get when certain units die). And if you are careful you should not lose many units. Arequebuses are easily killed.
#12 Build tons of cultists, stygian guards and fireball golems to conquer the earth. Focus on military production after about turn ~230. There is no need to build anything else. Whip units periodically and don't forget to build man of wars. On deity they get them pretty fast so if you're not ready you can lose your troops en-route. Later on they aren't needed as much b/c you'll have razed most coastal cities.

Milestone: You should have more than 150 research by turn 150 and over 1000 in the late game (say turn 275 or so). Again this is done with trade routes and overseas trade. Like most civ games this one is about speed - don't let them spread everywhere or you will have problems!

My two cents and good luck!

-- Manic

Whenever you get the relevant technology, the civ's hero comes without any effort (iron working for Guybrush, warhorses for the Hippus etc.)

Regarding healing, Siron's touch closed that corner for me. I also used the level up healing - I weaked the enemies with magic and then attacked with injured units. The enemies were weak enough to defeat, I got plenty of XP and a healed unit.
Doing the above helped me get Guybrush so powerful that when I met the dragon he kicked his ass with 95% chances of victory.

Some of my units did get raised as Demons, but since I avoided using weak units, I got around that. Didn't kill The demon lord though. Didn't see a point...

Too bad there is not hint that you can get the other civs for this mission. The events that trigger them are too vauge...

I'm not sure if this is the place for it, but The Black Tower crashes my game every time I load it. I've played and beaten every scenario up to it, and some after. I was running .41d and then just loaded .41i and it still isn't working. Any ideas? The scenario looks sweet and I can't wait to play!

Same for me with patch .41m, although I only completed the three required scenarios.

I hate to say it, but Sphener, Paladins, and Life Mana make this scenario incredibly easy, at least until the very end. If I would have bothered to build Priors it would have been even easier. I was only on Warlord as opposed to my usual Prince though, so I'll try it later on a harder difficulty.

The Momus and the Radiant Guard were both much harder scenarios, though. I liked Black Tower a lot more. And the map was really awesome.

Same for me with patch .41m, although I only completed the three required scenarios.

Yea, I played this once before (didn't finish it though) but now it crashes when I try to load this scenario.

Yea, I played this once before (didn't finish it though) but now it crashes when I try to load this scenario.

Crashes on me too, latest version dl'd a few weeks ago. The workaround to load from the worldbuilder works, but I'm not sure if that bypasses anything. I saw one person mention "starts with marble", so if you get to pick a starting bonus normally, you don't get to from the worldbuilder loading.

I Finished the scenario again (Prince level) a few days back after first completing the stand alone missions and choosing to Basium side on the radiant guard. There was no forth&fifth enemy (demons or Orcs) and I had a variety of cities of build (built all of them). But the bottom line remains that the AI is a no brainier. If you have destroy undead, most of the fire zombies die when you are casting the magic from a near by ship. I took off three stooges with no effort. Killing the main dish was a bit harder but again, with enough lighting, dwarven druids and fire balls, not even the dragon could stand Guybrush's sword (man you got to love the FFH2 team for bringing him in the game)

Yea, I played this once before (didn't finish it though) but now it crashes when I try to load this scenario.This is crashing for me as well.

I followed a version of Cordelayne's strategy, focusing on Fireball Golems, Priors, Mages and Sphener. While I had to reload saves a few times due to Assasins taking out my Mages, I had a lot of fun razing cities and destroying Tebryn's SoDs until I built The Nexus, which allowed me to teleport Arquebuses and Confessors into newly conqured cities. Pitting Sphener against Abashi was great, although the battle against Tebryn turned into a curbstomp right after that. Meanwhile, my economy was flourishing due to the great resources of my home isle and the southern one.

In fact, I kept playing even when I won, colonizing the ruins of cities I razed earlier, building the Tower of Alteration (I already had TotE earlier), and terraforming the land.

Elder Methyl,

You may want to build a Bannor City or a few; they will have untis with marksmen. That should take care of the assassin threat.

Best wishes,

Breunor

Actually, I did build one Bannor city in the later stages of the game, when I was mustering a second stack for Tebryn's southern cities. As for my first one, I managed to give Guybrush the Guardsman promo, and send Donal there once I got him. I also used my Fireball spam on any stack with Assasins. That said, acquiring Guardsman Arquebusiers was fun and novel.

Well, off to give my thoughts on Return of Winter!

the last patch(es) make this scenario crash (i had the same problem).

going back to 41b solves the problem (also with the not exploding pyre zombies). leave the trophy folder untouched when removing (i reinstalled bts and ffh2 for some other reasons and found out about this) and you can play on the scenarios without replaying any of them:)