The Black Tower

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:)
 
This was my favorite scenario so far, by far. I was done with Civ IV and decided to check out FFH. It's all I have played for about 3 months. What a great job Kael and team.

Lots of discussion on this board and it was certainly a challenging scenario with the lack of healing (Prince level, normally I play Noble). When I first beachheaded the big island in the SE I knew trouble was coming and then the first stacks of assassins and PZ came...I had mainly warriors and mages to slow them down, but gradually we built up and spread across the island until our boarders touched Tebryn. I chose Order and used the Lanun/coves to dominate in tech (my most common unit built was work boat = 116). We won the culture war slowly pushing them back. Ended at turn 532, 30 hours 15 minutes, future tech 20 (which allowed mega cities), had 7 golden ages (one from a dungeon, one from religion/event, one bone palace), and kills:
Skeleton 367
Spectre 348
Ritualist 265
Assassins 135
Pit Beast 91
Mage 77
(not sure why they didn't use as many PZ against me as some others, and I had not much in the way of naval attacks my way...I had an armada of arcane barges).

I lost 287 fireballs and 99 horse archers, among others. I built only horse archers in a Hippus city on the main continent that had a number of workshops and Ride of Nine Kings; these were very useful for punching into enemy territory.

I know only have Mulcarn Reborn awaiting me, and then I think my wife is making me pack up FFH for a while. Again, amazing amazing game FFH team - this may be my favorite game of all time. (hopefully I can convince my wife to let me play for the rest of the trophies, and it will be fun as I still have no idea what the baboon is or who Brigit is, except she is killed early in some of the Erebus games I play, and have to play some evil civs and get the AC ~100).
 
Congrats on your win! I also finished Black Tower recently, and shared your experience returning to Civ 4 after a few years and installing FFH. Regular Civ 4 feels unplayable to me now.

I played through on Emperor, after restarting twice on Deity. On Deity I used a colonize the mainland strategy (got hit by a huge stack and couldn't defend it) and also a Stygian/Cultist rush. Stygian/Cultist was powerful enough to take out the closest AI, but started to bog down after that.

On my third try I dropped the difficulty and used an Order/Golem strat. I rushed to expand with minimal defenses and colonized the lower swamp continent. I didn't land on the mainland until I had Sphener and paladins, backed up by fireball Iron Golems. I kept building IGs, dwarven Life 2 mages, and Queens of the Line until I had a large secondary invasion force that did an amphibious assault on the Orange AI in the south. Once Tebryn stopped sending stacks east, my main army cut across the north, taking out the northern AI and meeting up with my secondary army in the west, which had just taken out Hyborem. The two forces met up and struck east into Tebryn from the back. Abashi died to Donal Lugh in a pretty anticlimactic fight and after that it was all mopping up.

The biggest challenge I had in this scenario was random draws on resources. It really helps to have marble in your opening area for a quick Heron Throne. You also need at least 2 mana nodes (fire, life) and incense. I didn't have incense so I had to take a city on Tebryn's border that had access to it. Without that, there's no healing besides Sphener.

I think if you can find incense on your main continent, it's better to go Runes-->Empyrean so you can keep Neutral alignment and build dwarven druids + chalid. Theoretically, you could then split up your Luridus into 2-4 stacks and have a healer and a stack crusher in each of your armies. Your combat forces probably don't need to be nearly as big when you have Crush/Pillar of Fire+healing.

The second biggest challenge I had was war weariness. I had to switch out of city states and religion back into Aristocracy and Nationhood to deal with it. Even 7-8 future techs could not keep up with the penalty for me.
 
The island isolation helps early in this scenario and as the game progress I focused in building flesh golems( commune whit nature and strength of will) 8+1 from Gibon + some mages whit life2, from then on it was a rampage on sheam territory. golems do heal and at high strength+march promo they are at full health at the beginning of the turn and 99% victory chance on any combat
 
Is it intended that HN units can heal as normal?
 
I hope no one who gets notifications minds the revival of this thread.

I finished playing this scenario again recently and found an interesting trick/exploit that wasn't mentioned above (as far as I could tell).

Obviously, the non-healing for most units in this scenario is a big deal. I played the way most people recommended with an emphasis on OO and Life 2.

It occurred to me, what if I used Hastur's Razor (Hemah) to at least move the damage around? And could I eventually move it around to nothing? My SoD was full of Stygian guards and Saverous. I moved out of range all of the non-healing units that weren't damaged so far and cast it. Sure enough, it moved the damage around, including to units who could heal. A couple turns of the same procedure, and all of my units were back to full strength. :)

Anyway, I hope if you see this >3 years after the last post you find it amusing or even use it sometime.
 
Like how are you post to launch the Black Tower from the Scenario files cause when i lauch it lauches Civ4 but don't launch ffh2 scenario
 
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