Vampires?

cdogg

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A stupid question. I've searched everywhere....
What buildings/techs do i need to start creating vampires with calabim?
 
A stupid question. I've searched everywhere....
What buildings/techs do i need to start creating vampires with calabim?

Feudalism and a governor's mansion.
 
Or Fanaticism to get Losha (only able to get promo on units not the actually Vampire Unit)
 
A stupid question. I've searched everywhere....
What buildings/techs do i need to start creating vampires with calabim?

You can check the civilopedia, by the way. It shows the building and tech requirements to build things. Since some 'unique' units in FFH can require vastly differing things, it's worth it to double check.
 
From within the game, you find it just like you would find the normal Civ IV civilopedia.

Without loading the game, you could look directly in C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Text\CIV4GameText_FFH2.xml for the text of the civilopedia.
 
Another question on vampires:

I tried out the Calabim for the first time, going immediately for Emperor level, comfortable in the knowledge that Vampires were super-powerful and... their spells are good, but the 5 stars or so they get make them only slightly better than the AI's masses of 3 star units.

I'm not sure about what I'm doing wrong (except researching Sanitation much too late)
I try to Feast regularly out of my 2 biggest cities, but not too much so they can grow with my happiness cap. Something like once every 10 turns in each.
(I'm not sure how long the unhappiness lasts, I always forget to keep track of it :p)
And I bring my Vampires to about 50xp, considering that the benefit decreases as lvl rises.

Is there a special technique to make the perfect feeding spot, and a better way of managing your pool of vampires?

I'll be glad for any advice.

Cheers,
Jules
 
F12 key on keyboard for the in game civpedia. it tells 95% of everything there is to know about FFH2.
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the calabim is NOT an easy civ to truly play well.

in a competitive game, it's hard to take full advantage of their abilities. you won't be able to feast much or it'll bring your cities/game down and probably lose.

maybe the best idea for a competitive game, is to try to get a powerful enough force to take a(n) (ai or human city), THAN feast on those captured cities dry (down to population 1).

it's probably better/easier to get their hero unit losha, and use her to take cities. u won't have to feast as much since she is a hero unit and get +1 exp per turn. when she kills a living unit, she becomes immortal. she can grant ANY unit vampirism allowing them to feast (powerful when u do on magic units). i'm pretty sure she has higher str than vampires but i'm not sure about the final (national) units, vampire lord (immortal) and brujah (berserker).

the calabim require many things to really utilize their full powerful potential. this is very hard to do in a competitive game. it's really a balancing act that requires you to be at the veteran-pro level of a player.

the biggest thing to know:

FEASTING is very nice, but it's limited. so don't rely on it too much in a competitive game.

also this is really helpful to know:

*the governor manor building gives +1 production for each unhappiness in a city. this allows u to get extra production as u FEAST your city and make unhappy people. also u usually have farms and nearly no production, so this is a way to get production.

it's better to do all your FEASTING in-on 1 turn. this is because, all the unhappiness u make will go away in 10 turns. whereas if u FEAST each turn, 10 turns only removes 1 unhappiness than another turn to remove anohter unhappiness. it jsut builds up and takes longer to get rid of all the unhappiness. when u feast all at once in-on 1 turn u only get penalized for that 1 turn. if u feast each turn u get penalized and penalized. this is much worse. just don't over do the FEASTING and bring your civ down into ruin.

i'd have a single city be your feasting city. build the city based on the fact that u need as much food as possible. build all the farms u can. build breeding pit, granary, and the other like building (forgot it's name. its the same as the granary but gives health bonus for cows, pigs, etc.) as these help your civ grow back faster. do NOT build anything important here otherwise, because this city is going to shift between 20+ pop and ~5 pop constantly.

use otehr cities to bring in your commerce and such, since they always stay big as u aren't feasting off them.
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in a non-competitive game:

u can city spam REX and have a huge empire. completely farm up the empire. get the food techs, economy techs, civics, and vampire-losha techs. get a religion. build happiness and health buildings and get the techs. etc... than FEAST all u want with your super massive farm cities.

as u can see this is completely impractical in a competitive game. the calabim seem like a good civ for new players, but for competitive play it really take a veteran or pro player to play the calabim.
 
I tried out the Calabim for the first time, going immediately for Emperor level, comfortable in the knowledge that Vampires were super-powerful and... their spells are good, but the 5 stars or so they get make them only slightly better than the AI's masses of 3 star units.

Don't rely too much on your basic vampires. Yes they can get a lot of XP, but they will always be weaker than an equely promoted champion, just because the champion has a higher base strenght and a bonus vs. melee. Yes, you can use them as summoners, they are cheaper to build then mages.

But there real strenght lies in there upgrade abilaty. T4 units upgraded from vampires are always better than equaly promoted none vampires.
 
Thanks guys, that's good advice :goodjob:

I wasn't doing competitive MP, but Emperor-lvl SP.
But I have a hard time at that lvl, I have to play every card I have to win :p
 
I'd take Bronze Vampires with Ashen Veil and Necromancy to increase Spectre Death affinity than Iron Moroi + Losha Valas.

On Monarch or below you should be able to manage 300 beakers per turn with Flauros by turn 200 or shortly afterwards. This can be achieved using Aristocracy, Ashen Veil with Religion civic, and Governor's mansions to increase your production.
 
it's better to do all your FEASTING in-on 1 turn. this is because, all the unhappiness u make will go away in 10 turns. whereas if u FEAST each turn, 10 turns only removes 1 unhappiness than another turn to remove anohter unhappiness. it jsut builds up and takes longer to get rid of all the unhappiness. when u feast all at once in-on 1 turn u only get penalized for that 1 turn. if u feast each turn u get penalized and penalized. this is much worse. just don't over do the FEASTING and bring your civ down into ruin.

I'm not sure if this is correct.

The unhappiness from feasting is strange, and I've never quite figured it out, but I'm pretty sure it is NOT like the unhappiness from whipping or drafting. A) I'm not sure if it really does take 10 turns to go away, and B) I KNOW that feasting on consecutive turns doesn't raise the unhappiness from feasting. I almost always set up "feeder" cities that grow every turn and that I feast from every turn, and those cities always have only 1 :mad: from feasting. On the other hand I've had really enormous cities that I've feasted from once per turn for many, many turns, and that I've also occasionally feasted from more than once per turn, and those cities sometimes have +3 or +4 :mad: from feasting. In my experience, don't worry too much about over-feasting your cities, as it's hard to really ruin your happy caps by doing it, even if you feast more than once every 10 turns.
 
I didn't even consider it being different from whipping, so I avoided at all cost feasting in a city that still suffered the effect of a previous feasting...

It would help if the mechanic was more transparent.
 
needless to say, the best option is to take a city of a rival and instead of destroying it, FEAST "destroy" it :D

if u ever play sheim civ and get to their archmage unit, eater of dreams, the same concept applies but they don't get exp, they get their spell casting ability back.
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vamps work alright, jsut beware any smart humans (i don't think the ai have been programmed this well yet) who use rust....having a 4 str vamp from having lost his metal upgrades to rust spell...will make even a 1400 exp vampire unit useless against a 6+ str champion with no exp.
 
Just a question that may be off topic...Can you induce vampirism to a recon unit? Is feast possible under Mask CoE when attacking rival cities or perhaps use it with shadow units (if any) I know the Svartalfar have the kidnap ability, not sure if feast can work the same way...
 
None of the Vampire spells take unitcombat into account, so Shadows can use it.


However, the Feast spell only works in your own territory.
 
FoL + GoN for big cities (Especially after Pit + Granary + Smokehouse). Eat from them, then work the metal line to get Vamps with lots of starting strength to go with their % bonuses gained from levels.

Keep a few Regeneration casters in a stack, and plop out groups of skeletons before making an assault to soften the defense.
 
The unhappiness from feasting is strange, and I've never quite figured it out, but I'm pretty sure it is NOT like the unhappiness from whipping or drafting.

The way feasting unhappiness works is this:

One of the potential unhappiness factors is "We cannot forget your cruel oppression" which is ridiculous because they do forget fairly quickly. Possible sources of cruel oppression that they very easily forget is slavery whipping, vampire feasting, and various events - almost anything that says "temporary unhappiness" in its description (not the draft, separate mechanic, IIRC). The number of angry faces you get in the city for temporary unhappiness is directly tied to how long the unhappiness lasts. In a normal speed game (it scales based on game speed) 10 turns of unhappiness = 1 unhappy face. You always round up to the nearest whole number of angry faces, so 1-10 turns of temporary unhappiness = 1 angry face, 11-20 = 2 angry faces 21-30 = 3, etc. If a city currently has temporary unhappiness from one source and you cause more from some other source, it just adds to the number of turns of unhapiness in the city. If this doesn't increase it past the next multiple of 10, then it won't increase the number of angry faces. Using slavery always will because whipping adds 10 every time (regardless of pop lost). Easy way to determine who many turns of temp unhappiness you have left is to mouse over the slavery rush button and subtract 10 from the number of turns it displays.

Feasting causes 3 turns of temporary unhappiness (on normal speed), so if there isn't any temporary unhappiness in the city already, you can feast 3 times in one turn for just one angry face (9 turns of temporary unhappiness). Once 2 turns have passed, it will be down to 7 and you can feast once more without getting any extra unhappy faces. Past that you have to wait 3 turns between feasting if you want to maintain only one angry face from feasting.
 
what game is totally missing is countereffect to vampires from sun mana. Every sun mana effect should be remarkably devastating to vampires - it was extremely funny to observe how "blinding light" was resisted by vampires:crazyeye:

so my propositions: lvl1 sun spell scroch strips strips vampires from immunities ( maybe on cast affects up to 4 vampires)

therefore lvl 2 spell blinding light should affect vampires 100% plus reduces vampires attack and defence 30%

lvl3 spell summon aurealis: does + 100% dmg to vampires and after killing vampire heals himself fully.
 
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