Pyre Zombies

Well, I just met these guys and it wasn't fun.

I was having a blast playing this game as the dark elves. I wasn't playing very well, since I was unfamiliar with the game, but I was having fun. In order to compensate for a bad start, I had a big war against the circus freaks and managed to capture several of their cities and their capital that had plagued my empire since the start with its quickly expanding culture. Fine, I made peace and got a nice reward of 5 techs. They were scared to jitters under their poor makeup.

Two turns later some chick in purple declares war on me, 12 burning guys appear next to my city and destroy my entire invasion army and capture the circus capital I spent hours to capture. I even had some cool giants there that I got from a WW. The worst thing is that they didn't even pause to gaze menacingly - it took 1 round to destroy my entire army and capture a city. Without breaking a sweat!

Having played CivIV a lot I was seriously expecting something that does collateral damage to have a cap of sorts. After my troops had been slaughtered by these troops of inferior quality with maybe 3-4 losses among the zombies, I checked the Civipedia and... No cap!?

This is a ridiculous unit. I agree that it may be fun to devise tactics against stacks like these and probably very enjoyable to use them "ingeniously" but seriously...

Most of the people defending BZs here must be using them themselves. After getting my magnificent army handed over to me on a plate of ribs and hot sauce, the first thought that went through my head was: "I gotta play that civ", so it's not that hard a thought to come by.

Is this the easy way? Just choose the right civ and spam warriors and then spam the world with BZs?

I don't want to play on easy mode, so I'd rather see these guys changed. They are by no means comparable to other troops of their tier, and they will remain immensely useful from the start probably to the very end of the game. I can't see how this is balanced.

Suggestion: add a damage cap and do it now, for the squid god's flying tentacles. CivIV was way too easy to win by spamming catapults and cannons, even with damage caps!

I have little experience from the game so far, so I'll keep investigating, but my first impression is a blinking red light and a claxon crying "UNBALANCED, UNBALANCED!"

AWOOGA, AWOOGA! UNBALANCED!
 
I feel your pain, man with education avatar.

I'm just going to say this now. I'm pretty sheit at civ in general, and this mod is no exception. It's not that the mod's terrible, on the contrary. I think this is the best thing that's ever happened to civ, and I dread that FFH won't be coming back for civ5. Still, I applaud their progress turning into a standalone game. Let's see what Stardock does with it...

(now for what I've actually been meaning to say)

I was playing on noble difficulty on a fractal map as the Amurites. I got through the early game without much incident (several units died to barbs though... QQ), though I found myself boxed in by the Sheim and the Hippus. I found a city near the Sheim. I'm jamming in my little corner of the world, I get up to archers (I was probably slow, I'll admit), and trigger an event from a shipwreck, which spawns 4 drown. Surprisingly, they ignore my decently-defended city and go to the Sheim directly. A few more turns and the Sheim declare on me (actually like 2 turns... that cheeky armored prick...). What the...? Seven Pyre Zombles against 3 warriors and 2 archers?

Distraught, I, needless to say, worldedited this atrocity from existence. The Sheim reeally want that city, and stream a few zombles through. Still, it's only a few. I should be able to deal with this...

Oh, wait. No I can't. They have a whopping (kidding!) five strength, and according to the combat interface, I don't have a prayer of winning. Is it just me, or do these seem like they're too accessible for second-tier units?
 
FFH is supposed to operate on the maxim "if everything is unbalanced, then nothing is" though it does occasionally falls short.

And yeah, PZ's can be deadly. They can be counteracted with highly mobile horse units that kill off one PZ at a time, or mages with Destroy Undead - a Life 2 spell (it takes 2-3 of these spells to destroy PZ's). These counters come slighly later then PZ's themselves, though.
 
Although it is unspeakably inconsequential, as there will not officially be a FfH 3 for any new Civ games, I just feel obliged to share my thoughts. I never can seem to make up my mind as far as tech goes, and I usually end up getting horsemen and Horse Archers at the very end, so I would be absolutely terrible at Hippus.

Heck, I usually don't know what I'm doing, but that's what makes it interesting.
 
Fireballs are actually very good for defending against that kind of attack.
 
Top Bottom