Some basic questions

Bum

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 4, 2014
Messages
17
Hey there,

After several years I reinstalled Civ IV just to play the wonderful Fall from Heaven II mod. Now that I started to get into it, I got some some questions:

1) How does one gift units to an AI faction? Is this even possible?

2) Is there somewhere a "primer" of sorts that explains how one should go about turning magic into a weapon? I started my first campaign knowing nothing at all about the magic aspects of FFH and the civiliopedia wasn't very useful in enlightening me about it... I only understood that you're supposed to build Adepts as a first start, and they will automatically level up, with time, until they have 100 XP, and somewhere along the line they become "real" mages and learn more than the fairly basic spells they start out with.

3) How do I turn Iron into a booster for my army? Iron popped up as a resource next to a city of mine after some tech research, and I promptly built a mine on top of it, but I don't see Iron in my resource list, and there's nothing about my units that says "we now use Iron, yay". I noticed there are some more techs that are named "Iron-something", I am researching one of them in the hope that it will let me use the iron resource for my armies.... and I have urgent need to get any boost, because...

4) Is there a way to defeat Rosier the Fallen and his 31 pyre zombies??? :D I have beat the Sheaims' pyre zombies on a couple of occasions in this campaign, including some 8-10 stacks of pyre zombies so I know what they can do. But right now it looks like I am done for. As a newbie who got assigned the Calabim through the "give me a random neutral civ" start option, I didn't know I was supposed to go for Vampires and feast them on my population surplus. So the army stack I have available consists of mostly conventional stuff... maybe 6-8 horse archers, 6-7 Morois, a bunch of archers, 5 catapults, four Adepts (who know only basic stuff), Bambur and two of those basic Runes-of-Something worshipping guys who provide some limited healing to my units. Is there any chance for me to stop Rosier and his doomstack?? There's still some ground between him and my cities (including a castle on a hill where I am gathering my forces to make a stand) and even if he takes that castle I have still a couple of turns left until he gets into the pain zone. I can force-draft another couple of units, but I don't know if the unit types I have access to are really so grand. Horse archers is pretty much the best I can muster and in the past my tactics consisted of throwing horse archers + bambur + suicide Morois at enemy cities. My basic plan is to do that same thing to Rosier... and hope it kills him and enough pyre zombies so the rest of the stack turns back home.

Many thanks in advance!
 
1) Move them into their territory and a new button pops up in the unit action menu thingy.

2) No idea lol

3) Uncovering and accessing Iron are enabled by two different techs, but unfortunately I don't think it actually tells you so in an easy way.

4) dunno lal

One can see that I'm pretty much an FFH noob myself, so sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Funny thing, when I started my first FFH game I also rolled Decius of Calabim.
 
1) not in the original FFH, but if you're playing More Naval AI or ExtraModMod ( I highly recommend the latter ) , the Advanced Tactics gameoption enables unit gifting.

2) Once you research "Sorcery" tech your level4 or higher adeps can upgrade to mages and learn the second "layer" of spells, which is a lot more useful than the first of course. After you research "Strength of Will" you can upgrade level6 or higher mages to archmages and learn the third layer of spells. You can have 4 archmages max, top tier units are limited in numbers but extremely powerful.

3) Weapon upgrades are unlocked 1 tech after the one that reveals the resource:

Mining -> Bronze Working , Smelting -> Iron Working , Mithril Working -> Mithril Weapons

Alternatively, you can get 3 sources of iron without the need for techs if you adopt Runes of Kilmorph Religion, research Arete tech and then build the Mines of Gal-Dur wonder.

4) The best way to deal with massed pyre zombies is the life2 spell, Destroy Undead. The name says it all really :D
 
1) Move them into their territory and a new button pops up in the unit action menu thingy.
You mean, a new button is added to the row of buttons at the bottom of the screen? (where the disband/fortify/etc buttons are?) Or somewhere else? I thought I had already looked very closely at that row of buttons, the last time I tried to gift some archers to the AI... :confused:
What does the button look like??
2) No idea lol

3) Uncovering and accessing Iron are enabled by two different techs, but unfortunately I don't think it actually tells you so in an easy way.
:( oops... so I might as well have traded away my iron for those many turns since uncovering it
4) dunno lal
I suppose I am DOOOOOOOOOOOMED then
One can see that I'm pretty much an FFH noob myself, so sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Funny thing, when I started my first FFH game I also rolled Decius of Calabim.
The dice are loaded!!!! :D

The funny thing is, I totally didn't notice at first that I was playing a vampire race. Only after reading the FFH wikia page did all the obvious hints jump out at me! The "River of Blood" worldspell, the crazy blood magic with the Moroi, and the not-subtle-at-all hints in the "Sid's Tips" popup. Yes, I was playing a Vampire Race that is supposed to run evil civics!! :crazyeye:
 
You mean, a new button is added to the row of buttons at the bottom of the screen? (where the disband/fortify/etc buttons are?) Or somewhere else? I thought I had already looked very closely at that row of buttons, the last time I tried to gift some archers to the AI... :confused:

Yes, right there, and it should look like a gift package. Though it seems this is a feature that has been removed in FFH if I read Bum's post correctly.

:( oops... so I might as well have traded away my iron for those many turns since uncovering it

No, because you don't even possess the resource.

The funny thing is, I totally didn't notice at first that I was playing a vampire race. Only after reading the FFH wikia page did all the obvious hints jump out at me! The "River of Blood" worldspell, the crazy blood magic with the Moroi, and the not-subtle-at-all hints in the "Sid's Tips" popup. Yes, I was playing a Vampire Race that is supposed to run evil civics!! :crazyeye:

OMG Exactly the same thing happened in my first game! Coincidence, I think not!
 
[to_xp]Gekko;13310092 said:
1) not in the original FFH, but if you're playing More Naval AI or ExtraModMod ( I highly recommend the latter ) , the Advanced Tactics gameoption enables unit gifting.
The Naval AI mod, or the ExtraModMod?
2) Once you research "Sorcery" tech your level4 or higher adeps can upgrade to mages and learn the second "layer" of spells, which is a lot more useful than the first of course. After you research "Strength of Will" you can upgrade level6 or higher mages to archmages and learn the third layer of spells. You can have 4 archmages max, top tier units are limited in numbers but extremely powerful.
That much I understood from the Civiliopedia. However, I have no clue how all that magic is going to influence combat? Am I going to supplement my "conventional" army with a couple of mages whose main job is boosting the grunt? Or are the mages powerful enough to be city / stack attackers themselves? Will I end up disbanding my "grunt" army? And what sort of spells are there that can do the job of siege engines?? (Those annoyingly slow machines... I never find the patience to wait on that stack to show up for the siege.)
3) Weapon upgrades are unlocked 1 tech after the one that reveals the resource:

Mining -> Bronze Working , Smelting -> Iron Working , Mithril Working -> Mithril Weapons

Alternatively, you can get 3 sources of iron without the need for techs if you adopt Runes of Kilmorph Religion, research Arete tech and then build the Mines of Gal-Dur wonder.
Oh that's good to hear, I have Prespur building the Mines and with some assistance from my Kilmoph soldiers they're almost done. Maybe I am not so doomed after all... :D
4) The best way to deal with massed pyre zombies is the life2 spell, Destroy Undead. The name says it all really :D
That sounds like an awesome spell for my situation. :D Unfortunately with the haphazard and random method I have been researching my way across the tech tree, Sorcery is still 3 techs away. :cry:

Thanks for the tips!! FFH2 is the best mod for any game that I have ever seen. :) And the amazing artwork makes the original Civ IV look bland.
 
1) Advanced Tactics is available both in More Naval AI and in Extramodmod, in the latter it's actually enabled by default. I recommend to play Extramodmod since it makes the gameplay a lot more balanced and varied

2) there's a nice spell list available here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=319389

generally tier 1 spells are utility spells and buffs, except for death 1 which is a summon ( all 3 death spells are summons ) , and at tier 2 there starts to be useful combat spells. I'd say the most popular are Maelstrom and Fireball, the latter can replace catapults. If you're playing Extramodmod you can actually promote siege engines to mobility1 which makes them a lot more useful and less annoying of course.
 
The way magic works is like this:
1. you build an adept
2. you research the tech needed to build the node for the mana type you desire (ie elementalism)
3. adept (or mage/archmage) builds the node on a base mana resource (ie water node)
4. node now provides the mana resource (ie water mana)
5. mana resource allows you to get the related promotion (ie water 1)
6. once the adept can obtain a promotion you choose that newly available promotion
7. and you can now cast a spell (ie spring)

There are some spells in the first tier that are useful in combat but most are in the 2nd/3rd tier. Also remember that with the death 3 promotion you can turn your archmages into necromancers and get 4 more archmages for a total of 8 3rd tier casters (4 archmages and 4 necromancers)
 
Many thanks for the tips!! The info in that realmsbeyond thread was particularly useful, that was the sort of overview of magic and its uses that I hadn't found yet.

My game continued surprisingly well - the Sheaim doomstack attacked the Elohim in the valleys south of me, instead of my own cities, and I could keep producing units for my own doomstack until I was able to push into Sheaim lands and raze their capitol. I offered peace in exchange for two more Sheaim cities and now he's got a short respite. The Elohim (or what was left of them) asked to become my vassals and I am now going into a rather quiet period since I'm more or less alone on my half of the map now, with the other civs either stuck in mostly isolated valleys, or separated from myself by a huge barbarian city with dragons and other unpleasant things that even my own stack can't tackle.

I guess I'll now first get some kickass vampires and then settle my part of the map, and then slay that dragon and roll over the other civs. :D
 
[to_xp]Gekko;13313314 said:
that "isolated valleys" doesn't sound pretty. are you using the Erebus mapscript?

Yes, I am on an Erebus map, with one of the smaller map size settings.

Their valleys aren't really completely "isolated", at least not by the terrain - they have exits leading out towards the other valley and the inland sea, there are barbarian encampments sitting in front of quite a few exits, which may have caused some of the civs to stay in their valleys. Of the 9 or so civs that started the scenario, 4 are stuck like that, and haven't progressed past 3 cities at turn 300.

What kind of map sizes is Erebus supposed to be played with?
 
I'd recommend just avoiding that mapscript altogether, it changes the gameplay too much and the AIs don't react well to it. starting locations are completely unbalanced and some civs as you have noticed get shafted by it. most of the other scripts work fine, ExtraModMod also includes a few new ones specifically tailored to FFH. lately I enjoy this http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=487504 , which is basically a pangea with better starting locations.
 
I'm rather partial to Erebus Continents, myself. Even though I use Tholal's modmod, I still use the low sea level and high cohesion settings, just because I like it.
 
keep in mind that Erebus =/ Erebus Continent, that could be confusing at first :D

Erebus: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=261688

Erebus Continent: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=308590

There's World of Erebus which is similar to Erebus Continent but simulates a whole world instead of a single continent, it was first included in the Rise from Erebus modmod http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=451855

Mountain Coast is also nice: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=305364
 
Erebus Continent is the only way to go. Unless you're willing to fool around in Full_of_Resources (my personal preference).
 
World of Erebus is nice too, I'll cast a second vote for that. It tends to create a bigger map than Erebus Continent though, so you may need to add 1-2 extra AI players.
 
Erebus Continent is the only way to go. Unless you're willing to fool around in Full_of_Resources (my personal preference).

I second Full of Resources! That map script has so many options! I play with no water (remove Lanun and octopus religion), rivers & resources everywhere, some barb cities with strong defenders, extra gold and basic techs (so no AI is too behind), extra units (settlers, workers, archers, hunter with hawke, etc.), huge map so no choke points (though I could add more lines of mountains for that), more animals, etc. A ton of customization. I like to even the playing field for all the civs, and every one usually gets a solid start (except the Luichurp LOL).
 
Top Bottom