Fall from Heaven... fall from greatness?

LlamaCat

Emperor
Joined
Dec 29, 2005
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Wondering if anyone has tried this scenario/mod and their thoughts? I have seen suspiciously little discussion on it so far. I tried it once and so far I was really disappointed. Where are all the unique civs and traits, and the spells and abilities? This just seems to be a really nerfed version of it in a very specific scenario.

On the other hand, Final Frontier is just genius and I would not have expected that.

I was really looking forward to the FFH but alas, it seems I will have to play the regular mod outside of BTS to enjoy the reasons it became so popular.
 
Fall from Heaven is a mod for the original version of civilization, which requires alot of changes before the mod would work on the BTS code base, The scenario shouldn't be used to judge the vanilla mod as very little of the mods mechanics made it into the scenario,

That said, keal and his gang are working on converting the vanilla mod to work with BTS, and eventually to use to new features of BTS.
 
I kinda felt the same way about the FfH, a little disappointed. Since this is civ, I dislike playing scenarios. I think I will wait for the FfH2 mod to get released for BtS (it probably already is, but I will wait until I'm board with the epic game).

I really like the way they changed the city management in Final Frontier, just awesome.
 
If you notice when you load the mod you cannot PLAY it. That's because its not in the game. What you are playing is a SCENARIO they were asked by Firaxis to develop since their mod is the most popular one in history.

I believe they are referring to the FfH 2 version that will play in BTS as "Shadow", the 3rd or 4th part of their 4 part plan.
 
As above - the one included with BTS is a scenario, not a mod.

The scenario really will have nothing on the mod.
 
guys: I KNOW it's a scenario, that's what I'm trying to say. they took a great mod (the best one out there) and nerfed it into this lame scenario. that's my point, plain and simple. I'm not judging the original mod based on this BTS scenario.. I've been playing the FFH mods for a long time and I'm one of its biggest fans.

Final Frontier is a separate mod for BTS and that is great. I would rather they have invested some time adapting the full mod (or most of it) into BTS like they did with Final Frontier, rather than another WWII scenario that no one plays, frankly.
 
People complain too much! If don't like it download the real mod! No reason to come here and whine :)


Actually I see his point. I was pretty fired up thinking it was a full mod and not a scenario. Since BTS has SO much content including the excellent Final Frontier I'm not too bummed. Just a little disappointed. Ican't wait for them to port the full mod (FFH) to BTS. It is a fantastic mod.
 
People complain too much! If don't like it download the real mod! No reason to come here and whine :)

This is a forum. People can discuss things here. Not everything has to be A+ for effort preschool happy time.
 
We're definatly interested in people's opinions--not least because we have several more scenarios planned, albeit ones using the full FfH 2 rules.
We tried to be upfront about what we were making, although that wasn't easy between some misleading previews and NDA.

The goals here were fun, accessiblity, and polish. A direct port of FfH 1 or 2 wasn't feasible , and some depth and certainly replayability was sacrificed.
However, we (designers & testers) all enjoyed it. I think many players will as well, at least once or twice, though not as much as the full FfH 2 mod.

I would be interested in hearing opinions especially of people who never played FfH before. Did this make you more or less interested?
 
I tried the Fall from Heaven scenario in BTS.

I was really impressed with the scenario initially and all the thought that went into the backstory.

I initially got a spellcaster who could summon a skeleton and so headed off and quickly took over a town on a lake nearby. This may have triggered the avalanche of frostlings that quickly poured into my valley or it may just be that on noble difficulty setting, while you have warrior and one city, the game thought it would be hilarious to send about 30 units of frostlings into the starting valley.

not sure.

I gave up in frustration.

what am I doing wrong?
 
We're definatly interested in people's opinions--not least because we have several more scenarios planned, albeit ones using the full FfH 2 rules.
We tried to be upfront about what we were making, although that wasn't easy between some misleading previews and NDA.

The goals here were fun, accessiblity, and polish. A direct port of FfH 1 or 2 wasn't feasible , and some depth and certainly replayability was sacrificed.
However, we (designers & testers) all enjoyed it. I think many players will as well, at least once or twice, though not as much as the full FfH 2 mod.

I would be interested in hearing opinions especially of people who never played FfH before. Did this make you more or less interested?


Tell ya what, I just fired up my second Final Frontier game (barely lost a diplo last time) I'll save it and give it a shot right now.
 
Focus more on units from the start, less on buildings. Try going out to kill the frostling lairs with a couple pairs of scouts (enemies only spawn from lairs.) Get archers quick.

Or go down to warlord, the better AI made the game harder than average.
 
Focus more on units from the start, less on buildings. Try going out to kill the frostling lairs with a couple pairs of scouts (enemies only spawn from lairs.) Get archers quick.

Or go down to warlord, the better AI made the game harder than average.


Spoiler :

Yea, I had to restart a couple of times as my hero got smoked immediately....took out the barb city and some frosties, now I have 2 cities
and a much better start.
 
I would rather they have invested some time adapting the full mod (or most of it) into BTS like they did with Final Frontier, rather than another WWII scenario that no one plays, frankly.

I would disagree considering the the number of emails / threads about Road to War. It is being played quite a bit (and not just by people from CFC & Poly going by emails I'm getting). ;)

Also, I had nothing to do with Age of Ice. The two mods had separate teams. So it's not "we concentrated on one and not the other".
 
scenarios such as WWII and the new FFH are just not what draw people to Civ. the inherent attaction is the random map epic game, that really can't be disputed. sure, there is a small subsection of hard-core gamers who like these scenarios, I think they have their place. they are very well designed and clever. but I'm not in the minority when I say they get boring and confusing really quick, and they are not the reason I play Civ over and over... and over.. again.

but the Fall from Heaven experience as Kael and his team have designed is second to none. scenarions are not even in the same league. the mod has replayability. to say it's not feasible to port it into the expansion is a little disingenuous... of course it's feasible. the powers that be just made a decision to pick other things. it was the wrong decision in my opinion, that's all.
 
Dale dont you find it bizarre that german units in the '36 scenario speak english ?

Thanks for the efforts tho, great mod.
 
to say it's not feasible to port it into the expansion is a little disingenuous... of course it's feasible.
I mean in the time we had, in time for release. One of the stipulations was, of course, that everything in our scenario was made either by us or Firaxis artists/programmers. That means that all the button art, leaderheads, songs, etc., that we have placeholders for would have had to be replaced, in addition to transition to BtS code (which Kael is doing now, of course, but it would have been harder hitting a moving target), and testing to make it completely bug free. And not taking up the entire expansion. And just porting FfH 1 would have had little purpose, since that is already readily availible. (and has many of the same issues, anyway)
Given those constraints, Kael decided to go with an orignal scenario with some FfH features, and some new features, but generally pared down from the ambitious and even now not completed FfH 2.

I'm not trying to force you to like it, of course, play what you like. I just want to explain what I meant.

I agree that random maps are a large part of civ. But, the first time you play it, how is a scenario different from a random map?
 
guys: I KNOW it's a scenario, that's what I'm trying to say. they took a great mod (the best one out there) and nerfed it into this lame scenario. that's my point, plain and simple. I'm not judging the original mod based on this BTS scenario.. I've been playing the FFH mods for a long time and I'm one of its biggest fans.


Do you think Kael et al had any choice over it? :)

They were asked to make a scenario. They made one that works, is nicely polished, balanced etc.

Can it possibly compare to FfH? Not in a million years, but then it's probably got 1% of the features you know very well that they will have in the mod.

You can argue if you like, but Firaxis to me only seem to put scenarios into the game that act as models of what can be achieved - it's been this way since Civ 3 Conquests. Look at the present scenarios, aside from the couple of fan based ones, the rest are to introduce core game dynamics.

Really, what Firaxis wanted from the fan designers were some scenarios to tip their hats to the modding community, to show what's possible and to immediately get a large number of people on board thanks to the already established fan base for those mods.
 
I do understand what you're saying. I'm not blaming anyone, least of all the designers of these mods/scenarios! ultimately it's the company that decides what to include. I think it's perfectly fine that they were just giving a little flavor of what could be done. just had the distinct impression that it would be a little more like the FFH mod that's out there, but I was wrong clearly and I'm just disappointed. I guess some of the reviews were a bit misleading, but whatever. Final Frontier is great and seems to be a whole new environment, I love that one. if they could do that, I would have preferred they do something similar with FFH. but hey, if you say it was not possible under the time constraints or whatever, I sincerely believe you. but I would never believe an argument that it was not feasible due to budgetary reasons, for example.

the first time you play a scenario, it's very different from random map. it's very confusing to just jump into this whole world with sometimes hundreds of cities and units all over the place. then you look at the civilopedia and you get a headache. you basically have to learn everything on the fly. you have to evaluate all these cities and see what they are building, etc.

but when you start a clean map from 4000 bc, it's a huge different. this is the Sid genius at work. you are building an empire from scratch, slowing developing and learning as you build....
 
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