Kael and the FfH design team,
As I said before in the FfH 1.0 thread, thank you so much for all the hard work and imagination you have put into these projects. FfH surpasses the game it modifies. That is no small achievement. You all should feel proud. I should feel grateful I do, and I hope to pa you all back in some small measure with playtesting feedback from here on out.
That information you’ll find in my next post. First, I’d like to give a brief rundown on my FfH 2.013 game, as it was the most fun game of Civ I can remember, ever. At least it was for a random map game. It was a random map game that played out like a designed scenario. I played the Amurites (sorry for bad spelling/missing names) with an Org/Arc leader, Fractal Map generator, Aggressive AI, raging barbs, permanent alliances on, city flipping, Emperor level.
I made the best move of the game on turn 1, when I moved my settler away from his original position. This allowed me to steal a jump on my nearest neighbor, the Clan. I ended up cutting off a moderate chunk of my continent. The Clan (after a brief, failed war) was forced to spread around me. I ended up with my area and it was surrounded by 1-city deep layer of Clan cities. The only gap (by land) out of my empire to the outside world was blocked by mountains and a barbarian hill giant. So I was hard to get at, but it was literally impossible for me to explore outside my own realm.
This turned out to be a lifesaver, because of the alignments and religions. I made it my goal to found the Leaves, which I did. At the same time the Overlords were founded by the Calabim? (the vampires) who were based to the south of the Clan. Fortunately the Clan took up the Leaves. Unfortunately, everyone else on my continent took up the Overlords. (Not that I was aware of events in the outside world, yet.) So everyone on my continent was either Evil or an Overlords realm, or both. My “best friends” were the Clan, and they certainly did not like me.
Thus began the 250 years or so of nearly constant war. All those pals traded techs and soon I was outnumbered and vastly out-teched. But thanks to my buffer state in the Clan, my enemies could never focus their attacks. I was able to hold off attacks by Hippus, Dovello, and Calabim, until I was finally ready to expand into Clan lands.
That move nearly undid me. Hippus attacked again just as I made peace with the remnants of the Clan. By this time Hippus had taken over a small continent to my east, besides their homeland in the farthest south west of my continent.. So they attacked by land to my south (moving thru the vampire empire) or by sea to my east and to my south west. I shifted forces to defeat these thrusts, but would still lose the occasional small city. But I could not strike back to hurt Hippus. The raiding income made him unwilling to stop the war.
Then the Irin entered the war. They blasted a newly built civ, but clearly Hippus had bribed them into the war, as their initial attacks were haphazard. My counterattack took an Irin city, but then I discovered this backward little civilization had built Heavy Crossbows. Rangers and Axemen do poorly attacking cites defended by HvCrossbowmen. So do waves of skeletons and tigers. A bit of a stalemate developed on all fronts. By now my war weariness was past critical. I had to put my economy on 100% gold in order to get +10 happiness out of my Gambling Houses, and to afford to build more Gambling Houses fast. But neither enemy would even talk, and I had not been able to build a new unit in probably 50 turns or more.
So I tried a gamble. I had one ship, a Caravel. I landed a single Ranger on the continent to my east. Then, every 3-4 turns a pair of Tigers and finally an Axeman. One of the tigers had had quite the career and was now a 5* 3X freak. We took the first small city, defended by a pair of mere Warriors. Then we moved on the a 2nd city. If the second city fell, I figured Hippus would be willing to make peace. And it might have worked, if only my 5* 3X tiger had not lost the die roll on a 95% city attack. I could not kill the 3rd defender. Then Hippus’ Drowns reached the scene and my mini-invasion was thrown into the sea.
By now my situation was so dire I threw my emire into a 5 turn revolution just to stave off mass starvations in my best cities. Fortunately my Wizards had skilled up some. I changed tactics to fireballs and plague spells. I was able then to melt down those HvCrossbows. I forced the Irin to peace by the time my revolution eneded.
That restored a bit or war weariness, but my new selection of civics was bad. The improvements from ending the Irin war were offset by the weaker civics. And Hippus was in no mood to end the war at all. I had no choice by to do anything I could to ride out the crisis. Fortunately Hippus had taken heavy losses too, because 90% of my army was needed just to sit on the rioters in my big cities (Monarchy civic).
Eventually, I built 3-4 Caravels and returned to the eastern continent. This time I took my first city again and won at the second city. I razed the second city and asked Hippus if they’d had enough. I was able to buy peace with a bit of gold and the return of the city I had not razed. And so ended what was about 125 years of virtually continuous war, about 80 years of no unit production, and about 60 years of no R&D.
But I now had the biggest empire. And when Hippus sent in a fleet to try to wipe out the last Kuruoite refugees that had fled to my continent, I enjoyed a bit of payback. I declared war just as his fleet neared their target. I fireballed his fleet, wiped out his plagued army as it came ashore, and sent in a powerful army to scour Hippus from that eastern continent. That war ended before I could call another revolution to restore my peacetime civics. Now that felt good; a bastard is a bastard even if only an AI bastard.
Now I have the game in hand, if I want to finish it. But version 0.14 is downloaded and installed. As fun as that game was, it’s hard to keep away from the latest iteration of Kael’s magic.
Sorry to run on so long. I am sure many have died from boredom. My bad. Next post, playtesting feedback. But first, some chores need doing.
I also had an edit on that thread also?
