[MOD] Fall from Heaven

Oh, something to think about in the future. Since people have complained that your mod is too cluttered with too much tech and too many crazy possibilities, you might consider removing some of your civics. We don't really need 40+ civics, most of which are for some reason very Western and modern in origin, do we? This is one case where less is more. I would (if I had a ton of free time to just work on civics, which I know you don't), personally, start from scratch with the civic system and invent my own fantasy civics. Instead of renaming Representation into something else, or police state into something else, etc. I would create whole new systems.

Just something to think about for version 10.0 hehe. I know that's a lot of work and I'd rather have you work on spells, AI, and the tech tree first. You don't have to reply to this ;) In short, I think before you release your final, final version of FfH, the mod would look a lot more professional--and play a lot better--if you made your own fantasy-themed civics based upon the needs of this specific mod.

ﻢﻜﻴﻠﻋ ﻢﻼﺴﻟﺍ
 
Felzor said:
We don't really need 40+ civics, most of which are for some reason very Western and modern in origin, do we?
ﻢﻜﻴﻠﻋ ﻢﻼﺴﻟﺍ

I am American of Armenian and Italian heritage. I understand that America has invaded Iran and Afganistan. These are bad wars from ANYBODYS point of view. Both sides in this struggle think they are doing what is necessary for survival.

Can we stop with all the ANTI-(insert anthing you like here) BS. How about being PRO-HUMANITY. War is bad, except when its part of a PC game :mischief:
 
Gargoyle said:
I am American of Armenian and Italian heritage. I understand that America has invaded Iran and Afganistan. These are bad wars from ANYBODYS point of view. Both sides in this struggle think they are doing what is necessary for survival.

Can we stop with all the ANTI-(insert anthing you like here) BS. How about being PRO-HUMANITY. War is bad, except when its part of a PC game :mischief:
Dude, he was talking about the problem, that those civics are too modern for fantasy mod, not about your anti-americanism problem, lol...
 
This mod is amazing. I played a full game with it, and I can give a decent report. 0.5 has all the problems listed - weapon smith and armor don't do squat, you can build unique religious buildings everywhere, and the dragon hoard doesn't provide mithril. I understand they've already been fixed. Anyway, now for the review:

Early game:

When you start out, you have to choose between being able to defend yourself and being able to harvest resources - that's just the way this mod works. If you are playing the computer, get the resources. As you expand your borders, the rest of the early research will come easily. If you can't cut down forest, you'll be screwed in the later game as you will never catch up technologically. IN the early game, send out scouts right away - those movement promotions mean you'll have the entire world map before the computer has woken up to go to the washroom. The goody huts will be 90% yours, and it will help a lot in the early game. The scouts can get promoted later, so they'll be good mid-game units.

mid game: try to found a religion and spread it with missionary zeal. Religion is the path to peace, and winning a mid-game war is almost impossible. The enemy will be able to produce much faster than you think, and he'll send his units everywhere - not good. Having said that, the key to victory in any war with this mode is ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK. The upgrades will make your units invincible, and attacking gets you a MUCH higher experience point bonus than defending.
Note that almost any unit worth having requires a building to create - so build those buildings. If you are like me in normal civilization, you chose the path of peace. In this game, treat it like a turn based RTS because that's what it feels like. Build buildings making sure to specialize cities, then churn out special units. Bring wounded units back to specialized cities and BUY UPGRADES (you make a LOT of gold in this game, not like normal civ4) and send them back to pound the enemy into dust. As long as you wait until the late mid-game, you'll be able to wage effective war (but keep diplomacy with the other neighbors - the last thing you need or can survive is a war on two fronts).

Late game:

In the late game, there are many national units - build them, use them. The demon summoner is unbelievably good and the computer has absolutely NO idea how to use it. Demons can be re-spawned as soon as they die, so ignore the advice above and use them as cannon fodder. Once you've pounded a city's defenses with spell casters, in most cities you can send in three demons to die, and your remaining national units can wipe the city flat. Garrison it with golems and move on. Don't worry too much if a city is retaken, Demons move FAST and you can retake a city and re-garrison in a turn. The end-game is about getting one enemy civilization to beg for mercy and then going for the next. HOWEVER, watch the cultural victory condition - you can lose in a heartbeat if the enemy built the correct world wonders. One enemy had a 100,000 culture city before I had my first legendary city. I almost died of stupidity in that game.

Another option - getting 80% religion is almost impossible - totally so once there are more than one religion in the game, but it might be worth a try using the fellowship of leafs religions (which is easy to get very early in the game). I would like to see a religious victory.

The mod is very fun. It requires a lot of test playing to balance out, but that's to be expected in such an early release. I am astonished how much work has been accomplished in a couple of weeks. You've completely changed civ iv from a slow combat chess-like strategy game to an extreme rts feel involving an unbelievable amount of combat. This game is a pleasure to play.

Advice for the mod:

The computer has trouble realizing how important special buildings are - it takes a long time to make things like summoning chambers for instance. It needs to balance out units with buildings more. (but then again, this has been a problem with the computer from civ I - and the main way that I win every game I play)

I can't easily tell what technologies found what religion, and doing so requires searching the whole tech tree to find.

lots and lots of play-testing for balance. I think that a functioning dragon hoard would completely mess up the balance of the game. Several of the world wonders are too powerful from what I can tell.

advice for players:

attack, attack, attack. This mod is NOT for pacifists (although the pacifism civic is good not matter what you do!)

Deethdeeler
 
Stalin_Bulldog said:
Yea i found the same reorientating bug with summoners(boy are they fun)

Also i saw that you swapped earth eles for fire eles, would it be possible to have 4 different eles summonable, perhapes all the same except for strength+ versus one type, str- versus another i.e. Fire<Water<Earth<Wind<Fire or some other ordering, i could see that becoming neat, almost like a 2nd Ed. Dnd Mage Battle

Yes, the Elementalist is spec'ed to be able to summon all 4 elementals while the Conjurer can only summon one. Giving the Elementalist a lot more flexibility than his little brother. I just need to get the art down for the Air and Water elementals (and an improvement on the earth elemental would be nice too).
 
I am astonished how much work has been accomplished in a couple of weeks. You've completely changed civ iv from a slow combat chess-like strategy game to an extreme rts feel involving an unbelievable amount of combat.

Ah, but the question now becomes: Is that what Kael had in mind? :rolleyes:
 
Agraza said:
Can you be more specific regarding The Order religion music?

I won't be home until Thursday and I am away from my resources, if you could send me a private PM with this question and I will check it out when I get there and send you the exact song.
 
Felzor said:
Awesome, thanks for changing those around. While I think some are still a little cheesy/modern like "Care for the Elderly" (You have to admit, when was the last time you ever saw elves and dwarves worry about their elderly? Maybe you should just replace that civic altogether?), the rest sound much more like a fantasy game. City-states, public healers, and the disciplines are especially good choices in my opinion. Not sure what Anarcho-whatever means, but it's better then representation either way. Good job. Any chance you can release version 0.6 on Wednesday? That's when I get back home :cool:

&#65250;&#65244;&#65268;&#65248;&#65227; &#65250;&#65276;&#65204;&#65247;&#65165;

I wish, my work has me out and about so Friday is probably a hard date.
 
Aristocracy: Seems weak. Isn't it much better to build cottages?

Apprenticeship: I really like the idea of better but more slowly produced units :goodjob:

Consumption: Is that +10% commerce or +10% gold? You might want to change the symbol for gold.

Guilds seems very weak compared to Caste system, which on the other hand is a tad bit better than the other labor civics.

Military State: I can't for my life imagine that it's supposed to increase war weariness. That must be a glitch, right? Also, wouldn't sacrifice population make more sense?

Pacifism: Perhaps some more...war weariness? ;)

Sacrifice the weak: A science penalty but more gold bonus might perhaps be more fitting?

State funded education: I think this one should have better science bonus than Religious schools.

Overall, I like the plethora of civics but I think it would be smart to shrink the font size so that the text fit in the boxes.
 
deethdeeler said:
This mod is amazing. I played a full game with it, and I can give a decent report. 0.5 has all the problems listed - weapon smith and armor don't do squat, you can build unique religious buildings everywhere, and the dragon hoard doesn't provide mithril. I understand they've already been fixed. Anyway, now for the review:

Early game:

When you start out, you have to choose between being able to defend yourself and being able to harvest resources - that's just the way this mod works. If you are playing the computer, get the resources. As you expand your borders, the rest of the early research will come easily. If you can't cut down forest, you'll be screwed in the later game as you will never catch up technologically. IN the early game, send out scouts right away - those movement promotions mean you'll have the entire world map before the computer has woken up to go to the washroom. The goody huts will be 90% yours, and it will help a lot in the early game. The scouts can get promoted later, so they'll be good mid-game units.

mid game: try to found a religion and spread it with missionary zeal. Religion is the path to peace, and winning a mid-game war is almost impossible. The enemy will be able to produce much faster than you think, and he'll send his units everywhere - not good. Having said that, the key to victory in any war with this mode is ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK. The upgrades will make your units invincible, and attacking gets you a MUCH higher experience point bonus than defending.
Note that almost any unit worth having requires a building to create - so build those buildings. If you are like me in normal civilization, you chose the path of peace. In this game, treat it like a turn based RTS because that's what it feels like. Build buildings making sure to specialize cities, then churn out special units. Bring wounded units back to specialized cities and BUY UPGRADES (you make a LOT of gold in this game, not like normal civ4) and send them back to pound the enemy into dust. As long as you wait until the late mid-game, you'll be able to wage effective war (but keep diplomacy with the other neighbors - the last thing you need or can survive is a war on two fronts).

Late game:

In the late game, there are many national units - build them, use them. The demon summoner is unbelievably good and the computer has absolutely NO idea how to use it. Demons can be re-spawned as soon as they die, so ignore the advice above and use them as cannon fodder. Once you've pounded a city's defenses with spell casters, in most cities you can send in three demons to die, and your remaining national units can wipe the city flat. Garrison it with golems and move on. Don't worry too much if a city is retaken, Demons move FAST and you can retake a city and re-garrison in a turn. The end-game is about getting one enemy civilization to beg for mercy and then going for the next. HOWEVER, watch the cultural victory condition - you can lose in a heartbeat if the enemy built the correct world wonders. One enemy had a 100,000 culture city before I had my first legendary city. I almost died of stupidity in that game.

Another option - getting 80% religion is almost impossible - totally so once there are more than one religion in the game, but it might be worth a try using the fellowship of leafs religions (which is easy to get very early in the game). I would like to see a religious victory.

The mod is very fun. It requires a lot of test playing to balance out, but that's to be expected in such an early release. I am astonished how much work has been accomplished in a couple of weeks. You've completely changed civ iv from a slow combat chess-like strategy game to an extreme rts feel involving an unbelievable amount of combat. This game is a pleasure to play.

Advice for the mod:

The computer has trouble realizing how important special buildings are - it takes a long time to make things like summoning chambers for instance. It needs to balance out units with buildings more. (but then again, this has been a problem with the computer from civ I - and the main way that I win every game I play)

I can't easily tell what technologies found what religion, and doing so requires searching the whole tech tree to find.

lots and lots of play-testing for balance. I think that a functioning dragon hoard would completely mess up the balance of the game. Several of the world wonders are too powerful from what I can tell.

advice for players:

attack, attack, attack. This mod is NOT for pacifists (although the pacifism civic is good not matter what you do!)

Deethdeeler

Awesome write up, thanks for that. I have really pushed the AI to get it to build the unit buildings. In early versions of the mod the computer loved hawks, I would come across cities with dozens of hawks garrisoned. I guess he really really knew I was coming. But I do think I need to invest mroe on making the computer prefer the t4 unit training buildings.

The computer does not know how to summon right now. I don't know if the fix will make it into .6 or .7 but I do know how to fix it.

There is a relgious icon on the tech chart for each that grants a religion but the techs definitly need a little strategy blurb for each to help players decide what they do and don't want to do.

Did you notice that your demons or elementals didn't dissappear at the end of the turn?
 
Mumin said:
Aristocracy: Seems weak. Isn't it much better to build cottages?

Apprenticeship: I really like the idea of better but more slowly produced units :goodjob:

Consumption: Is that +10% commerce or +10% gold? You might want to change the symbol for gold.

Guilds seems very weak compared to Caste system, which on the other hand is a tad bit better than the other labor civics.

Military State: I can't for my life imagine that it's supposed to increase war weariness. That must be a glitch, right? Also, wouldn't sacrifice population make more sense?

Pacifism: Perhaps some more...war weariness? ;)

Sacrifice the weak: A science penalty but more gold bonus might perhaps be more fitting?

State funded education: I think this one should have better science bonus than Religious schools.

Overall, I like the plethora of civics but I think it would be smart to shrink the font size so that the text fit in the boxes.

Great feedback! I have tried and tried to shrink that font and have been unable to do so (technical limitation or my own boneheadedness stand int he way).

My thinking for Military state was that everyone was involved in warfare, making for an effecitve military country, but also more resistence to prolonged battles. It's incrediably counter-intuitive and I went back and forth on it a few times, in the end I think your right.

I will look through these before I release 0.60 and see if I can make any improvements.
 
Thinking about woodelf's Ancients Forests idea Im thinking about making them dangerous to enemy units that pass through them. Perhaps they occasionally spawn treant's that attack units in the tile if the owning country is has fellowship of the leaves as a state religion and the units are at war with the owning country.

Also, one of the reason's the t4 building are kinda just "there" is the design doc actually doesn't call for them. According to the design docs a t3 unit of sufficient level can be promoted to the t4 unit, and that is the only way to produce t4 units. So for example a crusader would just need to be level 8 and in a city with a temple to become a palaldin, and paladins could never be made from scratch. Once I can get that idea to work the t4 buildings will probably be scrapped (or kept for their non-unit making functions).
 
Can you make (skin) Treants or woodland monsters?

Down the road....are there plans to make civ (race) specific tech trees? Or at least make it impossible for certain civs (races) to found certain religions? In the back of my mind I'm hoping for completely new LHs whether they be dwarf, elven, human, whatever. If this isn't in your plans I'm wondering how easily it could be done. Maybe 2 or 3 elves, a couple dwarves, some humans that can go towards any religions, some undead, ect.

Sorry to ramble, my coffee is still brewing....

And I know the extra resources are a long ways down the road, but you could skin mythril, obsidian, ect. That would make some kick ass units. :)
 
Kael said:
Great feedback! I have tried and tried to shrink that font and have been unable to do so (technical limitation or my own boneheadedness stand int he way).

Have you tried this one?

Or do you mean that the current font seems to be the smallest possible?
 
I can tell I haven't played long into any 1 game since I just now got Iron Working. :blush:

Wow, what a jump from Axemen to Macemen. 4 att to 8! Too much?

And I love Mercenary units. Cool.
 
Mumin said:
Have you tried this one?

Or do you mean that the current font seems to be the smallest possible?

Yeah, its the font i can't shrink, Im alreayd doing the changes recommneded in the post you linked.
 
woodelf said:
Can you make (skin) Treants or woodland monsters?

Down the road....are there plans to make civ (race) specific tech trees? Or at least make it impossible for certain civs (races) to found certain religions? In the back of my mind I'm hoping for completely new LHs whether they be dwarf, elven, human, whatever. If this isn't in your plans I'm wondering how easily it could be done. Maybe 2 or 3 elves, a couple dwarves, some humans that can go towards any religions, some undead, ect.

Sorry to ramble, my coffee is still brewing....

And I know the extra resources are a long ways down the road, but you could skin mythril, obsidian, ect. That would make some kick ass units. :)

Well I can make treants.. if they look good or not is the question.

More race specific units were planned (Elven Longbowman, Elven Riders, Dwarven Hammerfists, Dwarven Crossbowmen, Thrull, Nightmare and Wraith) but they were cut because I didn't like reusing the models. But yes I think new civilizations based on the races with an entirely new unit structure would be awesome. Unfortunatly I will need new models to do it well so the new Civ's were pushed to Phase 2. I am stretching to make the most of the models I have, when the SDk comes out, expect great things.
 
Oh, I just remembered that somebody was skinning Orc models in the Units Creation forums. Maybe check that out. I'm sure there's a lot of potential there--although it sounds like you have plenty of units as is. Ta ta.
 
Top Bottom