beginners guide

Does any one have a beginners guide, something that suggest a race to play, techs to research, goals and anything else to learn how to play? i downloaded this mod and it looks really cool, but i play and i have so many options i don't know what to do, what goals to have or anything. i get to a point where i get bored because i don't know what to do next.

a short guide to successful rushing does also cover the base techs.
good starter civs are the hippus (very strong mundane -> no need for magic or priests) or the grigori (no priests, new stuff with the adventurers).

in my first games i played the game like normal civ, added mages and priests later on when i had the basics covered.

Bored because you don't know what to do next? I think the best part of FfH was exploring it in the beginning.

If you're looking for goals, try clicking on the fist icon in the upper-right corner of your screen. That shows you the breakdown of win conditions.

The civ I used for my first few games was the Balseraphs, with Perpentach as leader. I just liked his art, the idea of the insane trait, and the civilopedia entries. For your first civ, though, I think I'd recommend the Grigori, as then you don't have to worry about religion at all.

Play with any that fits ur personality.... and then check what pros and cons they have mechanics wise.... ffh tech paths are specialised, so there will be few favored by your civ/leader and some not
stick with direction and explore ffh

As someone else who's still relatively new to FFH, I'd recommend reading the PDF manual and just play a few games based on what races appeal to you. There is a LOT to digest and learn and the best way is to play thru a few times to see how things work, check the 'pedia as needed, alt tab to the manual as needed. Play on a lower difficulty if needed so you can focus on learning and exploring. There are a few FFH succession games too (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=168) - you might get some ideas reading thru those.

As said, probably best is to skim the manual, decide which civ appeals to you the most, read its entry more carefully, perhaps including a strategy thread if there's one here, but without going into too much details.
Start with some more obvious strategies, e.g. for Ljosalvar it would be pursuing to found Fellowship of Leaves religion and focusing on archery tech line. For Sheiam - read in the 'pedia about methods to increase the Armageddon Counter and try all of them. And so on...
Focus on roleplaying - do what you think suits the character of the civ you play and in most cases it will translate to good game experience.

A quick suggestion. In FfH II, it pays to specialize and beeline key techs for your specific civ (the ones that unlock your specials). To use the Balseraph example above, they've a bunch of great Recon line units that replace the standard ones everyone gets. If you play Balseraphs, focus on the Recon line ASAP! Harlequins are really great since they act like Rangers, but can also get Chaos and Mind spells up to the second sphere. (Chaos & Mind II respectively).

Okay, got a free moment:

Try this Balseraphs link. If you go through the archives, there are a number of strategy guides, although many are outdated due to game mechanics changes.

Another suggestion. You may want to play a civ like the Grigori or the Khazad for a first game. The first cannot research any of the religious techs and the latter can only get Adepts (at Knowledge of the Ether), and no higher-level Arcane spellcaster. This simplifies a first game. There's so much in FfH II, it can be confusing, and if your civ can't get a certain tech line, you can just ignore it and learn about the rest of the techs instead.

I just played a game as the Balseraphs, and the (relatively) new mimic is so cool I'd say it's just as or more valid to rush for them instead of their recon units (even though both the taskmaster and harlequins have nice perks). I have an immortal who, thanks to his long tenure as a mimic and many wars, can cast about 10 spells, is invisible, has marksmen, full combat, blitz, a few empowers, sinister & dexterous, commando, and more.

My preference for learning:

Start a game on easy difficulty, quick speed.
Use worldbuilder to edit your starting location to be amazingly good. (you can create all sorts of impossible combinations of terrain this way!)

Stomp over everything for a bit to get a base feel for what your units are like.

After you get the hang of the basic tech tree you just need to look at what makes other civs different... although in some cases the differences are huge.

I started playing with the Bannor; they are a good starting Civ because strategy form normal Civ will translate to them pretty well, they are balanced and don't have as many 'weird' FfH strategies as most of the others; they are all about straight on power.

Of course, you have to peruse the techs, civics, and the religions, and learn about heroes.

Best wishes,

Breunor

Don't just go by which leader looks best like I did. "What! What do you mean by religions have power in this game? Cassiel you looked so good." Look at the civs mostly and don't go with anyone to game changing Grigori, Kazad, Cardith Lorda, ect.

My 2 c:

* Since the tech-tree is somewhat diefferently designed than original civ (ie less linear) it is easy to miss out on sime vital economic techs, like education and code of laws.

* Most Heroes are very powerful, some can even be the foundation of your overall strategy, like Svartalfar's Alazkan. Take a good look on your own and keep an eye out for your enemie's.

* The range in power from the starting warrior to the top-tech units is smaller than in original civ. Units become less obsolete and in my experience experience and levelving units is more important than in vanilla.

I would pick the civ which's concept appeals to you the most and then start out carefully, build quite alot of defenders and a stable economy while you browse the tech tree for your civilization's hero and key units.

If you want something easy and not similiar to regular bts
Try playing Faeryl Viconia. Play on noble difficulty.

Found FoL. FoL allows your city to hit pop of 20+ and even 40 with city of slums due to insane happiness bonus and the fact that you can build improvements in forest.

Research to Poisons asap . Get alaz(hero), and level him and promote him with blitz (eithe thru othrus axe or military strat). Use his mirror image to weaken enemy stacks and then feed it to your alaz hero. Rinse and repeat till you have an uber alaz. Spam rangers (for defending your assasins) /assasins.
You will find that you can win a game without even using mages or swordsman.
First game you will win just using pure recon units.

Faeryl viconia has an added bonus of being arcane. If you have time, build a few adepts and let them gain enough xp to mages and then you can play around with them.

Just remember, Alazkan is not invisable, and while he is lethal, he is vulnerble to an Emryrean Spell, which removes hiddin nationality. Also, he has a minus 50% attacking and defending. He is also expesially weak agianst Empyrean Luichuip, as their Fire Ball throwing Golems are immune to poison. Will I agree he is Extremly poweful, he isn't the game winner exept i the early to mid game, since iff he has all the combat promotions, then attack a Champion in a city, he has only his atarting attack.

yes alaz has -50% city attack, but his mirror doesn't. MIRROR IS THE ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL ABILITIES A HERO HAS IN THE GAME. it is what makes alaz uber. In fact, the way to play alaz is to use mirror to attack (without penalty), use alaz or other assasins to attack (with penalty, but doesn't matter anyway since the unit is already at low health. Yes, as my previous post said stack a few rangers to defend alaz and remove his hidden nationlity promotion.

For a beginners game i wouldn't recommend any of the alfar if the other one is in the gamne aswell. The nearly automatic war between them can be quite bothersome.