What's wrong with the Wiki?

[SheckyS]

I just downloaded FfH2 and I am really enjoying it. But I'm having a lot of trouble finding any good documentation.

I've read the FAQ, but it doesn't explain some very basic concepts like how to upgrade Mana nodes, or what the traits do and how they work.

So I've been trying to look at the Wiki for a few days, but it always just displays an error:

Error in fetchObject(): Table 'kytelan_civ4wikidb.page' doesn't exist

Backtrace:

* GlobalFunctions.php line 602 calls wfbacktrace()
* Database.php line 596 calls wfdebugdiebacktrace()
* MessageCache.php line 246 calls databasemysql::fetchobject()
* MessageCache.php line 174 calls messagecache::loadfromdb()
* MessageCache.php line 357 calls messagecache::load()
* GlobalFunctions.php line 449 calls messagecache::get()
* GlobalFunctions.php line 408 calls wfmsggetkey()
* GlobalFunctions.php line 319 calls wfmsgreal()
* OutputPage.php line 177 calls wfmsg()
* OutputPage.php line 776 calls outputpage::setpagetitle()
* Database.php line 476 calls outputpage::databaseerror()
* Database.php line 419 calls databasemysql::reportqueryerror()
* Database.php line 806 calls databasemysql::query()
* Database.php line 825 calls databasemysql::select()
* Article.php line 391 calls databasemysql::selectrow()
* Article.php line 403 calls article:agedata()
* Wiki.php line 209 calls article:agedatafromtitle()
* Wiki.php line 48 calls mediawiki::initializearticle()
* index.php line 123 calls mediawiki::initialize()

[xienwolf]

Check my Sig, mainly the PDF from Grey Fox.

[vorshlumpf]

You can browse the Google cache for old Wiki data. Do a Google search designating the site, as follows:
site:civ4wiki.com
Add you search criteria after that, and then click on the Cache link for any of the results (you won't be able to navigate through the cache).

[jimi12]

i know there has been rumors of it coming back online but this seems less and less likely as the days go by. There are several wiki hosting sites. I am wondering if we should just start a new wiki. Even if the old wiki was recovered, there has been so many changes it would a lot of work with either option.

[SheckyS]

Originally Posted by xienwolf

Check my Sig, mainly the PDF from Grey Fox.

Thanks, there is some great info in here. In particular, the spell list and the PDF list of Civs is very helpful.

There are a couple of things I can't seem to find documentation on, though. Maybe someone can help me:

1) What does it mean when some units have a (+damageType) in their strength. Like Skeletons are 2 (+1 Death). What's the difference between that and someone with a 3 strength? Is Death/Fire/etc. damage better than regular damage?

2) Some civs get spells that can only be cast once per game and affects units. Like the Sidar get a spell that makes all of their units invisible. Does it matter when you cast this? Does it only make units invisible that already exist or will all future units be invisible as well?

3) What's a Settlement (as opposed to a City)?

Thanks in advance for any info.

[Theoden]

Originally Posted by SheckyS

1) What does it mean when some units have a (+damageType) in their strength. Like Skeletons are 2 (+1 Death). What's the difference between that and someone with a 3 strength? Is Death/Fire/etc. damage better than regular damage?

These damagetypes are modified accordiong the opponents resistance towards that particular type. So a skeleton with 2 (+1 death) attacking some one with 75% resistance to death results in a strength of 2 + 1 * (100% - 75%) = 2.25. If someone has a weakness the damage is instead amplified. There are also other features like creatures with fire combat setting forests on fire etc.
Whether having a damagetype is an advantage or not depends on who you are fighting and if they have a resistances og weaknesses towards the damagetype in question.

Originally Posted by SheckyS

3) What's a Settlement (as opposed to a City)?

It's only for the Kuriotates. They have hub cities, which can work the third ring normally outside the fat cross, and settlements, which can do little else than claiming territory. The number of hub cities allowed is dependant on map size, and the rest will have to be settlements.

I'm not sure about question #2, better let someone else answer that.

[MagisterCultuum]

1. It depends. Different units/promotions have resistance or vulnerabiliies towards different damage types. (Non-living units, i.e., ships, siege, Angels, demons, and the undead, are completly immune to death damage; Angels and blessed units are stronger versus unholy damage; and undead and demons are immune to unholy but weak to holy; dwarves are strong to poison; elves are weak to cold, magic resistant promotion gives 20% resistance too all these types, and Magic immunity grants immunity to them) If there is neither a weakness nor resistance, then typed strength deals damage identical to the normal "physical" damage. Oh, and also units with enough fire strength sometimes accidentally cause fires when in forests/jungles, units with poison strength cause units they fight to sometimes randomly gain the poisoned promotions (giving a negative healing, which actually only makes the units not heal as quickly, not killing them slowly like it once did), and I think that there is a small chance that a unit fighting an enemy with cold strength will become immoble for a turn or two.

2. All civs have a World Spell which can only be casted once per game. (exception: the Illian's World Spell, which I suspect may be similar to the AoI blizzard mechanic, and very hard to code, won't be added until Ice, the development phase after the current phase Shadow.) These can actually be cast twice, as the Birthright Regained ritual restores the ability. Of course, the spells have very different effects, not only giving units free promotions. However, the effects are all one time only. Those that give boni to specific units only effect the units you currently have.

3. The Sprawling trait (which only the Kuriotates leader Cardith Lorda has) limits the number of real cities you can have (# based on map size), but increases those cities' radii. so they can grow much arger and be more productive. Settlement are smaller "semi-cities" that Sprawling trait leaders can build to extend their cultural boarders to limit rivals expansion and grab resources. The cities don't count against the limit and have no maintenance costs, but they can only barely work the tiles around them and grow, and can't build anything. (I actually haven't played them in Shadow yet. Settlements used to be able to build monuments, walls, and city hubs --which turned them into real cities, but required the city limit not be surpassed. I have heard that there is now nothing that they can build.) I believe there is a spell that you can use to turn a settlement into a real city (if the city limit isn't passed yet), but I think it is causing bugs in Multiplayer so it may have been removed. At one point you got a choice of whether you wanted a city hub or a settlement when you had a settler settle somewhere (unless the limit was passed, in which case it was automatically a settlement), but that was removed a while back because of multiplayer OOS bugs. (Stupid Multiplayer! it ruins everything! I've never played a multiplayer civ game except hotseat games against myself or my sister, who usually gets board so I just keep playin for her.) I don't quite know how this works now, but I think that bugs are still requiring your first X cities be the real cities (which isn't very good for strategy). (Personally I think that all sprawling trait cities should start as hubs and have to be promoted.)

[velosepappe]

Obviously the world spell of the sidar only applies to the units allready in the game. Otherwise there would be no reason to not cast it right away.

[Taels]

BTW, we can also read (but not edit) a six month old copy of the wiki with the Wayback Machine, but only a few pages are available:

http://web.archive.org/web/200706261...from_Heaven_II

[SheckyS]

Originally Posted by MagisterCultuum

1. It depends. Different units/promotions have resistance or vulnerabiliies towards different damage types. (Non-living units, i.e., ships, siege, Angels, demons, and the undead, are completly immune to death damage; Angels and blessed units are stronger versus unholy damage; and undead and demons are immune to unholy but weak to holy; dwarves are strong to poison; elves are weak to cold, magic resistant promotion gives 20% resistance too all these types, and Magic immunity grants immunity to them) If there is neither a weakness nor resistance, then typed strength deals damage identical to the normal "physical" damage. Oh, and also units with enough fire strength sometimes accidentally cause fires when in forests/jungles, units with poison strength cause units they fight to sometimes randomly gain the poisoned promotions (giving a negative healing, which actually only makes the units not heal as quickly, not killing them slowly like it once did), and I think that there is a small chance that a unit fighting an enemy with cold strength will become immoble for a turn or two.

2. All civs have a World Spell which can only be casted once per game. (exception: the Illian's World Spell, which I suspect may be similar to the AoI blizzard mechanic, and very hard to code, won't be added until Ice, the development phase after the current phase Shadow.) These can actually be cast twice, as the Birthright Regained ritual restores the ability. Of course, the spells have very different effects, not only giving units free promotions. However, the effects are all one time only. Those that give boni to specific units only effect the units you currently have.

3. The Sprawling trait (which only the Kuriotates leader Cardith Lorda has) limits the number of real cities you can have (# based on map size), but increases those cities' radii. so they can grow much arger and be more productive. Settlement are smaller "semi-cities" that Sprawling trait leaders can build to extend their cultural boarders to limit rivals expansion and grab resources. The cities don't count against the limit and have no maintenance costs, but they can only barely work the tiles around them and grow, and can't build anything. (I actually haven't played them in Shadow yet. Settlements used to be able to build monuments, walls, and city hubs --which turned them into real cities, but required the city limit not be surpassed. I have heard that there is now nothing that they can build.) I believe there is a spell that you can use to turn a settlement into a real city (if the city limit isn't passed yet), but I think it is causing bugs in Multiplayer so it may have been removed. At one point you got a choice of whether you wanted a city hub or a settlement when you had a settler settle somewhere (unless the limit was passed, in which case it was automatically a settlement), but that was removed a while back because of multiplayer OOS bugs. (Stupid Multiplayer! it ruins everything! I've never played a multiplayer civ game except hotseat games against myself or my sister, who usually gets board so I just keep playin for her.) I don't quite know how this works now, but I think that bugs are still requiring your first X cities be the real cities (which isn't very good for strategy). (Personally I think that all sprawling trait cities should start as hubs and have to be promoted.)

Thanks, that's some more great info.

4) So what's this Armageddon counter thing do?

[MagisterCultuum]

Primarily, the Armageddon counter triggers Armageddon events. these include:

@AC 10: A warning about the AC, but no effect.

@ AC 40: Blight: Destroys all pastures, plantations, farms, camps, and winery improvements in the world; 25% chance to destroy each source of the wheat, corn, rice, deer, cow, pigs, sheep, sugar, and wine; 50% chance to remove each ice feature; 25% chance for each plains tile to turn to desert.

@ AC 60: Stephanos appears in the world. (The first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a powerful demonic flying mounted barbarian Hero. He causes fear,and is immune to magic)

@ AC 63: Buboes appears in the world. (The second of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a powerful demonic flying mounted barbarian Hero. He causes fear, is immune to magic, and can cast Rage)

@ AC 66: Yersinia appears in the world.(The Third of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a powerful demonic flying mounted barbarian Hero. He causes fear, is immune to magic, and spreads the Plague)

@ AC 69: Ars Moriendi appears in the world.(The fourth of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a powerful demonic flying mounted barbarian Hero. He causes fear, is immune to magic, and All (living?) units he defeats are turned to barbarian Wraiths, like the Death III summon but with unlimited duration)

@ AC 70: Hellfire: This creates the Hellfire improvement on random tiles in the world, and creates a Sect of the Flies (a demonic melee unit) (belonging to the Infernals if they are in the game, and to the barbarian state otherwise) on these tiles to defend them. More such units (and even stronger demons) will continue to spawn here if the AC remains high enough.

@ AC 90: Wrath: The Avatar of Wrath appears in the world. He is a powerful Barbarian Hero that can walk on water and can cast fireball, and units he defeats join the barbarian state. This event has a 60% chance of giving each unit in the game (except world units, so you won't lose heroes) the Enraged promotion. This promotion gives them a chance to turn barbarian each turn (note that whenever you disband a unit with a chance to turn barbarian, it will instantly turn barbarian instead of being deleted)

@ AC 100: Apocalypse: kills 60% of the living units in the world, and halves the populations of all cities of leader without the Fallow trait (anyone but Hyborem)

There are also several negative random events that require certain minimum ACs, but they are nothing compared to these ones, which always happen the first turn when the AC ht the prerequisite AC.


Also, The Stigmata Promotion gives a combat bonus of (AC/2)%. This promotion is available to Demons and the Undead with combat 5, and free for all units created in the City with the Stigmata on the unborn (the Ashen Veil Shrine)

The AC effects diplomacy. The Diplomatic penalties (but not the bonuses) between the different alignments scales based on the AC, and civs become more aggressive. Also, the largest contributer to the AC gets a significant diplomatic penalty with all civs without the Ashen Veil Sate religion, and the same size bonus to those with it. (I think there may also be a similar bonus for whoever lowers the AC the most with non AC civs, and a similar penalty with AC civs)


Edit: there actually were a couple of things I forgot to mention.

If you are playing as the Sheaim (or against them), you'll probably want to know that your Planar Gates depend on the AC. For each city the Sheaim have with a planar gate that also has certain other buildings they have a chance of getting a free unit in each city each turn, up to a certain limit. It looks like the maximum number of free units of each type that you can have at a time is equal to the number of Planar gates you have while the AC is less than 50, is double the number of gates between AC 50 and AC 75, triple the number of gates over AC 75, and quadruple the number of Gates at AC 100. The AC also effects the chances of getting free units in each city each turn. It looks like from AC 0 to AC 50 there is a 600 (found in the global defines.The other rates are multiples of this define) in 10 000 chance, from AC 50 to AC 75 a 900 in 10 000 chance, from AC 75 to AC 99 a 1200 in 10 000 chance, and at AC 100 a 1500 in 10 000 chance of getting of getting a free unit in each city each turn. The free unit is randomly chosen from among the units allowed by the buildings present in the city, so long as you don't have too many of those units yet. If the city that would provide the unit does not have a building that allows a unit of which you don't have too many, then you get nothing.

The Buildings needed for Planar Gates units are:

Gambling Houses for Revelers, a recon unit that can see invisible;

Mage Guilds for Mobius Witches, essentially free mages that start at level 4 with a chance to start with any first level sphere promotion (except that Shadow and Sun have not been added to this list), and can upgrade to Archmages, letting all your adepts aspire to become conjurers, and eventually Eaters of Dreams (Summoner UU, has an ability that consumes 1 city pop in order to regain the ability to cast again. Combined with the Summoning Trait, this makes Armies of Sheaim summons very potent);

Carnivals for Choas Marauders, the same melee unit as the Chaos II summon but without the chance to turn barbarian (remember these get metal weapons promotions if you have the resource);

Large Animal Stables for Manticores, quick and powerful demonic "mounted" units;

Public Baths for Succubi, a demonic melee unit that does unholy damage, can use metal weapons, can cast charm, and is the first topless female unit in the game;

Weapons Smiths for Minotaurs, melee units with high defensive strength; and

Temples of the Veil for Tar Demons, a demonic disciple class blob of tar with high defensive strength that used to be a lot cooler back when it would split into 2 weaker tar demons upon defeat (which would gradually increase to the original strength. the weakest ones couldn't split), but isn't as great anymore




It also seems I forgot to mention Hell terrain. Whether an individual tile is in hell or not depends on that tile's plot counter (which is different than the AC. If the plot counter is over 10, then it is hell. Most tiles change to a different "Hellish" terrain at this point, and change back when th counter dips below 10 (I think it used to be 20, but the code clearly says 10 now). There are some terrains, like tundras and water, that currently have no different version for hell.

Each tile is updated once per turn. All tiles owned by the Infernals have their plot counters set to 100. (I was also under the impression that Mercurian lands had their counters always set to 0, but since I don't find any mention to them in this code and since I've often had to wait for hell to recede from my lands when playing as the Mercurians, I assume this has been changed.) Any tile belonging to an Ashen Veil civ regardless of the AC, to any Evil civ at an AC of 25 or greater, or any Neutral civ at an AC of 75 or greater that borders a tile with an plot counter of at least 10 will have its plot counter increased by one each turn. (Good Civs are never effected, much to my chagrin.) Unowned tiles likewise have their plot counter increased by 1 each turn if they border a tile with a counter of 10+, if the AC is at least 25 (I could have sworn that non-AV evil lands turned to hell before unowned lands, but thats not what the code seems to say.) Tiles with positive plot counters that haven't been increased will have theirs decreased.

Note that while changing the plot counter immediately changes the terrain (e.g., the sanctify spell sets the plot counter of the surrounding tiles to 0, and immediately reclaims the hell terrain, temporarily), the resources aren't updated but once per turn. Also note that since several Hell resources are replacements for multiple normal resources, they won't necessarily revert to the same resource they were before hell spread to the tile. (e.g., Hell's spread could turn your horses to Nightmares, which then may revert to cows when hell is pushed back.

[Don Pelayo]

I never payed the Kuriotates because I was unsure of how the sprawling trait works. I would love to take this chance to get it right. Can you change a city to a settlement and viceversa (provided it doesn't imply surpassing the maximum city limit)?

[Great Oleander]

@ AC 21: The Ljosalfar will declare war on the Svartalfar (or the other way around)

[clut]

Magister Cultuum,

That's a really usefull post regarding the Armageddon Counter, and not because it lists the events that happen at various stages, but because you've included sufficient details to explain the advantages, disadvantages and intricacies of each event (for example, explaining the Enraged promotion, and going even further to say if you disband enraged units, to prevent them from becomming barbs, they'll become barbs upon disbanding).

[MalkutX]

Originally Posted by Taels

BTW, we can also read (but not edit) a six month old copy of the wiki with the Wayback Machine, but only a few pages are available:

http://web.archive.org/web/200706261...from_Heaven_II

Thanks, this is a huge help, even if it is pretty out of date. I'm looking forward to seeing it updated if/when it returns.

All in all, very helpful.

Originally Posted by MagisterCultuum

Armageddon

This, too. Even though I've been turning it off.

[Mewtarthio]

As I recall, the AC also affects how many units the Sheaim get from their Planar Gates.

[MagisterCultuum]

Yes, of course. I'm surprised I forgot to mention that. But of course, it only matters if you are playing as the Sheaim (or against them...)

[xienwolf]

Well, go ahead and edit in there will ya? It is the best "all in one post" summary of AC I have seen for a while, so I popped it into my Sig for new people

[xienwolf]

Just realized you listed 2 Horsemen coming at AC 69. I am guessing that Stephanos is actually at 59?

[desemondez]

Are there ways to reduce the Armageddon counter besides Sanctify (which hardly makes a difference ) and building certain wonders?

Or is it intended for good/neutral civs to end the game before AC reaches 100?