FfH 2 Manual

[xienwolf]

My appologies, but I've been quite busy since the start of the year, so the manual is a bit outdated. Fortunately, not TOO much has changed, most patches have been bug fixes or artwork, instead of balancing and changes. So the manual should remain fairly decent for a while, till I can get back and polish it up to the current version at the time.


Work in Progress FfH Manual.

Note that the pictures in each corner of the page are links: Good (White on the top, outer corner) links to the start of the current section (and thus the sub-Table of Contents), Evil (Red at top, inner corner) links to the start of the manual (main TOC), and Neutral (Brown across from Page Number) links to the start of the next section.

Also be aware that if you press ALT + LEFT ARROW that it will return you to the previous view (ie - the link you just clicked on).

FfH 2m Manual v1

Spoiler for Plans for Future Versions:

For Future versions I hope to have:

1. Religions fully described, with a Strategy Section
2. Details on Lair Exploration and possible results
3. Landscape Section will be expanded to include all resources, improvements & Terrain, even if they already exist in Vanilla Civ. Just for the sake of being complete because it won't add too much more work on my end anyhow, and someone might find it useful.
4. Civics section will get filled out the rest of the way. For now all of the Religion/Civilization specific Civics are fully detailed though, so it should be sufficient as is.
5. City Details Section
   • Will List all possible causes of Happy, Unhappy, Health, Disease and what they are tied to
   • Might list various methods to increase the Happy/Healthy of various Resources and how to get them to be available to your cities. But that should be covered well enough in Landscape
6. Appendix A will be completely re-written eventually, and color-coded/linked just as much as the rest of the document
7. Appendix B (Spoilers) will be added. (Somnium will move to Appendix C)
   1. Formulas used for Game Computations will all be moved to Appendix B (or just placed there if I skipped them to begin with. Like the Formula for selecting which 3 Cities are listed for Hyborem's Whisper. It takes up a lot of space in the Table Format of the Spells section, and some people would rather just not know)
   2. Events Section will be listed in Appendix B, containing information on what Triggers an event and the outcome of the events seperately, for those who would like to know how to get an event to appear, but want to figure out for themselves what will happen
   3. AI Wieghts and Limitations set in Python will have a Section in Appendix B as well.
   4. Quests Section will be listed in Appendix B (just as soon as there are any)
8. Appendix C (Scenarios) will be added as quickly as possible after Ice is released. So far it seems like it'll not be THAT soon
9. Appendix D (Mod-Mods) MIGHT come into existence. But that depends on me getting very bored, or incredibly hooked. Being as I am involved in Fall Further (and thus update this rarely), I will most likely build a completely seperate manual for FF someday, but I desire to finish this manual first right now.

[xienwolf]

All links should be color coded, but right now since it is first release there are a couple of words which got colored without links and a few that should have been colored, but I linked anyway. I know that another version will be coming out sometime after patch L to include the new Mimic unit, so I wasn't too anxious about fixing these small errors in the first version

[woodelf]

This should be another great help to beginning players. Thanks.

[Nikis-Knight]

Just had a chance to browse it a little, but it looks awesome... I want to go play some more now!

[Tielby]

Although Greyfox's manual looks fantastic, I just wanted to say THANK YOU for making yours printable.

[Slvynn]

Awesome Job

[Dumhead]

excellent job!

[xienwolf]

Thanks for the compliments. My main goal when I was designing it was to make sure that the end product was printable sinc ethat was the primary complaint about Grey Fox's manual.

However, I also made almost everything link to an explanation of what each term means for new players, so it works quite nicely un-printed as well

[Kael]

It is a pretty good. I really liked Grey Fox's version because instaed of listing the UU's and UB's he detailed them a little more with the civilization.

Thats the big value in my eyes, having one place a new player can go to for information on all the details about a civ in new player understandable terms. Even Fox's version is a little lacking in this regard, for example he does a great job of drawing out the Firebow as a UU for the Amurites and lists that it starts with Fire I and Channeling II. But that doesnt mean much to a new player. I would love it that next step was taken to say "Firebow's can spend a promotion to learn how to cast fireball" with that unit and really make it meaningful.

Im of mixed opinion on the concepts entries since those are already in the pedia. I dont know that having them in both places adds a ton of value. But, on the other hand, it could be helpful as well. If anything I would move them to the end of the document, as an appendix to the information. In my mind the core focus of the guide should be the civs (covering their world spell, hero, uu's and ub's in detail), then a section on the Barbs which talks about their options and heroes, global heroes (all civs can gain like Duin, Mary, etc) and wonders, base units and finally spells.

Xienwolf, if it would be helpful I have an OpenOffice version of Fox's guide if you would like to play with that or if there was anything you can use from it. If your interested PM your email address and I will send it to you.

[cthom]

it's nice to have something like this at my fingertips, but i'm a little surprised that the civopedia doesn't seem to be a priority. there a lot of empty pages there.

[xienwolf]

Trust me from going through and making this manual: You prefer it blank.


Even with the little bit of information that this manual has in it (all taken from in-game text pretty much), there was a LOT which is no longer valid. Things in the mod change a fair deal, but they intertwine a LOT. So if everything was documented fully, then it would be far too easy to miss something which is cross-referenced and fail to update it.

So if the Civlopedia were filled out, then either the total development time of the mod would be nearly doubled while they search for every little change and decide how to re-word it, or you would be left with a whole lot of "helpfull hints" which are in truth utterly wrong.

But yes, it can be a bit frustrating having to dig for information or guess and check things as you go

[cthom]

i'm wondering if i could somehow fill in my own civopedia with info from your manual, and update it myself as need arises. xml? it would really be for my own 'amusement'!

[xienwolf]

Yes, if you go to the Assets/XML/Text folder there is only one file in there, and it contains all of the information which will display in the Civlopedia. Though it can be a bit daunting to update with each successive patch all over again. Thus I would reccomend that you make it a module if you do an update so that nothing will overwrite it and you will not miss out on any new additions to the file with each patch.

In fact, if people contribute enough changes to the Pedia, I might just make that a standard module installed along with my Modular FfH (and available seperately once the servers are made public again for easy upload).

[Monkeyfinger]

Some corrections:

The following paragraph shows up twice in the Undercouncil entry:

Spoiler:

The Undercouncil is run by money, nearly all of its resolutions cost gold from its members. They can vote to declare war on a common enemy, and open borders to each other. There are no restrictive resolutions on The Undercouncil, they never vote to enforce a civic or outlaw anything but players don't get the larger attitude modifier members of The Overcouncil share with each other.

The following paragraphs in the Overcouncil entry are redundant, stripped down versions of things explained earlier in that entry:

Spoiler:

Being a member of The Overcouncil grants a significant diplomacy bonus with other members. It also forces members to comply with any resolutions that The Overcouncil has voted and agreed on, unless the player wants to defy and leave The Overcouncil. Overall these resolutions can be powerful and
restrictive. Players that expect to remain members of The Overcouncil should expect to enjoy the advantages of the friendships it allows, but also be subject to its control. That is unless they maintain the relationships required to be voted the head of the council and get to pick the decrees themselves.
Each member of The Overcouncil has one vote on resolutions. Both The Empyrean Hero Chalid Astrakein and the Malakim Hero Teutorix grant the players that control them an additional vote on The Overcouncil.

You said the Altar of the Lon... Luan... Lunatic (. .. .. .. .it) requires 7 greapt prophets. It actually needs 6. The final one is built the old fashioned way, with hammers.

Also, Hannag the Irin.

[xienwolf]

Heh heh. Thanks much. I skimmed the Over and Undercouncil entries, and had grabbed info on them from 2 locations, so I caught a bit of redundancy, but obviously missed a ton

[xienwolf]

Couple questions for Version 2.0 (massive additions/changes. Hopefully out by the end of next week):

1. Do people use the clickable links? If not, I'll probably not bother to include them anymore.
2. Would you like to have more information on the Guilds? If so, what?
3. Is a section on the Unique Features, Lairs & Buildable Improvements desired?
4. What are thoughts on the section on Leader Traits? Would you like a similar section on Civics?
5. Is there anything you can think of which you would like to see added to the manual, or believe might help a new player?

[desemondez]

Originally Posted by xienwolf

Couple questions for Version 2.0 (massive additions/changes. Hopefully out by the end of next week):

1. Do people use the clickable links? If not, I'll probably not bother to include them anymore.
2. Would you like to have more information on the Guilds? If so, what?
3. Is a section on the Unique Features, Lairs & Buildable Improvements desired?
4. What are thoughts on the section on Leader Traits? Would you like a similar section on Civics?
5. Is there anything you can think of which you would like to see added to the manual, or believe might help a new player?

1. I absolutely love clickable links, please don't take them away.

2. Yes, more information about guilds : How to obtain them, their pros/cons, possibly synergies too perhaps?

3. I think this would be really useful to the starting player. But even the starting FFH player would have played a few games of vanilla civ so they already might be aware of buildable improvements.

4. The leader traits were helpful to me personally, so i'm thinking the civics section that you'll write up would probably be useful to me too.

5. I haven't finished reading your whole manual but in case you didn't cover the FFH custom game settings, I could see that being useful too. For instance, don't start a large map with raging barbs and barb cities unless you want to get swamped by them and spend the first 200 turns defending...

[Monkeyfinger]

1) Keep them.

2) Only guild of the nine matters. Cover its mechanics and make clear that it's the only relevant guild.

3) Features and Lairs deserve their own sections. The only improvement related thing that's worth mentioning is that FFH cottages have double maturation speed.

4) Definitely.

[Tielby]

Originally Posted by xienwolf

Couple questions for Version 2.0 (massive additions/changes. Hopefully out by the end of next week):

1. Do people use the clickable links? If not, I'll probably not bother to include them anymore.
2. Would you like to have more information on the Guilds? If so, what?
3. Is a section on the Unique Features, Lairs & Buildable Improvements desired?
4. What are thoughts on the section on Leader Traits? Would you like a similar section on Civics?
5. Is there anything you can think of which you would like to see added to the manual, or believe might help a new player?

1. Yes, they're wonderful.
2. I don't agree that Guild of the Nine is the only relevant guild. Info on all of them would be desirable. (Hopefully the Gaelen event will be fixed soon so that his guild will become relevant.)
3. I agree with the last two posts. Info on features and lairs, yes. Improvements are covered well enough IMHO.
4. If the in-game info on civics (mouseover and Civilopedia) were better, I'd say don't bother. As it stands, yes it'd be useful.
5. I agree that custom game settings could use an overview. f.e. It took me ages to find out what the actual difference was between balanced and normal resources.

As always, Xienwolf thank you for doing this!

[Rankel]

Great job Xienwolf!!!
One thing I thought of, when going through the manual, was the possibility of a technical FAQ. Newbies (and hrrm sometimes veterans like yours truly) may run into trouble due to latest patch issues etc. The idea is NOT to write a massive all-covering text but rather to include updated links on topics. For example: right now a lot of people have problems with freezes/waiting for other players. The bug thread provides input here and there but hard to overview(especially if your new).
Again, great job !
Cheers
Rankel