orangelex44
Partisan
I wasn't sure where to post this, but I figured the first thing that most new players in the forum do is click on the manual thread. Anyway, I wanted to help out the mod by writing a little beginner's tutorial or sorts. (btw, it's copy-pasted from Word so any format issues are because of that. Spelling and such are simply goofs.)
New to Fall From Heaven? START HERE.
FFH is an extremely complex mod. Nearly every part of the original Civilization has been changed in some way. To help those new to the mod, here is a small tutorial of sorts although this is far from all-inclusive, and more than a little vague. I assume that all players have at least a cursory experience with the original Civ, and can muddle around some on their own. For those of you who really dont want to read this whole thing, skip to the end theres an outline of some of the added stuff in FFH.
First of all, after downloading the mod and opening up the game, you are presented with a rather scary-looking guy wreathed in fire. Remember; DONT PANIC (hug towel as necessary). Just start a game as normal, with the Grigori civ (leader Cassiel), an Erebus map, Normal speed, and any difficulty (maybe one weaker than you normally play). You can skip the initial movie since there are no instructions there, although it is kind of neat to watch at least once.
So, now you sit with three units: a Settler, a Scout, and a Warrior. Immediately youll notice two things: first, that Scouts and Warriors are stronger than normal and that you can see a lot more of the map than in general. These initial benefits are for good reason: capitol city placement is just as (if not more) vital in FFH, and barbarians are MUCH more aggressive and numerous than in vanilla. Before you actually do anything, since this is your first game and a write-off anyway, enter Worldbuilder and look around.
Here, youll see that the Erebus map is rather unique. There are LOTS of mountains everywhere, and tons of little valleys scattered everywhere. This is specific to Erebus maps (you can play FFH on the regular types), and gives more of the fantasy flavor to games. The reason you were told to pick an Erebus map is that its easier to play defensively on them, and to introduce you to this unique map style (props to cephalo).
As you look around, you should see some signs hanging around, too. These are labeled with odd names like Yggdrasil and Odios Prison, and are on tiles with cool-looking special features. These are unique improvements, only one per world (sometimes not even that not every one appears every time), which are very powerful. Grab them if you can, but having one shouldnt make or break a game. Just notice them. Specifically, note a Guardian of Pristinus Pass. If this is near (within 10-12 tiles) to you, quit and restart. It spawns powerful Barbarian units once someone comes next to it, and you dont want to deal with that yet.
Another group of special objects are the lairs. You can consider these to be a type of goody hut, except mutated and evil. You have to press a special "explore" button to see what's in them, and while the rewards they contain can be really neat they often just decide to dump a multitude of barbarians on your head for fun instead. Rule of thumb for your first game: don't explore a lair without heavy backup, especially when you're within range of your lands. It's very risky to explore these otherwise. Also, some of the unique improvements are nothing more than "superlairs", which give very nice things but also host some very un-nice beasties. There are no pink ponies hiding in the Broken Sepulcher.
Other things to notice are the new resources. Well get to Mana later youll pretty much ignore it this game just note that it gives no bonuses to food, commerce, etc. Pearls lie offshore, but can only be harvested by one civilization (read the manual to find out who), so ignore those too. That leaves three Reagents, Mithril, and Gunpowder. Reagents are moderately good bonuses in and of themselves, but their real benefit is to allow powerful magical stuff. They wont help right now. Mithril and Gunpowder are revealed in the late game, and allow powerful units. This is as good as place as any to mention that Copper and Iron are handled differently in FFH. They arent necessary to produce melee units (Iron is needed for some ships, though), but rather they increase the power of those units. Copper adds 1 strength, Iron adds 2 and a bonus vs. Copper units, and Mithril adds *4* and a bonus against Iron units. These are exclusive (they dont add up), but once the appropriate tech is researched the upgrade is automatic.
After exploring a bit, you can now exit Worldbuilder and build wherever you like. Once your capitol is placed and set to producing something, enter the city screen. Look at the Great Person Points counter, and youll see that you are already getting some points! Yay! This is because of your civilization the Grigori. Every civ in FFH is unique in playstyle, with distinct benefits and limits. Your civ has the ability to produce Adventurers as Great People. Adventurers are special because theyre Heroes, which as you can guess means they're cool. Every civ in FFH has at least one Hero, but the Grigori can potentially have an unlimited amount. Why are Heroes special, you ask? Well, Heroes automatically get one experience point a turn until they reach 100 XP which is awesome and furthermore, they have a couple special promotions like increasing strength - which is more awesome. Other Heroes are unique, with set strength and abilities. Your Adventurers are Heroes which can be upgraded to any common unit. On the flipside, the Grigori cannot join, found, or get any benefits from religions. Thus, we'll ignore them all this game.
Another thing to notice is the selection of research. All your options are ungodly long to research, and you cant even get MINES until the second tier. Also, there are several split paths, instead of one integrated path. This is intentional (duh), and forces players to specialize and eventually select one way to win. As a rough approximation, the paths are split thusly: magic (which well ignore this first game), religion (also ignored), economy, recon, and combat. There are benefits to each, and powerful units result from each. This first game, youll probably want to focus mostly on combat with a little bit of economy mixed in.
Your first tech options are Agriculture, Exploration, Ancient Chants, and Crafting (you start with one of these, but I forget which one, so bear with me). They grant (in order): farms, roads, Monuments (culture), and wineries (yes, wineries but Crafting leads to Mining, and from there to better combat units). Pick any one of the basic ones; eventually youll want them all.
Now, a note about your starting units (the Warrior and Scout). They will die within 75 turns, almost guaranteed. Scouts have a VERY short lifespan in the early game often 20 turns or less. Erebus (the place where this all happens, not the map) is not a friendly place to visit. Animal counts are higher, barbarians start rampaging earlier, and some of the people you meet are just not friendly. Deal with it, and choose whether losing half a dozen scouts in exchange for some gold and a tech is worth it. You are generally safe using the starting Warrior to do a loop around instead of home guard, but at high levels, anything is possible.
Assuming you are at Prince/Monarch difficulty, your first unit produced should probably be a Warrior to replace the exploring one youll lose. Any higher, and you cant explore so another Scout is kind of nice. Any lower, and it really doesnt matter its a lot easier for your units to survive at the beginning, so its a toss-up whether you want to have three units out/empty home or build a garrison troop.
Dont forget to check out your Civics. Your options are unrecognizable from the original Civ ones, but note that you are a Pacifist. Youll want to stay that way until you get at least two Adventurers, but then you should change since army costs will be outrageous. If you feel evil, switch to Fend For Themselves sooner or later and note the relative benefits of City-States and God-King. Youll want to be one of them eventually.
Your beginning game will be slow. Animals should appear within 25 turns, barbarians within 70. After getting the first tier of techs, aim for Education (cottages) and Bronze Working (Axemen + Copper boost). Sometime around turn 75, there will be an event telling you that some unkind fellow named Orthus has showed up. If hes next to you (i.e., closer to you than anyone else), you should probably quit. Orthus is a barbarian Hero with 6 strength and a bad attitude, and if hes next to you he can turn ugly. You can try to kill him quickly (and I mean quickly, within 20 turns) but for your first game hes an unnecessary complication. In some games, Orthus seems to acquire an entourage of barbarian troops in some twisted playerkilling megastack. Dont let it happen. If hes not next to you, ignore him, but you might see a computer civ or two die in a hundred turns or so.
The makers of FFH had a little bit of an event fetish. There are tons of them, with a very eclectic mix of effects both good and bad. You can't really affect which ones you get, though, so just try to ride it out. If, for instance, you get an event involving a hungry hill giant and some innocent pigs, just chalk it up to the "FFH Experience!" and continue about your business. And, for the love of whatever diety you worship, do NOT antagonize the rabbit. EVER.
Anyway, dont forget those Adventurers you got. At about turn 100, you should have two and one of them should be above 60 experience. Hopefully, you havent lost one (theres an annoying random event bug that can do that). Upgrade at least one of them to Warrior you might want to do both, since you arent going to be having recon units above Scouts anytime soon. In the future, you may want to upgrade one to an Adept but not this game. Promote your super-Warrior with whatever sounds cool a possible recommendation is to get all the Combats, which allows you to get Heroic Strength/Defense for power boosts.
Youll probably have met someone else by now, if all you explorers havent died. Youll notice a few new things down by the Diplomacy corner of the main screen. First of all, the dude(ette) you met is either Good, Neutral, or Evil. This indicates their general alignment in the world generally the Good guys stick together, the Evil guys rampage together, and the Neutrals get hit by everybody (you, by the way, are Neutral). This is by no means a definite arrangement, since alignments can change and sometimes your Good friends just tick you off, but you can generally figure along those lines. Also, alignment doesnt relate to behavior some of the Evil guys are genuinely loyal, while the worst conquering type in the game is Neutral. Nationality matters a lot more, and experience will teach you who does what. Look out for the Hippus, the Doviello, and the Malakim, though. Just saying. Another thing youll see is a reassuring little red line reading Armageddon Counter. It should read in the single digits. Ignore it. As it goes up, bad things happen, but for your first game assume that there is nothing you can do about it and try to ride the wave. Itll be explained later, in the parts of the manual that I don't help with because lots of thinking and research were involved. Just wait for the pleasant experiences as the AC rises above, oh, 50 or so.
Some last things to help you out. The Grigori have three unique units and two unique buildings, relatively bland by FFH standards. The unique buildings are the Adventurers Guild (increased GP Adventurer points and two free XP), and the Grigori Tavern (same as normal tavern, plus GP Adventurer point). The first unit (and the only one you will care about right now) is the Dragon Slayer, which is useful not for its advantage against dragons (which youll probably never need) but for their Courage, which grants faster healing and immunity to Fear (babble to you right now, but youll see why it is useful as you play). The other two are the is the Grigory Medic and the Luonnatar, that you will never get to use if you ignore the magic techs as you should. Finally, each civilization in the game gets a world spell, an extremely powerful one-time shot that gives great benefits. The Grigori spell resets the Great Person counter, and if you have ever played Civ before youll know thats useful. To use it, select the appropriate button by the unit order stuff; it's called "Ardor". And finally, Cassiel has the Adaptive trait. That means that he periodically can change one of his other traits to another one of his choosing. Your first change should be at turn 95 or 96, with one every 100 turns.
So at this point, you can basically play as normal. Focus on the combat techs, culminating in Mithril Working, with whatever techs you think sound cool. You will see some weird things happen, but if you are a good player playing on a relatively easy difficulty, you should muddle through. Its more than *I* had, no one told *me* any of this, some of us just figured it out. As for victory, well, you wont. Not in the first game, unless you went on a monster conquest spree and got a big score whilst avoiding Hyborem. In any case, there are some of the regular ways to win: conquest, domination, culture, and score. There are also a few new ones. Religion (I think its new, I havent played BTS in a while), Tower of Mastery (you need lots of that mana you ignored), and Alter of the Luonnotar (you need those religious techs you ignored). Basically, the Tower required one of every mana type (Im getting there, I promise), while the Alter requires a half-dozen Great Prophets and a big wonder. They sound easy, but theyre not.
Suggestions for your second game are as follows: Try a new civ. Another one that is generally easy for newcomers to learn is the Bannor, who basically play like the old civs but have a unique Civic for the warmongering types. Also, experiment a little. Get a couple mages and upgrade them randomly, just to see what happens. Found a religion. Go kill that guy from Hell. Find a dragon. If youre not sure whats going on, youre doing it right. Youre not supposed to.
OK, finally: Magic. How does it work? How do I learn it? Can I fly with it? None of these are answered here, but FFH has a remarkably complex system that must have been a real pain to design that revolves solely around magic. This is the part where most FFH noobs shut down, since its totally unrelated to the real Civ. Anyway, magic comes from Mana, which is either provided from your Palace, some Wonders, some Unique Features, and the ground those pretty blue crystal things.
To use it, you need Adepts magic users. Adepts are weak units strengthwise, but the magic they can do is pretty sweet as they get stronger, they get a free promotions, and they automatically get experience, albeit at a pretty slow rate. Each spell you can do is based on the mana you have and the promotions your Adepts have technically, the promotions become available due to your mana. Thats because each mana has a type. You cant use the blue mana, you need Water mana or Chaos mana or Shadow mana, instead. To make the mana into what you want, you have to build an improvement on it with an Adept. The improvements available are limited by your tech (you need Divination, Elementalism, etc.), so the spells you can cast are limited too.
The spells for Adepts are actually pretty weak. None of them can do damage; instead, they do stuff like add strength boosts to other units, increase heal rate, terraform, start fires, summon a skeletal buddy, etc. However, Adepts can upgrade to Mages once the appropriate tech is researched and the Adept is level 4. Mages can access a new level of spells once they get the right promotions, which are more powerful generally they are summons, creating a unit for a short period of time. Mages can then upgrade to Archmages, with another level of still stronger spells. There is a limit on the number of Archmages a player can have, although an Archmage with Death 3 as a promo can become a Lich a free up a slot.
It is clear that magic is NOT all-powerful. Early magic users are almost defenseless (especially against those damn assassins), and without a whole bunch of promotions are useless or close to it. Mages and Archmages are extremely valuable while still being vulnerable. Refined mana (upgraded from the blue kind) is stuck. It cannot be changed UNLESS one of two things happens: the Amurites (a mage civ) casts their world spell, which resets all mana back to raw, OR a Mage with Metamagic 2 casts Dispel Magic on a specific node.
There is another kind of magic too Divine, related to religion. Each religion (except the Council of Esus) has its own line of disciples that grow in power just as mages do. The initial ones can only spread the religion and increase healing speed (the Medic promotion is rare in FFH), but this is offset by the fact that the second tier can be built with no XP limits. These Priests can cast a couple weak, religion-specific spells or have religion-specific abilities, but they can also sacrifice themselves to create a temple in a city and spread their religion with no chance of failure. Finally, there is a level above them that does require a specific experience level, but these guys have spells as strong as the Archmages. Moreover, religious units dont need promotions to get their spells, so they can focus on other promotions. They are less flexible, though, and generally have fewer spells as a whole. As for religion in general, each religion in FFH has different benefits. If you want to know what they are, look it up.
One more thing: the scenarios, which have finally been added. I'm not going to explain anything more about them than how to play them: there's a button up by the advisor buttons, way on the right side. Press it, then select an available scenario by unintuitively clicking the button next to the name on the RIGHT of the screen. A lot of these are difficult, but a couple of them are pretty easy and in fact designed to help out the noobs. Specifically, the Grand Menagerie (which involves hunting) and the Gift of Kylorin (which involves magic).
A Recap of Whats New in Fall From Heaven (in no particular order, and missing some stuff, and really more along the lines of things you should make an effort to find out about somehow):
Armageddon
Good and Evil Epic Battles
Hell
Magic
Councils (Over/Under)
New units, wonders, buildings, etc. tons thereof
Civics are revamped
Vampires, Elves, Dwarves, and More!
Guilds
Landscape is Cooler
Heroes
Religions are unique to play
Civilizations are unique to play
Scenarios
New to Fall From Heaven? START HERE.
FFH is an extremely complex mod. Nearly every part of the original Civilization has been changed in some way. To help those new to the mod, here is a small tutorial of sorts although this is far from all-inclusive, and more than a little vague. I assume that all players have at least a cursory experience with the original Civ, and can muddle around some on their own. For those of you who really dont want to read this whole thing, skip to the end theres an outline of some of the added stuff in FFH.
First of all, after downloading the mod and opening up the game, you are presented with a rather scary-looking guy wreathed in fire. Remember; DONT PANIC (hug towel as necessary). Just start a game as normal, with the Grigori civ (leader Cassiel), an Erebus map, Normal speed, and any difficulty (maybe one weaker than you normally play). You can skip the initial movie since there are no instructions there, although it is kind of neat to watch at least once.
So, now you sit with three units: a Settler, a Scout, and a Warrior. Immediately youll notice two things: first, that Scouts and Warriors are stronger than normal and that you can see a lot more of the map than in general. These initial benefits are for good reason: capitol city placement is just as (if not more) vital in FFH, and barbarians are MUCH more aggressive and numerous than in vanilla. Before you actually do anything, since this is your first game and a write-off anyway, enter Worldbuilder and look around.
Here, youll see that the Erebus map is rather unique. There are LOTS of mountains everywhere, and tons of little valleys scattered everywhere. This is specific to Erebus maps (you can play FFH on the regular types), and gives more of the fantasy flavor to games. The reason you were told to pick an Erebus map is that its easier to play defensively on them, and to introduce you to this unique map style (props to cephalo).
As you look around, you should see some signs hanging around, too. These are labeled with odd names like Yggdrasil and Odios Prison, and are on tiles with cool-looking special features. These are unique improvements, only one per world (sometimes not even that not every one appears every time), which are very powerful. Grab them if you can, but having one shouldnt make or break a game. Just notice them. Specifically, note a Guardian of Pristinus Pass. If this is near (within 10-12 tiles) to you, quit and restart. It spawns powerful Barbarian units once someone comes next to it, and you dont want to deal with that yet.
Another group of special objects are the lairs. You can consider these to be a type of goody hut, except mutated and evil. You have to press a special "explore" button to see what's in them, and while the rewards they contain can be really neat they often just decide to dump a multitude of barbarians on your head for fun instead. Rule of thumb for your first game: don't explore a lair without heavy backup, especially when you're within range of your lands. It's very risky to explore these otherwise. Also, some of the unique improvements are nothing more than "superlairs", which give very nice things but also host some very un-nice beasties. There are no pink ponies hiding in the Broken Sepulcher.
Other things to notice are the new resources. Well get to Mana later youll pretty much ignore it this game just note that it gives no bonuses to food, commerce, etc. Pearls lie offshore, but can only be harvested by one civilization (read the manual to find out who), so ignore those too. That leaves three Reagents, Mithril, and Gunpowder. Reagents are moderately good bonuses in and of themselves, but their real benefit is to allow powerful magical stuff. They wont help right now. Mithril and Gunpowder are revealed in the late game, and allow powerful units. This is as good as place as any to mention that Copper and Iron are handled differently in FFH. They arent necessary to produce melee units (Iron is needed for some ships, though), but rather they increase the power of those units. Copper adds 1 strength, Iron adds 2 and a bonus vs. Copper units, and Mithril adds *4* and a bonus against Iron units. These are exclusive (they dont add up), but once the appropriate tech is researched the upgrade is automatic.
After exploring a bit, you can now exit Worldbuilder and build wherever you like. Once your capitol is placed and set to producing something, enter the city screen. Look at the Great Person Points counter, and youll see that you are already getting some points! Yay! This is because of your civilization the Grigori. Every civ in FFH is unique in playstyle, with distinct benefits and limits. Your civ has the ability to produce Adventurers as Great People. Adventurers are special because theyre Heroes, which as you can guess means they're cool. Every civ in FFH has at least one Hero, but the Grigori can potentially have an unlimited amount. Why are Heroes special, you ask? Well, Heroes automatically get one experience point a turn until they reach 100 XP which is awesome and furthermore, they have a couple special promotions like increasing strength - which is more awesome. Other Heroes are unique, with set strength and abilities. Your Adventurers are Heroes which can be upgraded to any common unit. On the flipside, the Grigori cannot join, found, or get any benefits from religions. Thus, we'll ignore them all this game.
Another thing to notice is the selection of research. All your options are ungodly long to research, and you cant even get MINES until the second tier. Also, there are several split paths, instead of one integrated path. This is intentional (duh), and forces players to specialize and eventually select one way to win. As a rough approximation, the paths are split thusly: magic (which well ignore this first game), religion (also ignored), economy, recon, and combat. There are benefits to each, and powerful units result from each. This first game, youll probably want to focus mostly on combat with a little bit of economy mixed in.
Your first tech options are Agriculture, Exploration, Ancient Chants, and Crafting (you start with one of these, but I forget which one, so bear with me). They grant (in order): farms, roads, Monuments (culture), and wineries (yes, wineries but Crafting leads to Mining, and from there to better combat units). Pick any one of the basic ones; eventually youll want them all.
Now, a note about your starting units (the Warrior and Scout). They will die within 75 turns, almost guaranteed. Scouts have a VERY short lifespan in the early game often 20 turns or less. Erebus (the place where this all happens, not the map) is not a friendly place to visit. Animal counts are higher, barbarians start rampaging earlier, and some of the people you meet are just not friendly. Deal with it, and choose whether losing half a dozen scouts in exchange for some gold and a tech is worth it. You are generally safe using the starting Warrior to do a loop around instead of home guard, but at high levels, anything is possible.
Assuming you are at Prince/Monarch difficulty, your first unit produced should probably be a Warrior to replace the exploring one youll lose. Any higher, and you cant explore so another Scout is kind of nice. Any lower, and it really doesnt matter its a lot easier for your units to survive at the beginning, so its a toss-up whether you want to have three units out/empty home or build a garrison troop.
Dont forget to check out your Civics. Your options are unrecognizable from the original Civ ones, but note that you are a Pacifist. Youll want to stay that way until you get at least two Adventurers, but then you should change since army costs will be outrageous. If you feel evil, switch to Fend For Themselves sooner or later and note the relative benefits of City-States and God-King. Youll want to be one of them eventually.
Your beginning game will be slow. Animals should appear within 25 turns, barbarians within 70. After getting the first tier of techs, aim for Education (cottages) and Bronze Working (Axemen + Copper boost). Sometime around turn 75, there will be an event telling you that some unkind fellow named Orthus has showed up. If hes next to you (i.e., closer to you than anyone else), you should probably quit. Orthus is a barbarian Hero with 6 strength and a bad attitude, and if hes next to you he can turn ugly. You can try to kill him quickly (and I mean quickly, within 20 turns) but for your first game hes an unnecessary complication. In some games, Orthus seems to acquire an entourage of barbarian troops in some twisted playerkilling megastack. Dont let it happen. If hes not next to you, ignore him, but you might see a computer civ or two die in a hundred turns or so.
The makers of FFH had a little bit of an event fetish. There are tons of them, with a very eclectic mix of effects both good and bad. You can't really affect which ones you get, though, so just try to ride it out. If, for instance, you get an event involving a hungry hill giant and some innocent pigs, just chalk it up to the "FFH Experience!" and continue about your business. And, for the love of whatever diety you worship, do NOT antagonize the rabbit. EVER.
Anyway, dont forget those Adventurers you got. At about turn 100, you should have two and one of them should be above 60 experience. Hopefully, you havent lost one (theres an annoying random event bug that can do that). Upgrade at least one of them to Warrior you might want to do both, since you arent going to be having recon units above Scouts anytime soon. In the future, you may want to upgrade one to an Adept but not this game. Promote your super-Warrior with whatever sounds cool a possible recommendation is to get all the Combats, which allows you to get Heroic Strength/Defense for power boosts.
Youll probably have met someone else by now, if all you explorers havent died. Youll notice a few new things down by the Diplomacy corner of the main screen. First of all, the dude(ette) you met is either Good, Neutral, or Evil. This indicates their general alignment in the world generally the Good guys stick together, the Evil guys rampage together, and the Neutrals get hit by everybody (you, by the way, are Neutral). This is by no means a definite arrangement, since alignments can change and sometimes your Good friends just tick you off, but you can generally figure along those lines. Also, alignment doesnt relate to behavior some of the Evil guys are genuinely loyal, while the worst conquering type in the game is Neutral. Nationality matters a lot more, and experience will teach you who does what. Look out for the Hippus, the Doviello, and the Malakim, though. Just saying. Another thing youll see is a reassuring little red line reading Armageddon Counter. It should read in the single digits. Ignore it. As it goes up, bad things happen, but for your first game assume that there is nothing you can do about it and try to ride the wave. Itll be explained later, in the parts of the manual that I don't help with because lots of thinking and research were involved. Just wait for the pleasant experiences as the AC rises above, oh, 50 or so.
Some last things to help you out. The Grigori have three unique units and two unique buildings, relatively bland by FFH standards. The unique buildings are the Adventurers Guild (increased GP Adventurer points and two free XP), and the Grigori Tavern (same as normal tavern, plus GP Adventurer point). The first unit (and the only one you will care about right now) is the Dragon Slayer, which is useful not for its advantage against dragons (which youll probably never need) but for their Courage, which grants faster healing and immunity to Fear (babble to you right now, but youll see why it is useful as you play). The other two are the is the Grigory Medic and the Luonnatar, that you will never get to use if you ignore the magic techs as you should. Finally, each civilization in the game gets a world spell, an extremely powerful one-time shot that gives great benefits. The Grigori spell resets the Great Person counter, and if you have ever played Civ before youll know thats useful. To use it, select the appropriate button by the unit order stuff; it's called "Ardor". And finally, Cassiel has the Adaptive trait. That means that he periodically can change one of his other traits to another one of his choosing. Your first change should be at turn 95 or 96, with one every 100 turns.
So at this point, you can basically play as normal. Focus on the combat techs, culminating in Mithril Working, with whatever techs you think sound cool. You will see some weird things happen, but if you are a good player playing on a relatively easy difficulty, you should muddle through. Its more than *I* had, no one told *me* any of this, some of us just figured it out. As for victory, well, you wont. Not in the first game, unless you went on a monster conquest spree and got a big score whilst avoiding Hyborem. In any case, there are some of the regular ways to win: conquest, domination, culture, and score. There are also a few new ones. Religion (I think its new, I havent played BTS in a while), Tower of Mastery (you need lots of that mana you ignored), and Alter of the Luonnotar (you need those religious techs you ignored). Basically, the Tower required one of every mana type (Im getting there, I promise), while the Alter requires a half-dozen Great Prophets and a big wonder. They sound easy, but theyre not.
Suggestions for your second game are as follows: Try a new civ. Another one that is generally easy for newcomers to learn is the Bannor, who basically play like the old civs but have a unique Civic for the warmongering types. Also, experiment a little. Get a couple mages and upgrade them randomly, just to see what happens. Found a religion. Go kill that guy from Hell. Find a dragon. If youre not sure whats going on, youre doing it right. Youre not supposed to.
OK, finally: Magic. How does it work? How do I learn it? Can I fly with it? None of these are answered here, but FFH has a remarkably complex system that must have been a real pain to design that revolves solely around magic. This is the part where most FFH noobs shut down, since its totally unrelated to the real Civ. Anyway, magic comes from Mana, which is either provided from your Palace, some Wonders, some Unique Features, and the ground those pretty blue crystal things.
To use it, you need Adepts magic users. Adepts are weak units strengthwise, but the magic they can do is pretty sweet as they get stronger, they get a free promotions, and they automatically get experience, albeit at a pretty slow rate. Each spell you can do is based on the mana you have and the promotions your Adepts have technically, the promotions become available due to your mana. Thats because each mana has a type. You cant use the blue mana, you need Water mana or Chaos mana or Shadow mana, instead. To make the mana into what you want, you have to build an improvement on it with an Adept. The improvements available are limited by your tech (you need Divination, Elementalism, etc.), so the spells you can cast are limited too.
The spells for Adepts are actually pretty weak. None of them can do damage; instead, they do stuff like add strength boosts to other units, increase heal rate, terraform, start fires, summon a skeletal buddy, etc. However, Adepts can upgrade to Mages once the appropriate tech is researched and the Adept is level 4. Mages can access a new level of spells once they get the right promotions, which are more powerful generally they are summons, creating a unit for a short period of time. Mages can then upgrade to Archmages, with another level of still stronger spells. There is a limit on the number of Archmages a player can have, although an Archmage with Death 3 as a promo can become a Lich a free up a slot.
It is clear that magic is NOT all-powerful. Early magic users are almost defenseless (especially against those damn assassins), and without a whole bunch of promotions are useless or close to it. Mages and Archmages are extremely valuable while still being vulnerable. Refined mana (upgraded from the blue kind) is stuck. It cannot be changed UNLESS one of two things happens: the Amurites (a mage civ) casts their world spell, which resets all mana back to raw, OR a Mage with Metamagic 2 casts Dispel Magic on a specific node.
There is another kind of magic too Divine, related to religion. Each religion (except the Council of Esus) has its own line of disciples that grow in power just as mages do. The initial ones can only spread the religion and increase healing speed (the Medic promotion is rare in FFH), but this is offset by the fact that the second tier can be built with no XP limits. These Priests can cast a couple weak, religion-specific spells or have religion-specific abilities, but they can also sacrifice themselves to create a temple in a city and spread their religion with no chance of failure. Finally, there is a level above them that does require a specific experience level, but these guys have spells as strong as the Archmages. Moreover, religious units dont need promotions to get their spells, so they can focus on other promotions. They are less flexible, though, and generally have fewer spells as a whole. As for religion in general, each religion in FFH has different benefits. If you want to know what they are, look it up.
One more thing: the scenarios, which have finally been added. I'm not going to explain anything more about them than how to play them: there's a button up by the advisor buttons, way on the right side. Press it, then select an available scenario by unintuitively clicking the button next to the name on the RIGHT of the screen. A lot of these are difficult, but a couple of them are pretty easy and in fact designed to help out the noobs. Specifically, the Grand Menagerie (which involves hunting) and the Gift of Kylorin (which involves magic).
A Recap of Whats New in Fall From Heaven (in no particular order, and missing some stuff, and really more along the lines of things you should make an effort to find out about somehow):
Armageddon
Good and Evil Epic Battles
Hell
Magic
Councils (Over/Under)
New units, wonders, buildings, etc. tons thereof
Civics are revamped
Vampires, Elves, Dwarves, and More!
Guilds
Landscape is Cooler
Heroes
Religions are unique to play
Civilizations are unique to play
Scenarios
![[to_xp]Gekko](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/74/74677.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
this is gonna be a big help for newcomers. great work indeed, bravo! 
? Do you have a macro or some other semiautomatic method for putting in the links?
