Technology
The Tech screen is minimized and grouped into colour coded sections, but if you want a larger version it is in the spoiler. When you open it you can see that it looks quite different from Civ 4. While Civ has a horizontal tech path that you have to advance along everywhere to get ahead... In FFH the tech is vertical, which encourages you to specialise.
The Larger number of worker and building techs help slow the game down in the beginning, but the more advanced techs can be focused on completely to the lack of others. For example, you could advance completely down the melee weapon line. Gaining Champions, Immortals and the ability to use Mythrill weapons. You can do this without ever teching to a religion, to defensive bowmen of any kind, or magical Archmages.
The Religions are the ones in the Yellow sections and we will be heading for the
Ashen Veil. To do that we need
Mysticism,
Way of the Wicked, and
Knowledge of the Ether. All very good techs in their own right,
Mysticism will allow a civic that will be useful, i'll explain the civics in a later section. Way of the wicked gets me a wonder that increases the AC and
Knowledge of the Ether gets me Shamans... Base magic wielders... They don't do much now... I could maybe burn a few forests to the ground... but later... oh my do they improve.
Technology Paths
As you can proceed to the end techs in any order here is a list of the basic ones. Take note that most of the end result units are only National Units, meaning you can only have four of them at any one time. This means you need an army of base units supported by specialists.
Most tech paths at the high end are to do with units. Powerful units have to be earned.
Religion
The Religions can all be founded via their techs but uniquely in FFH even if you tech a religion second, after its been founded, you still gain a disciple so you can spread the religion and gain it's bonuses. Some religions have a second technology to unlock heroes or unique wonders or civics. The end path for religion techs is at the bottom of the tech tree. The Disciples also differ in that the initial zealots spread the religion... but the priests allow you to spread AND build a religions temple in a new city. This can be very cost effective Production wise.
Theology gets you High Priests which can really make a game... Enemies in the water? Have a Kraken, a water beast powerful enough to destroy anything... Someone have too many cottages? Have an Earthquake, destroy all those tile improvements...
The other part of the religion path depends upon whether you are Good, Neutral or Evil. The Good Civilizations need
Valor and unlock Paladins, high level healer and warrior units. Perfect for leading an army. The Neutral Civilizations need
Commune with Nature, This unlocks Druids, High level healers and magic units. These are terraformer units. You have some desert in your lands? A Druid will change that to any type of land you want... ANY. Evil Civilizations need
Malevolent Designs, which unlocks Eidilons, another high level healder and warrior unit.
Arcane Magic
The Arcane Magic path is one of the most linear. You go for your adapts, Then pick which type of magic you would like, Necromancy for dead minions, Elemental for fireballs, Divination for city improvement or alteration for unit or land enhancement?
Once you've decided that you just keep heading up the path. Eventually you reach Archmages which can alone control a battlefield. Unit stack? Hit them with a lightning storm... City has high defence? Make your units shadow walkers able to ignore defence... You also get a tech that does the equivlent of airports. a building for fast portal transport.
Melee Line
The Metal weapons line is VERY different to base Civ. In FFH the units have pre-requisite buildings instead of pre-requisite metals... the metals in FFH effect the weapons the units use. No metals and they just have stone or jade rubbish... Copper gets bronze weapons which give +1
Iron Weapons give +2
and a weakness to electricity. The Most powerful is Mythrill which gives +4
Thus even if you have a tech savy nation, unless you have the resources to equip your troops they may actually be WEAKER then a nation with base warriors with better weapons.
The High end of the Melee line is Immortals and Phalanxs. The Immortals live up to their name seeing as they don't die. If they are killed in battle they are teleported back to the capital. To end them once and for all you would need to kill them once then burn the capital to the ground on the same turn... hard to pull off. The Phalanxs are just your basic super soilder, excellent at taking cities and strong enough to fight of armies for themselves
Archer Line
The Archery line is the basic city defence stuff. They have more defence then attack meaning they are stuck in their designed battle role. the first unit archers have 3/5
Meaning a 2nd tier axeman or swordsman from the melee line would have to be equipped with bronze weapons to be equal to them.
The Longbowmen can wield bronze of iron weapons themselves making them the best city defence in the game!
The high end units for this include a crossbow unit and a type of Musket men called a Aquabus, which you have to detour through some of the building line techs to unlock.
Recon Line
This line is needed for exploration early game. The Animals in FFH can be powerful and only the natural vs. animal bonus from this line will make them a match.
The initial scouts and hunters aren't amazing. But opening up this line gives you access to hawks. A Quick flying scout unit similar to Civ 4's Airships. The hawks make scouting on your friends and enemies alike a breeze.
In the high end of this tech line you get Rangers and assassin and the national unit beastmasters. You also open up a national Werewolf Hero.
The Rangers have no build limit but are only good as scouts seeing as they get a negative bonus vs. cities. The Assassins are brilliant as they allways target the weakest unit in a stack. Making them good for taking out damaged heroes or weak magic users before they can cast.
The Beastmasters are a nation unit meaning you only get four of them... And their main bonus isn't the strength... it's the fact that while Rangers and the like can tame any beasts they defeat in combat, giving you bears and lions on your side... Beastmasters tame Beasts. By beasts i mean Beasts like King Kong or a Dragon! Yes you heard me right.
Mounted Line
The Mounted line opens up a lot more quickly then base Civ. The Horsemen are quite weak on 4
but they get a 50% bonus vs. archers. Horse units in this game also get 3
instead of 2. Plus there are two move promotions AND a haste spell which combined with road improvements means you can get a lot of movement for rapid redeployment very quickly.
You get Horse Archers later and then Chariots which are horse units that can use metals! Making them very good attack units. The high end horse units are Knights which are national.
I don't expect to have a large enough empire to get much use out of horse units, i also assume i'll be on the defensive for most of the game.
Siege Units
Not so much a tech line as it is part of the builder line and metal line.
Siege units are a lot more powerful in this game with a high collateral damage cap and a constant 80% withdrawal rating. They have to be able to compete with the awesome power of magical spells.
The drawback is that they are not "living" units. This means they can't gain the raiders perk to use enemy roads and any haste spells won't effect them. Slowing up your advance into enemy territory.
The low level catapult is unlocked quickly but the high end cannon is at the end of the builder line with
gunpowder.
Builder Line
There are a lot of powerful buildings in the game. Both wonders and normal buildings. Some are pre-requisite to build troops of a certain line which are discovered by researching their own lines. But the Builder line concentrates on the infrastructure buildings, like the Public Baths building is very powerful for city growth. It gives +3
and +1
Unfortunately there is no super growth building like a granary. Instead the growth bonus is split up between lots of different buildings that take a bit too much time to build.
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Orc Tech Path Plan
All in all i'm going to be heading down the Religious path. I'm going to throw my all into burning the world. I will venture down the melee path a bit to pick up the ability to use different metal weapons but i doubt i will complete it enough to use immortals etc.
to all cities. No upkeep to Compassion Civics and Double production of Granaries and Harbour.
tech rate making it harder to gain new technological breakthroughs. Dumb Orcs.
it's just one of those strange little quirks. Penguins do turn up as a happy resource in FFH which is amusing.
with Interest.
& +1
