Adaptive trait, Combat promotions, World Spells - questions

[RobAnybody]

First off, I'm late to the party, but I'm loving it. This is a great MOD & has really reinvigorated my enjoyment of Civ, so thanks to all involved. Now, I'm on my 3rd game. First one, Amurites, no idea what I was doing, played Prince (I can play Immortal on CivIV BtS), won Domination. Second, Calabim, I read up on the forums, moved to Emporer, won eventually with Conquest after Feasting Feasting Feasting. Now I'm playing the Kuriotates, on Immortal, because I figured a good turtle civ would be good to try that difficulty.

So, I have a few questions, & thanks in advance to anyone who can help me with them.

1) I understand the whole settlement concept, well, in general, but obviously not completely. I thought I'd be able to border-pop them with religion spread, but that's not working (wasn't working before question #4, either). Is casting Legends the only way to border-pop my settlements? I settled them to grab some resources, but if Legends is the only way to pop, then you basically need to settle every Settlement you might ever want, then cast Legends, right?

2) I understand that Adaptive should let me change one of my traits every 100 turns, specifically the Expansive trait (or is it my Phil trait - I can't seem to tell, I'm hoping it's my Exp trait - Cardith Lorda's description lists him as Phil-Exp-Adapt). I'm on turn 128 & haven't been able to change traits - is it because I'm playing on Epic, or do I have to proactively do something to change traits?

3) If the answer to #2 is that I can pro-actively change my trait & I've missed how to do it, what should I change to given I'm trapped in Stasis (see #4)? Or does it not matter & I should just wait it out?

4) The #%*(@$^& Illians cast Stasis. Hey, I think the idea of World Spells is pretty cool. I saw in the Custom Game options there's a way to disable them all - that seems like a terrible solution. But, I'm seriously sitting here for 30 turns where I can't do anything?!? Initially I thought "hey, at least my cottages get 30 turns of growth!", but no, not even that. Is there a way, maybe in the asset files, to lower the turns on certain World Spells?

When I played the Calabim, the Amurites cast Arcane Lacuna & that... sucked. Disabled Feasting. Disabled gifting Vampirism. Again, for 30 turns, because Epic. I don't want to turn off World Spells. They're too neat. But can I cut down on the base # of turns of these 30-turn game killers? I seriously want to either RageQuit or else reload & BarbCrush them the turn before this happens. Can someone show me where to modify the effects of certain World Spells? I'm playing single player & these are nerfing my fun.

5) I've pretty much gotten all my information from reading the forums & I have never seen a topic on playing the Somnium card game. I didn't even know it existed until I was literally hitting every button shortly after turn 100 trying to figure out how to change my trait. Does anyone use that? Are there strategies for it?

6) Other than an occasional city guardian unit you want to have a little buffed up strength, is there any reason to take Combat promotions in FfH2? Drill leads to Blitz & Drill is generally superior to Combat even in basic CivIV (other than Combat leading to Blitz). Other than getting a few Commando units, what's the point in taking Combat in FfH2?

7) I think I have a pretty good handle on mana nodes, but, rather than starting a separate topic, I may as well ask this here: If you, theoretically, had 4 nodes of each mana type, your Archmages would promote having every spell in the game, right?

8) Finally, a this-game-specific question. With the Kuriotates, after having Dominated & Conquested, I figured I'd try a Cultural victory. Other than building Temples & the occasional Wonder I can snag, is there a sure fire way to boost my Culture? I've just managed to get Fellowship of Leaves spread to my 3rd potential Culture city (a few turns before Stasis hit, so I haven't been able to build hardly any Temples), & was hoping to combine Cottages + Ancient-Forest-Lumber-Mills to feed the big cities & run some Bards, plus probably continued Agrarianism, at least early on, until way on down the line when I can get Foreign Trade, Liberty, Republic. Is there an early-mid strategy I should be pursuing to advance my Culture?

Other than Temples, most buildings seem to add a very small amount of Culture. I'm used to playing with Cathedrals, Synagogues, Mandirs, etc. to *multiply* Culture, even if I only have 1-2 religions. Any suggestions on how to adapt?


Thanks for any replies, & I know this is a mix of "how does this work?" & "what's the best stategy?", so if this should go the Strategy & Tips subforum, feel free to move it, of course.

EDIT: I remembered one more as soon as I flipped back over to the game:
9) My promotion icons obscure my unit information. Now, I'm running Blue Marble in my base game of Civ, so maybe that's it, but, particularly with my Mages who have a lot of Lvl 1 spell promotion icons, the icons to show their promotions cover up the numeric descriptions that say what their strength, movement, & X/X experience is. Is there a way to disable the promotion icons in FfH2, even temporarily, so I can see the unit information behind it?

 

[Calavente]

2) it always come, don't worry. IIRC epic lengthen the time between each change.

4) well.. I understand... and disagrees that's their hidden trump card... they got this spell to ... compensate for not having an other spell and for having some other weakness. plus epic multiplies the length of spell.. but that's normal. you also got more turns to grow on the use of your own spell.

6) on combat and drill:
drill are inefficient against horsearchers (they disable all FS from opponent) .. further shadow II is a spell that counters the FS of other opponents.
I almost always get combat I-V on my units first. (combat % were doubled in FFH versus BTS however drill stayed the same... what was true in BTS isn't necessarily in FFH)
combat allows you to get march.... which is pretty useful to move and heal and fight sooner.
further blitz is very late tech...

well : drill for archers
flanking then combat... and sometime drill (for a late blitz) for mounted
combat for mage (increase the summon's strength
combat for melee.

7) yes (well, almost.. not counting religious spells and the ones specific to some units)

and sorry, no ideas currently for your other questions. it's been a long time I played vanilla FFH.(and especially kurios)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

welcome to the forums! let's see if I can help:

1) which religion did you spread there? not all give culture ( RoK and Esus give gold, AV give beakers ) so that could be it. also it has to be your state religion. settlements do not benefit from tile yields, but they can generate culture/gold/science which means specialists work. with religion priests you can create temples in them, which give specialist slots. FoL temples allow bards, while the caste system civic allows any specialist to generate culture.

2) check the manual, there should be a stickied thread. it does depend on speed, you should get a popup shortly on Epic

3) I wouldn't let stasis influence your choice of adaptive pick.

4) if you're feeling industrious you could check civ4spellinfos.xml in assets/xml/units , there might be something useful there. Also you could manually select opponents, avoding the ones whose worldspells are not to your liking.

5) Somnium can be pretty fun, it's often used to entertain yourself while waiting for others in MP. it can also give a minor diplo bonus but nothing significant.

6) did you notice combat promos are double strength compared to BTS while drill are the same? drill unfortunately sucks in FFH except for some exceptions. a cant-go-wrong promo path is usually c1 -> shock -> c3 -> march, with mobility added in as soon as feasible.

7) theoretically yes but you'll never have that many. however, with Sorcery tech you can build a metamagic node and get a mage with dispel magic, which will allow you to switch nodes back to raw and change them. this allows you to switch nodes around to maximize the free spells from upgrading.


8) ancient forest lumbermills are a big pita, you can only mill a non-ancient forest so you need luck and hordes of stacked workers. there's better ways to boost happiness imo:

a. early on religion civic, since you'll be building plenty of different temples
b. theatres give happiness from culture slider which you'll want high
c. lategame Order high priests can remove all unappiness from your cities
d. OO wonder tower of complacency removes all unhappiness from one city
e. pillar of chains will give you 1 hammer per population point, making unhappiness acceptable in one city


for cultural, there's a couple nifty tricks:

a. if you have festivals ( plus education iirc ) you can use a great bard to bulb drama, and if you are the first to grab it you get a free great bard.
b. found Empyrean, build the holy shrine, trade/gift others the honor tech and get them to join the overcouncil. you can then enforce the Liberty civic without having to tech the pricey and useless mercantilism tech. also, the Empyrean hero is OP especially vs the AI.

it should be noted that Republic and Foreign trade civics suck while Agrarianism is OP. As the Kurios you'll most likely want to keep God King. you also want caste system, sylvien lyre, theatre of dreams and that other wonder that boosts specialist culture ( hall of kings iirc )


9) I don't think so, but you can mouseover the unit to see strength etc. I'd disable blue marble as FFH already has pretty terrain graphics. also if you haven't, get Tholal's More Naval AI mod asap. the AI is a whole lot better!




@Calavente: it's Shadow I, not II

 

[UnforcedError]

In addition to the posts above:

2. Cardith is always Exp. Cassiel is always Phil, Varn is always Spi.

4. You can either handpick opponents as Gekko suggested or you can disable world spells altogether in the custom options. I often do that.

5. Gekko, did you ever get a diplo bonus from winning a Somnium match? I know the game claims to add that bonus but so far I haven't actually seen it happen.

6. You have tons of reasons to take the combat line with virtually all your units. Every combat promo enhances your unit's base strength by 20% so a C5 unit has an effective +100% str. The other promos don't increase the base strength directly but are instead subtracted from the opponent's strength if applicable. Your C5 heroes can also benefit from Heroic Str I-II, Heroic Defense I-II and Twincast (for casters).

8. Erebus in the Balance lets you build lumbermills in ancient forests too

9. Sounds like a problem with Blue Marble. Get rid of it

 

[RobAnybody]

2) it always come, don't worry. IIRC epic lengthen the time between each change.

(regarding my Adaptive trait)

Thanks - I've gathered it just hasn't happened yet due to Epic.

4) well.. I understand... and disagrees that's their hidden trump card... they got this spell to ... compensate for not having an other spell and for having some other weakness. plus epic multiplies the length of spell.. but that's normal. you also got more turns to grow on the use of your own spell.

Oh, I understand what you're saying, I mean, when & if I get around to playing as the Illians, I'm gonna want that thing to last 30 turns! I just don't have a real problem with nerfing some of the AI's World Spells when I'm not them, because they are SO annoying.

I'm not above tweaking the settings when it helps me. Especially since I never play multi-player - just single. I don't mind when the AI invades me, or beats me to a Wonder, or kills my units (well, ok, I've been known to reload a 99.9% loss), I'm just saying, given that I'm not real concerned about being fair to the AI, I was wondering if I could (easily) change the parameters of certain World Spells.

6) on combat and drill:

Thank you - more on my noobness in later posts - I had not been evaluating these properly.

welcome to the forums!

Thank you!

1) which religion did you spread there? not all give culture ( RoK and Esus give gold, AV give beakers ) so that could be it.

Yes, that must be it. I've had RoK for quite a while & had been creating several missionaries for that. Also, I'd been using the "standard Civ IV approach of not adopting a state religion for as long as possible for diplomacy reasons" approach. So, once I adopt FoL (after Stasis ends, is my current thinking - I'm about to start playing after this reply), then will FoL missionaries spread culture to my Settlements?

Also, I've read a bit more strategy tips - apparently I can use "Priests" (by that I mean Tier 2 religious people) to create Temples, which will expand my Settlements' borders, yes?

2) check the manual, there should be a stickied thread. it does depend on speed, you should get a popup shortly on Epic

Yes, I should have read the manual - just pointing that out was helpful, really, because, to be honest, I didn't even realize there was one, which is my fault. I found on the FfH2 wiki that on Epic I need to wait 'til turn 150. *sigh*

5) Somnium can be pretty fun, it's often used to entertain yourself while waiting for others in MP. it can also give a minor diplo bonus but nothing significant.

Is there any strategy to playing it? I mean, I get the concept, but, IRL, I get the concept of poker but that doesn't mean I could play on the World Series of Poker.

6) did you notice combat promos are double strength compared to BTS while drill are the same?

I did *not* notice that. Duh. My bad. For 3 straight games I was still in Civ IV mode about Combat. Thanks for pointing that out.

8) ancient forest lumbermills are a big pita, you can only mill a non-ancient forest so you need luck and hordes of stacked workers. there's better ways to boost happiness imo:

Well, I figured with big-Kurio cities, I'd need a ton of Workers, so... I have a ton of Workers. I'll pursue this Ancient-Lumbermill strategy for this time because I'm kinda committed to it, but thanks for your suggestions. Once I play the Kurios again, & I'm sure I will eventually, I'll use your suggestions instead.

for cultural, there's a couple nifty tricks:
*snip*

These are great - I'll use what I can, given where I'm at.

it should be noted that Republic and Foreign trade civics suck while Agrarianism is OP. As the Kurios you'll most likely want to keep God King. you also want caste system, sylvien lyre, theatre of dreams and that other wonder that boosts specialist culture ( hall of kings iirc )

I'll keep these in mind - I was just looking at Civics that give Culture modifiers & thinking I wanted to go to there.

9) I don't think so, but you can mouseover the unit to see strength etc. I'd disable blue marble as FFH already has pretty terrain graphics. also if you haven't, get Tholal's More Naval AI mod asap. the AI is a whole lot better!

Will do. Is this something I can change mid-game, or something I should do after this game is done & before my next game?

Thanks for your help!

2. Cardith is always Exp. Cassiel is always Phil, Varn is always Spi.

That's a shame. Considering I'm going for Cultural, is there any reason to change out of my Phil trait, then? I'm "stuck" with Exp, then, & really don't need more than a couple Settlers at this point. The Health is nice, though, but I still wish I could change that one instead of Phil.

4. You can either handpick opponents as Gekko suggested or you can disable world spells altogether in the custom options. I often do that.

I'm still new at FfH2, so I like seeing all the various leaders/civs & what they do. I'd really prefer to nerf some AI World Spells rather than disable them or deny their civs. Any suggestions on where to tweak the files to do that? If not, no worries - I'd rather live with it during my first few games than shut them off entirely.

6. You have tons of reasons to take the combat line with virtually all your units. Every combat promo enhances your unit's base strength by 20% so a C5 unit has an effective +100% str. The other promos don't increase the base strength directly but are instead subtracted from the opponent's strength if applicable. Your C5 heroes can also benefit from Heroic Str I-II, Heroic Defense I-II and Twincast (for casters).

Thanks, as above - I had not been evaluating FfH2 Combat properly. I'm glad I asked.

9. Sounds like a problem with Blue Marble. Get rid of it

Will do. Thanks!

 

[Qgqqqqq]

@OP, sorry if this is already answered.
1) No.
Certain religions give culture, some (RoK, AV(? its been a while)) don't.
2) Its the epic speed. I expect it'll come between T145 and T160 (I don't play epic).
Its the Philo trait, sorry :/
3) see 2.
4) certain mods change it.
I don't know how.
5)Just play around with it
6)Drill is worse then combat in base. MUCH worse in FFH2. I never take it unless its a high-strength hero or an archer (and even then, its only a MAYBE).
7) Yes.
8)Link: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=4087&pid=171598#pid171598
9) Yeah this sucks.
I don't know a way :/

 

[UnforcedError]

Yes, that must be it. I've had RoK for quite a while & had been creating several missionaries for that. Also, I'd been using the "standard Civ IV approach of not adopting a state religion for as long as possible for diplomacy reasons" approach. So, once I adopt FoL (after Stasis ends, is my current thinking - I'm about to start playing after this reply), then will FoL missionaries spread culture to my Settlements?

Most disciples (I think all except savants and nightwatches) can do mini culture bombs -- only sufficient to pop a city, but very often that's exactly what you need. OO is also a reasonable choice for a cultural victory, but FotL is fine, sure. Also, I think religions are far more valuable in this mod than in BtS. It's actually worth planning which religion(s) you will want to adopt during the course of the game. Yes, it hurts your diplo but you will also get great units / heroes / civics etc for your efforts. I tend to miss religions with Auric or Cassiel. No reason not to use them when you can.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Yes, that must be it. I've had RoK for quite a while & had been creating several missionaries for that. Also, I'd been using the "standard Civ IV approach of not adopting a state religion for as long as possible for diplomacy reasons" approach. So, once I adopt FoL (after Stasis ends, is my current thinking - I'm about to start playing after this reply), then will FoL missionaries spread culture to my Settlements?

Also, I've read a bit more strategy tips - apparently I can use "Priests" (by that I mean Tier 2 religious people) to create Temples, which will expand my Settlements' borders, yes?

yes, FoL in a city with FoL state religion gives culture so that will work. not all temples give culture though, for example a temple of kilmorph will only give +20% culture, but NO base culture. temples of the overlords are awesome for settlements as they give a good amount of base culture.

Is there any strategy to playing it? I mean, I get the concept, but, IRL, I get the concept of poker but that doesn't mean I could play on the World Series of Poker.

sorry, havent't played Somnium much

Will do. Is this something I can change mid-game, or something I should do after this game is done & before my next game?

nope, install it after your current game.

That's a shame. Considering I'm going for Cultural, is there any reason to change out of my Phil trait, then? I'm "stuck" with Exp, then, & really don't need more than a couple Settlers at this point. The Health is nice, though, but I still wish I could change that one instead of Phil.

phi and fin are both pretty good for cultural, one for moar great bards and the other to convert moar commerce to culture via slider. it depends, but phi is usually best for lategame cultural victory.

 

[UnforcedError]

Just a small warning on Tholal's mod. Tholal's AIs are hard-coded to declare on their weaker neighbours (even as early as warrior rushing them), and they are also hard-coded to aggressively pop lairs and dungeons further away from their territory with their initial scouts. As long as you play on Monarch this should be managable and still allow for a versatile game. IMM / Deity, however will become AW games for you (all your neighbours deciding you're a weakling), except with certain civs. So if you plan to raise the difficulty level later on and want something else from your game than fighting off barb heroes on T20 and defending against three neighbours simultaneously you better try EitB. I agree that the vanilla AI is somewhat wanting.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

what about Emperor, is AI aggression closer to monarch or immortal ?

 

[UnforcedError]

what about Emperor, is AI aggression closer to monarch or immortal ?

EMP seems to be closer to Monarch in this respect IMO. You can very often accumulate enough power in the early game to keep the AI from declaring on you before T100 (which seems to be their habit on IMM / Deity), so that you can start wars whenever it fits you and not them. The worst thing about this design decision is the fact that it seriously hampers replayability IMO: even if you grind out a win on the higher levels it's going to be the same "AW setting" for the next game. Your tech choices will be limited to getting better units, all other techs will depend on what you can get from opponents before you eliminate them completely. You will not utilize flavours of a particular civ (unless it gets you a military advantage). And conq or dom will be your only logical VCs (sure, it's possible to stop before you acquire either of them and say build the ToM or the Altar, but why do it?)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I agree, making things dependent on difficulty where not fitting can create issues and this is a good example. hopefully Tholal will tweak it in the upcoming update

 

[UnforcedError]

I agree, making things dependent on difficulty where not fitting can create issues and this is a good example. hopefully Tholal will tweak it in the upcoming update

I read most of the better naval AI thread and had the feeling it wasn't Tholal's intention to change this AI rush behaviour

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

well, with enough whining he can probably be persuaded

 

[UnforcedError]

well, with enough whining he can probably be persuaded

Haha

 

[Doug Piranha]

I'm still new at FfH2, so I like seeing all the various leaders/civs & what they do. I'd really prefer to nerf some AI World Spells rather than disable them or deny their civs. Any suggestions on where to tweak the files to do that? If not, no worries - I'd rather live with it during my first few games than shut them off entirely.

Stasis and Arcane Lacuna have most of their code in CvSpellInterface.py, which is in the Assets\python\entrypoints folder under your install directory. If you want to shorten the length of the spells, change the two occurrences of the line:

iBaseDelay = 20

to some smaller value. Be very careful when messing with .py files, because adding an inappropriate character can crash the game.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Philisophical for culture, you should be farming over towns for a culture victory.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Haha

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12124589&postcount=1728

that was fast

 

[UnforcedError]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12124589&postcount=1728

that was fast

Wow... fast indeed

 

[Calavente]

@Calavente: it's Shadow I, not II

you might be right !
I thought it was shadow 1 to pass the walls' protection and 2 to negate FS..
(maybe it's because I always thought it very powerful to negate drill so easily.. and I suppose I inversed the two spells in my non-MoM games...)
whatever
it is even worse for drill.... even the khazad can negate drill promotions