Axioms to help you play Fall From Heaven

[Humakty]

Finding some exploits to beat the AI on Deity is one hell of a hobby !

 

[Onionsoilder]

you forgot angels. (immune to holy, halve fire)

Uneffective. Even if you take the Magic Resistance promotion on them, Chalid will still cut them down to 80%. If you take Magic Resistance and Fire Resistance, Chalid will do 30% damage. In one turn. The three listed are immune to Pillar of Fire, not resistant to fire damage, which is why they work.

 

[xalien]

Chalid or no Chalid, in the world of magic he who strikes first is the one to win. Hasted-mobility mages/champions/assassins can waltz from up to 9 tiles away and then even the strongest will fall.

 

[Tasunke]

which is why raiders is so awesome.

If you want to be really evil, build Nox Noctis, build Chalid, use HorseArchers/Rathas and Shadows ... and level up (the Shadows especially) on enemy soldiers weakened by the pillar.

If one of those shadows happens to have Aeron's Chosen (upgraded from assasin) then all the better

dont forget a healthy supply of Rathas and/or Radiant guards in order to blind thine enemy.

 

[Spectral-Fremen]

Chalid is full of fail

 

[Lord Katana]

I've completed a fair number of games, but must admit I had to look up who Chalid was.... In other words, you can win perfectly well with AV or FoL or RoK. Heck in my last multiplayer against 3 humans and 11 AI i had a whole horde of 100+xp vampires and heroes with 200+xp.... Didnt even have a large number of mages, just Ritualists to soften them up.

Chalid centainly looks awesome... but needed... noway!

 

[xalien]

All heroes, religious and civ, that come after sorcery and iron working are overrated, except maybe for 2 immortal ones. You see a SoD of 100+ units? Blind, rust and RoF them and your iron champions instead of ~20% will have 97%+ odds at attacking them.

I never bother with religious heroes, I prefer to have a constant freedom at choosing my religion for eidolons/druids/paladins or foreign city visibility and steal. One Chalid or four RoF'ing eidolons? For me the choice is obvious.

 

[WarKirby]

direct damage spells are too powerful. Hopefully we'll implement caps on how any units can be hit at once, in FF, rather than allowing infinite stacks to be hit with these spells at once. Pillar of fire only hitting a max of 8 units or so would make it a lot less overpowered against massive armies, but still far from useless.

 

[WCH]

Actually I think infinite stacks are BS anyway and like that direct damage screws them.

 

[CurseUppl]

Actually I think infinite stacks are BS anyway and like that direct damage screws them.

Putting a limitation on, say, the amount of strength you can have in one tile (except in cities) would be a very interesting concept....

So, with a 100 strength limitation, you could have 33 warriors in a single tile or 25 axemen without copper or 20 axemen with copper. It would actually give meaning having stacks of powerful units (say ten 10 strength champions) accompanied by stacks of 20 axemen.

*edit* Combining that with what Warkirby said, if a direct damage spell can damage max 10 units then there'd be value in having stacks of weaker units.

It would mean developing entirely new strategies. Armies wouldn't move in one single SOD but instead cover several tiles. And choke points would be insanely powerful too.... Just like actual warfare (even fantasy warfare).

Though coding the AI to use it properly might prove difficult.

I'd love that!

 

[Fafnir13]

Much as I like the idea of limits placed on the number of units per tile, there are too many pathing issues to make it feasible. Without even getting into teaching the AI and auto-move how to deal with it, there's the problem of a maxed stack being unable to move through any tile with a unit in it, how units from different players interact under the system, what constitutes a unit, summoned creatures and how they effect the stack, and many others.
I really would prefer such a system, but this game probably wasn't built to handle it.

 

[Onionsoilder]

Limiting the amount of units that can exist in a stack is a very bad idea. Specifically, you run into one major problem: city garrisons. Say you have a stack limit of 10 units. A defender can only have 10 units in a city, but the attacker can bring 4 stacks of 10 units, giving him an overwhelming advantage. If you remove the cap while units are in cities, then the attacker is seriously disadvantaged. BtS is simply not built to limit the size of stacks; stacks are built in as a gameplay mechanic, and limiting them will only cause a lot of balance problems.

 

[Skaevola]

He specifically excluded cities from his idea.

 

[Onionsoilder]

He specifically excluded cities from his idea.

I already addressed that. Regardless of cities are excluded or not, either the attacker or the defender will be seriously disadvantaged. There is no way to balance Civilization IV, BTS, FFH or any variants if stacks are limited in size. The game is simply not designed to handle it.

 

[Jenaelha]

No way? How about the chaos of organizing a massive stack, like...
1)movement penalties for large stacks
2)chaos penalty (random units moving random direction) chance/turn
3)supply line failure... loss of unit(s) chance/turn

I expect there should be many other ideas on how to balance this unfortunate but legitimate AI strategy from this crowd.

As I think of it, there could be bonuses too, morale, fear...

 

[FireBlaze]

I don't get it. Are you suggesting that I use some sort of unit to defeat my foes...? I don't know, can someone explain?

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

I don't get it. Are you suggesting that I use some sort of unit to defeat my foes...? I don't know, can someone explain?

See this post for further details: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8546046&postcount=1

 

[FireBlaze]

See this post for further details: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8546046&postcount=1

I get that this guy named Chalid is involved somehow, but I may just not be making the connection...

 

[EverNoob]

Sure Chalid is great, but there's other options for managing those stacks of doom. Maelstrom, wither, ritualists, rust, entangle, blinding light, charm come to mmind. I use Chalid once in awhile, and he sure is effective as heck but you can play without him.

 

[Onionsoilder]

No way? How about the chaos of organizing a massive stack, like...
1)movement penalties for large stacks
2)chaos penalty (random units moving random direction) chance/turn
3)supply line failure... loss of unit(s) chance/turn

I expect there should be many other ideas on how to balance this unfortunate but legitimate AI strategy from this crowd.

As I think of it, there could be bonuses too, morale, fear...

1) Split stacks into smaller ones for movement, converge at end of turn.
2) Wouldn't hamper stack effectiveness much since the benefits of a larger stack far outweigh a couple units going stray.
3) Similar to the first one. If needed, stay in separate stacks until next to a city.

This is, of course, ignoring the fact that all three of those options would severely hinder the AI. I said it before, and I will say it again; Civilization IV is built to use stacks of units. Trying to break stacks up will only cause more trouble unless you completely overhaul the game engine. Unless you design a game so only a single unit can occupy a single space, these mechanics can not be changed - at least not in a convenient way..