Source: http://www.pelit.fi/index.php?id=69640
Dropped down from the heavens
The world is coming to an end! Demons are conquering the world, lava is burning the cities and mods challenge their parent games! Fall from Heaven II makes a fantasy strategist weep with joy.
Civilization is without doubt one of the finest game series ever although every version suffers from the same problem. The game is at its funniest in the beginning, stays interesting in the mid-game, but the later it gets, the heavier it gets on you. Fall from Heaven II has abandoned the flint-to-flight time-scale of Civilization. It is replaced with a pseudo-medieval fantasy world which looks like a big bunch of clichés at the beginning but under the surface one will find the finest fantasy strategy game since Master of Magic and the glory days of Warlords.
The ice age is over and the remnants of humanity take their first frail steps towards civilization. The birth of a new world doesn't go unnoticed by the gods and it doesn't take long for the humanity to be enslaved to mere puppets. Elves, dwarves, orcs and numerous human tribes scatter to populate the virgin land.
While the nations of vanilla Civ have only minor differences FfH is a different game when playing with different peoples. There are peoples designed for veterans, to utilise the more advanced tactics of Civ, like cottage or specialist economy.
Midwives of Mayhem
Civilization IV brought religion to the game but Firaxis chickened out of completing them. It didn't matter whether one chose Yahweh or Buddha as their idol. In FfH the people's traits and attributes are only a beginning to be developed through religion. It defines what buildings you can build, what troops you can make, which heroes you'll get and most importantly, whom you'll fight or befriend.
In my first game I wondered at the armageddon counter at the corner of the screen. When it grew I noticed the ground on my borders was beginning to smoke. Next the forests went ablaze and finally lava began pouring over my borders, destroying everything in its path. Then I found myself watching as horned beelzebubs marched to my homelands. It was literally hell on earth, with its inhabitants and all. Thanks to the Ashen Veil.
The Armageddon goes further every time nasty stuff happens in the world, such as cities getting razed. The nearing of the end can be seen literally; first the demons arrive as a new civilization and finally get accompanied by the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The idea in warfare is not to build huge hordes but rather small and tight groups, to be kept alive from one fight to another. Like in vanilla, units gain experience from victories but there are many more levels for them. Most of the powerful units can't even be built, but instead upgraded from cheaper ones as they gain levels. And heroes, a couple of them for each people, are completely in a class of their own. They gain far more levels than normal units and they are truly nasty killing machines, all but impossible to kill. On the downside, losing one is really painful as they can't be rebuilt.
There are a couple dozen different types of magic and they are developed by upgrading mana nodes around to, say, fuel of necromancy. There are no artificial restrictions and the same wizard can learn both the ways of chaos and life. One can take a bit of everything or specialise to just one or two, in which case single spells are very effective. One option is to go without magic at all and choose the Order as one's religion, a sect which is a kind of a brotherhood of priests and crusaders. And on top of that all, to prove the variety in the mod, one can play even a complete people of agnostics who don't care s**t about invisible pink unicorns.
From the Dread Diary of a Doombringer
A good example of inter-people friendship is my game with the Sheaim, a people worshipping demons, unable to train conventional troops. Instead of that they build gates to the beyond, bringing demonic forces faster and faster as the Armageddon proceeds and more gates are built. Which puts my people to a difficult situation: the fastest way to bring Armageddon would be to raze the conquered cities, but I need those cities to build new gates.
The only conventional fighters are sucky warriors, disease-carrying walking carrions and pyre zombies blasting fire around them when dying. Because hell gates are extremely expensive, I'll have a slow and dangerous beginning when the barbarians begin their invasion.
My scouts quickly explore the small island, a narrow western peninsula of which is the site of my first colony. The wide part of the island can be reached by a narrow mountainous isthmus with a conveniently placed mana resource at its narrowest point. The wide part of the island is populated by a people of dwarves, some elves and gypsies led by a mad king.
As a speciality of the dwarves their production depends on the amount of gold they have. More gold means faster building and training. The elves on the other hand can build their farms and mines in the sticks while others have to cut them off first. An advantage making a difference as pollution is as much of a problem as in vanilla. The gypsies mimic everything from their neighbours and their caravans cause restlessness when getting to others' towns. Only the gypsies are evil from the beginning and thus the most likely ally I'll have.
Between my three neighbours there is a pyramid giving automatically one level of fire magic. As my people can use chaos and fire magic in addition to necromancy I could get my fire magic to level two instantly. In addition of vandalism by giving others a fire, keeping them warm for a day, I could set them on fire and keep them warm for the rest of their lifetime.
The plan is clear. My first settlers rush to get the pyramid before my neighbours and the next colony is built at the narrowest part of the isthmus, to block the neighbours from getting to my long peninsula. The plan works perfectly, at the price of neglecting my defences. I feel the consequences when Orthus the barbarian king invades and takes the axes from the hands of my isthmus city defenders like lollipops from toddlers. As a result my three-city empire is divided to two parts and I lose the benefit of the fire pyramid as there is no longer a route to my palace from it.
The city Orthus took was too well placed: on a hill in a perfect defensive position. My first better mages from a hell gate and their skeleton hosts summoned once a turn can do nothing against the big axe of Orthus, which I'd love to have.
So all I can do is to attack the tree-huggers. Neither forests nor forest fires do respect borders so I begin their ordeal by setting the woods ablaze from my side of the border. The fire spreads like a wildfire and chars the huge elven woods. Try to hug those trees now, pointy-ears! The nuisance doesn't last long, however, as forests have the habit of growing back.
At the meantime my mages have gained experience by slaughtering animals in the forests. Now I can summon not only skeletons but also ethereal wraith warriors and also support my troops by sending forth fire and thunder from behind the lines. As I send my skeletons and wraiths to battle, the elves can do nothing against my armies restoring every turn.
Sympathy for the devourers of souls
We are frying the pointy-ears on the ruins of the elven cities. The Armageddon is proceeding but not fast enough. Orthus needs to be brought down to unite my realm. Skeletons alone won't do it so I can found the Ashen Veil-faith and get the demonic Hyboreal-people to my allies. However, it's a long way to go and my lands would become ash and lava. Not such a bad thing compared to what it'd do to others but in the beginning I would suffer the most. Especially as Hyboreal takes one of my cities as theirs.
Another alternative would be to learn to tame animals and use the elephants wandering around as rams. Again, risky and slow. Finally I decide to build the Pact of Nilhorn, bringing three huge trolls to my side, named Larry, Curly and Moe. They would be tough enough to beat Orthus and can also smash the walls surrounding the city.
When it's done I'm ready to call for the dwellers of Hell. Then I could choose whether I want to continue with my current people or switch to the Hyboreal. At the same time I lure a dragon cult to my cities. Not a real religion but rather a secret guild spreading through trade routes, making units built in cities with it possible to join the cult. That will make the dwarves, relying on conventional troops, really, really afraid. Especially as the cult can bring forth the dragon it worships once it has grown big enough. After that I could share the island with the gypsies.
But religious affairs spoil my plan. The dwarves found a faith worshipping the goddess Kilmorph residing deep under the earth and get the gypsies to join them, giving up their evil ways. Suddenly I am facing a religious alliance of two peoples, with no allies on my side. And it doesn't take long for them to demand me to convert and give up messing around with corpes. Blasphemy, I say!
The best since the masters of magic
Fall from Heaven began as Age of Ice, a minimod brought with Beyond the Sword expansion pack. It gives the first impression but must not be confused with FfH II, the full version of the mod. Multiplayer continues to have problems, ones that a mod can't easily fix but would require action from Firaxis instead. The worst problems arise when people join the same game with both Vista and WinXP.
FfH II is a mod, but don't let it fool you. A strategy game this fully thought about, deep yet rich in variety is a rare find, even in the shelves full of commercial brands. For a mod it is rare, as it has not only a good story but also a wonderful manual with a couple hundred pages and a total rewrite of the Civilopedia. One doesn't need to draw lots on whether something works or not with everything clearly explained.
Despite the scale of the mod, it's only the first part of a trilogy, as after the ice comes fire.
92/100
+ Every civ is different
+ Good backstory for a mod
+ Full of difficult choices
- Multiplayer problems
- Recycled voices functioning sometimes badly
- Heavy on hardware
