"Fire" Developer Diary

A thought occured to me - it might be interesting to have the Planar Gate generate a few more unusual creatures according to (some) wonders which happen to be in the city, as well as its existing building tie-ins; Pact of the Nilhorn could grant the possibility of a Chaos Giant or Frost Giant or similar appearing, Council of Esus some sort of hidden nationality unit, Core of the Subtle some stealthy/invisible unit, Eternal Flame a fire elemental, etc. etc. I know it's mostly a flavour thing (rather than a functional one) but it'd be an extra fun addition to the mechanic.
 
I play the Khazad most of the time and am now playing them with "Fire". I am unable to find any unit that can revitalize the land. I thought that Dwarven Druid would be able to learn Nature spells. Can someone help me clarify whether any Dwarven unit can revitalize the land. NOTE: I am aware that adepts can use spring but Dwarven adepts can not be upgraded.
 
Khazad can only cast vitalize with a priest of the leaves upgraded to tier 4 (high priest, inquisitor)
 
A thought occured to me - it might be interesting to have the Planar Gate generate a few more unusual creatures according to (some) wonders which happen to be in the city, as well as its existing building tie-ins; Pact of the Nilhorn could grant the possibility of a Chaos Giant or Frost Giant or similar appearing, Council of Esus some sort of hidden nationality unit, Core of the Subtle some stealthy/invisible unit, Eternal Flame a fire elemental, etc. etc. I know it's mostly a flavour thing (rather than a functional one) but it'd be an extra fun addition to the mechanic.

Iya like! :)
 
I don't think wonder-tied Planar Gate creatures would be a good idea. It'd make said wonders feel too much like an "obligation" to build for the Sheiam.
 
After playing the game several times through, I have a suggestion.

The Hyborem needs to be reworked!!!

I have read in several posts that many players feel that the demon hoard needs to arrive later in the game or be somehow tied to the armegeddon counter. These are great suggestions, but only address half of the problem with the demons.

The other problem that I see is that the demons have a lot of unnecessary troops. They currently have a production mirror to the normal civs that start at the beginning of the game. Since the Hyborem do not arrive until later in the game (around the same time as tier three units) there is no need for them to have early unit types. The tier one and tier two units in the Hyborem aresenal are ignored by a good human player, but the AI wastes resources on building them. Since it is a demon army, their entry level units should be tier three strength and upgradable to tier four later on. This would improve the AI ability to use the Hyborem and also make up for their late appearance in the game.

I think that the Hyborem should appear a little later in the game as well. The AV religion should spread a little bit before their demon masters arrive to destroy the world. AV deciples could summon demons of greater and greater power as time goes on (and the summoned demons could be under the control of the AI). Eventually a ritual will become available to AV players to summon Hyborem himself at which time the option will be given to take over the Infernal player (along with any demons that have been summoned thus far).

That said, I would like to say that I am having a lot of fun with all of the new features. I just think that they need a little bit of refinement.
 
Eventually a ritual will become available to AV players to summon Hyborem himself at which time the option will be given to take over the Infernal player (along with any demons that have been summoned thus far).

Something like maybe the Infernal Grimiore? That can kill two birds with one stone. Hyborem's favorite wonder is the Infernal Grimiore so he doesn't immediately hate his summoner and it serves the purpose of postponing when Hyborem enters from the Ashen Veil being founded.
 
Something like maybe the Infernal Grimiore? That can kill two birds with one stone. Hyborem's favorite wonder is the Infernal Grimiore so he doesn't immediately hate his summoner and it serves the purpose of postponing when Hyborem enters from the Ashen Veil being founded.

Hey, that sounds like a pretty cool idea. I'm worried that even more of the map will be filled up by then, though...
 
Something like maybe the Infernal Grimiore? That can kill two birds with one stone. Hyborem's favorite wonder is the Infernal Grimiore so he doesn't immediately hate his summoner and it serves the purpose of postponing when Hyborem enters from the Ashen Veil being founded.

Good idea, though the hammers on the Grimiore would probably have to be reduced.
 
I think that the armageddon counter should start at like 50. 50 would be the world is at balance and basically what 0 is now. That way if it got over 50 it would help the evil civs but the closer you got to 0 the more it would help good civs. it seems like the best the good civs can do is not make things worse. if you got closer to 0, then barbarians could spawn that only target evil civs and then when it got even closer to 0, neutral and evil civs. that way if the counter was at 0, the good civs would have a good advantage like how evil civs do now if its closer to 100.
 
Dunno how that would work. Veil civs are trying to bring about Armageddon, yes, but Order or good civs aren't trying to bring about anything of their own, so it would seem strange to have them gain a direct advantage asides from what there already is. If that makes sense.
 
Yes, read the change log!

There was even a bug that you did not receive one but it was fixed in one of the patches.
 
I've been following this mod since its earliest stages and I can not stress enough how good it is. Definitely what makes Civ4 stay in my hard drive.

I've been playing with the Sheaim, discovered 2 of the 3 initial religions and decided to go for veil. Hyborem appears, I converted immediately to avoid a war and proceeded. Everything was going well... until I realized that the flood plains on which I built my capital were catching fire as if they were desert. My capital city cannot work those 7 tiles with farms anymore. So the price for summoning Hyborem has been loosing almost half of my population in my capital... which used to be my best city. Painful, painful... Spring is useless since although it does extinguish the fire, allowing my workers and units to pass (thanks god or my territory would have been split in two), it does not allow the city to work those tiles. My question is if it is intentional... had I known it I would have either not summoned Hyborem or else terraformed ALL my deserts and floodplains into plains first. In any case I think there should be a way, at least for Veil and/or evil civs to work those tiles. I think it would be a bit unbalanced otherwise. Perhaps after researching a specific tech, elementalism, for instance..?

Congratulations for a superb mod.
 
I've been following this mod since its earliest stages and I can not stress enough how good it is. Definitely what makes Civ4 stay in my hard drive.

I've been playing with the Sheaim, discovered 2 of the 3 initial religions and decided to go for veil. Hyborem appears, I converted immediately to avoid a war and proceeded. Everything was going well... until I realized that the flood plains on which I built my capital were catching fire as if they were desert. My capital city cannot work those 7 tiles with farms anymore. So the price for summoning Hyborem has been loosing almost half of my population in my capital... which used to be my best city. Painful, painful... Spring is useless since although it does extinguish the fire, allowing my workers and units to pass (thanks god or my territory would have been split in two), it does not allow the city to work those tiles. My question is if it is intentional... had I known it I would have either not summoned Hyborem or else terraformed ALL my deserts and floodplains into plains first. In any case I think there should be a way, at least for Veil and/or evil civs to work those tiles. I think it would be a bit unbalanced otherwise. Perhaps after researching a specific tech, elementalism, for instance..?

Congratulations for a superb mod.

Switch to "Sacrifice the Weak" civic. It halves the amount of food your people eat (sure they don't like it, but hey you are worshipping demons after all).
 
That will ease the pain a bit... thanks for the hint. So are desert tiles unusable once hell "gets" them? Does that mean that using spring before one can avoid completely that side effect? BTW, I also lost my only source of stone which happened to be in one of those tiles...

Also, has anyone experienced any problems with the armageddon counter and the prophecy of Ragnarok? The pedia states the counter should increase one per turn up to 40 or 50 (I can't remember). I built it to no effect (it has very slowly increased to 24, probably for events not related to the prophecy).
 
Given that it's not possible to have flood plains and flames in a tile (since they're in the same improvement layer), could the floodplains perhaps prevent flames from spreading (or make it unlikely)? In fact, it makes a lot of sense for being next to a river or oasis (or having fresh water access, although that would mean farms could be used as barriers against flames) to reduce the chance of a serious fire breaking out, and it would make the current hell-ruins-your-economy-even-if-you'd-otherwise-welcome-it effect much less offputting for evil players.
 
Given that it's not possible to have flood plains and flames in a tile (since they're in the same improvement layer), could the floodplains perhaps prevent flames from spreading (or make it unlikely)? In fact, it makes a lot of sense for being next to a river or oasis (or having fresh water access, although that would mean farms could be used as barriers against flames) to reduce the chance of a serious fire breaking out, and it would make the current hell-ruins-your-economy-even-if-you'd-otherwise-welcome-it effect much less offputting for evil players.

They dont look good on Hell tiles, they are all green and lush, it looks really bad.
 
Top Bottom