First Fall from Heaven Game - What have I done wrong so far?

[Ignorant Teacher]

Hello everybody!

I started to play Fall from Heaven tonight and I would like to get some pointers, if that's possible. Following you guys' (and the manual's) advice, I picked the Grigori to play. That Erebus mapscript is weird so I started a Fractal game. I'd like to know what I've done wrong so far. The game is on Emperor and Normal speed. I don't hope to win this game, but any help will do.

These are my cities (I only have 5):

The techs and demographics:

And the neighbors (I realize there's someone else I haven't met in my continent):

That Sandalphon guy has enough on his hands. Because of that, I have a couple of Axemen in my border cities and I have also sent my two heroes there. I upgraded them to Heroic Strength and Defense. I also have a Hawk in one of them because it says it can see stealth and I assume it means it makes their units visible. Does it?

I've attached the initial and the current saves. Sorry if I don't report the techpath, I forgot it.

 

[Onionsoilder]

For a first game, that actually doesn't look too bad. Some of your problems might come from being the Grigori; from the looks of things, you haven't been warring much. See, lore-wise the Grigori are peaceful folk who would ideally remain in their cities with technologies and crafts, eventually aiming for a Altar victory. Gameplay-wise, they're a great warmongering civilization thanks to their early heroes, yet suck at peacetime economic activity because they lack any unique economic boost and their Adventurers prevent other Great People from spawning. It could be that you just aren't playing them right.

That hawk will indeed let you see invisible units, but only when you recon with it. If you leave it sitting in your city doing nothing, it won't be of any use. Sadly, there is no auto-recon feature.

 

[Jet]

You're doing fine. Here are my criticisms:
* The main criticism is that you're not running specialists. Some might say Grigori shouldn't run specialists. I disagree and say all great people are good people. I would say use the capital as a GP farm since you get +15% GPP, 2 GPP, and an Adventurer source from the palace, but your capital is low food. So maybe Kalm or something. Build Library -> Elder Coucil -> Market -> Palace in some city and hire all three specialists.
* Hook up your cotton for +1 happy
* Don't build workshops or the forest mine. Do build lumbermills.
* Hunting is an iffy tech, expensive. But you did have Ivory, and the Hawks will be useful. Hawks reveal hidden when they do recon missions. I don't think the AI uses stealth, though. (Except with Nox Noctis, but I forget if Hawks work against that.) Anyway build a second Hawk to keep an eye on your second neighbor. You have to run the recon missions every turn. It's a pain although you can queue them up with Shift. Also: you can rebase hawks to any visibile city of a civ you have open borders with, then run recon missions from there, revealing much mappage.
* All those points of Heroic X on your heroes are probably overkill. I'd have taken March, then saved the other points for whatever, maybe Heroic X as needed. But there's also City Raider, Mobility, Guardsman, Blitz (requires Drill 4, then requires Mobility to be useful). Even Shock / Shock II / etc, depending what you're up against.

Advice:
* Build Siege Workshop -> Catapult* in Corel.
* Research Writing -> Warfare (build Form of the Titan, unlocked with your heroes and double production with Copper) -> Drama (hopefully win the Bard and bulb Sanitation). Then Knowledge of the Ether (or trade for it) (build an Adept and buff your stack with Enchanted Blade and Courage (healing)) -> Currency (build Adventurer's Guilds.)
* Meanwhile you're good on cities and tech, so just keep building Axemen and Catapults and invade when ready.
* Any other heroes, make them mages. They can become Archmages (takes a while to tech there though) with the special promotion Twincast (doubles many spells). Or: the barbarian spot east of Decius surrounded by telltale burnt forests is the dragon Acheron. It takes a lot of setup (teching to Beastmasters, getting a big stack), but you can get a recon hero, promote him to Beastmaster when you get the tech, give him the Subdue Beast promotion, then kill Acheron (takes some work, he's immune to magic and you'll need Courage... you need a big stack) using the Beastmaster for the kiling blow -> capturing the dragon -> fun. (You don't actually need a hero for Subdue Beast but the promotion has a lot of prereqs so it's easier with a hero.)

 

[Monkeyfinger]

The good:

- You've built 5 cites by turn 161. In BtS that would suck but in FfH the higher cost of settlers combined with the more violent early game means that peaceful expansion is a lot slower early. (As agrarianism, construction and sanitation roll in, the crazy food output lets you kick it into higher gear later.) 5 is a nice balanced number here: Enough for a decent economy, not enough to stretch you thin.
- Mostly good building priorities. Monuments for culture, lots of units, training yards to make them, and a hunting lodge in your capital to make the few recon/hawk units you need. (and you do need hawks.) No extraneous crap, no redundant buildings. There's a problem I'll cover further down though.
- You're teching's pretty good, though not flawless. (fishing and sailing this early when you only have one seafood resource and most of the civs are on one landmass? faaaiiil.) Aside from that hiccup you have almost all the important basics, with the missing one, writing, just about to complete. Without knowing the order I don't know if you made some big mistake in how you grabbed them, but the techs themselves look good. Everything important, and only 1 foolish beeline.
- You're running the agristocracy pretty well. Right civics and early, and a healthy number of farms to use them with. Your start is good for it too (lots of high production tiles to channel that food into), which helps. Just prioritize sanitation higher for this economy (+1 food per farm, stacks with agrarian.)

The bad:
- You're running pacifism but have no specialists. Come on dude, you're an experienced BtS player, that's... WTH. That milprod penalty probably really hurt you considering the number of units you built. Run nationhood instead. You get a bonus to military production instead of a penalty and training yards become good for 1 smiley face. If you want to run pacifism in future games get mysticism early, build pagan temples and elder councils, and run the specialists they enable.
- You don't have enough workers. 4 workers, 5 cities. Not good. You should have cut a couple axemen and built workers instead. Maybe instead of having one of your cities build a training yard and axemen, focus on workers instead.
- Unimproved resources. The cotton 2N of Corel is a happiness resource workable with calendar (which you have), you ignored it. You skipped an elephant to the south of Corel too. Maybe you're not aware that in FfH, BW allows jungle chopping? You've got a pastured cow in your capital, but it isn't roaded! Since there are resource trades you can make, you do want that spare.
- You're building workshops. Terrible improvement, plains forests are strictly better right now and workshops don't become equal with them till the smelting tech. At Guilds they become good improvements, but that's a ways off.
- You're playing a peaceful early game as the god damn Grigori, a frontloaded rush civ. You have heroes, use them! The grigori don't get religion, and priests in FfH are very mighty in war, so for midgame and lategame warfare the grig are crippled. Their window of opportunity is early: Get your first hero, make him a melee unit and let him gain combat/shock/march promos, maybe get him a nice metal axe, stick him in a decent sized stack and rush. Looks like you skipped it. BTW heroic strength/defense kind of blow, they're only what you take if a hero's stupidly high leveled and running out of promos. March, mobility (available at HBR, +1 move), commando, specialist promos like shock/CR/cover, even drill... they're all better.

The eh:
- You've adapted to financial. That's... smart when considering how you've played your earlygame, but a properly played grig earlygame features an early switch to aggressive. What you did would often be the right move for a different adaptive civ though (malakim, kuriotates.)

 

[loffenx]

The others have given you sound advice, I'll just toss in a few c's:

Junon, the northen coastal city, has very little production but lots of commerce and food - I would have skipped the Training Yard there and tossed in a few workers instead, as pointed out by Monkeyfinger.

Im sceptical about the lack of Markets and Elder Councils, but I cannot really tell what oppunrtunities you have had there.

You are at the bottom of the powergraph, which can be dangerous. It weighs in quite heavilly on the AIs decision on who and when to attack *I think* (haven't read up on the specifics in a while).

On the other hand you are in a diplomatically safe place, everyone seem to like you except Sandalphon. And his main stacks of troops seem to be elsewhere(?), so I'd say Sandalphon would be a good medium-term target.

EDIT: I would not give up on this game though, a few conquered cities and a sounder economy will push you a long way up the ladder.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

It could be that you just aren't playing them right.

That's the most likely reason.

That hawk will indeed let you see invisible units, but only when you recon with it. If you leave it sitting in your city doing nothing, it won't be of any use. Sadly, there is no auto-recon feature.

I've been running recon missions. An auto-recon would be really time saving.

You're doing fine. Here are my criticisms:
* The main criticism is that you're not running specialists. Some might say Grigori shouldn't run specialists. I disagree and say all great people are good people. I would say use the capital as a GP farm since you get +15% GPP, 2 GPP, and an Adventurer source from the palace, but your capital is low food. So maybe Kalm or something. Build Library -> Elder Coucil -> Market -> Palace in some city and hire all three specialists.

I'll do that.

Hawks reveal hidden when they do recon missions. I don't think the AI uses stealth, though. (Except with Nox Noctis, but I forget if Hawks work against that.)

Nox Noctis is the Sidar's world spell? They've already used theirs so that, plus the WHEOOHRN is what made me build the hawk. I just hope it lets me see them coming (if I'm the target).

It's a pain although you can queue them up with Shift.

Really? Good to know. Does it work in BTS too?

* All those points of Heroic X on your heroes are probably overkill. I'd have taken March, then saved the other points for whatever, maybe Heroic X as needed. But there's also City Raider, Mobility, Guardsman, Blitz (requires Drill 4, then requires Mobility to be useful). Even Shock / Shock II / etc, depending what you're up against.

Yeah, I was just following the manual's suggested promos; it takes a while to get accustomed to Erebus' rules.

* Any other heroes, make them mages. They can become Archmages (takes a while to tech there though) with the special promotion Twincast (doubles many spells). Or: the barbarian spot east of Decius surrounded by telltale burnt forests is the dragon Acheron. It takes a lot of setup (teching to Beastmasters, getting a big stack), but you can get a recon hero, promote him to Beastmaster when you get the tech, give him the Subdue Beast promotion, then kill Acheron (takes some work, he's immune to magic and you'll need Courage... you need a big stack) using the Beastmaster for the kiling blow -> capturing the dragon -> fun. (You don't actually need a hero for Subdue Beast but the promotion has a lot of prereqs so it's easier with a hero.)

If I capture the Dragon, I can use it in my army, right? Or does it grant me some special equipment or the like?

- You're teching's pretty good, though not flawless. (fishing and sailing this early when you only have one seafood resource and most of the civs are on one landmass? faaaiiil.) Aside from that hiccup you have almost all the important basics, with the missing one, writing, just about to complete. Without knowing the order I don't know if you made some big mistake in how you grabbed them, but the techs themselves look good. Everything important, and only 1 foolish beeline.

Fishing was for the fish. I traded for Sailing because I had the trade routes in mind.

- You're running pacifism but have no specialists. Come on dude, you're an experienced BtS player, that's... WTH. That milprod penalty probably really hurt you considering the number of units you built. Run nationhood instead. You get a bonus to military production instead of a penalty and training yards become good for 1 smiley face. If you want to run pacifism in future games get mysticism early, build pagan temples and elder councils, and run the specialists they enable.

I think I'll switch to Nationhood. It's Decius' favorite civic too. For the looks of it, it doesn't seem that Logos will declare on someone he's pleased toward so losing the favorite civic bonus won't hurt much.

- Unimproved resources. The cotton 2N of Corel is a happiness resource workable with calendar (which you have), you ignored it. You skipped an elephant to the south of Corel too. Maybe you're not aware that in FfH, BW allows jungle chopping?

That is because of this:

- You don't have enough workers. 4 workers, 5 cities. Not good. You should have cut a couple axemen and built workers instead.

The grigori don't get religion, and priests in FfH are very mighty in war, so for midgame and lategame warfare the grig are crippled.

Can't mages take their role? I've read in that top 10 tips thread that I can use Maelstrom and Fireballs to act as siege. Although it's not as nice as that Tsunami spell...

The eh:
- You've adapted to financial. That's... smart when considering how you've played your earlygame, but a properly played grig earlygame features an early switch to aggressive. What you did would often be the right move for a different adaptive civ though (malakim, kuriotates.)

Note to self: Grigori = early aggression.

You are at the bottom of the powergraph, which can be dangerous. It weighs in quite heavilly on the AIs decision on who and when to attack *I think* (haven't read up on the specifics in a while).

Doesn't Fall from Heaven have the same thing as BTS where you only prevent DOWs because of power if you have a really huge standing army? If it does, having a deployable army to deal with the eventual war and relying on diplo would be wiser IMO. Of course it takes a lot more knowledge of the AIs' behavior than I have to know when you're safe. Sandalphon, for example, seems like Tokugawa - he doesn't have open borders with anyone and is not willing to trade techs at Cautious.

BTW, is there WFYABTA here as well?

I'd say Sandalphon would be a good medium-term target.

Sure, I now have two goals: conquer them and the dragon. What should I rely on: siege or magic?

EDIT: I would not give up on this game though, a few conquered cities and a sounder economy will push you a long way up the ladder.

I won't quit, I want to learn the techtree, the civics, etc. As I said before, I don't expect to win this game, but I'll do my best.

The best part was to find out that I haven't screwed everything up yet. Don't lose hope on my ability to do so, though. I'll play another round later today and post the results here. You can tell me what other flagrant mistakes I'll have made.

 

[Lone Wolf]

For the looks of it, it doesn't seem that Logos will declare on someone he's pleased toward

He will (80 NoWarProb at Pleased). Rather unthematic for him, but there you go. To be fair, it's easier to gain Pleased status with him then with evil leaders, since he has a high BaseAttitude.

Nox Noctis is the Sidar's world spell?

No, it's the Council of Esus' religion shrine.

BTW, is there WFYABTA here as well?

All FfH leaders have a 5 NoTechTradeTreshold and a 25 TradeTechKnownPercent.

Hawk micro sucks.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

if you capture the dragon, he's one of your units...

 

[grayrest]

Can't mages take their role? I've read in that top 10 tips thread that I can use Maelstrom and Fireballs to act as siege. Although it's not as nice as that Tsunami spell...

Mages work but you need more of them than with the priests.

Sure, I now have two goals: conquer them and the dragon. What should I rely on: siege or magic?

Capturing the dragon is just a fun diversion. It's better to just ignore him. I normally kill him efficiently with high withdraw horse archers and grab his treasure (gems+gold in a city plus automatic enchant weapons for any metal unit ending its turn in your city). Alas, at that point I normally don't need the treasure, but...

The difference between siege and magic is speed. With magic, you can get your stack up to 3 movement/turn (mobility+haste) while you're stuck at 1 movement with siege. The drawback for magic is that the research path is considerably longer. If you want to conquer soon (and you should), go siege.

I won't quit, I want to learn the techtree, the civics, etc. As I said before, I don't expect to win this game, but I'll do my best.

I'd expect a win out of this game. You're out of the hard part and reasonably stable economically, so it's more of a matter of how efficiently you go forth and conquer.

 

[Onionsoilder]

Nox Noctis is the Holy Shrine of the Council of Esus. It makes all units in the owning civilization's territory invisible(once they leave their territory, they become visible), but hawks will NOT make them visible if they remain in their territory. It's glitched, or something... Anyway, it can't be used offensively because of that, but is insane on the defense because the only way to counter it is to take the holy city, which will be hard when assassins are picking off your troops and you can't fight back.

Anyway, a win is possible in this game. If you have not yet used Ardor, you could go for an Altar victory, which is sort of like FFH's Space Race. You need to get the Omniscience and Rightousness technologies(some of the most expensive in the game) and get 6 Great Prophets to build the early stages. The best way to do this is to adopt Theocracy and cast Ardor once you're running as many priest specialists as you can feed. Once you have the 6 prerequisite altars built, you can build the final altar, which costs 6000 hammers but will win you the game(no launch needed)

If you have already used Ardor, or don't want to go for an altar victory, you can go for the standard conquest/domination. You's rather far behind militarily, but if you use your heroes intelligently you may be able to pull it off. Another possibility is the Tower of Mastery, which is like the Altar but requires mana instead of prophets to build the early stages.

 

[Emptiness]

It's glitched, or something...

Nox Noctis isn't glitched; it is supposed to provide super-invisibility that nothing can penetrate (within national borders). It is the opposite of Dies Diei, which provides full revelation of all hidden or invisible units (within national borders).

 

[JonathanStrange]

I think he's done rather well in his first game.

He made only one mistake: he wasn't born an Ljosalfar.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

He made only one mistake: he wasn't born an Ljosalfar.

That can be solved in the next game.

BTW, I already played a new short round that I'll post later. I think I'm doing decently in techs, but I'm a little lost so I'd like some guidance.

 

[Souljar]

Execellent advice. Just a heads up though, be carefull with the altar victory, all civ's will DOW you once you start the last stage.

 

[Onionsoilder]

Execellent advice. Just a heads up though, be carefull with the altar victory, all civ's will DOW you once you start the last stage.

Only Evil civilizations DoW with an Altar.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

And only if not already at war with someone else, iirc.