How to stop burning land?

[JoelHalpern]

So, if you are playing an evil race, and Hyborem shows up near by, it would seem to be to your advantage (usually) to let him live.
It is quite possible my problem is right there, and I was supposed to kill him off right away.

However, if I stick with that assumption, how do I deal with the fires? At first, they just take out my nice, useful, forests. But then I start getting laval and burning sands which even take out mines.

At the moment, I have hordes of water adepts just standing around putting out fires, to try to stay even. This seems really foolish, and quite frustrating.
(Also, losing my cows, wheat, etc to become snake pillars and worthless stones is not particularly pleasant. But I can live with that part.)

I presume I am missing something obvious I am supposed to do?

(As an alternative, I have considered pushing the armagedon counter by building lots of prophecy units, since everything seems intent on burning anyway.)

Details: Vanilla Civ 4. FfH 2.023. Playing Perpenrach the crazy Balseraph. Armaggedon counter is now about 54.

Thank you,
Joel M. Halpern

 

[Maniac]

Being evil gives immediate power (Sacrifice the Weak), but bites you in the ass sooner or later (Hell). In your case sooner.

 

[Vehem]

Try Life Adepts rather than Water adepts - they have a spell called "Sanctify" which will force the hell-terrain back from all adjacent squares when cast. If you have a few of them, you can keep the hell-terrain away - but it is hard work.

The main alternative is to embrace it as Maniac suggested - adopt Ashen Veil, Sacrifice the Weak and flourish in adversity (Sacrifice the Weak makes you much less dependent on food). One balance issue both in the version you play and the current version is that Sacrifice the Weak provides solid bonuses even if the player isn't suffering the effects of hell terrain - it really is quite good

Hyborem can be a bit of a wild-card really. He will tend to declare war on (or be declared on by) the goodly folks that you'd like to attack anyway - so he helps weaken and conquer in that respect, but he's never really a trusted ally unless you can persuade him to join you permanently by sharing plenty of war.

 

[avalonnn]

I'm playing 0.23 too,

If Hell terrain _really_ upsets you, become Hypborem. . .

I find that the fires rage most in the desert, less on other terrain. So your city placement can effect Hell terrain. And if you've got ports, the oceam's not burning. . . at least not in this game. Maybe if you become AV and win a religious victory, the ocean burns away?

Also there are a few benefits. The Sheut stone gives units a death attack strength bonus. The snake pillar is okay. The obsidian ground is fertile. But burning sands are annoying. If your fire problem is due to them, convert desert to plains and you'll be better off.


Finally, If there's a barbarian city still alive, and it's near the enemy, ramp up the AC and get the avatars of the apocalypse there. This worked well for me once when the AI Lanun had Basium but had not destroyed the Red Dragon. All the avatars appeared there, except for the last one, which did me a great deal of damage.

And yes, with the AC that high, especially if you're driving it up, you should be AV. If not, destroy Hypb and the AV holy city and it will go back down.

Sanctify won't help you much if you're evil, but it does help if you're neutral or good (and won't help neutral any more when AC reaches, IIRC, 60)

 

[JoelHalpern]

Thanks for the replies.
I had not understood how life / sanctify works. As I am evil (AV, Balseraph) that probably won't work.
So I probably need to give up and just push the AC.
It is the burning land burning up things like gold mines that is really frustrating. But I guess that is the tradeoff I chose.

I do appreciate the prompt responses.

If I understand the upshot though, since I am evil Sanctify just won't do me any good with an AC of 54?

Joel

 

[Blackmantle]

About "burning land": That only happens to deserts turned to hell (burning sands) and forests (which will vanish in hell even without burning sands / flames nearby. No trees in Hell.). Spring / Vitalize those tiles and fires won't appear.
Or build the Genesis world ritual to upgrade all your terrain by one step. Which should eliminate all deserts preventing land from turning into burning sands.

Beware though. Vitalize / Genesis only work on non-hell terrain. So either build it before Hell spreads to you or Sanctify all you want to upgrade.

Also sanctify works for anyone (evil or not. Only Hyborems / Infernal tiles are set to hell each turn. Which still allows for 1-turn sanctifys. Not much good to be gained from that though...)

Its just that from something like 40 AC up Hell will spread into evil territory. 70 for neutral i belive and no spread for good. Unclaimed tiles start to be converted on AC 20 or 25 i belive. So below that tresholds Hell won't spread at all. No matter if you are Evil or not.
If you run AV hell will always spread to you no matter what AC. But thats not a problem if you don't have a direct border with hyborem and the AC is still below 20 (which is rather unlikely with Hyborem nearby and you running Ashen Veil but possible still...)

So use nature III, water I and life I if you want to contain that one...

Or just use life I on a tile and follow up with water I to turn desert into plains even after spread. (Won't work for floodplains though which need nature III / Genesis to upgrade for good reasons...)

 

[JoelHalpern]

It sounds like what I needed to do was use life mana instead of water.
Of course, at the time I had gotten elemental mana (so I could make fire mages and archmages for combat) adn I could not build life nodes.
Unfortunately, as I saw in another thread, there does not seem to be any way to clean a node so you can change its type?

Joel

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You can use the Metamagic II spell to revert any node back to raw mana, and then turn it into an type you like.

 

[JoelHalpern]

You can use the Metamagic II spell to revert any node back to raw mana, and then turn it into an type you like.

Sorry to be dense. I don't see in either the civilopedia or the list of mana types "MetaMagic"? Spell Extension? I tried Chaos II Dispell Magic. The game would not let me cast that while standing on the mana (undeveloped because the enemy had torn it down, if that matters.)

Thank you,
Joel

 

[Blackmantle]

That rather likely means you play a vanilla version of FFH2 (like 0.23. or somesuch. Fire Phase.).
Most people here play with BtS probably (if only to play FFH2 Shadow with it. Well worth the investment btw. ). But back then, there was no metamagic-mana implemented. (dispell magic dispelled magical effects like enchant weapons back then and didn't have any effect on Mana.)
If you ask those kind of questions please do mention the version you are playing otherwise you'll get unadequate answers to them which won't help you at all. (So much has changed since...)

But you have another way pre BTS.

Try to collapse the borders of a city near a node (via culture revolt / Purge the Unfaithful or Order vs. Veil riots if its a version where you can have Veil and Order in one city or build a beast of Agares in said city. All of those will send the city / cities effected into revolt which will collapse its borders and "disenchant the mana.".)

The fastest way perhaps might be to let an "unimportant" city near a developed node be captured by AI or Barbs and capture it back (if you have such a city).
Or just go on conquest and capture an AI / Barb city with a node nearby and develop it. (that last one works for BtS as well if the nodes are nondeveloped. )

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I guess I overlooked the first post where you said you were playing 0.23. Yeah, there was no Metamagic back then.

As Blackmantle said, you will need to have the mana cross though cultural borders.

Order and AV could not coexist in that version, so the riot event is out. The Cult of the Dragon events and the public debates couln't be used either, as events didn't exist yet.

The surest way would be to build Beasts of Agares, which cost your cities 3 population and send them into revolt upon competion. You could also try summoning and deleting Chaos Marauders near undefended cities, since that will turn them barbarian and they will capture the city. That is easier than waiting for barbs on an enemy AI to wander into the area.