Into the Desert feedback

[TC01]

Well, this was a rather interesting game. I am playing as the Malakim, and decided to milk the hell out of that period before finding Varn. Attaching Decius to my Hunter, he became my hero and I managed to capture a barb city that formed to my north (in the foresty/hilly/grassy area-- perfect site for a production city). I spread Empyrean to Kane (the other Malakim) and the Elohim, and both Flauros and Sval war-dec'd me. I haven't played the game normally past the "Spread within 75 turns" so I interpretted that as "win a religious victory in 75 turns or lose" (if it isn't, please correct me ). Switching to RoK, I got open borders with the Dwarves and spread it to them too, before switching back and bribing them to convert to Emp.

And then, Kane vassalized Flauros (and would later vassalize the Dwarves too). I managed to defeat and vassalize the Sval, and "encouraged" them to convert to Emp too. So now all that was left was stubborn old Flauros (as a vassal of Kane, he was unable to declare war on me, but the -10 diplo modifier made it impossible for me to convert him to Emp).

Feeling pretty good, I moved my heroic hunter (now Beastmaster Awesome) onto the Mirror and BAM! Kane and Flauros and Dwarves wardec me. Ouch. So, I reload (I swear I never do this, but COME ON.)

Taking an alternate strategy, I notice that the religious victory is still enabled and proceed to Inquisition every city on the map (except Flauros who is still clinging to OO), and win a religious victory. I get a nice little dialog box with Varn (guess he found his way out of the desert on his own), and the next scenario unlocks.

Aside from the reloading, would you say this is cheating, a glitch, or just an alternative way of beating the scenario?

The way it actually works is: have 75 random turns, then win a religious victory. Apparently, it was supposed to be implemented so that after 75 turns, the other Malakim civ (kane) flipped to you and you gained control of his cities, units, etc. Otherwise, you can completely ignore the 75 turns in both this and the Calabim versions.

 

[Bill Bisco]

There must be a bug in this scenario because I killed the Calabim before the 75 turns was up, and yet the dialogue during the Council meeting says that Flauros will likely oppose me. But, he's already dead so that dialogue doesn't make any sense.

By the way, the only way I can stand to play this scenario is on Marathon so that I have time to turn my Camel Archer with Decius into a superstar killing machine before the other civs can build armies fast enough to stop me.

Kill all barbs on the map to get a lot of xp, and be sure to get the anti-Archer, anti-Warrior and anti-Mounted Promotion. Then proceed to kill the Calabim, then the Svarts, then the Dwarves. Raze every city; don't waste time and resources with occupation.

 

[Lone Wolf]

There must be a bug in this scenario because I killed the Calabim before the 75 turns was up, and yet the dialogue during the Council meeting says that Flauros will likely oppose me. But, he's already dead so that dialogue doesn't make any sense.

Well, think that all those Calabim cities you razed are just a part of their empire that borders the Malaki desert.

 

[hbar]

playing as Cabalim, Python error on razing Dirage (latest patch)

Traceback
File "CvEventInterface", lin23, in onEvent
File "CvEventManager" line 212 in handleEvent
File "CvEventManager", line 1963, in onCityRazed
File "ScenarioFunctions", line 1551, in onCityRazed

ArgumentError: Python argument types in
  CyTeam.signDefensivePact(CyTeam, CyTeam)
did not match C++ signature:
  signDefensivePact(class CyTeam {lvalue],int)

But it seems the scenario is still playable after the error.

 

[Veqryn]

having a major problem with this scenario

it starts up ok from the scenario launcher, but the second I click end turn (the first turn), the game hangs and stops (have to press esc to close it)

i have latest patch "i", am playing as malakim
other scenarios seem to work fine. I can't get the black tower to work from the launcher, but i haven't tried other methods yet, and all other scenarios work

 

[Breunor]

having a major problem with this scenario

it starts up ok from the scenario launcher, but the second I click end turn (the first turn), the game hangs and stops (have to press esc to close it)

i have latest patch "i", am playing as malakim
other scenarios seem to work fine. I can't get the black tower to work from the launcher, but i haven't tried other methods yet, and all other scenarios work

Hmm, it worked fine for me on j. Have you tried this a few times? Try it from the beginning (loading first).

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Veqryn]

I tried a couple more times, fresh starts, and even one directly from the scenario files on the computer. none will work. I thought maybe there is something wrong with the malakim version of the scenario? I have gone back, done the fall of cuantine a second time and chosen calabrim. Still does not work.
Everything loads perfectly fine, then when I go to press the end turn for the first turn, the game hangs / does not respond.

i've attached my save file, saved on turn one, if someone can check that out and see if the game plays ok?
i am using patch 'i'
I have windows xp pro, sp3, and also .net 3.5, and i can post other information about my computer or setup if need be



edit: it now works with patch "j"

 

[JonQ]

how do I play as calabim? was this option removed?

 

[deanej]

You have to choose to flee to the Calabim in the previous scenario.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Or, you could just load the scenario file directly, and choose the version with Calakim in the name instead of Malakim.

Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Scenarios\Into the Desert Calabim.CivBeyondSwordWBSave

 

[JonQ]

Thanks for the help Magister.

Seems I got a religious victory in the previous one. Playing as the calabim Varn Gosam founds and spreads ROK, the objectives of the scenario is to "destroy all empyrian cities".
I guess this means get a conquest victory before someone wins a religious victory.

Seems like the AI in scenarios are bad at handling starting out with a religion, or getting a religion from a priest. (They research other religions even when having the holy city).

When playing as the Malakim I also noticed Kane was eager to switch to FOL, even if every city had empyrian he switched if one of his cities was FOL (even gifted me a FOL deciple unit).
Elohim leader seems to do the same with empyrian.
Being unable to ask the AI to switch religions makes this scenario hard to win without attacking other civs.

Its a fun scenario, but think the AI could be made to play the Malakim a bit more like the player would (Malakim focusing on Empyrian, calabim esus instead of always going for OO.)

Also, the sand lions are annoying. They just sit outside the malakim city and wont attack (on a forrested hill making it impossible to kill them.)

 

[Folket]

I find it really sad that you decide which civ to join at the end of the first scenario. It would be nicer to choose at the beginning of this scenario so that you easier play both stories.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

A question, playing as the Calibim.
The objective to raise all Empirean cities, what exactly does that mean?
Does it refer to all cities with the emperian religion present or just to the Malikim cities?

Also, what happens if emperian spreads to one of my cities?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Sorry for the bump but ANYONE???

 

[Senethro]

I had to raze all Empyrean cities. I did this by not being a big turtle and sitting about all game. I got my war on early and often.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

So I will have to burn that one... oh well. More blood for me.

 

[Hesmyrr]

Holy hell, I just finished this campaign on Noble and I think I took the approach which made it too unnecessarily hard for myself. Wanting to take pacifist apporach, I immeidately put everything to 100% and started producing research, beelining for Forest -> Earth -> Octopus religion respectively. Used Decius+Camel archer immediately toward the mirror to get all those 3 city boosts as possible, and was very lucky in that there were TWO sand tiger dens in my way, so got those eliminated pretty quickly and didn't have to deal with them at all.

And at output of 100% and 3 cities my finance was obviously in red, and I was scouring the goody huts with my now powerful Decius+Camel archer (with skill that gives 2 gold when beating enemy learned) for additional funds to keep my science output at max. And even then I was beaten to the Octopus Overlords by EXACTLY 1 turn by Flauros taking advantage of the moment when my treasury ran out and I had to put my science fund allocation down to 90% for few turns. So I loaded my save state approx. 10 turns before and hit the same goody hut over and over again hoping it'd give out some money so I could keep science at 100%, and it gave out FISHING instead, which was perfectly fine with me xD

Even then, although I beelined for Theocracy immediately to prevent spread of non-state religion, it was way too late and when I got Theocracy up I was in dire need for lot of inquisitors.

Spoiler :

The fact that I researched Honour last probably has something to do with this statistics.

Fortunately everyone but Flauros was in overcouncil with me so relations wasn't that much of the problem, with exception of the latter of course. In fact he led a group of fifteen Maoi? Mioi? those strength 4 guys with three catapults and actually took down one of two barbarian cities I captured solely using camel archer. Cracked up religious fervor (I actually forgot about my world spell until my Malakim counterpart Kain kindly used up his world spell after the seige) and used my recently completed Arakin? well, Inquisitor hero guy + camel archer to beat back the rest of stack from invading my mainland, which wasn't really that hard since there was only about 6 of them surviving. Since he razed the barbarian city I captured I had no choice but to deviate from my pacifist position, abandon my scientific lead, and put all my production into warfare and capture the lowermost of his city to persuade him into making temporary seize fire. And I saw Empyrean in fact spread to few of his cities as well, and by then the Empyrean percentage was about 45% and so, and I was wondering why it was so low while me + Kain + Elohim nearly had perfect Empyrean nation then I realized that barbarian city concentrations count as the overall population needed for religious victory too wtf -_-

There were 6 cities with all over at least population of 4 - all conveniently located on south side which meant it would be far away from Calabrim - so I had to lead half of my army just to make sure against possible backstabbing, and used my hero to go on barbarian sweep tour which made the religious situation much more tolerable. Even then it took some more turn to get the threshold over 80% because I hadn't been taking that much attention to the religious situation of dwarf and evil elf civ and needed to influence them too. What a marathon D:

Edit: And for some reason game crashed every time when I tried to use solinum-diplomacy to try to curry favour toward me for some reason =/

 

[Elder Methyl]

I played Calabim, built several wonders (Including Pact of the Nilhorn, which was helpful), got an Adventurer from a lair, and then cranked out several armies of Moroi, Longbowmen, and Horse Archers. I then began razing Empyrean cities left and right. Then I got bored and decided to just cheat with WB. My difficulty was on Noble, by the way.

 

[avalith]

Playing as Calabim, I initially got a crash after razing Dirage, and I think I identified why. Barbarians had taken Golden Leane. Presumably this screwed things up.

 

[Elder Methyl]

I played another game as Malakim,and this time I won fairly. Production was slow, and most of my troops were cavalry. But the Camel Archer I attached to Decius gained a lot of promotions, and almost won the game singlehandedly. It was fun.