Lord of the Balors feedback

[reverend oats]

Give..... me...... water........ please........

More seriously, playing as the Bannor, there is just one thing I need to say: Crusaders. Own.
Free demonslaying and mobility, plus combat 1-4 from Alter and Shrine of the Champion, plus Bless from Confessors= Lots of dead Infernals.
My allies haven't been too useful, with Keelyn converting to AV, Varn just expanding westward, and Basium mostly concentrating on carving out a little empire of barbarian cities inside Hell.
Tech pace is laconic, even with Emperor AIs, seeing as it is at turn 200+ with the only T4 units being my 4 Priors that I spent 50 turns getting (should've gone for Righteousness).
The upper left part of the map seems kind of redundant; maybe something could be done to spice it up?
One the whole, I'm having a blast with this scenario (most fun since Momus) and hope I can rescue Donal.

 

[Mesix]

The SE portion of the map where all the fallout is placed doesn't work so well. It seems like the intent is to have the player explore a maze to get to the bad guys. Unfortunately, it is more of a burden to the AI than the player and limits the growth of the Infernals.

 

[ZeroZeroSix]

I started a new game with this scenario as Basium again with the new patch V.

At first I got a wierd start then decided to reload...see attachement for detail.

I am now at turn 393 and the AC is pass 70 for the first time and I keep it beyong 80 by killing infernals. Very intersting game so far. I read somewhere that at 80 all disciples units are changed to prophet or sage not sure wich, does that mean even hero disciple like Chalid ?

The annoying part is not seeing what happen in your 'allies' territories unless you keep a garnison there to prevent infiltration and troops outside your border lower the revenu plus the inflation and then research is cripled.

Would be nice if there was a permanent alliance possible.

 

[Mumin]

I agree with the opinions that the scenario would be better of with fresh water and a little less dead space.

I played with Basium and picked FoL in order to get some more food and a holy city. (Bannor gets Order for free.) Research was anemic at first and the blight struck before I had time to switch to Guardian of nature. Bleh! My AI allies spammed cheap units that they garrisoned and didn't expand. Stephanos appeared and managed to get himself killed on a huge stack of Ecclestians in the Malakim city. When I got priests, I noticed that the tigers too are reborn as angels when they die Soon a horde of free, rampaging angels swept into hell and pillaged all those phat towns and citadels for obscene amounts of gold. I also burnt and sanctified all the demon cities, so the AC dropped like a rock. This part was quite fun but still a bit long slog.

 

[Lone Wolf]

managed to get himself killed on a huge stack of Ecclestians in the Malakim city.

Wow, that must have been a rely huge stack...

 

[Bitwise]

Patch y.

Way more fun with the fresh water. I can farm now! Also in this game the allies are packed around each other pretty tightly, bad for me an capria since we're stuck in the middle, but Basium and Varn seem pretty effective.

 

[Brokenbone]

Playing with Capria, I agree that Crusaders are pretty fun, as someone observed.

Check this out though: build Sphener and resurrect poor Donal... then recruit after every demon slain, wow. Sure, Donal gets "reborn" without an Empty Bier, but him picking off demons just for the sake of recruitment mania is where his strength is for this scenario. I wonder if this is a bad thing, haven't finished with Capria yet, so I wonder if it'd make any end story which could mention Donal, odd, but hey.

 

[thewyrm]

Well crap. 825 turns and I finally win with Keelyn only to get a victory story about some mage sanctifying trees. Surely that wasn't the Balseraph victory screen?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It shouldn't be. This is the Balseraph victory:

Spoiler :

At first, I thought I had arrived at Amathaon's heaven. I had cheated, stolen, committed crimes beyond count, even sent Perpentach's idiot daughter to face Hell itself, and yet I had made it to paradise! Maybe the gods were rewarding me for ridding them of that spoiled brat.

I beheld gardens, beautiful statuary, a sky that held fairy-tale clouds, and great angels dressed in pink and white. Great angels, with horns and large teeth.

The gardens, I noticed as my vision cleared, grew gulgarms, razorweed, and other, even more hellish plants. The statuary depicted not handsome men and beautiful women, but succubi and demon princes. The sky, I saw, was actually more red than pink, and the clouds were coming from an active volcano.

This was not the hell I had imagined awaiting me, but it was hell nonetheless. One of the great demons, absurdly dressed but still terrifying, marched towards me. "Princess Keelyn wants you to dance," it said.

"Princess... Keelyn?" I muttered, unable to believe what I'd heard. I was dragged to a great central hall, where upon a demonic throne made for giants was placed another throne, of mortal scale, that looked like it had come from a giant doll-house. Keelyn sat upon that throne. I could not believe it, Princess Keelyn was sitting on Hyborem's throne. I had sent her off to die, and she had overthrown the Lord of the Balors.

"You're that advisor. The one who gave me the boat."

"Yes," I said. "Remember all the fun we had together..."

"You didn't like me," she said. "You were always mean to me. The only nice thing you did was give me that boat..." she leaned close and then smiled, "and that was because you thought I'd die."

I stared, unsure how to respond to the new Lady of the Balors.

"Dance," she ordered. I danced. I'm not sure how long for. She clapped and was clearly amused, but demanded I keep dancing. So I did. I kept dancing until I collapsed, unable to continue. "Don't stop! Keep dancing!" she demanded. But I couldn't. "Guards," she yelled, "he won't dance! Throw him in the Naughty Pit!"

As I was dragged away by a Balor, I knew that the Naughty Pit was going to be far worse than dancing until collapse. The screams to which I was being dragged towards suggested that, as did the cruelly stupid grin upon the Balor's face.

 

[thewyrm]

Thanks MC! That was much, much better.

Spoiler :

I don't even want to imagine what is in the naughty pit.

KillerClowns did an excellent job with the Balseraph stuff on this scenario.

 

[bluedevil99]

Finished this scenario over the weekend. It is WAY more fun with fresh water added; in retrospect there is no way I would have finished this scenario before patch y. It was still a bit long, but I did get to try out every type of T4 angelic unit (Repentant Angels are, to borrow a term, wtfpwn in this scenario). Admittedly I could have finished sooner, but I decided to settle a few cities in the north just because a couple of the infernal civ capitals had really good wonders, like Guild of Hammers, that I can't ever bring myself to raze. Overall, lots of fun.

My only recommendations are make the map a bit smaller (watching the postgame movie, the whole west side was never settled) and maybe give the player or the playable civs bonuses (units, etc, as in the first Illian/Doviello scenario) as the demon lords are defeated. I'd also liked to have seen some of the unique features in the north to really make the player think about the cost/benefit of settling cities up there as opposed to a raze-fest with a SoD or two. I also thought it would be cool if, at some point, say when 4 of the demon lords are wiped out, the remaining infernal civs would ally under the leader (probably Hyboreum) and the good civs would likewise have the option to ally, just to switch things up a bit.

 

[MAPBill]

Finished it playing as the Bannor. One of the best scenarios ever, although it seemed a bit long (not so much, finished it in about 270 turns on Prince difficulty).
I've took my time in leveling that first Crusader you get in the beginning. Along with Phanuel, he spearheaded every Bannor assault. Single handedly finished the Infernal Queen leader. Renamed him to Bane The Demonslayer, tacky but fitting.

I've found that the best way to win this scenario was simply not to let the Infernals to expand too quickly (course it's impossible to keep them all from doing it, but the most of them you finish off earlier, the better). Keeping their cities was far too costly and dangerous, razing them and moving on was the best strategy.

Also I've found that keeping the Armageddom Counter low is crucial. Not having to deal with those damned Horsemen greatly raises your chances. That's why destroying Infernal cities is important, and quickly Sanctifying their ruins.
Still I got Stephanos raising hell on Varn's stronghold. Took us lots of units to take him down. My main army was really far away, so I rushed Demagogs and Crusaders to tackle him.

My allies (except for Keelyn) were very useful. Basium was relentless on his assaults, helped me out a lot. Varn simply conquered the west part of the scenario and remained there but occasionally sent some troops over towards Meresium's (I guess getting pounded by Stephanos really slows you down). Keelyn got engulfed on my evergrowing culture, and converted to Ashen Veil. Stolen her precious iron resource with my culture, my only source of metal throughout the whole game (wasn't blessed with any metal in my starting location).

All in all, great scenario. The Bannor really get it easy with their Crusade civic and steamroller infantry. Gonna try the other civs for sure later. The texts are great by the way.

Spoiler :

Finally a happy ending! Rare thing on Fall From Heaven scenarios.

 

[Kenjister]

I agree that this scenario is much better with the water added. It also has some good replay value since every faction has some very different starting units.

Overall though I think Bannor and Mercurians are probably the most fun to play as.
Also, I don't know if it was changed, but...

Spoiler :

Did anybody else rescue Donal by finding the "island" in the fire?

 

[Breunor]

Sorry to be dense here, but I'm playing as Basium -- how do I get the Basium hero unit? I thought maybe I needed fanatacism, but that didn't help. I saw a lot of you got him to be an uber-power. How does he get in?

Thanks for any help,

And Best wishes,

Breunor

Btw I am playing Patch Z

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Basium requires Iron Working whenever you don't get him automatically.

 

[Breunor]

Basium requires Iron Working whenever you don't get him automatically.

Thanks MC!

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Ksi]

Beat this is Varn but I didn't get the end game text.
Captured Sallos's city last.

 

[Skitters]

finally won last night as Bannor, mostly enjoyed this scenario, but did feel that with the game pretty much won it was extended by around 20 turns or so because there are a couple of landmasses in the far right that are inaccesible from the main continent.

Therefore as Judecca had colonised an island in the bottom right, and Hyborem had colonosied a tip of land cut off from the rest by mountains in the top right of the map, I had to build a mini fleet in order to ferry troops to engage them. Just seemed like a bit of an unneccessay chore.

Also note - should it be possible for the Bannor with Sphener to resurrect Donal Lugh? Not that it made much difference as he came into the game not much before the need for the mini fleet after the tide of demagogues and crusaders had already done most of the smiting

Of the allies, Varn and Basium were fairly active - Basium in particular got a fair number of Angels come his way. Keelyn adopted AV and pretty much spent the game in her city having a hissy fit at me for being Order.

 

[Grakor456]

I found it somewhat alarming, in my first couple attempts at this map, that because Basium is on the opposite side of Keelyn and has no default religion of his own, under the AI he frequently adopts OO and becomes neutral.

This was a challenging map though, in a good way. In my winning game, I played Mercurians with Runes of Kilmorph religion. Basium and Arthendain were monsters by the time I finished. Capria and Varn Gosam were moderately helpful, and managed to take out one of the demons while working together, while Keelyn was...doing something, I'm not sure what. That AC is killer here, by the way.

Are the demon lord locations randomized? One got stuck behind Hyborem's culture zone, and none of them really expanded westward enough to pose a threat to Varn, which is probably why he was able to be as aggressive as he was. Good map though. Good job whoever wrote the story for the Balseraphs and the Mercurians, I enjoyed both stories.

 

[PaulusIII]

Played as Basium/Immortal.

The AI allies did not contribute anything except that two of them contributed angels to the righteous cause. Varn squeezed his capital between Capria and Keelyn and as such he was useless the whole game long on 2 cities. Keelyn converted to the Ashen Veil (!!!) and did nothing either - whose side is she on anyway? Only Capria did something... but not even she managed to get a demon lord down - or even a city. I had to do it all by myself.

(PS. If Keelyn converts to Ashen Veil - as seems to happen sometimes - might there not be an event that has Basium declare war on her? Because well... Basium is not exactly the most open-minded person about dealing with demons and their worshippers. If that is not possible or would destroy the scenario, maybe there should be something that prevents her from adopting AV in this scenario)

I am very happy that I held back on the Decius arc until patch z - and with Lord of the Balors, which follows it, I'm also happy that I waited. Why? The new Mercurian art. The top tier Mercurians now look awesome. Heralds, Ophanims, Repentant Angels... awesome. Main priority was getting to there, and after that start demon hunting.

Once the Mercurian machine started rolling there was really nothing that could stop me. High-level (among which a former Valin and a former Chalid) tier 4 angels cannot be stopped by anything the various demon lords throw at me. I don't remember facing many tier 4 units.

And well, the ending...

Spoiler :

Nice to see a good ending for once, indeed. Fitting for Basium that he's not content to keep the victory to Erebus, and instead wants to bring the fight to the home ground of the demons. Actually, with the army I built him I can see him succeeding in wreaking havoc in hell at the very least.