[MOD] Fall from Heaven II

[Nikis-Knight]

That really seems lilke throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I think the ai zeal for killing animals is probably related to their owning hidden nationality promotion.

I get your point about capture animal and hunting, but really don't want a hunting requirement on animal husbandry, that pushes horsemen and pastures way out for not enough justification.

 

[oyzar]

They used to upgrade to War Elephants, do they not anymore?

The main problem with animals is that the AI tends to mercilessly hunt them down before anyone has the animal husbandry tech/subdue animal promotion. I'm thinking that for starters we should make scouts (but not their upgrades) unable to attack, like in vanilla. That way they would be more likely to wait to kill off the animals until they have the promotion needed to capture them. It might also be good to make subdue animal require hunting instead of Animal husbandry. It makes more sense there, since the graphics for the Hunter unit include a presumably tamed wolf already. You shouldn't need to know how to breed animals before you can tame them. (It might also be appropriate for animal husbandry to require hunting, perhaps as an "or" requirement.)

Just because the normal civ early game tech three makes more sense and is way more balanced and accessible doesn't mean it have to used if people want it to be hard to develop land unless you start with a river. You need to be able to build roads to hunt animals? I mean come on...

 

[Deon]

Just because the normal civ early game tech three makes more sense and is way more balanced and accessible doesn't mean it have to used if people want it to be hard to develop land unless you start with a river. You need to be able to build roads to hunt animals? I mean come on...

But it makes sense (not roads to hunt -.-). I mean I can imagine how the mature hunter with his hunting tricks, sounds and moves can silence the raging bear and tame it, but I can't imagine how the fat old cattle-farmer can deal with the fierce panther... But this iss just a single point of view, so nwm.
But in the game mechanics it's more "realisctic" too because you get hunters which are more likely to capture the animal, while animal husbandry means the way of BREEDING not TAMING. Also as it was said hunter also has his wild dog/wolf...

but really don't want a hunting requirement on animal husbandry

Let the tech tree stay as it is, just move "subdue a." promotion to hunting.

 

[oyzar]

Well of course.. To breed you do have to tame though.. How did the cattleherder tame the wild boar(into pigs) or the wild bulls(into cattle)? THAT is the secret of animal husbandry, not how to breed the annimals(honestly i doubt they knew how fu***** worked by then). Hunting is just killing the animals, not taming them... That said i do believe hunting should be an optional prereq for AH and not have exploration as a prereq... Not that i was actually arguing about this in the first place but i can see why it makes sense, my comment was just regarding the general unwieldiness of the ffh early game tech three and the inaccessibility of most worker techs unless you get an early high commerce resource nearby.

 

[Caleb_kreegan]

Hello Kael

first of all i want to say to u and all ur team that ur mod is really awesome and is one of my favorites, wonderful work

i would like to know if in the future u will put the Illyan Civilization (Auric Ulvin) available to play, i would really like to play with them. I consider that follow people of the winter god were important in the ice age it would be interesting if u could play with them, having like special spells like turn the terrain into ice and that winds that in the ice age mod appeared and for example as special power and hero could be to summon the winter god again in Letum frigus don't know...
anyway thanks to all the team for this great mod

 

[Dragonlord]

My 2 cents on the Subdue Animal discussion:
I'd like for Subdue Animal to be available from the very start, with no tech prerequisite.
Why? Because on higher levels (I play Emperor and above) it takes too long to get Animal Husbandry, even if you beeline to it (which I always do). By the time I finally get it, my Scouts have multiple promotions, which they have naturally gained by killing animals - wasting them..
I often see the rare animals, like Tigers and Gorillas, in the very early game and can't capture them... I scrupulously avoid killing them but the AI slaughters them indiscriminately...

Make Subdue Animal available immediately and I'd be happy - I just LOVE to capture animals...

 

[Kinjiru]

It is quite easy to move promotions around using the included editor.

Let's say you want to move the Subdue Animal promotion to the Explorations tech. Here are the steps:

1) Go into your FFH2 folder,
2) Open Ffh Editor excel file,
3) Go to the Promotions worksheet,
4) Scroll over to column HD (PROMOTION_SUBDUE_ANIMAL)
5) Go to the drop down on row 10 (TechPrereq)
6) Change the value to TECH_EXPLORATION
7) click the Export Promotion Information button in the upper left of the worksheet
8) Start a new game
9) Pick a civ that starts with Exploration and you will have the ability from the start (as soon as you level your starting scout twice...)

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Hello Kael

first of all i want to say to u and all ur team that ur mod is really awesome and is one of my favorites, wonderful work

i would like to know if in the future u will put the Illyan Civilization (Auric Ulvin) available to play, i would really like to play with them. I consider that follow people of the winter god were important in the ice age it would be interesting if u could play with them, having like special spells like turn the terrain into ice and that winds that in the ice age mod appeared and for example as special power and hero could be to summon the winter god again in Letum frigus don't know...
anyway thanks to all the team for this great mod

The Illian civilization is the focus of the next major phase of FfH, Ice. Other than fleshing out this one civ, Ice will be mostly scenarios (and whatever minor tweaks are needed to make the scenarios work). In the mean time the Illians don't have enough unique about them to make the team think they are worth a human player's time, although they do tend to do very well as as an AI (perhaps due to the xp boost for melee units built in th capital city).

There may eventually be some ways to return the world to an Ice Age, but they haven't been added yet. (I suspect and hope that the Illian World Spell will work much like the Blizzard mechanic in AoI, but they aren't even going to have a world spell until Ice). They already have a Hero: Wilboman, the last of the Ice Giants. As for "summoning" Mulcarn, that isn't possible. Mulcarn was destroyed by Kyorlin, and his body and power were broken. However, his consciousness lived on, and took possession of a young boy (or, may have been reincarnated as a mortal). That boy's name was Auric Ulvin. Auric is Mulcarn, and is seeking to regain his divinity. How this is possible I do not know, but he isn't the only mortal that is striving to become a god. Since he once was one, it seems more likely for him to succeed that for some of the others (like Loraoth, who, despite being dead, is fairly close to usurping the power of the god of death, with the help of many of Arawn's angels.) It has at least been implied that such an ascension is possible. It has also been said that the possession of the gems of creation can give a mortal more power than the gods themselves have.

If you want to go ahead and play as them before they are fully implemented, then there is only 1 very minor change you need to make; change bPlayable from a 0 to a 1. You can either open up the excel 2007 file that comes with the game, turn on macros, go to the Civilizations tab, find the Illians column, change the 0 in the bPlayable row of that column to a 1, and then click Export Civilization Information, OR directly open up the CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml file found in the civilizations folder of the xml folder of the assets folder of the mod folder, find the <bPlayable> tag under the Illian civ's entry, anange the 0 to a 1, and then save the file.

 

[Caleb_kreegan]

The Illian civilization is the focus of the next major phase of FfH, Ice. Other than fleshing out this one civ, Ice will be mostly scenarios (and whatever minor tweaks are needed to make the scenarios work). In the mean time the Illians don't have enough unique about them to make the team think they are worth a human player's time, although they do tend to do very well as as an AI (perhaps due to the xp boost for melee units built in th capital city)....

thank u for the explanation man!

 

[Dragonlord]

It is quite easy to move promotions around using the included editor.

Let's say you want to move the Subdue Animal promotion to the Explorations tech. Here are the steps:

1) Go into your FFH2 folder,
2) Open Ffh Editor excel file,
3) Go to the Promotions worksheet,
4) Scroll over to column HD (PROMOTION_SUBDUE_ANIMAL)
5) Go to the drop down on row 10 (TechPrereq)
6) Change the value to TECH_EXPLORATION
7) click the Export Promotion Information button in the upper left of the worksheet
8) Start a new game
9) Pick a civ that starts with Exploration and you will have the ability from the start (as soon as you level your starting scout twice...)

Thanks for the tip! I'm going to try exactly that...

Somehow I had completely missed this editor, even though I thought I had kept up on developments in FFH.... ?

Edit: No luck :-(.... seems you need Excel 2007 to open this file. My Excel version is too old..

 

[Kinjiru]

Thanks for the tip! I'm going to try exactly that...

Somehow I had completely missed this editor, even though I thought I had kept up on developments in FFH.... ?

Edit: No luck :-(.... seems you need Excel 2007 to open this file. My Excel version is too old..

Hmmm... I was going to save is a 2003 version, but we can't. There is so much data in the workbook that the 2007 version is the only one that can handle that many data values.

There is an excel 2007 viewer freely available from MS. I don't know if it will allow macros or support the buttons that generate the xml files for you.

 

[Kinjiru]

Okay, you can do the same thing manually:

1) In your FFH2 folder, open the Assests folder
2) Open te XML folder
3) Open the Units folder
4) Open the CIV4PromotionInfos file
5) Search for the string "PROMOTION_SUBDUE_ANIMAL"
6) Go down to the <TechPrereq> tag and replace the current value with "TECH_EXPLORATION" (no quotes).
7) Save the file and start a new game

If you wanted to get fancier, you could leave the promotions alone and instead either:
a) give Scouts the Subdue Animal promotion for free (edit the appropriate entry in CIV4UnitInfos.xml - look for the <FreePromotions> tag), or
b) create a new unit that is a Scout with Subdue Animal, make that unit non-buidable and give each civ one of these guys to start with.

"B" is obviously more complex - I would think you could create the unit by making a new entry in CIV4UnitInfos. I am not as sure about how to make it non-buildable or to make it a starting unit or each civ.

 

[jacktannery]

As for the Grand Menagrie, I disagree with the majority view about making it easier.

I tried a few games where I set the game up sepecifically for this wonder (play as elves, emporer, big map with some islands too, and lots of barbs seems to help as it gives quicker XP to your scouts) and got it every time that I really tried. It is extremely cheap, when it works you get it really early, and it is extremely powerful.

Since the AI will never build it, making it easier to get will mean a massive advantage to the player (ok, so I know the player can't lose an average game vs. the AI anyway but..). So I say to leave it as it is: it can be got if you focus utterly on it, on the right map type, and with a little luck; but whenever you do get it it is a wonderful surprise.

 

[philippe]

Hello persons, just a friendly reminder there is also an FFH chatroom on the server of civfanatics!
totalshells.ch.us.irc-chat.net => #erebus
or look in sig on how to get there or PM me!

See ya there!

 

[Omegon3]

I don't know if this is a "situation" that happens only with FfH (a spell of some type?) or if it is symtomatic of Civ 4 in general, but in the last couple of games I've played a strange (in my humble opinion) thing has happened that I'm hoping someone can explain...

The last two games I've won with the Tower of Mastery which, as you all know, causes all other civs that are not your vassals to declare war. Well... Both times I was ready with my armies and quickly invaded the other civs. However, I also had cities within reach of those civs. Once in both games I had a city attacked by opposing forces. The odd thing was is that each time, despite the fact that I still had defending forces in the city, the city was claimed by my opponent and suddenly my defending forces were outside the city looking in...

Does anyone know what causes this? I would have thought that the city would hold until all my forces were eliminated, but it appears as if they got chicken and bailed on me. The first time was really weird since the only defender that was "removed" (he returned to my capital since he had the immortal promotion) was an arquebusier and there were quite a full fully healthy units remaining (plus at least one guardian vine!). The second time the defenders had taken a toll on my units though I still had about six remaining (just not in full health).

Thanks in advance to anyone that can explain this.

 

[oyzar]

Fear maybe? otherwise I know of a bug with workers that cause you to capture cities prematurely in BTS. Though this happens if you capture a worker and they get teleported into the new city or something..

 

[Omegon3]

Oyzar, what type of units could my defenders have feared? In the first case there was one knight and several fryewells); in the second case it was mainly chariots, horsemen, and assassins. Would any of these cause my units to flee in panic?

Thanks for reply!!

 

[thealien_83]

If you had any invisible units defending the city, those can get 'overlooked' rather crazily by the AI. Dunno if it's intentional or not, but it's happened to me anyway. Had a stack of.. I forget exactly what. Like 2 Horsemen, 2 Ghosts (Sidar Assassin replacement, with Shadow II, so they can become invisible for that extra niinjaaaah touch). Enemy attacks me, kills the two Horsemen, then merrily jump in and occupy the square the Ghosts were in, because, I guess, he couldn't see 'em, couldn't fight 'em, couldn't acknowledge their presence. Sneaky!

Now, anyway. On to what I was intending to ask. Did I completely hallucinate when I got it into my head that a Castle would claim whatever resource it was built on? So that instead of building a mine on that patch of copper, I could build a Fort and then 20 turns later when that turns into a Castle, it would claim the resource for me? Maybe that was just delirious wishful thinking or something. <.>

 

[Omegon3]

Good suggestion, but no invisible units in either case... So far as castles are concerned, hopefully someone a lot better versed than I can answer that one.

 

[lobosan]

I can't get GameFlood to install the mod. The GameFlood middleware downloaded for a long time, processed the download, and told me that it succeeded - but there was nothing actually installed in the BTS mod folder and BTS didn't list the mod.

Hitting on the GameFlood play button gives me a syntax error and it does not let me re-download the mod:
Script exec error: t72.lua:68: bad argument #1 to 'ipairs' (table expected, got nil): -1

Where can I get the mod installer without the suspect GameFlood middleware?