[MOD] Fall from Heaven II

[Kael]

Elves have been more or less banned in our MP games due to the fact that the get a production boost, food boost, MASSIVE health and happiness boost (guardian of nature with forrests on every tile is massive), a defence advantage (chance of treeent spawning on every tile if all covered in forrest and guardian of nature civic running) and an economic advantage (you never have to build anything but cottages unless you have a resource underneath).


Disadvantages to playing the elves... a minor penalty if your opponent specialises his forces for killing elves... and the fact that AC will destroy your forrest (and thereby economy)... if it ever gets high enough to enter your lands... so in other words svartalfar has got alot more at risk than ljosalfar due to them beeing evil if they choose to run way of the forrest religion.

If not overpowered I would like to hear how you figure they are not?

Not complaining, just wondering... other than that I love the elves... just not for multiplayer due to the facts stated above.

The ljosalfar are the best defenders in the game, and left to build they are incrediably formidable. If you and your friends agree not to attack each other in the early game then they are going to be powerhouses.

But they have the worst workers in the game. It takes them longer to improve their land than anyone else and that makes them more damaged by pillaging. Hippus raids drive them nuts and can even frequently be gone before the rare Treant defender is able to attack them, kuriotate centaurs do the same (especially mounted units with bonuses against the Ljosalfars strong archer units). They are also decimated by enemyies that blaze their forests, making them weak against the civs that start with Fire mana, the Clan, Amurites and the Sheaim. The Sheaim do double duty by being able to field exploding Pyre Zombies that wipe out elven stacks and their forests.

As attackers the Ljosalfar are weak. They have no siege weapons so are left with magical options or the Pact of the Nilhorn as the only ways to bombard enemy cities (pillage and camp defenders on elven fire nodes!).

Marching a line of melee units into elven forests isnt an effective strategy. The Ljosalfar are going to require something more creative.

ps. Heres a really sneaky trick for getting through Ancient Forests without spawning Treants. Trents only have a chance to spawn for the first unit that enters a tile (they will never spawn if you already have a unit in the tile). And they will never spawn if a flier enters the tile. So if you send a flier into the tile first you can make sure you never run into a Treant. I like to use Floating Eyes and Griffons to scout ahead and keep me safe.

 

[Skitters]

One thing that does strike me about Elves is that a town implies a hefty population of its own. This to me doesn't sit well on two counts (admittedly, these are based on my notion of Elves)

1) Elves are a dwindling race - but in FFH, you could in theory have every landtile within the Elven borders with a town on it. That would suggest that given the chance, they'll breed like rabbits.
2) That an Elven town, would remain in perfect harmony with a forest.

As such I'd either like to see a cap of village on the size an Elven Cottage can grow to, or that for every town in a BFC requires one food and/or counts against the city's health.

 

[Maniac]

1) Elves are a dwindling race

How so? This isn't LotR.

 

[jselsmark]

The ljosalfar are the best defenders in the game, and left to build they are incrediably formidable. If you and your friends agree not to attack each other in the early game then they are going to be powerhouses.

But they have the worst workers in the game. It takes them longer to improve their land than anyone else and that makes them more damaged by pillaging. Hippus raids drive them nuts and can even frequently be gone before the rare Treant defender is able to attack them, kuriotate centaurs do the same (especially mounted units with bonuses against the Ljosalfars strong archer units). They are also decimated by enemyies that blaze their forests, making them weak against the civs that start with Fire mana, the Clan, Amurites and the Sheaim. The Sheaim do double duty by being able to field exploding Pyre Zombies that wipe out elven stacks and their forests.

As attackers the Ljosalfar are weak. They have no siege weapons so are left with magical options or the Pact of the Nilhorn as the only ways to bombard enemy cities (pillage and camp defenders on elven fire nodes!).

Marching a line of melee units into elven forests isnt an effective strategy. The Ljosalfar are going to require something more creative.

ps. Heres a really sneaky trick for getting through Ancient Forests without spawning Treants. Trents only have a chance to spawn for the first unit that enters a tile (they will never spawn if you already have a unit in the tile). And they will never spawn if a flier enters the tile. So if you send a flier into the tile first you can make sure you never run into a Treant. I like to use Floating Eyes and Griffons to scout ahead and keep me safe.

Thx Kael, I see your point... but after we had one game last only 42 turns for one of my friends at a LAN party we decided not to go for early rushes, having him sit through a whole LAN (if the game went good) and having to play single player games most of the time just wouldn't seem fair hehe...

But only once have we had a 12 player FFH lan and since then played max of 6 friends together with some AI so maybe we should "allow" early conquest again unless "all seats are taken".

Thx again...

 

[Kael]

Thx Kael, I see your point... but after we had one game last only 42 turns for one of my friends at a LAN party we decided not to go for early rushes, having him sit through a whole LAN (if the game went good) and having to play single player games most of the time just wouldn't seem fair hehe...

But only once have we had a 12 player FFH lan and since then played max of 6 friends together with some AI so maybe we should "allow" early conquest again unless "all seats are taken".

Thx again...

That makes sense. Your house rules greatly favor the Ljosalfar and weaken civs like the Doviello and the Clan of Embers.

I'd recommend making a rule that keeps you from taking another players capital for a certain amount of time. That way you can still sweep in, capture workers, pillage and otherwise slow down the builder civs. Otherwise straight expansion becomes the only viable strategy and the civs that do it best will be the most powerful.

 

[mamimo]

Hi All,
I am having the time of my life with FFH II, I do have one question.
I have replaced my machine a while back to quad core, however it seems there is no big impact on CIV4, also I read that in FFH 0.33 an optimization work was done to reduce the time on huge maps.

Is there anything else that can be done to push the performance up?

Of course I am talking on the lag time while waiting to the computer to finish...

 

[Crni Gruja]

I have found a way for a single Balseraph Archmage to conquer entire world in only one turn!!! I think this has to be corrected! The problem would be solved if the Puppet was unable to transform into Lich. By the way, the mod is great!

 

[DBear]

nevermind

 

[Prebral]

I have found a way for a single Balseraph Archmage to conquer entire world in only one turn!!! I think this has to be corrected! The problem would be solved if the Puppet was unable to transform into Lich. By the way, the mod is great!

Puppets are nice, a "Johnny" stuff . I have recently created a stack of archmages, liches and Gibbon Goetia, all able to cast domination (+some fire- and metamagic), and march forwards turning enemy armies to mine. There is no risk of losing domination ability if spell fails (only puppet loses it) and if assassins attack my stack, puppets get hit instead of mages.

 

[Jordal]

For whatever reason, my adepts can't cast inspiration in my cities. I'm playing as the Malakim with Empyrean as my religion. Is this a feature or a bug? The adept I've been trying with was obtained through a Guild of Nine event. Level 2 with Water I and Mind I. I've really enjoyed this mod by the way. You guys have done a great job.

 

[chocmushroom]

It's a Bug, mine can't cast any city based spells AAGGGHHHHHHh, a bug that's new!

 

[Webrider]

Quick question. I have been playing a single player game as the Elves. I have been fellowship of the leaves since I founded it. Way later in the game I researched the Order since it only took a turn or two and I founded that religion as well. If I switch to that I think I would get paladins and some new heroes? What would happen if I switch to that religion now. I have size 45 - 28 cities that have been only fellowship of the leaves.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

you will lose your FoL heroes, and will no longer be able to use the guardian of nature civic. hence, your cities will probably starve and shrink to a smaller size. but then you'll get all the benefits of The Order ( not sure what they are, actually. I'm not a goody-goody type ) oh, and you will become good btw.

 

[TheConqueror]

Hello there
I just finished regitering here just to say congratulations to your mod
Fall from Heaven 2 is the best I have played in quite a good time, and if it wasn't for it I would probably be both bored to death and never having posted here
Keep up the good work, I would like to help but my skills in modding Civ IV are non-existant, so best I can do is toi give ideas

 

[ClownPrince]

I can also confirm that city-based spells aren't working (wall of stone, inspiration). Hope to see that fix added to the next patch.

 

[Djoser]

I feel a bit sorry for making an account just for one question...
(but bogmenot had no working civfanatics acc)

Well, I've 0.30 working atm (couldn't play much the last months).
If I want to upgrade to 0.33 - do I have to dl and install 0.31 as well or does 0.33 contain everything I need?

 

[Chip56]

You have to download the main 0.33 mod and the patch f.
Every new number is complete new version and indepent of earlier version numbers.

 

[Prebral]

I am experiencing some CtDs with the up-to-date version of FfH. Unfortunately, these cannot be repeated and I have not found any patterns in them. Because they can not be repeated, I can not post a "just-before-the-crash" savegame.

Is there some way to generate an error log even from unexpected crashes? Can you use for example Microsoft Windows error report (the one that attempts to be sent to MS after a program crashes)?

 

[Superjebus]

I captured the Holy city of CoE containing Nox Noctis. It now prevents me from fortifing the countryside, and closing off bottle necks without building a city in them(and 2 space wide bottlenecks can never be closed). Is it possible to choose to destroy buildings in a city without having to raize the whole city?

 

[Nor'easter]

I captured the Holy city of CoE containing Nox Noctis. It now prevents me from fortifing the countryside, and closing off bottle necks without building a city in them(and 2 space wide bottlenecks can never be closed). Is it possible to choose to destroy buildings in a city without having to raize the whole city?

You probably know this: Nox Noctis makes your units invisible within your borders (unless they're in cities), which is why you can't fortify your countryside. Kind of a mixed blessing, in that you can surprise-attack enemies within your borders, plus your workers can build improvements without fear of being attacked and captured.

Unlike Civ 3, Civ 4 doesn't let you get rid of buildings in your cities. Maybe there's a way to code that in Civ 4, but I'm not a programmer, and I don't know if there's much demand for it.