well.... okay your mod is great, you could say that you created a complete new game.
Unfortunatly i think that your game is a bit unbalanced. Besides changing the scale in difficulty, it is a lot harder than the original one.
I suspect it is a matter of experience. I find the current version of BtS quite a lot harder than FfH. In BtS, I was a monarch/emperor player. In FfH, I'm an immortal/emperor player.
I think most experienced FfH players feel this way; the reason this occurs is that FfH has a lot more 'stuff' than regular BtS and it is much easier for the human player to understand how to integrate it all. However, for new players to FfH these extra features can be daunting. Stick with it, most of us find that the rich array of choices not only makes play stronger but also more enjoyable.
i think it is next to useless to tech yourself up, because no matter how much buget you put into techs it isn't rewarding because your opponent either spamms you with artillery (why the hell do the have a chance of 80% to withdrawl by the way ?
) brings your defence down to 0 and kills you with cheap lowlife units (goblins.... nasty), or you sit on an island with enough space for 2 cities and only desert and have no way of getting away from there (the real joke is i had because of the terrain only 4 possible titles to work on in the beginning... ).
I think most of the FfH community doesn't feel that the catapults are very strong. They are very slow. Because they aren't living, they cannot be 'hasted' with the haste spell.
If you are finding that the artillery is pounding you, you probably aren't building enough mobile troops or raods within your empire (or simply not enough troops!). Try to grab some cavalry (like regular BtS) or the recon line - they should take the artilley out. Note that artilley is very weak on defense, you kill the escorts, they are toast.
Note that the dwarven trebuchets are killers, but they are suppsoed to be. Try the same tactics though.
Teching is important. While horsemen can beat catpults and theri stacks, horse archers will annihilate them! Of course, similar results happen to other parts of the tech line. If you have mages, catapults will be wasted by fireballs and worse.
So catapults just aren't that powerful. However, they WILL take you down if you are behind in units so, like BtS, you must have a strong military and be ready to respond.
My personal highlight was being introduced to a new player which resulted in a new war in the first conversation because i killed 2 of his buddies, because i was good, he evil (-4) , i declared war on his friend (-2) , and i have fallen under a false value (-2, two times because i founded by accident 2 different religion), this was my death sentence after my population was comletely anihilated by the spell "Blight" or whatsoever i got no explnation for that, neither in the civclopedianor the event message.
FfH can be polarizing, the natural fight between good and bad guys is more likely. There is a lot of 'flavor' in this mod. The key to winning - have a powerful military!
Note that FfH is more 'military' based than BtS. So, yes, the advantage of higher tech is lower in FfH than in BtS.
In contrary to that a good method is getting 3-4 adventures, upgrading them to warriors and then axemen, and killing entire civs. give them combat 4 (each +20%) , def/attack +2 and defence/attack skills and healing skills and the battle begins....
Only the Grigori get adventurers. The adventurers are the Grigori 'thing', every Civ have special advantages. In BtS, you have a unique unit and building that is somewhat stronger. In FfH, your Civ has HUGE advantages in some areas that you have to use. Don't try to win with the Calabim without building vampires!
A recent poll listed the Grigori as one of the weaker Civ's, for which I agree. Your tactics are good - get the adventurers upgraded to axemen and conquer with them, good going! Learn the same tricks for the other Civ's and then move up a levelor 2!
on top of that i thing the whole mage system should have been added after all that other stuff because my adepts were not given any experience, neither from combat, neither from the +1 experince for each turn.
Adepts don't get a +1/turn, they get sporadic XP's with time. If your adepts were upgraded Grigori Adventurers, then they should be getting the +1; note, however, it stops at 100 XP's. Note that adepts will get XP's from combat but it has to be direct combat - spells and summons that hurt or destroy the enemy do not add XP's.
The links from the game to the civclopedia. aren't helping new players either the are really confusing because sometimes you don't even know what you are building. Sometimes i thought i was fighting the game, not my opponent because you use new complex things. If i weren't with civ. since civ2 i would have had no idea how to play the game.
The civilopedia is out of date. It hasn't been upgraded because of large changes to the game. However, make sure you go intot he FfH subforum, there are literally hundreds of pages of help of all kinds.
The link is here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=190
Even though i am going to be hated for this comment i can not understand why nearly 400k players downloaded it and that that many praise it to be so good.
(and yeah i mean the latest version )
Because we think it is great. It is hard to get started, but that is becuase it has a rich detail of lore, strategy, and ideas that I find absolutely unique; and the numbers seem to indicate others do to.
So I recommend that you go on the subforum, look at the strategy articles, read some of the key postings, and try it. Most people find they like it, as I said I find it to be without peer.
Best wishes,
Breunor
