[MOD] Fall from Heaven II

[Jean Elcard]

I don't know if it has anything to do with the new warscript but in recent times I get a lot of war declarations from civs I don't expecting it from. Years of Diplomacy wasted in a blink. It's not that my standing is low with them or anything like this. Sometimes it's like 10+ from years of peace, fair trading and appreciation of years I supplied them with free ressources. But then from one instant to the next this doesn't count anymore and we are at war. All the diplomacy bonuses I collected over the years vanish in the list of pluses and minuses forever.

Is this intended or am I the only one having a problem with this? At least fair trading and stuff like this should stay in the list I think. It's not, that there weren't better times in the past ...

On the other hand, in a way this simulates the behaviour of some humans I know from multiplayer a lot better. Someone who is smiling at you the whole time but has a dagger behind his back already.

 

[Kael]

The warscript isnt random. If you have a declaration form it it is because the AI civ has a purpose (often because it thinks you are weak enough to take down). Unlike vanilla it isn't all about attitude modifiers (although they play a large part, especially on if an ai player will dogpile you or not) and sometimes a friend will turn against you if it thinks that you are better off out of the game than in it.

 

[Pintadvs]

If you have a declaration form it it is because the AI civ has a purpose (often because it thinks you are weak enough to take down). Unlike vanilla it isn't all about attitude modifiers (although they play a large part, especially on if an ai player will dogpile you or not) and sometimes a friend will turn against you if it thinks that you are better off out of the game than in it.

It's a bit disappointing on the beginning espetialy for peoploe like me who don't tend to focus on military enough, but if you are careful, it should not happen too much.

Apart from that I have a question :

Is the "charm" spell bugged or do i not understand it ?

If I charm a unit, it is supposed not to attack me until my next turn, right ?

So for exemple, in this game, i should be able to save this city (which recently joined me thanks to my Loki), no ?

 

[Jean Elcard]

The warscript isnt random. If you have a declaration form it it is because the AI civ has a purpose (often because it thinks you are weak enough to take down). Unlike vanilla it isn't all about attitude modifiers (although they play a large part, especially on if an ai player will dogpile you or not) and sometimes a friend will turn against you if it thinks that you are better off out of the game than in it.

Ok, thanks Kael, that information helpes a lot and brings me to an idea. A great idea, to be honest!

Why not adding a new modifier to the attitude modifieres already in existence which states what the AI thinks about your strength? Something like: You are weak: -2 or Your forces are fearsome: +5

The "you are weak" value might be higher for evil civs, especially the barbarian ones and don't exist for civs like the Elohim altogether as an modifier. Just a thought, but not a bad one I think. It would make the game more intuitive.

 

[beorn]

Lockups like your computer hangs? Make sure oyu have at least 600 meg free space on your hard drive. Civ4 caches the entire mod when it loads and that means a copy of everything.

Tons and tons of hard drive space

 

[Maximus Caesar]

This thread is fairly general, feel free to post any comments relating to FfH, but if you have specific bugs or balance issues, there are threads in the main forum (link in my sig.)

Are you using any special map?

Ave

thanks for your advice, I'll move straitaway to the forum you've just suggested me for my loading problem..

Regarding the maps, I play tons of games but in this moment I play a LARGE FFHsmartmap with terrains and map features from Greatplains (no ocean), with 15 civs, Monarch level (few peaks, normal lake, many river). Then I touch up the map with the editor in order to put the AI players in the proper area (elves and svarfatal in the forest, dwarves in the hills, each good civ between two evil civs..) and to create "war zone" (for example I put all the Mithrill in only 2/3 points of the map so the civs have to fight each others to obtain that resource..), In the end I put my civ in the center of the map (usually in a big plain with mountains all around). The feeling is like fighting for The Middle Earth, with enourmos army moving toward the land and a lot of enemy gathering around my civ. Unfortunatly I've got a lot of MAF crash around the year 400... but this is another story..

I also enjoy a lot A Winter's End, A World Awakens, Illuria, Fantasy Island.

Ave

 

[Maximus Caesar]

Did you install the patch to the default path? It goes to the MODS folder I believe.

Ave,

Thanks for your advice..

Yeah, I think so..
I installed the .021 in a general folder then I copy to the mod folder, and do the same thing for the patch (rewrithing over the .021 installed in the mod folder)..

I'm moving to the bug tread forum now because I think it's the proper forum for my problem.. but thank you very much.. if you want to help me again you'll find me there.. I'll apreciate

Ave

 

[Anaztazioch]

Thanks for the mod FFH II Team. Its one of the best thing to relax after testing Total Realism.
Fortunalty i had 2 or 3 days (actually 4 ) to play this mod after release of 2.1

This mod has 5 things that I do not like:

1) Wizards are too weak. Adept strength is 2, wizard is 3 or 4 (dotn remember), but 4 is strength of axeman/swordsman with bronze weapons + plenty of promotions from barbarian fights (before adepts can be made). So in melee wizards are "allways" weaker than melee. Besides imp is too weak, especially it needs high level caster (4 lvl Adept + wizards free promo for that magic). Firaball is also "worthless". 3 strength but casted at stack of 4 orcish spearman it barelly lowoered their strength to 2.8 (weakest one, had bronze weapons).
Besides, going for magic, costs a lot. No bronze working (need way of the nature, to be working good), no buildings that give happiness/commerce/production.

2) Runes of Kilmorph strongest ? +1 from relgion in city is too much. It works well for Khazad as they need money to be happy, but for other civs its just too good, especially with soldiers of kilmorphs +45 hammer hurry production. This way i can make anywonder in barelly 4 turns (prophecy of ragnarok was made like with great engeiner). And their 40 strength mithrill golem .

3) With raging barbarians, Clan of Embers is way too weak (no xp from combat vs barbarians), Same for that "barbarian" northman leader.

4) Is it me or armageddon counter is too slow ? 500 turns and its barelly 26. Never met Mercurians or Infernal. Maybe Good and Evil Immortals to affect counter ?

5) There is no civilization i would call "favorite". Clan of Embers, but their lack of expirians should result in stronger units, especially with slow goblins "scout". I would like to have civs with stronger units.
Clan of Embers to have strongest melee
Ljosalfar (elves, sorry to dont be a complete fanatic and dont remmeber the name) to he best archers
Khazad to be Orc slayers
Sheiam to be scorch earth (raze cities), as they want to bring downfall. Maybe add their own "demonic" wizard wich will increase armagedon counter for every unit he kills pr/and for every lvl past 7.
Hippus to have stronger cavalary (ATM i dont see its cav to be stronger on way other than horses starting resource)
Elochim to be best life mages (free life I promotion for adepts and prophets?)

I know some may sound inballancive, but its fantasy, lets leave ballanc to Ljosalfar

I like the overall do of the mod. I was very sceptic of this mod, didnt like the idea of Fantasy and Magic in civ4. But once i got tired of TR and had some "holiday" from it, FFH II was the first mod i wanted to check, and so far im very happy of my choise.

When ever i will have a spare time(no work for Total Realism and free time i dont waste on stupidity and laziness), i will try to aid you in further version of this mod, in matter simmilar to wich i helped TR before joining their Team (actually i was drafted ;P)

 

[ween]

I am getting lockups as the new games sets up, during initialization.

I did clean out the cache before the new game.

I am having the same problem when I use any of the FFH smart maps.
If I use the standard continents or pangea ect I am fine.
Perhapse an issue with the latest patch and the smart maps?

 

[thealien_83]

1) Wizards are too weak. Adept strength is 2, wizard is 3 or 4 (dotn remember), but 4 is strength of axeman/swordsman with bronze weapons + plenty of promotions from barbarian fights (before adepts can be made). So in melee wizards are "allways" weaker than melee. Besides imp is too weak, especially it needs high level caster (4 lvl Adept + wizards free promo for that magic). Firaball is also "worthless". 3 strength but casted at stack of 4 orcish spearman it barelly lowoered their strength to 2.8 (weakest one, had bronze weapons).
Besides, going for magic, costs a lot. No bronze working (need way of the nature, to be working good), no buildings that give happiness/commerce/production.

I do think it is rather supposed to be that spellcasters are weaker than combat units. It might be seen as a tad overpowered if they could beat up axeman and fling fireballs at the same time. And it's not all about their combat potential. Fireballs are quite hefty if you have an upgraded Mage throwing them, and while they won't always kill units, weakening big stacks is a surefire way of letting your melee units win the upcoming fights. Also, magic can do a -lot- of other good stuff for you aside from killing ****. Never underestimate the difference a few low-key spells like Enchantment I, Chaos I and Body I can make in a war.

2) Runes of Kilmorph strongest ? +1 from relgion in city is too much. It works well for Khazad as they need money to be happy, but for other civs its just too good, especially with soldiers of kilmorphs +45 hammer hurry production. This way i can make anywonder in barelly 4 turns (prophecy of ragnarok was made like with great engeiner). And their 40 strength mithrill golem .

Personally I've never considered Runes particularly unbalanced. It is a good religion to be sure, but that is all, to me. Khazad get -benefits- from being rich, so Runes still make them stronger, not just make them work. Soldiers of Kilmorph take a while to build, at least early on when those +45 hammers make a -real- difference. So sure, if you want to focus your entire empire on building something fast, you can. But is it worth it?

3) With raging barbarians, Clan of Embers is way too weak (no xp from combat vs barbarians), Same for that "barbarian" northman leader.

They can still fight animals for XP. Not as good as fighting barbarians, I know, but it helps. And what they should do anyway is go to war early on, and acquire their XP that way.

4) Is it me or armageddon counter is too slow ? 500 turns and its barelly 26. Never met Mercurians or Infernal. Maybe Good and Evil Immortals to affect counter ?

How much the AC rises is very different from one game to another. Sometimes I've ended games with hardly anything in it, sometimes it is all but maxed out. Depends a lot on, and also usually depends on if you are trying to keep it down or make it go up yourself.

5) There is no civilization i would call "favorite". Clan of Embers, but their lack of expirians should result in stronger units, especially with slow goblins "scout". I would like to have civs with stronger units.
Clan of Embers to have strongest melee
Ljosalfar (elves, sorry to dont be a complete fanatic and dont remmeber the name) to he best archers
Khazad to be Orc slayers
Sheiam to be scorch earth (raze cities), as they want to bring downfall. Maybe add their own "demonic" wizard wich will increase armagedon counter for every unit he kills pr/and for every lvl past 7.
Hippus to have stronger cavalary (ATM i dont see its cav to be stronger on way other than horses starting resource)
Elochim to be best life mages (free life I promotion for adepts and prophets?)

I know some may sound inballancive, but its fantasy, lets leave ballanc to Ljosalfar

Some does, yes. And "it's fantasy" is not a good excuse to make certain civs better than others, that just ruins the point. Clan of Embers having overall stronger units just wouldn't work. Sure, early on they may lack a bit in strength due to not fighting barbarians, but on the other hand they can expand as they desire and never worry about getting ganked when they head outside their borders. And later on when barbarians are out of the game it would be crazy if they had more powerful units.
Ljosalfar already have one leader with Defender, and they kick ass in forests. They don't need to have extra powerful archers on top of that, or you'd never be able to root the little pointy-eared bastards out.
And if the only thing Khazad gets compared to über-melee and über-archery units is that they are good against ~one~ Civ (okay, one Civ and barbarians) then, ehhhh...
Sheaim and Scorched Earth.. Might work, sure. But then again they can always opt to burn the city to increase the AC if they want as is. If they were Scorched Earth they'd burn the Ashen Veil cities too and lower the AC that way.
The latter two ideas I have no quibbles with as such, so long as it is handled in a sensible and balanced way.

Tally-ho!

 

[Gwydion62]

Hi, great job you did with that MOD

My problem is, that I can not find FFH maps and do not have a scenario in the folder?

I did not play the MOD often, because I loaded it down 2 weeks ago. But one thing I faced till now is that I only had to deal with skeletons and orks/goblins. the evil civs are not agressiv even with aggresiv AI?? And they have no intelligent mix of units - cavalry, archers or some other monsters are still missing...

Looking forward to new stuff

 

[beorn]

I am having the same problem when I use any of the FFH smart maps.
If I use the standard continents or pangea ect I am fine.
Perhapse an issue with the latest patch and the smart maps?

Based on this, I tried it with a regular (highlands) map. It worked. Then, when I went back to use FFH smart map, it did work.

Go figure.

 

[beorn]

I am curious as to what changes have been made to the likelihood of a goodie hut yielding a new tech.

In my limited sample, it seems like, at prince, you never get a tech, while at noble, you frequently do.

Of course, this may just be the limited sample, but in my opinion, this setting alone has a huge impact on the actual difficulty, and it may be creating too great a gap between the default "noble" and the "up one notch" prince.

IMHO, it is ideal to be rewarded for aggressive exploring with typically finding 2-4 techs, plus this adds some variety to games. Much more than that, and the game quickly loses its challenge.

 

[Jean Elcard]

I am curious as to what changes have been made to the likelihood of a goodie hut yielding a new tech.

In my limited sample, it seems like, at prince, you never get a tech, while at noble, you frequently do.

Of course, this may just be the limited sample, but in my opinion, this setting alone has a huge impact on the actual difficulty, and it may be creating too great a gap between the default "noble" and the "up one notch" prince.

IMHO, it is ideal to be rewarded for aggressive exploring with typically finding 2-4 techs, plus this adds some variety to games. Much more than that, and the game quickly loses its challenge.

You should take a look at the CIV4HandicapInfo.xml file in the FFH mods assets folder. There you can see the the probabilities of finding a tech, a map or something else on the different difficulty levels.

 

[Anaztazioch]

@ thealien 83

I know your point and i have not made my arguments blindly. They were overall show of what i say is missing, or is not good. I have never killed enemy units wih spell dirfferant than banish (and i never had flame magic III )

But the point if making orcs stronger is that promotions are "sick" strong. Combat I +20% and its 5 xp (usually 2 fights) and you got lvl 3 or sometimes lvl 4. I usualluy get combat I, bashing I, mobility/combat II. This way my warrior is 2.4 and enemy orc is 1.2 . With onlt 10 xp in my warrior. And ATM playing as Ljosalfar, my best units was that silveric hero, 83 xp died (actually good knowing what wonder i can build now), and my elven archer led by commander (military strategy commander free one). Now that arhcer has 144 xp and lvl 13 ot 12. And strongest Clan of Ember unit is lvl 2 worgrider, who has cover I.

Bad thing in my strategy ATM is that i have only archers in my army, so cant upgrade them to immortals.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

5) There is no civilization i would call "favorite". Clan of Embers, but their lack of expirians should result in stronger units, especially with slow goblins "scout". I would like to have civs with stronger units.
Clan of Embers to have strongest melee
Ljosalfar (elves, sorry to dont be a complete fanatic and dont remmeber the name) to he best archers
Khazad to be Orc slayers
Sheiam to be scorch earth (raze cities), as they want to bring downfall. Maybe add their own "demonic" wizard wich will increase armagedon counter for every unit he kills pr/and for every lvl past 7.
Hippus to have stronger cavalary (ATM i dont see its cav to be stronger on way other than horses starting resource)
Elochim to be best life mages (free life I promotion for adepts and prophets?)

In some cases, this is true already. Evlen Flurries and Marksmen, and I think Longbowmen, have more strength than other civs. Hippus horse units all have extra strength, withdrawl, and/or movement. Sheaim have a ritual that will raise the counter rather than a unit.
Clans of Embers have some strong melee later with their ogre units, but in general they are designed towards swarms of melee, with the Doviello being the ones with the stronger melee. Each civ has a specialty, but things overall we still want them to be more or less balanced.

 

[Love]

What about some Lanun UU ships???? Like Lanun galleon and so on...

 

[Kael]

Patch "c" is linked in the first post. It resolves the following issues:

1. No more duplicate Acherons.
2. So that Acheron doesn't leave his city (I hope).
3. Heroes/Adepts/etc now get the level the turn they get enough xp instead of being delayed a turn.

It won't break save games.

 

[Kael]

Hi, great job you did with that MOD

My problem is, that I can not find FFH maps and do not have a scenario in the folder?

I did not play the MOD often, because I loaded it down 2 weeks ago. But one thing I faced till now is that I only had to deal with skeletons and orks/goblins. the evil civs are not agressiv even with aggresiv AI?? And they have no intelligent mix of units - cavalry, archers or some other monsters are still missing...

Looking forward to new stuff

Agressiveness doesn't really come until later on. Then I promise the evil civs get a lot meaner (as the armageddon counter increases).

 

[beorn]

You should take a look at the CIV4HandicapInfo.xml file in the FFH mods assets folder. There you can see the the probabilities of finding a tech, a map or something else on the different difficulty levels.

Thanks for pointing this out... but something is not quite right. If I am understanding this properly, at each level there are 19 possibilities, each with an equal chance.

Thus, at Prince level, where I often play:
- <Goodies>
<GoodyType>GOODY_HIGH_GOLD</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_LOW_GOLD</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_LOW_GOLD</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_LOW_GOLD</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_MAP</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_WARRIOR</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_WARRIOR</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_SCOUT</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_EXPERIENCE</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_EXPERIENCE</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_EXPERIENCE</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_EXPERIENCE</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_HEALING</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_TECH</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_TECH</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_BARBARIANS_WEAK</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_BARBARIANS_WEAK</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_BARBARIANS_WEAK</GoodyType>
<GoodyType>GOODY_BARBARIANS_STRONG</GoodyType>

There should be a 4 in 19 chance of getting barbarians... but, in my experience, I rarely get barbarians, while I get a map far more than 1 in 19.

I have to think there is more to it than this.