[MOD] Fall from Heaven

[Xereq]

@Kael or someone else, where can I find the full version of this mod, it seems I only have 70% and the 100% patch

 

[Mad Mike]

just an idea.
if u select a state religion (any-one) possibly it could make resurching the other one's void. or perhaps some races perfer certian religions and in that way u can only resurch certian religions.
Orc's might not like the fellow ship of the leaves but tollerate the other religions,and elves might love the leaves and distane the other religions.
just an idea .

 

[Chalid]

In the first post are two downloads. One for the mod and the patch.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

Zherak Khan:
What music editor are u using and, by any chance, is it free to download? i need a good station to create some good sounding fantasy pieces i have come up with on my keyboard...

Sibelius 3 with Kontakt Player Silver. It appears Sibelius 4 is out, so you might want to get a hold of that instead. If I'm not mistaken, it costs a lot, seeing as it is intended for orchestras and professional musicians. If you need any details, feel free to mail me at [First part of my nick] at gmail point com.

 

[camthalion]

Hi FfH Devteam,

(doesn't that sound kinda cool?)

is the hawk unit still available in Version 2.0? If yes, will it finally look like a falcon instead of a plane?

Be aware that your mod rocks even if the falcon looks like a plane...

Keep up the good work!

Camthalion

 

[Chalid]

Hi FfH Devteam,

(doesn't that sound kinda cool?)

is the hawk unit still available in Version 2.0? If yes, will it finally look like a falcon instead of a plane?

Follow the link in my signature (Bird) for a preview of the new Falcon.

 

[feydras]

Nevertheless good point with the catapults. I would have nearly missed to give an additional consideration to collateral damage.

The Ancient Mediterranean Mod has expanded given collateral damage to archers and skirmishers. Kind of makes sense and gives then an offensive role. Maybe the solution in FfH would be to add in a couple early game units with minor collateral damage.

- feydras

 

[Chalid]

My comment was talking about the AI considering the worth of buildings as all. Collateral should be used to classify a unit as more usefull. (At the moment i use simply raw strength)

In FfH the main role of catapults will be to tear down city defenses. As strong colatteral units we have fireballs and meteors. (at least for players AI - again has to be teached to promote some Mages intelligently to fire).

As in the beginning of the game units are much more difficult to train (due to the building requirements) you do not need additional collateral in the beginning i think. Furthermore giving collateral to more different units will just reduce the variety of units as you can use then archers for both attack and defense, so why bother about building melee troops?
In FfH as you know for sure Archers are the best city defenders as they are the only ones to get the Garrision Promotion (and +150% defense is huge - and needed if the enemy has +150% attack ....) so there is no need to make them even more useful.

 

[Kael]

just an idea.
if u select a state religion (any-one) possibly it could make resurching the other one's void. or perhaps some races perfer certian religions and in that way u can only resurch certian religions.
Orc's might not like the fellow ship of the leaves but tollerate the other religions,and elves might love the leaves and distane the other religions.
just an idea .

In general we don't want to limit your options. So if you want to play the orcs as nature worshipers, more power to you.

In FfH2 the AI civs tend toward certain religions based on their alignment. An evil civ won't found the order, and is less liekly to convert to the Order (so more of his cities will need to have the order in it and such before he will switch).

So you could play a game where the elves become evil demon worshippers, sacrificing their workers for research and the dark elves become good paladin wielding paragons of virtue. The game won't tend to develop that way, but it could happen.

 

[feydras]

I like this. In Phase 1 i enjoy having the option to twist the do-goody elves and halflings to the 'higher truths' of the Crimson Veil... But i am glad you will be taking alignments into account to make things like that more difficult to pull off. It gives the factions more personality.

- feydras

 

[camthalion]

Follow the link in my signature (Bird) for a preview of the new Falcon.

...for joy, that is.

 

[DarthCycle]

Chalid, if I understand correctly, the AI is not building catapult because
1) it requires a building
2) in order to asses the usefullness of a unit, the AI evaluates its strength
So by the time the building for catapult is available, other buildings are already generating better units, hence, it doesn't built that building and can never build a catapult.

How about removing the building prerequisite for catapult and check if the AI builds any? If vanilla Civ, I think that's the case.

However, the FfH design aims for the following:
1) catapult for reducing defense
2) mage with spells for collateral
I think there has to be a non-mage unit for collateral damage. If catapult are not the unit for such a task, another unit should be introduced. However, this would reduce the already limited usefullness of catapult. IMO, catapult should keep their dual-purpose: reduce defense and collateral. Agreed, mage should be better at collateral, but there has to be a non-mage unit that fullfill this role.

The goal here is to have a gameplay incentive not the use the SOD again. That was one lame gameplay tactic in Civ3. With the current mechanics in place in FfH 1.0f, SOD are a viable option. And that's not a good thing.

 

[Kael]

Chalid, if I understand correctly, the AI is not building catapult because
1) it requires a building
2) in order to asses the usefullness of a unit, the AI evaluates its strength
So by the time the building for catapult is available, other buildings are already generating better units, hence, it doesn't built that building and can never build a catapult.

How about removing the building prerequisite for catapult and check if the AI builds any? If vanilla Civ, I think that's the case.

However, the FfH design aims for the following:
1) catapult for reducing defense
2) mage with spells for collateral
I think there has to be a non-mage unit for collateral damage. If catapult are not the unit for such a task, another unit should be introduced. However, this would reduce the already limited usefullness of catapult. IMO, catapult should keep their dual-purpose: reduce defense and collateral. Agreed, mage should be better at collateral, but there has to be a non-mage unit that fullfill this role.

The goal here is to have a gameplay incentive not the use the SOD again. That was one lame gameplay tactic in Civ3. With the current mechanics in place in FfH 1.0f, SOD are a viable option. And that's not a good thing.

We can get the AI to build catapult and the required buildings (Siege workshops) by adjusting the AIWeights, which has been done. The weighting could be better, but the buildings don't have to be removed if the desire is to make the AI build them more often.

Mages are intended to be the most effective SOD killer in FfH1. Catapults are intended to accomplish the same purpose but not be as effective at it. So civ's without mages still have a viable option, but they may not be as good as other more costly paths. Disease is also intended as an anti-SOD mechanic.

This is where the line blurs, this has been through a substantial change in FfH2. That was most of what Chalid was refering to. We looked for a way to make catapults more viable without encroaching on mages design space. Towards that end catapults have generally been made more powerful, most noticably with the addition of substantial withdrawal chances (so its a much more effective option to attack with a catapult to warm up an opposed stacks since most of the time you will retain the catapult). Also there are different flavors of catapults and cannons for different civs, so they are substantially better for some civs than they are for others.

We may end up giving catapults a 1 range rock like a fireball to hurl at enemy units, we may make them immune to damage when attacking so they only do their damage then retreat on loss but don't ever get hurt unless they are defending. But the above paragraph is where we are at right now.

 

[Chalid]

No! the problem about the Ai is that it generally does not build the requireing buildings enough and that catapults are too weak to be considered wothwile (str 3 when str 9 units are available eg.). That all will be adressed (the code already exists now) but is not incorporated into the beta. So do not bother with it

Catapults will in FfH2 be also useable as collateral unit (they even got increased withdrawal rates so you will be even better able to use them). But the mage is much more effektive as colatteral as you can use it every turn without risk of loosing it. Therfore we increased the importance of the city defense to emphasise catapults ability to bombard it (city defense is generally increased by 25%, it might be increased further but that will be based on the feedback from beta testers)

Furthermore when we finally got the AI to use lots of firemages you will not want to use SoDs anymore (6 units get damage from fireballs down to 25% of their LP (vanilla catapult allows only about 50%)).

But as was said expect to rule the AI in the beta easily, as there are no AI improvements in the first beta.
They will be included in later Versions when the functionality of all aspects of the Spell System is ensured.

One should not call people during writing. Thats the second time Kael beat me today ...

 

[DarthCycle]

Thank you both for the clarifications on this important aspect of the game.

When the first beta is released, you should provide a general guideline of what is expected from us in terms of feedback. What specific features should we test and try to break and what is out of scope. This should help the tester community to focus its effort on the right elements of the mod.

 

[Kael]

Thank you both for the clarifications on this important aspect of the game.

When the first beta is released, you should provide a general guideline of what is expected from us in terms of feedback. What specific features should we test and try to break and what is out of scope. This should help the tester community to focus its effort on the right elements of the mod.

Well said, thats exactly what we are hoping for (and we hope you have some fun too).

 

[Chalid]

Year just try to find all things that are either a bug or really unbalanced. (Yes we know about the vampires already )

We will set up some Polls where we would want people to vote when they think they have a feeling for the mod and we might start some threads that ask specific questions, too.
But the most severe unbalancing features are only revealed when someone tries a kind of new strategy and sees: oh, this would never have worked in vanilla but in FfH it is absolutley overpowered.. and with the many additions such scenarios might become relativeley common. So whenever you find something like this.. let us know .

Oh and by the way: Make sure you have a lot of time to spare on friday...

 

[TheJopa]

Don't worry, we will have fun, even if it will CTD all the time. Just exploring all stuff will be fun. And you will get feedback, no doubt.
There were discussions on C&C forum about 2 maps, and I remember that somebody said that whoever does that, he deserves statue. Well, if anyone can do that, you guys can. If FfH Crew can't do it, then it is impossible.
However, I think that it will be possible, but it will take much hardware power to render 2 maps. But that is just my guess.

 

[Samuelson]

Maybe you guys could make the catapult throw stones at the enemy like a mage casts spells, but the stones could only go 1 space. You could have throwing stones act like casting a spell, and you could even make it so that you can throw other things. Maybe the people with the religion that allows slavery could sacrafice one of their units and use it to throw heads that would be more effective than stones. This would kind of bring back the Civ 3 catapults instead of the suicide Civ 4 catapults.

 

[Kael]

Maybe you guys could make the catapult throw stones at the enemy like a mage casts spells, but the stones could only go 1 space. You could have throwing stones act like casting a spell, and you could even make it so that you can throw other things. Maybe the people with the religion that allows slavery could sacrafice one of their units and use it to throw heads that would be more effective than stones. This would kind of bring back the Civ 3 catapults instead of the suicide Civ 4 catapults.

Yeah we have thought about it (well... not the heads part). We may go that way eventually.