[MOD] Fall from Heaven

[TheNewSaint]

Another thing, it seems to me that the order, not having all the spiff of the "creature" religions, would be focussed on "Divine Arts" such as holy spells, increased damage against undead, heros that increase the stats of their fello warriors, etc. I also think that there human units should be a tad stronger... "cyber wink"

Edit: i am sorry, but im never happy with just posting once and leaving the CPU.

The Veil...

their non human or "myth" units should be able to suck life from each other and perhaps blight/corpses? Maybe after a kill they can eat the corpse which takes one turn but fully heals the unit? Also, a thought for order and veil heros/liches/champions/scourges:

THe Order ones have a spell avaliable only to them, called Holy Light, which heals order, dwarf and elf units and damages Veil units.

THe Veil ones have a spell (death coil? im taking the names from warcraft...) that kills a veil unit and fully heals the caster, and damages order, dwarf, and elf units.

Also, while order units would be stronger, veil units would cost less and be weaker (in health, not strength, if possible) which would encourage massive armies to be "sacrifed/canabalized(if you could get them working), where the order would have less, and focus on keeping them all alive.

 

[Sareln]

It's funny Kael, but your Order religion reminds me of the Boros Legion from the Ravnica set of Magic:The Gathering (yes I play both Magic and CIV, how the heck do I have any free time at all?!?).

In that vein, I view the order as a very aggressive religion which aims to build a rightious army to smite the unbelievers while rallying the poor and oppressed to its banner.

To this end, it would be really really cool if the order had a really cheap unit which would represent the volunteers it gets - not very skilled, but useful none the less - available that could upgrade on experience levels (when you figure that out after SDK release and all that) to the more powerful tiered units. The only requirement being that the order is practiced in the town that builds it. Perhaps on the power level of a warrior? (i.e. Str - 2, Mv - 1 can only recieve Combat Star promotions since they're relativly unskilled)

Is there anywhere where you sorta say what the veil are? Right now the only sense I get from them is a Mageocracy which elevates power above everything else, willing to do and sacrifice anything to get it. Once I get some sort of flavor essence, ideas are alot easier to do .

 

[Kael]

Another thing, it seems to me that the order, not having all the spiff of the "creature" religions, would be focussed on "Divine Arts" such as holy spells, increased damage against undead, heros that increase the stats of their fello warriors, etc. I also think that there human units should be a tad stronger... "cyber wink"

Edit: i am sorry, but im never happy with just posting once and leaving the CPU.

The Veil...

their non human or "myth" units should be able to suck life from each other and perhaps blight/corpses? Maybe after a kill they can eat the corpse which takes one turn but fully heals the unit? Also, a thought for order and veil heros/liches/champions/scourges:

THe Order ones have a spell avaliable only to them, called Holy Light, which heals order, dwarf and elf units and damages Veil units.

THe Veil ones have a spell (death coil? im taking the names from warcraft...) that kills a veil unit and fully heals the caster, and damages order, dwarf, and elf units.

Also, while order units would be stronger, veil units would cost less and be weaker (in health, not strength, if possible) which would encourage massive armies to be "sacrifed/canabalized(if you could get them working), where the order would have less, and focus on keeping them all alive.

I agree. As soon as I have access to the command code I will add spells to these units. As it is now a unit can either cast spells or level, not both. So if I give the crusader a spell to cast, he won't be able to level anymore.

But as soon as I can, I will do exactly as you suggest. Give them some spells to makeup for their late start. And I agree on the life magic spells for the Order and destructive (even self-destructive) spells for the Veil.

 

[Kael]

Is there anywhere where you sorta say what the veil are? Right now the only sense I get from them is a Mageocracy which elevates power above everything else, willing to do and sacrifice anything to get it. Once I get some sort of flavor essence, ideas are alot easier to do .

This is what I put in the mod:

Mages spent weeks in meditation, exploring the farthest reaches of the ethereal world. The demands of the body were ignored, and they survived sustained by magic alone. Their efforts were rewarded, a sentience was contacted, dark and horrible. It whispered secrets into the mages minds, necromancy, diseases, sacrifical rites. It promised power in exchange for their blood, and they freely gave it.

This is from my design doc:

The Veil worships Agares, but they do so through intermedaries. Demons of different aspects, assigned to an individual based on their personal weakness. Their end goal is the complete degradation of their victims spirit, loss of every morale he once embraced. And the farther they fall, the sweeter the victory.

Some Veil worshippers belive the Veil to be a good religion, many think the Veil isn't a religion at all, just a set of magical teachings. It isn't until late into their "education" that they even realize they are worshipping demons at all. To a Disciple of the Veil the Order represents faith without reason, striking out at something it doesn't understand. Close mindedness that doesn't even allow its adherants to listen to other ways of thinking. So the Veil listen, and compromise, and slowly become as horrible as the demons themselves.

Agares is the origional fallen angel, and the one who tempted Bhall into turning fire against mankind. The following are the orders under Agares:

Impudites: Order of the Heart (Grand Anthraxus)
Sins: Betrayel
Heart & Mind: Phryxis: Swayer of Sycophants
Heart & Soul: Runistibble: Rallies Idolators and false-worshippers
Heart & Flesh: Gutterfowl: Progenitor of infidelities
Heart & Blood: Tufforp: Demon of Vengeance and retribution

Balseraphs: Order of the Mind (Grand Polyphon)
Sins: Lies, bear false witness and hide from the truth
Mind & Heart: Forneus: Lord of traitors
Mind & Soul: Volak: Tempter of false prophets and bane of the spiritually infirm
Mind & Flesh: Andrealphus: Revered by thieves and bandits
Mind & Blood: Eligos: Tempter of madman and the infirm

Calabim: Order of the Blood (Grand Phenex)
Sins: Rage, Destruction
Blood & Heart: Gusion: Progenitor of homicides and tempter of murderers
Blood & Soul: Botis: Patron of suicides
Blood & Mind: Furfur: God of foolish pride
Blood & Flesh: Sabnock: Progenitor of depravity and father of cruelty

Lilim: Order of the Flesh (Grand Decarabria)
Sins: Lust
Flesh & Heart: Vapula: Progenitor of greed
Flesh & Mind: Gremory: Envy
Flesh & Soul: Rofocale: Demon of gluttony
Flesh & Blood: Hyborem: Lord of villains and blackhearts

Sheaim: Order of the Soul (Grand Rubbibat)
Sins: Blasphemy
Soul & Heart: Dantalion: Demon of despair
Soul & Mind: Malphas: Progenitor of hubris
Soul & Blood: Marchosias: Master of unthinking crusaders
Soul & Flesh: Orobas: Lord of corruption and bribery

Each order is full of demons, tempters set upon the fall of mankind one person at a time. Remember the Calabim I talked about earlier, here you see their origion. They are from the Order of the Blood, a corruption of that divine essence which grants life, which has made them vampires.

I have a feeling that is probably way more information than you wanted. But there you go, an overview of the Ashen Veil. Its not your typical elves and dwarves fantasy world, its a fantasy world in the middle of a ideological war.

 

[Sareln]

Ach! Brain overload! Thank's Kael.

Looking at this, it seems that you plan civilizations for each realm of corruption.
What would be really interesting is if we could have the veil mean different things to different civs. i.e. normally human based ones get the generic veil, perhaps focusing only on each purity: Heart, Mind, Blood, Flesh, Soul. But then it gets really interesting so say that when the Calabim convert to the veil, they gain access to the specialized section of the veil for Blood - ie. Blood & Heart etc. This would be in incredibly large amount of work, one I would suggest a team for if you want to do it properly.

A more fluid way, is not linking it to civs but techs, so that the tech tree ends up splitting into various religions and once you start down one path, it becomes less and less beneficial to go down the others. That way you could have the veil forking again, into each of the specializations - also the order could be a series of choices between increasing the power of its divine troops and its mortal ones (I assume the end of the order tech looks something like Angels, and glories, and smiting galore, the whole rightious wrath thing).

Noted... that's still a crapton of work.

I'll take the veil right now to represent the generic, unspecialized veil - a civilization that hasn't been given over to the realm of a particular branch yet.

And of course, if I'm totally off base, let me know... after all, it's your mod.

 

[BlakTooth]

It's funny Kael, but your Order religion reminds me of the Boros Legion from the Ravnica set of Magic:The Gathering (yes I play both Magic and CIV, how the heck do I have any free time at all?!?).

In that vein, I view the order as a very aggressive religion which aims to build a rightious army to smite the unbelievers while rallying the poor and oppressed to its banner.

To this end, it would be really really cool if the order had a really cheap unit which would represent the volunteers it gets - not very skilled, but useful none the less - available that could upgrade on experience levels (when you figure that out after SDK release and all that) to the more powerful tiered units. The only requirement being that the order is practiced in the town that builds it. Perhaps on the power level of a warrior? (i.e. Str - 2, Mv - 1 can only recieve Combat Star promotions since they're relativly unskilled)

Is there anywhere where you sorta say what the veil are? Right now the only sense I get from them is a Mageocracy which elevates power above everything else, willing to do and sacrifice anything to get it. Once I get some sort of flavor essence, ideas are alot easier to do .

Ah yes, another Magic player .

I don't think a cheap unit like this would be very useful, because by the time you get the Order, warriors are enormously outclassed. Perhaps if they had some other kind of special ability?


I have a similar type of suggestion to replicate this effect: give only Order Civs the Nationhood civic (the one that lets you Draft units).

Other bonuses can be put on the civic as well (such as, say, giving draft units a free blessed upgrade?).

THAT would make the Order kick some serious ass!

 

[Sareln]

ooo... Blaktooth, I like the draft idea. Not to mention it saves Kael/Everybody the trouble of making a new unit. Or if we still wanted to make a new unit, change drafting so its the only way to make those units.

You know, the order is fairly militant right? I'm going to go out on a limb and say what if drafting for the order didn't create unhappiness? After all, you're asking them to go on a rightious crusade for you that they also believe in, not to go fight a war that makes no sense to them.

The order should be able to create a highly motivated, and very dangerous army backed by priests in short order. But how to balance something like that?

 

[jjsheets]

Kael, IIRC, you mentioned that the history and background of the Fall from Heaven story were primarily of a pen-paper RPG origin. Do you have a lot of this background material worked out? I've actually become quite a bit more interested in this mod just from the little excerpts you've given about the backstory. I can't wait to see where you take the story, but unfortunately I'm somewhat too busy to play FfH and make my own personal mod as well.

Here's hoping you release more and more of that background!

 

[Sareln]

Oh yes, and Kael is it possible for there to be "levels" to a civic, so that you could emphasize the increasing corruption of society as it delves deeper and deeper into the veil? This could probably be applied to all religions.

I would also want it to work so that there wasn't an anarchy when you leveled up your civics. This would also make the civics more fluid, and you could get bonuses to different civics as you proceeded in techs.

i.e. right now you have Sacrifice the Weak as the veil civic

Base : -1 Health, +15% Commerce
Upgrade 1: -1 Health, + 15% Commerce, - 1 Happy
Upgrade 2: -2 Health, + 20% Commerce, - 1 Happy
So that by the endgame your civic "Sacrifice the Weak" now reads:
-4 Health, +50% Commerce, -2 Happy.

Note: this is an example with numbers pulled from my head, don't take it as canon, it needs to be and should probably be tweaked.

 

[BlakTooth]

Kael, question about the history:

Why are the Runes and the Order two separate religions if they're both founded by Good angels? I thought all the good angels worked together?



Also, I was wondering, what happens when you research everything? There's no Future Tech-esk research that you can continuously spend points on.

I think that there should be a final research option, that unlocks a quest to attain the elemental gems that you talk about in the History (the ones that let you get the Godlike powers of Creation).

This research would take a mega-normous amount of time, but it would result in a Godhood Victory, a peaceful win condtion.

Yeah, this is kinda like the Space Race. But I think this kind of victory condition adds a lot of suspense to the game (gotta race to knock out other civs instead of sitting back and getting a Time Victory). Plus, Godhood is COOL .

 

[Sareln]

Taking the elemental gems thing one step further -

I know that you've established that any of the elemental gems would be enough, but in the Master of Myrror style, perhaps it would be better to break it into multiple endgame techs.

Also, it would be interesting if you could have it so the first to each of the techs has the crystal spawn in their lands... and you need all of the crystals to win. Ergo, if the AI beats you to one tech, you need to go get that crystal from them, probably by force (make it reside in their capital or something).

An alternative to this would have the final tech spawn in all the crystals at once... and now, whoever collects all of them (could you scale this to number of players originally in the game?) wins.

It's sorta like the spaceship victory, but I think your world wants everything to end in bloody violence anyways. Think about it, if your greatest ally beats you to the tech and it spawns in their lands or the a crystal is in their lands, what then? Will you be blinded by your lust for power, declaring war upon your friend, to seize from them one of the keys to godhood? Sorta like the one ring isn't it?

 

[BlakTooth]

An alternative to this would have the final tech spawn in all the crystals at once... and now, whoever collects all of them (could you scale this to number of players originally in the game?) wins.

If Kael takes this route, perhaps the gems could spawn as crystalline barbarian golems, each with a special power (the earth one could create mountainous barriers all around him to make very difficult to reach him, the death one kills all units around him every few turns, etc.).

Wow, that sounds really, really fun (kinda like hunting down the Weapons in Final Fantasy 7, if anyone else has played that).

 

[Lightzy]

Is there any way to set a true technology branching scheme?
with certain technologies precluding others?

It could definitely differentiate factions more, and possibly add an interesting element to the tech-trading game, as there may be some techs crucial to your strat that you simply cannot research yourself.


Also, much more simple, did you add any water units in .80 ?
The lack of variation there in .70 is somewhat disturbing for continents/archipelago/island play

 

[edu2003mdq]

Rregarding the air elemental, when can the conjurer produce it?

 

[Dennis_Moore]

Is there any way to set a true technology branching scheme?
with certain technologies precluding others?

It could definitely differentiate factions more, and possibly add an interesting element to the tech-trading game, as there may be some techs crucial to your strat that you simply cannot research yourself.


Also, much more simple, did you add any water units in .80 ?
The lack of variation there in .70 is somewhat disturbing for continents/archipelago/island play

Don't you mean "excluding"?

Anyway, it's a good idea, I would go as far as to suggest that some techs should be civ-specific. In a fantasy setting the factions should be more differentiated compared to vanilla Civ4.

(My post might be reduntant if this has already been covered, either way I appreciate you work Kael)

 

[woodelf]

Is there any chance that after completing a Wonder a scene could pop up and at least remind you what the benefits were of the Wonder you built? I'll admit that rarely do I recall what I'm getting from the Wonders and other than the little green message sometimes I forget I even made one. I don't need movies or even pictures depicting the Wonders, just something to remind me without going back through the Top 5 Cities/Wonders tab. Of course, maybe no one else has this problem and I'm just getting old and forgetful...

 

[Kael]

Ach! Brain overload! Thank's Kael.

Looking at this, it seems that you plan civilizations for each realm of corruption.
What would be really interesting is if we could have the veil mean different things to different civs. i.e. normally human based ones get the generic veil, perhaps focusing only on each purity: Heart, Mind, Blood, Flesh, Soul. But then it gets really interesting so say that when the Calabim convert to the veil, they gain access to the specialized section of the veil for Blood - ie. Blood & Heart etc. This would be in incredibly large amount of work, one I would suggest a team for if you want to do it properly.

A more fluid way, is not linking it to civs but techs, so that the tech tree ends up splitting into various religions and once you start down one path, it becomes less and less beneficial to go down the others. That way you could have the veil forking again, into each of the specializations - also the order could be a series of choices between increasing the power of its divine troops and its mortal ones (I assume the end of the order tech looks something like Angels, and glories, and smiting galore, the whole rightious wrath thing).

Noted... that's still a crapton of work.

I'll take the veil right now to represent the generic, unspecialized veil - a civilization that hasn't been given over to the realm of a particular branch yet.

And of course, if I'm totally off base, let me know... after all, it's your mod.

There are more evil religions than just the Veil, the Veil is just the only one that has been added so far. There probably won't be different aspects of the Veil, but according to the design doc each of the evil gods except Mulcarn will have their own religion. That will cover some of the variety you are talking about.

I want both the Civ and the religion to offer significant strategic options such that you can pair them up to achieve different results. I want people to be discussing the advantage of playing Calabim/Veil vs Calabim/Overlords vs Balseraphs/Overlords, etc. But of course this is going to take a lot of work.

 

[Kael]

Kael, IIRC, you mentioned that the history and background of the Fall from Heaven story were primarily of a pen-paper RPG origin. Do you have a lot of this background material worked out? I've actually become quite a bit more interested in this mod just from the little excerpts you've given about the backstory. I can't wait to see where you take the story, but unfortunately I'm somewhat too busy to play FfH and make my own personal mod as well.

Here's hoping you release more and more of that background!

Yeap, I have no shortage of material, 17 years worth. Most of these characters from the mod are like old friends and one of the best parts for me is just seeing them out and active again.

 

[Kael]

Kael, question about the history:

Why are the Runes and the Order two separate religions if they're both founded by Good angels? I thought all the good angels worked together?

Also, I was wondering, what happens when you research everything? There's no Future Tech-esk research that you can continuously spend points on.

I think that there should be a final research option, that unlocks a quest to attain the elemental gems that you talk about in the History (the ones that let you get the Godlike powers of Creation).

This research would take a mega-normous amount of time, but it would result in a Godhood Victory, a peaceful win condtion.

Yeah, this is kinda like the Space Race. But I think this kind of victory condition adds a lot of suspense to the game (gotta race to knock out other civs instead of sitting back and getting a Time Victory). Plus, Godhood is COOL .

The good angels have different focus's and different ways of operating. Mostly because they have different enemies. So Junil (The Order) is tasked with fighting Camulos (evil god of Chaos and War) so Junil's creates a very strict lawful militeristic religion to do it. He builds his religion into what he needs it to be to defeat Camulos.

That said, one of the reasons I pushed making the Civ's until phase 2 is I want to have alignments in the game. I need it to be much more complicated that do you share my religion or not for favor from other civs. All of the good religions should treat each other well. One of the biggest advantages of being a good religion is that you will get along with other good religions (the evil religions dont work like that). Also I have specific enemies for each religion, so you would recieve an even greater negative if you were a religion that was directly opposed by that civs religion.

And remember that these aren't angels fighting but men. And men don't always follow their religions and may wage war with countries that share the same religion. So good countries may attack good countries. How did the Romans put it, they weren't attacking their enemies, they were "civilizing" them.

My thoughts on the future techs were to provide reusable techs for each of the magic spheres. Each of the passes through would provide some cumulative bonus. So for each time you researched 'Fire Magic' all of your units fireballs, fire elementals, etc would get a little larger. Done right, with a lot of spheres to choose from it would give civs plenty of room to grow indefinitly.

 

[Kael]

Is there any way to set a true technology branching scheme?
with certain technologies precluding others?

It could definitely differentiate factions more, and possibly add an interesting element to the tech-trading game, as there may be some techs crucial to your strat that you simply cannot research yourself.


Also, much more simple, did you add any water units in .80 ?
The lack of variation there in .70 is somewhat disturbing for continents/archipelago/island play

No, there are no new water untis in 0.80. I want some fantasy units for water but since I only have the models Im currently using I don't have much I can do. Heck, I would just like the Drown to me able to travel through coast tiles but I haven't been able to do that yet either.