[MOD] Fall from Heaven

[TheJopa]

OK Kael, PM me your e-mail. I also plan to check MW for voice-overs (for orcs etc.), if you don't want them to sound like humans. Iwill check for good music too, and I also plan to check Icewind Dale 2 for same things. Good thing is that time isn't issue.
On side note, downside of Calabims should be low health and low pop. growth- if they treat population that badly.
I think that 150 gold for upgrade is fair, and also their hurry ability should be 25 industry (Once I used 10+ slaves and it still added small amount for production)

 

[SteamPower]

This is a fab mod, its hard to believe how much you have done.

Just 2 things so far:

1) I seem to run out of money real easy, maybe because not as many money increasing techs/civics.

2) The tune that plays every time you bring your religion to another city is great but a bit loud, alot louder than the other samples.

As you can see this list of complaints shows you how good it is!

 

[Kael]

OK Kael, PM me your e-mail. I also plan to check MW for voice-overs (for orcs etc.), if you don't want them to sound like humans. Iwill check for good music too, and I also plan to check Icewind Dale 2 for same things. Good thing is that time isn't issue.
On side note, downside of Calabims should be low health and low pop. growth- if they treat population that badly.
I think that 150 gold for upgrade is fair, and also their hurry ability should be 25 industry (Once I used 10+ slaves and it still added small amount for production)

Calabims are a little wierd from the city perspective. They have access to growth boosting buildings like the Breeding Pits but no ability to handle large city populations. Their answer to this...... feeding the excess population to their vampires.

I expect successful Calabim civs to build cities specialized at producing "livestock".

 

[Kael]

This is a fab mod, its hard to believe how much you have done.

Just 2 things so far:

1) I seem to run out of money real easy, maybe because not as many money increasing techs/civics.

2) The tune that plays every time you bring your religion to another city is great but a bit loud, alot louder than the other samples.

As you can see this list of complaints shows you how good it is!

Cool, I'll turn them down a little.

 

[naf4ever]

I can make it cost whatever we want. What do you think is fair?

I'll do some playtesting this weekend and get back to you with a good number that doesnt imbalance things too much.

 

[Kael]

I'll do some playtesting this weekend and get back to you with a good number that doesnt imbalance things too much.

Awesome, let me know what you find out and I'll make the change.

 

[nealhunt]

I won't be blocking UU's based on religions or otherwise handicapping players who want to try an unusual combination.

Sorry. I must have been unclear. I believe I confused having the religion tech with the actual religion.

In any case, I didn't intend for any of that to be restrictive. Rather, the intent was that if you had a particular religion, you were allowed to have certain units, pretty much exactly like the current system, only expanded to include racial units based on the "racial" religion.

OTOH, if you don't want the racial religions linked so closely to the races themselves, I'm certainly not going to complain.

 

[ChaoticWanderer]

the recommadations seem to want to build soldier buildings without the resources which is annoying in one game it was barracks on an island with no iron or copper. in the other it was on another island with no horse and they wanted to build stables in each city. both are annoying if you lsiten to your advisors you are wasiting time and gold.

 

[darkedone02]

there is too meny units in this game, and i don't know which one is weak, so i suggest that you add a "Unit Obsulation" so we have a more organized list of units to produce.

If you don't know what i'm talking about, you should of remember that Axeman or Spearman replaces Warrior, that is "Unit Obsulation"

 

[naf4ever]

there is too meny units in this game, and i don't know which one is weak, so i suggest that you add a "Unit Obsulation" so we have a more organized list of units to produce.

If you don't know what i'm talking about, you should of remember that Axeman or Spearman replaces Warrior, that is "Unit Obsulation"

There is this thing called "unit power" you should check out. Its a pretty cool feature they implemented back in civ4 version 1.0. It doesnt give a full summary of all the units strenghts and weaknesses but is a pretty good rule of thumb on which units are better than others. If for some reason you are unable to find the "unit power" just build whatever unit looks the meanest...

 

[Mesix]

I had in idea today. I'm not sure what you might think of it, but this is what I came up with.

Why not have the unique heroes be great people that are spawned rather than being built like a regular unit. Cartain heroes could have a particular religion, bulding, or wonder as a prerequisite before they would spawn. This would stop the rush to get appropriate technology to build a hero as fast as possible. It would also give players an incentive to build more wonders (rather than just conquering the civs that do). It would also add a sense of randomness to the game. Building more buildings and wonders could increase the likelihood of a hero being born so it would not be completely random and players would still be rewarded for their research and development.

What do you think?

 

[naf4ever]

Ive played a few games out quite far now and Ive noticed the ability to maintain a large empire and/or be a warmonger in the endgame is basically shot. Here is a pic from my size 22 capital, emperor level difficulty:

Ya the war weariness is a lot (I have -25% from military state and -25% from dungeon, i cant imagine what it would be without) but thats expected... War weariness I dont think is suppose to deter you from war, but force you to adopt particular civics to deal with it. I can handle that... The problem is notice whats going on with the "We Demand Republic." Im currently in God King but as you can tell by the -13 unhappiness difference it isnt working out. I have the money along with all the cool new fun units in FfH to go to war and start beating up people with but i cant because of how this Republic negative works. Taking over cities and managing the unhappiness and war weariness in a large empire in the vanilla game typically requires Monarchy. Yet monarchy gets obsoleted in this game which is unfortunate. Consider that Republic gives an additional +3 happiness to my 6 largest cities in this map, switching to republic alone is this example is then the equivlant of gaining 9 happiness because of the -6 it will also remove. Yet if were to go to monarchy i would still have this -6 unhappiness in my 6 largest cities not to mention -3 or -4 in all my medium sized ones. So switching to Monarchy over Republic requires at a minimum for me to produce 36 new units to stick on my cities just to break even with what republic would give. Lets say i have 6 more medium sized cities that are all receiving -4 from the republic modifier, that means I need 24 more units for a grand total of 60 units that i need to produce and stick on my cities doing nothing with just to have Monarchy break even with republic in this example..... I think this is a little unbalancing and it makes trying to go to war and take over cities in the mid to late game pointless. Being in Republic doesnt let you maintain all your new cities and non-core ones that are suffering from war weariness and "wanting to join the motherland." Yet if you switch to monarchy to deal with this all your cities get even worse because of the "we demand Republic." This ends up making Republic like Emancipation was in vanilla civ meaning the civic that you have to switch to later on whether you like it or not cause nothing else really works. And oddly enough for a mod that i really enjoy and that seems focused on adding lots of cool new units for you to fight with,,, this discourages war in the endgame which is the most fun time to fight i think and is the purpose of this mod i believe. I mean i guess i could solve my happiness problems by stopping the war and getting rid of the -13 war weariness but again,,, this is Fall for Heaven!!! People arent playing it to win by the UN or space race and besides even if i did stop the war the fundamental problem of Republic obsoleting all the other gov civics still remains, especially Monarchy, the civic that is suppose to allow you a playstyle different from republic.....

You think you could ponder a change in this area Kael? Foreign trade already has an Emancipation like effect. Two civics doing this is quite harsh, especially when one negates the ability to be a warmonger endgame in a mod that encourages it. Perhaps put it back how it was in vanilla civ. That way its still powerful but would also serve a unique role for those that have a playstyle focused on specialists.

Anyway couple of other minor things:

1) Spells like fireballs and such that attack wearwolves and die become wearwolves themselves. Seems a bit odd. I shot a stack of fireballs at some wearwolves and their numbers practically doubled

2) Fireballs and spells can create slaves in the slavery civic.

3) Meteor's from archmages seem to be able to take over cities half of the time, but not others. I conquered then occupied or even razed many cities simply from meteors. Im not sure why this works on some cities and not others. I'll try to look for a pattern and note whats going on next time.

4) For the life of me I cant figure how to build arcane barges. I have all the techs and such. Yet its production value is 1 so i assume you have to upgrade to it. Which unit does this though?

5) The computer doesnt hardly spread religeon,, its like they are not realizing what the first level missionary guys are for. It also seems not to realize the potency of it either. Saverous and Rosier the fallen were never built in my game because the computer players that founded them just switched over to kilmorph or leaves instead. Seems unfotunate. I realize this might be out of your control, tweaking the AI, but just wanted to touch on it.

6) I didnt get to be octopus overlords so will get back later on the lunatic upgrade cost thing...

Also I know many people think conjurors and archmages are overpowered but i noticed if you are attacking iron golems or have magic/fire resistance on your units then the meteors and elementals just bounce right off... So this aspect seems done out and balanced pretty well,,, though the base units could be lowered by 1 power each i think. They seem a bit too buff in melee combat.

Otherwise the game is extremely fun at early, mid and late game and seems balanced very well. The game requires you to utilize all units for effective attack and defense and there doesnt seem to be one unit, even heroes that can dominate all by themselves. Well,, except for the mithril golem, but i think his 5000 cost balances that out, heh. The national unit feature for the really buff units adds a lot of strategy to the game. In fact I dont think it would be nearly the same without it. Just wish i could go warmongering and use monarchy endgame without my whiny people protesting for republic

hope this helps. -naf

 

[Kael]

there is too meny units in this game, and i don't know which one is weak, so i suggest that you add a "Unit Obsulation" so we have a more organized list of units to produce.

If you don't know what i'm talking about, you should of remember that Axeman or Spearman replaces Warrior, that is "Unit Obsulation"

Most units already obsolete if you can build all of their upgrades. So if you can build a maceman and a pikeman in a city then you won't be able to build axemen there. There are a handful of units that I don't let obsolete for different reasons (disciples, dwarven soldiers, elven archers maybe a few others) but in general if you can build all the upgrades you can't build the unit.

 

[Kael]

I had in idea today. I'm not sure what you might think of it, but this is what I came up with.

Why not have the unique heroes be great people that are spawned rather than being built like a regular unit. Cartain heroes could have a particular religion, bulding, or wonder as a prerequisite before they would spawn. This would stop the rush to get appropriate technology to build a hero as fast as possible. It would also give players an incentive to build more wonders (rather than just conquering the civs that do). It would also add a sense of randomness to the game. Building more buildings and wonders could increase the likelihood of a hero being born so it would not be completely random and players would still be rewarded for their research and development.

What do you think?

We considered this but didn't go with it for the following reasons;

1. Because of the heroes power we didnt want it tied to a random element.

2. Also heroes are a good strategic goal of the game that we wouldnt want to leave to chance. Likewise players favor certain heroes and we would want them to rush for the heroes they like.

3. They help to differentiate the different religions and Civs. If they were all drawing from the same pool it would muddy the waters between them.

 

[Kael]

Ive played a few games out quite far now and Ive noticed the ability to maintain a large empire and/or be a warmonger in the endgame is basically shot. Here is a pic from my size 22 capital, emperor level difficulty:

Ya the war weariness is a lot (I have -25% from military state and -25% from dungeon, i cant imagine what it would be without) but thats expected... War weariness I dont think is suppose to deter you from war, but force you to adopt particular civics to deal with it. I can handle that... The problem is notice whats going on with the "We Demand Republic." Im currently in God King but as you can tell by the -13 unhappiness difference it isnt working out.

God king is a bad civic for a large empire. How many cities did you have? What religion were you (The Order is best at maintaining large empires)?

I have the money along with all the cool new fun units in FfH to go to war and start beating up people with but i cant because of how this Republic negative works. Taking over cities and managing the unhappiness and war weariness in a large empire in the vanilla game typically requires Monarchy. Yet monarchy gets obsoleted in this game which is unfortunate. Consider that Republic gives an additional +3 happiness to my 6 largest cities in this map, switching to republic alone is this example is then the equivlant of gaining 9 happiness because of the -6 it will also remove. Yet if were to go to monarchy i would still have this -6 unhappiness in my 6 largest cities not to mention -3 or -4 in all my medium sized ones. So switching to Monarchy over Republic requires at a minimum for me to produce 36 new units to stick on my cities just to break even with what republic would give. Lets say i have 6 more medium sized cities that are all receiving -4 from the republic modifier, that means I need 24 more units for a grand total of 60 units that i need to produce and stick on my cities doing nothing with just to have Monarchy break even with republic in this example..... I think this is a little unbalancing and it makes trying to go to war and take over cities in the mid to late game pointless. Being in Republic doesnt let you maintain all your new cities and non-core ones that are suffering from war weariness and "wanting to join the motherland." Yet if you switch to monarchy to deal with this all your cities get even worse because of the "we demand Republic." This ends up making Republic like Emancipation was in vanilla civ meaning the civic that you have to switch to later on whether you like it or not cause nothing else really works. And oddly enough for a mod that i really enjoy and that seems focused on adding lots of cool new units for you to fight with,,, this discourages war in the endgame which is the most fun time to fight i think and is the purpose of this mod i believe. I mean i guess i could solve my happiness problems by stopping the war and getting rid of the -13 war weariness but again,,, this is Fall for Heaven!!! People arent playing it to win by the UN or space race and besides even if i did stop the war the fundamental problem of Republic obsoleting all the other gov civics still remains, especially Monarchy, the civic that is suppose to allow you a playstyle different from republic.....

You think you could ponder a change in this area Kael? Foreign trade already has an Emancipation like effect. Two civics doing this is quite harsh, especially when one negates the ability to be a warmonger endgame in a mod that encourages it. Perhaps put it back how it was in vanilla civ. That way its still powerful but would also serve a unique role for those that have a playstyle focused on specialists.

So you would like Republic to be like it was in vanilla civ?

Anyway couple of other minor things:

1) Spells like fireballs and such that attack wearwolves and die become wearwolves themselves. Seems a bit odd. I shot a stack of fireballs at some wearwolves and their numbers practically doubled

Thats been fixed in 1.0 so that only living units become werewolves. Im actually surprised to see that in 0.95g, do you have the latest patch?

2) Fireballs and spells can create slaves in the slavery civic.

The same as the above, both problems use the same solution (I created an array of living units that a unit has to belong to to be effected by these abilities).

3) Meteor's from archmages seem to be able to take over cities half of the time, but not others. I conquered then occupied or even razed many cities simply from meteors. Im not sure why this works on some cities and not others. I'll try to look for a pattern and note whats going on next time.

As you can see from the attached screenshot meteors are set to not be able to take cities. I would be curious to find out in what situations they do. let me know if you find a pattern.

4) For the life of me I cant figure how to build arcane barges. I have all the techs and such. Yet its production value is 1 so i assume you have to upgrade to it. Which unit does this though?

The arcane barge was pulled from 0.95. It is a naval unit that fireballs, but without the fireballs ability to ravel on land and sea tiles it was useless. It will be in 1.0.

5) The computer doesnt hardly spread religeon,, its like they are not realizing what the first level missionary guys are for. It also seems not to realize the potency of it either. Saverous and Rosier the fallen were never built in my game because the computer players that founded them just switched over to kilmorph or leaves instead. Seems unfotunate. I realize this might be out of your control, tweaking the AI, but just wanted to touch on it.

They definitly have the "missionary" ai assigned. I have definitly played against both of heroes that you mention. I tend to see this behaior on smaller maps, where the religion spread jumps to all of the civs to quickly. What size map do you play on? (I wish I could adjust religion spread by map size).

6) I didnt get to be octopus overlords so will get back later on the lunatic upgrade cost thing...

K, no problem.

Also I know many people think conjurors and archmages are overpowered but i noticed if you are attacking iron golems or have magic/fire resistance on your units then the meteors and elementals just bounce right off... So this aspect seems done out and balanced pretty well,,, though the base units could be lowered by 1 power each i think. They seem a bit too buff in melee combat.

This will be done in 1.0.

Otherwise the game is extremely fun at early, mid and late game and seems balanced very well. The game requires you to utilize all units for effective attack and defense and there doesnt seem to be one unit, even heroes that can dominate all by themselves. Well,, except for the mithril golem, but i think his 5000 cost balances that out, heh. The national unit feature for the really buff units adds a lot of strategy to the game. In fact I dont think it would be nearly the same without it. Just wish i could go warmongering and use monarchy endgame without my whiny people protesting for republic

hope this helps. -naf

Definitly, I love to see you applying the very through analysis you use in making your mod to Fall from Heaven. Check your version and make sure you are running 0.95g (the readme will say 0.95g if you have it) to make sure you have all the latest tweaks and let me know specifically what you think reublic should do and I will get it changed.

Thanks!

 

[Mesix]

I don't really want to quote the entire passage by nav4ever, but I agree with what he was saying. The fantasy motif of the Fall for Heaven mod seems to follow a theme of war between various fantasy factions, but the civics discourage war to the point of being somewhat unrealistic (for example I was playing the Elven Empire in one game and the dark elves kept wanting to have a strategic alliance).

Perhaps you could redo the civics so they behave in the opposite way of the vanila Civ. Being at peace should cause unrest, especially for warlike civs such as orcs, dark elves, etc. Maybe some civics could mitigate the "peace weariness" for people who want to build a peacefully coexisting civilization. I don't know, I'm just throwing out ideas here.

I'm not sure if it related to the war weariness issue or not, but in a recent game I had a very strange occurance. I was lagging behind a few of the civs (mainly in culture since they built most of the wonders) and I was gearing up for a big war in the end game. Once I had my forces ready I declared war on my nearest enemy and (to no surprize) he had two allies that came to his aid. This would not have been a problem at all since I was spitting out tier 4 units every 2-3 turns in my five biggest cities...but all of the sudden my cities became smaller. All of my cities had been between 12-16 with a couple over 20. After a few turns of war I was wondering why my reinforcements were not forthcoming and I panned back away from the action to find that all of my cities were now between 4-7 in size. Needless to say they could no longer keep up with the requirements that I had to maintain competative. The cities were not attacked, the countryside was not pillaged (since all of the combat was in foreign territories), the cities just shrunk for some reason. It was a very annoying outcome for a game that built up for several hours. My initial force ran in and destroyed half of the dark elf cities along with a handful of minotaur and octopus ones as well. I was able to take out most of their powerful units, but when my cities shrunk I could not reinforce and rebuild my forces as fast as the three of them could.

What do you think could cause my cities to shrink like this?

 

[Kael]

I don't really want to quote the entire passage by nav4ever, but I agree with what he was saying. The fantasy motif of the Fall for Heaven mod seems to follow a theme of war between various fantasy factions, but the civics discourage war to the point of being somewhat unrealistic (for example I was playing the Elven Empire in one game and the dark elves kept wanting to have a strategic alliance).

Perhaps you could redo the civics so they behave in the opposite way of the vanila Civ. Being at peace should cause unrest, especially for warlike civs such as orcs, dark elves, etc. Maybe some civics could mitigate the "peace weariness" for people who want to build a peacefully coexisting civilization. I don't know, I'm just throwing out ideas here.

Yes, in phase 2 some civs are planned to have reverse war weariness as you described.

I'm not sure if it related to the war weariness issue or not, but in a recent game I had a very strange occurance. I was lagging behind a few of the civs (mainly in culture since they built most of the wonders) and I was gearing up for a big war in the end game. Once I had my forces ready I declared war on my nearest enemy and (to no surprize) he had two allies that came to his aid. This would not have been a problem at all since I was spitting out tier 4 units every 2-3 turns in my five biggest cities...but all of the sudden my cities became smaller. All of my cities had been between 12-16 with a couple over 20. After a few turns of war I was wondering why my reinforcements were not forthcoming and I panned back away from the action to find that all of my cities were now between 4-7 in size. Needless to say they could no longer keep up with the requirements that I had to maintain competative. The cities were not attacked, the countryside was not pillaged (since all of the combat was in foreign territories), the cities just shrunk for some reason. It was a very annoying outcome for a game that built up for several hours. My initial force ran in and destroyed half of the dark elf cities along with a handful of minotaur and octopus ones as well. I was able to take out most of their powerful units, but when my cities shrunk I could not reinforce and rebuild my forces as fast as the three of them could.

What do you think could cause my cities to shrink like this?

It sounds like someone built Apocolypse, it halves the size of all the cities in the world.

 

[Dragonlord]

There is this thing called "unit power" you should check out. Its a pretty cool feature they implemented back in civ4 version 1.0. It doesnt give a full summary of all the units strenghts and weaknesses but is a pretty good rule of thumb on which units are better than others. If for some reason you are unable to find the "unit power" just build whatever unit looks the meanest...

Exquisite sarcasm...

 

[Dragonlord]

Just to add my voice to the chorus: I also feel some thought should be given to make the game more viable for war-mongering.
I feel this Mod appeals more to the war-monger than the builder anyway, with all it's cool units and promotions (I especially love capturing animals BTW - I find myself missing that when I play any other mod .. which I'm only doing because I'm waiting for FFH 1.0, of course ).

I play mostly on Emperor and have massive problems keeping up the cash flow - with even moderate conquests I often have to reduce my research to 10%... sometimes to 0%! Even as a financial civ I have problems, any others... forget it!
Also, as I mentioned in previous posts, WW is a massive problem in the later game, no matter what civics I choose. And I also have the problem with Republic, it's a choice between frying pan and fire: choose Republic and have huge WW, don't choose it and have high unhappiness from the penalty.

For the financial problem I'd advocate tweaking the penalties for number of units and number of cities a bit.
For the WW... dunno... tweak the civics somehow, I just can't seem to find any good combination for war-mongering in the late game.

 

[Kael]

I would like to improve it but I don't want to change it so that one civic is clearly better than the other. If anything Republic should be slightly better than Monarchy since it comes later.

Based on the feedback from you guys Im thinking about halving the civic anger for not having republic and also having it give a slight reduction to war weariness (maybe 20%). That way Monarchy is still a viable option for civs with large armies and they wont be punished as badly for not being republic, and Republic is a bit easier to warmonger with.

What do you think?