[MOD] Fall from Heaven

[kevjm]

Is Frankenstein's monster really that much of a leap from typhoid mary? Not sure if I'd want to see any reference to Frankenstein in the game, but having something like Frankenstein's monster could work.

 

[Kael]

I mentioned Frankenstein because i thought vampires, werewolves and Frankenstein all go together and i see that in Phase 2 there will be vampires, right?

Definitly vampires in phase 2. There won't be a "frankenstein" in phase 2 but there is a similar concept. There is a spell called "Create Flesh Golem". It allows you kill 2 units to make a new golem unit with all of the promotions of both of the units that were destroyed.

So you can build your own frankenstein.

 

[Kael]

Personally, I miss silver. Is there any chance you could make mithril take over aluminum's placeholder and bring back silver in the future?

Its not the placeholder that I need, those are easy enough to make, its the art. I needed distinctive art for mithril, so I stole silver's.

 

[Oran-ge]

Hey, what with the long wait for FFH 1.0, and the large number of new fantasy unit models coming out, is there any plans to release another update for FFH before 1.0 that includes these new units and maybe the new units you already put in 1.0?

If you just include the models and the unit stats, you don't have to make engine changes. Not only would this give us some new units to play with, you could also get feedback on how well the new units go together with the mod.

 

[Kael]

Hey, what with the long wait for FFH 1.0, and the large number of new fantasy unit models coming out, is there any plans to release another update for FFH before 1.0 that includes these new units and maybe the new units you already put in 1.0?

If you just include the models and the unit stats, you don't have to make engine changes. Not only would this give us some new units to play with, you could also get feedback on how well the new units go together with the mod.

I did add a few of the new models (White Rabbits awesome Werewolf, Angel and Dark Angel models). But in general I won't be adding much to 1.0 just because I don't want to mess up the balance.

Also Im not a big fan of the "more is better" mentality so if I have new units in they should serve a purpose beyond just being more units. Which usually means code for unique abilities.

And Im really really hoping 1.0 will be coming out soon. please please please please please

 

[Oran-ge]

I think you misunderstood me, I meant to ask if you had any plans to releasing another update to 0.95g before FFH 1.0, like a 0.98 or 0.95h or something, with the new units in there.

So you won't use any of the new models that are being made now into unique units for FFH?

 

[Killamike718]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to inform the Civfanatics community that there is this site that is a large Mod directory for every game able to be modified and you guys might like it, im just posting this because you can add Mods [your mod(s)] and they have a huge community with many features. here is the link. PLEASE check it out. I really wanna get the Civ IV Mod count up because they have like 3 mods and there are sooooooo much good mods on this site. thanks everybody and heres the URL:
Moddb.com

 

[Kael]

I think you misunderstood me, I meant to ask if you had any plans to releasing another update to 0.95g before FFH 1.0, like a 0.98 or 0.95h or something, with the new units in there.

So you won't use any of the new models that are being made now into unique units for FFH?

Not 1.0 unique units. They are all going into phase 2 right now (thats where all the development work is going on right now). I havent really done any work on 1.0 in the past month.

There were 156 units in the version of phase 2 that I put out yesterday, there are 118 in 1.0. Except for a handful of summoned units all of those new units are UU's. And I still have a ton more to make.

 

[tombeef]

There were 156 units in the version of phase 2 that I put out yesterday, there are 118 in 1.0. Except for a handful of summoned units all of those new units are UU's. And I still have a ton more to make.

Wow... that's a crap load of units. I guess when phase 2 comes out (or version 1.0, for that matter) I'll have to say good bye to my life for a few weeks.

I pulled an all-nighter. Played FfH from 7:30 PM, to 5:00 AM, showered, then went to work from 6:00 AM to 2:00 pm. Then played 3 hours of tackle football, then watched basketball. What a life.

 

[Mesix]

The idea of vampires and werewolves cam long before Frankenstein. If you really want to add somthing to the Horror/Fantasy catagory, a Grim Reaper world unit might work.

While I agree that Frankenstein does not fit well n a fantasy motif, it is not true that the other stories are older. Vampires were made popular by the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker published in 1897. Mary Shelly's Frankenstein was published in 1818. I guess that you could say that the story of Dracula is loosly based on Vlaad the Impaler which had been a story of oral tradition dating back many years, but the modern idea of a vampire came from Dracula. Vampires are as much in the SF/horror area as Frankenstein, it is just that Ravenloft and the Whitewolf series have blended fantasy and horrer nicely in many people's minds.

The reason that I do not think Frankenstein fits as well is that he is a unique character rather than a type of creature. Vampires and wearwolves are general enough that they can be made into stories in almost any setting. The Baron von Halfmoon is really well done by the way

Enough pontificating for the time being. Time to load up CIV IV and play some more FFH.

 

[Lightzy]

Personally, I don't like that.

What I really loved about FFH was that there were few units, and each with very specific roles.
Unless incredibly well done, more units would just be clutter.

Even the 'big' ammount of unique units currently available is too much for me. once it becomes heavy crossbows and phalanx and immortals and heavy chariots it gets boring for me. units sharing roles, not being unique or powerful enough to make difference in gameplay anyway, etc.

Its understandable that there will be upgrade lines for the same purpose of the unit (archer --> longbowman), but where they differ they shouldn't be sharing purpose.

There should also be substantial diversity in costs.
some units should be extremely powerful but expensive, while some units you should be able to mass produce and flood the field with, even though they're relatively weak.
or maybe that should be unique mechanics for the races/religions, dunno.
I miss the fast, cheap, weak (ie goblin) race


EDIT:

Another mechanic that I find sorely needed is hitpoints/protection for improvements.
Or something.
Rodes and resource mines should be destructible, but everything else, I think, should just give the pillager gold.. but even that is a bit of an exploit.


A civ4 phenomenon is that speed beats everything else into rubble.
a quick strike with 3 upgraded 6move units and I can completely destroy the improvements of a big important city, reducing it to nothing in a couple of turns, without the enemy being able to do anything.

 

[naf4ever]

Played the last couple of games with Octopus Overlords. Here are few things I noticed:

Some people have mentioned the slavery civic seems gimped as the unique OO civic compared to the others, i dont think it is but it could definitely use some tweaking:

1) Sacraficing people to pop rush things is really inefficient but more so in FfH because in general units and wonders in this mod cost more. Sacraficing one pop in the vanilla game would net you 30 hammers and hence let you rush a whole archer, here its half an archer. Not too mention in version 1.0 when the drown will cost 90 hammers it would require you to sac 3 people just to rush one of these. Hurrying wonders is even more dreary.... I think the nature of pop rushing is already extremely detrimental as is. It destroys your economy and production base and because you cant sac more than half of your pop at a time its intrinsically safe from abuse. Few people are going to sac the max pop they can two turns in a row thus reducing thier population in that city by a whopping 75%. Here are some ideas for improvement:

• Increase the amount of production that is generated from sacraficing a person. Personally I think it could be rasied to 50 or 60 hammers per/sac'd pop considering many of the units in FfH cost 2 to 3 times as much as in vanilla civ. I dont think this would imblance things too much since like i said the nature of sacraficing your own pop and reducing your overall economy and production in that city makes this method of hurrying safe from exploting and constant usage. I dont think this would impact wonders too much since most of the wonders in this mod are very expensive and would require sacracfing 20+ people in one turn to even see a moderate advance in the construction progress.
• Perhaps get rid of the unhappiness from sacraficing people. It seems uneeded for a method of a rushing that already has its own restraint and disincentive system built in. Also based on the tidbits of their storyline i read in the pedia I dont think the Octopus Overlords get real emotional when they have to sac few peasents here and there

2) Besides pop rushing which is the main feature of this unique civic (yet is hardly ever used), being able to catch slaves seems like the other big perk. This seem pretty well thought out already and the production sac bonus the slaves get for buildings, though small, is a nice additive feature. The cost to upgrade them to lunatics though could use some modifying. At the moment it costs 195 gold to upgrade a warrior to a maceman or stygian guard. It costs 250 gold though to upgrade a slave to a lunatic. This value could be reduced down to 150 or even halved to 125 without too many problems, heres why:

• Lunatics arent that great in the first place. In order to build or upgrade to them they have a prereq of an advanced metal like iron or mithril not to mention the construction of an additional building, the asylum. In combat they are inferior to similar level units like the maceman or stygian guard because of thier no-defense modifier and their enraged ability is erratic.
• The cost reductions i mentioned above might seem to make the upgrade a bit cheap, but consider that this upgrade is only possible with the slave unit which you cant exactly mass produce unless you are constantly fighting. And if you are, you're most likely using up all your gold maintaining your army or maintence from cities and so dont have much to blow anyways. Usually about the time im ready to turn a few slaves into lunatics I barely have a few hundred gold as is and am usuallly using losing more every turn from all the fighting...
• There needs to be a reason to upgrade slaves into lunatics. Usually most people have lots of warriors mulling about their empire from earlier on. The current upgrade cost of slaves to lunatics makes it an inefficient action to pursue when you could just upgrade all your idle warriors to far better units for much cheaper. Reducing the lunatic upgrade cost will help make the slavery civic, slave unit and lunatics more defining and useful features of Octopus Overlords.

At the moment most of the unique civics of all the religeons offer something different and usually better than the other civics of the same category. But with Octopus Overlords I usually find myself switching to something else besides slavery as soon as i can. I think the above changes will help make slavery a more prominant feature of OO empires.

-naf

 

[naf4ever]

Personally, I don't like that.

What I really loved about FFH was that there were few units, and each with very specific roles.
Unless incredibly well done, more units would just be clutter.

Even the 'big' ammount of unique units currently available is too much for me. once it becomes heavy crossbows and phalanx and immortals and heavy chariots it gets boring for me. units sharing roles, not being unique or powerful enough to make difference in gameplay anyway, etc.

Its understandable that there will be upgrade lines for the same purpose of the unit (archer --> longbowman), but where they differ they shouldn't be sharing purpose.

Im not sure how you came to these conclusions. The above units you mentioned do have extreme diversity in thier uses:

• The heavy crossbows are very tough and have a built in 25% city defense and the option for the city defense promotion. Its possible to build them right off the bat with 2 city D promotions for a total of +115% to city D on a unit with a power of 13.
• There are no phalax's in FfH so i assume you meant shield walls which use their model. These units are also good defenders but are good at defending in every terrain, not just cities. Their defensive promtion enables this but at the same time makes them weak attackers. Thier archery defense bonus makes them ideal against Flurry or the deadly marksman. Shieldwalls are very good units to escort archmages or demon summoners around with.
• Heavy Chariots move 3 spaces and have a 25% withdraw rate and the chance to increase that to even much higher. They are kings at raiding or attacking, something the above two units arent.
• Immortals on the other hand have a high base power but no real special attack or defenses bonuses except thier immortal promotions. This makes them decent at whatever task they pursue but masters of none like the heavy crossbowman, shield walls or heavy chariots are.

There should also be substantial diversity in costs.
some units should be extremely powerful but expensive, while some units you should be able to mass produce and flood the field with, even though they're relatively weak. or maybe that should be unique mechanics for the races/religions, dunno.
I miss the fast, cheap, weak (ie goblin) race

• Things like longbowmen or macemen cost 120 but u can build unlimited amounts of them and flood the field like you mentioned.
• Advanced national units cost 240 and you can only have 3 of them not too metion most are far down one particular tech line.
• Golems which are the only tier 4 units that you can build as many as you want of are extremely expensive to produce, between 200 to 400 hammers and cant get promotions.
• The unique units Mithril Golem and Meshabber of Dis are the most powerful in the game but cost 5000 .

There appears to be significant diversity in costs from my perspective.

 

[Kael]

Personally, I don't like that.

What I really loved about FFH was that there were few units, and each with very specific roles.
Unless incredibly well done, more units would just be clutter.

Even the 'big' ammount of unique units currently available is too much for me.

There are no Unique Units (UUs) in phase 1. What I mean by UUs are civ specific units. So when you play the orcs all of your units (or a substantial portion) are orcish units. In general, just as you suggest orcs are undercosed and underpowered (though they do have 3 ogre units that are the opposite).

I don't want make longer build lists but I do want each civ to play different than every other one. So each civ has some units only it has access to, most are blocked from building some of the "shared units" (elves cant make arqeubus's or berserkers). And there are some civ specific buildings as well. Just a handful on these, but enough to effect the way the civ plays.

 

[azzacanth]

Well, quit chattin on the forum and finish phase 2, so we can all play it! *winks*

By the way, if there are any icons you need made, I am a fair photoshop doodler myself. I don't do it very often though so I can't guarantee anything. However if you want to send me a list of stuff that you might need, let me know and I will be happy to pm you my email address. (or I suppose you could just pm the list to me if that works easier.)

As I said I can't guarantee anything but sometimes I get the urge to doodle and might be able to come up with something pretty nice for an icon.

 

[Kael]

Played the last couple of games with Octopus Overlords. Here are few things I noticed:

Some people have mentioned the slavery civic seems gimped as the unique OO civic compared to the others, i dont think it is but it could definitely use some tweaking:

1) Sacraficing people to pop rush things is really inefficient but more so in FfH because in general units and wonders in this mod cost more. Sacraficing one pop in the vanilla game would net you 30 hammers and hence let you rush a whole archer, here its half an archer. Not too mention in version 1.0 when the drown will cost 90 hammers it would require you to sac 3 people just to rush one of these. Hurrying wonders is even more dreary.... I think the nature of pop rushing is already extremely detrimental as is. It destroys your economy and production base and because you cant sac more than half of your pop at a time its intrinsically safe from abuse. Few people are going to sac the max pop they can two turns in a row thus reducing thier population in that city by a whopping 75%. Here are some ideas for improvement:

• Increase the amount of production that is generated from sacraficing a person. Personally I think it could be rasied to 50 or 60 hammers per/sac'd pop considering many of the units in FfH cost 2 to 3 times as much as in vanilla civ. I dont think this would imblance things too much since like i said the nature of sacraficing your own pop and reducing your overall economy and production in that city makes this method of hurrying safe from exploting and constant usage. I dont think this would impact wonders too much since most of the wonders in this mod are very expensive and would require sacracfing 20+ people in one turn to even see a moderate advance in the construction progress.
• Perhaps get rid of the unhappiness from sacraficing people. It seems uneeded for a method of a rushing that already has its own restraint and disincentive system built in. Also based on the tidbits of their storyline i read in the pedia I dont think the Octopus Overlords get real emotional when they have to sac few peasents here and there

2) Besides pop rushing which is the main feature of this unique civic (yet is hardly ever used), being able to catch slaves seems like the other big perk. This seem pretty well thought out already and the production sac bonus the slaves get for buildings, though small, is a nice additive feature. The cost to upgrade them to lunatics though could use some modifying. At the moment it costs 195 gold to upgrade a warrior to a maceman or stygian guard. It costs 250 gold though to upgrade a slave to a lunatic. This value could be reduced down to 150 or even halved to 125 without too many problems, heres why:

• Lunatics arent that great in the first place. In order to build or upgrade to them they have a prereq of an advanced metal like iron or mithril not to mention the construction of an additional building, the asylum. In combat they are inferior to similar level units like the maceman or stygian guard because of thier no-defense modifier and their enraged ability is erratic.
• The cost reductions i mentioned above might seem to make the upgrade a bit cheap, but consider that this upgrade is only possible with the slave unit which you cant exactly mass produce unless you are constantly fighting. And if you are, you're most likely using up all your gold maintaining your army or maintence from cities and so dont have much to blow anyways. Usually about the time im ready to turn a few slaves into lunatics I barely have a few hundred gold as is and am usuallly using losing more every turn from all the fighting...
• There needs to be a reason to upgrade slaves into lunatics. Usually most people have lots of warriors mulling about their empire from earlier on. The current upgrade cost of slaves to lunatics makes it an inefficient action to pursue when you could just upgrade all your idle warriors to far better units for much cheaper. Reducing the lunatic upgrade cost will help make the slavery civic, slave unit and lunatics more defining and useful features of Octopus Overlords.

At the moment most of the unique civics of all the religeons offer something different and usually better than the other civics of the same category. But with Octopus Overlords I usually find myself switching to something else besides slavery as soon as i can. I think the above changes will help make slavery a more prominant feature of OO empires.

-naf

I halved the cost of upgrading the slaves to lunatics like you suggested. I will think about changing the production bonus. I do still think the cities should have unrest from sacrificing people, even if their religion is for it there are parts of the population that wont like to see others killed off.

 

[naf4ever]

I halved the cost of upgrading the slaves to lunatics like you suggested. I will think about changing the production bonus. I do still think the cities should have unrest from sacrificing people, even if their religion is for it there are parts of the population that wont like to see others killed off.

Something just popped into my head from this. Maybe you should give "sacrafice the weak" pop rushing ability too. But in this case make it give happy faces for doing so, lol

 

[TheJopa]

But it would be more 'ritual sacrifice' that gives culture and happines in exchange for pop, this one...well... sacrifices the weak
What happens when you bring golem to life with that phase 2 spell? Gives him ability to get promotions or?
I personally think that all religion specific civics should be somewhat superior to others, so that you won't likely change them. Maybe INCREASE unahppines from pop rushing but double production from them. And arete should, acording to my opinion, be more powerful.

 

[ditb]

Dumb question time:

If it says version 90 when I load up the mod, I am not running the 95 version…right?

I am 99.9999% sure that is the case, but the download is so giant that I wanted to make sure. Thanks in advance!

Dave

 

[naf4ever]

Dumb question time:

If it says version 90 when I load up the mod, I am not running the 95 version…right?

I am 99.9999% sure that is the case, but the download is so giant that I wanted to make sure. Thanks in advance!

Dave

Yup,, you need to download the new version. It should autoinstall into a new directory and label it self ".95" .