[MOD] Fall from Heaven

[Zherak_Khan]

Does anybody know why you frequently get weird odds? It mostly seems to happen with Barbarians, I haven't done extensive research, but I frequently see:

Scout: (No promotions) vs Lion (No promotions or terrain): 67%

 

[Lord Yanaek]

You have a positif bonus against barbs, even in vanilla civ you have greater odds vs barbs. It depends on your difficulty level. So if you are playing at a low difficulty to test this mod you have a high bonus to fight barbs. In addition, scouts, hunters and other recon units have a 100% bonus against animals.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Well, i just finished playing my first game with this mod, cultural victory with the wood elves on year 444. One of my cities was producing over 600 culture/turn at the end . I really liked playing this mod, i think i'll start a new one end try another victory now. You did an impressive work on thi mod. OK, now a few notes :

The victories condition listed in the pedia are from vanilla civ (UN, space ship ...). There is no tip as to what's a religious victory. It would be nice if they were included somewhere in the pedia. Oh, i have french version so maybe it's just in the french version.

The start of the game is pretty slow. All you have is warriors for quite a few turns. I think i'll start at a later era next time. I'm not sure you can do something without changing the whole technology tree, but speeding up the first techs so we don't have to play only with warriors for so long could be nice.

When i discovered bronze working, i was'nt able to build axemen, they require IRON or mithril. So i had to stick to warriors even longer, and then my most powerful units where hunters

Elven archers are really expensive for what they do. They cost 50% more then standart archers, but are not any better to attack, and often worse as defense units (they must really be put in forests to defend, but you don't have forests under cities). Both are 3 strengh, both have 1 first strike.

There is some bug for group moves when you haste the group. Often, when moving a group of units containig an adept, i casted haste first, but then the group was only able to move ONE square on my roads. I had to select each unit seperately to move them more then one square. I'm not sure you can do anything about this one, it could be an engine bug.

Reagents were very rare on my map (played a continents map), only 3 on the whole map, pretty close to each other, 2 of them where controlled by the same AI refusing to trade a single one (too bad for him ) I don't know if this is normal, but this makes mages very hard to produce.

Religions don't seem balanced. Some of them only allow one special unit, some allows more. Some religions allow avatars later or wonders, and some don't. I guess you'll balance them better for phase 2.

You can get really high culture production with the civics and wonders adding to culture production of specialists, carnivals and animals. Don't you think you should increase the culture required to become lengendary? Cultural victory can be pretty easy.

Is it normal that elves can produce demonic units (eidolons, Meshaber of Dis...)

Is it possible to have some background for your mod, other then the entries in the pedia?

 

[Mesix]

From that description it sounds like your computer is overheating. If that is the case you shouldn't have the crashes if you leave your computer turned off for long enough to cool down (more than an hour) until it has been running long enough to get hot again. You should also see more occurances of the problem when your computer has been on for a while, especially when running apps that use the video card heavily.

I figured out a work around for the problem with my laptop. I'm not sure what the deal is, but if I unplug the AC adaptor it will not crash. I just played FfH for two hours before my battery was too low to continue ! I'm not sure what I can do to fix the problem, or even what the actual problem is.

All of the power should be converted to DC before it is distributed to the components inside the computer so I would think that the source of power (AC outlet or DC battery) shouldn't matter. Perhaps it's the dirty commercial power here in Okinawa...or maybe I have a bad power cable...or maybe I was right and the video card is on the out.

It seems kind of odd that the problem only occurs when playing games. If it is a power issue you'd think that the computer should crash regardless of the application being run.

Kinda strange...any ideas???

 

[Kael]

Well, i just finished playing my first game with this mod, cultural victory with the wood elves on year 444. One of my cities was producing over 600 culture/turn at the end . I really liked playing this mod, i think i'll start a new one end try another victory now. You did an impressive work on thi mod. OK, now a few notes :

The victories condition listed in the pedia are from vanilla civ (UN, space ship ...). There is no tip as to what's a religious victory. It would be nice if they were included somewhere in the pedia. Oh, i have french version so maybe it's just in the french version.

The start of the game is pretty slow. All you have is warriors for quite a few turns. I think i'll start at a later era next time. I'm not sure you can do something without changing the whole technology tree, but speeding up the first techs so we don't have to play only with warriors for so long could be nice.

When i discovered bronze working, i was'nt able to build axemen, they require IRON or mithril. So i had to stick to warriors even longer, and then my most powerful units where hunters

Axeman should be able to be built with Copper, Iron or Mithril.

Elven archers are really expensive for what they do. They cost 50% more then standart archers, but are not any better to attack, and often worse as defense units (they must really be put in forests to defend, but you don't have forests under cities). Both are 3 strengh, both have 1 first strike.

Yes, Elven Archers and Dwarven soldiers are overcosted. They are intended to be used just as support troops where needed, not as the base of your army. Netiher requires resources or buildings to be built, making them more flexible but inefficent.

There is some bug for group moves when you haste the group. Often, when moving a group of units containig an adept, i casted haste first, but then the group was only able to move ONE square on my roads. I had to select each unit seperately to move them more then one square. I'm not sure you can do anything about this one, it could be an engine bug.

Reagents were very rare on my map (played a continents map), only 3 on the whole map, pretty close to each other, 2 of them where controlled by the same AI refusing to trade a single one (too bad for him ) I don't know if this is normal, but this makes mages very hard to produce.

Religions don't seem balanced. Some of them only allow one special unit, some allows more. Some religions allow avatars later or wonders, and some don't. I guess you'll balance them better for phase 2.

There are 2 ways to balance. You either balance by making things equal or you try to balance differences. The first is easier but the 2nd is more interesting to me, you don't have the issue where things seem like the same wall with a different coat of paint. So I like the fact that the religions are very different as to what they offer. We did a lot of work making sure that even though they are speced differently they are reasonably equal in power overall.

As is the Overlords are the most powerful in the begining because fo the Drown and Slavery. The Fellowship and Runes become more powerful in the midgame because of their strong yield bonus's. And the Order and the Veil become most powerful in the late game because of their heros and increased spread. Thats all a generalization, there are a lot of variables that feed into it.

If you think they aren't balanced which religion would you say is the most power? Whic is the least powerful?

You can get really high culture production with the civics and wonders adding to culture production of specialists, carnivals and animals. Don't you think you should increase the culture required to become lengendary? Cultural victory can be pretty easy.

Thats a good idea, I'll look into it for phase 2.

Is it normal that elves can produce demonic units (eidolons, Meshaber of Dis...)

Yes, the Fellowship of Leaves is the neutral religion in the mod and has the benifit that it can draw from both the good and evil units.

Is it possible to have some background for your mod, other then the entries in the pedia?

What would you like to know?

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I figured out a work around for the problem with my laptop. I'm not sure what the deal is, but if I unplug the AC adaptor it will not crash. I just played FfH for two hours before my battery was too low to continue ! I'm not sure what I can do to fix the problem, or even what the actual problem is.

All of the power should be converted to DC before it is distributed to the components inside the computer so I would think that the source of power (AC outlet or DC battery) shouldn't matter. Perhaps it's the dirty commercial power here in Okinawa...or maybe I have a bad power cable...or maybe I was right and the video card is on the out.

It seems kind of odd that the problem only occurs when playing games. If it is a power issue you'd think that the computer should crash regardless of the application being run.

Kinda strange...any ideas???

Looks like you have overheating issues. An adapter is something that heats quite a lot, all adapters, not only computer adapters. A laptop often heats much more than a desktop, because they put lots of components in a very limited place. A graphic card is also a component with a high tendency to heat a lot, especially if used intensively, like for a game. All in all, if your GC is heating while playing and your adapater is heating too, the temperature of your computer will rise quite high. This can cause lots of crashes.

Unfortunately i have no solution, except what you already found, play on the battery and make sure it's fully charged before starting a game. Also in order to lower your consumption, you should (i hope i won't be banned for telling this) install some no-cd crack, having the cd-rom drive working non-stop can really empty your battery pretty quickly.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Axeman should be able to be built with Copper, Iron or Mithril.

Mhh, strange, they were greyed out and i had a tooltip telling me i needed iron or mithril and a barrack (wich i didn't built as i thaugh i was'nt able to produce axemens anyway), i'll try buoding the barracks next and see if it's only a tooltip bug.

Yes, Elven Archers and Dwarven soldiers are overcosted. They are intended to be used just as support troops where needed, not as the base of your army. Netiher requires resources or buildings to be built, making them more flexible but inefficent.

Oh, those poor elves

There are 2 ways to balance. You either balance by making things equal or you try to balance differences. The first is easier but the 2nd is more interesting to me, you don't have the issue where things seem like the same wall with a different coat of paint. So I like the fact that the religions are very different as to what they offer. We did a lot of work making sure that even though they are speced differently they are reasonably equal in power overall.
...
If you think they aren't balanced which religion would you say is the most power? Whic is the least powerful?

Well, if it's harder for you to balance, it's harder for the user to see the balance . I thought it was a work in progress and all religions would have their late-game powers too. I like it more when it's balanced differently rather then some sort of "same wall with a different coat of paint" as you said, so i can only applause if you can balance them while keeping them different. Anyway, i had the feeling the fellowship of the leaves was pretty weak. Weak unique unit, and only one. No wonder or anything late. I first thought you had first made everything for some other religions and would add for the fellowship later. Of course, it's always easy to think others have something better then you, and FoL was my religion. Now there is the production bonus for sawmills. Maybe it's enough to make fellowship strong. Mhh, let's see, sawmill gives +1 prod, forest is +1 and you have a +1 from hidden path, so this is a +3 production. Yes i think, it can be quite powerful. I overlooked that aspect of the religion.

What would you like to know?

Everything
Well, mostly what kind of world is this? I think you mentionned somewhere the background was from some RPG campaign, maybe D&D. Is this world similar to the Forgotten realms? What are the relations between the races, who are the good guy and who are the bad ones (some are obvious, some not)? What are the overlords, and where do they come from? There are several sub-races of elves, are they fully independent or are they still somewhat linked? It's hard to tell exactly. I think backgroung is something very important in such a mod.

 

[Kael]

Mhh, strange, they were greyed out and i had a tooltip telling me i needed iron or mithril and a barrack (wich i didn't built as i thaugh i was'nt able to produce axemens anyway), i'll try buoding the barracks next and see if it's only a tooltip bug.

Oh, those poor elves

Well, if it's harder for you to balance, it's harder for the user to see the balance . I thought it was a work in progress and all religions would have their late-game powers too. I like it more when it's balanced differently rather then some sort of "same wall with a different coat of paint" as you said, so i can only applause if you can balance them while keeping them different. Anyway, i had the feeling the fellowship of the leaves was pretty weak. Weak unique unit, and only one. No wonder or anything late. I first thought you had first made everything for some other religions and would add for the fellowship later. Of course, it's always easy to think others have something better then you, and FoL was my religion. Now there is the production bonus for sawmills. Maybe it's enough to make fellowship strong. Mhh, let's see, sawmill gives +1 prod, forest is +1 and you have a +1 from hidden path, so this is a +3 production. Yes i think, it can be quite powerful. I overlooked that aspect of the religion.

The Fellowship also has access to the Guardian of Nature civic which is an amazing way to run a big happy, healthy country if you can afford the cost. The Fellowship is also on the path to Duin, which is a more significant advanatge than it may sound.

Everything
Well, mostly what kind of world is this? I think you mentionned somewhere the background was from some RPG campaign, maybe D&D. Is this world similar to the Forgotten realms? What are the relations between the races, who are the good guy and who are the bad ones (some are obvious, some not)? What are the overlords, and where do they come from? There are several sub-races of elves, are they fully independent or are they still somewhat linked? It's hard to tell exactly. I think backgroung is something very important in such a mod.

Check out the History Extract attachment in the 2nd post if you haven't read that yet.

The Overlords are taken from Erebus, which is a world covered in mist. The mist removes the memories from any sentient thing it touches. The civilizations are built on cities fashioned on the rare mountain tops and a few ancient structures that peak through the top of the mists, and a valley that the people pumped all of the mist out of. The cities live and die by their shipyards and trade between the cities, they have enchanted ships that float on the mist. The valley provides the bulk of the food for the relam. One city (Prespur of the Storms) permanently holds a massive storm over the city, gathers and sends the water out to the rest of the realm through magical portals.

The history of Erebus is unknown to its inhabitants who largely came there from other planes. As far as they know they found it as I described when they arrived. The players started without memories, they had been recovered from the mists and a large part of the game was spent trying to figure out what is going on with this world, who they are, and why they were in the mists in the first place.

The truth was Erebus was a "Vault", a place the sacred to Oghma (neutral god of knowledge) went after they died (heaven for a world without heaven, the extract will explain that). It was invaded and overrun by Mammon's (evil god of the mind) forces. Rather than let his libraries be lost Oghma created the mists to protect them.

The only creatures able to travel in the mist are the angels of Oghma that still survive. Their are powerful beasts of Mammon within them as well but they have been driven mad or are simply living in the present without any recollection of the past and traveling around the world wildly. Occasionally one comes out of the mists and attacks the cities. I used a Lovecraft encyclopedia to design Mammon's forces so that is where all of the cthulu references started (though I never actually used cthulu).

In the D&D game there was no "Octopus Overlords" (the name actually comes from one of my favorite websites) but there were some cultists that worshipped the creatures that came out of the mists and the few creatures that made it out and stayed out of the mists (the Cliffs of Hastur outside of Alexandria was the home of one of these creatures and is mentioned Mardero's pedia entry). These worshippers found the visions and messages from the creatures to be sporatic and uncontrolled, because of the effect of the mist. So they used intermediary's to recieve the messages, most pulled out of the asylums just as they are in the mod.

The drown were unthinking undead they sent down into the mist to perform tasks. They weren't literally drown, just zombies, one of the things I switched that to fit the game to Civ4.

As for the elves, there are subtypes of elves in my world. They all came from the same source (created by Sucellus) but a lot has happened to them since then. They are largely unconnected to erebus, a few were there but the plane didnt have enough livable places to support racial areas. Toril was the plane that held most of the game stuff about elves. When Sucellus was killed the elves went through a pretty extensive civil war that killed off most of their numbers. What was left retreated to small bands and were seperated from each other during the 3rd age (the Ice age).

When the 4th age began and civilizations gained the ability to come out of their retreats most fo the elves tried to stay hidden because they know that reconnecting will restart the civi war. The Ljosalfar are the "good" elves and the Svartalfar are the "evil" (these are both civs in phase 2). The Svartalfar have started worshipping Esus (evil god of the night) are smaller in number but out hunting for the good elf colony's to wipe out.

There are other "sub-races" of elves are just differences due to prolonged seperation from other groups. Varn (the leader of the Malakim, a civ in phase 2) comes from a group of elves that were slaves of a cruel angel of Arawn in the underworld. Biologically they are elves but are very different from the rest of the elves in the world. There were a lot of situations like that were the specific history of whatever group you were dealing with was important, rather than just their race.

 

[chas1951]

I'm in the process of playing my first game of this mod and only can describe it as AWESOME. I really like the way that it forces a player to build a Training building for each type of character(archer, crossbow, etc) The magic effects are also great, especially when you bring a group of conjurers, mages, and archmages to bombard a city. I need to figure out the cure disease, but just an oversight on my part. The only problem I had was with Meshaber. The yellow aura around him was so bright, it actually prevents seeing anything close by. Is there a way to tone this down just a bit??? Otherwise, great job, can't wait to see any additions you might have in mind.

 

[Kael]

I'm in the process of playing my first game of this mod and only can describe it as AWESOME. I really like the way that it forces a player to build a Training building for each type of character(archer, crossbow, etc) The magic effects are also great, especially when you bring a group of conjurers, mages, and archmages to bombard a city. I need to figure out the cure disease, but just an oversight on my part. The only problem I had was with Meshaber. The yellow aura around him was so bright, it actually prevents seeing anything close by. Is there a way to tone this down just a bit??? Otherwise, great job, can't wait to see any additions you might have in mind.

Yeah, the size of the aura is controlled by the /Fall from Hevean 100/Assets/xml/misc/CIV4AttachableInfos.xml file.

		<AttachableInfo>
			<Type>ATTACHABLE_HIGHLIGHT_MESHABBE</Type>
			<Description>Highlight effect for Meshabber</Description>
			<fScale>49.99</fScale>
			<Path>Art/Effects/fx_demon_highlight.nif</Path>
		</AttachableInfo>
		<AttachableInfo>
			<Type>ATTACHABLE_HIGHLIGHT_MESHABB</Type>
			<Description>Highlight effect for Meshabber</Description>
			<fScale>99.99</fScale>
			<Path>Art/Effects/fx_demon_highlight.nif</Path>
		</AttachableInfo>

The lower you set the fScale values the smaller the aura will be.

 

[talchas]

Unfortunately i have no solution, except what you already found, play on the battery and make sure it's fully charged before starting a game. Also in order to lower your consumption, you should (i hope i won't be banned for telling this) install some no-cd crack, having the cd-rom drive working non-stop can really empty your battery pretty quickly.

No need for that, Civ4 (at least with 1.52+) only requires the CD at startup, so it doesn't keep drive spinning.

 

[psiborg001]

Tryed to run FFH100C and then FFH100D under the 1.61 patch. All I get when running the Mods are 50+ XML errors, then the game crashes. Is there a fix for this?

 

[Kael]

Tryed to run FFH100C and then FFH100D under the 1.61 patch. All I get when running the Mods are 50+ XML errors, then the game crashes. Is there a fix for this?

You probably have files in you CustomAssets directory that are conflicting with the mod. You may want to rename the directory to CustomAssets.old.

 

[azzacanth]

Also in order to lower your consumption, you should (i hope i won't be banned for telling this) install some no-cd crack, having the cd-rom drive working non-stop can really empty your battery pretty quickly.

Actually, once the game is started, you can take the CD back out of the drive. It only needs it for authentication.

 

[azzacanth]

The only problem I had was with Meshaber. The yellow aura around him was so bright, it actually prevents seeing anything close by. Is there a way to tone this down just a bit??? Otherwise, great job, can't wait to see any additions you might have in mind.

If you use Kael's method of changing the values, I found that 19.99 and 69.99 made an acceptably small aura for messhaber.

In other news shoudl I have been able to build Messhabber as the order? (that was 95 so if thats a bug fixed in 100 dont worry about it.)

 

[imagine83]

I LOVE YOUR MOD!!!!! but one thing i really messed up with is...
what is that inquisition thing? my cities' culture dropped down to 1 all at once...

 

[azzacanth]

inquisition gets rid of non state religions in a city, and it puts your city into anarchy/revolt. Culture will be back to normal when they are out of anarchy.

 

[Salamandre]

First I would like to say I always thought Kael as one of the best mod conceptors for CIV, I played all his mods and enjoyed them without measure.


But on this mod I have some negative points (this doesnt stop me to think this mod is revolutionary)

First, the tech tree is chaotic IMO. The fact that you can choose from 10-15 tech everytime makes difficult to implement a strategy. And the great persons allows you sometimes to choose a tech which is FAR away.


The civlopedia isnt detailed regarding new concepts, which makes the mod hardly enjoyable.Entangle, revitalise nature??!!!


The lack of difference between advanced tech civs and poor ones. Basically if I have a 15 techs lead, the battles would be as hard as if I was 15 behind or equal; except the unique units, the ones you build normally stay same over centuries.


In my game I switched to elves civics and my priests were able to plant a forest every turn.I enjoy this but it unbalances the game in a MP or even against the AI.


The fact that some ressources will not be in the game, even if they are vital to some interesting build: Mithril, Incense. I had no mithril in my first game on the map, and only one Incense available for 18 civs.

I think the techs tree should be entirely revisited, but I know how hard would be ...The mod is amazing and revolutionary, as everything Kael did for CIV3. But it is a chaotic and makes its replaybility hard. In the end, there is hard to make a crucial mistake, even on high levels. In the Vanilla, delaying on a special tech would be a pain, here you are free to advance to anything, no really consequences.

 

[Kael]

First I would like to say I always thought Kael as one of the best mod conceptors for CIV, I played all his mods and enjoyed them without measure.


But on this mod I have some negative points (this doesnt stop me to think this mod is revolutionary)

First, the tech tree is chaotic IMO. The fact that you can choose from 10-15 tech everytime makes difficult to implement a strategy. And the great persons allows you sometimes to choose a tech which is FAR away.


The civlopedia isnt detailed regarding new concepts, which makes the mod hardly enjoyable.Entangle, revitalise nature??!!!


The lack of difference between advanced tech civs and poor ones. Basically if I have a 15 techs lead, the battles would be as hard as if I was 15 behind or equal; except the unique units, the ones you build normally stay same over centuries.


In my game I switched to elves civics and my priests were able to plant a forest every turn.I enjoy this but it unbalances the game in a MP or even against the AI.


The fact that some ressources will not be in the game, even if they are vital to some interesting build: Mithril, Incense. I had no mithril in my first game on the map, and only one Incense available for 18 civs.

I think the techs tree should be entirely revisited, but I know how hard would be ...The mod is amazing and revolutionary, as everything Kael did for CIV3. But it is a chaotic and makes its replaybility hard. In the end, there is hard to make a crucial mistake, even on high levels. In the Vanilla, delaying on a special tech would be a pain, here you are free to advance to anything, no really consequences.

This is my first mod, I never made any for civ3. I agree about the tech tree. I think its okay, but could be better. Lunargent joined the design team for phase 2 mostly to redo the tech tree.

As for the resources, I wish there was a way to force a few of a resouces without making it common. Right now I adjust it up and it becomes common, I adjust it down and on some maps it doesnt show up at all. If anyone has more luck making "rare resources" let me know.

 

[Brancaleone]

Man i played this mod and got so frustated! I didnt had raging barbarians, and were playing on Prince. All i could build was units and sometimes a settler. Several of my cities were destroyed by giants. Barbarian mounted units kept coming every 20 turns and burning all my improvements, and there was notthing i could do. I had 4 cities and not a single unit resource; all i had was warriors, hunters and elven archers. The dwarf empire had +10 relation with me (+6 from civics, +4 from commerce and open borders), and sudently he declared war, and our relation went to negative (-4 this war spoil our relation, and -something else) and invaded me with hordes of mages and axemen. Man i hadnt a single building, all i kept building the entire game was units, i had stacks of crap units and useless workers, and he came with two times more soldiers i had! He had one super hunter with two speed upgrades and several others, i think he was lvl 12 or something, damn man he took two cities of mine by himself! And i was surrounded by dozens of barbarians cities.. I never played with raging barbarians, but no barbarians is no fun.. I just think a giant with streng 6 pillaging my cities before i can even build archers may be too much...