Obscure & non-intuitive unit and city tricks

BobCW

Warlord
Joined
Apr 13, 2005
Messages
239
This forum is kind of dead, but on the off-chance that some FFH vets want to help out any new players who Google their way here, I figure there should be a thread for some of the more poorly-documented FFH features. I'll start us off:


  • Lunatics (or any other "enraged" units) won't run away if you load them on boats.
  • Units with the "Angel" race can be sacrificed on the Pyre world feature in exchange for permanent Fire Elementals. Bridgit or Sephener will yield several, although that trade is rarely favorable.
  • Leaders with the Barbarian trait can hire +1 strength goblin units from goblin forts, with the options available depending on your tech level.
  • The ability of most basic discipline units to add +10 culture to a city can be used to end revolts instantly. This is useful for both captured cities and for after building Beats of Agares as any civ other than the Infernals.
  • Speaking of which, the Infernals do not lose population or suffer revolts when constructing Beasts.
  • Auric Ascended's Snowfall spell is a more powerful version which has the ability to kill.
  • Units dropped by Kurio Airships retain their full movement points. This gives them potentially incredible range.
  • Tigers are the only land-based summon which can be mutated. You can exploit this to get every beneficial mutation on a Flesh Golem by constantly summoning and selectively merging them.
  • Merging Kraken summons allow for the highest base strength possible for a Flesh Golem sans promotions, 16.
  • You can merge Hawks with Flesh Golems to enable them to fly.
  • Waterwalking or flying Mimics can steal naval promotions from boats.
  • Slaves can be sacrificed in Balseraph arenas. The ones which survive are transformed into Warriors with a random amount of exp.
  • Fireballs will disappear as soon as you end turn; you cannot use them as defensive units.
  • Attempting to delete a Moroi with "burning blood" activated will instead permanently place it under Barbarian control, with ful movement points.
  • Agnostic is a civ trait for the Grigori but a leader trait for the Illians. That means you can build religious units as the Illians if you play with the unrestricted leaders setting.
  • Combining Wolf units together to form Wolf Packs will restore their movement points.
  • There is no cap on withdraw rates. A Hippus Horseman unit with each flanking promotion and the "light" mutation will have an extremely high chance to flee combat if not surrounded.
  • Invisible units can only block you from working titles if you can see them. Therefore it almost never makes sense to pay adventurers to remove the Spider from the mine event.
  • Choosing the "spare" option in the witch event does nothing. Neither of the options in the "werewolf attacking a city" option has any impact either.
  • The correct answer for the "governor has been murdered" event depends on what civics you are currently running (Godking = let the church decide).
 
That reminds me- you can also capture all of the various sea beasts.


The easy way is to either have a water-walking or embarked Archmage dominate them.


The much more difficult way is to get the "capture beast" promotion on a flying or water-walking Mimic, and then just walk over and fight them.
 
Tortoises and Sea Serpents are UNITCOMBAT_ANIMAL, so just put a Satyr on a boat and use the Mesmerize ability.

More naval tricks:

- units can take a mobility promotion and/or Haste to regain movement after disembarking, or after boarding. Getting on/off a boat always uses up the full movement of the land unit, but if you add more moves to the unit via promotion or spell, those moves will be available.
- if you capture a city, you can move your ships inside and unload units which will have full movement.
- summoned units can exceed the cargo capacity of a ship (i.e., the ship can be full to capacity with summoners, but they'll still be allowed to summon more units).
- waterwalking units can unload at sea with full movement.
- units can transfer from boat to boat at sea, allowing chained ship movement across long distances (if you have enough ships and have positioned them properly).
- magic-users on ships can cast spells (fireball, maelstrom, ring of fire, tsunami) that can swing the odds greatly in your favor.
 
one way is to get a acolyte of a religion from a hut... but it rarely happens above prince level.

you have another way ?
 
It can get pretty weird! You can get disciplines from lairs even for religions which have been turned off in the game options. If you try to found a religion with them you'll get a failure message, but don't despair- you then subsequently build the shrine with a Prophet, even though the city won't show as having the faith! :crazyeye:
 
Here are a couple more which are mainly useful for multiplayer-


  • The treasure chests you can get from events and exploring lairs are actually invisible in-game units. That means you can use them to make contact with other players who wander by, and can use the chest as a sort of immobile, invisible sentry.
  • You can make contact with a player even when their unit has hidden nationality- if you suddenly have contact with someone after encountering a "barbarian" unit (usually an animal), it may be under player control.
 
one way is to get a acolyte of a religion from a hut... but it rarely happens above prince level.

you have another way ?

Seems to come out a lot for me, and I play IMM/DEI only.

Great thread, Bob.

Temple of the Hand
- Creating a Temple of the Hand will transform jungle into ice tiles with forest on them
- It will remove floodplains, but leave oasis tiles intact, giving sweet 5f/3c tiles
- It also removes river commerce, and makes building improvements with workers take longer

- The only tile-to-tile conversion not possible in the game is Grass-Plains
- Hell terrain replaces desert with Burning Sands, and Floodplains with Obsidian Plains. However, these never last more than a few turns, as they are replaced when the sands burst into flames.
- You can use your settler to scout for where enemy cities and barb units are. More information here
- If you summon a Floating Eye with Spell Extension 1 in unmodded FFH, it can visit any of your cities and scout from there (this is changed in a lot of the modmods)
- In the base game, Vampires can be drafted, leading to an intense synergy with food-intensive cities
- Units using the mobility promotion can make a move onto a forest or similar that uses more than their movement, promote, and move again. This is especially useful with unloading from ships. Between this and haste, you should never attack amphibiously
- Picking up or dropping equipment counts as casting a spell, as does exploring lairs.
 
Some more:

* The "Wonder" spell available to Archmages at Chaos 3 has strategic terraforming capabilities. One of the random results possible is creating a 3x3 square of Hell terrain centered on the caster. You can exploit this to give yourself a source of Nightmares, Sheut Stones, or any other Hell resource without having to wait for Hyborem to be summoned and the terrain to spread where you want. This works even if Hell terrain is ostensibly turned off.

* Neutral leaders who have summoned Basium can upgrade their Champion units to Paladins in his territory, provided that Basium himself is still of the Good alignment.

* T3 Priests upgraded into Paladins / Druids / Eidolons retain their spells and abilities. This means you can have Eidolon which are waterwalking and can cast Tsunami, making them arguably the best naval units in the game.

* The ability of the Amurite hero Govannon to "teach" spells to units is potentially extremely powerful. It means that any unit with Channeling II (such as T3 priests or Royal Guard) can act like mass-produced combat Mages, while Druids become essentially an additional four Archmages. Between heroes, Druids, regular Archmages and Liches, the Amurities can potentially field as many as 14 end-game spellcaster units at a time. Of course this takes an incredible amount of investment to pull off.

* Waned Sidar Archmages can continue to cast spells! They are extremely fragile, slow, and can no longer learn any new ones, however. This does mean though that you can theoretically have an endless supply of end-game caster units.

* The Balseraphs can use Puppets to safely cast Dominate without losing the Mind III promotion on a failed roll.

* In vanilla FFH and some modmods, Keelyn of the Balseraphs can literally summon more units per turn than many stacks can kill. This works because each of her Adepts can have two Puppets out at a time, and the number of Skeletons you can have summoned is dependent solely on how many units you have with the Death I promotion- including Puppets. This means that a force of 30 Death I-equipped Adepts can summon 60 puppets and 90 skeletons, or 180 units in total. This strategy is very expensive to support, but if you can, then you can stall out most opponents essentially indefinitely. It is a big part of why Keelyn is usually banned in vanilla FFH MP.

* The Balseraphs are essentially Assassin-proof as well, as Puppets will always be targeted before their summoners, thus negating one of the main counters to arcane units.
 
* Waned Sidar Archmages can continue to cast spells! They are extremely fragile, slow, and can no longer learn any new ones, however. This does mean though that you can theoretically have an endless supply of end-game caster units.

There is a limit of 4 Shades for Sidar. You can't cast Wane, if you have more.
 
Undead promotions for magic users. It not obvious, but a good way to make you arch-mages safe is to promote them to Liches and give them Fear. Combat arch-mages|liches could also get cannibalism.



  • Units with the "Angel" race can be sacrificed on the Pyre world feature in exchange for permanent Fire Elementals. Bridgit or Sephener will yield several, although that trade is rarely favorable.

And you can get the first Angel casting Life I spell in graveyard. So, if you lucky and fast enough, you could get Fire Elemental at the very beginning.

  • The correct answer for the "governor has been murdered" event depends on what civics you are currently running (Godking = let the church decide).

Not correct. If you are a Godking, any decision is right. The church decides while you have Theology, and son well succeed during Aristocracy.
 
neither nonintuitive nor obscure but unnoticed: priests of winter can build ice nodes on raw nodes (and ice elementals have ice affinity)
 
neither nonintuitive nor obscure but unnoticed: priests of winter can build ice nodes on raw nodes (and ice elementals have ice affinity)

Are you sure? I can't get that to work in my current game with the Illians.
 
at classical start via calabim worldspell you can get 3 pop at turn 1 as we all know. 2 goldmines gives to you approximately 50 % chance to win RoK holy city rally, 3 goldmines (improved of course) is more or less a guaranteed shot at the deity level. Usually at the higher levels AI beats you.
barbarian at the gates event - turn 1 unoccupied city and barbarian spawn max 2 slot away - first 2 options are available at everyone - the last only for good alignment - can add this barbarian as a pop
summon skeleton adept at the graveyard - gives to you three skellies. Great for sheaim.(stumbled on this totally randomly)
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom