Questions from a newbie

[lordcooper]

Howdy folks

I'm new to the Civ games, having somehow only just heard of them on a Total War forum. This mod seems to be the most highly regarded, so I figure I'll start with this. Should I play number 1 prior to number 2? Are these mods still being actively worked on? Should I read up on the lore before playing? Is there a manual?

Thanks in advance

 

[Nor'easter]

Is FfH1 even around any more? Don't bother with it, that was a very early, almost experimental version. Play FfH2 -- you can download the latest version from the first post of the bug thread. Be sure to also install the last patch, patch "o," after installing the main mod. You're also going to want what I've taken to calling "unofficial patch p," available in this thread.

The mod's no longer being actively worked on, but there are modmods which are, which you can find in these forums. Still, probably a good idea to play base FfH2 for a little bit before moving on to one of the modmods, just to get familiar with the main mechanics.

And yes, there is an unofficial manual, available here; it's a bit out of date, but still pretty good. And of course there's some good info in the 'pedia, plus plenty of info on these forums.

Some people really get into the lore, I just plunged into playing the mod and learned by trial and error.

Good luck, and enjoy.

 

[arcticnightwolf]

iirc FfH 1 was for vanilla Civ4 ...
idk how about you, but i never managed to start vanilla Civ4 after I installed Beyond the Sword

and about the manuals, i'd probably read the threads in this and in strategy forum for threads created by beginners - these threads usually have a lot of helpful advises from experienced players

 

[lordcooper]

Thanks for the advice guys

I'm 256 turns into my first campaign now (playing as Grigori on whatever is one notch below noble difficulty) and absolutely loving it, despite all the idiotic mistakes I've been making.

I've got five more questions for you folks, if that's alright.

1. Should I be building tightly packed or spread out villages? How many tiles would you recommend?

2. What effects the 'overcrowded' status on cities? Is there anything I can do to alleviate it?

3. How the hell do I capture enemy cities? I've been knocking the defences down with catapults and assaulting with vast numbers of axemen and hero axemen, yet their archers always wipe me out.

4. Despite being really aggressive on TW games, I keep finding myself turtling. It was turn 230 before I declared war on anyone and when playing vanilla I never attack or get attacked until everyone's using machine guns. Is this wise or dumb with Civ/FfH2? What turn do you guys normally push the offensive on?

5. The research tree confuses me. In the below image, archery is shown is being the only requirement to research stirrups. As much sense as it makes out of game, I can't find anything that says why it's forcing me to research horseback riding first. Can anyone explain this?

Cheers

Edit: Oh yeah, anyone got a recommendation or challenge for what race to choose in my second playthrough?

 

[xalien]

1. Should I be building tightly packed or spread out villages? How many tiles would you recommend?

It's a matter of personal preference. Warmongers prefer to put them closer together for easier defense and to be able to share some bonus resource tiles between cities. I personally like to play a "builder" game so I try to avoid overlapping.

2. What effects the 'overcrowded' status on cities? Is there anything I can do to alleviate it?

If you're talking about unhappy citizens then you need to improve happiness of your cities. See if you can get some happy resources (gold, cotton etc.) and build the appropriate buildings.

3. How the hell do I capture enemy cities? I've been knocking the defences down with catapults and assaulting with vast numbers of axemen and hero axemen, yet their archers always wipe me out.

Bring in more and/or better units or leave them alone. If you right-click and hold on the enemy unit it will show combat odds for your currently selected unit. Something like 0.1% is obviously not very good for you.

4. Despite being really aggressive on TW games, I keep finding myself turtling. It was turn 230 before I declared war on anyone and when playing vanilla I never attack or get attacked until everyone's using machine guns. Is this wise or dumb with Civ/FfH2? What turn do you guys normally push the offensive on?

Some people like to do very early rushes - look at Horatio's threads at the strategy subforum. I rarely go to war before champions and mages become available.

5. The research tree confuses me. In the below image, archery is shown is being the only requirement to research stirrups. As much sense as it makes out of game, I can't find anything that says why it's forcing me to research horseback riding first. Can anyone explain this?

There's the icon in upper-right corner indicating that this tech requires HB. Besides - what are you going to put those stirrups on - cows?

 

[arcticnightwolf]

what are you going to put those stirrups on - cows?

well ... i know of one particular civilization that is already quite creative about using cows in military ...


*looks at Balseraphs*

 

[Horatius]

well ... i know of one particular civilization that is already quite creative about using cows in military ...


*looks at Balseraphs*

 

[Horatius]

1. Should I be building tightly packed or spread out villages? How many tiles would you recommend?

It depends. What is your plan and the land that you have?
There is no point in completely avoiding some overlapping since you will usually take quite a while to be able to work all the land that a city can work (and specialists, if you use them, do not work tiles, of course).
I think that, in the long run, with most civilizations, you will use your tiles more efficiently if there is some overlapping and you're willing to micromanage.

3. How the hell do I capture enemy cities? I've been knocking the defences down with catapults and assaulting with vast numbers of axemen and hero axemen, yet their archers always wipe me out.

Are you using your catapults to attack as well instead of just wearing down the defenses?

4. Despite being really aggressive on TW games, I keep finding myself turtling. It was turn 230 before I declared war on anyone and when playing vanilla I never attack or get attacked until everyone's using machine guns. Is this wise or dumb with Civ/FfH2? What turn do you guys normally push the offensive on?

The game will seem easier if you can put pressure on others as soon as you are able instead of letting them put pressure on you.
You are still learning the game so don't worry about it now. With experience, you will be able to figure out what is the minimum that you need to crack someone else.

5. The research tree confuses me. In the below image, archery is shown is being the only requirement to research stirrups. As much sense as it makes out of game, I can't find anything that says why it's forcing me to research horseback riding first. Can anyone explain this?

You need to enable stables to build horses, man

Edit: Oh yeah, anyone got a recommendation or challenge for what race to choose in my second playthrough?

Do you want to try out a building game or a war game?

 

[lordcooper]

If you're talking about unhappy citizens then you need to improve happiness of your cities. See if you can get some happy resources (gold, cotton etc.) and build the appropriate buildings.

I'm still having a little trouble keeping happiness balanced as time goes on. Does anyone know what actually causes the overpopulation penalty?

If you right-click and hold on the enemy unit it will show combat odds for your currently selected unit.

This makes things a hell of a lot simpler! It turns out that grinding for unit promotions is a lot more effective than I assumed it would be.

It depends. What is your plan and the land that you have?
There is no point in completely avoiding some overlapping since you will usually take quite a while to be able to work all the land that a city can work (and specialists, if you use them, do not work tiles, of course).
I think that, in the long run, with most civilizations, you will use your tiles more efficiently if there is some overlapping and you're willing to micromanage.

I've just restarted with the Grigori again due to what can only be referred to as a legion of mages utterly creaming me. I'm aiming to go on the offensive ASAP this time round.

Are you using your catapults to attack as well instead of just wearing down the defenses?

I was not. That was silly of me.

Do you want to try out a building game or a war game?

I'm hoping for a balance between the two, but I'd say combat is the more important to me. Conquest victories seem as though they'd be the sweetest. I'm also pretty interesting in messing around with the magic system.

 

[Ruanek]

I'm still having a little trouble keeping happiness balanced as time goes on. Does anyone know what actually causes the overpopulation penalty?



This makes things a hell of a lot simpler! It turns out that grinding for unit promotions is a lot more effective than I assumed it would be.



I've just restarted with the Grigori again due to what can only be referred to as a legion of mages utterly creaming me. I'm aiming to go on the offensive ASAP this time round.



I was not. That was silly of me.



I'm hoping for a balance between the two, but I'd say combat is the more important to me. Conquest victories seem as though they'd be the sweetest. I'm also pretty interesting in messing around with the magic system.

The Bannor aren't too complex (compared to some of the other civs), though they have a very strong emphasis on war with their unique crusade civic. A lot of their units have the guardsman promotion, which is nice in that it can help protect otherwise vulnerable mages from assassins. They also work really well with the Order religion, and when I play as them I always try to found it.

 

[xalien]

I'm still having a little trouble keeping happiness balanced as time goes on. Does anyone know what actually causes the overpopulation penalty?

You get one for every population unit. Each city has 4 by default +1 from palace in your capital. As long as doesn't exceed you're fine, however every pop that is not counter-balanced by will result in an angry citizen that refuses to work tiles, can't be assigned as specialist but will still consume food. So early on your capital will be able to grow to 5 and other cities to 4, after that every additional citizen will be angry and consume food which will slow down worker/settler production. So in order to grow bigger you'll need too improve happiness of your cities. There's a button at the bottom of the city screen that prevents city from growing, it's a good idea to use it when your city reaches it's current cap )=)

 

[BvBPL]

Just to add to what xalien said, your actual happy cap will differ based on difficulty level as you receive bonus happiness.

There are several ways to increase the happiness of your cities. One of the best ways is to research calendar which allows you to build plantations over many resources that will increase your happiness. Note that you will also need a route from the resource to your cities to make use of the resource; this usually means building roads, although once you research sailing rivers will also act as routes. Mining will open up gold and gems as happiness resources and hunting will allow beavers and ivory to increase your happiness, although those last two are relatively rare resources. Wine will also boost your happiness. Use Crtl+R to readily identify resources; it will identify the resources visible to your on your map. You can mouse over any resource to tell you what it provides and how to tap it. Every resource instance is sufficient to provide that resource to all of your connected cities.

Calendar also allows the use of the agrarianism civic which increases the yield of your farms by one food while decreasing your hammers from farms by one. This is a very useful civic for growing your cities and has a very nice synergy with aristocracy, unlocked at code of laws, which increases the commerce yield of your farms by two while taking one food away from your farms. With agrarianism you will want to focus building farms on grassland (green) tiles and do something else with your plains (brown) tiles as grassland farms do not produce hammers so there is no loss from using agrarianism with grassland farms.

Religion also boosts your happiness. The presence of your state religion in your city boosts its happy cap by one. In addition, if you are running the religion cultural civic your receive a happiness from your temples plus another one if you have access to incense, or gems for the Runes of Kilomorph. This means one temple could provide you with two happiness plus one for having the religion in your city plus the happiness you receive from having incense or gems in your city.

 

[Breunor]

There are some more complex items that can also affect happiness. Long wars especially in foreign countries can affect happiness through 'war weariness', making citizens unhappy.

Some civics can also add to (or subtract from) happiness. When you first play, check out the civics when you can change. Mouse over their effects, some of them can have an important impact.

Random events can impact happiness. Some leader characteristics (charismatic) also raise happiness. Some wonders have a very important impact on happiness.

Some buildings can effect happiness, sometimes tied to resources, like theaters. Increasing the cultural sldier increases happiness along with culture.

The 'good news' is that you have discovered an important part of the game, both FfH and 'regular' civ - expansion can be impacted by happiness, and managing happiness does have a very important impact on the game. For instnace, if you want to pump out settlers and you have a lot of food available, you may want to go up to your happiness cap and then start churning them out.

I know I've probably given you information overload - basically, lots and lots of things impact happiness, and as you get more used to resources, buildings, wonders, civics, religion, leaders, and the like, the better you will be at it.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Tortfeasor]

3. How the hell do I capture enemy cities? I've been knocking the defences down with catapults and assaulting with vast numbers of axemen and hero axemen, yet their archers always wipe me out.

Also keep in mind that you generally need to bring more units to get the job done in FFH than in vanilla. In vanilla 10 axemen and 5 catapults would be a pretty scary stack for awhile. In FFH the same stack MIGHT take your first enemy if they're close and if you keep reinforcements coming and if you have other units to garrison the cities so you don't have to leave any of your stack behind. Until you get your heroes promoted quite a bit expect to burn through your cannon fodder at a liberal rate.

 

[blue_inStinCt]

iam in my frist seriouse FFH 2 game myself and i thought i post my question here
i played ~380 turns on standard speed, and still didnot figure out how to get a MAGE

i have lots of adepts who are sitting arround and doing nothing but waiting ( i thought they might become mages after a while, but it didnot happen), so how can i get a mage, iam curiouse
iam playing elohim on Emperor and my champions/knights are doing well, my economy prospers, but i cant figure out the magic mechanics all that well any clues would be most welcome

 

[Breunor]

You need to have:

An adept that is fourth level. Make sure you upgrade the adept, just having the XP's isn't enough.

You must have the tech sorcery.

You need to have enough gold to upgrade the adept (I think it is 65 gold).

The adept must be located in some place, I think it is within cultural boundaries.

The Khazad don't get mages.


Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[blue_inStinCt]

ok, tnx for the info, ill try it

 

[blue_inStinCt]

another question: i have started a new game with the elves now and i wonder how i can improve the woods, i read somethinhg about special improvements for the forests and ancient forests. tnx in advance

 

[blue_inStinCt]

ok, i found it out, i need priests as it seems

 

[blue_inStinCt]

hmmm, so i got my priest, but it can only be used to grow new forest wich is great, but what is the best way to improve the forests? is there anything else than lumbermills?
3 food and 2 hammers for an ancient forest is very good, dont get me wrong, i was just wondering if there is a way to improve the forests even more.
greetings