sheaim and terrain on fire?

[davidlallen]

So far I have only played a half dozen or so FFH games and I love it. But I am confused about the Sheaim. In two games I played, even in the early game with the AC in single digits, I was beset by terrain on fire. A lot of it. I am using version 0.33 and patch e. At like turn 100, I had probably 4-5 plots on fire and maybe 20-30 plots of smoke, basically covering my whole civ area. Not only did I lose a lot of improvements, but the graphics slowed my machine to a crawl when scrolling.

I played a game or two as another evil civ, Svartalfar, and I did not have any fires for the whole game. Well, a short game, 300 turns, 4 players, enough to win with AC less than 20.

The excellent FFH manual does not say anything specific about Sheaim and fire. I wasn't able to find any posts in this sub-forum, except for one recently about infernals which points to using water or life adepts. At less than 100 turns into the game, there is no way I was going to have any adepts, especially not water or life as Sheaim.

If there is some strategy for reducing the loss due to early game Sheaim fire, I'd love to know.

 

[xienwolf]

Most likely you just happened to be close to Acheron and it is coincidence that you had Sheiam both times. When the barbarians build him (essentially as soon as they have held a city for 25 turns, 12 in favorable terrain) he sets all nearby forests/jungles on fire. Certain mapscripts mean that the entire world will soon follow

 

[Zechnophobe]

Actually, the Pyre Zombie unit for the Sheaim (Needs bronze working) can cause fires when it dies. So that another possibility.

 

[davidlallen]

I don't think Acheron was around. At least, the fires were coming in areas where I could see that Acheron was not nearby, either my own terrain or scouted enemy AI terrain. I had blown up a couple of pyre zombies in both cases. Maybe that is it. However, this is nowhere mentioned in the pedia or manual. In one game I know I only blew up *two* PZ and there was still a huge fire.

Is it known whether/how fast it spreads? Is there any way to put out this type of fire, which is not hell terrain? The PZ is pretty early game, and if the only counter is a water adept, that is way too hard.

 

[xienwolf]

Water adepts are the only way to put out a fire. And they spread like mad to any connected forest. So either you have to chop out a huge section of forests, or you need to switch to FoL and gain a large chunk of Ancient Forests (harder to set on fire) to stop it. Basically if the section of trees is large enough, the fire will never end because new trees grow fast enough for the fire to come back and start over again.

 

[davidlallen]

Perhaps it is an implicit request, but, for the next guy, please add a comment to the PZ unit in the manual that when it explodes it may start this type of fire.

 

[xienwolf]

Aye, I've already added in a mention that they have a 20% chance of starting Smoke in the tile when they die if it is a Forest, New Forest or Jungle.