The Black Tower

It does, it was changed in one of the 0.40 patches for Tolerant as a whole.

 

Thanks for the speedy answer. And it's great to know Tolerant now works that way.

As for Svartalfar and Ljosalfar not unlocking for Black Tower, is there a way to ensure they be unlocked? I've not yet seen a solution posted about it.

 

You could edit My Documents\My Games\Fall from Heaven 2\Trophies\Trophies.cfg directly. Changing the I0 below sS'TROPHY_WB_THE_SPLINTERED_COURT' to I1 makes the Ljosalfar availible, and changing the I0 below sS'TROPHY_WB_THE_SPLINTERED_COURT_SVARTALFAR' to I1 makes the Svartalfar available.

And yes, you could change them both so as to have both elven courts aid you in The Black Tower, which isn't supposed to be allowed.

 

First of all, thank you all very much for the scenarios. They got me through this dark and annoying holiday season quite nicely. Some scenarios were very well planned, some a bit half-finished.

Some notes on this one..

Because I was expecting hardships of epic proportions, and because it was a large map, I started on Emperor difficulty. But turned out it was perhaps the easiest scenario of all the 'big' ones.

Like some have pointed out previously, also I noted that at turn 250 the Sheiams had only 3 or 4 settlements each. Most of which were small and poorly developed. My monstrous Stygian Guards just stomped over everything. Did not even need the Cultists.

I got the feeling the Sheiam brothers either started with no techs or they did not share teching like a proper team does? The 'Lanun on a coast' is a notorious teching monster, so perhaps some time limit, like an armageddon clock going up a notch every two or three turns, would be appropriate. There should be the 'The end of the world is coming!' feeling in this scenario, right?

The Overlords, which is so powerful in special circumstances, was really needed in the Momus. But here it was too much. Auto-healing melee monsters where no-healing was supposed to be the flavour of the scenario.

Perhaps it was intended that the player finds this out and thus the key for victory, but then by adding the time limit you could get a proper ending for this scenario line.

Yes, I could start in again on Deity and all that, but the lack of suggested difficulty setting at the start of each scenario was really causing problems for me. Some were clearly more difficult than a regular non-scenario game and some not. An indication on what level the designer thinks it should be played would help.

 

I had the same two thoughts - the lack of AC counter struck me as being a missed opportunity - even if the AC counter didn't trigger standard events - it could simply increase every X turns and decrease based on the size of Sheaim/Infernal cities you defeat or raze. Reaching AC100 could mean instant loss (Tebryn succeeded in casting the final Armageddon spell) or could just be "A Very Bad Thing(tm)". Definitely adds urgency to what is potentially a long and fairly straightforward extermination job...

For the non-living healing (including Saverous) - perhaps the Black Tower holds a certain appeal to the Undead/Demons. Any under your control would have a small chance per turn (via promotion) to betray and join either the Sheaim or the Barbarians. That should fairly quickly put an end to the cannibalizing undead armies of soggy doom(tm) which seem to be by far the optimal method of attack.

The other issue of note is that razing every Sheaim city is definitely the most effective tactic, but the game is far more interesting when you try to hold them. The Sheaim are poor at attacking across the sea (as the AI generally is), but are very good at fighting cross-continent to retake captured cities. It was actually great fun to mount a desperate defense of one colony (originally captured to get the incense for High Priests) - much more so than when I eventually lost it and decided "oh well, I'll bring Magnadine back around at the end" (by that point, he was strong enough to attack 6 times a turn and still defend the stack). Given the multitude of heroes that are potentially available, it may pay to give a greater incentive to holding those cities. Perhaps Tebryn's sanctuary will only fall if the player controls all 3 sub-capitals at once (as they form the spell that protects Tebryn's own lands)? Neither side would be able to raze those cities, but it's upto the player whether he wants to eliminate each Sheaim sub-civ (extermination mission) or just to hold their capitals and strike at Galveholm directly to destroy the Black Tower once and for all... (guarded by Abbi of course...)

The latter option is potentially a lot quicker, but far more risky and requires more planning due to how effectively the Sheaim are able to counter attack. It would however make the final scenario more exciting and "hard" rather than "hard work".

 

Definately seemed a bit easy once I got some drowns and a cultist up. Played a Monarch game. Only Hyborem attempted a landing, he brought 5 caravels, 1 made it through my net and he dropped a lonesome diseased corpse.

I basically built up 2 drown and a cultist to eliminate two of the the Sheiam stooges, of course transported with Black Wind. When they eliminated the two civs up north, I brought that group back, one of the Drown died to a 98% win chance ;( While that expedition was underway, I was working on a second army for the southern expedition. I got a lucky event that gave me a Stygian guard, so I sent him to the southern islands to nab some xp then when I got Saverous and another cultist I grouped them up and went to finish off the game. I did lose Saverous to Abashi with an 88% chance to win but the Stygian guard with him had a 75% chance to win before Saverous damaged it, fortunately he didn't damage him too much so I got a 99% chance to win vs Abashi after Saverous died, after killing Abashi it meant it took a few extra turns but despite 4 Balors & 5 Longbows it was 99.9% chances to win.

I only encountered one extremely dangerous situation apart from Hyborem's attempted landing which was easily crushed only 1 diseased corpse landed; as I approached the Sheaim that started on the island, with a Drown, Stygian, Cultist and a fair winds adept I got within 4 tiles for his stack of caravels to attack my Black Wind, fortunately after killing 5 of his caravels he retreated back to my capital area with the entire army intact...it was a loss that only cost me healing time and the trip back out there. Of course when it happened, it was also quite Ideal as Saverous had 4-5 more turns to complete...so three to heal up two waiting for Saverous so I could swap out the Drown.

Although I will say, I used to prioritize Ritualists...I certainly fear Cultists more now...fortunately however AI's tends to attack with them recklessly before using their spells. I reckon starting cities should be place inland so you can't clear the map with a cultist. Yes I got Saverous and a Stygian guard but I could have done it just as easily with exclusively drown as my attacking force, though it may have taken a a bit longer if I'd done so.

Fun game nonetheless, I rarely play OO in my normal games and only did so to avoid the healing issue in this map, it was far more effective than I possibly could have imagined.

 

I decided to not try for cultists, since it seemed too easy.

I beelined for druids and Runes of Kilmorph. 4 Dwarven Druids with Crush made each city a simple matter of walk up, Crush, then kill the city with alakazan, guybrush, magadine, barnaxus, donal, bambur and arthendain (who was a stack defending monster with all the defensive strike upgrades). By then end of my Monarch game Tebryn had reached crossbows, but it didn't matter even though he could build boatloads of them.

I got quite bored...

 

In the game I played, I managed to wipe out the very northwest guy by not defending my original city and just bringing those two bows to attack, which meant one less guy for almost no penalty

Was I supposed to be able to do that?

 

The free national units Tebryn gets are really a pain. It can make it quite hard to capture a city when fully-healed xbows and death knights pop up just as you run out of fireballs.

 

Hiring units with the Hippus hero creates the new units in the first hippus city i built rather than the city the hero is in...

 

I guess I'm one of the few who's never gone for OO in this one. I tried Order for Valin and more importantly, Sphener (and his healing). I landed a settler on the island from the start and made it Ljolsalfar. I was pleasantly suprised by Gilden popping up, and I used him to wipe out the Sheaim leader there. Maybe the Sheaim should start a bit more developed, right now they're really easy to wipe out if you rush them.
That would probably also make the game more challenging once the player gets their hero's and tier 4 units. Once I got Sphener, I just steamrolled with him, Valin and Gilden.
Still, it was a fun game and there were a few scary moments (right before Tebryn's last city was about to fall, a massive stack shows up next to my wounded heros. with pyre zombies. not good )

 

promoting heroes with magic+fire resistance makes pyro zombies a lot less scary.

i second the idea of giving the infernals a better defense in the beginning. if you happen to have the ljosalfar you have a hero unit from the beginning and can take out at least one leader.

 

Since the patch with changed heal, going for druids no longer is nearly as strong since they can't heal. I'll have to try the OO method.

Also, is it just me or do your units die over time without anything happening to them on this map? My starting archers eventually went down to 0 life!

 

A question about the healing: Will the Shrine of Sirona still work? I'm currently playing on Deity with RoK, I could use any help.

 

It does, I used it.

 

I have to figure that when everyone was complaining about how easy this scen was, it was a previous patch. Because I am playing it emperor now, and went right for OO for cultists and stygian, and am still getting dominated by them. The pyre zombies, and other undead are bad enough, but they are coming with tons of arquebus, assassins, and crossbowmen besides, so when they are not near the water, I have no chance, even now that I tried getting a bunch of mages with fireball and Hemah. Unfortunately, I rushed to get The Cultist upgrade, only to find that there was no way I would be able to get and hold incense so I could upgrade.

 

I find that if you don't have Incense or Gems in this scenario, then it's just crazy difficult. Sphener can heal, but the fact that druids no longer heal makes it a HELL of a lot harder.

 

Maybe its a feature of the scenario but I got the benefit of 2 palace at the same time. I started the 1st city as Lanun then build the Bannor palace in the 2nd city then I build again the Lanun palace and end up with the 2.

 

I found a bug in the scenario (and perhaps with the Elohim world spell mechanism). I had a stack roaming around killing the blue guy. I destroyed a city and instantly was closed in by the main Sheiam's borders. Their borders surrounded by stack in every direction and I couldn't move at all. The game didn't eject them either. The stack is just stuck there... sitting ducks waiting to be destroyed...

 

I am just about finished with this scenario (I think).

The biggest problem so far is that the plot did not advance properly. After I eleminated all three of the initial targets the updated goal was to eliminate Terbryn. The Great Wall disappeared as designed and I could now attack her. Unfortunately, after I killed her off, the text for the goal still reads "Defeat Terbryn" and has not updated. I am going after Hyborem hoping that a Conquest victory will trigger the victory for the scenario.

One other (minor) problem I experienced was the inability to retake a city that I had lost. Since the player is banned from attacking Terbryn early on, any cities that she "liberates" from the player cannot be retaken until the plot allows. It is annoying to lose a city and not be able to take it back.

I found an exploit around the no healing dilema experienced by many. By upgrading my Cultists to Druids I got Druids that could cast Heal (and Tsunami). I'm not sure if this is intended or not. I am also not sure if this will be disabled by the recent patch that makes Heal attach to the Medic III promotion. I did not update yet because I did not want to replay the hours invested in this scenario.

I must say that Terbryn is one of the toughest AI fights that I have had in FfH. She kept getting free Crossbowmen just as I was about to finish off a city. She used Ring of Fire with Ritualists and Fireball with Mages a lot to soften up my stacks. I actually lost one of my SOD to a well coordinated counterattack on her part. Too bad I had two more SOD on the way to make quick work of her puny empire...muhahaha!

Nice job on this scenario. I see that there have been updates, but due to the length I will probably not play it again. Hopefully the Conquest will give me the trophy.