Two Games, Two different results, Lots of learning...

[Feyd Rautha]

So I heard a lot of buzz about Fall from Heaven II coming out and so I decided to break down and try it out. I've "played" (for a few hours at least) two games so far and I had greatly different results.

The first game I do a random leader on Erebus map with raging barbs and wind up with Flauros. This doesn't work out for me so well though since it's hard to leverage Financial and Organized when you have no plains and you can't expand beyond three cities without winding up completely overrun. Add to that the fact that I had no idea about half the concepts in the game nor how to proceed through the tech tree and I barely made it through the early game into the middle (while finding myself in the middle of the pack on a difficulty on which I'm normally the far and ahead leader).

Ugh.

My second game I decide to play it safer and choose the Lanun on an Archapeliago map. I really liked this one! I was able to leverage my financial trait which was very nice and allowed me to quickly tech and see what worked and what didn't. I put a few too many cities on my starting island, but the resources were pretty spread out and so it was hard to plot things properly (I think I placed my capitol too early even though it was in the only river square).

I missed out on the Heron Throne , but overall by the time I ended my session it was around turn 300 and I was in the lead by a couple hundred points, at peace with everyone, and pushing out to my second large island after muddling about a bit in the early going.

I did discover a few things though that I thought were rather cool and I'm sure I'll be discovering more...
Pirate Coves are OP. If you plan well ahead you can get your city running on three of these bad boys. It's sick the benefit they provide. I'm sure if it were not an archapeliago map I would have been hosed by one of the more traditionally powered civilizations, but since I was allowed to turtle up these things made my economy a juggernaut.

Also I found a strat that is ridiculously OP...

Spoiler :

Be the first to discover a religion (any) and tech trading. You can then quickly gift it to everyone (may take a few turns to get them all the prereqs). Why give away a hard earned tech? Because whenever a religion tech is discovered the person that discovered (or was given) it gets a free "missionary" unit. In this game I quickly discovered Whispers from the Deep and gifted it as part of an exchange to an AI player. Lo and behold he switched to Octopus Overlords that turn. So... taking this into consideration I gave it to everyone and in a 12 player game 10 of us are Octopus Overlord cultists. Diplomacy has been a breeze since that point AND I've been able to run at 100% tech with a gold surplus for most of the game (before I went to the second continent).

Anyway, I really enjoy the mod and I look forward to experiencing more and more of it. Any suggestions on fun things to try out in a new game just let me know!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

playing Lanun on Archipelago is definitely OP

don't play Erebus, I suggest you play perfectworld2 or erebuscontinents. mountaincoast is also very nice. the latter two available in the modmod sections of this forum, the first in the mapscripts section of general civ4.

what's wrong with not having any plains with flauros btw? you don't need cottages with financial. adopt aristocracy and agrarianism, get sanitation and spam farms everywhere. on grasslands, you'll end up with tiles that give 4F3C, 4C if riverside. all that food will also allow you to use tons or specialists and feed your vampires like crazy while having a crazy economy and a big empire. aristocracy is awesome and very easy to use, it gives -1F and +2C on every farm. agrarianism gives +1F -1H on every farm, but since you're building them on grasslands anyway you only get the benefit. and the +2C is enough to trigger financial so it's actually 3C. you don't even have to think, just spam farms everywhere. flauros with grasslands is arguably the most powerful situation you can find yourself in in FFH and the best thing is that you'll be getting Code of Laws very soon anyway, since you'll be teching towards Feudalism for vampires

 

[cabbagemeister]

Giving away the religion tech is indeed a good strategy for diplomacy. But you're not getting something for free--you need to be aware of the costs and tradeoffs you're making.

1) Religion is not purely a diplomacy / happiness / shrine gold modifier in FFH as it is in BTS--there are very substantial military benefits to it as well. In your case, you just gave the whole world easy access to Cultists (the Octopus Overlords' Priest unit), which are probably the most ridiculously overpowered unit in the game on Archipelago maps. I'd be diplomatically happy with you too!

2) Religions also give access to certain powerful Wonders and even more powerful Heroes (units that can only be built once in the entire game). In your case, once you research the right techs, Octopus Overlords allows you to build the Tower of Complacency, a Globe Theater-style world wonder, as well as Saverous, a very powerful midgame hero who can crack strongly defended cities for you, and Hemah, the most powerful Arcane unit in the game. Again, by giving the religion away, you've made your diplomacy easy, but you've also greatly increased the competition for these things!

 

[Andvare]

Remember that Calabim financial- powered aristocratic grassland farms, are actually 4F3C2H+whatever specialists and/or other tile worked, as you have the best building in the game, the Calabim courthouse, which effectively gives you 1H for each population (or, at max population, 1H per 2F).
Huge populations and fast growth is everything for the Calabim.
This also means that unhealth is more damaging to the Calabim than to others, as it's -1F½H per unhealth above the limit.

Starvation is "cured" by feeding the hungry to the vampires.

Of course, this makes it a bit overly simple to specialize Calabim cities, as there is no need for cottages. Just get to aristocracy, and you are good (usually).

BTW, this is the reason the Tower of Complacency works poorly with the Calabim, the city looses the benefit from the Calabim courthouse.

 

[zup]

Also, Calabim need something to reliably weaken their enemies' units but not killing them. After its nerf, I'm not sure if maelstorm is still enough. On maps with heavy water, tsunami can do it, which is good because Calabim seriously want OO, explained below. Going AV first for ring of fire and then keeping whatever ritualists you built safe at all costs can work too. Getting a few confessors (Order priests) for bless won't hurt, just don't lose them. Even throwing away summons at terrible odds might get the job done but you might end up with an unlucky kill or accomplish nothing and just feed xp. Secure sheut stones if you can, Hyborem is your friend.

The Calabim replacement for warriors, bloodpets will never obsolete. You can build them even late to the game and even a newly established city can pump them out like there's no tomorrow. Now you have to get them to level 6 somehow, 26 xp to go. Free xp helps a lot, at least try to score form of the titan, +2 xp for all newly built units. Flauros is organized and can build command posts for another +2 xp. But even with bronze weapons and bless, 4 + 1 holy + 1 death, they just can't do anything later on, against healthy units. But if they are hurt. You should be doing this on a massive scale so losing a few at 95% odds is nothing to worry about. Now you need to gift them vampirism, which can only be given to living units. Now, haul their asses back to a city with a temple of the overlords and drown them, though they are no longer alive, they retain their vampiric abilities and also become undead which gives them access to two nasty promotions, cannibalism and fear. The drown can be further promoted to stygian guards, who are demons and can learn stigmata which is awesomely op when the armageddon is getting close. Also immunity to death, poison and unholy strengths is a pretty big deal in this game. Stygians are stronger than regular champions and as vampires they have the advantage in experience too. Life II spell hurts you but you have your regular, living vampires as backup and summoners. And the enemy will have to focus heavily on arcane units, whom are squishy and good fodder for your new stygian-to-be-bloodpets. Weakness to holy is no big deal unless you face Basium, but once again, you can use regular vampires and their summons, just in case your stygians cannot overwhelm them, which I doubt. Your biggest threat are units with shock I + II + demon slaying + undead slaying, but unless your enemy is Calabim as well, he will hardly have many such specialized units. Finally, should armageddon hit, your stygians will just shrug their shoulders and continue to butcher everything in sight.

If you need some stack/city defenders, upgrade some of your vampiric bloodpets to archers. Just remember to feast a lot first. You can get promotions of both melee and archery units for them.

Vampire Hemah is also an insanely good caster. Saverous cannot be gifted vampirism, which is a shame. But all of your stygian guards are pretty much equal to him anyway. As Calabim, don't build the tower of complacency, that's just throwing away hammers. Asylums are nasty imo.

Oh sure it is a lot of work but the reward is also great. Your army has the strongest tier 3 units in the game, can cross oceans without ships and attack from the sea so they are difficult to counter, will eat their fallen foes, are difficult to attack unless the enemy has spirit mana (for courage) and can (should) be supported by ridiculously powerful OO cultists. Remember to giggle like mad when the horsemen show up.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Sorry the benefit I was speaking of was financial. Since I had the holy city and shrine I wanted it spread. Yes I allowed for cultists, but with the tech lead I had on my rivals especially after being able to go full research. Add to that the large navy I had built up and I wasn't worried about cultists.

In the end, this made shooting for a peaceful victory an obvious path. (Now... would I have done it if I was on a land map...that's the tricky question.

 

[WarKirby]

Your first game as flauros, would almost certainly have been winnable regardless of the circumstances. The Calabim are an extremely powerful civ, and financial is the most overpowered trait in the game, Or in base BTS. Calabim are pretty decent early on, but once you get vampires, you can just tear the whole world to pieces.

For a religious choice as Calabim, I find anything that helps with growing massive cities is good. Order, AV, and FoL are all exceptional at this. OO gives the Tower of Complacency wonder, which you should never ever ever build (as calabim) because it negates your extra production from governor's manors.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I still have the save and I might go back to it. The problem is that it was on "flexible difficulty" because I thought that would just be a one tier bump up or down based on where I started. Unfortunately this is not the case and I'm stuck on Deity at this point (the barbs must have been really bad for some of the other players.

As for my problem with the map that was mainly due to the poor placement of my initial city. I have too many hills to really make a bunch of feed farms nor access to any other civ due to the way the map spawned (mountains everywhere) and so my armies will be slow to strike if they make it around at all.

I may go back to it when I'm more familiar with the game and think I can keep up with the deity level. (BTW even with four cities and organized my economy is in shambles. I simply had to produce too many units to survive the onset of the barbarians.)