Your Top Ten Tips for Your Favorite Civ

[phizuol]

I never thought to send mages into combat. That may be pretty game changing for me since I usually tech up for meatshield units before getting mages. I do use Dain so I'll have to try bulbing too. Using GP effectively is a weakness of mine I need to work on.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

when you got tons of them, the XP you can get out of direct combat is generally very worthwhile

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Which civ would you recommend me to get started with Fall from Heaven? Sorry to spam the thread, but I didn't think it deserved a new thread.

 

[phizuol]

I found Lanun to be a great civ to start with. It's not hard to find water, and that's the only terrain you need. When the barbs come just hide in the city. You can expand via galleys along the coast if you REALLY don't want to deal with barbs.

In other news I tried the "all mage" Amurite army and I have to say I was massively impressed. Axemen don't have much to say about a fireball to the face. Took out a 5 city civ with zero casualties. Even sent some of the wizards in to fight. Good times. All 3 of the mana types are great for Amurites. Using the eyeballs for scouting is quite handy.

 

[loffenx]

The Grigori are pretty straightforward, as is the Bannor i believe(?). But The short introductions in the manual equips you quite well to start out with most civs i believ. I began with the Ljosalfar, and all I knew was that i could build improvements in forests, that the tech "Way of the Forest" was important and that archers were good.

I would pick the civ I find most interesting lore/style-wise, and then post a thread called "New to FFH - any tips for the X" or something

 

[PekkaR]

Which civ would you recommend me to get started with Fall from Heaven? Sorry to spam the thread, but I didn't think it deserved a new thread.

Read the start of the manual (link in my sig). I played Grigori the first time, like it recommends, and continued that game to a victorious end.

 

[Morikal]

Question about the Ljos tips from the first post:

1) When you say vitalize early, don't wait, are you saying to build nature nodes and get an archmage with Vitalize instead of waiting for druids? Or are you saying to not wait for genesis or whatever it is?

(I.e., if druids will be available, is it generally not a good idea to wait until you have them to vitalize for you, because it takes too long?)

 

[Demus]

Question about the Ljos tips from the first post:

1) When you say vitalize early, don't wait, are you saying to build nature nodes and get an archmage with Vitalize instead of waiting for druids? Or are you saying to not wait for genesis or whatever it is?

(I.e., if druids will be available, is it generally not a good idea to wait until you have them to vitalize for you, because it takes too long?)

the spell vitalize is end-game, and realy doesn't deserve that much emphasis. I think they're talking about the "bloom" spell of the fellowship of the leaves priest unit. It allows them to create forests on every non-forested tile. Since the Ljos can build improvements in forests, you'll want to have a forest in every single square in your empire. They also upgrade to ancient forests, which together with guardian of nature allows for huge cities

 

[Emptiness]

I'm pretty sure he's not talking about Bloom in tip #7 (which is what Morikal is asking about), since he talks about Bloom in tip #10. He does after all state "Vitalize" multiple times, and refer to it as "the Nature III spell".

And yes, I think he's saying both: don't wait for Druids and don't wait for Genesis. They both become available at the same tech. Getting to Commune with Nature is less expensive than getting to Strength of Will, though, so I might not be understanding him correctly.

 

[JonathanStrange]

Question about the Ljos tips from the first post:

1) When you say vitalize early, don't wait, are you saying to build nature nodes and get an archmage with Vitalize instead of waiting for druids? Or are you saying to not wait for genesis or whatever it is?

(I.e., if druids will be available, is it generally not a good idea to wait until you have them to vitalize for you, because it takes too long?)

Greetings.

I didn't write Vitalize early; it's not an early game must-have. You do often need better lands and if you do, using Vitalize is usually better than waiting (for the alternatives like the Genesis Project) - but it's very map-dependent. The Ljosalfars probably have earlier, more important defensive needs most games - and that's why I wrote they might just need one mage with the spell.

Regarding building Nature nodes, I placed their priority after Air and Enchantment nodes because the first two types always give Elves something they can use, while Nature I (Treetop Defense) needs no node, Nature II (Poisoned Blades) is more of a Svartalfar recon thing although Ljos priests/recon can use it, and Nature III (Vitalize) is less commonly needed - but if you really need it, you really need it .

Basically once the Ljos have already researched Alterations tech - which enables both Enchantment and Nature node building - they might as well leverage the spent and starting Elf Palace mana to get the higher level Nature spells.

(People often say they have no problem restarting a game if they start on a "bad" map, so if early Vitalize is needed, I think they'd just restart. Myself, I'd fight it out, but that's the just about the only situation where I'd think getting Vitalize early is crucial.)

 

[Monkeyfinger]

The only types of crappy terrain vitalize is needed for are tundra and snow. You can't touch mountains or ice, desert is handled by spring, and plains aren't actually bad unless they exist in a city with no grassland or floodplains.

Vitalize is kind of ass unless you're stuck in an arctic region.

 

[Senethro]

And as long as you've got fresh water, hills or forests on them, a few tundra tiles in your BFC aren't worth fussing about. If your 15th citizen has to work a tile that makes 1 less food than a grassland, is it really such a big loss by then?

 

[UncleJJ]

I find ice and tundra tiles worth developing for elves, in some cities at least. Just about every tile inside an elf BFC should be worked to make the most of the city. An adept with Scorch (Sun level1) is a good way to turn ice tiles into tundra before Vitalise. Then use a priest of leaves to Bloom the tile and have a worker build a cottage. Eventually the cottage will grow to a town and the new forest will become an ancient one. A tile giving 2 food, 1 hammer and 5 commerce is not to be ignored even if it was originally ice. By that stage of the game you could have an archmage with Vitalise and he can turn the base tile into a plains (+1 hammer) or grassland (+1 food with 2 casts).

Even tundra hills are not entirely rubbish for elves. Just build a windmill instead of a mine if food is short and then Bloom the tile. Eventually the tundra hill will give 2 food, 4 hammers and 1 commerce. Again Vitalise will add +1 hammer by turning the hill into a plains or +1 food by turning that into a grassland, using Vitalise twice.

The Spring (water level 1) spell be used to turn desert tiles into plains and then they can have Bloom add a new forest. This is especially useful for desert goldmines which then become very valuable tiles once the ancient forest matures. Strangely the only tile that seems not to benefit from the elf terraforming abilities is the floodplain. At the end of the game they are easily surpassed by other land tiles which can all gain an ancient forest (+1 food + 1hammer) and be turned into either a plains or a grassland by a combination of Scorch, Spring and Vitalise. The floodplain suffers from unhealth while under GoN the other tiles all give +0.5 health and +1 happy and are superior.

 

[Demus]

about floodplains: i'm not sure if this still works, but you used to be able to vitalize floodplains, turning them into grassland/floodplains with a base food yield of 5, turning them into VERY valuable tiles. However, i'm not sure if vitalized FP/desert tiles still keep their FP's.

 

[readercolin]

Vitalizing FP/desert tiles does turn them into FP/plains, which can then have forests planted on them. This gives a square that is base 4 food/1 hammer, plus 1 food/1hammer for having an ancient forest. Definately worth it imo...

-Colin

Edit: Yes, I did just check this by giving myself a worldbuildered archmage with nature 3.

 

[UncleJJ]

It's good to know that floodplains can eventually get a forest after Vitalize. Thanks

 

[phizuol]

Started trying the Svarts recently and I'm finding them quite enjoyable. I think giant spiders get nervous when they see my scouts, heh. Thanks to DarkxL0rd for the great tips, I never paid attention to the recon line before, assuming it was a dead end like Explorers in BTS. Now I'm trying to streamline the gameplay so I was looking for some advice.

Early game: Seems like farms are not as powerful in forests because you don't get the commerce from the river and you'll lose the hammer if you switch to Agrarianism. I also notice Svarts can chop forest right away without bronze working - but is it a good idea? Forest cottages and mines are great though for the extra hammers; this seems to be a pretty big help early on despite the longer build times. I have generally been grabbing Calendar and Education, then beelining for FoL to get the extra food from ancient forests. Civics along the way: Agrarianism, Apprenticeship, and God King. You'll pick up Hunting with that tech path too, which you need anyway for 5/4 hunters (which are awesome barb slayers.) I am having issues pumping out enough troops and building the right buildings to get the correct GPP, but I can work on that. Overall it feels like this is a fairly strong opening as 5/4 resource-less units and a very synergistic religion "feel" pretty good. I think most of my troubles at this point are from over-expansion and maybe fooling with forest-farms and Agrarianism.

Post-Early: Now is the point where things seem to slow down. Working up the recon tree is still really expensive at this point and there's the lure of CoE, adepts, and priesty type units. I feel myself wanting to do all of these things and losing focus. There's also mounted units as a possibility to make up for lack of siege units, though in general our units already have a mobility advantage. So let me try to break this down...

Religion: FoL is obviously synergistic with any civ that builds improvements in trees. So synergistic it makes any benefits from CoE seem very small besides the amazing bonus from building NN. I don't have much experience with other Religions besides OO, and I don't see OO being nearly as powerful, again, for a tree-living civ. Ancient Forest mines and cottages are just wonderful. Switching out of Agrarianism to the woodsy civic (forget the name right now) is a huge huge boost too. Is there any reason not to be FoL besides strictly following lore? You can still get NN even without changing religion if you really gotta have it.

Units: Recon line is obviously attractive and even makes Archery seem pretty pale especially considering lumbermills cannot be built in Ancient Forest. I'm assuming you can use these for the meat if your army. From looking at the bonuses they're not the best for city assault... so do you use Fawns for your city busters? Or work on flanking mounted units instead? You're definitely going to want Illusionists for Poisoned Blade and Fireballs and probably Priests too to grow more forest. Are Satyrs worth working on or just stick with the Recon line?

Alignment: Druids seem hit or miss. On the one hand you may have two sources of nature magic if you founded FoL giving the possibility of them being pretty strong, but on the other hand you can have your archmages cast Vitalize as well. Is it worth it to grab a religion temporarily to change to Neutral?

I haven't really gotten too far yet due to miscellaneous game issues, but these are the thoughts/questions I've had so far. Can anyone throw some more advice my way? Thanks.

 

[phizuol]

I should also request for any advice on using the Kidnap ability. It sounds pretty cool, and maybe dangerous. How does it work?

 

[Emptiness]

Vitalizing FP/desert tiles does turn them into FP/plains, which can then have forests planted on them. This gives a square that is base 4 food/1 hammer, plus 1 food/1hammer for having an ancient forest. Definately worth it imo...

-Colin

Edit: Yes, I did just check this by giving myself a worldbuildered archmage with nature 3.

Bloom does not work on Flood Plains. Vitalize can improve the tile to be more worthwhile, but you can't get a Forest or Ancient Forest there.

 

[readercolin]

Ahh, didn't know about not being able to bloom them.

As for the svarts, there are a few things you can do with them. Whatever you do, don't chop forests, as that free 1 hammer makes them much better than anything else you can do. In addition, following FoL will allow you to have all those forests give +1 food, so your real problem is going to be the happy cap. As such, aside from food resources, its usually not best to build farms unless absolutely necessary, and never chop down a forest to do it. Also, if you run agrarianism, don't plant farms under forests if you can help it, and switch out to something else once you have FoL.

After the early game, there are two important things to remember. First, your mages are illusionists. That means that everything that they summon will be an illusion. An illusion can't kill something, it can only damage it up to 90%. This is when attacking. I'm not sure, but it may be able to kill while defending. In addition to this, after winning a round of combat, the illusion is healed completely. The second thing to remember is that assasins are recon units, and therefore benefit from sinister. That means that instead of being attack 5, defense 3 +1 poison, they are attack 6 defense 3 +1 poison, and can get another +1 poison from nature 2. This means that with 1 nature 2 mage, you can have an army of attack 8 defense 5 units who attack the weakest unit in the stack. They do have -50% city strength, but because strength is additive in civ, getting combat 1-3 would leave you with +60% strength in the field and +10% in cities, making combat ideal promotions to take. In addition, taking something like shock will guarantee that they attack weak melee units, making them even more useful. Add powerful assasins and illusions, and you should have NO illusions about what tech path to take. In addition to all of this, your rangers will be attack 8, defense 7, +1 poison from nature 2. As for satyr's, I have never actually found them to be useful, but if you find otherwise go ahead and play with them.

As for druids, well, if you want them, grab them, if you don't oh well. It won't make or break your game. FoL vs CoE is another up to you thing. You'll still be able to bloom if you don't risk your priests in combat after switching, but you will loose the ability to generate more ancient forests. On the other hand, all CoE gives you is gibbon and shadowriders. If you want to use shadowriders, this may be worth it. Otherwise, there is no real reason to switch.