Fall From Heaven II, Adventure 2 Rankings, Shadow & Sponsor Remarks

[Bobchillingworth]

Okay! First up are the results. Here at RB everyone is a star, but only a select few truly are STARS:


* = Won the scenario
[COLOR="Blue"]
*[/COLOR] = Never used the Letnum Frigus free Aggressive trait

* = Eliminated the Infernals

* = Won the scenario while playing the Mercurians

Mist: * * *

Dantski: * * *

uberfish: * * *

Sunrise: * * *

DerWille: * *

Sciz * *

Profane: Incomplete

Jet: Incomplete



Reports for this game are of course welcome at any time!



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As for my shadow, I just took a few screencaps. Note that my game differed a bit from that of everyone else- I modified the map slightly and gave the AI a few goodies after my test run. I also reloaded the game at a couple different points to test the effectiveness of certain strategies and examine AI behavior, and to check out their progress via worldbuilder.





Jonas regularly harassed me with stacks of 10-20 lizardmen throughout the game. This was the first one that he sent me. At one point fairly late in the game he actually managed to take my second city after he suddenly decided to bypass a front-lines town which he previously had obsessed over, out-maneuvering my garrison. He stupidly kept the town instead of razing it, though, so I just captured it back from him a turn later. I was actually thrilled that the AI was capable of wielding at least some sort of military, although clearly it left much to be desired.





Here is Hyborem's main stack. I think he had something similar in most of the games. Between the Veil-worshiping units of the other AI and razed Veil cities he had a generous supply of manes. As you can see from the snow, I made heavy use of Snowfall. My military was three High Priests of Winter, plus a large number of HA- I knew that the Hell Terrain would create several sources of Nightmares, giving them a respectable 7 strength. Also, I just now realized that the resource name is a pun





My empire from the last turn of the game. I didn't expand particularly far, preferring to set up a secure territory and then razing everything AI once I had built up enough. The barbarians founded at least a dozen replacement cities all over the map, and Hyborem would hilariously keep sending then savants to spread the Veil, even when I was in the process of invading his empire.





And finally, my kill totals. Pretty typical for an Immortal game with a lot of late-game warfare.




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So, my comments. As has been noted in several of the reports, the AI totally sucked here. Sadly, what everyone faced was actually boosted from what I saw in my initial game. The final boosts the AI had were as follows:


* All of the AI had the same starting techs as the player, minus Code of Laws which only the Calabim shared.

* All of the AI started with Corruption of the Spirit.

* The Sheaim started with free Knowledge of the Ether.

* The Sheaim and Hyborem had free entropy nodes.

* Every AI started with two settled cities, except Hyborem who had three.

* AI without the Barbarian trait had far fewer lairs near them than the human player.

* The Sheaim AI were boosted with several "obsidian plains" tiles, which acted like floodplains (except even better, since theirs weren't on desert tiles).

* The AI started with held Tier II / III units in their cities, to prevent an early rush.

* The AI had superior commerce and food resources at their starts.

* The AI had free workers and units equal to the regular Immortal starting units. I believe I also gave them supplies.


None of this seems to have mattered much. For some reason the AI all but refused to tech. In one of the reported games, Hyborem had rangers, and in another several axes. The Calabim were also reported as having built the Lyre. It's possible that they never actually researched these techs however, but instead got them from huts.

I can understand how Hyborem had trouble researching- he must have been dying under unit fees- but even he should have gotten a least a coupe techs first just from running scientists and his elder councils. Other AI like Jonas had no excuse, with developed cottages and reasonably-sized militaries. The lack of rivers on the Western part of the map may also have played some role, but the large numbers of grown towns means that the AI was able to develop an economy. Tech trading was off, but that doesn't explain how nobody researched anything.

My best guess is that the Always War was to blame, perhaps coupled with the aggressive AI. The computer likely ran 0% science as soon as it met the player, and spent whatever few beakers it had from elder councils and specialists on stupidly expensive techs that it would never finish. In his thread, DerWille suggested the "Beter Naval AI" mod for future games, in order to buff the AI. I've read about the mod and it does sound very promising, but I'd like to run at least one more game without it before I make a case to Square Leg to run future events with it. Plus I'm not sure how we'd integrate it with the four current FFH PBEM games running without screwing up their saves. There's clearly something terribly wrong with the AI though, and it extends well beyond just this scenario. I've already had to delay Adventure 3 because while the AI are actually teching quite well on that map, they're hardly building any military For future "extreme" adventures, I think I'm just going to cut loose and give the AI some truly obscene bonuses.


Looking beyond the AI, my objective for this scenario was to showcase the ability to transform Hell terrain and put out fires using snowfall / temples of the hand. Also to make some snow + hell related puns. To railroad the player a bit, I purposely left out all raw mana nodes, meaning that if you wanted to reach the main Infernal towns or Prespur you'd need either Ice III or a fleet (or water mana from an invisible holy city ). I tried to mimic the feel of the official FFH scenarios, with flavor features like the ancient and new forests, tormented souls, hell fire, and some other goodies. Stuff like the Lonely Werewolf had no real purpose except to be fun, while the Necrototems in the ocean had the neat side benefit of adding points to the AC (they don't scare ships).

I absolutely loved hand-crafting this map, and I intend to personally build every map that I make for an adventure. This one started off as a small Great Plains map, which I then flooded by turning every tile to ocean, then transformed all the ocean to grassland, and then carved out the features from there. The one thing which I did NOT enjoy was drawing those rivers. I think I spent more time trying to make the goddamn rivers look at least mildly realistic than every other feature combined. If anyone has any tips on how to draw them, please post them here or send me a PM!


Anyway, I think that's everything. Thank you everyone who played! I very much enjoyed reading everyone's reports!

[Square Leg]

Hey Bob,

Thanks for the game! I did play but didn't finsh. I'll post a quick summary later on and a few shots if I still have them. I got to the point where I had beaten everyone up except Hyborem and was walled in by his flames. I didn't have snowfall by then so it was a case of waiting for the tech to upgrade the priests.

Fun game though! I actually popped a raw mana node from a lair and converted it to a... wait for it... enchantment node by mistake! Only when it completed did I realise what I had done.

[Ilios]

Thanks for the game Bob!


I wasn't able/willing to finish the game. I don't know why, but the endgame always seems to be too much of a hassle for me...

[Dantski]

Take into account that you did give us the PoW to play with, without them the game would've been more challenging.

If I was to change anything about the map, it would be to have a northern land route connecting W/E. I'd have put HYborem in the middle west with the Sheaim covering his flanks. The idea of this would be to threaten the player from one side if he's busy conquering on the other.

[DerWille]

the Necrototems in the ocean had the neat side benefit of adding points to the AC (they don't scare ships).

There's a weird thing about that. When I was messing around with ships (trying to find where this distant civilization was) the necrototems didn't scare the ship, but they scared the mages that were inside the ship. So I had these couple of units sitting in the middle of the ocean while the boat head first into the maelstorm.

The one thing which I did NOT enjoy was drawing those rivers. I think I spent more time trying to make the goddamn rivers look at least mildly realistic than every other feature combined.

I was really impressed with them. The northern snowy river valley looked awesome.

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Thanks for the game. I'm looking forward to the next adventure.

[DaveV]

I only played one session with this game, then never could muster the enthusiasm to go back to it. I've never been a big fan of scenarios; I think it's because it feels too much like cleaning up someone else's mess, which I have plenty of opportunites to do in Real Life.

[Yell0w]

Played until walled out by flames.

Hyborem could have seriously threatened me with his super stack. I probably would have lost 1-2 cities with major loses on his side but still. He just walked in front of a city and walked back instead of taking it. Built up HA's then Champions.

Poped Bowyers from a Dungeon.

In EitB the AI is better as well, and you can combine it with More Naval AI (I think)

[Tasunke]

Version 9? of EitB will incorporate a LOT of More Naval AI code (I think) so really no reason to combine the two.

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Combat wall of flames with either Water 1 (to put out the fires), or Life 1 (fires will be put out the next turn, as its desert now).

And of course, a permanent solution is to first use Life 1, and then use Water 1 on those desert tiles to turn them into plains

[Bobchillingworth]

The reporting date may have been over a year ago, but you should give the game a shot, Tasunke! You'll figure out soon enough why Water I and Life I weren't necessarily viable solutions

[Tasunke]

Hmm I see....

Do Ice Elementals and Wilboman's fear of Sand extend to burning sands?

It seems like if I gave Wilboman magic resistance + Fire resistance it would overcome his fireweakness + winterborn just barely, enough I think to cross fire? As long as burning sands as a terrain type was not completely blocked via XML (such as desert is).

That being said, I could see my basic troops ( a few melee, some royal guards and many mages) should invest in magic resist when possible.

-> With this set up, it may be possible for at least a small portion of my army to simply walk through the fires of hell, instead of needing magic to deal with the situation. And if Wilboman could join them well ... all the better!

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On second thought, as the Mercurians' "patron god" is technically Sucullus* due to their sphere of influence being life, I can (hopefully) safely assume that life mana is part of their palace mana.

-> Therefore, by summoning the Mercurians I could always ask for life mana from them (or even use it directly if I switched TO them)



*Yes, yes I know that Basium is technically an Archangel of Arawn, but so is Gyra. And while Gyra represents death, Basium represents life. Furthermore, Arawn only 'Used to' wield both Life and Death aspects, and at the end of the age of ice gladly gave the sphere of Life to Sucullus.

Therefore, Basium can be considered as an "Adopted Archangel" of Sucullus, because both are part of the sphere of life.
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Still, once I have FFH2 and Internet on the same computer once more, I will be sure to check it out ... in the meantime, I usually make my own psuedo-adventures for myself from time to time.

The last one I made ended up with a huge build up on my part for a 6 prong, yes SIX prong invasion of the Bannor empire ... however I ended up winning domination less than 5 turns into the war XD

(army groups A, B, and C wiped the Luchiurp, one of Bannor's vassals, during the first 3 turns of the war ... and after that B and C were poised to make a strike against the Bannor-allied Mercurian territories while groups 4 and 6 actively worked on mopping up "Bannor Proper" or the original cities of the Bannor empire. And then I won via domination )