[Spoilers] Biggus Decius and the Sucking Vampires (Bobchillingworth / Calabim)

[Bobchillingworth]

"What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!

But enough talk, have at you!"

-Dracula, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night



Hello, I'm Bobchillingworth, and this is my spoiler thread for FFH II PBEM I, wherein I shall be playing as Decius of the Calabim & reporting my actions, plans, and most intimate thoughts as the mood strikes me. This first post is obviously all nonsense filler to avoid my degenerate, yet delicious, competitors from inadvertently stumbling across any spoilers.


....


What a horrible night to have a curse!

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh boy, where to even start?


Fall From Heaven II, in case you hadn't figured out already, is a dark fantasy mod for Civilization IV. The mod includes a truly astounding array of comprehensive changes to vanilla Civ, and has a surprisingly rich & detailed lore, backed by some of the best fantasy art found anywhere.

As the mod fundamentally alters the default Civ game, there's far too much information for me to bring up and discuss every difference and change as I play through the game. Even the technologies and units which are drawn from Vanilla civ have substantial differences; the game also has about two dozen new civics, countless new promotions, and several new resources and terrain types. The only thing which has not been substantially altered to the best of my knowledge is the "medic" line of promotions and some of the default basic terrain types. So how I'll play this game is as though I'm writing for an audience (assuming I even have one) who has at least some basic knowledge of the mod; if anyone has questions regarding game mechanics / units / whatever, post your queries in this thread, and I'll try to answer them as best I can, when I can.

So, on to explaining my leader choice, basic strategy, and a few words on my opponents.


My leader selection


I'm Decius (Organized / Raiders) of the Calabim (Civilization of Vampires and their human thralls / livestock). I'm actually rather surprised that I was even able to swing this leader, given how massively overpowered both Decius and the Calabim can be.

I'll start with covering Decius. He has probably the best synergy between any of the Calabim leaders. Organized provides the same basic "civics cost less" bonus that it does in unaltered civ. It also gives me a half-price discount on the Governor's Mansion, one of the two or three Calabim Unique Buildings, and one which is required to build my Vampire Unique Unit. Organized in FFH II also allows leaders to build "command posts", city improvements which provide new units with +2 exp, reduce unit building costs by 25%, and generate free points for Great Commanders (FFH's replacement for the Great General, who is generated through Great Person points like any other great specialist, and not through amassing exp in combat).

The best thing about Decius is that he has the "Raiders" trait, one of the most broken traits imaginable. Raiders gives double income from pillaging improvements, an extra experience point on top of every victory, the ability for units to gain over 100 experience from fighting barbs (100 being the usual cap), and by far most importantly gives a free commando promotion to all combat units. Combined with my Vampire UU, this means that my units can rush through enemy lands to strike at the heart of the empires, leaving a trail of razed cities in my wake. I'm rather astounded that only one other player elected to select a Raiders leader. The trait doesn't count for too much in single player, where the AI spams stacks of hundreds of units on the higher difficulties where FFH is generally played, but the usefulness calculus is completely different for vs humans, who justifiably tend to see defending all cities with equally large stacks as a colossal waste of manpower.


As for my civilization, I have two unique buildings. One is the aforementioned Governor's Mansion; in addition to unlocking my best UU (I have five), it gives one hammer for every unhappy population. Since the basic strategy for playing as the Calabim involves growing as large cities as possible, the Mansion is invaluable for making use of what will inevitably be endemic unhappiness in my cities. My second UB is the Breeding Pit, which gives two free food per turn, but causes -1 health; a small price to pay. All of my cities will be getting one of these eventually.

My first UU is the Bloodpet, a warrior replacement whose only difference from the basic warrior unit is that it can be eaten by vampires to recover their full health & movement points. My second UU is the Moiroi, a second-tier melee unit that can increase its strength, movement points, and give itself a temporary blitz ability for the cost of possibly turning barbarian. My most important UU, and the one which I will bee-lining ASAP is the Vampire, a third-tier melee unit of astounding capabilities. Vampires can consume 1 population point from a city per turn, and in exchange receive an amount of experience proportional to how large the city was. This makes it trivially easy to field a force of vampires each boasting a dozen promotions. Additionally, Vampires can use special abilities to move 2 spaces a turn (which works perfectly with Raiders), and can summon a permanent Skeleton unit every turn, a basic melee unit comparable to warriors in strength. With a promotion, the vampire can summon specters instead, which start out as the same strength as skeletons but move 2 spaces instead of one, and can be greatly boosted in strength over time. The other two UU I have come very late in the game, so I'll cover them if and when the time comes.


All civilizations also have at least one Hero, a very powerful unit which can access special promotions. Mine is Losha Vales, a unit with the abilities of a vampire, increased strength, and the ability to become invincible after she gets a single kill vs. any "living" unit (as opposed to an undead, like a skeleton). She's essentially the perfect Kamikaze unit- get her invulnerable, and then just slam her again and again vs the enemy.


Basic Strategy


My foremost goal is to unlock the vampire UU. Second is to obtain a religion, and try to build religious hero units (I'll get more into this when the time comes). Third goal is to get Losha activated. I intend to win the game through violent means- probably domination.

Biggest strategic issue with the Calabim, and their main weakness, is that their early tech rate absolutely sucks. Most civilizations can build a structure very early on called an "elder council", which gives 2 free beakers per turn, and allows you to run one scientist specialist; the Calabim can't build it. I also am not able to build libraries, which work similar to their vanilla counterparts. So my early tech will have to come from cottages, but the Calabim need farms for large cities to better boost their vampires.... it's an issue I'll have to work on. Probably will build 3-4 cottages at most cities, and hope that minimal amount is enough to get me to Aristocracy, the technology that unlocks vamps.

I'll write more as the game develops.



The Competition


To be honest, not much to say here; it's a very wide mix of experience and skills. I'm not going to analyze them individually in depth. Sareln is probably the most dangerous, as his Svaltar (or however you spell it) elves are a very powerful civilization, and have Raiders to boot. Just looking by leaders, Cull seems to have one of the weakest picks; as one of the least experience players, he might make a good first meal.


I guess we'll see!

[Bobchillingworth]

Current diplo agreements (as of turn 195):

I frigging died!

[Bobchillingworth]

So here's my start:








You can see the commando promotion on my bloodpets. Normally settlers in FFH start with 4 movement and extra vision, but I got a default one. I started 1N of the tile my settler is currently on; nice land there, but I didn't see any food resources. I took a gamble and moved to my present location, which seems to have paid off well with a grassland pigs and cotton (calendar resource, gives minor commerce.


Will found next turn, research will go toward calendar so that I can get some meager science going. First build will be a scout (usually you start with a scout and a warrior, but I seem to have two bloodpets instead). I'll scout near my capital with both bloodpets, then move one in to fortify after a few turns while the other roams Erebus until he dies a horrible death.

[DaveV]

I'm going to be lurking this thread exclusively, if that's OK. I would have loved to play in this game, but it was already filled up by the time I saw the thread. Which just goes to show my unsuitability, I guess.

I love the vampires, and play them in the great majority of my games. I always use Flauros (financial and organized), though, so I'll be interested in seeing just how good the Raiders trait is in MP. Are you planning to run a pillage economy, or just use the quick strike aspect?

I also am not able to build libraries

Actually, you can build libraries. Alchemy labs are the second forbidden building. Libraries and Great Library are one of the options for cranking up the tech rate.

A few questions; I looked in the setup thread, but couldn't find the answers:

1) What is the map size?
2) Difficulty level?
3) Other special options (tech trading on/off/no brokering, no Acheron, etc.)?

[darrelljs]

You can't build the Elder Council building, which is a fairly big pain.

Darrell

[Bobchillingworth]

Dedicated lurking is encouraged by all means! Happy to have you here



Heh, I'm a total doofus to forget that I can actually build libraries. Too many games spent playing the Horde lately, I guess.


Raider trait is mostly for the mobility; I intend to strike initially with between 8-16 Vampires promoted to combat 5, city raider 3, and mobility 1 (along with misc summoned skeletons / spectres as need be). With the Haste promotion my vampires should be able to move at least 6 tiles a turn in enemy lands, and I don't anticipate many backline city garrisons being able to withstand +100% strength, 80% (or something) bonus against city defender, base 5 strength units. I'm not going to try to hold much of anything, just raze & then pillage whatever I can. With organized I could potentially make use of some far-flung cities, so not entirely rulling it out, but the vampires seem to work best using a "horde of undead locusts" strategy.


To answer your other questions:

* Map size is standard, I think? I'm actually not sure myself :|

* Difficulty level should be emperor. I wanted Immortal, but I think some of the newer FFH guys were worried about the barbs.

* We have tons of special options, they're all listed somewhere in the set-up thread. Big ones are no Acheron (or he's off on some island somewhere), Orcus enabled, no tech trading, some or possibly all major lairs on, minor lairs on.

[Bobchillingworth]

Aughhhh for fuck's sake Cull, I can see that you're online- and so is like everyone else playing in this PBEM. Send me the goddamn save and we might get two turns in tonight!




Eh, he's probably in class or at work or something. I gotta stop refreshing the forums, I'm gonna chew my arm off in anticipation.

[darrelljs]

I'm gonna chew my arm off in anticipation.

That would be appropriate .

Darrell

[Bobchillingworth]

Okay Turn 2. Time to scout with my bloodpets (renamed "pork" and "beef") and oh hey what is this.







Well, I seem to have made my first contact! On turn 2.


What.




Okay, I'm going to hope that this is the work of the Mirror of Heaven, and that I'm not like 5 tiles away from a possibly invisible Kuriotate super-city.

Sent this PM to pocketbeetle (not sure what his email address is):

I'm really not sure what to make of this (besides "oh shit"), but we seem to have met in-game. On turn 2.

I can't see any of your units, so possibly this is the result of some sort of map-editing bug... or you have a guy on a hill (or Mirror of Heaven?) who has seen something of mine, but which for whatever reason is too distant for me to do the same.



Care to confirm if/how you've found me? Also, got an email address I can contact / chat with you at?


-Bobchillingworth

In non-terrifyingly early diplomatic first-contact news, my capital pretty much rocks. I've carped some about my start in PBEM3 (uh, not for any reason, fellow PBEM3 players!), but this one is loaded with floodplains, commerce resources, and chopping forests. Only thing that would make it terrible would be if someone started almost literally on top of me!


... hmmmm.