Could anyone recommend a good mod for Fall From Heaven? I've played the base game a lot and some of the mods looked pretty interesting, but the documentation/features lists on CFC weren't very helpful. Thoughts?

Hey, just a quick question.

I keep seeing so much FFH2 stuff pop up around here that I feel I've been a bit remiss in sussing the game out. I've played maybe a half dozen times, but there's just too much stuff and I get really bogged down in it, get frustrated, quit.

Is there somewhere that someone can point me to that has a bit of a walkthrough game where basic strategy is explained or something? I know the wiki exists, but that really doesn't help me at my level of mis-understanding.

Thanks!

So yeah, hi everyone.

Since I can't think of anything better to put as filler in this post and I need to learn the game settings/rules, I'm putting that in the rest of this post. Of course if I've gotten the rules wrong then let me know.

Quote:Written assuming a 24 hour timer with 12 hour clock splits.

1) Settling Races: When settling in a disputed area, teams must wait 12 hours after moving a settler before the same unit can move again. You cannot move at the end of a turn, and then immediate re-move at the start of the next turn.

2) Declaring War: When initiating a new war, the attacker must declare war during the first 6 hours of the turn. Once 6 hours have passed, no new wars may be initiated by any teams. Upon declaring war, the attacker immediately takes the first 12 hours in a 12/12 hour timer split. Because these rules make it impossible to gain the element of surprise - the defender will always have a chance to play the second half of the turn - the attacker should make every reasonable effort to declare war at the very start of the turn, to avoid confusion.

The attacker must also move their units during the first 6 hours on the turn before declaring war, to avoid a double move.

3) Joining an Existing War: Teams joining an existing war on the attacker's side must take the same half of the clock timer, the first 12 hours. Teams joining an existing war on the defender's side must do the same, and take the second 12 hours. Teams must synchronize their turn with their respective side (first half attacker, second half defender) on the turn before declaring war.

4) Turn Actions during War: During their half of the timer split, teams can take all normal civ actions. Once the attacker(s) have all ended their turn, or after 12 hours have passed, their turn is over and the defender(s) turn begins. When it is not their turn in wartime, teams may log into the game, but cannot take any actions whatsoever. This includes moving units, whipping or drafting cities, changing research, changing builds or reassigning tiles in cities, promoting or upgrading units, adjusting espionage or the research/culture sliders, and conducting any diplomacy other than chatting (no gifting or trading units, gold, cities, etc.) Think of it this way: IT IS NOT YOUR TURN. Teams can watch what the other teams are doing, but that is all.

5) Gifting: Teams should act in good faith when gifting units, cities, techs, and/or gold to one another. Gifting and re-gifting back cities (to build a unique building) and units (for Heroic Epic purposes) is strictly prohibited. Gifting cities away as part of a peace treaty is allowable, but gifting cities away to third parties to prevent capture in war is forbidden.

6) Phony Wars: Phony wars instituted between teams for purposes of training Heroic Epic units or manipulating the clock timing rules are strictly forbidden. Don't be a jerk about this.

7) Fair Play: Teams should show good sportsmanship and act in good faith. Play to win, play to survive, and avoid moves that artificially unbalance the game.

Quote:2. No Nukes
3. No War Elephants or related UUs
6. No Pauses
11. No Spies/Missions
13. Settle or Golden Age all Great Spies
16. No Changing Builds/Research Late in Turn in Bad Faith/Consistently
17. The Heroic Epic and West Point can only be built once you have a qualifying unit that has always been yours, and if joined to a GG, the GG was one you spawned yourself
22. No diplomacy until players meet in-game
26. Map-trading at first contact
27. Ivory is Krill's decision (no 'Phants)

Quote:1. Mackoti + Ioan76: Rooservelt of the Netherlands
2. Adlain + DL-Mania Muse: Wang Kon of Arabia
3. plako + DL antisocialmunky: Catherine of China
4. Locke + Cervantes: Isabella of England
5. sunrise089 + DL-Rego: Shaka of the Zulu`s
6. Luddite + Atlas1998: Bismarck of Sumeria
7. Lord Parkin: DeGaulle of Egypt
8. WarlordDr: Washington of Greece
9. Nakor + Gaspar: Asoka of the Vikings
10. Sleeping Moogle + DL-sciz: Louis of Babylon

Here is my small mod which I have do for a several days. It's not finished yet (I do not modify help and desc files and I do not write a complete description about changes for now) so you may find all changes which are already done in the txt files in archive.
Of course, in this mod, I used a lot of other people's ideas and therefore I am grateful to their authors, and those who have created a wonderful tool for editing.
Download link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?wptc2an8dbzby5v
http://www.mediafire.com/file/wptc2an8db...%200.7.rar
I hope that you enjoy playing this mod as same as me. And I will be very pleased for feedback

Fleme over at CFC has decided to run a FfH (including modmods) Succession Game series with a twist over on CFC. (S)He is running the games as a dungeon master, so expect lots of suprises, and has tasked me with finding an extra player and any alternative players, and also to advertise the series.

It should be lots of fun, for both participants and lurkers, and if you are interested details are here.

Hope to see you there.

Are the Calabim too good? Irgy thinks so:

Irgy Wrote:Calabim. There's not one thing about them that's broken, they just have too much love. Every single thing that's different about them is good. Moroi are good. Every single ability that Vampires have, is good. Governer's Mansions are really good (once you know that they add a ton of "secret" hammers). The civ has three leaders, and all of them are good. Breeding pits are good. Any one thing on its own is fine, but put them all together and it's too many pros for too few cons.

Bobchillingworth Wrote:The Calabim are balanced right now in the same way that the Clan and Amurities are balanced- they're very strong once they get going, but getting to that point takes a lot of effort and time. Cities have to be grown, vampires babysat until they have enough exp, tech is slow. If you're thinking of nerfing the Calabim, then you should also make it so the Clan can't produce two base strength 8 Ogres at once and Govannon can't give spells to priests. Both are at least as good as vampires.

Irgy Wrote:Anyway, maybe the only fair way to resolve this Bob is a duel. We'll set up a map that avoids a warrior-fight between capitals or some such rubbish, then I'll take Flauros, and you can play Clan/Amurites/Your Choice. If I can't set up a deathsquad of Vampires faster than you can get enough double-Ogres, spellcasting priests or whatever to defend yourself then I'll conceed the point

Bobchillingworth Wrote:Is this offer genuine? Roll up a non-islands mirror map (small size, I guess), and I'll be happy to duel you. Ancient Era start, barbs, all unique features, double events- standard settings used for these games. I'll take Sheelba of the Clan. Just be aware that the game will probably take around a month to complete depending on how often we play, so come in with the intention more of having fun and less of proving a point

Anyone tried this game?
http://www.qcfdesign.com/?cat=20

It's really fun. It's like a whole series of mini-RPGs, and there's a lot of different strategies you can use. It's sort of a blend of strategy, puzzle, and RPG. The dungeons are all randomly generated, so sometimes they're completely impossible. There's 18 different classes you can use and 9 deities, all quite different, and not really balanced at all (but that's not important for this game). They have some sort of online ranking system set up, but I haven't tried it- I'm just having fun unlocking the different features. However, there's no way to save the game, and it's easy to kill yourself with a misclick.

I bought Diablo 2 on release day over 10 years ago and after stumbling over some reports on Sullla's site have recently purchased a bundle with D2 & LOD (I have actually never played the AddOn).

I remember playing Necromancer the first time, but my skeletons kept dying pretty quick. Can you guys give any advice on what's the easiest class if I just want to play through the game for old time's sake ? (Yeah, I know I could google, but it seems there have been some major changes with patches throughout the years and I like to rely on the opinion of the RB pros... )

Hey guys, this is a little impromptu preview of a Civ-like game I’ve been working on designing, tentatively titled Foundations of Civilization (FoC), for the sole reason that I can then call the expansion Castles in the Air.

Note: emphasis on “designing.” I want to make it, but I don’t see a good way to do that yet. I’ll explain more at the end. Anyway, my goal with this project is to take Civ IV, a game that’s already quite solid, and put even more emphasis on the tiles. Here’s a quick summary of what’s new about tiles:

Hex Tiles

Civ V’s failure notwithstanding, hex tiles are good, because they remove the need to distinguish between orthogonal and diagonal adjacencies. Two rings of hex tiles around a city is 18, only two less than the 20 tiles of a Civ IV city radius. Most other things can remain as they are.

Resources and Tile Yields

Civ V took the game in the exact wrong direction: less variety in tile yields, poorer resources, and poorer and fewer improvements. In FoC, tiles can yield:
* Food
* Construction (corresponding to Civ IV’s worker turns and production, mostly of buildings and improvements)
* Production (corresponding to Civ IV’s worker turns and production, mostly production of units)
* Gold (corresponding to gold and GPP in Civ IV)
* Science
* Culture

FoC actually has fewer different yields/currencies than Civ IV (no GPP, no espionage) but every single one is important, and every single one can be directly produced by tiles, resources, and improvements. This makes city placement and development more important than ever, and allows great freedom in the specialization of cities.

Culture

Civ V kind of made claiming tiles a pain. In FoC, culture spread is as nuanced as in Civ IV, with the added wrinkle that culture doesn’t just get added at cities. Any improvement (or resource) that produces culture - such as a monument or castle - will add that culture right there on that tile! The way border pops work is now generalized: whenever any tile reaches a new multiple of 8 culture, it also adds 1 culture on each of its 6 neighbor tiles.

Culture is also important as a secondary research currency, complementary to science, that lets you discover cultural advances. Cultural advances exist in a separate mostly-optional tree, though most of them take a technology as an alternate prerequisite. While not as critical as technologies, cultural advances are a significant perk of running some number of cultural improvements, even where border pops are not needed.

Combat

Though Civ IV combat is still the model, FoC shakes things up a bit in an effort to bring the tile-based ideal to warfare. First of all, enemy units can use your roads! So... you’ll want to guard them. How, you ask? Forts, perhaps, or castles. Don’t worry, a stack of doom can’t simply blow through your defenders in a single turn, because of the rest of the rules. Most notably:

You may not attack across the same front (hex border) more than once per turn.

Sure, you can attack the same tile 6 times, if you have it surrounded. And those attacks will be quite effective, because of flanking bonuses. Let me explain.

When two units fight, they will take enough damage between them to kill 1.25 full-health units. That damage is apportioned to them in direct proportion to their relative strengths after taking all bonuses into account, with only a little bit of randomness (all applied within the last 0.25). Percent-based combat bonuses are awarded for defensive terrain (up to 50%, similar to Civ IV), high cultural control (whether you’re the attacker or defender) and 20% to the attacker for each previous attack against the defender’s stack this turn (up to 5, of course). That last one is the flanking bonus, and it makes it extremely valuable to surround or otherwise outmaneuver your opponent.

The units themselves are based on actual warfare dynamics, rather than strange ideas about how spears are good against horses but arrows aren’t. For example, the ancient age units include:
- The Skirmisher, available at the start, with low strength but a free Maneuver promotion (double % combat bonuses).
- The Phalanx, available with Bronze Working, a more expensive unit with high strength and a free Armor III (damage taken is reduced; small amounts are reduced the most).
- The Archer, available with Composite Bow, expensive but puny at 1 strength and with a ranged attack.

The counter system, if you can call it that since it’s fairly soft, is that skirmishers beat phalanxes, by outnumbering and surrounding them and then getting massive (doubled!) flanking bonuses. Archers beat Skirmishers because ranged attacks are just good. And Phalanxes beat archers since Armor III lets them shrug off small pokes quite effectively. Chariots and Horsemen also feature, as more-advanced, 2-move alternatives to the Skirmisher. They are quite effective on open ground but receive large penalties when fighting in forests, hills, and cities.

Powerful promotions are available for specialization quite early. For example, Charge allows an attacking unit to continue fighting defenders in the same stack until it is near death, and only requires the second level of Shock (basic combat bonuses) or Flanking (additional flanking bonuses). Guerrilla I gives bonuses in Forests/Hills, and Guerrilla II also adds bonuses for attacking out of them into the open, and leads to Mobility (+1 movement). Armor promotions are available to block small amounts of damage, countering archers quite effectively. And Formation is a second-level defensive promotion that lowers the attacker’s strength by 25% - it’s twice as effective when fighting Skirmishers or other units with Maneuver.

Building up highly-promoted units isn’t free, because healing isn’t automatic. If you wound an enemy unit, that costs them hammers no matter what! Healing (i.e. replenishing lost troops and equipment) only occurs when you commit a city’s production to it.

Notes

FoC is not fully designed yet. I see no point in working past the medieval era until the basic principles are implemented and tested. Obviously, some stuff will play well, and other stuff wont, and it’s important to figure out what’s in that second category before putting in too much labor. So for now, all I’ve done is write down a ton of game rules and figure out the first part of the tech tree.

My plan for a while has been to wait for Civ V to have decent modding abilities and then get started on implementation. I’ve been a bit less than impressed with the handling of Civ V’s updating, though, and I might have to try something else instead. We’ll see.

Questions and comments are appreciated. I know I won’t agree with some of the opinions I expect to see, and that’s unlikely to change. But even in that case it’s useful for me to hear that opinion, and anyway in most cases I am not set on anything yet.

The need may be arising for a replacement player in Pitboss 4. This isn't certain yet, but I would like to start an attempt to round up a suitable replacement as soon as possible to prevent a delay in case it becomes necessary.

Ideally, we would find a completely unspoiled player willing to take over turn playing duties. The player that may potentially be replaced has no spoiler thread, so this will be a completely blank slate for you to puzzle together.

Right now, the game is roughly 35 turns in.

Is there anyone out there interested who fits the bill as completely unspoiled? And if not, is there anyone who hasn't been following the game closely that might work in a pinch?