So while I'm waiting to be able to play my real turn I might as well put up my initial thoughts about the game. I’m assuming most of the people who know this game well are in this game, so the lurkers will be the ones who don’t know that much about the game. So I’m going to be explaining a lot about Fall From Heaven, and trying to make this as accessible as possible.


All hail our glorious leader.

I’m playing Auric Ulvin of the Illians. The world of Fall from Heaven was until recently locked in eternal winter. This was broken when the god of winter was destroyed. The Illians were his loyal servants and have rallied around Auric Ulvin, who seeks to make himself the new god of Ice.


The civilization is based around wintertime and its special mechanics are related to this. The Illians aren't the strongest civilization, but I really enjoy them. And they do have a few tricks up their sleeves


Auric is Charismatic, Defensive and Agnostic. Charismatic is the only good trait in that lot, since promotions matter a lot more in this game. It remains the same as in BTS except without bonus happiness from monuments. The promotions have gotten more powerful though, and the amount of experience gained per combat has shot up. It becomes a very decent war time trait. Agnostic is a trait that leaves you unable to research religion founding technologies or adopt a state religion. I won’t be playing the religious game at all. Which is generally a disadvantage, but at least means I’ll be more focussed. Defensive gives me a little boost to defence in my home turf, and a little bit of a withdrawal rate. It is a generally negligible trait that does have some synergy with horse riders. If I can find Letum Frigus(The place where the last god of winter was destroyed) first then I also gain the Aggressive trait(same as BTS except Combat 1 is 20% rather than 10% bonus) which makes Auric a much more attractive leader. I’m hoping I find it, but I’m not pinning all my hopes on it.


Letum Frigus AKA The Illian easy mode button

The Illians themselves have 4 big things going for them.

1.The priests of winter. My early game is going to be focussed around these bad boys. Powerful strength, medic abilities, free experience and the ability to cast Ice 1 and 2. Best of all they come very early at the Philosophy tech. sadly we will only ever get 3 of these guys, so we need to make them last.

2.The ability to make a Temple of the Hand building, and the productive use of Ice terrain. The temple of the hand turns all terrain in the city radius to ice, and the Illians get 2 food from each plot of ice. That’s as much food as grassland, so this must be a no brainer right? Build them everywhere. Welll… not really. Ice terrain has two notable disadvantages over grassland. Firstly it takes longer to build improvements. Secondly it removes all commerce bonus from being riverside. Since Ice is still worse than grassland these should only be built where necessary. What they do work for however is defence. Illians gain a bonus in ice and tundra terrain. The ice also works as a passive defence to ward off agressors. Who wants to steal a city surrounded by worthless ice terrain? It means anyone who attacks gains very little from their conquest. It also means that there will be no hell terrain messing up my empire in the late game.

3. Ice Mana. Ice Mana is a type of mana nearly unique to the Illians. I love it. At every level it has a useful spell. The first level spell is slow. This removes 1 movement from every unit within 1 tile of the caster. Any 1 move units are unable to do anything. This spell can heavily blunt any attempt to counterattack, but is countered by the spell haste, or by any 2 or 3 move units like the Hippus horse. I’ll eventually replace this with the better Sun 2 spell which doesn’t have a counter. Ice 2 summons an ice elemental. A disposable unit of moderate strength that is decent without Letum Frigus and good with Letum Frigus. Ice 3 is a powerful area of effect spell that damages opponents within range 80%, after which they can be cleaned up by any random units.

4.Stasis. Stasis freezes the opponents for a good few turns. I’ll use it to give myself an edge in getting my early Priest rush running. Using it early is good, because lost turns in the early game are worth more. When the Balseraphs are in the game this spell can be the ultimate screwover as it negates their world spell. If I chose to I could also use the synergy with Samhain, but that would be a different strategy.

So my early strategy is a rapid rush with Priests of Winter backed by some warrior bodyguards. If I find Letum Frigus nearby that should be sufficient to clear away two or three opponents. If I don't then one is probably sufficient. Either way I hope to make enough space to expand into. Moving on from there it will be time to implement my main game strategy. One of my chief advantages is Ice Mana; the Charismatic trait makes high level mages easier to acquire, and my opponents have picked civilizations that don’t go for the arcane tree. If you thought that I’d be specializing in magic then congratulations!



They said I was mad.. but I'll show them all!!!! Mwahahaha!!!

It's kind of an unorthodox strategy. The Illians have decent traits for magic and have a good mana from their palace But they aren't one of your real arcane master civs. If the Sheaim, Amurites, (Keelyn) Balseraphs or Grigori were in this game I wouldn't be trying this strategy.

The arcane path though has a lot of power. An army of magic users locking down opponents with slow, then beating them up with ice elementals is the plan, supplementing with other mana types as needed. Two of the most powerful wonders in the game happen to lie down the arcane path too, as well as a good science building. Lastly there are the arcane towers which would lead into a Tower of Mastery victory.


The Illians have a lot of other things as well that don’t impact the game so much. The Illians have a variety of rituals, and these are mostly fairly useful, but nothing brilliant.

1.Samhain. Samhain comes hyper early, but I’m not sure that I will build it. The creation of Samhain heavily increases barbarian activity in the world by summon a race of creatures known as frostlings. These frostlings will still attack me though. I’d prefer to spend the early game focussing on getting the priests of winter up and running. Having to build even more barb defences won’t help me. The ideal behind Samhain is that you pop stasis super early, and build Samhain. Heavy barbarian activity, and only you can produce units in response.

2.The Deepening. This cools down the world, randomly turning tiles into tundra or ice on a global scale. A massive screw you to the other players, that will have a minimal actual effect on the game. I’ll build it if I ever get the technology, but I don’t see much reason to go for priesthood.

3.Wilboman. Not a ritual, but a hero. There area lot of heroes in this game who will be heavily influential on the playstyle and tactics of the civ they belong to. Alazkan, Magnadine and Losha Valas are examples from this game. Eurabatres, Maros and Wilboman are not going to be changing much. Wilboman is a champion level hero with not much special going for him. I’m not going to be going up the metal line, so I probably won’t get Iron Working before the game ends.

4.Stir from Slumber. Summons a powerful dragon. Unfortunately the ritual needed to summon the dragon is incredibly expensive, and comes with a technology at the end of the priest and metal lines. Also, I need to have eliminated a civilization. We are never going to see this ritual.

5.The Draw/Ascension. The end result of this is the ascension of our leader to godhood. If it was an instant win I would consider this but all it does is create a super unit. Auric Ascended is a strength 60 unit that can fly(And so hide out on mountains if injured). His main selling point is the ability to cast a lethal version of the spell snowfall, with a radius of two. That doesn’t affect your units. Any enemy stack of doom will be instantly wiped out to a man by the simple expedient of getting an archmage to cast snowfall, then Auric to cast snowfall. Killing literally hundreds of units per turn sounds good… but there are some significant drawbacks involved. Firstly the tech to start the process comes late. The same tech that unlocks archmages unlocks the draw. To get ascension requires going all the way down the recon line then reaching ominiscience. We’re talking uber late game technology here. The second and more important reason to not even attempt this if I get the chance: Building the draw halves the population in all my cities; heavily injures all of my units; and LOCKS ME INTO WAR WITH ALL OTHER TEAMS IN THE GAME FOREVER . After I cripple myself I still need to build the hyper expensive Ascension ritual. Once I finally have Auric the opponents get a hyper weapon to use against him. Called the “Godslayer” it instantly kills Auric if he ever fights against the unit bearing it. So keep him hidden on the mountains. So yeah, much as I’d like to I’m not going to be building the Ascension.


Not like things worked out so well for the last god of ice...

Up next: Analysis of opponent civilizations

First of all, thanks for your interest in the report KingOfPain. The normal difficulty is more like a overview but the nightmare and hell parts are more detailed. I hope you enjoy the read.
Kudos to Shade for his archive like list which was used as baseline for this report and Hariel who would let me allow to use his screen shots.

[SIZE="3"]

• Warrior IM_Shade
  

• Rogue IM_Hariel
  

• Sorcerer IM-Plague
  

1. Town service at each difficulty start
   
2. Relaxed Training games
   

Obligatory text at beginning so that the mouseover doesn't spoil folks.

Any interest in a PBEM using the Fall From Heaven II mod for Civ?


I've never tried playing FFH II multiplayer before, but as I understand it the mod should work just fine as a PBEM, although we probably won't be able to make use of the tracker website.


Ideally there should be 4-6 players; I know that at least a few people on this site play, so hopefully there's enough takers.


If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should totally give the mod a look - it's fun (and addictive as Hell )



_______________


Play Order:

TheArchduke - Mornings or Evenings
Selrahc - Evening
pocketbeetle - Night
Cull - Evening to early vampire
Bob Chillingworth - Night or early Vampire
Sareln - Vampire

This is really short notice, but I was curious if anyone would be up for a little bit of MP action sometime in the next half hour or so. Any takers?

Have you guys seen this yet?

The Hunt For Gollum About 35 minutes long.

And Behind the Scenes

This thread is meant to update and make-semi-official the exploit rules discussed by some of our veterans way back in dathon's exploit list. Comments, corrections, and suggestions are always welcome.

[EDIT: Belatedly updated 8/19/13 with the new url for dathon's list and information on kyrub's patch.]

The following exploits should be avoided in playing the Imperia, from most to least damaging (in my opinion) - note that some of us take these rules to greater extremes, e.g. never using the wait button at all for any reason, never mounting bioweapons on ships except for special variants, never requesting Declarations of War against a race's ally (or even of any race to which we're not allied ourselves) even if at war with the target race, never redirecting a retreating fleet from its default retreat orders, etc. - but that these extremes reflect personal preferences and play styles, not absolute exploit rules. The following are the ones that are pretty much universal:

1. Infinitely Recharging Specials: If a ship has Automated Repair System or Advanced Damage Control, it may never "Wait" unless it's undamaged. A ship that has already fired a "Special" weapon (one that goes in the "specials" slot instead of the regular weapons slots) in a given turn may not hit the "Wait" button. NOTE: This rule DOES NOT APPLY when using kyrub's 1.40M patch, as the relevant bug has been FIXED!

2. "The Yo-Yo Trick": Don't fire missiles unless you expect them to hit (i.e. wait until you're close enough that you don't think the AI will dodge them successfully) -- especially when defending one of your planets that has missile bases. If you're not sure if the AI will dodge them or not, don't strain yourself worrying about it. The point is to avoid abusing the AI, not to force everyone to analyze every possible tactical maneuver on the combat screen.

3. "Spectator Wars": Also known as "Let's you and him fight." We may not ask one AI to declare on another race with whom we are not already at war ourselves.

4. Bioweapon Bug: Also known (thanks to Blake) as the Sssspin Department bug. No using bioweapons on the tactical combat screen (Orbital Bombardment is okay) unless you are in a state of declared war with the race whose planet you are attacking, and that race controls at least one other world. Note that this rule may be partially relaxed for certain variants (e.g. Imperium 29, where we were not allowed to acquire normal Weapons technologies beyond lasers and nukes by any means.)


Okay, so those are the big 4 (or 3 with kyrub's patch). The following, looser rules are for tactics that, while also exploitable, are usually not as severe in their impact on the game; though players should avoid leaning on them, and should "break" these rules sparingly if at all, occasional use of the restricted tactics below is not severe enough to turn your Imperium into a shadow game:

5. Retreating and Ammunition: If your entire fleet retreats from a battle over a world where you have no colony, any stack that fired expendable weapons (missiles, bombs, or bioweapons) during the battle must be sent away to another star - not just back to the planet you just attacked. (Ignoring this in a game that's already won just to avoid a little tedium is probably fine; breaking down an alien homeworld's defenses with warp-1 2-rack missile boats that fire volleys and retreat over and over again every turn is going way over the line.)

6. Empty Threats: You may "Threaten to attack" an AI race from the diplomacy screen only if you feel that race could believably regard war with your empire as a legitimate threat. This is obviously a highly subjective rule; the point is, don't abuse the option to bully alien races into giving you all sorts of stuff. It's usually more fun to find ways to beat them in space (or to take back what you lose when you can't) than to just threaten them off anyway, in my experience. (NOTE: This rule really needs to be tightened up and made more specific. Suggestions are welcome; I'll have to think about it.....)

7. Baiting: Any ships which will not actively participate in a battle must retreat at the first opportunity. Anything that's expected to contribute directly to the battle (firing on the enemy with weapons that are expected to have an effect, or at least soaking up damage) can stick around, but leaving a single scout in the back row just long enough for enemy ships to get slaughtered by your invulnerable defenses, and then retreating it when they finally get close, is indeed exploitive and silly.

Happy birthday and all the best to you, ShadowHM! Regardless whether you are at the cottage or at your "real"(?) home, I hope you have a great day!

Trying to send a PM to a friend who has posted zero times(MathNerd). It says that either he has chosen not to receive private messages or may not be allowed to receive private messages. I am pretty sure that he did not do the first, so I'm wondering: Is it possible that members with zero posts can not recieve PMs? I would appreciate an answer.

So, in the hope that someone interested is reading this but not aware of it yet: Team Friendly Kittens (Ragnar of Maya) in the RBP3 game needs some help, in the sense of someone unspoiled who can play any significant role on the team over the next month or so (or longer if you wish).

We'll be happy to bring you up to speed on the in-game (and meta-game) situation, and we'll welcome any level of participation you prefer to take on; if you have any questions or (please?) are willing to help, send us an e-mail (we're on gmail, where we are of course FriendlyKittens) or post in this thread, or get in a time machine to drag Ragnar Lodbrok over to the New World and convince him to lead Maya instead of his native Scandinavia. Whichever you find most convenient.