(May 4th, 2018, 04:05)Ituralde Wrote: Thank you for the game review. I played that game to death on the Super Nintendo. Never knew the name, or maybe just mistook it for being called simply 'Off Road'.
I *think* it got released as Off Road Racer for the consoles. Presumably the full thing wouldn't fit on the box or something.
Turn 81
I don't think OT has much of his army in the north. He's still at war with Joey, hopefully for a while longer. Our galley has a worker to shuttle over to Ivan, but after that it can either go threaten Kerkouane or stay visible and in our waters to show we mean peace. For now.
That route to the east is blocked after all (the selected tile must belong to Japan). And Toku signed a peace treaty with Elkad. And his power is spiking a little, which makes me think this Immortal should either move back to the forest hill and keep watch or cover the worker that's moving to the hill east of Elite Dangerous. I really don't like the Japanese chariot heading into the forest west of Elite. Sixish turns until we get visibility on his research.
A map of the known world for working out where various stacks are hiding. Note the road into the forest 2 south of Lorem. Is that a sinister plan?
I guess Elkad is going to re-build this city... Other news of the turn is that Mackoti has taken a couple of cities off Aretas, probably core ones, so he's doomed. We just have to hope that Rusten, TBS, Gavagai, Xenu and Mack are all close enough together to drag each other down.
No gold on the island. Do we want to check on the last island tile too? If we want to stop OT building horse units we know which city to hit.
Are we going to run up against another dead end? Maybe we'll have to declare war on someone...
Ended turn by declaring and offering OT peace. Toku can declare war on us again on t85. He has 2 spears in Lorum at the moment, but this road is making me worry. Should we pillage it? We'd need to cover our immortal with our woodsman 2 axe or it'd get killed. That also lets us know if there is a stack of two-movers poised to attack col. I guess we could just put the two units there without pillaging, to show good intent.
Game: Fall from Heaven 2
Released: 2006
Played: 2016
Personal rating: I started to write this review, then realised I'd not yet installed it on my new computer; this review is now three weeks late.
Fall from Heaven is a (self-described) "Dark Fantasy mod for Civilization IV" (the "2" is for a complete rewrite, rather than being a sequel). The available civilisations include fairly mainstream gold-loving dwarves, tree-loving elves and orcs with a chip on their shoulder, but also such delights as golem-builders, insane clowns and a surprisingly liberal state run by a gold dragon in the form of an ageless 12-year old boy. Also the previously mentioned apocalyptic cult, vampires, pirates and another apocalyptic cult that want to resurrect the god of winter. And murderous angels and demons. That's just for starters. Every civ has unique mechanics, much deeper than the "traits/UU/UB" of Civ IV. All this is backed by an extensive in-game lore - I love the way that the mechanics and lore blend to let you play each game as a story, letting you shape the fate of the world of Erebus.
In addition, there are extensive, interesting changes to the overall mechanics. Religion is far more fundamental than in Civ IV, with stark differences in the abilities tied to each one. There is a huge range of spells, both priestly and arcanc, available for those who want to put in the effort to get them. The tech tree is genuinely a tree - it is possible (in fact necessary at higher difficulties or in MP) to ignore whole branches and specialise in priests, wizards, horsemen, archers, hunters or just people who hit things. Barbarians are a deadly threat from the first few turns, and the game has an Armageddon Counter that can turn the world into a literal hell-hole if allowed (or encouraged) to get too high.
There are undoubted flaws. For a mod, it's astonishing, but not as polished as the base game. It's not really balanced - given the right starting terrain and a bit of luck some civs can rapidly reach dominant positions (actual in-game snowballs are available in the right circumstances - see PBEM 1). The AI doesn't really know what to do with all the toys it has available, so good players (not me) can dig themselves out of ridiculously deep holes. Tholal's "better naval AI" mod-mod - somewhat misnamed, as it affects far more than just boats - is a definite upgrade and gave me a couple of nasty shocks after I installed it. Many civs are terrain dependent (elves need trees, pirates need coast, winter cults need ice), so you're better off running the custom map scripts rather than the mainstream ones, and the one installed with the mod is peculiar; it's common to be completely cut off by sea and mountains to start with. Again, there are third-party alternatives that improve matters, but it feels less smooth than vanilla Civ. However, it remains a fun, different take, and might actually be my favourite version of all.
Note that there is a further mod-mod used here on RB - "Erebus in the Balance". I've not played it, but there are PBEMs and SGs on the site worth digging up for both EitB and the original FFH2. A new PBEM started only a few weeks ago, after a fun variant SG. Not a bad history for a ten-year old game built by people in their spare time, even if based on an existing framework.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
We have peace with OT4E and surprisingly with Elkad, who must be a bit worried about our scouting immortal and declared to offer peace... Odd. We're probably going to declare on GJ next turn to get through. Unfortunately I don't think we can offer peace, as the immortal will just bounce back to where he is now.
No more seafood available, so we'll probably settle the desert tile. Although we've decided OT has metal casting already (forge in Carthage), so we won't have trireme-based naval supremacy, and settling on the copper might be more defensible. Our exploring immortal will sit on the plains hill to keep an eye on things.
We were going to 3-whip a forge this turn and put two chops into the Colossus next turn. Couldn't you have waited for three turns OT4E and let us get 150 gold? Well we'll start on the Great Lighthouse next turn, which will be great if we complete it and great if we get failgold...
Down south we need passage through this dead end. Including all the peace treaty war/peace wars this is our tenth conflict. I moved SE rather than take the 88% shot at one of the axes.
Up north we're building forges everywhere and battening down the hatches in case Toku wants another fight. We have 2 immortals and 2 axes in Colonization and 2 immortals, an axe and a spear in Dragon Age. That's most of our army, and I don't think he can break through either.
War number eleven is declared and Toku offers us peace. We decline and will offer it back so that it staggers a little better with OT4E (whose treaty runs out t93). Mack took a city from Rusten this turn - is this a great general for him? I was tempted to snipe this worker, but that's probably suicide, so we didn't.
Joey offered peace but we need to get out of his culture or we'll be teleported back where we came from, so we moved here, then offered a cease fire (in case we need to get through more culture). Next turn I think we want to head south east?
Our third wonder attempt actually gets some hammers in. Fingers crossed someone else doesn't complete it before these hammers are processed at the end of this turn. It'd be nice to pop borders with this build! We need to work out how to mine that third hill in time for the city to grow to size 5. We can grow a turn earlier by working the lake once over the gems or mine - do we want to? (Note my text editor impinging on the picture because my pc is currently a horrible crawling mess with a 100% hard disc use problem and can't switch between programs properly any more.)
Our woody 2 axe can get here in time to spy on the new OT city and check for threats.
Demos and some graphs. Crop yield is the important one, right?
On both my machines in the last 2 months I noticed that my hard drives were full, and couldn't for the life of me understand why ... After going through the C drive folder by folder I narrowed it down to the Windows folder. Turns out, it has a temp folder (full of window update fragments/backups) which had ballooned well over 200 GB on one drive, and maxed out the other drive at over 100 GB I deleted the entire contents of the folder and my machines were back to normal
In foreign news TBS settled four new cities this turn. Show off. He's probably reached a fancy tech like currency or Code of Laws like what us laggards can only dream of.
Our scouting immortal has three options for next turn:
- NE into the jungle heartland
- SE-? to move faster (and piss Joey off)
- S to try to sneak through a little gap there
We've whipped three forges and a worker this turn and that brings our costs down to exactly what we need to get writing, allowing us to start building libraries next turn. Unless inflation goes up and ruins everything. Also we're finally guaranteed some failgold (at least 39!) at the third attempt.
On both my machines in the last 2 months I noticed that my hard drives were full, and couldn't for the life of me understand why ... After going through the C drive folder by folder I narrowed it down to the Windows folder. Turns out, it has a temp folder (full of window update fragments/backups) which had ballooned well over 200 GB on one drive, and maxed out the other drive at over 100 GB I deleted the entire contents of the folder and my machines were back to normal
Mine has plenty of space but for some reason windows search keeps writing to the drive, meaning I either disable searching or wait ages for anything to happen. I think I need a new pc.
Lots of news this turn - Rusten built the Hindu shrine, TBS got the hanging gardens (with a LOT of cities ), we got Writing (almost to the beaker) and we met Xenu (SPI/CRE Greece). Looks like there's a route through to find him here.
He's got seven cities to our ten, but has the best religion, so is a big threat.
We can start planning how to kill Toku's scouting work boat now - it'll just reach Goldeneye on the turn our peace treaty expires. Unfortunately we won't get XP for it, but it'll be satisfying...
Do we want to check on the last island tile too? If we want to stop OT building horse units we know which city to hit. 
Well we'll start on the Great Lighthouse next turn, which will be great if we complete it and great if we get failgold...
I moved SE rather than take the 88% shot at one of the axes.
- is this a great general for him? I was tempted to snipe this worker, but that's probably suicide, so we didn't.
I deleted the entire contents of the folder and my machines were back to normal
Unfortunately we won't get XP for it, but it'll be satisfying...
