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[Deon]

I think it's time for us to share experience, thoughts, emotions and funny situations from this game.

I consider it almost as a stand-alone project because it's very different from Civilization 4.

Almost perfect development with constant updates, a lot of very different races, very specific religions with various benefits, powerful xp/promotion system, dynamic alignment, a very good built magic system, hundreds of civ-specific and religion specific units (every race has unique graphics for each unit for you graphic whores and for those who like flavour). And the universe is quite unique and has a lot of story.

I may compare Kael's work (main developer) only to Toady's work: I mean the dedication and constant development for free for the good of everyone.

If you like TBS strategies, civ4 or fantasy in general you should try it.

A single screenshot for those who are still not persuaded to try it (there're just 4 types of units on the screen because it's the very beginning of the game and the tech tree):
I'm starting to build a dwarven empire. I've got some land scouted, a single artifact retrieved, a few warrior parties promoted, I saved 2 axemen from lizardmen and got one party killed by a Giant Spider (GCS analogue which are a creeping terror in the forest, very terrifying in the early-mid game if you have no hunters to spot them). There're a few goblin forts around which I cannot dispatch quickly and I will deal with them later. For now I easily kill their ambushing parties. I want to go dwarven druids this game (since I have Standing Stones unique feature just near my capital Nist Akath, which is by chance in the Tundra .

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Muz]

Good sir, I give that game two thumbs up. It's got a hell lot of detail and a lot of replayability. I find that mod second only to Rhye's and Fall of Civilization, and the game itself not far in quality from Dwarf Fortress.

There's a huge disadvantage to it, though - it's still obviously in alpha. Also, my sister managed to win entire games without building a single city, simply by putting all resources into the military. The game also suffers from the flaws in the Civilization 4 engine, in that a low-tech unit can defeat a powerful dragon with a few buffs.

Otherwise, it's a beautifully, well-planned game. Don't let the criticism bother the rest of you, that game is just so good that the flaws stick out more in contrast to the perfection. It's also about as nastily addictive as DF, so don't start learning the game if you're busy at work/class or so

[Deon]

There's a huge disadvantage to it, though - it's still obviously in alpha.

I don't consider it a disadvantage. It's just an unfair fate that we were born too early... But consider it as a gift because if you were younger you could ignore such brilliant games as DF because of bad "over-mega-3d" upbringing.
For example DF is in alpha too but it's already a gem.

Also it's quite good "fixed" so it has a very small number of bugs, even in comparison with "vanilla" civ4.
Kael posts almost weekly updates. This week he released 2 updates in a raw .

Also, my sister managed to win entire games without building a single city, simply by putting all resources into the military.

She is oblviously playing not at Deity . I usually play immortal/deity when I want a challenge and emperor when I want to enjoy the game (like this one, however I've got a Great Engineer from ruins and the game is quite "won" already). The more the better, let's wait for the development to go on.
For now the AI is not the primary goal of the development so I'm quite happy that it is still able to play nicely with all the changes which are introduced by this mod. However if you're a good player you should play at the highest possible for you difficulty level to give yourself a bit of challenge.

Otherwise, it's a beautifully, well-planned game. Don't let the criticism bother the rest of you, that game is just so good that the flaws stick out more in contrast to the perfection. It's also about as nastily addictive as DF, so don't start learning the game if you're busy at work/class or so

I totally agree.

[kcwong]

I love FFH too. All those new concepts and mechanics are great.

I was just playing a game this morning, trying to make it a religious victory. Two days ago I just finished a game as the Illians. Auric Ascended is godly.

[Soulwynd]

It made Civ4 last a couple more weeks for me, but nothing special I think. I don't really know what's the deal with Civ4, it was addictive but it was such a short addiction.

[Kagus]

I have exactly one Civ game in my collection, "Test of Time".  I don't think I ever played a single game of that without cheating at least once.

I'm just no good at these games where you have to spread out like the devil's on your tail.  I like having a small area of land that I pump up to the absolute most it can be, I've never been good at just shoving people in random directions and saying "go forth, and make randomly-named cities that essentially mean nothing more than an extra dot on my territory".

That was really all I saw.  You didn't really have to work on infrastructure in your cities, planning a nice location took too much time (just plant them everywhere, you'll eventually get one with good resources), the combat was dreadfully simplistic (and thus not a strong factor), and there just didn't seem to be much more to the game than just building hundreds of cookie-cutter cities and advancing up a tech tree until you got an even bigger rock than your opponent, which would then win you the game if you made enough of them.

But that was several years ago.  If I'm missing something important, please inform me.

[Tormy]

This is the best Civ4 mod  that is for sure. I don't play with the vanilla game at all, because I prefer the fantasy themed strategy games.
Either way, this is an awesome mod, but it's getting boring after a period. Civ4 + FFH is on my HDD for a very long time now, I play it on and off.
I guess that Stardock's upcoming fantasy TBS will force me to uninstall it for good hehe....

[Deon]

I have exactly one Civ game in my collection, "Test of Time".  I don't think I ever played a single game of that without cheating at least once.

I'm just no good at these games where you have to spread out like the devil's on your tail.  I like having a small area of land that I pump up to the absolute most it can be, I've never been good at just shoving people in random directions and saying "go forth, and make randomly-named cities that essentially mean nothing more than an extra dot on my territory".

That was really all I saw.  You didn't really have to work on infrastructure in your cities, planning a nice location took too much time (just plant them everywhere, you'll eventually get one with good resources), the combat was dreadfully simplistic (and thus not a strong factor), and there just didn't seem to be much more to the game than just building hundreds of cookie-cutter cities and advancing up a tech tree until you got an even bigger rock than your opponent, which would then win you the game if you made enough of them.

But that was several years ago.  If I'm missing something important, please inform me.

I inform you.
Congratulations! You've just described a Perfect Noob Strategy .

You didn't really have to work on infrastructure in your cities

Oh really? Ok let's build another forge in this swamps/flood pains surrounded city and make it to starve.
Let's build this +100% GPP nation wonder in this city despite of the fact that we have better Great Person growth in another one and let's create Mocca Cauldron in this city despite of the fact that it's in the center of your emprie and it's unlikely to get your units dying here often. Let's build the magic-protection ring somewhere despite of the fact that we have infernal civilization just near this city. Let's spend this Great Bard to give a lot of culture to this city despite of the fact that we're going to find a Fellowship of the Leaves soon and he can create the Song of Autumn.

planning a nice location took too much time (just plant them everywhere, you'll eventually get one with good resources)

OK, plant a lot of cities everywhere. Get your civic unrest high and maintance rocket to the sky. Let them build the city in a perfect area with a food resource or two and on a marble tile, with that shiny Pool of Tears nearby, it's for noobs!

the combat was dreadfully simplistic

OK, let's ignore the hundred of various promotions avaliable, I'd better select all +strength even when the enemy is marching an army of priests and I have a prophet-slaying promotion or the enemy is creating a lot of undead and just got his hero turned into a demon, let's forget demon-slaying and "destroy undead" promotions. Well, what if we have a lot of forests around, I will never promote a single adept or mage to Fire sphere I and sed their elvish forests aflame... Etc.
(I haven't told anything of unit-counter-unit etc.) Oh yeah, let's forget about those assasins who target the weakest units in a stack or charming spells. Just ignore them and make a dreadfully simplistic war with warriors (don't let them to gain "bronze weapons" or "iron weapons" promotion!!! Or better let them have it while enemy is using lightning elementals)...

"go forth, and make randomly-named cities that essentially mean nothing more than an extra dot on my territory"

I personally like to name cities myself although they have a nice backstory so sometimes I leave original name (for example I never rename Innsmouth or Kingsport).
Also ignore the fact that every "extra dot" means a new area and resources under your control, more national wonders to build, a good fortified point to keep your army and re-supply your war machines and just a nice place to build an inn for your adventurer or hero to rest. Also you can build a lot of wonders in the city and place there a lot of specialists and make it the best city in the world. Oh, I forgot, ignore this.

And advancing up a tech tree until you got an even bigger rock than your opponent

Definitely espionage, religons, crusades, different tech-paths (you go for druids? I go for steam and grenades to burn your forests, dirty tree-huggers!!!), magic and summons, world spells and rituals, weather changing, vassalage and creation of oversea independent colonies  mean nothing.


I see why you can't enjoy the game, good sir. You just doesn't know what can you do.


P.S. I still grow pretty tired now by "vanilla" civ. But there're a lot of cool mods, and the best for me for vanilla are IDW (influence driven war: when your unit is fortified on enemy territory, you slowly gain "influence" there (it replaced culture), also every succesful combat nets you a good amount of influence and every loss gives some of your influence to the enemy (so now borded wars are a real thing); and another one is Revolutions mod, where every city has a "revolt-meter" and if the city is unhappy/distant/not connected to capital/oversea/with enemy religion/culture etc. there's a chance for it to join another nation or form an independent one, also barbarians evolve into new nations).
And also there's FFH. A true gem.


P.P.S.

I like having a small area of land that I pump up to the absolute most it can be

There's a "single city" challenge. Also you can really have a small and mighty empire, it just requires good planning and strategy which (by your words) you lack.

Also there's a Kuriotates nation which can have only 3 major cities but their cities can work 3 tiles around them (usual cities can work only 2 tiles) and they have a lot of cool buildings to make their cities in real megapoli.

P.P.S. I forgot about demons, they may have insane cities:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[kcwong]

The Basium vs Hyborem thing is pretty cool... both have very interesting special mechanism.

So is the latest addition: human ascended to godhood - Auric becomes the new God of Winter, covering the whole world in snow as you conquer them all.

I too no longer play the vanilla game... after playing FFH, the vanilla game is too easy and boring.

[Kagus]

Thank you for thoroughly reading my post, correctly interpreting my intention, and then calmly and helpfully guiding me to the pieces of information that I had missed so that I may actually give the game another chance, trying to take things from my point of view in order to further gain my trust and willingness.

Also, thanks for actually talking about the game I have, Civilization II: Test of Time, and not the newer Civilization IV, which I have never played.


Okay, breakdown.  By infrastructure, I mean actually setting up the place.  I really like building stuff, figuring out what should be placed where to maximize efficiency and style.  Clicking a button and adding another picture to the list of things the city includes doesn't really count for me.

For simplistic combat, I was referring to what I had seen in CivII, which seemed to me to just be a matter of getting the bigger unit to crush the smaller one.  I found that to be simplistic.  What you just described is rock-paper-scissors combat, which I also describe as simplistic.  You don't really get to see any of the action (unless that's been changed in the latest games), the only strategic considerations are taken before you enter combat (type of units, number of units, and apparently "promotions").  There's no maneuvering in-combat, nor does positioning make any more difference than "I'm standing on a forest, you're standing on a hill".  I would consider that simplistic, to be perfectly honest.

Making lots of cities doesn't really appeal to me, because I want each one to actually mean something.  Furthermore, I don't want to have to manage every little detail of fifty faceless towns that really shouldn't need me to take care of.  This could be alleviated by some sort of AI-controlled automation so that one man doesn't have to control every aspect of the empire, but I don't know if anything like that has been implemented.

And naming a city?  Why should I spend the effort of naming something that isn't going to be any more important than a farmhouse or a mine somewhere?


But, hey, you're happy knowing more about the game than I do, and you seem perfectly content playing it without trying to bring around other people to its strong points.   I'll just go play Cortex Command.

Cheers.

[kcwong]

Okay, breakdown.  By infrastructure, I mean actually setting up the place.  I really like building stuff, figuring out what should be placed where to maximize efficiency and style.  Clicking a button and adding another picture to the list of things the city includes doesn't really count for me.

That exists in CIV as city specialization... you choose which city to provide what functions, and build stuff inside accordingly.

For simplistic combat, I was referring to what I had seen in CivII, which seemed to me to just be a matter of getting the bigger unit to crush the smaller one.

Tactical combat is never a feature in Civilization... Heroes of Might and Magic has it, but miss out on something else.

In the vanilla game, units have a very limited set of promotions. That makes the rock-paper-scissors game very simple. In FFH, each unit have a truckload of available promotions, and these promotions have been re-balanced. It's no longer the bigger unit wins... it's about what units you bring along, and how you've trained them.

A super-super-super huge stack of doom still wins, of course, but it'll be your fault to let them have such a big stack while you don't.

Making lots of cities doesn't really appeal to me, because I want each one to actually mean something.  Furthermore, I don't want to have to manage every little detail of fifty faceless towns that really shouldn't need me to take care of.  This could be alleviated by some sort of AI-controlled automation so that one man doesn't have to control every aspect of the empire, but I don't know if anything like that has been implemented.

City build queue automation does exist in CIV vanilla. I can't say about the quality of its choices though.

And naming a city?  Why should I spend the effort of naming something that isn't going to be any more important than a farmhouse or a mine somewhere?

Instead of naming them, I put signs on each of them. "Hammer", "Coin", "GP Farm", "Resource Grab", "Barracks", etc. Makes it easy to tell which one I should care more about.

[Deon]

Also, thanks for actually talking about the game I have, Civilization II: Test of Time, and not the newer Civilization IV

Actually I spoke of Civ4 FFH2 mod mainly. And you'r right, I just tried to convince you to play it .
Also guess how many time has been spent between 2nd and 4th version with it's 3rd expansion. You can't compare them at all. It's like to compare toy plane model you had in your childhood and a new tactic bomber. The shape may be the same but the content is very different .

For simplistic combat, I was referring to what I had seen in CivII, which seemed to me to just be a matter of getting the bigger unit to crush the smaller one.  I found that to be simplistic.  What you just described is rock-paper-scissors combat, which I also describe as simplistic.  You don't really get to see any of the action (unless that's been changed in the latest games), the only strategic considerations are taken before you enter combat (type of units, number of units, and apparently "promotions").  There's no maneuvering in-combat, nor does positioning make any more difference than "I'm standing on a forest, you're standing on a hill".  I would consider that simplistic, to be perfectly honest.

OK, I see, you try to convince me that the combat is too simple in a game you've never played.
But I tell you this. You can play a rock-paper-scissors game. Or you can play rock-paper-scissors-wood-fire-earth-air-life-death-entropy-metamagic-enchantment-body-mind-chaos-law-ice-... (there're more sphere types there ) and wield double-scissors, covering your retreat with a triple paper roll which contains earth-ice-air essense to repay your expenses. Also note that promotions can be kept to be used in special situations, also there's equipment and artifact system so the number of options is great if not limitless. Also various units has various number of movement points, different land travel speeds (for example dwarves have double movement on hills) so you can't say

There's no maneuvering in-combat, nor does positioning make any more difference than "I'm standing on a forest, you're standing on a hill"

because it's just not right. Plus there're various spells which affect terrain and are affected by terrain ("tsunami" near water, forest fires etc.)
The main problem here is that AI cannot use it very well, but I play a lot of online matches so this is not an issue for me.

By infrastructure, I mean actually setting up the place.  I really like building stuff, figuring out what should be placed where to maximize efficiency and style.  Clicking a button and adding another picture to the list of things the city includes doesn't really count for me.

I just don't get it at all. By "clicking a button" as in any other strategy game you construct a building which provides the efficiency you're asking for. And buildings are very special, not just +a -b, they provide various interesting benefits like special promotions for units built in this city and other neat stuff, i.e. warrens for orcs doubles the number of living units produced while temple of the white hand turns the land around Illians' city into ice and tundra etc.


So you can continue to play your simplistic Cortex Command (which I like too) but your words won't make the game and this mod especially less awesome .
Thank you for the dispute.

P.S.

And naming a city?  Why should I spend the effort of naming something that isn't going to be any more important than a farmhouse or a mine somewhere?

I don't know, you may miss this feeling but I like to see something like "Your Champion (of Nist Akath) has defeated the Acheron Red Dragon!". It's just a flavour which is highly important for me to fully enjoy the game.

[DFNewb]

This mod is so much fun thank you Deon for putting it on the forums. 
what is the Armageddon counter for?

[Deon]

There're various toggle-able options for a victory, from the most simple "kill all" to different stuff like religious/diplomatic victory or  Tower of Mastery and Altar of Luonnatar victories (both are "spaceship-race-like" victories where you should build a very hardly achieved structure).

Also the armageddon counter is a cool thing which determines how evil the world is. When good units die, when cities are razed and heroes are killed it goes up. Also there're special buildings and promotions (stigmata) to rise it. And it's pretty ahrd to lower it. Around 25 if I remember correctly all the world is hit by "blight", which damages units and kills population. Furthermore you will recieve various Riders of Apocalypse (4), the next stronger than previous, and at 100 Avatar of Wrath appears in the world which is VERY badass and quite big % of all the world units join his side. Also if you've summoned Demons race they highly benefit from this counter and spread Hell terrain (desert->burning sands, plains->plains of perdition etc.) which also raises it and transforms resources (cows->toads, horses->nightmares etc); post #7 last screenshot: infernal city rests on cursed lands which once were green. The armageddon concept is very detailed and quite cool.

[DFNewb]

I just won my first game by domination