Fall From Heaven 2
For those of you who have Civilisation 4 and have played it to death, I really recommend the mod Fall From Heaven 2. I've been using it to distract myself from things and it really is quite a lot of fun.
The mod focuses on a medieval style fantasy world, spanning the Ancient/Classical/Medieval eras of Civ. The idea is that, with the death of the God of Winter, the Age of Ice has retreated from Erebus, leading the shattered remnants of past civilisations to re-emerge.
The basic gameplay mechanics are pretty much familiar to normal Civilisation 4: you start out with a city, research new technologies, improve your cities with new buildings, improve the land around you, gather resources and conduct wars and diplomacy with other civilisations. As a result of which, it's easy to jump into the mod.
In terms of content, the mod also incorporates a lot of the elements of Civ 4 from the Ancient/Classical/Medieval eras, so lighthouses, walls and libraries do what you think they do, as do the resources like fish, wheat etc, and are accessed the same way.
Everything else in the mod, is completely reworked and even the bits I've described as being similar to normal Civ 4 have enough new elements to keep a player on their toes.
Starting a game, you are presented with choosing a civilisation. The game features many different civilisations of different races and types, ranging from wood elves to religious humans to vampiric overlords to insane clowns. Each civilisation comes with different leaders and the mod comes with new leader traits, including tolerance (can build unique units of a civilisation if you conquer it), arcane (benefits to magic casting) and adaptable (allows the leader to choose a trait over gameplay). Leaders and civilisations are grouped broadly into good, neutral and evil and there's enough choice for more or less any path you want to choose, whether its an arcane civilisation bent on world annihilation, a militaristic civlisation bent on world domination, a guardian of nature civilisation or an arcane civilisation bent on acquiring knoweldge, there's something to suit everyone's style of play. Civilisations also come equipped with their own unique units and their own heroes, which you can build, and the races can have an effect on units stats (e.g. elves are dexterous given their archery units +1). Finally, civilisation start the game with three types of mana, which enables magic (more on that later). Finally, each civilisation has its own unique Worldspell which can be cast once per game and is really powerful.
The civilisations themselves are impressively realised, with unique art for the leader, music for the diplomacy screen (some of it really is quite spectacular... you know when Hyborem is calling you) and some unique models for the various types of units (e.g. the evil elves are all white female models) plus the cities have their own unique feel. It's obvious quite a lot of work has gone into it.
Starting a game, the first difference I noticed was how badly I got swarmed by barbarian hordes of goblins, animals, lizardmen, orcs and undead. Erebus is an extremely dangerous place and surviving in it and pacifying it is hard work. It's fairly common for one or two civilisations to get wiped out in the initial stages of the game by the barbarians. Plus the barbarian presence solidifies strongly in areas you can't get to at first, with the barbarians founding some strong cities that are hard to crack, and the barbarians get a hero of their own plus a dragon guarding a treasure hoard. Also, there are lots of tiles with lairs which can be explored for hidden treasure (or nasty surprises).
The next thing that's noticeable is how you are required to build buildings before higher level military units can be produced. So an archery range is required to build an archer, a stable for a horseman etc. This is quite a departure from the main Civ 4 model and takes some getting used to. For example, a newly conquered small city is even more useless than in Civ 4 if the archery range gets destroyed...
The random event generator has been really overhauled for FfH and works really well: you get various astronomical signs which you can take action over and various strange events like witches, kidnappings, portents of great births etc. It certainly keeps things interesting and gives for some difficult choices, plus an interesting impact on gameplay.
As you build up the cities (with many extra buildings added to flesh out the medieval theme) and advance in research, you are soon presented with a choice: whether to go down the arcane, religious or military path. Research times are sufficiently long to force you to pick early, although I managed to go down all three fairly quickly by the simple expedient of being the most powerful civilisation in both games I've played.
The arcane route involves tackling the most confusing and interesting addition to the FfH system: magic. There are some 14 different types of mana ranging from elemental (earth etc) to life, law chaos and death. Each type of mana not only affects what spells your arcane units can cast, but also affects your civilisation too, and benefits can be cumulative (e.g. having two nature mana caused my deserts to bloom to life). Magic units are trained in cities with magic towers and the magic system uses the Civ 4 experience system to work. Adepts (the first kind of unit) gain experience and when they level up, can choose new spells based on what mana you have available. Magic units automatically level up over time and stop levelling up when they hit a cap beyond which they must be upgraded. Adepts can only learn level one spells, mages level two and archmages level three. Level one spells are generally useless for any direct effects but can do a lot of supportive things, like modifying cities, units or terrain, but level two is where all the fun stuff like fireballs and maelstroms are, so it's fairly easy to get effective magic units provided you have the time to train them. New types of mana can be aquired by using magic units to improve the mana resource, which occurs naturally on the map, with the appropriate type of node.
The religion route requires having a state religion, which you can get either by researching the appropriate tech or by having it spread to you civilisation. Like you'd expect in Erebus, the gods like to get down and dirty with their congregation and religion has an immensely important effect on daily life and the gods are willing to give power to the priests to kick arse. Religious units tend to be slightly stronger than magic units in stats, but weaker than military units. However, like magic units, religious units gain experience over time, which can make them more powerful. They are also more mobile.
The religions themselves are well chosen and fun. From the green Fellowship of Leaves, stratified Order, wise Empyrean, apocalyptic Ashen Veil, powerful Octopus Overlords, mercenary Council of Esus, and Earth-worshipping Runes of Kilmorph, there's something to suit everyone's playing style and objectives. Plus, I couldn't help noticing the distinct Enya influences on the religion themes, which still make me grin everytime I hear them.
The military route works much like standard Civ 4, which is build units, attack places and level up as you do so. The major difference is that most units can be built without access to bronze, iron or mithril. However, having any of those gives you a +1, +2, +3 bonus respectively and removes the rusted promotion from your units.
Combat is rebalanced so that archery units are more powerful, so attacking is a lot harder and requires a lot more units. However, to counterbalance, siege units are more prone to withdraw, and magic can be used instead of siege units for a similar effect. As a result, the effect is one of huge armies wondering around from city to city, which after getting my head around it, felt like it fit with the theme of the game. Also, the other big change is that the medic promotions have been completely removed from the military promotions and added as a basic ability to the religious units, so having a few religious units along is a must to stop an offence stalling.
Playing further along, FfH has an overall well constructed feel. There are very few things which are directly annoying and don't fit with the theme (some of the techs imported from Civ 4 still have original quotes and the wonders imported have the original vides) and only a few more that scream mod under construction. Even though the Civilapedia is woefully under-prepared and obviously a low priority, it's still complete enough to get a good handle on the mod's unique concepts, which impressed me. Even more impressively, there were no really blatant bugs, although I managed to uncover two minor ones in the first game, one of which was when I uncovered a lair in which a disciple of leaves hid before I'd discovered the tech. That resulted in me founding the religion before the tech. Impressively, the game still coped and asked me to choose another religion, but this confused the AI. Still, that's a bug of sequencing more than actual sloppiness and it emphasises the richness of FfH that it can happen in such an unexpected way.
Finally, FfH has numerous plot related things to keep the later game interesting. The Hyborem and Mercurian civilisations appear in the game if you make an infernal pact or angelic pact respectively, and the Illians can try and resurrect the dead God of Winter for a different ending. Plus there's the Armageddon Counter which counts how close the world is to destruction, with different civilisations trying to reduce/increase it.
In conclusion, it's a really well constructed mod that's visually appealing and well constructed and has fun gameplay and I heartily recommend it.
The mod focuses on a medieval style fantasy world, spanning the Ancient/Classical/Medieval eras of Civ. The idea is that, with the death of the God of Winter, the Age of Ice has retreated from Erebus, leading the shattered remnants of past civilisations to re-emerge.
The basic gameplay mechanics are pretty much familiar to normal Civilisation 4: you start out with a city, research new technologies, improve your cities with new buildings, improve the land around you, gather resources and conduct wars and diplomacy with other civilisations. As a result of which, it's easy to jump into the mod.
In terms of content, the mod also incorporates a lot of the elements of Civ 4 from the Ancient/Classical/Medieval eras, so lighthouses, walls and libraries do what you think they do, as do the resources like fish, wheat etc, and are accessed the same way.
Everything else in the mod, is completely reworked and even the bits I've described as being similar to normal Civ 4 have enough new elements to keep a player on their toes.
Starting a game, you are presented with choosing a civilisation. The game features many different civilisations of different races and types, ranging from wood elves to religious humans to vampiric overlords to insane clowns. Each civilisation comes with different leaders and the mod comes with new leader traits, including tolerance (can build unique units of a civilisation if you conquer it), arcane (benefits to magic casting) and adaptable (allows the leader to choose a trait over gameplay). Leaders and civilisations are grouped broadly into good, neutral and evil and there's enough choice for more or less any path you want to choose, whether its an arcane civilisation bent on world annihilation, a militaristic civlisation bent on world domination, a guardian of nature civilisation or an arcane civilisation bent on acquiring knoweldge, there's something to suit everyone's style of play. Civilisations also come equipped with their own unique units and their own heroes, which you can build, and the races can have an effect on units stats (e.g. elves are dexterous given their archery units +1). Finally, civilisation start the game with three types of mana, which enables magic (more on that later). Finally, each civilisation has its own unique Worldspell which can be cast once per game and is really powerful.
The civilisations themselves are impressively realised, with unique art for the leader, music for the diplomacy screen (some of it really is quite spectacular... you know when Hyborem is calling you) and some unique models for the various types of units (e.g. the evil elves are all white female models) plus the cities have their own unique feel. It's obvious quite a lot of work has gone into it.
Starting a game, the first difference I noticed was how badly I got swarmed by barbarian hordes of goblins, animals, lizardmen, orcs and undead. Erebus is an extremely dangerous place and surviving in it and pacifying it is hard work. It's fairly common for one or two civilisations to get wiped out in the initial stages of the game by the barbarians. Plus the barbarian presence solidifies strongly in areas you can't get to at first, with the barbarians founding some strong cities that are hard to crack, and the barbarians get a hero of their own plus a dragon guarding a treasure hoard. Also, there are lots of tiles with lairs which can be explored for hidden treasure (or nasty surprises).
The next thing that's noticeable is how you are required to build buildings before higher level military units can be produced. So an archery range is required to build an archer, a stable for a horseman etc. This is quite a departure from the main Civ 4 model and takes some getting used to. For example, a newly conquered small city is even more useless than in Civ 4 if the archery range gets destroyed...
The random event generator has been really overhauled for FfH and works really well: you get various astronomical signs which you can take action over and various strange events like witches, kidnappings, portents of great births etc. It certainly keeps things interesting and gives for some difficult choices, plus an interesting impact on gameplay.
As you build up the cities (with many extra buildings added to flesh out the medieval theme) and advance in research, you are soon presented with a choice: whether to go down the arcane, religious or military path. Research times are sufficiently long to force you to pick early, although I managed to go down all three fairly quickly by the simple expedient of being the most powerful civilisation in both games I've played.
The arcane route involves tackling the most confusing and interesting addition to the FfH system: magic. There are some 14 different types of mana ranging from elemental (earth etc) to life, law chaos and death. Each type of mana not only affects what spells your arcane units can cast, but also affects your civilisation too, and benefits can be cumulative (e.g. having two nature mana caused my deserts to bloom to life). Magic units are trained in cities with magic towers and the magic system uses the Civ 4 experience system to work. Adepts (the first kind of unit) gain experience and when they level up, can choose new spells based on what mana you have available. Magic units automatically level up over time and stop levelling up when they hit a cap beyond which they must be upgraded. Adepts can only learn level one spells, mages level two and archmages level three. Level one spells are generally useless for any direct effects but can do a lot of supportive things, like modifying cities, units or terrain, but level two is where all the fun stuff like fireballs and maelstroms are, so it's fairly easy to get effective magic units provided you have the time to train them. New types of mana can be aquired by using magic units to improve the mana resource, which occurs naturally on the map, with the appropriate type of node.
The religion route requires having a state religion, which you can get either by researching the appropriate tech or by having it spread to you civilisation. Like you'd expect in Erebus, the gods like to get down and dirty with their congregation and religion has an immensely important effect on daily life and the gods are willing to give power to the priests to kick arse. Religious units tend to be slightly stronger than magic units in stats, but weaker than military units. However, like magic units, religious units gain experience over time, which can make them more powerful. They are also more mobile.
The religions themselves are well chosen and fun. From the green Fellowship of Leaves, stratified Order, wise Empyrean, apocalyptic Ashen Veil, powerful Octopus Overlords, mercenary Council of Esus, and Earth-worshipping Runes of Kilmorph, there's something to suit everyone's playing style and objectives. Plus, I couldn't help noticing the distinct Enya influences on the religion themes, which still make me grin everytime I hear them.
The military route works much like standard Civ 4, which is build units, attack places and level up as you do so. The major difference is that most units can be built without access to bronze, iron or mithril. However, having any of those gives you a +1, +2, +3 bonus respectively and removes the rusted promotion from your units.
Combat is rebalanced so that archery units are more powerful, so attacking is a lot harder and requires a lot more units. However, to counterbalance, siege units are more prone to withdraw, and magic can be used instead of siege units for a similar effect. As a result, the effect is one of huge armies wondering around from city to city, which after getting my head around it, felt like it fit with the theme of the game. Also, the other big change is that the medic promotions have been completely removed from the military promotions and added as a basic ability to the religious units, so having a few religious units along is a must to stop an offence stalling.
Playing further along, FfH has an overall well constructed feel. There are very few things which are directly annoying and don't fit with the theme (some of the techs imported from Civ 4 still have original quotes and the wonders imported have the original vides) and only a few more that scream mod under construction. Even though the Civilapedia is woefully under-prepared and obviously a low priority, it's still complete enough to get a good handle on the mod's unique concepts, which impressed me. Even more impressively, there were no really blatant bugs, although I managed to uncover two minor ones in the first game, one of which was when I uncovered a lair in which a disciple of leaves hid before I'd discovered the tech. That resulted in me founding the religion before the tech. Impressively, the game still coped and asked me to choose another religion, but this confused the AI. Still, that's a bug of sequencing more than actual sloppiness and it emphasises the richness of FfH that it can happen in such an unexpected way.
Finally, FfH has numerous plot related things to keep the later game interesting. The Hyborem and Mercurian civilisations appear in the game if you make an infernal pact or angelic pact respectively, and the Illians can try and resurrect the dead God of Winter for a different ending. Plus there's the Armageddon Counter which counts how close the world is to destruction, with different civilisations trying to reduce/increase it.
In conclusion, it's a really well constructed mod that's visually appealing and well constructed and has fun gameplay and I heartily recommend it.