Will it let me summon dragons and raise volcanos across the land? If it’s just Elvish Archers instead of regular Archers, I’m not that interested.
Is there anywhere hosting this besides gameflood?
Its not just a graphical/text replacement but a total conversion of Civ4. Yes you can create dragons, yes you can transform the world into a volcanic hellish terrain (in fact that is the goal of the Infernals, one of the games 21 civs).
Fall from Heaven just celebrated its 2nd birthday on the 16th and has been in active devleopment that entire time. It has over 100,000 downloads on Civfanatics, and had a prequel scenario in Beyond the Sword. Its really a rework of all aspects of Civ4 with a strong RPG influence.
The ‘download / play -> install files’ link on the mod page takes me to the ‘install gameflood’ page. There’s a ‘download content without installing the download manager’ link which takes me back to the mod page.
Scratches head…
Do you have to have BOTS to play it? I’ve wanted to try it but haven’t yet. I thought some version of it was actually included in the expansion. Is it just one scenario?
Damn, that video Kael linked makes me want to run out and buy Civ 4 and d/l this conversion. Which version of Civ4 is it compatible with (I’m not a Civ fan and I know there’s been multiple expansions for the original game)?
The expansion version of it is indeed just one scenario, and it’s a limited, gimped version of the real deal. Kael’s full mod allows you to use Civ’s random map generator, and it creates a whole bunch of really, really unique factions. The difference between Kael’s factions are greater than the difference between the AC factions. And there’s like 22 of them. Also, there’s five or six very, very distinct religions that any faction can adopt.
The downside to his mod (and why I stopped playing it) is that it’s a perpetual beta. It’s always evolving and shaping, and new features are always being added to further realize their vision. It’s pretty clear that they’re following a well thought out game design, and it’s an extremely ambitious one, but I prefer more stable games. (I know… I could just not upgrade. Well… the problem with that is that they are shooting for a long term “final” game, and when you really sink into any given version of the mod, you begin to realize its glaring shortcomings… which are often fixed in the very next mod version.)
Also, the endgame consists of a limited number of uber units, in order to give the game a more “role-playing” feel. A lot of people really liked that design decision, but I didn’t. It seemed to create the “stack of doom” syndrome which was the one thing I didn’t like about Master of Magic.
BTW Robert, you can probably find an older version of the mod that doesn’t require BoTS. I used to play Kael’s mod on vanilla Civ4.
Same with me, until I allowed cookies: I then got the option to download using the browser under the Play button.
Thanks. What a crap website. And I can’t understand why people agree to install all those download managers shit on their systems. As if there aren’t enough spy wares and Trojans around.
Another question. The order is:
Mod, patch, media?
Kael, you guys are doing some awesome work, but you’re effectively locking newcomers out of it by not documenting the game better. :(
I’ve got a couple pages of questions from having played all night. Since there aren’t any answers easily available – I couldn’t get to the wiki and the Civilopedia is in pretty bad shape – my game turned out to be a test session more than an actual game.
Part of the beauty of Civ is that you can learn as you go. You start with a settler and the game layers in the mechanics as you progress. But that simply doesn’t work in Fall from Heaven when there are so many holes in the documentation. There are bits of information you can’t reach, from minor issues like crime rate to major issues like what all those icons mean on enemy units. But then there are whole chunks of the game that simply aren’t explained. I’m still pretty shaky on the whole spell system, which needs some sort of unified display, like a reference chart or something. It sucks going in blind.
Fall from Heaven is an awesome set of systems and concepts, but I wish it was more accessible. Because it’s a mod I’d really like to spend my time playing, rather than learning to play.
On the plus side, I know a common earlier complaint was that the AI couldn’t handle a lot of the mod’s new systems. There’s obviously been a lot of work done in that department. It’s still got a ways to go. I was delighted to see the Ljosalfar elves use their global spell to summon a bazillion treants when he declared war on me. That was a real rush to suddenly have a line of strength 11 units bearing down on my borders. Unfortunately, he just shuffled them around rather than rushing in and plundering my territory. :(
-Tom
P.S. Boy, I do not miss espionage one whit…
Using Opera there was no way to get the download to work.
Along these lines, better descriptions of the factions would be (in my opinion) the most helpful documentation hole that needs to be plugged. The factions are well described in terms of backstory, but I couldn’t figure out how they played. And given that almost every faction has at least one major twist, a gameplay description of the factions would be really, really helpful.
The Wiki is really great for that sort of stuff, but even there it is a tad weak. Then again, I was obsessed with the mage civ, so I never really figured out how the others worked.
My problem also (and I’m not gonna use IE or their (they swear many times on their website “non-spyware”) download manager). Kael, is there anywhere else to get this?
I would love to get a copy of those questions. Sometimes its hard to see the glaring documentation ommisions because the people that are in it every day take them for granted. I need a new player perspective.
@Anaxagoras: it better not be perpetual beta, I have other projects I want to work on once FfH is complete. We actually have a pretty strict design doc that leads us through the 4 phases of FfH. “Shadow”, the version that was released on the 16th, is the first version of the 3rd phase. This phase is also the last phase scheduled for new features (phase 4 is all campaign scenarios). So you are absolutly right that the project is still in development, though great pains are taken to make sure it playable and fun while we are working. But it does mean that substantial changes do happen and that documentation is currently weak (since time spent documenting is time taken away from development and is often obsoleted by new changes).
But I think there is a middle ground. As Tom mentioned we need a way to get new players up and playing without driven off by the learning curve.
@Warpstorm: sure, here is a copy you can download directly (media pack is still on gameflood):
Full mod: Fall from Heaven 2 0.30
Latest Patch: Patch “d”
Media Pack (adds movies and new music tracks to the game): Media Pack for version 0.30
Kael, some of it is stuff I found after poking around in the Civilopedia, or figured out by testing. I suspect I could also get answers to many of my questions by doing searches on the CivFanatics forum, or by checking the wiki when it’s back up.
But I’ll gladly send you some feedback on the things that confused me. I kind of hit a wall in my current game once I went out of my way to implement the Undercouncil, only to be greeted with “UNDERCOUNCIL_TEXT_DESCRIPTION” when I tried to look it up in the Civilopedia. To be fair, that’s the sort of thing you have to expect in a beta, but it reminds me why I usually avoid betas. :)
-Tom
P.S. I’m loving the heroes, the naval refits, the adept upgrading, the religions, the copper/iron/mithril path, the world spells, the artwork for the races, and the unique civilization twists.
Thanks, Kael.
Thanks Kael. I’m impressed that you not only answered my questions, but actually provided a screenshot showing exactly what I asked for :O
The religions in particular were what sold me on the mod the first time around. Really, really fun.
And now, thanks to this thread, I’m reinstalling the mod. Damn you. Damn you all.
It’s a great, great mod Widget – practically a new game so much has been changed and added. As long as you’re willing to put up with the sparse documentation Tom has pointed out, you should try it out. You won’t be disappointed. Kael and his team have done an amazing job.