Fall from Heaven II is a dark fantasy mod for Civilization IV. The Age of Ice has ended, what is left of the once great empires of man have formed into small tribes, ready to rebuild and retake that which was lost. Fall from Heaven II requires Civilization IV Beyond the Sword patch 3.17 to play.
I answered the Ljosalfar's call for aid in their war against the Sheaim with a gambit. There were only two ways to reach the Sheaim from my Hippus empire: through a narrow pass in the barbarian mountains or by sea to the Ljosalfar coast and north to the Sheaim highlands. So I took five galleons loaded with champions, horsemen, archers and mages and made landing in Ljosalfar territory.
As my army made way north to the Sheaim lands, Thessa of the Ljosalfar unexpectedly announced a truce with the Sheaim, pulling her and the armies of her two vassals out of the fight. My forces could no longer count on their support. But no matter, I could invade Sheaim by surprise. Sure enough, by the time my southern forces reached their first target city, there were hardly a few bowman to stop them. The city fell easily.
But I never expected the treason. Right after conquering this city, which lay just between the Sheaim and Ljosalfar lands, the Ljosalfar declared war on me, bringing their vassals the Svartalfar and Elohim along. Suddenly I found an army I could not afford to lose trapped in a city I could not keep in the shadow of four advancing armies. It looked as though I had no way out. So I made a deal with the devil...
I contacted Hyborum the Infernal, knowing the Infernals had no city of their own yet. I offered him the Sheaim city I had just captured for nothing in return. Not only would this put the Sheaim and traitorous Ljosalfar at the Infernal's doorstep, it would also transport my entire army out of harm's way and to the nearest friendly territory.
As luck would have it, that friendly territory turned out to be a small patch of land I own on the other side of a mountain range, deep in Svartalfar territory. Now my men must make a desperate march through enemy land to the Ljosalfar coast before the four armies can find them, or try to capture a city and hold as long as they can...
That's the kind of stuff that happens in this game! An epic fantasy theater for Civ IV!
I've enjoyed the ample time I spent playing this mod. I can't imagine how a mod could beat the depth of lore underlying this mod, the specially added mechanics, and the fundamental differentiation of the factions. This mod redeemed many mechanics that went relatively unused in the base game.
The best mod for CIV4.
goog
Read all the hype, so I had to go for it. Even on "quick setting" bring a lunch, dinner, breakfast and lunch again, wow you built a barracks (training yard)! Too slow for this lover of almost every classic turn based game ever made. (FX-6300, 8GB RAM, R9 270, 512GB SSD, so not a slow computer). I felt like I spent 98% of the many hours I played with several different races and settings just waiting to hit "next turn" again. (I REALLY tried to find something to like!)
Balance was horrid with barbarian units with 5-8 promotions running around when I have maybe 4-5 cities. "Hero" barbarians pop up way before it's possible to have units that can counter effectively. Barbarian cities capable of pumping out 2-4x the units you can produce city for city will appear all around you before you get 10 techs into the tech tree. Scouts, hhahhahhahha, dead without micromanaging and luck (if you aren't an AI player, because AI explore units can dodge 50 Giants and Griffins while trekking across vast continents, it's amazing.......). At least barbarians rarely plundered anything in any play-through so that's a bonus.
Buildings are too expensive for the effects and most decent buildings with worthwhile effects have a negative "balance" to them as well, which is unnecessary as the game moves at almost glacial speed as it is without introducing civilization drag.
Governmental choices suffer from the same "balance" issue. You can't have a useful positive bonus without an equally disastrous negative bonus. I find I rarely use more than 3-6 governmental choices across all categories, unless you have specific racial bonuses that make others more useful.
Resources just made my head hurt in the way they were used/tied into the buildings and units, I didn't enjoy resource management or claiming at all.
Initial city placement is commonly within 1-4 squares of one or more "lairs" and one or more competing cultures.
The dungeons and graveyard looting are a nice touch, except that 90% it is something negative and often enough so bad it makes you cringe to hit he button to explore or loot them.
Graphics remind me of Civ:ToT where it seems the artists think heavy shading makes everything look better, it just makes me squint and want to adjust my monitor brightness/contrast. Some races units all look almost exactly alike, especially in the unit thumbnails.
Many civopeida entries are empty or overfull of useless information without telling the player anything helpful.
Do I feel like I could win this game against the AI? Definitely. Do I feel like I would enjoy any of it? The 2% I actually did something other then wait to hit end turn again? Doubtful.
Civ4 fans should try Legends of Revolution, Final Frontier Plus, and the Star Trek Mod as they are all move much faster and are far more entertaining than Fall Asleep While Hitting Next Turn II.
I can tell this team put a lot of work into the mod, I appreciate that. I can tell there are a lot of real fans of the mod and I respect that. Unfortunately play-by-mail progress that is often crushed by ridiculous "barbarian" forces just as I finally start getting my kingdom started, is not fun to me.
I will try playing this and Sword of the Stars at the same time on my two screens so that I have something fun to do while I wait for the FfH2 game to advance, and I will see if I can find a way to like it.
******Update*******
Put in another 4-5 hours, found games regularly crash in an unrecoverable fashion after turn 175-200 or so, making the glacial pace of the game even worse! When the game crashes it also corrupts a few of your vanilla BTS files, so make sure you do a repair or reinstall. I HIGHLY recommend you avoid this buggy, slow, terribly balanced boondoggle of a mod.
Best mod I've ever played, add lots of content, a superb lore and a moltitude of unique civilization, it's still giving me a lot of fun even after years that i've installed it, and I'm pretty sure that I still haven't found all of it's magnificent features.
My absolute favorite mod for Civ 4! This game is absolute perfection and epicness to the tenth power. The amount of detail the creators put into the stories of this game are praiseworthy. This dark fantasy mod is about as addicting as Skyrim was for me. A MUST for Civ 4 lovers!
probably the best mod for civ4 so far
all i can say is..... Incredible!
An epic fantasy mod which I find even more fun than BtS. The only thing which makes me give it 9 instead of 10 are the out-of-sync errors with the AI in multiplayer, which apparently won't be fixed since the mod isn't being worked on anymore.