Review Fall from Heaven 2, Fashion for Civilization IV

Many are familiar with the genre of global strategies, and its famous representatives: Galactic Civilization, Age of Wonders, and, of course, Sid Meyer’s Civilization. About fashion for the latter and it will be discussed. Welcome to Erebus lands, a world torn by wars, magic and gods.

Fundamentals of the game

The basics of gameplay are the same as in the main game – construction, research, war – practically did not change. But the approach to each aspect of what is happening has changed. For example, barbarians have become much stronger and more aggressive, which greatly complicates early expansion. The Tree of Technologies was completely processed, and the experience of the troops, not their number, began to influence in battle (although the quantity, of course, is also important).

One of the main features of the fashion is the uniqueness of each nation, but not too pronounced. The basics remain the same for everyone, but each has its own unique mechanics that allows you to do something better than others. For example, jangles receive bonuses depending on their own treasury, demon worshipers receive free troops depending on the proximity of Armageddon, and vampires can devour their population for the sake of experience.

Portraits of leaders are motionless, but have unique replicas. This madman, for example, speaks poems.

One of the most famous shortcomings of the genre is a very prolonged endgame in which practically nothing happens. In Fall from Heaven II, this problem was partially solved using the “Armageddon counter”, showing how close the world is to turn into hell. With the development of the party and the growth of the meter, bad signs begin to occur: the World Plague, the riders of the Apocalypse begin to travel on the map, and the diplomatic relations between the countries are spoiling more and more. This does not improve the situation with the number of necessary actions, but at least creates some tension in the late game.

Appearance

The visual design looks pretty decent, especially taking into account the fact that civilization came out more than 10 years ago: good models, different for each nation, new visual effects like lightning and fire, and an old, but still good, interface.

And all this is the same unit, the infantryman of the third “shooting range” of technologies.

It was not without flaws: for example, https://lowdeposit-casinos.co.uk/ some models close neighboring cells, animations of the battles are quite prolonged, and some spells have excessively noticeable, large effects that do not correspond to the power of the spell, or simply annoying, such as pillars of light denoting urban blessings.

Since this is a modification for the game, it is somewhat strange to expect from it its own, unique soundtrack, but the selection of borrowed compositions is simply excellent. Music very accurately conveys the dark, gloomy atmosphere of the fantasy world, which is on the verge of the end of the world. The melodies of each nation emphasize their specifics, for example, funny, fast music of local “Rohanists” or heavy, viscous hum of demons.

Dragons growl and pour flame.

Separate references deserve additional effects, like a roar of a dragon, voice acting spells and religious actions. At some point, they can get bored, and some will get bored very quickly, for example, due to the fact that artificial intelligence simply spams with some spells, but in general it sounds atmospheric and does not get out of the topic of the game.

Not only basic mechanics

In addition to the direct improvements of the gameplay, the mod brings several new features that do not affect the basis of the game. For example, the Somnium mini-game, based on restraint and risk assessment, thanks to which you can slightly change the attitude of the leaders of AI to the player, or win a little gold from another person in the network game.

Somnium. Art is beautiful.

Mod represents 18 scenarios in which a lot to read – the texts in missions are very good, but require knowledge of English. It seems to be the main fashion Russifier on Civfanatics, but I can’t say. By the way, if you put a mod on the Russian version of Civilization, then part of the text will be in Russian, which can facilitate joining the game.

List of scripts. Pay attention – some of them are not available until other missions are passed. Plot!

Another important advantage of fashion is the flexibility of setting up an expanded batch. You can remove any religion, prohibit the appearance of demons and angels on the map, introduce dynamic complexity, influence the frequency of random events or create an additional challenge, for example, having inhabited the world with barbarians even before the first move.

Finally, for those who need any specific goals in the game-there are achievements in fashion! Yes, there are classic ones, like “win for a nation” or “win in a certain way,” but there are also specific ones, such as victory over a specific monster or nurturing a machine to kill all living things.

Further improvements

Everything, or almost everything from written above is applicable to the main modification. Unfortunately, several problems are preserved in the main modification related to the fact that it began to be developed before the recovery to the main game, in connection with which some mechanics from additions in fashion are either not presented at all, or are very far.

Among these problems: the almost complete absence of the great military leaders, problems with performance in the later stages, very weak espionage (only one religion can spy, by and large), the absence of international corporations. A huge problem is the dumb AI, who believes that a crowd of initial units is an unstoppable force, and only weaklings are being built on island maps.

If you see ships – most likely, this is a modmod

These problems are solved by superstructures for the main modification, the so -called “modmodes”. Yes, they have their own shortcomings, some change a lot, some are aimed at the network game, and sacrifice some features of the original for the sake of balance or stable connection, but, in my opinion, they often outweigh the advantages. II improvement, a greater variety of magic, the development of espionage (yes, it is still attached to one religion, but even more actions), generals for experience, and not just from the tree of research.

And you can also change the viewing angle – this is the same screenshot as the previous one, but with an extended angle

So what can be about the mod as a whole? Even now, he looks and plays very well, and if you, like me, do not like stagnation on the field of global fantasy strategies, this mod is quite good to try.