Calabim (Civ4 FFH): Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

Version vom 6. November 2007, 20:56 Uhr

Calabim
Übersicht
Gesinnung	Böse
Spielstil	Gemischt
Spielfarbe	Dunkelrot
Leitmotiv	Vampire
Palastressourcen	Körpermana Ordnungsmana Erdmana
Starttechnologien	Erkundung
Anführer
Anführer	Eigenschaften
Alexis	Philosophisch Aggressiv
Flauros	Kommerziell Organisiert
Helden
Held	ersetzt
Losha Valas
Gebäude
Gebäude	ersetzt
Gruft des Grafen	Gericht
Palast der Calabim	Palast
Spezialeinheiten Einheit    ersetzt Brujah Berserker Vampirfürst Unsterblicher Blutdiener Krieger Moroi Axtkämpfer Vampirfürst Morgensternkämpfer
Spezielle Fähigkeiten Die Calabim haben als einzige ab der Technologie Feudalismus den Zugang zu der Beförderung Vampirismus

Civilopedia

Das Zeitalter des Eises bedeutete für die Vampire fast das Ende. Als sich das Eis über das einst fruchtbare Land ausbreitete, wurde ihre Hauptnahrungsquelle, die Menschen, immer seltener. Auch schlossen sie sich immer mehr zu kleinen Stämmen zusammen. Weil sie ein schlimmeres Schicksal als den Tod fürchteten, nämlich das schattenhafte Dahinvegetieren eines Vampires, der Jahrhunderte auf frische Nahrung warten muss, versuchten die meisten Vampire sich an die kleiner werdenden Gemeinden der Überlebenden anzuhängen. Aber ein einzelner Vampir, eingeschlossen von einer kleinen Gruppe von Menschen, wird schnell vom Jäger zum Gejagten. So wurden einer nach dem anderen ins Jenseits befördert.

Von den wenigen Vampiren, die den Jägern entwischen konnten, lebten die meisten ein wildes Leben und ernährten sich von Blut gleich welcher Herkunft, welches die Wildnis gerade hergab und stellten den wenigen Unglücklichen nach, die sich gelegentlich allein in die Wälder trauten. Aber einige Wissende realisierten, dass ihre einzige Überlebenschance eine natürliche Wandlung vom Parasit zum Herr wäre.

Eine kleine Gruppe, die von den Geschwistern Alexis und Flauros geführt wurden, nahmen einen zwielichtigen Stamm von Menschen an. Sie benutzten ihre Fähigkeiten als Unsterbliche, denen Kälte oder Ermüdung nichts anhaben kann, die dafür aber mit unglaublicher Weitsicht und Geschwindigkeit ausgestattet sind, und stellten sicher, dass der Stamm über reichlich Nahrung verfügte. Als einzige Gegenleistung verlangten sie einen im Überfluss zu Verfügung stehenden und sich ständig erneuernden Rohstoff: ein paar Tropfen Blut. Aber die Kräfte der Vampire sind nicht beschränkt auf übernatürliche Sinne und große Stärke, ihre eigentliche Stärke ist ihr Geist.

Langsam aber sicher unterwanderten die Vampire diese kleine Gesellschaft und stiegen zu den Führern auf. Dabei benutzten sie ihre Fähigkeiten in List und Überredung und köderten die besten und stärksten Menschen mit der "Dunklen Begabung" als Belohnung für deren Hilfe. Einzelne wollten sich ihnen widersetzen und riskierten, ihre wertvollen Fähigkeiten als Jäger zu verlieren. Die, die es tatsächlich versuchten, erlitten Unfälle oder verschwanden ganz einfach.

Als die Menschen endlich merkten, was vor sich ging, war es schon zu spät. Sie waren in einer üblen Situation gefangen, und kaum mehr als Vieh für eine wachsende Schicht von parasitären Adeligen - und das alles aus eigenem freien Willen heraus.

Inzwischen sind Flauros und Alexis zum Großprinz und Großprinzessin einer verkommenen und hoffnungslosen Gesellschaft von Blut spendenden Haustieren und Sklaven geworden. Kontrolliert vom Großen Züchter, wird jede Stadt von einer Vampirfamilie wie ein Eigenbesitz geführt, um ihren Blutdurst nach Bedarf stillen zu können. Die Calabim sind der Gipfel in der Entwicklung der Vampire, eine Abscheulichkeit, die der natürliche Feind einer jeden heiligen Nation sein muss.

Dawn of Man Text

Strategie: Ihre Vampire (durch Feudalismus erreichbar) können entweder durch den Bau großer Bauern-Städte, oder einfach durch die Eroberung von feindlichen Städten und das Verschlingen derer gesamten Bewohner genährt werden (Guten Appetit). Verteilen Sie dieses Geschenk auf so viele Einheiten wie Sie können (Ihre Moroi Einheiten können Vampirismus früher als andere Einheiten annehmen), und übernehmen Sie die Welt. Mit ihrer einzigartigen Aufzuchtgrube können die Calabim auch Synergien mit den Schatten der Tiefe und dem Aschfahlen Schleier eingehen, da die einzigartigen Regierungsformen dieser Religionen den Gebrauch von Sklavenarbeit erlauben - wann immer Ihre Bürger nicht als Vampirfutter verwendet werden, können sie für Produktion verheizt werden. (Ihre Bürger könnten ein bisschen unzufrieden sein, aber sie werden sowieso bald genug tot sein.)

Strategien

Your vampires can be fed either through building a couple of big farm cities, or simply by taking over enemy cities and gobbling up their entire population (bon appetit). Spread the gift to as many of your units as you can and take over the world. With their unique Breeding Pit building, the Calabim also have synergies with the Octopus Overlords and the Ashen Veil, since these religions' unique civics allow use of slave labor - whenever your citizens aren't being used for vampire food, they can be whipped away for production. (Your citizens may feel a bit unhappy, but they'll be dead soon enough anyway.)

Other players have had success with both the Fellowship of Leaves (providing bonuses to health to support a large population) and the Runes of Kilmorph (using the Mines of Gal-dur to get Iron early and assign engineers for extra production), although the latter will convert the Calabim from Evil to Neutral, affecting diplomacy among other factors.

Daladinn's Strategie Tipps

You have several special units to look at as Calabim:

1. - Bloodpet ... you can NEVER have enough blood pets. first thing you learn is that a vampire can feed on weaker members of your army to regain health (this kills the unit). however when a vampire feeds on a bloodpet not only do they regain health but they also regain a movement point and can attack again in the same turn.
2. - Moroi .... so some bloodpets grow up. mostly the moroi are the little axemen that think they can. they have the burning blood ability which they can use on themselves to allow them to attack again in a round (however this normally kills them afterword). they do however have the honored status of being able to be gifted with the vampiric status once they hit 4th level. Personally I avoid these if I can.
3. - Vampires .... damn if they don't show up late in the game but wow are they awesome. they come in 3 types: Vampires , Brujahs, and Vampire Lords. The latter 2 are national units.

The Calabim have a few concerns that many other civilizations don't have to worry about.

1. - Food: nothing is on a vampires mind more then food. To this end you're going to want to research Agriculture first thing and adopt the Agriculture civic. its all about farms. To aid in your growth you want to build your Granary and Smokehouse. Each of these gives you a 20% starting point on your food for the next population gain. Then also look at a Breeding Pit (+2 food and 20% gain), for a total of 60%. Yes every population level will start 60% full.
2. - Money: you can't work a cottage and a farm at the same time so Aristocracy is far and away the best route here. You sacrifice a little food to gain money for research, but is all worth it.
3. - Happiness: this is the tricky part. You have to understand that your people don't like being eaten. It kind of upsets them, and the more you eat the more unhappy they get. So you have to resort to tried and true tactics: found the Octopus Overlords religion and build the Tower of Complacency and get Hemah, or get yourself some Archmages (either of the later two solutions require Law III for Unyielding Order). Ironically, aside from The Ashen Veil or Octopus Overlords, The Order is the best religion for the Calabim because their priests and inquisitors get Law spells. Once you've dabbled around with Octopus Overlords for long enough to get Flesh Golems (and built the Tower of Complacency and turned Hemah into a Lich or a Golem so he won't turn on you), try merging your vampires with High Priests of the Order. The resulting golem will have Law III and Sorcery, the perfect recipe for Unyielding Order (depending on promotions, you might also get access to Fire, Spirit, and Life spells, as well).

Ok , so where does this all get ya? It is all about Vampirism and being a sadistic fiend. So you have finally built your first Vampire, and hopefully your capital city is so upset with you you're wondering why people are still there (yes its ok to have a size 14 city with 7 happy). Here the plan is to eat all the unhappy people. Eventually you hope all the survivors will learn to smile.

The way this works is you earn xp based on the size of the city. Its current population - 3 is how much you get. So if you have a size 14 city you will get 11 xp. Now in most cities you will reach a sweet spot where the city will grow every single turn and you can eat every single turn. The downside is this really upsets people. Again lets make them forget they are unhappy.

Now you finally after much playing around gotten to the point where your feeling a bit more sadistic.

• here is where you learn Way of the Wicked and then head toward the Council of Esus. The council will make any unit built in the city start with Hidden Nationality. Vampire with hidden nationality are EVIL... mu ha ha!
• Then I should mention that the Calabim have a heroine and her name is Losha Valas.Aall bow down and worship Losha, we love her so. Losha is a vampire and thus starts with Vampirism. However whats easy to miss is that if she kills a living unit in combat she gains the Immortal promotion. This can make her very hard to kill. If she just happens to be born with her Hidden Nationality (through the Council of Esus) , so much the better .... mu ha ha!

Really at this point its all fun and killing and blood and grass growing and more blood and ..... maybe some blood. If you ever get bored this is the only civilization where I have found what is as close to an infinite loop as is possible in Fall From Heaven II. With Soul Forge, a Demons' Altar, and a Confessor (Warning: this requires The Order as your state religion to build these units) with Spirit II for Spirit Guide ... take a high level vampire and you can sacrifice him for science.... gain more then enough hammers to build another Vampire and carry a portion of his Experience Points over to another vamp in the city..... play with it , it's fun. (Underhill's Note: You can do the same thing with Graft Flesh if you'd rather use Runes/Overlords instead of the Veil, before switching to the Order)

Another really interesting thing to do is to build the Pact of the Nilhorn and have your vampires gift the three giants that you receive with vampire powers. This gives them increased healing, the ability to eat population and to heal faster by eating bloodpets.

Hegemonkhan's Calabim Guide

Religions

Octopus Overlords

Since we are discussing Calabim and Vampires and not general strategies or strategies based on a religion, the religion most useful for this civilization and their vampire units is Octopus Overlords mainly because of its wonder, Tower of Complacency. This wonder allows one and only one city have no happy capacity. This has good synergy with the Feasting ability from Vampirism (city pop -> unit exp) and/or slavery (city pop -> prod). However, this wonder requires Octopus Overlords religion, takes a lot of beakers for the two technologies needed to reach being able to build this wonder (Message from the Deep technology for Octopus Overlords and Mind Stapling technology for the wonder), takes a lot of production to build, and only affects the one city it is built in.

The second reason is the Slavery civic it allows. This has good synergy with 'farm' cities (cities with high food output) which has good synergy with the Feasting ability from Vampirism, Alexis' Philosophical trait, Agriculture and Aristocracy civic and Sanitation technology (+1 food) and pacifism civic. Flauros' Financial trait will add +1 commerce with the Aristocracy civic on farms for 3 commerce away from rivers and 4 commerce near rivers. But, as you can see Alexis is clearly the better leader for farm cities and provides melee and mounted units with automatic/free Combat I from the Aggressive trait, also. And besides for the real potential/power of Financial trait you want Towns yielding ~5-8 commerce. Also Slavery civic allows you to capture Slaves which has synergy with farm cities' lack of production from chopped trees for Farms, no Workshops, and no +1 prod from Plains from the Agriculture civic. However, you will have major happy and health problems. You'll have happy problems from fast growth from farms which your technology and resources will nearly never keep up with. The city you'll build Tower of Complacency in will have happy problems until you get it built, but than it won't have any more happy problems (Unfortunately, all your other cities won't be affected and still have happy problems). Also, once you start using Slavery and/or Feasting ability from Vampirism, you will have even more unhappiness on top of your huge fast growing farm cities. You will have major health problems, too. Your farm cities grow too fast for your technology or resources to almost ever keep up with. Also, you will be chopping Forests for farms so you lose lots of health from the loss of Forests. This requires a lot of infrastructure technologies as you can see, trying to deal with happy, health, gold and beakers. They are usually out of the way technologies from your military techs. To make matters worse, their military techs are all over the place too, requiring you to get many more technologies than some other civilizations. Also, constantly needing to deal with health, happy, beakers, and gold with buildings takes away from building military units. Finally, it is very hard for Calabim to get Octopus Overlords religion first with all the other technology needs they have. In a multi-player game, using a religion that some one else founded isn’t good because of them being able to see your cities (this is not a problem in single-player Fall From Heaven II because the standard AI doesn't respect the Fog of War; once they have your city on the map, they'll see it forever). Being able to see your enemy, knowing what he is doing or planning to do, in multi-player type games and real life is extremely valuable and life saving in terms of real life like crimes, fighting, combat, battle, and wars. The units from Octopus Overlords religion allow for good diversity and joint combat with your Vampires, Moroi, Bloodpets, etc.

Fellowship of Leaves

The Guardian of Nature civic makes it great due to the need for happiness and health the Calabim civilization needs and that civic provides. However, you can't have Forests and Farms in the same tile since only Elven Worker or Elven Slaves can build on Forests (yes, if, you happen to have Ljosalfar in the game you can steal their Elven Workers and than use them to build on forests, but what if there's no Ljosalfar Elven Workers to steal from)? You'd have to gift you Archer of Leaves, then enslave them). Kinda hard to build on Forests with out Elven Workers last time I checked - other than Lumbermill. Because of the Forest chopping for FfH Farm (Improvement)s, you won't get the additional bonus to happy and/or health the Fellowship of Leaves religion provides from Forests since you don't have Forests. Also since you don't have Forests since you chopped them all down for your farm cities for your Feasting ability from Vampirism, Agriculture and Aristocracy civics, and Alexis' Philosophical trait (enhancing great people generation) (and the farms allows for working lots of specialists), you don't have Ancient Forests that the religion spawns for +1 food over normal Forests and Ancient Forests forests ability to spawn Treant for you to use when invaded.

So nearly all of the bonuses of Fellowship of Leaves religion is lost with the Calabim's unique play style do to its Vampires and other synergies with farm cities. But, as I said earlier the Guardian of Nature by itself is very helpful for Calabim. However, In my humble opinion, Octopus Overlords religion is much more useful and beneficial than Fellowship of Leaves or the other religions.

Runes of Kilmorph

Perhaps it's not as effective as the Octopus Overlords, but should you choose the Runes of Kilmorph as your religion, you'll have access to a powerful money-making machine that can support your empire's finances in the early game quite well. If you started in a hilly area, you'll have plenty of production thanks to mines enhanced by the Arete civic and an additional Earth Mana if you have the Holy City. If you're running a specialist economy or building a melee-centric army, check out the Mines of Gal-dur. It grants 3 free sources of Iron and up to 4 engineer specialists. Plot it in the same city as the Tablets of Bambur and add a forge to punch out up to 6 engineers in one city. Use the Great Engineers earned from the Mines to rush production of other wonders, or stock them in any city that needs additional production for later (this is especially useful for the Calabim, since most of your citizens will be focused on food, not production).

Units

Their specialty unique units are Vampires (Vampire, Vampire Lord, Brujah) and their civilization is centered and built around these vampire units. Yes, you can still build mounted, recon, arcane, discipline units, but they stand on their own, getting no special help from Calabim civilization benefits. You probably want to take advantage of the special unique units for this civilization and that's probably why you decided to play Calabim in the first place. You can of course go with another unit category and get religion to help and play in a general way or based on the religion you choose and not specific to any civilization.

Octopus Overlords (and The Ashen Veil) religions are good in joint operation with the Calabim unique units. If your enemy makes counters for your living units with like contagion or other Contagion / Poison attacks or spells. Then, use your Undead units from religion (Octopus Overlords or The Ashen Veil) which those attacks can’t harm at all or less so. Also many or all of the Octopus Overlords religion units can water walk and do water spells and other spells.

Once they reach level 6 and can receive Vampirism, your spellcasters and priests can feast their way to obscene strength, but until then, they aren't as useful in combat as pure-bred vampires, so they'll usually be stuck behind your borders casting Spring, Enchanted Blade, and other support spells while they wait to level up. Remember, the Calabim have no Arcane leaders and they can only use the Altar of the Luonnotar for priests if they turn neutral or good (which rules out the Veil and the Overlords for state religions), so you could be waiting for quite some time. Because of this, it's best to build spellcasters early and often, so that when they're ready, you'll have plenty of casters to work with.

Counter-strategy

The Calabim unique units (Vampires (Vampire, Vampire Lord, Brujah, Moroi, Bloodpets, etc.) are all Melee Unit and living units. Vampires (Vampire, Vampire Lord, and Brujah are also able to be good magic users. So, a smart player would counter with Shock I and Shock II to deal with Bloodpets, Moroi, melee Vampires or Brujah (pure melee vampires with no advanced spells).

Since all of Calabim unique units are living, the Death spell Contagion and other disease / poison types slaughter them, like all living units. Yes, Vampires, themselves can use contagion, so many people don’t think to use contagion back on Vampires. Yes, you can use water to put out fire, but its only so effective. If you really want to put out fire, you fight fire with fire, not fire with water. Well, the same is with Vampires and contagion. Use the Vampires’ contagion right back at them with your Mages / Archmages.

As to Vampires’ huge experience from feasting, I’ve come to find out as long as your units are same strength, Promotions don’t protect you as much as you think from multiple units attacking. Yes, having one combat 5 Vampire versus one unit with no experience, the Vampire will win easily. But, one combat 5 Vampire versus five no experience units may very well lose. I think this is because most people get promotions that do damage (like Shock I, Combat I, Cover I, and etc.). However, these promotions don’t prevent the unit from getting hit; they get more and more wounded from each attack, until they fall to 0 HP. The best example is Orthus. How do you kill Orthus? Multiple units. Five warriors at 2 strength with little or no exp can attack and kill Orthus even with Combat V on Grassland (no bonus or negative defensive bonus from land). The biggest strength Vampires have is that the foe thinks they can’t kill the Vampire, when a Vampire is really no different than when you’re faced with killing Orthus or any other high-XP unit. However, hopefully you’ll have same strength units as the Vampire, unlike when your facing Orthus (5+ strength) with only Warriors (2+ strength).

Magic (any magic) can decimate any stack of units unless they have a counter for it. Magic is like a mounted unit in civ4; if you don’t have a spearman in your stack or city, mounted units can wipe you out. The same is true with magic in Fall from Heaven II. If you have no unit that defends against (for example) fire magic (Fireball, Ring of Flames, Meteor Swarm), your stack will be wiped out just like catapults wipe out stacks in vanilla civ4. If you have a Magic Resistant and Resist Fire promoted unit, those same fire spells that wiped out your entire stack, now target your strongest defender which is your fire resistant or possibly even Immune to Fire unit, which in the case of Fireball and Meteor Swarm limits the damage to the other units to collateral damage (which is capped). Magic is the way to take out high level Vampires (or any unit) long as he doesn’t have counter units for your magic(s).

For further discussion

1. Other religions (pros and cons)
2. Technology orders (go for morai, go for vamps, improve empire, go for religion, go for military, go for economy, go for tech rate, etc.)
3. Play styles (holy vampire knights of the order, overlord water walking vampires, stealth forest vampire poison assassins, runes enchanted vampires, disease immune vampires, etc.)
4. Unit promotions (each unit specialization)
5. Types of joint armies (what units to use together)
6. Farms/windmills (food) vs cotages (economy) vs mines/work shops (prod) vs forests (health/happy/defense) vs hybrids vs etc. type cities and empire
7. AC 40 (famine) really hurts your farm empire (calabim's bane)(bane=weaknes/threat)
8. Heroes

Ideas to improve ergonomics (organization) of my guide:

(feel free to offer any or more ideas to discuss or address by me or whoever wants to)

1. TABLE OF CONTENTS and chapters/headings!!!!!!! (right know you have to read the entire guide to find most of the strategies I've discussed because it's all jumbled up in huge clumps and most of the new stuff I've added is at the very bottom which most people won't look at, which is annoying for readers)
2. Calabim civilization's uniqueness and general strategy for them
3. Religions
4. Units
5. Promotions
6. Combinations
7. General tech orders for them
8. Specific tech orders for them
9. Maintaining economy and empire while raising armies
10. Magic (what magic and what units get what magic)
11. Magical vampires (NO combat abilities)
12. Arcane units and magic
13. Non-magic vampires (NO magic abilities)
14. Magical hybrid vampires (magic attack spells and combat abilities)
15. Magically enhanced combat hybrid vampires (magic spells that enhance combat abilities)
16. Specific build orders (from turn 1, turn by turn, steps on playing them)
17. Vampiric summoners

Things I disagree or dislike with the Calabim

1. No Elder Council

In terms of game playing:

It hurts you in the early game. You can't build it for the +2 beakers. You have no way of getting a sage specialist until writing technology and libraries, which is a long way off in the early game (I think some religion temples probably lets you do a sage specialist but religion technology is as far or farther off than Writing. -Underhill's note: Actually there are two. Both Overlords and Veil temples allow sages.). Also you are probably doing farms and not cottages so until Code of Laws technology and its Aristocracy civic (which is really far off) you have no means of making any beakers/science and your technology is so slow especially if you don't rush to Code of Laws tech or Writing for Sage specialist from Libraries when using farms and not cottages.

In terms of traditional vampire myth:

Vampires do NOT die from aging/time, however, few vampires live long because they CAN die and/or be killed. "Elders" is what vampires are all about. What vampire can survive the longest? The few that do are the leaders or "elder" vampires. But this is Fall from Heaven II and Fall from Heaven II vampires can be unique and thats fine with me, but traditional vampire myth would mean the elder council building be available to the vampire Calabim civilization.

Vampires' most common weakness (and effective) is daylight (sun). Its a good thing there's no day-night in Fall from Heaven II. But there will be sun magic in next phase (shadow) and Malakim-lugus improved and implemented (I think). So I'd presume sun magic will do extra damage to Vampires but until than Vampires only weakness now is stuff against living units. And Vampires are living things, they just have altered or mutated anatomy-abilities to humans etc.

....though if theres any way this could be implemented could be cool. During noon good civilizations are strongest. During midnight evil civilizations are strongest. During dawn and dusk neutral is strongest. Vampire would have to stay in cities until after dusk and before dawn....though this definitely would make a complex Fall From Heaven II way too complex...but if it could be successfully done would be so cool...any ways back to Vampires weaknesses...

Fire is very much like daylight/sunlight. Vampires are just as vulnerable to fire or more so than humans in traditional myth. I do not think Vampires in Fall From Heaven II are vulnerable to fire damage. They should be. Maybe a -25 resistance to fire damage like Orcish units get +25% percent. I'd have sun magic would do 50% more damage to them. Fire would do 25% more damage to them.

In terms of holy stuff, that's only for religions' bandwagon with vampire mythology. Vampires are NOT demons or undead so holy stuff actually wouldn't effect them. Yes, the religious vampire mythology says they are evil, undead, and unholy and thus vulnerable to holy water, the "wooden stakes", etc. It's up to Fall from Heaven II to decide this. Right now vampires are not undead in Fall From Heaven II and Life magic only effects Undead like Skeletons.

Namen der Städte

1. Prespur
2. Nubia
3. Acaia
4. Morr'ta'nar
5. Adonias
6. San'ta'ron
7. Pavu'nar
8. Krinera
9. Itos
10. Maron
11. Pina'dom
12. Amapia
13. Kasava
14. Pevas
15. Anaea

Gesellschaftsformen