Alan Emrich, then Computer Gaming World’s Online Editor, gave Master of Orion an XXXX rating when previewing it in 1993 as a cheeky way of describing the essential elements of the strategic conquest game: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate.
(The term was changed to “4X games” to accord it some decorum, which is a good thing because the phrase “XXXX strategy games” brings to mind “Sid Meier’s True Anal Stories” and nobody needs the associated mental imagery.)
But four Xes might also describe the experience of playing any given 4X game. The player must explore the complex ruleset, experiment to realise their strategies then extend those strategies to cope with playing the game at higher difficulty levels.
The fourth and final X of the player experience is exhaustion, which inevitably sets in after sinking dozens if not hundreds of hours into campaign after campaign. No matter how deep and expansive the 4X game, there eventually comes a moment when the one-more-turn compulsion is replaced by ennui.
Even the Civilization series, the standard bearer for 4X gaming, is not immune to this. Anyone who has been with the series since the first game is entitled to feel a little jaded two decades later. The rules may be tweaked, new mechanics may be added, the presentation may be improved but the Civilization experience is fundamentally the same and at some point the thought of having to rediscover Pottery for the umpteenth time simply crushes the spirit.
Fortunately, Firaxis anticipated this so the fourth game in the Civilization series was deliberately designed to be highly moddable and this led to some outstanding fan-created variations on the basic Civilization formula.
(Image source.)
Fall from Heaven 2, developed by a team of 15 led by Derek “Kael” Paxton, is arguably the best of the lot. It’s the perfect mod for those who appreciated everything Civilization IV brought to the table in 2005 but couldn’t get much into it because they’ve just played too much Civilization. The mod’s greatest achievement, and it is a considerable one, is returning the joy of exploration and experimentation to the jaded Civilization player.
The bad news is Pottery is still in it. Fall from Heaven 2 is very much a mod built upon Civilization IV’s foundations rather than a completely unrecognisable total conversion and as such, playing it still involves the familiar phases of explore, expand, exploit and exterminate. That said, it would be a grave injustice to the staggering amount of work the modders have done over the course of five years to simply dismiss the mod as just Civilization IV with dungeons and dragons bolted on.
However, Dungeons & Dragons is where it all started as the mod’s lore is informed by Kael’s 17-year tabletop campaign. The overarching themes are of corruption and salvation with alignments never being absolute and as the proxies for mercurial gods war among each other, the fanatically good aren’t always distinguishable from the nihilistically evil.
(And in Fall from Heaven 2, evil gets very evil indeed. The vampiric Calabim are hands down the most disturbing faction of any strategy game and this is something that actually comes across when playing them.)
Kael’s team took considerable effort to emphasise the dark fantasy theme. The mood is set at the main menu screen when the player is greeted by a woman solemnly going “AAAaaaAAAaaaAAA” (which is, of course, the sound one makes when one falls from heaven). In play, the mod’s graphics have a grimmer look and the hellish burning terrain of a demon-infested world edging towards armageddon is a striking thing to behold.
The modders were also inspired in their choice of borrowed media assets. The artwork features beautiful portraits by Justin Sweet and the soundtrack includes the outstanding work of Nox Arcana among other note-perfect songs.
For some gamers, the mod will be a better experience than its parent game. The inclusion of spellcasting allows a whole slew of new wartime strategies. There are several collateral damage spells that not only address Civilization IV’s killer stack problem but recast killer stacks as high value targets thoughtfully aggregated in one spot for XP-shopping convenience. Armies rampant in the field would do well to fear fiery shapes streaking towards them from the horizon and the heavily garrisoned seaside city is only safe until Cultists appear and calm waters begin to froth. With Obsidian Gates teleporting units across vast distances, offensives are no longer bogged down by plodding artillery pieces and defensively, cities soon to be assailed can rapidly be reinforced.
(Though one of the main menu screens brashly bills the mod as Master of Magic II, it is not quite a spiritual successor to the SimTex classic. Fall from Heaven 2 lacks the customisation of the older game and the battles aren’t as tactical. On the plus side, at higher levels of difficulty, the mod’s AI has a killer instinct that MOM’s AI was sadly lacking.)
Fall from Heaven 2’s greatest strength is its high degree of replayability. The modders accomplished this by including 21 civilizations, each with unique tech, spells and units, and each with different styles of play. With enough variety to sustain interest and enough quality to stay engrossed, it will be several months before exhaustion sets in.
Unfortunately, this replayability comes with a high cost: a steep learning curve. There’s no getting around the fact Fall from Heaven 2 is daunting. It’s tough to get into and it’s tough when knee-deep in it. This is a complex design with a huge number of rule clarifications, addenda and gotchas that makes getting to grips with the mechanics a bewildering process, resulting in a lot of “how do I …” and “why can’t I …” moments in the first few campaigns. Even after a dozen campaigns, the mod is capable of delivering “what the hell just happened” moments as entire armies disappear following ear-splitting bursts of sound effects during the AI’s turn. Since the combat log has been disabled for performance reasons, piecing together what just occurred will often require spellcasting forensics and guesswork.
To make matters worse, the mod is underdocumented. The in-game Civilopedia helps a little as do the tool tips but to get the most out of Fall from Heaven 2, players must regularly consult the unofficial manual during their first few campaigns and even then new players should still be prepared to fail a lot. (“Tweedledee” will gain special significance.)
There are no major bugs to speak of and what few niggling issues that remain are mostly tolerable. There are a few text-string errors, some graphical oddities when the Animations Frozen option is enabled and a start-up error with the Steam-version of Civilization IV that occurs if the Steam client is resident in memory when the Fall from Heaven 2 shortcut is launched, but for the most part, Fall from Heaven 2 is a remarkably polished experience.
And what an enjoyable experience it is, one well worth the considerable effort it takes to learn the mod’s ins and outs. The best 4X games provide unforgettable campaigns with ebbs and flows, twists and turns, and Fall from Heaven 2’s campaigns are among the very best, providing gaming memories for the ages. That a small team of 15 gamers should manage to produce in their free time such an enjoyable and memorable gaming experience is a testament to their abilities, commitment and passion, and perhaps another reason to look askance at professional game development teams squandering millions of dollars on unambitious 60-dollar titles barely distinguishable from each other.
Essential links
Files
To play Fall from Heaven 2, you’ll need the 0.41n executable, a 373MB file, and the 11.5MB “o” patch. The current version requires Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword ver. 3.19 or greater.
Official site
The About, Civilizations and Religions sections provide a great overview.
Unofficial manual 2m ver. 1
Although xienwolf’s 12.4MB PDF manual is incomplete and hasn’t been updated to reflect the latest patches, it remains an essential download as it includes orangelex44’s new player guide.
Fidgit game diaries
Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
Tom Chick’s Fall from Heaven 2 game diary is one of the best enablers for the mod but unfortunately SyFy took the archives offline in December 2010 and even more unfortunately, the Internet Archive’s collection is missing three parts.
