There's not a lot to say here. I actually don't really have that many choices!

Hereditary Rule is necessary currently to allow my cities to continue growing. Without a proper garrison, my cities would quickly descend into unhappiness and become less productive. Of course, the only other option is Despotism, which is strictly worse than Hereditary Rule, so I'm not exactly upset about being locked into this choice at the moment. In fact, I should be saying that my cities CAN grow larger with a proper garrison--without Hereditary Rule, this wouldn't even be an option. Representation is an option down the line, but not until Constitution (surprised Kinjo isn't running this, since he grabbed the Pyramids). Universal Suffrage will also open up with Democracy, but it may be some time until I have enough towns to make use of it.

Ah, Bureaucracy. This is the civic that makes my capital the monster city it is. +50% Production and Commerce in the capital. Combined with the Academy in my capital (+50% Research), this creates a stupidly good multiplier for Commerce -> Science. Just wait for Oxford University. Kinjo's biggest victory in this game was landing the Oracle ~8 turns before I would have completed it. I would have completed my Code of Laws research in ~7-8 turns, then immediately landed the Oracle the next turn, and used the free technology on Civil Service to open up Bureaucracy that much sooner. As is, I had to research the expensive Civil Service tech the old-fashioned way.

Slavery. What can I say? Learning to use this civic effectively increased my skill level significantly. I've been whipping off excess population all game to speed up my production. If you wonder where all the infrastructure in my core came from, here is the answer. It's especially great in the early game, where your cities can't grow past size 4-5 without becoming unhappy anyway, so you might as well whip off extra population instead of just letting the city stagnate. Oh, and Granaries. These help you recover the lost population faster. Just watch the unhappiness! You can't whip too often or with the wrong numbers or they'll just get unhappy anyway--it's almost always better to do a 2-population or 3-population whip than a 1-population whip (though 3-population whips are costly and should be carefully considered--I used them for my forges, for example).

Decentralization. Well, I won't get the economic techs required for Mercantilism or Free Market for quite some time, so this is all I have for now. It has no effects whatsoever. I'll probably replace it with Mercantilism the instant I hit banking (free specialest in every city + Philosophical leader = many great people, add Representation [+3 research per specialest] for flavor).

Organized Religion. I'll need this until I get buildings down in my new conquests. Spreading my religion (Confucianism) is key to getting this working right, so I have a city devoted to making missionaries right now. Once you see the switch to Nationhood/Theocracy, that's when I'm going back into war mode.

Demographics are next.

My GNP lead isn't as significant as before, but I suspect it's actually Wang Kon who's catching me and not Kinjo (Wang Kon is also running Bureaucracy and has a rather nice capital, Kinjo doesn't have Civil Service yet). This is my GNP at a sustainable (40% science) rate. It's higher at 100%. I am not worried, as I have a lead in every important category. The fact that I am low on approval rate/life expectancy is actually a GOOD thing, as it means my cities are pushing their health and happy caps--I'm getting the best I can out of them. Large amounts of excess happiness is not really a good thing--that means the city isn't growing fast enough to make use of it all! Ideally you want to be very close to unhappiness and unhealthiness in each city--but not over the line. That is about where I am.

What do the statistics mean? GNP accounts for a lot of things, mostly dealing with your commerce and culture. I honestly don't know exactly how it is calculated, but the general idea is: if someone has a major GNP lead, they're teching much faster than the competition.

MFG represents empire-wide production. This also takes into account the proper multipliers, so a person who has a high MFG is probably getting various multipliers. For example, if you start building the Pyramids at double speed thanks to having the stone resource, your MFG will increase. Likewise for building military units in a city with the heroic epic (double production for military units).

Crop Yield is empire-wide food output. More food means higher population. Population produces everything else. Slavery turns population into production. A high food count is good. In the early B.C. years, I'd say food is the most important statistic by a large margin--Slavery requires only Bronze Working, a second-tier ancient era technology that you will want anyway. Bottom line: food is important. VERY important. And I'm #1 in food output.

Soldiers. This is obvious, I was just in a war (and have an active semi-war with Kinjo). If I'm not #1 I'd be losing, or at the very least very worried about my position.

Land Area. Since I just absorbed most of Cyrus's Byzantine into my own empire, it's no surprise I'm the largest. Though Kinjo COULD be larger if he devoted more production into producing Settlers and Workers--he has tons of unclaimed land to his south and east, and no barbarians to worry about. I've been boxed in the whole game by two AI, stuck at 5 cities until I started conquering more. I am rather happy I managed to get the top spot here.

Population. Tied to food, it's no surprise I'm #1. I already explained how important this is. Next!

Life Expectancy/Approval Rate. This measures your health and happiness. I already covered this too. I am happy with where I am here.

Exports/Imports. I'm not too sure about these values, I believe it has to do with trade routes. Since my empire is not dependent on foreign trade routes for commerce, I do not really need to be worried here.

Next is top 5 cities.

Top 5 cities. This is mostly for show, as I consider my capital to be pretty awesome even if it's only #2 on the list. I believe the list depends largely on wonders in addition to culture and other things related to infrastructure, so the reason Kinjo's capital is #1 is because it has 3 wonders in it, plus a religious shrine. I haven't managed to generate that many world wonders so far, but now that I have a tech lead that's likely to change.

In any case, I do have TWO cities on the list, and Umoja is apparently good enough to make the list even though it doesn't have any wonders.

Let's have a look at some of these cities, shall we?

(Yes, I went with a Starcraft Terran Confederacy naming theme for my cities/empire).

Tarsonis is the heart and soul of my empire. Look at that commerce. Think that science output is gross now? Wait until Oxford University is complete. The only thing keeping it in check is a low happiness cap, which requires a significant garrison. I'll be taking the appropriate measures to raise that in time.

The short version of how I got this is: Bureaucracy + Academy (from my early great Scientist) + grassland river cottages = SCIENCE!

Oh, and I built the great library and the hanging gardens here, for various reasons. The Hanging Gardens, combined with running an Engineer specialest in my Forge, helped me generate a Great Engineer which was used to "light bulb" (instantly discover) the Machinery tech. Not to mention the extra population in all my cities was put to use via the whip. Thanks for letting me borrow the stone for this, Kinjo, it took me maybe 10-12 turns to build it thanks to that! As for the great library, 2 free scientist specialests. Philosophical leader. Have I mentioned how much Philosophical leaders love specialests yet? Yeah. Specialests provide great person points, Philosophical leaders double the amount of great person points generated. That's how you make use of it.

Umoja is my second city. It was founded as an aggressive border city to seal off my eastern border with Wang Kon. Also to grab that copper that has since flipped its cultural control to Wang Kon (good thing I have another source).

It's also a commerce city. Gotta love those money bag icons (a money bag represents 5 commerce, much like a bread loaf represents 5 food, and an anvil represents 5 production). It's the Confucian holy city, so when I get a great prophet, it'll found the shrine here. Without the copper, however, its production potential is limited. You'll notice I built a castle here, for that sweet +100% defense bonus. As I said, this is a border city--if Wang Kon declares war, this will be where he strikes. Fortunately, I don't see him cracking the defenses I have there anytime soon. On the other side of the border, Wang Kon has longbowmen defending his cities. That means I'm not cracking his defenses until I have Riflemen and/or Knights/Cuirassiers. Sure, you CAN beat down Longbowmen-defended cities with Macemen and War Elephants, but it's not very economical. So don't expect war on that front until I have gunpowder, guilds, and rifling.

>>3153
Unlike the previous two commerce cities, Mar Sara is center of my production. It has very little commerce potential, and so I didn't bother with libraries or monasteries here. Instead, there's a barracks, a stable, and a forge producing military units with extra experience and at a +25% increased rate. Eventually, when I get a break from nonstop Spearman production (to counter Kinjo's Horse Archer harassment in the south), the Heroic Epic will go here for another +100% military unit production. This is not an ideal production center--it could use more food--but it'll do for now. It's also where the Oracle would have been built if Kinjo didn't beat me to it (it was about 40% finished when Kinjo landed it). It is also the site of my horse and copper resources. Still working on getting iron. Once I have iron, I can make pikemen, which completely overpower horse archers.

Oh, and it was formerly my border city with Cyrus, which is why it has walls.

New Trinidad is a nice filler commerce city. It has two food sources, and not much in the way of production. See those two village tiles in the south-west? Those are shared in the capital's city radius. I'm working them with this city so they continue to develop (cottages require a city to work them to grow into hamlets, which grow into villages, which grow into towns--each producing more and more commerce). Once the capital has the happiness and population to support working more tiles, it'll take those two highly-developed villages/towns from New Trinidad and give their commerce to the city that has +50% commerce. I considered building the Hanging Gardens here, but went with the capital because the capital still had some forests in its city radius which I could chop into extra production. This city will go back to building missionaries after its university completes, to continue to spread Confucianism.

Korhal is my first city on the "outer" coast. It has the Moai Statues--not an ideal place for it, but I figured it was better to get them out sooner than later. This city will generate a great prophet soon, thanks to running some priest specialests and the prophet point from Moai. This city will be decent for both commerce and production, and will emphasize both once I get some more food up in here.

Chau Sara is the first city I captured from Byzantine. It has decent potential for both commerce and production. May take over as a secondary production center alongside Mar Sara, with better food. Will take a little time to develop, as it's a new addition.

The last city I want to showcase is Char, the former Byzantine capital. Why? LOOK at all those bread loafs. When I get a pasture back on those pigs to the east it'll be even better. I'll build the Globe Theater here (no unhappiness) and turn it into a draft camp. The Nationhood civic allows you to "draft" population into military units, at a heavy unhappiness cost--using the globe to negate the happiness penalty and having tons of food (+a granary) so the city regrows instantly means every single turn = a new unit. How does one free Musketman/Rifleman every single turn sound? Cyrus even did me the favor of settling a great general in the city for free XP to all units produced here. Very nice of him to do that for me.

Lots of bread loafs means Slavery will also be useful here. The infrastructure shouldn't take any time at all, once the resistance is quelled.

And that's all for now, I think. I have other cities, but these are my major players right now.

Since the game is over, I thought I'd highlight some of my little strategies that helped me be successful in the game.

Strategy #1: The Draft Camp!



Now, here's a stumper. How the heck did I get so many riflemen and musketmen if I never built a single one? You could say upgrading, but there are some problems with that. First off, nothing upgrades to musketmen. Second, upgrading is usually saved for special cases, as it's not a very good use of gold to upgrade every single unit you have to the next tier: that gold is better spent funding research, to get to the NEXT tier. Outdated units make good garrisons for your back-line cities, particularly under Hereditary Rule, or good expendable scouts (I had a Sentry-promoted [+1 visibility range] Chariot traveling with my main stack of Cavalry and Riflemen at the end of the game). In any case, the answer to where those units came from is here:



But wait, drafting a musketman or rifleman reduces the city's population by 1 and creates 3 unhappiness! Spamming that all over your empire would wreck your economy (though it's a perfectly acceptable practice if the situation calls for it)! How can you afford to draft so many? Well, by creating one city specially for it, of course!



A draft camp requires a few things:
A. The Globe Theater national wonder. This requires 5 Theaters built throughout your empire and the Drama technology.
B. A very high food surplus. Bread loafs everywhere.
C. Of course, you need the Nationhood legal civic, which requires the Nationalism technology.
D. A barracks, at the very least, and either a settled great general or Theocracy or Vassalage. This is optional, but ensures your drafted units come with a promotion off the bat--XP granted by buildings and such is halved for drafted units.

The Globe Theater erases all unhappiness in the city. This means that drafting the city produces no unhappiness, no matter how many turns in a row you do it. The high food surplus is to regrow that 1 population you lose every turn. Note that even though you can draft X units each turn (where X depends on map size), a city can only be drafted once per turn.

This does not mean you can draft ONLY from your draft camp, but keep in mind that a city must be at least size 7 in order to draft (for infantry at least, it may be 6 for riflemen/musketmen or lower-tier units). While draft unhappiness in other cities will dissipate over time, repeatedly drafting the city increases the duration in a manner similar to using slavery. Another thing to consider is that while drafting riflemen or lower tier units reduces the city's population by 1, drafting infantry or higher tier units reduces the city's population by 2. This means the draft camp functions more on an every-other-turn basis once you have infantry, however, drafting in other cities becomes more economical (net +1 unhappiness instead of net +2).

Anyway, in this game, I drafted almost exclusively from my draft camp. And even that produced more than three dozen units "out of thin air."

A special note: Civilizations that replace draft units with their unique units can draft their unique units. For example, the Ottomans can draft Janissaries when they would normally draft musketmen.

>>3251
Notes: I circled the "3 unhappiness for 533 turns" message just to highlight how many times I'd drafted. Drafting the first time (at epic speed) causes unhappiness for 15 turns, but each additional time you draft the same city the duration lengthens (and the amount of unhappiness increases, of course).

Also, I briefly said there that many times, upgrades were not a very good use of gold. However, there I did run into one of those "exceptions" in my game. And here it is. The City Raider promotion is not normally available for gunpowder units, but by upgrading my macemen with that promotion to riflemen, I can have riflemen with a +75% city attack bonus.

I also upgraded many knights to cuirassiers because it was fairly cheap.

Eye am excite

One of the most important reasons for early-game scouting is city planning. In the early game, you're going to be looking to settle strong locations near your capital that have resources. Preferably resources that you can use NOW rather than down the line. Settling next to wine and spices doesn't help you if you're still a long ways away from Calender! Likewise, I base my early tech choices on nearby resources: if I settle next to wheat and I don't already have Agriculture, it'll probably be my 1st technology. Things to look for:

Food resources: All cities need something like this, or lots of grassland and a fresh water source. Otherwise they simply won't grow fast enough to be of any use early in the game!

Strategic Resources: If you're not interested in being a "cripple" Civ, look for Horses and Copper at the very least. Ivory is nice for the late classical age if it's around, and Iron is needed for many medieval era units (swordsmen can safely be skipped), however Iron Working may become more important if there is no copper nearby, or if there's a lot of jungle you need to chop.

Distance to Capital: At lower difficulty levels, you can get away with settling pretty far and wide, but as the difficulty increases you'll find your research rate crippled if you try to expand too far outward. Don't be too afraid of overlap, just avoid it in excess. You'll see what I consider to be acceptable levels of overlap in my screen shot, around 2-3 tiles shared between a given two cities. This is not only important in terms of maintainence, but logistically you can move your units around your empire quicker, and tactically it's easier to defend a condensed empire than one that is spread across the world.

Terrain: Look around your city when you decide how it should be used. A city with lots of hills leans towards a production/military focus (just make sure it has some food so it can grow, those mines aren't of much use if you have no food to work them). Resources that provide extra production like cows, ivory, and most strategic resources are boons here, as are food resources, but commerce resources like silk and dyes are less desirable. At most production centers, don't bother with cottages, stick to farms--hills don't give much food back, so you'll need to work the farms to grow into the hills. Some city sites are strong enough to be "hybrids" that can do both (such sites have food, a river, and lots of hills). This is your judgment call whether you want to try to have them do both, or focus them one way or the other.

You should generally consider your "core" to be 4-6 cities, but don't hesitate to expand beyond that, once you have the economic potential to do so (courthouses help here). Try to keep your cities as close together as their workable radius allows--wasted terrain between cities is far more worrying than a little overlap, in my opinion.

>>3301
Notes:

The BUG Mod: I love it. Notice things like the Great Person counter at the top, the Great General XP tracker to the left of it, and my favorite, the "city radius" tool which greatly helps for city planning. With the BUG UI mod, you can press alt+X to bring up a city radius tool which can be used to plan out potential city sites. It shows you the "workable" city radius--that is, the cultural borders of the city may expand beyond that eventually, but the city will only ever be able to "work" tiles within that radius. Side note: note that resources within your cultural radius but not in a city's workable radius can still be improved and provide their strategic, happiness, and health bonuses to cities in your trade network, but you don't get the yield from working the tile itself (in other words, for example a mine on an iron tile will allow you to build swordsman, but you don't get the extra production to any city if no city is working the tile). The BUG mod ALSO has "unhappiness" checkers (will tell you if a city is going to grow into unhappiness on the next turn), and Slavery pop-ups (tells you if you can use slavery to complete a building in a given city) as convenient messages that appear at the top of your screen, to save you the hassle of monitoring each individual city.

Workers: In order to improve your land at a reasonable pace, I recommend a ration of 1.5-2 workers per city in the early and mid-game. Late-game, 1 worker per city is more appropriate. If you ask me for the best unit in the game, I would say the Indian Fast Worker, as a 3-move worker as opposed to 2-move worker.

Farmer's Gambit: The AI will almost never attack you in the early ancient era. Barbarians, however, are a problem. Make sure you have the military to deal with them--if you can keep ahead of them in tech, of course, they'll be little threat: barbarian warriors are no cause for alarm if you have a handful of axemen guarding your territory. Just don't lose your workers and settlers to barbarians, always send them out with a military escort if they're heading into the fog of war! Remember that the sooner you get your production center online with a barracks in place and hills mined, the sooner you can start cranking out units for defense--don't bother with libraries or wonders in this city (well, you might go for a wonder once you have some soldiers, but make sure you rush it along with forest chops) until your empire is secure.

Food and Growth: Every citizen requires 2 food to feed. Remember this when you are considering how to work tiles: a population 2 city requires a minimum of 4 food to not shrink, a population 3 city needs a minimum of 6 food, etc. Tiles that produce 2 food are "food neutral," in other words, they feed the citizen that works them. Tiles that produce more than 2 food generate a "food surplus," and allow the city to grow. Early in the game, these are limited pretty much to grassland farms and food resources. Tiles that produce less than 2 food are "food deficit" tiles, and you'll need to make up for them by working "food surplus" to keep a city from stagnating. The ideal commerce city gets a +4-6 food surplus, and then grows into food neutral tiles like grassland cottages which produce commerce. A production center generally works food-heavy tiles to grow to its happy cap, then switches to stagnation mode while working food deficit tiles alongside a handful of food heavy tiles. Tile management is very important to getting the most out of your cities.

Avoid Growth: The happiness cap is a severe issue early in the game, unless you start next to a bunch of early-game happiness resources (gold, gems, silver, ivory, fur). Unhappy citizens are a drain on your empire: they consume 2 food but contribute nothing. A city that is unhappy generates one unhappy citizen for each point of unhappiness which exceeds the total happiness in the city. In order to maximize production, you must avoid unhappy citizens. There are two ways to do this: when a city reaches its happy cap, rework the tiles so that the city is in "stagnation." However, this is not always possible, and in some cases (particularly in commerce cities) will result in lost commerce or production. That is where the handy "avoid growth" button comes in, circled here. Simply click it, and the city won't gain another population point even if it has the food necessary to do so. Just remember to turn it off when you're ready for the city to grow again! Side-note: Sometimes, you may want to grow a city into unhappiness if you're preparing to whip off 2+ population, or if you're about to make those citizens happy in a turn or two anyway (hooking up a luxury, switching to Hereditary Rule, etc.). I'll discuss proper use of slavery in another post later on, but the general idea is that whipping off 1 population is happiness-neutral: you gain 1 unhappiness from the whip itself, but lose 1 unhappiness for decreased population. Therefore, whipping off 2+ population actually gains you happiness in the short-term, because you lose that many points of "It's too crowded!" unhappiness. Just remember that whipping off 3+ population is a rather extreme move that should be carefully considered as to whether or not it's worth it.

Slavery: A lot of newer Civ players don't think much of the Slavery civic when they first see it--sacrificing population and causing unhappiness just for a boost in production? They might think it's something to be saved for only extreme circumstances, but this is wrong. Slavery is the lifeblood of most early game civilizations and continues to be useful well into the midgame for most games. Until you have tons of gold and can cash-rush buildings with Universal Suffrage, if you want to get your new cities up and running quickly when you start "mass expansion," here's how:

1. First, some prerequisites.
a. You must be able to afford these cities. In any game that isn't on a very low difficulty, this is probably around the time you research the economic "breakthrough" technologies of Currency and Code of Laws. You will need these technologies to support extra cities without going into the red in research. Until then, you'll probably be stuck on a smaller number of efficient cities.
B. Once you can afford the cities, you need a happiness buffer. The Hereditary Rule civic and some luxuries should do the trick. Depending on your start, you may need Calender to really get this going. If you don't have the happiness resources, you can still do this, but you'll need to go slower, waiting out the unhappiness penalty and growing slower.
C. Obviously, you need to be running Slavery. It works best in a city that has at least one 4+ food resource. You really need to start with a Granary. Why? Because a Granary helps a city grow back the population that much faster by making each population growth store 50% of the food towards the next increase.
2. The basic idea is to grow a city to size 4 and then whip off 2 population over and over to get basic infrastructure inside the city, constantly alternating between size 4 and size 2. My typical priority is Granary (best to chop this, not whip) -> Forge -> (Temple and/or Monastery if you have the Apostolic Palace religion) -> Courthouse (if the maintenance cost of this city is relatively high, otherwise delay it a bit) -> Library -> Market.
3. This strategy can be adjusted a bit. For example, this city has a +6 food surplus at size 4 while still working the gold. I think I would be better served by letting this city grow to size 6 and whipping it back down to size 4 to get out the basic infrastructure. If you are restricted by happiness, stop working food and start working (food-neutral) cottages to slow down the city's growth. The cottage growth will pay off later.

Slavery doesn't have any specific strategy involved, really. The basic rule of thumb is that it's better to whip off 2-3 population than 1, but if you have excess happiness then a 1 population whip to speed something up or get some overflow into another build can be very worthwhile.

Heavy slaving is not advised in low-food cities. If you can't get a +5 or so food bonus, look for chops or other methods of speeding up your production. Don't think a granary won't still help, though, because it's just as important for slow growth as it is for fast.

One thing to note is that all production modifiers apply to Slavery, so use this to your advantage! Each population point you lose when you whip adds a certain amount of production, which is increased by modifiers like a Forge's +25% production. Situational modifiers like +25% to buildings when under Organized Religion in a city with the state religion (spread your religion to new cities before starting the whip! Have a missionary ready to go when the city is settled! This also lets you avoid building a monument in the city to get the culture spread going!), or +50% to production for Industrious Civilizations building a wonder. Even the modifiers that are based on leader traits apply, like the +25% bonus for Expansive leaders building Workers, or the +100% bonus for Creative leaders building Libraries. These bonuses apply for forest chops too! Use these factors to your advantage as much as possible!

>>34643
I would like to point out that the Sacrificial Altar aka UB of the Aztecs is worth the mention as well for whip lovers. One strategy I tend to use involves slingshotting Code of Laws with the Oracle before chopping Sacrificial Altars in my cities.

With altars in place, the duration of anger per whip decreases by half. Hence, all you need for your cities are surpluses of food and the income to whip a large amount of archers or Jaguars for a quick skirmish!

>>34663
Sac-Alters are good BUT:
1. Aztecs probably have one of the worst starting tech combinations (Hunting/Mysticism)
2. The jaguar unique unit sucks (It's actually a point of power weaker than the unit it replaces)
3. You still probably want to get a Granary and a Forge in place before you start whipping a Courthouse/Sac Alter, which may limit its effectiveness in the long haul.

Play to your Strengths!

I really cannot overemphasize how important this is! Look at your leader, and your Civilization! Know what areas you can emphasize so you can edge out a lead as quickly as possible! Civilization is very much a game where, as long as you are left relatively undisturbed, a small lead will eventually "snowball" into a huge one. Eek out a minor edge in production and food early on, and you could find yourself a GNP leader in the midgame if you play your cards right~!

Let me give some examples, because that's easier than trying to explain~!

Leader Traits

The Big Three!

Financial: Financial only gives you a single benefit, but it's a good one: +1 commerce to any tile producing at least 2 commerce. Lemme break this down for you: grassland river cottages? They produce 3 commerce for you right away rather than 2. Coastal tiles? 3 commerce instead of 2. Colossus-boosted ocean tiles? 3 commerce instead of 2! Oasis? Yup, 3 commerce instead of 2! Look for those kinds of tiles and work them, then watch your research overtake the pack~! There isn't a lot of finesse involved in using this trait, kay~? Any cottage will see benefit from this trait when it grows into a hamlet. Just focus commerce and ride the technology wave! About the only way you could screw up playing financial would be to try and run a specialest economy, in which case I would come beat you with a stick, wahahaha~ That's for philosophical civs, silly, and don't even think about running Elizabeth with a specialest economy~!

Expansive: Certain trains give you a bonus when building certain units or buildings, and I think expansive is without a doubt the most generally useful one. There aren't very many times where you're going to put off building a granary for long in a new city, as storing half of the food whenever it increases in population makes the city grow that much faster and is particularly important for leveraging slavery to its full extent. Granaries may be my most-built building in the game! But~! That's not all! What's a unit that EVERY Civilization will build in numbers early in the game--a unit where it really makes a difference as to whether or not you get out a few turns earlier? If you said "Settler," that's a good guess, but I mean the Worker! Do not undervalue the worker! Improved tiles can be worth 2x-3x times as much as an unimproved tiles (compare: irrigated grassland corn vs. unimproved grassland). You want to minimize the working of unimproved tiles as much as possible, and that means you want plenty of workers! The expansive trait builds them +25% faster. But! Keep in mind that although both food and production count towards the unit cost of a worker, only the production (hammer) output is multiplied. So when building a worker, a 3-hammer tile is strictly better than a 3-food tile. If you build a worker with a size 1 city on the first turn of the game (and most people do), try to work at least 4 hammers total if it is at all possible (counting the center "city" tile, which most of the time produces 1 hammer, though will produce 2 on some resources or a plains hill). This is not always possible, of course, but you can expect to see a very big difference in speed if you make use of this knowledge! Oh, and the bonus health is nice~

Creative: The last of what I consider to be the "big three" traits! First off, creative players get +2 culture for every city for free. This means you can skip monuments in early cities, so do! There is absolutely no reason to build monuments other than for popping borders early, so don't build monuments if you're playing a creative leader! You already produce culture twice as fast as a city with a monument, and those hammers will be better spent on a Granary or Worker or something. Being able to skip monuments and having an innately high cultural output means you can dominate cultural control in the early game, against pretty much anything but wonders! Getting control of your "second ring" tiles earlier than the competition can be very important, and makes settling new cities easier for you~! As for double-speed buildings, well, coliseums are of questionable value, but theaters are a decent building as a creative leader for cultural purposes. Obviously you'll want plenty if you're going for a cultural victory, and even if you're going for a more military bent, you'll probably want the Globe Theater for your draft camp city (see one of my earlier posts), and you need a certain number of theaters to build it! The most useful multiplier the creative trait grants is for libraries, an early-game science multiplier building that allows you to run scientist specialests (YES, I know that's misspelled, stupid blacklist and drug name). If you don't produce a great scientist for an academy in your best commerce city, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! Anyways, +25% science in any commerce city is a nice start, and being able to run 2 specialests will have you generating great people much more quickly than anyone who was just trying to run 1 from a temple or something. Libraries are a great building, and being able to build them twice as fast is a nice bonus!

Other Good Traits

Industrious: I could almost call it the big 4, because this trait will make a huge difference if you use it right! Now, the main thing is that it might not come into the early game all that much. If you try to spam wonders in the early game for the +50% bonus, you're going to get out-settled and I'd much rather have 2 extra cities than Stonehenge. But! There ARE a lot of useful wonders that you can use effectively if you can manage to land them. Of course, the competition for wonders is fierce, as there can only be one of each World Wonder in the world--if your rival beats you to the Oracle, then you don't get one! As an Industrious leader, you can build wonders +50% faster than any non-Industrious leader, all other factors being equal. Of course, keep in mind that even the Industrious leader bonus isn't as large as having the right resource for the job--like stone for Stonehenge or copper for the Statue of Liberty. But, those bonuses stack, so you can get +150% hammers if you have the right resource~ Anyways, get your wonders sorted out and get them, and use them to put yourself in the lead! And don't forget that bonus works for National Wonders too, the ones that each Civilization can have exactly 1 of! So yes, +50% for Oxford University~ The Industrious trait also gets double-speed forges, which is an excellent building that has only one thing holding it back: the expensive, out-of-the-way Metal Casting technology. When you get forges out, though that's +25% production on all further projects in that city. Get those forges out asap! This goes for non-Industrious leaders too! The forge is usually the second building I'll build in a new city after a granary, after I have metal casting. Hey, hey, did you know~? I played to my strengths excellently in the last MP seacats game by building the Oracle (a wonder) to grant myself Metal Casting instantly, so I could build those half-cost forges~!

Philosophical: You like Great People? You get them twice as fast as anyone else! Do you know how much science you can generate by getting your Great Scientist out in 15 turns when everyone else needs 30?! But this trait won't do anything for you if you don't run specialests! So build those libraries and forges and markets and temples and run those specialests! Remember, you need a decent food surplus to run specialests, so plan wisely. Of course you can also generate great person points via wonders, but that's slower (wonders are expensive) and more difficult to control. And don't even think about trying to cheat the system, as there's no Industrious/Philosophical leader, wahaha~ You can't have it both ways! Half-price universities are nice too, a critical midgame research building that you need to build multiples of for Oxford University (a national wonder that adds +100% research to a single city). Universities are expensive, so having them for half price is certainly a nice deal. Unfortunately, they have no specialest slots unlike libraries. Still! Generate lots of great people, make academies, rush wonders, build shrines, conduct trade missions... bulb technologies, start a golden age! Remember, most of these things other than a golden age are better early in the game, while in the late game, a golden age is generally the best use of great people.

Spiritual: Underrated! But harder to use to its fullest potential. Okay, the easy part first: double-speed temples. Temples are of questionable value to a non-Spiritual civ, but to Spiritual civs they are cheap happiness/culture buildings. But! Did you know? There is a set of wonders, sometimes called "the religious trifecta," which can transform all buildings associated with your state religion into powerhouses! These buildings include temples, monasteries, and cathedrals (and the religious shrine). What wonders do you ask? The University of Sankore adds +2 research to every building associated with your state religion. The Spiral Minaret makes all buildings associated with your state religion generate 1 gold. Finally, and this is not listed in the wonder description, but the Apostolic Palace wonder adds +2 production to every building associated with the religion it is associated with (note: this includes buildings in OTHER civilizations as well, and it is not directly tied to your state religion, though the palace is tied to whatever your state religion was at the time that you built it). With any combination of these wonders, your religious buildings like temples can become very very powerful! Even without them, temples are still a decent investment and allow you to run priest specialests. Naturally, you need a religion for this stuff. Now, the other facet of Spiritual is that you suffer no anarchy. This is nice when you research a tech that grants you a new civic, but you can also use it to rapidly swap civics for immediate gain! Like whipping out a bunch of buildings under slavery, then immediately switching to caste system and running 5 scientists to generate a great scientist in record time! Non-spiritual leaders suffer a period of anarchy when doing a civic swap, but you do not, so use that to your advantage as much as possible~!

The Others

Aggressive: Look, this is a warmonger trait! You probably don't pick this if you're aiming for a peaceful victory condition. Look for a Civilization that has a strong unique unit that is either melee or gunpowder, and put that unit to use as quickly as you can! With those half-cost barracks, any units qualifying for the free promotion can automatically come out the gate with a promotion like Shock or Cover. Keep that in mind!

Organized: Can be better than I'm rating it. It becomes stronger the higher the difficulty level, as maintenance costs go up as the difficulty level increases. This makes Organized doubly effective then, as courthouses reduce maintenance further and you get them at double speed. Lighthouses will come in handy at double speed if you have a lot of coastal cities, but that's map-dependent. A solid trait, but I'd rather be Financial, wahaha~

Imperialistic: I think this trait is better on paper than in practice~! Sure, getting out Settlers quickly is nice. But generally I think expansive is better, because having a bunch of improved tiles is better than a bunch of cities working unimproved tiles! Remember, extra cities cost more maintenance, and you need to work to make them productive. With that said, you can get good use out of this trait by keeping ahead on workers and then spamming those settlers out to claim the best city sites as quick as you can. Generating great generals more quickly is nice too, though great generals are not of much use unless you're a warmonger. But! You can use them for great things~ Only units with a great general attached can receive the Medic 3 promotion, so do that~! And merge them to your best military production cities (and/or draft camp) for extra XP! Of course, you'll need to fight some wars to actually get any, so this is another warmonger trait~

Charismatic: Um, we're starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel here~ Monuments are a pain to build, and you want to NOT build them as soon as you can (build missionaries to spread you religion to new cities instead of building monuments). Oh well, if you're Charismatic, you'll probably want lots of monuments~ If you can land Stonehenge without shooting yourself in the foot too much, you can do a lot with that~ Of course, monuments will obsolete with Astronomy, so... yeah. Broadcast towers come too late in the game for +1 happy to make much difference, but oh well. Eiffel Tower just became even better for you! Problem is that it's good for everyone so expect competition for that. Quicker promotions are nice too but that might not come into play all that much. Oh well, one extra happy is better than a stick in the eye, you can use that to grow your cities bigger and work extra tiles~!

Protective: Protective sucks, wahahaha~ But if you must use it, get those archery and gunpowder units out so you can take advantage of the promos. If nothing else, your cities will be very hard to take~ Free drill promo means it can be useful for offense too, particularly with gunpowder units. Protective longbows are very very hard to dislodge. Double speed walls are nice, but you only need walls in a city that you think will be attacked. So you probably won't see that a lot. On the other hand, Castles are borderline broken defensive structures in the pre-gunpowder age, so build them in your border cities if you can! You get them at double speed so why not~? The problem is that these benefits simply aren't as generally useful as other traits, as they only really work to their fullest effectiveness if you're being attacked, and who wants to be attacked?! Oh well, this trait isn't completely useless, but it's generally accepted to be the worst of the lot~

On Traits and Civilizations: Note that each civilization has a unique building and a unique unit. The leader-based bonuses apply to these unique units and structures as if they were the unit that they replace, so yes, an expansive India gets the +25% production boost for Fast Workers, and the Mali's Mint (forge replacement) is built at double speed by Industrious leaders~ You can use this to great advantage if you like, particularly when playing with unrestricted leaders~! Aggressive Praetorians dominate the ancient age, to just use one example~ There are way too many possibilities to list, so I'll leave it to you and the Civilopedia to figure it out~

In my next post which will come later I'll talk about more little tricks and tactics, like binary science and getting the most out of your production modifiers~!

Exploring Dos and Don'ts!

Do: Explore in a circular pattern around your capital first thing.
Don't: Run your warrior off in a single direction for a long distance.
Reasons: Well, the second strategy could work if you're the type to gamble and try to walk into an empty capital in the first 10 turns of the game~ But otherwise, keeping close to your capital and exploring the immediate area will reveal good potential city sites and keeps your warrior close to home in case you need to rush back to defend~! Plus, you want to map out a good spot for your second city right away so you can get a settler out as soon as you have a few warriors and a worker or two on the ground~

Do: Stick to forests and hills.
Don't: Park your warrior on flat ground next to a bunch of unfogged terrain.
Reasons: Losing your explorer to an animal attack sucks! Why risk it, even if you get a bonus against barbarian units (which includes animals)? You can still have as much as a 30-40% chance of losing a starting warrior or scout to a lion attack! Don't take that chance, stick to forests for the +50% defense boost--or +75% on a forested hill~! Note that hills give your unit a longer sight range than most units and give a +25% defense boost on their own, so they're good for exploring~ By the way, bears are generally too strong to take even with a defensive bonus so try to avoid them~

Do: Take Woodsman promotions on an exploring Warrior. Usually.
Don't: Take promotions without regard to the terrain, or take combat promotions on an explorer.
Reason: Woodsman II will grant your warrior 2 moves in forests! Most maps have large groups of forests and this can speed up your exploration greatly~ Not to mention you get a significant defense boost to defending in forests~! In some isolated cases Guerrilla may be better (lots of hills), but generally I do not find this to be true~ Guerrilla WILL get you more bang for your buck when defending cities constructed in a hill, however~! It's a stronger bonus than City Garrison~ Keep little details like this in mind~ If you want to get XP for your starting warriors, stick them into forests near lions and wolves and panthers (don't tease the bears)~

Do: Keep scouts exploring rival territory, watching their troop movements and noting city locations if possible.
Don't: Be in the dark!
Reason: You know, the AI isn't too subtle about trying to keep its big stacks of units hidden from your scouting units~ If you see it marching a big stack of doom towards your borders, their intentions are pretty clear~ Plus, having city locations mapped out for your allies is useful for commerce because a city must be revealed for you to get trade routes to it~

Binary Science

What is it?
Binary science refers to alternating between 100% and 0% on the research slider, wahahaha~ Now, why might you do this? Civ 4 is pretty good about preserving fractional values so you don't really need to worry about losing those to odd %s~!

But~! There are still some advantages to running binary science! For example, let's say in a given 10 turns, you complete an academy for +50% science on turn 6, for a city producing 10 commerce. If you run 50% science for all 10 turns, you get 5 science per turn for the first 5 turns and 7.5 science per turn for the next 5, for a total of 62.5 science. But~! If instead you run 5 turns of 0% science, and then after the academy completes switch to 100% science for the next 5 turns, you get 75 science, wahahaha~ See the gain~? Assuming the gold modifiers are equal, you make the same amount of gold either way, but you come out ahead on science by running binary science~! In other words, to get the most out of a binary science strategy, run a higher research rate when you get multipliers to science~! While you're waiting for those multipliers to build, run 0% and store gold~! A good time to start doing this is when you're running scientist specialests for your first academy--switch to 0% science a few turns before the GSci comes in, and boom~! You get a situation just like I outlined up there, wahahahaha~ The same goes stuff like libraries, run 0% science for the few turns before you complete building them, switch to 100% when they finish, instead of running a constant break-even rate~! You come out ahead this way, believe me~!

Another reason to run binary science is a tactical one~ Let's say you can research Literature in 8 turns running 50% science at break-even or 4 turns at 100% science at a deficit. Break-even science will have to research for all 8 turns to get Literature, but if say an enemy suddenly starts acting aggressive and you decide you need Construction instead, you have to switch over and start from scratch, researching slowly at break-even~! But if you're running binary science, you've already stored up enough gold to run 100% science and blow through Construction in just a few turns~! Or maybe you need gold to upgrade the units in your border cities instead~! Break-even science doesn't tend to ever have a massive gold surplus they can call upon, while binary science will have one~! Sure, it sucks to upgrade sometimes, but it's better than losing a few cities~

Useful Combinations and General Tips and Tricks

Production Modifiers
Don't forget, they stack, wahahaha~ Try to use them whenever you can~! Organized Religion with your state religion will make building infrastructure much quicker~ Forges are excellent buildings and you should get one in every city as soon as you research Metal Casting! The same goes for Factories and Power Plants when you reach that point in the tech tree~

Hey, hey, did you know~? Production modifiers apply to bonus production from chopping forests, too~! They also apply to production generated by the Slavery civic~! Modifiers from leader traits, or having the right resource for a particular building, yup~! These all work with bonus production sources~! That sure makes chopping the Hanging Gardens out a lot more attractive when you have access to stone, eh? Wahahahaha~

National Wonders
National Wonders should define the city in which they are built~! You can only build one, and generally they require a certain number of a particular related building to be built first~ Here's a quick rundown on the major ones:

Moai Statues
Make sure the city you build this in has plenty of water tiles to work, because this wonder boosts only water tiles~ Coastal tiles are much better than ocean tiles, of course~! Look for a city with 8 or more water tiles for this, if it's possible~! Preferably more, but you might not always be able to found a great coastal city, wahaha~ Note this city will not want to run specialests too often, since you want to work every tile~! The Colossus makes a good companion wonder if you can land it, and make sure to build a Lighthouse too~!

Heroic Epic
When you build the Heroic epic in city, consider that anything you build in that city from that point onwards other than a military unit is essentially losing that much production in military units! So this city should produce a non-stop stream of military units, only pausing for very important infrastructure builds, such as ones that add additional production~ Don't waste this in a commerce city, silly, you want to work production to the max in a Heroic Epic city~! Note that if your Heroic Epic city is coastal it can also serve as a naval base for building military ships at double speed, and makes a good companion to the Moai Statues~ However, it can be quite difficult to find a good coastal city spot that also has decent production, so don't go delaying putting down the Heroic Epic searching for the perfect coastal site~! (Note: It may be tempting to build West Point alongside the Heroic Epic, but the production cost of West Point is so high that I generally don't consider building it unless I have a Great Engineer with absolutely nothing else to rush, wahaha~).

National Epic
The National Epic should be the center of your "Great Person Farm" city~! You run lots of food and specialests in this city. It probably won't have much production as a result, but you can't have everything, wahahaha~ The Great Library is an excellent wonder to combine with this (2 free scientists that don't need to be fed!), if you can manage to land it~! Alternately you can stick it in a city with a lot of wonders to double those GP points, but I'm hesitant to do this because if you have a city with a lot of wonders it's probably the capital, and I prefer to focus my capital on commerce to get more from Bureaucracy, wahaha~ With that said, if your capital is ill-suited to pure commerce output and you later move the palace elsewhere with better commerce potential, I could see a strategy like this working~

Oxford University
This should go in a high-commerce city with an Academy~! Stack those modifiers and produce super science~! Not a lot to say here, except that a Bureaucracy capital with an Academy and Oxford and lots of mature cottages will be an absolute monster for research~! In the mid game you could see it producing more than half of the total science of your empire~!

Wall Street
This requires a bit of explaining, I think~ You might think this is a good idea to put in a high-commerce city like the capital for when you run 100% gold, but~! I have a different strategy in mind for Wall Street~! Did you know? The gold that religious shrines (the Great Prophet-generated buildings that can only be placed in the founding city of a religion) generate is produced by the shrine itself? This means that if you have the Temple of Solomon and there are 15 cities with Judaism in the world, the Temple of Solomon generates 15 gold--it does NOT mean that each of those cities generates 1 gold~! This is an important distinction, because gold modifiers can increase the gold generation of a religious shrine~! Market (25%) + Grocer (25%) + Bank (50%) = double output! Throw Wall Street (100%) on top of that and you have TRIPLE output~! That Temple of Solomon now generates 45 gold instead of 15, and it increases by 3 for every spread of Judaism~ So, basically, I like to stick Wall Street in the city where a religion was founded and put the religious shrine there~ This same principle applies to corporations--the HQ generates 4 gold for each branch, or 12 gold if it's founded in a city with full gold modifiers, so always found corporations in your Wall Street city if at all possible~ Incidentally, this does NOT apply to the Spiral Minaret wonder, that does actually add the gold output to each of the religious buildings themselves~! Anyways, I think you'll find that by the time you have access to Wall Street, you'll be spending fewer and fewer turns at 0% science, so it's better to have something that still gives you extra gold when running 100% science~

Globe Theater
I already outlined the draft camp strategy for this wonder earlier, wahahaha~ So check that out~ If you're not using that for whatever reason, a good place to put it is in your GP farm with the National Epic, as that city will try to grow to a high population value to run more specialests, and the theater itself gives 3 artist slots~

Overall
I really like national wonders! Every civ can build them, but each civ is limited to one. It really drives home the point as to how important city specialization is in Civilization 4~! You can really aim to get the most out of your cities by building the appropriate national wonders in the appropriate places~

Commerce
Contrary to how it works in Civilization 5 or other Civ clones, worked tiles in Civ4 do not directly generate things like science or gold~ Instead, things like cottages, luxury resources, oases, coastal tiles, and river tiles (among other things) generate "commerce" when a citizen works the tile~

Commerce is controlled by the slider in the top-left of your interface. The slider determines what % of your commerce is converted into research or gold (or, in some cases, espionage or culture).

Each city converts commerce to science or gold as determined by your national rate. Once it is converted into either science or gold, it may then be subject to multipliers as determined by the buildings present in the city, such as libraries or markets~ There the only multiplier that directly applies to commerce is the Bureaucracy civic, which adds +50% commerce to the capital~ In other words, your gold modifiers do nothing when you're running 100% science--at least, nothing to gold generated by commerce~!

There are a few ways to generate gold and research outside of commerce. Specialests, for example~! I've explained growth and citizen assignment in detail in my other posts, so I won't go over it again here, but suffice it to say that most of the time commerce will be your primary mode of generating science~ It is possible to run a "specialest economy" that uses scientists exclusively for research, but it requires specific circumstances and a very special setup to pull off~ One of the most lucrative ways to generate gold outside of the commerce slider is via a religious shrine, which requires the holy city of a religion plus a great prophet~

I might write more later, but for now this is what I got~

And here's a random shot to show just how much GNP can be inflated by culture~

Yes, I actually had a GNP of 11,000 when rival best was 800. I'm guessing it had to do with the +350% cultural output of 3 of my cities, and turning the commerce slider to 100% culture (450% in my Hermitage city, plus 50 base from corporations, needless to say my 3 legendary cities were producing more than 1200 culture per turn).

I was going to do a brief overview of civics next, but since we recently played some Fall from Heaven 2, let me explain one of the most easily overlooked concepts in the mod: the finer points of setting up your economy.

I'm sure you have all noticed that the early game in Fall from Heaven is much, much slower than base Civ4. There are a lot of reasons for this:
1. You only start with 1 tech instead of 2. Your worker and build options are therefore extremely limited from the get-go.
2. Techs are more expensive! In Civ4: BTS, first-tier techs like Hunting, Mining, and Mysticism typically range from 40-60 science. In FFH2, your first tier techs are 80-120. Since there's not a big boost to early game commerce to compensate, this means you generally discover techs at a slower pace in the early game.
3. Not only that, but your first-tier techs do not give you a whole lot of extra options in terms of buildings. They are almost strictly "worker techs," that give you access to more options for your workers. Here's a quick run-down of the early techs and what they do:

First Tier
Ancient Chants (80): Cities can build monuments, leads to Education (with Agriculture) and Mysticism. Monuments are much worse in the early game of FFH2 because of their very expensive cost.
Exploration (80): Workers can build roads. Leads to Cartography, Fishing, and Hunting.
Crafting (120): Workers can build wineries. Cities can build the Brewery national wonder. Leads to Mining and Masonry.
Agriculture (80): Workers can build farms. Leads to Education (with Ancient Chants), Calender, and Animal Husbandry.

Second Tier (Requires 1 or more techs from the first tier)
Mining (200): Allows workers to chop forests and build mines. Reveals copper on the map. Leads to Archery, Bronze Working, and Way of the Earthmother (with Mysticism).
Education (240): Allows workers to build COTTAGES. Enables the Apprenticeship civic. Leads to many, many techs, notably Code of Laws and Writing.
Hunting (480): Ouch! Look at that science cost. Workers can build camps. Cities can build hunting lodges (which in turn allow them to build hunters), and [b]hawks[/b]. Hawks are borderline overpowered scouting units, giving you a stupid amount of map information at no risk. Leads to Archery and Way of the Forests (with Mysticism).
Mysticism (200): In my opinion, the most important early-game tech for most civilizations. Cities can build elder councils and pagan temples. Enables the God-King civic. Leads to the three early-game religions, Philosophy, and Knowledge of the Ether.
Fishing (160): (Note: For the pirate-themed Lanun civilization, this is effectively a first-tier tech due to their unique Seafaring tech which leads to Fishing). Cities can build work boats, Harbors, and the Heron Throne. Grants access to water tiles. Leads to Sailing and Message from the Deep (with Mysticism).
Calender (160): Workers can build plantations (granting access to the appropriate resources). Enables the [b]Agrarianism[/b] civic. Leads to Festivals. Important, especially if you have the requisite resources.
Cartography (200): Can construct the Pact of the Nilhorn world project (gives you three hidden nationality, 7-strength hill giants for 500 production). Enables map trading, open borders, and the City States civic. A dead-end tech that isn't of much use early on.
Masony (160): Workers can build quarries (granting access to the requisite resources). Cities can build dungeons and city walls. Leads to Construction
4. It's a long time before you can even replace your basic warrior unit! And since building workers leaves them with not a lot to do, you will spam warriors and the occasional scout in the early game. And this is partially a good thing because your starting scout units usually have a short life span, and it's not uncommon for your civilization to fall under attack from local barbarians throughout the early game. The dangerous nature of Fall from Heaven 2's early game combined with the slow tech pace forces you to go on the defensive early on to protect your very existence, and unfortunately your only real option in that regard is spamming warriors. Accessing better units, like archers via Archery or Axemen via Bronze Working, not only requires you to research a third-tier tech, but you also requires building special buildings (Training Yard or Archery Range) in cities before you can produce such units! And given these units are not even that much stronger than Warriors (Archers are no stronger on the attack than Warriors and Axemen/Swordsmen are only 1 point stronger, and no longer receive huge bonuses against melee units), the opportunity cost is high.

With that in mind, I think the basic strategy for technology in the early game should be as follows:
1. Commerce boosting. Look at your stating location, and think of the best way to build commerce. Resources like cotton and wines are more efficient than cottages in this regard, because they provide immediate benefits and come sooner (Education is kind of expensive). A food resource or two is nice too, but you're going to cap out soon anyway and unlike base Civ4, there is no Slavery civic (in the early game) to carefully manage your population and happiness. Therefore, food is less important, since you can't directly and quickly turn it into production~ On the other hand, commerce is scarce and you need it, so Calender or Crafting or Fishing are great to improve your research rate!
2. Mysticism. Sage councils are your basic early-game science building. They add 2 science base, and then you can run a scientist specialist on top of that for 3 extra science and Great Scientist points (remember, food is less important in FFH2 early game, so running a scientist has a lower opportunity cost than in base Civ4)~ Plus, the God-King civic is pretty nice, though note the bonus is to gold and not commerce, unlike Bureaucracy. Getting an early Great Scientist for an Academy is a nice science benefit~ Remember, if you have grains, the Brewery national wonder will give you big commerce boosts, so put that in a commerce-heavy city with an academy for big boosts~
3. Aristocracy + Agrarianism. These two civics, unlocked at Code of Laws + Calender, create a powerful combination where farms produce -1 production and +2 commerce. How to use this? Put it on tiles that don't produce any production to begin with, like grasslands or flood plains. Note that if you put a farm next to a river it will still add +1 commerce. For many Civilizations, you can set up an economy purely by spamming these farms on every grassland or flood plains tile, and mining hills, lumbermills on plains forests, etc. Financial leaders love this since 2 commerce is the threshold for adding an extra commerce to the tile, therefore river Aristofarms will add +4 commerce! Even though these produce less raw commerce than a cottage, the extra food can eventually make up for it by allowing you to work more total tiles and run specialests~ Add into the fact that Sanitation is a much earlier and easier to get tech than Biology, and Construction allows you to "chain farms," and farms are easier to make and more productive than in base Civ4~ There are, however, some civilizations that run into problems spamming Aristofarms:
a. Elves. Elves should never run Aristofarms, because the elven benefit is that they can build improvements on forested tiles without removing the forest, therefore adding extra production (and eventually food when under the Fellowship of Leaves religion) to each tile. Agrarianism would remove the production from the forest, therefore cancelling out the benefit. Elves run the standard cottage economy.
b. Kuriotates have a unique upgrade from the town called the "enclave" that produces extra food and commerce. However, they may still choose to run Aristofarms because Enclaves take a LONG time to grow (twice the length of village->town if I remember right), and the benefits come in the extreme late game where it may not matter as much. The Kuriotates are also known for having a very strong economy and can probably lose a few commerce without hurting. In any case, if they're making the "flavorful" choice of actually using their unique improvement, then they can't use Aristofarms for commerce. But they can still benefit from doing so.
c. Illians. Techncially they can use Aristofarms, but due to the fact that riverside snow tiles do not receive the standard +1 commerce boost, they are of more limited effectiveness. Still, you can use them if you so choose.
d. Lanun. Lanun are notorious for having low production due to their emphasis on working water tiles. Since water tiles are where most of the Lanun's food commerce comes from, Aristofarms may not benefit them as much, and they may choose to focus their land tiles more on production through mines, lumbermills, and (lategame) workshops.
5. There may be others, I'm not a master of every Civilization. But Aristocracy + Agrarianism is a very strong combination that works for many of the Civs and can run your empire by itself.

Anchan, explain mana nodes too neeee

>>38347
Raw mana nodes can be transformed into a particular kind of mana by adepts, mages, and archmages. You must have at least one kind of mana to promote units with spells from that "school." For example, Death 1 grants a spell to an arcane caster that summons a skeleton, and you must have at least 1 Death mana to promote a unit to Death 1. For the purposes of referring to spellcasters here, please note I am referring only to arcane spellcasters. Divine spellcasters follow different rules.

If you have 2 of a given mana, any arcane units you produce when you have those 2 mana automatically start with the level 1 promotion associated with that school. If you have 3, mages will be granted the automatic level 2 promotion, and with 4, archmages will gain the automatic level 3 promotion. These promotions do not cost experience points, and indeed, whenever you create an arcane caster or upgrade one to the next level, you get one EXP-free promotion. Mages and archmages cannot be built (except for certain heroes), they must be "upgraded" from adepts with a certain amount of EXP (archmages are upgraded from very high EXP mages and you can only have 4). Only mages and archmages have access to level 2 spells, and only archmages have access to level 3 spells. You also need certain technologies to unlock mages and archmages, Sorcery for mages, and Strength of Will (VERY expensive tech) for archmages? It should be noted there are some heroes that are archmages and may come with earlier, cheaper techs, but they may be religion or civilization specific.

Since getting EXP for adepts is understandably hard, given their low strength, the "channeling" promotion that all casters begin with has a chance to passively grant 1 EXP each turn (note: this is far from guaranteed). You might also look for weak barbarians to use for EXP farming--you can weaken them with catapults or something before sending in the casters. For these reasons, if you plan on using casters in numbers, it's best to build them early, so they can start building EXP right away.

In addition to raw mana nodes, your palace (the building that is automatically generated in your capital city) may also grant you a few different kinds of mana. The type varies from civilization to civilization. Think of these as freebies. In addition, once you convert a raw mana node to a different kind of mana node, you cannot replace it directly. However, the level 2 metamagic spell "Dispel Magic" will revert a converted mana node to a raw mana node so you can change it. Once you have a few mages with Dispel Magic you can change your mana nodes around at will. Also, multiple mages creating/dispelling nodes function like workers, you can assign multiples to the task to speed the process up. This is especially key if you're aiming for a Tower of Mastery win, as you'll need 1 mana of 4 different kinds to build each of the towers, but you don't need every single mana in the game at once (which would be next to impossible). It should be noted that, as far as I know, losing access to mana does not cause your spellcasters to lose promotions or become unable to cast certain spells.

Finally, certain types of units, particularly summons and elementals, become stronger with the more of a particular kind of mana you possess. For example, wraiths and spectre gain a strength increase for every death mana you have. The same goes with elemental summons like ice elementals (increased strength with ice mana). These units DO become weaker instantly if you lose a source of that mana. Some mana types also confer passive benefits, for example, life mana grants +1 health in all cities, and enhancement grants +1 happy (I think). These bonuses are cumulative and are lost if you lose access to that kind of mana.

What are Civics?
Civics are various aspects that represent how you manage your empire. They replace the monolithic progression of governments from past Civilization titles, and indeed, instead of having certain Civics become eventually obsolete, every Civic beyond the starting set are at least situationally useful. Some have drawbacks, others do not. All provide some benefit to your civilization.

All civics incur an upkeep cost, ranging from "No Upkeep" to "High Upkeep." The costs are modified by the size of your empire and by inflation (which steadily increases throughout the game), with naturally "High Upkeep" and "Medium Upkeep" civics increasing at a much faster rate than "Low Upkeep" and "No Upkeep" civics. Generally, when you have a small empire early in the game, you won't sweat civic upkeep costs, but they become more and more relevant throughout the game. Civic upkeep costs are also higher on higher difficulty levels. Note the Organized trait reduces civic upkeep cost.

Anarchy and Civic Swapping
When you swap civics, you undergo a period of anarchy. When in anarchy, none of your cities produce anything--they don't accumulate production towards your builds, and they don't contribute any gold or science. Fortunately, you also pay no maintenance costs.

The duration of anarchy depends on a lot of things--the size of your empire, the game speed, and the amount of civics you change. Note that anarchy is much more costly in the late game than in the early game--in the early game, you're losing proportionally a lot less production/research than in the late (where your empire will be larger and more productive). Timing civic swaps can be important, I like to wait for anarchy to revolt to Slavery until after I built my first settler, but before I found my 2nd city, for example.

Note that after the period of anarchy ends, you cannot swap civics again for a time (the duration of which depends mostly on the game speed). Note that although swapping religions also incurs a period of anarchy, swapping religions does not trigger the "cooldown" on civic swapping, or vice versa. This might mean that if you know you're going to discover the requisite technologies for two new civics you want back to back, you should hold off on swapping after you discover the first so you can swap to both at once. Not only will you save a turn of anarchy in most cases, but you won't have to worry about the cooldown period.

Spiritual leaders do not suffer any anarchy, but still incur the cooldown period between religion or civic swaps. The Cristo Redentor great wonder reduces the cooldown time between civic swapping to 1 turn, and also causes the civilization that builds it to produce no anarchy. Note that Spiritual leaders get a +100% bonus to building this wonder, which helps to compensate for the fact that it does a little less for them, since they already have no anarchy~ However, they stand to better use the rapid civic-swapping it offers!

Civics

Despotism (Government)
Barbarism (Legal)
Tribalism (Labor)
Decentralization (Economic)
Paganism (Religion)
The default civics. They all provide no benefit and have a Low Upkeep, and are available from the start of the game.

Government Civics
Special Note
The Pyramids allows access to all Government civics for the civilization that builds it, regardless of your technological progress! To be honest, I question the usefulness of this. The Pyramids are a very expensive build, especially without stone or for non-Industrious leaders, and to really get the most out of it you need to be able to leverage the civics for your advantage. Slowing yourself down to land this wonder usually isn't worth it in my honest opinion, since it comes early enough that you really want to be out settling more land and producing workers (and defending yourself against barbarians). On the other hand, it's absolutely essential to a specialist-based empire in the early game, as it opens up Representation early enough for it to really matter~

Hereditary Rule (requires Monarchy)
Low upkeep. Each military unit stationed in a city provides +1 Happiness.
This is an excellent way to raise your happy cap in the midgame~ You should have at least one or two military units in each city, so that's an extra happiness right there, and you can add more to taste~
Useful Combos: Slavery. Whipping out military units gets you extra beef, and the military unit you produce cancels out the unhappiness from the whip~!

Representation (requires Constitution)
Medium upkeep. Each specialest provides +3 science, and your X largest cities (scales by map size) gain +3 happiness.
This also raises your happiness, but it comes late in the game if you don't have the Pyramids. If you're running this civic, you should really make sure to run some specialests, otherwise it's a big waste compared to Hereditary Rule~
Useful Combinations: Mercantilism, Caste System, Pacifism, Philosophical leader. Mercantilism gives you one free specialest in every city, this is a great way to get those extra beakers "for free"~ Caste System allows you to run as many Artist, Scientist, and Merchant specialests as you want, without the need to build the proper buildings in cities! Pacifism (and the Philosophical trait) increases the Great Person birth rate by 100%, and all of those specialests produce great person points~! I'm sure you can see the effectiveness of these combinations~

Police State (Requires Fascism)
High upkeep. +25% military unit production and -50% war weariness.
The applications of this one are pretty obvious, it's a warmonger trait~ You run this when you want to produce a bunch of units and go wage war~
Useful Combinations: Vassalage, Theocracy, Jails, Mt. Rushmore national wonder.
Vassalage and Theocracy both provide extra EXP for additional promotions for every military unit you produce--makes that extra production worth more~! Vassalage also adds a number of "free units," IE units that require gold for upkeep, therefore helping with the high maintenance cost of these civics. If you have a Jail in a city, the Mt. Rushmore national wonder, and this civic, you reduce War Weariness by 100%~! Yes, that means absolutely no war weariness~

Universal Suffrage (Requires Democracy)
Medium upkeep. +1 Production for towns, and allows spending gold to instantly finish the current project in a city's build queue.
In the late game, when you have a number of mature cottages (towns), this civic can add a huge amount of production to your empire. In addition, you can also produce a large amount of gold at once by simply turning the commerce slider to 100% gold, allowing for quick-rushing of crucial projects~
Useful Combinations: Emancipation, Free Speech, river cottages and Levees. Emancipation greatly increases the rate at which cottages mature, therefore getting you towns faster~ With a levee, a river cottage already produces +1 production, and with Universal Suffrage it's +2. Free Speech adds +2 commerce to every town, turning your towns into real powerhouse improvements~! Yes, cottages start off at a piddly +1 commerce, but in the end game, towns can be absurdly powerful~

Legal Civics

Vassalage (Requires Feudalism)
High upkeep. Military units are built with +2 XP, free support for X units (varies with map size).
This trait is mostly useful for building or supporting a large military~ I wouldn't use it for anything else~
Useful Combinations: See Police State. May also combo with Theocracy for +4 XP units~

Bureaucracy (Requires Civil Service)
High upkeep. +50% Production and Commerce in your capital city.
At one point in time this was a medium upkeep civic, but it was raised to high upkeep when the absurd power of it was realized~ Your capital is likely to be your oldest, most well-developed city, and emphasizing commerce and production there can make this civic transform it into a powerhouse! A good portion of the reason the "Oracle into Civil Service slingshot" is so powerful~
Useful Combinations: The Oracle, a commerce-focused capital, Academy in the capital. Don't spread out your multipliers, stack them~ +50% commerce with +50% science applied is huge~! And that's not even counting libraries and any other science-boosting buildings you may have~! If you run Bureaucracy, focus on your capital first, and the rest of the empire later~ Admittedly, the effectiveness of Bureaucracy fizzles out compared to Free Speech when you have a massive empire with lots of cottage-focused cities~

Nationhood (Requires Nationalism)
NO upkeep. +25% espionage in all cities, +2 happiness from Barracks, Can Draft X Units per turn (varies with map size).
No upkeep is a big deal late game, and so is being able to produce free units by sacrificing a bit of population~! If you need units fast, this is an excellent way to get them~ The extra happiness from Barracks helps to offset the unhappiness from drafting~ I explained drafting earlier so I won't go into too much detail~
Useful Combinations: Theocracy or Vassalage, Barracks, settled Great Generals, Granary, Globe Theater, strong Civilization-specific unique units that replace draftable units. Theocracy or Vassalage + a Barracks will give drafted units a free promotion--remember, XP given to units via buildings is cut in half for draftees~! So a Barracks of Theocracy alone isn't enough to give a promotion by itself, but the two combined will be. Don't be afraid to skim a few units off of your most populous cities with Nationhood in a pinch! The value of extra warm bodies for war and/or defense can't be underestimated, more units is always a good thing when you plan for war~

Free Speech (Requires Liberalism)
Low upkeep. +100% culture in all cities, +2 commerce from Towns (mature cottages).
If Nationhood is the late-game civic of choice for warmongers, this is for peacemongers~ +2 commerce in every town is extremely strong when you have multiple cities working towns~! This is also the civic of choice for a cultural victory, as it adds +100% culture to every city~ It's also low upkeep, a welcome relief as compared to the high upkeep of the Big B~ Those factors combined make it excellent for large, late-game empires~
Useful Combinations: Other cottage-boosting civics and technologies like Printing Press, Universal Suffrage, and Emancipation. Cultural buildings.


Labor Civics

Slavery (Requires Bronze Working)
Medium upkeep. Can expend population to rush the completion of units and buildings (converts population to production).
I have talked about the Slavery civic at length, and suffice it to say you're doing it wrong if you don't make extensive use of this civic in the early and midgame~ The only excuse not to use this civic for all that it's worth is a food-poor start. To which I'd say GO LOOK FOR FOOD, wahaha~ It's available early in the game and will allow you to quickly make units or infrastructure as you please, turning that excess population into production~
Useful Combinations: Granary, Hereditary Rule, production modifiers like Forges and Organized Religion.

Serfdom (Requires Feudalism)
Low upkeep. Doubles the work rate of workers.
IT'S A TRAP~! I can't think of a single reason why I'd ever want to run this over Slavery~
Useful Combinations: The Hagia Sophia? Just don't run this okay~

Caste System (Requires Code of Laws)
Medium upkeep. Can run unlimited merchant, scientist, and artist specialests. +1 Production for Workshops.
Now we're talking~ This takes some effort to use to its full effect, but you can generate some fast great people in cities with a high food surplus if you run this civic~! Normally, you can only run as many specialests as you have buildings to support them, but with this, you can run 10 scientists if you want (and have the food to support them)~!
Useful Combinations: A high food surplus, Pacifism, Representation (and the Pyramids), State Property (for the workshop bonus).

Emancipation (Requires Democracy)
NO UPKEEP. Doubles the growth rate of cottages, hamlets, and villages. Inflicts a happiness penalty upon all civilizations not running Emancipation.
Adopt this after you run a massive expansion campaign and plop down a lot of cottages to get them back up to speed so you can benefit from town bonuses ASAP~ Or, switch to this as needed if the AI starts to adopt it and the happiness penalty becomes a problem.
Useful Combinations: Rapid expansion + cottages, Free Speech, Universal Suffrage.

Economic Civics

Mercantilism (Requires Banking)
Medium upkeep. No foreign trade routes, and one free specialest in each city. Foreign corporations have no effect.
Another trait for maximizing specialest potential~ Note that you still must have an applicable building to house the specialest (you can circumvent this via Caste System).
Useful Combinations: Caste System, Pacifism, Representation, the Philosophical trait. This civic is generally useful if you pick up Banking early enough, and may remain useful if you are not benefiting from foreign trade (due to war, overseas, etc), but in the endgame, intercontinental foreign trade routes can be extremely beneficial. You may lose significant amounts of commerce if you run this civic, and could potentially have trade routes with many other foreign cities.

Free Market (Requires Banking)
Medium upkeep. +1 Trade Route in each city, and -25% corporation maintenance costs.
The flip side of mercantilism, Free Market is all about maximizing your trade route commerce~
Useful Combinations: Overseas trade, foreign trade, open borders with foreign civilizations, extended peace, Harbors, Customs Houses, corporations. Note that foreign trade routes get a +100% bonus over domestic trade routes. Trade routes add a certain amount of commerce to every city, which varies with population and other factors such as distance. If you are running multiple corporations this is also a great way to save on upkeep~

State Property (Requires Communism)
Low upkeep. No "distance from capital" maintenance costs, +1 food to Workshops and Watermills, and +10% production. Corporations have no effect, and you cannot found or spread corporations.
Don't run this with corporations, wahaha~ Otherwise, the civic of choice for a massive, world-spanning empire~ Encourages the use of workshops, as this transforms them into food-neutral improvements (effectively removing the food penalty)~
Useful Combinations: Caste System, Combustion (for Workshops). A large empire with high distance maintenance costs.

Environmentalism (Requires Medicene)
High upkeep. +25% corporation maintenance costs. +6 health in all cities, +2 Commerce from forest preserves and windmills. +2 health from Public Transportation.
I don't use this one much, but I guess it could be helpful if you have a lot of unhealthiness! I usually don't have enough forests left to make use of the forest preserve part, though, as I chop them all for early game boosts (and to remove potential defensive terrain for invading armies to hide within in my lands--I can use my cities, I'd rather they don't have anything, easiest to kill them if they stand on flat land)~
Useful Combinations: Windmills and forests.

Religion Civics
Special Note
The Shwedagon Paya wonder allows access to all religious civics, in a similar manner to the Pyramids. Due to its place on the tech tree, it might be of limited use, but if you have gold and think you'll get a benefit from it, feel free to build it~ I don't usually think the later religious civics are powerful enough to justify building it, and the techs come naturally on the tree. But hey, up to you~
Note: Religious civics are mostly dependent on your state religion. If you have no state religion you won't benefit from religious civics, with the exception of the Free Religion civic.

Organized Religion (requires Monotheism)
High upkeep. Each city with your state religion present receives a +25% production bonus for buildings (and wonders). Allows you to build missionary units without a monastery (for any religion present in the city).
Note that the production bonus applies to chopping and slaving as well~ Great for an infrastructure push, but make sure your religion is present in the city! Note that you can build missionaries for other religions too, not just your state religion~ So that's nice, particularly if you don't want to invest in a monastery but need to keep spreading your religion to new cities~
Useful Combos: Slavery, chopping. A non-war building push.

Theocracy (requires Theology)
Medium upkeep. Units produced in city with your state religion present receive +2 XP on creation.
More XP means more promotions which means stronger units. Great for a wartime buildup~
Useful Combos: Any building that grants EXP (Barracks, Stable, Drydocks, Airport) will stack with this to grant two free promotions right away~ See Vassalage for details~

Pacifism (requires Philosophy)
NO UPKEEP, but you must pay an extra 1 gold support cost for each military unit you control. +100% great person birth rate in cities with your state religion present.
For generating great people, look no further~ Anti-synergistic with a large invasion or defense force.
Useful Combos: Representation, Caste System, the Great Library, the Philosophical trait. I've given you enough details here how to maximize your great person generation via specialests, so no need to repeat myself~

Free Religion (requires Liberalism)
Low upkeep. You have no state religion. +10% science, +1 happiness for each religion present in a city. Note that this also makes every religion count towards your city's base culture instead of only your state religion.
One thing to keep in mind when running this civic is that you WILL lose the benefit of any wonders that are reliant on a state religion, such as the Sistine Chapel or the Spiral Minaret~ I don't usually run this because I love pushing my state religion to the max benefit, but if you have a lot of religions present in your empire and don't have a self-founded religion to take advantage of, you might prefer this~
Useful Combos: I honestly can't think of any~

I want to get more people into Fall from Heaven 2. So I thought I'd give some overviews to help skeptics ease in.

So what is Fall from Heaven 2? Fall from Heaven 2 is a medieval fantasy mode for Civilization 4, and one of the reasons why I think Civ4 is still a lot better than Civ5.

The basic gameplay is largely the same as in Civ4. Your goal is to build up your civilization, through a combination of economic management, diplomatic cunning, and force of arms. The victory conditions are slightly changed from base Civilization 4, with time, conquest, domination, and cultural victories being largely the same, but there is no longer the option of a diplomatic or a space race victory. The "technological victory" of the space race has been replaced by two different victory conditions: the altar of Lunnotar victory (which requires a large amount of technologies, plus a certain number of great prophets in order to build), and the Tower of Mastery victory (requires you to build 4 towers which require 4 different kinds of mana each, then building the Tower of Mastery). Instead of a diplomatic victory, you can win a religious victory if you control the holy city of a religion, and your religion has a certain % of influence over the world--sort of like a "backdoor domination" victory that the diplomatic victory is. The best way to do this is to make sure that highly populated cities have only your religion present.

A lot of the same improvements and terrain concepts remain the same. You still have farms, cottages, mines, etc. Units are still produced in cities, as are buildings and wonders. There are still "civics" which influence how your civilization operates and are unlocked with technological process, and you still have religions which are founded by the first person to reach a certain technology, unlock certain buildings, and work well in combination with other civics.

So what's different?

Fall from Heaven Concepts

Vertical Tech Tree
Fall from Heaven's technological progress halts at an earlier level than in base Civ 4, with the highest tier being cannons and crude muskets. A good guideline for FFH2 is to focus on mastery of one or two paths rather than trying to max out every path. You most likely will not reach the end of the tech tree in most games, even when going for a peaceful victory~!

Unit Powers
Many units have special powers--some even cast magic. Spellcasters even get new powers based on the promotions they receive~! I explained magic earlier so I won't go in-depth on that just yet, as that's good enough for a general overview. The amount of unit abilities varies widely.

Vast Differences between Civilizations
Some of the Civilizations change the basic mechanics of how the game is played. For example, the Kuriotates get a limited number of cities based on map size. However, these cities are often called "megacities" due to their ability to work the third cultural ring, and the special unique commerce-multiplying Kuriotate buildings (which keep the research output of the Kuriotates on par with that of a larger empire with more cities). Cities settled beyond this limit become "settlements" which have their output quartered and cannot build anything. The Khazad dwarves have a happiness modifier tied to their gold count, which gives them a happiness penalty when they have a low amount of gold per city, or a bonus to happiness, production, and great person points when they have a large amount of gold per city~! In addition, each Civilization has its own "world spell," and one-per-game effect that is generally very powerful in some way. Generally this is balanced by Civilizations with somewhat weaker mechanics having more powerful world spells. The Kuriotates are a research monster, but their world spell "Legends" simply gives a huge culture boost to each city. This is nice, but compared to the Illian's freezing the production and research of all rival civilizations for 20 turns (mechanically, this is essentially 20 turns of anarchy), it's not exactly the most potent thing in the world. On the other hand, the Illians have pathetic economic traits and can't adopt religions (and religions are very powerful in FFH2). There are also a good number more unique units and buildings per civilization, and many even have "banned" units and buildings that they cannot build. For example, the Kuriotates have centaurs replacing all non-religion-based mounted units, and cannot build stables. The Calabim have powerful midgame units called vampires (which replace champions), but they lack the early research-boosting Sage Council. The Clan of Embers orcs cannot build libraries, etc.

World Units and National Units
World units and national units are similar to wonders of the same type, except that generally you can build four of each "national unit." National units are typically the pinnacle unit of a particular branch of the tree, for example, knights are the most powerful mounted unit in the game, and they are national units. Beastmasters are the most powerful recon units in the game, and they are national units, archmages are the most powerful arcane units, and are national units, etc. Beyond national units, there are "world units"--this is mostly a category that includes only heroes. There can only be one of a given world unit in the game, even if multiple civilizations could build him. For example, even if you and two rivals are of the Empyrean religion, only one of you can build Chalid, the Empyrean hero. Generally, each civilization has at least one hero unique to their civilization, and the same goes for each religion. Certain civilizations and religions may have multiple heroes. Further, these heroes are generally more powerful the further down the tech tree they come. Some civilizations have access to very early heroes, but these heroes are not as immediately powerful as others. For example, the Dovello start with their hero Lucian, but he's basically a warrior with the hero promotion. Not special abilities. On the other hand, the Kuriotate hero called Eurabartes the Gold Dragon is immensely powerful, but cannot be built until the late game tech Divine Essence is discovered. It should be noted that not all heroes are world units--certain units can become nameless heroes via other means, particularly those of the Grigori civilization--another agnostic Civilization that gains immense power via access to the "adventurer" great person, a kind of hero that can be upgraded to many different kinds of units. A hero passively receives 1 XP every turn until it reaches 100 XP, which means heroes can gain promotions very quickly and become quite strong.

Faster XP Gain
Great Generals are not in FFH2, but all units gain XP faster and earn promotions faster. Furthermore, you'll notice that promotions are more powerful. The combat line gives +20% Strength per promotion instead of +10%. The +1 movement mobility promotion is available to almost every unit and is available very early, only requiring the Horseback Riding technology, and has no prerequisites to promote a unit to it. The drill line not only gives additional first strikes, but also "defensive strikes" which may cause a unit to make a counter-attack against a unit attacking its stack. The combination of faster XP gain and world/national units means that FFH2 tends to center around a smaller number of elite, potent units rather than massive hordes. Naturally, it's best when you have the elite units with the backup of a massive horde.

Religions are Different
Base Civ4 had every religion being basically the same, with the only real difference being the resource required to double the speed of their cathedral building, and the technology associated with founding the religion. I understand why they did this, as Civ4 used real-world religions and wanted to avoid offending anyone by making a particular religion "more powerful"~ However, since Fall from Heaven 2 uses fictional religions, they are much more varied. Each religion gives differing benefits, from unique units to different bonuses from their temples, and unique lines of divine spells. We range from the gold-based religion of the Runes of Kilmorph to the highly secretive Council of Esus, which has no priests or temples. To go into the differences in religions would require a post all of its own, which I may make someday, but for now I think this will do~ Oh, and one last thing. Whenever you research the technology associated with a religion, you receive a free emissary of the religion, even if you don't found it. This means you can still have access to a certain religion, even if another Civ founds it first~

I may make followup posts to this later~

If there are any FFH2 mechanics in particular you'd like me to go over, let me know~