I've had the game for ages now, and recently decided to reinstall and play in for a dozen hours straight. There's just nothing quite as satisfying at 3 AM as nuking Israel and repelling US-sponsored invasions.

Would anyone be willing to begin a small-sized game, perhaps with slower technology and faster unit production?

Post here or send a PM.

Why play Vanilla?

I play Fall from Heaven 2.

Pure win.

Seconding this. Even if you don't play the game, spend some time reading the manual.

Truly amazing amount of detail for a mod.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=257728

I played vanilla, Fall from Heaven 2 and some other pretty great mod, but my Civilization 4 CD won't install anymore.

I only play vanilla. I am not sure how and where I would download FfH (it's probably on Furien's link, I barely browsed it), but would try it if others were interested.

kael.civfanatics.net is the main site.

I downloaded FfH II... and cannot for the life of me figure out how to run it. It may be that I do not have the 3.19 patch installed (I am not sure if I do or do not, but have been downloading it to see for the past hour), but when I go to run the installer it warns me that it cannot detect the "o.43 version" and crashes to desktop after installation, running the Microsoft error report program.

Does anyone happen to know what all this business is, or more importantly and to he point, where and how I can install and play FfH II for Beyond the Sword?

There's an Israeli Civ? Hm...

Anyways, yet. I've been playing Beyond the Sword for a while. Nowadays, I mostly play on Prince, but I'm trying to work my way up to Monarch. I still feel quite unskilled. I usually use Mansa Musa or Wang Kon. Never tried Romans or Inca.

Israel is my analogy for IG America's pesky ally state, which heckles me to no end with impunity as it has an aggression pact with the nation eight times the size of my own. Ironically, I play Persia, and not very seriously much of the time. On occasion I will deliberately cripple myself for that "small third-world country striving to assert itself as a nuclear power" feeling.

If you are ever interested in a game, send me a PM or post here. I am going to reinstall the game in attempt to get FfH 2 to display in-game menus.

Oh, so basically Mali or Maya when they get vassaled. So annoying...

Persia's probably one of my favourite civs, too. Immortal rushes are fun. China and Vikings also have some really fun unique units, too.

Also, Civ 5 is going to be the stuff of legends: hexagonal tiles, ranged seige, improved AI and diplomacy... There goes any chance of me doing anything productive next fall.

Crap. A new Civ? Please tell me it has high system reqs. Pleeeeeaaaaase tell me I can't play it.

I am apprehensive toward the prospect of a Civilization 5 for a number of reasons, one of which being the amount of time that can be poured into these games. Coupling with that, having now played FfH 2 I think I am utterly satisfied with any non-diplomatic aspect of the game. If Civ 5 carries on the legacy of hack and slash without a very dedicated social and political interface, I can do without it.

Foot note: Download and play the Fall from Heaven 2 mod. Furien was right- in most respects, it is better than the real game.

Good music, too.

Have either of you had that problem where the game (particularly FfH2) crashes to desktop at some point after the 200th turn? It has done this for me a number of times, but this morning I discovered it had become game-breaking; I load the game, end my turn, and as soon as the AI makes it moves and casts its spells-- bang.

A shame, considering I was on the brink of a domination victory with Grigori, good fun as that is. I suspect it has something to do with the video card (I deleted the civ cache already), and it may be worth noting that play with all 19 civs on a standard map.

Gandhi is such a violent prick.

I have it, but I'm not very good at it, and I've never played online before. Would I get destroyed for not being very excellent?

Not at all. It takes a while to pick up all the additional aspects of game play I am an amateur myself (I play on Warlord), and prefer to play the more diplomatic side anyhow.

If you want, I would be willing to play a typical game of Beyond the Sword.

I play on Warlord too! Yay! I don't feel like such a loser compared to everyone else anymore, haha . Sure yeah we could totally try playing sometime. What does playing online involve?

Actually, the jump from Warlord to Noble isn't too bad. I won my first game on Noble with Boudica. If you have the time, try playing one difficulty outside your comfort zone: if you win, awesome. If you lose, you learn a lot.

Playing online means that certain strategies that work singleplayer will probably not work out on multiplayer. For example, diplomacy is out of the question right away, and space, time and culture are really difficult and risky. AI always goes for a space win, but almost all human players go for conquest, so in multiplayer, you have to really build up a strong military (as well as the commerce and research to sustain said military).