Gameplay

Some game concepts differ from traditional Civilization. Here is some information on some of these new concepts.

The Nations

The nations in Fairy Tale are very much unique. Each nation has its own strengths and weaknesses and the nation you choose to play has a dramatic effect on the style of play you need to employ as well as the overall game itself. Some nations have access to superior military units; like the Principality and Namyr, while other nations, like Yatenga, for instance, are more suitable expansion and the building of cities and improvements. The Collective is the nation that is most suited for military conquest. They have superior units and buildings to aid them in their destruction of the Known World. The minor clans of Elchers and Dal are the hardest to play. They have minimal unique units and own buildings. Winning a game with them against the other well-equipped nations would pose a challenge even on the lower levels of difficulty. Some nations are suited for offensive, other for defensive play. The Elves, for an example, have strong defensive units in their arsenal and also several buildings to aid defensive play.

All nations have own themes and an own history. The Crystallin Matriarchy is a nation led by women; the Denerean Union is a state of Blue Elves.You will indeed need a few testgames to get familiar with how each of the nations function.

BUG

Fairy Tale has been merged with BUG, the BtS Unaltered Gameplay mod. For those who do not have it from before, BUG is a mod for Civilization IV that introduces a lot of good options to the game. Open the BUG menu by clicking the little extra Icon that has appeared in the top left of the game screen. Among other things, BUG updates all advisor screens to make them a lot more useful. You should familiarize yourself with all the advisor screens and see what information you can indeed gain from them. The Foreign Advisor is especially useful, giving a lot of information that is not available in Vanilla Civ and that you'd have to work harder to get. All this information makes Fairy Tale a lot more interesting to play as you can keep more up to date with what is going on in the world around you. All BUG functions can be turned on or off or edited by entering the BUG options screen by pressing Ctrl-Alt-O, or just clicking that little BUG icon.




Barbarians

The Barbarians are slightly stronger than in traditional Civilization, so keep your early towns under strict guard. The Barbarian threat is perhaps at its greatest during the early phases of the game, but all nations are supplied with rather good early units as well to counter. The Barbarian threat is nothing like in Fall From Heaven though. Barbarians in Fairy Tale mobilize different units from standard Civ as well, all, of course, inspired properly by fantasy culture clichés.

Special Units

Heroes. All the great nations have national heroes that can be built. These are powerful units, representing some of the cliché characters of Fantasy culture. They are strong and any one hero can probably take out a mid-sized army stack all by himself, but they are also meant to function as backbones for invasion armies, and they are meant to scout enemy territory in peacetime, since they can travel and adventure in the world unhindered by borders. Just like the real heroes in Fantasy culture. Keep them safe though, because they are not invulnerable. All nations can have a Great Hero functioning one at a time and if that one is defeated in battle, he will be reborn at the nation's capital, complete with all the gained promotions (except the Respawn), if he has the Respawn Promotion. Otherwise, he will have to be rebuilt without his promotions. There is also a Respawn 2 promotion, which will give your hero two lives to be respawned. All the nations' heroes vary slightly in production process as well as abilities.

Dragons. Dragons are beasts that can be trained by all the civilizations in Fairy Tale. Each civ gets to have one active dragon at a time. These beasts can swoop down surprisingly over enemy territory from the sea and bring devastation deep behind enemy lines. They do a good job of defending hills terrain, but are not meant to be city attackers, although they can take weakly defended positions. These animals fly over both land and sea but handle fighting at sea rather bad. Correctly used, they will bring serious headache to the enemy.

Magicians and Spells. Magicians are powerful units that can bring destruction to the enemy in a number of ways. They function as powerful artillery and can bombard enemy city defenses, as well as oncoming enemy stacks of units, with their destructive spells; they also have powers to heal friendly troops when inside enemy territory. Finally, magicians can also carry powerful spells that they can cast on enemy units and towns. These are the Snaketrail Spells that can be built and loaded onto Magicians in your cities. Any magician can carry three of these spells, but spells can also be cast directly from the Mage's Guild inside the cities if enemy troops approach, and you can move spells between cities to form a magical barrage around your nation. The Collective Sorceress and the Elven Enchantress can also carry a spell each, but do not confuse them with the magicians proper.

The Royal Family. When research of The Kingdom is completed, your nation's Royal Dynasty is founded and you are supplied with a king unit. After that, you gain several other Royal Family members as well through research of proper techs. Each family member has special powers and abilities and add new dimensions to the game. The King is a great leader of armies since he was once one of the greatest generals in the land who has now risen to power; he functions like a beefed up Great General. The Unit he is set to lead will effectively become the Royal Guard and you can see to it that this one becomes the ultimate crack unit in your army. The Queen has a major defense bonus when posted in a city and therefore, when deployed in border towns, she will strengthen the defense of those towns immensely. The Princess is a stormtrooper who is a powerful attacker and does well against enemy cities. Deploy her at the spearhead of your armies and you'll be certain for victory.

The Covert War

Fairy Tale offers the player several means of carrying the fight to the enemy without declaring open war. In this way, you can threaten and damage your rivals in a totally new way.

Pirates and Rogues. The Pirate Haven National Wonder can be built once in every nation. When you own a Pirate Haven, you also get to build Pirate ships, which can enter rival territory and destroy improvements as well as threaten enemy shipping through blockading their harbours and coastal areas. Pirate ships can also transport the Rouge land unit, which is built at the Recruitment Centre. Such centres can only be erected by a Great General though, and it might be a good idea to build the Centre in the same town as the Pirate Haven, or near it, to be able to create a real dangerous Pirate fleet. The Rogue unit can be landed or sent into enemy territory to destroy and plunder improvements; however, the unit is only defensive and cannot attack other military units, so watch out for the enemy regulars coming to hunt your bandits down. The Rouges as well as the Pirates have their nationality hidden from the enemy, so they cannot see which nation sent them, and you yourself might actually be subject to the same invasion of criminals.

Wolfpacks are trainable at the Beast Farm, which is available from Horse Breeding technology. Wolfpacks are free to explore rival territory and can also cause some damage to opponents by preying on weak settlers and workers. The nationality of the Wolfpack is hidden, so the rivals don't know who is sending the menace into their lands, but of course, they can still do qualified guessing on where the wolves hail from. Medieval European Fairy Tales are full of stories of Wolves attacking and preying on the innocent, so it's only fair they should have a representation here as well.

Special Buildings

The Purple Tower was built to unite the quarreling lands of the Known World under one Emperor. Such a leader has yet to appear though and in our times, the Purple Tower serves as a kind of United Nations for the Fairy Tale World. The diplomats and ambassadors from all over the world who gather here discuss the most diverse issues. They seldom get along and the World Government has become known as an ineffective beast of bueraucracy. However, the major resolutions taken there are always followed by the respective governments. The Purple Tower opens for global elections and the player can win the entire game by diplomatic victory when winning the elections. This opens up for diplomatic games.

The Valkyrie Academy is a de facto World Wonder that can only be built by the Norse and give them access to powerful Valkyrie infantry. The Collective, on the other hand, has access to several militarily important buildings that give them an advantage in building and maintaining grand armies. Their Hives produce military units at a good rate and their War Factories also support military industry in the Collective. All nations have their own special buildings, so be sure to get familiar with them and see what they can bring your gaming style.

The Mad Scientist's Workshop can be erected by the Great Scientist and can build some strange and surprising machinery and units. As of now, there is a cannon that can only be built at the Workshop, but more fun stuff will come with later updates of the mod!