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Starting with the birth of Hyborem and the Infernal civilization, Hell Terrain will spread as allowed by the Armageddon Counter (AC). Hell Terrain will always spread into Ashen Veil lands, but if the AC is over 25 it will also spread into unowned lands. If the AC is over 50 it can spread into other Evil lands and if it is over 75 it can spread into Neutral lands. It can never spread into the lands of Good-aligned civilizations.
Hell Terrain spreads as a wave: any infected tile has a chance to infect surrounding tiles, obeying the rules of the AC.
When terrain changes to hell terrain, the base terrain is shifted to its hellish counterpart, and will lose most features, including forests and floodplains. Hell Terrain is visibly different and has a different name, with the exception of: Ocean, Coast, Ice, and Tundra tiles. However, they will still count as hellish terrain for the purposes of altering resources and will still spread Hell Terrain to the surrounding tiles. In this way Hell Terrain may creep into your realm unseen from the sea or from the uninhabited north. Many Modmods however expand on the Hell Terrain system, giving proper equivalencies for the above and UI information about whether or not a tile is Hellish.
The moment Hyborem spawns Hell Terrain will appear and will never vanish from the map on its own. To be rid of it, you will have to Sanctify all the infected tiles, and purge every single possibly infected tile. It may get troublesome in the mountains, where non-dwarven Adepts may not go, or in the Tundra or Ocean tiles, where Hell Terrain is invisible. In short, if the AC goes up and Hell Terrain gets to the open seas or the Artic, it will be virtually impossible to be rid of it.
|
Base terrain |
Hell equivalent |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Plains | Fields of Perdition | Scorch (Sun I) change Plains to Desert |
| Grassland | Broken Lands | |
| Marsh | Shallows | |
| Desert | Burning Sands (Flood Plains will be permanently destroyed) | Spring (Water I) change Desert to Plains |
Features[]
Hell Terrain removes all normal features: Forests, Flood Plains, Oasis, Volcanoes and Blizzards.
Forest, Jungle, and Ancient Forest features will convert rapidly to Burnt Forests and then disappear. You may recover them if you act quickly with Sanctify and wait for Burnt Forest to grow in New Forest and so on. If you wait too long, you will have to Bloom them anew.
Flooplains are lost forever: it is a feature of the base desert terrain, the feature is removed and they will return to desert if Sanctify is casted.
Also the simple passage of any Horseman of the Apocalypse (or the war machine) turns floodplains to bare desert.
Flood plains risk[]
If your realm is an Egypt-like desert river with lots of flood plains, you will be lost if Hell Terrain spread to your land.
You will suffer most if your economy is based on Cottages. Your cottaged floodplains produce 3
/ 5
. You will have also a lot of unproductive deserts, but probably a water adept will be providing quick conversion to cottaged plains (producing 1 / 1
/ 5)
When Hell engulf your lands, the cottaged plains will lose nothing because field of perdition is just the same as plains. But your poor Flooplains are lost forever: the tiles will convert to Bruning Sand with cottages on it, with max production of 0 / 5! Even if you are running Sacrifice of the Weak, your cities will shrik to useless crap.
If you run Aristograrian the floodplains will drop from 5 / 3. to 2 / 3: your loss will be much more manageable, but the edge that floodland realms sport is gone.
If you have the strange combination of Sanitation, Agrarianism civic and no Aristocracy, your Burning Sands farm will still produce produce 3 . It is quite amazing seeing so much food come out from perennial flames.
You have a last hope. An Adept casting Spring does not convert Burning Sands in Field of Perdition, limiting to a temporary solace to the perennial flames. But if you are really motivated, you may cast Sanctify to convert back to plain desert, quickly cast Spring to convert to plains, and in the end come back to an Hellish equivalent of Plains, producing 1 / 1 / 5 or 3 / 0 / 3 if adjacent to river. Two adept in tandem with Life and Water mana may slowly work a tile per turn.
Resources[]
Hell terrain is generally less productive than most land and the bonus types are replaced with hell versions. For example Cows or Horses on a normal terrain type will be converted to Nightmares if the tile switches to hell terrain. The conversion will be made at end of turn and is reversible, so original feature may not be lost forever. However, if the terrain is gained back to normality by Sanctify spell, at the end of turn the resources will revert to original type, but it may be mutated in the same group. In example, a Horse will become a Nightmare and will revert back to a Cow. Sheep and Pigs both turn into Toads when they enter Hell, so when they revert they can become either one.
- Toads: Hell version of Sheep and Pigs, same food and health yield.
- Nightmares: Hell version of Cows and Horses. Nightmares enable the Nightmare promotion for Mounted units.
- Snake Pillar: Hell version of the crops: Corn, Wheat, and Rice. Removes the food bonus for the crops, which can be lethal to a city's growth. The technologies Ways of the Wicked and Infernal Pact give 1
and 1/1 to the Snake Pillars respectively. - Sheut Stone: Hell version of Marble, it gives +1 Death damage to units buit in the city!
- Gulagarm: Hell version of Banana and Sugar, gives 1, plantations give a bonus yield of 2/1
- Razorweed: Hell version of Silk and Cotton, reduces enemy heal rate in your territory by 1% (cumulative), same yields as Cotton.
Sanctify[]
Sanctify will revert to normal the tile where it is casted and all adjacent tiles, setting the plot counter to zero.
If the plot counter is greater than 0 then Sanctify can be cast.
The main purpose of Sanctify is to hold off Hell Terrain, the ability to remove city ruins and fallout (caused by the Entropy spell Defile) is just an added bonus.
Note that sanctified lands may revert to Hell Terrain again rather quickly, especially in Infernal lands.
Hell algebra: the plot counter[]
The plot counter is what determines if a tile is hell or not. It has a range from 0 to 100, and anything over 10 is hell. Infernal lands are set to 100 every turn. Tiles that are eligible (good civs' lands are never eligible, nor or neutral or non-AV evil lands when the AC is low enough) have their plot counter increased by 1 each turn if they are adjacent to a tile with a plot counter greater than 10; otherwise, the counter decreases by 1 each turn.
Whether an individual tile is in hell or not depends on that tile's plot counter - which is different than the AC. If the plot counter is over 10, then it is hell. Most tiles change to a different "Hellish" terrain at this point, and change back when the counter dips below 10 (it used to be 20, but the code clearly says 10 now). There are some terrains, like tundras and water, that currently have no different version for hell.
Each tile is updated once per turn. All tiles owned by the Infernals have their plot counters set to 100. The Mercurian lands had their counters slowly dimished (in previous version it was set to zero).
Any tile belonging to an Ashen Veil civ regardless of the AC, to any Evil civ at an AC of 25 or greater, or any Neutral civ at an AC of 75 or greater that borders a tile with an plot counter of at least 10 will have its plot counter increased by one each turn. Good Civs are never effected. Unowned tiles likewise have their plot counter increased by 1 each turn if they border a tile with a counter of 10+, if the AC is at least 25 (I could have sworn that non-AV evil lands turned to hell before unowned lands, but thats not what the code seems to say.) Tiles with positive plot counters that haven't been increased will have theirs decreased.
Note that while changing the plot counter immediately changes the terrain (e.g., the sanctify spell sets the plot counter of the surrounding tiles to 0, and immediately reclaims the hell terrain, temporarily), the resources aren't updated but once per turn.
Mod the hell spreading[]
To adjust spreading of Hell Terrain simply go to file:
...\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\python\CustomFunctions.py
and search for line:
def doHellTerrain(self)
If you use Noteplad++ ti will do it for you thank to function "search in directory".
Change:
if (bUntouched and pPlayer.getStateReligion() == iAshenVeil or (iCount >= 50 and iAlignment == iEvil) or (iCount >= 75 and iAlignment == iNeutral)):
in
if (bUntouched and pPlayer.getStateReligion() == iAshenVeil or (iCount >= 70 and iAlignment == iEvil) or (iCount >= 95 and iAlignment == iNeutral)):
Or use even greater value. It is better to go for very high value than disable completely Hell Terrain in the options at game start, feature that many users find useful to avoid tedious micromanagement in late game.
Reference: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/hell-terrain-spread.297012/
Technicalities on removed features[]
Hell terrain does not remove all features, it removes features that do not have both the hell and non-hell version of the terrain in their TerrainBooleans.
Ok, that means it removes all terrains, but changing that is almost trivial if you want to do it. (I tend to make flood planes and obsidian planes valid in both deserts and burning sands so that the python part of the code can switch them back and forth.)