Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

Ok, fallen a little bit behind in responding to Elvish High Council, so let's do a bit of a response dump here, then I'll see if I can get that Hippus post up as well. I suspect you won't see the turn report until later today, unless the save moves around very quickly in the short term.

Thanks very much. I feel like a very well fed lurker!

I’ll start with your second post…. One thing I’ve noticed (especially, for example, with the RB team in the Apolyton demogame) is that starting with a plan and then working very hard to hone it to perfection can really pay off. I suppose you’ve got about three days before decisions on worker micro and tech path start being important, so it is time to get going with the plan.

Agreed. Particularly considering my personal tendency to change my mind 39 times when playing FFH.

Domination is an admirable aim. We need to find some more nodes soon if we want to think about a Tower victory, and I’m happy to discount culture and religion. I wouldn’t set aside Altar – we’re spiritual, can tech in the late game, will have big cities to run specialists, forest enhanced production for the final push, and a defensive worldspell.

I suppose its an option, just sort of suspect the GP counter will be well out of control before then. I honestly wouldn't mind a layer or two of the Altar in a key city earlier anyway, since more Priest XP would be quite useful.

Back to the post before….
I’m happy with whatever you decide about the scout. It’s safe to say we will meet any civ to our immediate south at some point. There is logic to getting as far from home as we can before all the FFH nasties set their sights on the scouts, and Cheech should already be halfway to a western neighbour. I’m sure Mardoc will sympathise with a desire to avoid being isolated.

The big picture has of course sent me into a plotting frenzy.
• The area northwest of the Pyre looks like it‘s forests rather than jungle. A city 1W of the elephant could be food neutral at size 6 or 7 with only one farm or ancient forest (just based on what we’ve seen). I’d say that is legitimate to settle well before bronze working, and is definitely expanding towards our rivals. 1N of elephant fits better from a dotmap point of view, is nearer to the capital, but isn’t on a hill and reduces the number of workable tiles.
• East of the banana fog-gazes as a line of peaks (very helpful for blocking off our core).
• The cotton tile being third ring means we should be able to access the happy without needing to settle that backline location.
• I suspect the marble might have been deliberately placed in a “race” location, equidistant between two civs.

Let me know if the stream of consciousness or bullet point lists aren’t helping. I’m new to this dedlurking business.

The uncovering of RoP has me thinking my next neighbor in the west is probably about equidistant from it. Just seems like the sort of thing a mapmaker would do. We'll see.

I can see your argument here, plus it's true that the southern civs are more likely to contact us as well. Really, as long as you keep uncovering tiles, I'll be happy. And if you keep having the luck with huts, ecstatic .

Pick your target for extortion carefully, though. No point in turning a maybe Hippus rush into a certain Hippus rush, for instance .

Well, I think if we're talking Hippus or Sheaim, if I'm sure my scout can raze their capital, I'm probably just going to do it. The other Civs I would extort first.

And then, we can comment on your comments on our comments .


I bet the lurkers were laughing and laughing at our comments like 'someone's already got the remnants?!?!'.

That does look like a beautiful site. And we're even Creative to get it all in quickly. Remnants is a wonderful thing - by the time we settle, it should be a 5 hammer tile, plus 3 happiness in the city that claims it. If we Spring that tile, it'd get up to a 1/6/0 tile. Very tasty.

On the demos - it looks like someone went warrior first . Always a good thing to see in your enemies.

Aye - hopefully the result of a bad lair pop.

And now you've got me logging in at this time of the evening for the latest turn!

That is beautiful, and would fit on a reasonable dotmap with a city 1N of the elephant. There'd be a couple of wasted tiles, but one could be a fort covering both of the two sites once it turns into a citadel. I'm very much looking forward to what you find from the ancient tower next turn. However, I suspect it will be another civ

FFH at it again with the tech choices, though. Now we want animal husbandry for the two pigs and cow.

Hut gold is good at this early stage of the game. Events, upgrades and hammering out the most important early techs all cost cash.

In demo watching, it looks like someone has settled with some water tiles in the BFC. Maybe not enough to be coastal

Yeah, FFH and tech choices is right. There's no doubt that at least 3 of the obvious city sites are going to require AH, so we'll definitely have to find time for it soonish. Not quite ready to go for it 2nd, since we'll probably have at least 2.5 techs in before we are getting the second city out. But it might have to force its way up the chain of importance.

No, last turn someone had 8000 land, the only way to have water in the initial square is to be coastal. Seems like a mistake for anyone non-Lanun, though.

Yeah - pretty much no way I'd settle a cap on the coast as non-Lanun in this game.

Thanks, Mardoc, including for your patience with my ignorance.

It is sort of relevant, since fishing is also a gateway religious tech in FFH.

Given our lucky hut tech, spirituality, and strong desire for water mana, it would have been nice if nobody had the slightest incentive to go anywhere near OO until we really, truly had nothing better to do.

One other observation. I don't think we've seen a single ruins/fort/barrow yet. I don't imagine Ravus was that noob friendly, so there is a chance there are three in a row one tile out of our vision to the south.

Fully agree here. We're clearly going to have at least 2 coastal cities of some importance in buffering the homeland. Cultist vulnerability does not appeal to me. I suppose your thought was mine, that given the early fishing pop, a detour over to OO once we had the stuff we needed made sense - one of the logical things for spiritual civs to do is stockpile a few priests of many sorts, as it makes your army more versatile. Someone who settled a fishing capital will be far more likely to go in that direction than us, however. Any guess on who it might be, for posterity?

[Gaspar]

Time now for our next installment in the exciting series...



This time we discuss ways to counter the threat posed by the Horselord and her minions:



We've discussed what makes the Hippus so dangerous - the combination of their civ trait, Horselord, which gives their mounted units an additional movement point, and Warcry, their worldspell, which gives all units +1 STR , +1 movement and Blitz. When combined with their palace providing Horses, you can wind up with a stack of 5 str blitzing Horseman units on your doorstep in very short order.

The biggest threat here is the mobility, rather than the strength. While 5 strength units are deadly early on, the fact that they can land on your doorstep in no time is what really works against your favor. The plus side, of course, is that given the level of forestation in our lands, we should almost always be able to see them coming. The minus side is that in the window we can expect to see them, we'll have no way of accelerating production, neither the whip nor cash rushing, so other than working max hammers to churn out units, there's not a lot that extra time buys us.

The biggest boost we can really get is the Formation promotions, since there are no spear/pike units in FFH. The Formation I promotion is +40% strength against mounted, and the Formation II gives another +40%. If we had Formation II Archers, we'd be in excellent shape against a warcried horde. Unfortunately, Formation I requires C2, and Formation II requires C3. The likelihood of having a bunch of level 5 units to counter the Hippus threat by the time they showed up on doorstep is exactly nil, unless they show up after we've already been invaded by someone else. In which case, we're screwed anyway, probably.

So, given that highly promoted units are out, what's the next best thing? I think ultimately the choices for all of our early defense needs are going to come down to this:



versus this:



plus this:



That's the question we have to ask ourselves, here, and its pretty applicable to the barbarian threat as well. Archery is more directly in our tech path, and costs less beakers than Bronze Working, and unlocks our hero. It would pretty simple to go Hunting -> Archery -> Way of the Forests and have archers and Gilden, plus our worldspell available, while completely ignoring the metal line. The problem is that Archers require a 100 hammer building built in the city, and then builds you a 60H units. Those 60H units are 4/5 for us, so they're pretty good, but imagine this scenario.

We get a tip and learn we have 10T to prepare for a Hippus rush. In that time, we'll be able to produce 225 hammers in our capital (no chance of this, but just bear with me.) Would you rather those hammers generated an Archery Range and 2 Archers, or 9 Bronze Warriors? Its pretty apparent to me which one is going to leave you more likely to survive an attack. I have to say, its actually one of the biggest design flaws of FFH, the power of Bronze Warriors in relation to cost.

I guess what I'm throwing out the crowds here is that I would love to hear a reason to believe we can make Hunters/Archers as a base defense work, but given the fact that there are two good rushers in this game, and even our 1 move units get double moves in Forests, it seems to me we almost have to go up the metal line and just tech Crafting -> Mining -> Bronze Working before really getting into the meat of our gameplan. That's a lot of beakers that could be improving the economy, and that do a lot less for us than other Civs.

This concludes this edition of Defending the Forests: When Horses Attack.

[Mist]

I have to say, its actually one of the biggest design flaws of FFH, the power of Bronze Warriors in relation to cost.

Shhh Don't say this loud, there's a lot of people disagreeing with such heresy

We actually broached this subject discussing Sarlen's mod. Both sides of the discussion provided decent arguments, neither convinced the other. For what it's worth I do agree with you.

One nitpick though - the hammer cost in the pedia is for normal speed. Cut all your calculations by 1/3 for quick.

[Gaspar]

Shhh Don't say this loud, there's a lot of people disagreeing with such heresy

We actually broached this subject discussing Sarlen's mod. Both sides of the discussion provided decent arguments, neither convinced the other. For what it's worth I do agree with you.

One nitpick though - the hammer cost in the pedia is for normal speed. Cut all your calculations by 1/3 for quick.

Knew I forgot something. Though realistically, it doesn't change the power of the Bronze Warrior in relation to this article. Even if it gets me a 3rd Archer, it also gets me another few warriors. Not to mention the fact that Education will necessarily be an early research for us, so we can get a lot of those warriors out at 2 XP. Thinking about this as I was getting ready for work, the biggest argument I can see for Archers is that it doesn't deviate from the desired tech path like BW will. The problem is, the future tech path doesn't matter too much if we're on the receiving end of a nice little stack of horsies/flaming zombies.

[Mardoc]

Nice pictures!

I think that describes the tradeoff quite well. The other advantage to using higher tier units is that we'd have much lower unit supply/support costs, again something that makes a big difference in the long term, assuming we survive to the long term.

A couple things worth mentioning. First, Hippus do have to build a Stable themselves to use the rush, plus 40 hammer horses - we're not going to see a horde on the horizon instantly; they should be about as limited as we are in hammers, if not moreso - once we get working a lot of forests, we should have one of the best MFG in the game. Second, this will partly depend on where Bronze is - if it's too much of a stretch, then that pushes us in the other direction. We do probably want Mining anyway, though, for the gold if nothing else, so we can find out where our bronze is before having to commit.

Finally, something I had forgotten about - Horsemen get a +40% bonus vs. archers. Which means if it's Hippus in particular we're worried about, I really don't like using archers to defend.

I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion you're probably right to want to acquire copper, even as the elves. Just...if there's sufficient distance (or fellow targets) between them and us, keep the option for going straight for Priests open, ok? I don't want to end up with a horde of Bronze warriors and no one to party with I'm confident that if we have the time for Priests, they'll handle either rush force, the question is mainly if we can in fact get there in time. Between the Tigers and the free XP, Priests are good.

Any guess on who it might be, for posterity?

Regorarr!

Ok, seriously? Well, I figure it's one of the turn one settlers - either they didn't have time to get lurkers to tell them 'don't do that', or they knew it would hurt but chose to sacrifice the tiles in exchange for the turns. RG, Nicolae and Kyan all settled on T1. I figure it's a very BtS sort of thing to do, since with a water resource a coastal capital in BtS doesn't hurt that bad. RG claims a decent amount of FFH experience. So...I'm going to go with Nicolae (with a side bet on Kyan).

[Man Behind the Mask]

I’ve done a couple of rewrites of much longer posts, but I think this is where having a fellow noob as your second dedlurker is going to work against you. I really can’t seem to reach any conclusions that I don’t immediately want to contradict.

I suppose the best message I can give is to remember that you’re the elves, and in 200 turns your cities absolutely WILL be the biggest and most productive. That simple fact means you have more leeway to sacrifice a “hot” start for survival, because you’ll be that much more able to overhaul somebody else’s lead. It’s still too early to decide if you really have to make that sacrifice, but you are THE late game civ in this game, and I completely sympathise with a desire to prioritise reaching the late game over giving yourself a chance of being a dogpile target before that.

[Gaspar]

MBTM, any thoughts are always welcome, they generally help the conversation even if they're "wrong." God knows I've screwed something up in just about every post, but I think we're consolidating a plan by talking it out, so anything you might have to say about the situation is welcome.

I think the bottom line on the rush defense front, is that while MotT early is the best defense, Bronze Warriors can come faster that WotF, and also give us flexibility. I think probably looking at a tech path along these lines:

Agriculture -> Ancient Chants -> Mysticism -> Crafting -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Education -> Animal Husbandry -> Hunting -> Way of the Forests

is what I'm thinking right now. That's a lot of turns though, so it might be worth delaying God King until after BW if we discover we have a real reason to be afraid, rather than just my paranoia. My best guess for the fastest we can see Horsies or PZs on our borders is T60-ish, so that's probably what we should prepare for. Unless you guys think I'm too paranoid? The nice thing about BW is we only need that tech completed a turn before the danger, since all units auto-upgrade. So we could conceivably go up to Mining on the plan above and then push the worker techs after until we actually see there's a threat. I'm extremely open to comments and changes on this, however.

Anyway there's a turn to report...

[Gaspar]

The Grigori jumped to 50 in score, so that's a tech plus pop growth. Not sure what could come in 5T, so I'm guessing that's a hut. Suppose it could be Exploration/Agriculture/Ancient Chants with a quite decent GNP, however. Regardless, they definitely are the warrior first culprits, since nobody else has had a pop increase. No other score increases at all, in fact.

Ok, so our scouts found the answer to your Ruins/Barrows question.



I hemmed and hawed and hemmed and hawed and hemmed about that Barrow in the north. I ultimately decided to leave it until we have a warrior, but I'd like to pop that one soonish, its a little close to home for my tastes. I'm a little more concerned about the Ruins N of the scout - I really don't want to deal with a stream of annoying Lizardmen. A stream of skellies, meh, not as worried.

That water in the shot is Coast/Ocean, so clearly this is a weirdly shaped continent. It leads me to believe that jungle in the south is a buffer between Civs, and there isn't a 3rd civ. The positive is it makes it more likely that we just have 2 direct neighbors to worry about, as opposed to a potential 3. The negative is that its some more highly unattractive to settle land. I really don't want to roleplay Seafaring Ljosalfar.

Here's the demos, for your C&D pleasure:

[Ravus Sol]

Interesting on the rush for defence plan, are you really going to put education so far back though? If you do Mysticism will be your only tech to help boost your commerce and tech research rate?

Happy hunting with the barbarian spawn points! You going to fortify on any of them to stop the spawning or just keep exploring?

[Man Behind the Mask]

MBTM, any thoughts are always welcome, they generally help the conversation even if they're "wrong."

Thanks, Gaspar. The problem was actually so many different, conflicting, thoughts, that they would probably be unhelpful.

I am worried that you're being a little too paranoid. That is easy, since we actually have very few facts to go on. I hope I'll have a little time over the next couple of days to do some actual analysis (you know, maths and stuff ), so we've got more facts. I know that some of the size/speed/difficulty scaling changes between BTS and FFH, that maps can occasionally be funny, and that I have no ability whatsoever to investigate the code. So that I don't get it all wrong, can I just check that the game is showing 76 beakers for Agriculture and 191 for Cartography.

On the latest turn, it's quite painful to see an abundance of peaks and a selection of barbarian spawn points messing up what had been looking very promising. I'd now be more tempted to send the western scout south along that coast - I'd want to know if we're blocking in somebody to our south on a peninsular. The northern scout can slip through the mountains and continue along the north coastline.