[Spoilers] A more civilized age - Arendel of the Ljosalfar (Uberfish)

[The ShiningOne]

Are you teching hunting now? What's the eta for the current research project? Good luck with the hut results!

[uberfish]

Hut popped for 16 gold, but no other resources found in the SW (I can see the tundra belt below what's in the last screenshot)

current ETAs: Academy t45, Settler t48, Hunting t51

[uberfish]

In other news, Calabim have been losing units over the last few turns due to barbarian/animal activity. I'm in a position to explore the Sepulcher next turn, somewhat tempting to do it now since if barbarians are targetting the vampires and not myself, any bad spawns from the Sepulcher are likely to head their way too...

[uberfish]

Finally I get to do an update with more interesting content.

So, to follow up my last post, the power graph looks like this:



It's possible to clearly see when Calabim power increased hugely after getting the Dwarf vs Lizard event, and that they've been taking losses against neutral units in the last few turns. (Sunrise confirmed that there were both animals and barbarians involved.) A well known bug/feature of FFH is that barbarians tend to concentrate on one player at a time, if all the barbarians are attacking other players it would explain why I haven't seen any and the activity in the other threads.

In any case this makes me feel safer to do some exploration:



Honestly I don't actually mind if monsters pop out and kill my warrior since the chances are the AI will send them to attack Calabim instead of me. :neenernee

So I explore it... and free an Adventurer:



That's a pretty nice result. Adventurers start as 2 strength units with the Hero promotion that gives them free experience each turn. The only way to get them is from randomly exploring lairs or playing as the Grigori who can generate them as Great People. They can be upgraded to most basic military units or down the Adept line with the appropriate techs. Unfortunately the Disciple line is not available to them. Ironically, the best thing to do with adventurers is to have them sit around in town and not actually do any adventuring for a while so that they gain experience safely.

The red lines show how I'll use the Elf forest move bonus to get Groo back to Evermore safely. The bear in the screenshot is sitting on a Den and won't attack my warrior unless another bear happens to spawn next turn.

Blue and magenta circles are the two candidate locations for a city in this area. Blue is better earlier with the Floodplain to kick start growth and both wines, but magenta is better later with more free tiles and forest, secures the mana source better and has the plains-hill advantage. Not an easy choice, but it won't be the first city so I don't have to decide in a hurry.

Also, last turn I did a bit of detective work for Mist concerning Luchuirp known techs since those two civs still don't have contact.



By looking at their GNP it's possible to estimate their research rate, combining this with score tracking to keep track of how long it took them to research a tech suggests that the techs Sciz researched after Calendar are Mining and Masonry. Both sensible techs for dwarves, as Masonry leads into Construction which enables the first combat Golems.

[uberfish]

Another bear appeared next to the bear den, but my warrior wasn't attacked. These bears will make good training for my future animal-taming hunters.



Just to throw another wrench into the city placement dilemma my exit route from the bear area revealed a saltwater lake with a fish and crab opening up the possibility of settling at the 2 seafood resources + 1 wine + Death mana, and placing another filler city on the Desert Hill 4W2S of Evermore. I should probably check east of the crab to see if there are any arctic furs which would be a useful pickup with Hunting. Exploring the Antarctic lairs may also be a possibility, but the important thing at the moment is that I don't stretch my military so thinly that I can't found my second city ASAP. The planned site (4S1E) may be harrassed by Skeletons from the barrow and/or barbarian units.

Groo continued down the forest path escorted by one warrior in case of sneaky griffon attacks.

In neighbour news, Calabim rebuilt a warrior, Doviello lost one. I'm still ahead of all three neighbours in GNP, although Ilios has taken over first place by a small margin.

[The ShiningOne]

Aha! Congrats on the adventurer. Groo the Wanderer is based on a comic book of the same name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groo_the_Wanderer

[Brian Shanahan]

Aha! Congrats on the adventurer. Groo the Wanderer is based on a comic book of the same name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groo_the_Wanderer

Wouldn't his name also be a reference to the grue from Zork as well? I'm assuming from the comic on this one.

[uberfish]

Groo makes it back to within cultural borders without incident

EOT second cottage completes and a Great Sage is born who will build the academy next turn

A comparison of units available in the short-medium term future:

Warrior 3 str, 16h (+1 str with copper)
Swordsman 4 str, 40h (+1 str with copper)
Hunter 4 str, 40h: 2 move, -10% city attack, animal capture
Archer 4/5 str, 40h, +25% city defence, +25% hill defence, 1 first strike, defensive fire
Priest of Leaves 5 str, 80h, 2 move, passive XP gain, summons, terraform

Warriors are the most hammer-efficient with copper but spamming them comes with the serious drawback of high army maintenance costs.

Priests of leaves are the overall best unit but fairly expensive, and rushing to priesthood is probably the wrong thing to do since I've already skipped basic techs like calendar and crafting in the rush to tech and religion. It would be better to build the infrastructure to support them first. However their ability to mass summon tigers is the best offensive option available before tier-3 units like Mages, and having a lot of them will allow me to terraform quickly.

[Ravus Sol]

I notice that you skipped Fawns of your available units. I don't use them myself although their upgrade can be good.

You also missed out Archers :-p which are the elvish trademark especially with their hero. Will you not deviate to that first before Priests?

What do you feel is the best use for your Adventurer? There are a few lines it can go down, Horse, Recon, Melee, Archer and Magic. Most could be useful. Although you will allready have one super Archer. Recon could be fun to claim some animals and get into Assassins or Beastmasters. Melee could be a good city smasher and Horse could cover the empire when you expand. Magic, of course is allways powerful :-p So do you have any preferances.

I allways personly like making a Super Hunter if i get an early adventurer and promoting to a Unstopable Assassin. But i know others prefer Melee or Magic.

- Ravus

[uberfish]

Fawns cost 50% more than hunters, don't get the animal bonus and can't carry hawks. I've never seen the point of building them.

Haven't decided which training path Groo should take.

Mage: An adventurer mage doesn't really have that much impact on the game over a normal mage, although he can eventually upgrade to an Archmage with the hero-only promotion Twincast which gives double summons. Nice, but still not game altering. The religious/national hero archmages are powerful because you can get them early (at Arcane Lore.) Adventurers have to wait till Strength of Will to upgrade.

Recon: Since my first high-end unit goal is Druids/Beastmasters this is definitely a reasonable choice, although there's already Yvain available as a hero druid. Highly promoted beastmasters at 14 str are definitely good even with the -20% city attack penalty.

Melee: The main benefit here would be getting a high level city attacker. Always useful to have.

Archery: Not sure I really need a second archery hero, although a hero Flurry would be extremely strong in the long term.

Horse: Not going to pursue this line, Elves are spread thinly enough across the tech tree as it is.

I'll probably just leave him as an adventurer and keep maximum flexibility until I feel the need for a strong unit.