Miguelito gets tricked by magicians, but Bob isn't fooled. Kaiser rules from behind.

[Kaiser]

In my single player games I always struggled with tech, is it really successful to ignore full parts of the tech tree in EitB?

Then it is my part for the stupid questions:
- how do you tier the units (like how do you know which tier they are)?
- Are there any key techs/units which basically anybody will need?
- Is there any winning condition to play for from the beginning or growth first and then decide when established?

[Bobchillingworth]

Yes, you have to skip large segments of the tech tree to be successful even in singleplayer, and especially multiplayer; techs get very expensive quickly in FFH, and spreading around beakers trying to research everything means you won't have a specialized army, and will therefore be much weaker. Several civs also derive little-to-no benefit from certain branches; for instance, there's hardly any reason for the Khazad to pursue techs associated with archery units except perhaps researching Archery itself, since they can't produce Longbows or Horse Archers.


For your other questions:


- how do you tier the units (like how do you know which tier they are)?

Almost all of the units fall into distinct combat lines; Melee, Discipline (religious), Arcane, Ranged (archery and muskets), Recon, and Mounted. You can then figure out the tier for most units by looking at how many times you need to upgrade from the most basic units available at the start of the game without any tech requirements (Warriors for the melee, ranged, and mounted lines; Scouts for recon and also mounted).

For instance, the Champion unit is considered a T3 Melee unit, with the Warrior as T1, and Axeman / Swordsman as T2. The Arcane and Discipline lines don't have a starting T1 unit (technically the Malakim get one with the Lightbringer Discipline unit, but we'll ignore that), so they begin at T2 with the Adept and the most basic priest units, respectively.


- Are there any key techs/units which basically anybody will need?

Sure; most of the Worker techs, with the occasional exception of Archery (which unlocks lumbermills). Bronze Working for copper weapons on your Warriors and to unlock T2 Melee units for everyone other than the Luchiurp. HBR for the Mobility promotion, and Knowledge of the Ether + Alteration (if you don't start with body mana) for the Haste spell (+1 movement).

IIRC every civ can build Chariots or a UU equivalent, and pretty much everyone will want to as well. They're like the Medieval Infantry from Civ 3; civilization enders if you can field them in numbers prior to your opponent having counters, though they typically need backup to avoid unfavorable hammer exchanges since they're heavy on attack power and light on defense. Anyway, Trade and Construction unlock them, both of which are very useful techs in their own right anyway, so everyone will want them eventually too.



- Is there any winning condition to play for from the beginning or growth first and then decide when established?

Plan for Conquest, most games end via concession after enough players are crippled or eliminated. Tower victories are doable even in multiplayer, but you won't know how practical one will be until you have at least a grasp on whether you can secure enough mana nodes to build the mandatory four mini-towers first.

I think there's been one or two Altar and Culture victories, but they're generally impractical.

[Kaiser]

Thanks, I probably was spreading tech way to much around in SP.
I actually won the game with the GP tower game ender (Lunnotar?)

Is there a way to get a good overview over the magic spells? I tried to use the in game wiki but found only the page to look up all spells which is not a good overview.
At least from there you can look them up and then click yourself through the schools.

[naufragar]

Here is your start. Fog-gazing is dangerous magic.  In case it's not clear, the tile the settler is on is a plains hill.

Here are your pick options. Let me know if you'll play as one of these or want three new choices.
    Svartalfar-Volanna
    Doviello-Mahala
    Illians-Auric Ulvin

[Bobchillingworth]

Woah, those are some high-power options, all of which are geared toward T1 / T2 rushes. You may already have a strong preference, but let me know if you want my thoughts on some basic pros / cons of each.

[naufragar]

Hey, I screwed up and gave you an old pic. The actual starting pics have the vision that your starting settler would get. My apologies.

[Bobchillingworth]

Also, that start is going to be hideously slow with any of your three options, especially the Doviello, since it lacks any commerce resources (or at least any visible ones, might be Pearls somewhere).



I'd strongly encourage you to take advantage of your Settler starting with 4 moves and enhanced vision, even if it means potentially wasting a turn. Volanna could move the Settler to the forested plains hills a couple tiles to its south and still have two moves left. Even if you do spend a turn moving, it's an opportunity to potentially switch to the Nationalism or Religion civics, depending on your preference vs. what you start with.

[Miguelito]

what an evil bunch

In the first place, thanks Bob for providing thoughts already.
Ok, I fear I might disappoint you here, but I'll toss out two of them straight away:
Doviello seems like the warrior rush civ, and I'm not really interested in that, let alone know how to pull it off successfully. Overall their focus are melee units, and I'm looking more for something more mobile. No starting tech
Illians are certainly strong, with their worldspell and the priests, but this seems like a pretty onedimensional game - rush the priests, hope to catch somebody unprepared despite the obvious telegraph. I feel like I just played a stronger version of that game in PB54. I don't care too much for Auric's traits either; Arcane is great (required?) if you want to win with mages, but that isn't really what the Illians are about. Charismatic is solid but unexciting. Exploration will of course be needed, but is not that useful at the start.

Now with Volanna it's different . Let's see what's in that package:

• Cre - I've said I'm interested. Early culture is tendentially harder to come by in FFH than base, not only because the monument costs more, but also because whipping is unfeasable. Then no very early religions, some of which don't give culture anyways. Cheap buildings are an afterthought, but the carnivals might come in handy if we catch some animals? And public baths' 3 for 50h before other boni does not sound bad either for later. I was tempted to say that Cre allows us to postpone Ancient Chants for a good while, maybe get to Cartography and/or Hunting first, but otoh with this start we likely can't afford to delay cottages that long can we? Well AC isn't as expensive anyways.
  
• Agg - well yeah. C1 on everything, that's surely helpful. Just have to get an economy from elsewhere. Cheap shipyards are irrelevant most likely.
  
• Agriculture starting tech. Well that's certainly useful on this start. I'd just hope there are some calendar resources in the fog, then heading straight there should do us really well. It's significantly cheaper than Crafting, so if we have gold and need mining fast then the joke's on us.
  
• Mind, Shadow and Nature mana. None of these seems terribly useful, I guess inspiration is nice to have? And no harm in casting blur before a combat. Well we'd not be too interested in magic anyways, early on at least.
  
• In the same vein, of the unique units only the Nyxkin seems interesting, but isn't that basically just an (awesome) reskin of the regular horse archer?
  
• Sinister civilization trait, giving +1 on attack to all recon units. I think this is where the true appeal of the Svarts is? Also somehow they can kidnap great persons. Does that apply to settled GP only, or unused ones? So you'd have to go into someone's territory with OB (or hidden?), find the GP and then kidnap? Well probably irrelevant in MP.
  
• An assassin hero at poisons (should also get the sinister bonus?), with a mirror ability (item). Would surely pick him up, as the recon line seems the way to go anyways?
  
• Forgettable worldspell
  
• They're elven, so get boni in forests, can build improvements without chopping them away, and the workers are slow. The starting location has no forests but there are some to the SE and W.
  
• Leader portrait will provide unconscious diplo boni
  

So, I've never played Svartalfar, not even in SP. I do like the leader, but I feel I don't know what the Svart game is really about. My guess would be to replace some of the regular warriors with scouts, and try and catch some animals. Then build units along the recon line until getting werewolves . More seriously, I think the bulk would be recon units, but after Hunting you'd likely want to go for Fellowship of the Leaves (despite theme, that seems like the one right religion for Svarts, right?), to plant forests on top of your cottages and bring tigers to combat. Fawns seem better than hunters in most cases as well. Hidden paths before poison as well? Satyrn are awesome but require a lvl 4 unit.
The problem with recon units of course is that they don't get to use metal, and are hence often at a disadvantage vs melee and particularly chariots which are also fast.
I don't think we'd ever go for magic, or would we still, just for hasting?
Do I get it right that Svartalfar don't get siege weapons nor chariots?
Early game I'm still hoping for some calendar resources. After that, the economy will need mining, education, cartography, festivals, not sure in which order. Also we're already seeing 2 Desruptus resources so that should also be on the menu. 
You mentioned that you'd go for a tier 2 rush, so that would be hunters? (/ fawns?)
Agree on settler move. The forested plains hill SSW (did you mean that one?) loses the rice though, although we might not need it at the cap with agrarianism. It also orphans the fish though. Or did you mena to just move there to get a better view? We can send the scout there first. How about the PH SSSE that catches both rices? Loses all those rivers though. Also if the fogged patch in the south contains mostly desert that area might not be better than coast actually (could also have incense though).


To sum it up, I'm tempted to go with Volanna but I'm not sure I actually understand how a Svart game works. I also have some worries about not managing to get a decent Immortal economy up with these traits, but otoh there are not that many storng econ traits in the game anyways.
I also think the options could be far worse, although there are also some civs that I would be more naturally inclined to take (Kurios, Balseraphs, maybe Hippus, Calabim). Mind those are fairly popular and are likely in the other players' pools (the game has 21 civs, and 5*3 were sent to players).

[Bobchillingworth]

Doviello seems like the warrior rush civ, and I'm not really interested in that, let alone know how to pull it off successfully. Overall their focus are melee units, and I'm looking more for something more mobile. No starting tech

I don't care for Mahala much as a leader either, but her forces will actually be the most mobile of the options available to you, if that's an important consideration; remember that she has the Raiders trait, meaning all of her combat untis are commandos.  The Doviello start with body mana and don't need a prereq building to produce their Adept UU (the Shaman), so once you've researched KotE, BW, and HBR (which won't take long, even with her fairly lousy economy) you'll be able to fairly quickly produce stacks of hasted, mobility T2 melee backed by Shamans, which will move 6 tiles a turn on enemy roads.  Plus she's Expansive, which is like BTS / CtH Imperialistic, except better, and she starts with free gold to make the loss of a starting tech sting a bit less. 

Not saying you should pick her, but she does bring a good amount to the table.  IMO her main weakness is that, aside from being able to very effectively rush with commandos, her units surprisingly don't pack a lot of oomph, unlike, say, Volanna. 



Cre - I've said I'm interested. Early culture is tendentially harder to come by in FFH than base, not only because the monument costs more, but also because whipping is unfeasable. Then no very early religions, some of which don't give culture anyways. Cheap buildings are an afterthought, but the carnivals might come in handy if we catch some animals? And public baths' 3 for 50h before other boni does not sound bad either for later. I was tempted to say that Cre allows us to postpone Ancient Chants for a good while, maybe get to Cartography and/or Hunting first, but otoh with this start we likely can't afford to delay cottages that long can we? Well AC isn't as expensive anyways.


Volanna should be running a cottage economy in most circumstances, correct.  You don't want to run Agrarianism with her because the civic removes a hammer from farms, which makes placing them on forests largely pointless, so an Aristocracy economy is going to be food-poor until you can adopt FoL and start aging forests into ancient forests.  Cottages are much simpler. 

Your start doesn't look like it has much commerce immediately available, so getting some cottages down relatively quickly will be important. 




Agg - well yeah. C1 on everything, that's surely helpful. Just have to get an economy from elsewhere. Cheap shipyards are irrelevant most likely.

Plus that C1 translates to free Empower 1 on all of your summons (i.e. a 10% strength boost), which is neat.  The real advantage though is being able to adopt Apprenticeship once you research Education, and then produce recon units with the Shock, Cover, or CII promotions, who will get odds on just about anything within the same tier in the field until people start fielding T3 units.  Bear in mind that there are no counter-recon promotions. 



Mind, Shadow and Nature mana. None of these seems terribly useful, I guess inspiration is nice to have? And no harm in casting blur before a combat. Well we'd not be too interested in magic anyways, early on at least.


Inspirations are nice enough, but none of those mana are worth rushing Adepts for.  Nature II will give +1 strength to all of your recon units via the poisoned blade spell (although you could also just capture a Scorpion for it). 



In the same vein, of the unique units only the Nyxkin seems interesting, but isn't that basically just an (awesome) reskin of the regular horse archer?


They don't require horses and can move fast through forests due to being elves, but yeah.  You don't get Chariots, so they're filling in as your most mobile T3 unit, albeit one which defends better at the cost of losing some attacking strength compared to Chariots with iron weapons, and needing their own special and otherwise useless tech. 



Sinister civilization trait, giving +1 on attack to all recon units. I think this is where the true appeal of the Svarts is? Also somehow they can kidnap great persons. Does that apply to settled GP only, or unused ones? So you'd have to go into someone's territory with OB (or hidden?), find the GP and then kidnap? Well probably irrelevant in MP.


I think kidnapping only applies to settled GP, but it's irrelevant, I doubt anyone is going to settle GP, and if they did they'll just declare on you the second they see you moving recon units into their cities. 



An assassin hero at poisons (should also get the sinister bonus?), with a mirror ability (item). Would surely pick him up, as the recon line seems the way to go anyways?


He's a strong hero; has a high combat strength, and his mirror ability is actually from a piece of equipment, which means any of your units can use it.  It duplicates a unit as an illusion- illusions cannot kill in combat (though they can redline units just fine), but they also fully heal after every defensive combat, so having a high-strength illusion as a stack defender can be tough for an opponent to manage, though there are ways to dispel them. 

All that said, while you def. will want to focus on the recon line, Assassins are specialist units- great for taking out enemy Mages and Chariots, but terrible at assaulting cities.  Use Rangers for the heavy lifting, if/when you start fielding T3 units. 



Forgettable worldspell


The WS isn't great, but you can backstab the heck out of someone with it, if they're dumb enough to give you OB.  Mostly useless, though. 



Leader portrait will provide unconscious diplo boni





So, I've never played Svartalfar, not even in SP. I do like the leader, but I feel I don't know what the Svart game is really about. My guess would be to replace some of the regular warriors with scouts, and try and catch some animals.

Correct.  In fact, your Scouts are strong enough to eliminate an opponent who gets complacent, or least punish attempts to aggressively pink-dot you.  Barbs of all sorts will = easy exp = potentially being able to field some very dangerous recon units early, so Immortal difficulty works well for you. 

You'll need AH to capture animals (and an available promotion), but once you can, it's well worth doing so.  Some are good for providing happiness (Wolves, Tigers, Bears, Lions, Gorillas), some are useful as specialized combat troops (Spiders, Gryphons), and you'll get an enormous amount of use from a Giant Scorpion, if you can find one. 


Then build units along the recon line until getting werewolves . More seriously, I think the bulk would be recon units, but after Hunting you'd likely want to go for Fellowship of the Leaves (despite theme, that seems like the one right religion for Svarts, right?), to plant forests on top of your cottages and bring tigers to combat. Fawns seem better than hunters in most cases as well. Hidden paths before poison as well? Satyrn are awesome but require a lvl 4 unit.

Yup, you've got the gist of it; opponents who cannot be eliminated outright with Scouts, Hunters, and Fawns early on should be drowned in Tigers and then hit with whatever recon units you can bring to bear. 

You do also have perfectly acceptable melee units as well, if you find yourself needing the city-busting power of city raider Swordsmen.  I wouldn't bother with Champions or above though, one of the great weaknesses of the Svarts is that they have toys all over the tech tree, and you'll never have enough beakers to use anywhere close to most of them.


The problem with recon units of course is that they don't get to use metal, and are hence often at a disadvantage vs melee and particularly chariots which are also fast.

This is where having +1 attack strength (+2 if you can get poisoned blades), plus Combat I,  is a real advantage; it almost entirely makes up for the intended weaknesses of the Recon line. 


I don't think we'd ever go for magic, or would we still, just for hasting?

You'll still want magic, I think- haste, as you mention, is a major reason, and rust from Entropy I will significantly weaken enemy melee units. 

Later on you're going to need Illusionists (your Mage replacement UU) if you want real collateral (i.e. not just sacrificial Tigers) and don't want to abandon the FoL for the Ashen Veil. 


Do I get it right that Svartalfar don't get siege weapons nor chariots?

Correct.  Expect to summon and lose a lot of Tigers. 


You mentioned that you'd go for a tier 2 rush, so that would be hunters? (/ fawns?)

Yeah.  Scouts can fill in too as relatively cheap pseudo-collateral to weaken defenders.  If you can manage it, bringing along a Satyr or two will help a lot as well, as they hit incredibly hard for when they're first available. 


Agree on settler move. The forested plains hill SSW (did you mean that one?) loses the rice though, although we might not need it at the cap with agrarianism. It also orphans the fish though. Or did you mena to just move there to get a better view? We can send the scout there first. How about the PH SSSE that catches both rices? Loses all those rivers though. Also if the fogged patch in the south contains mostly desert that area might not be better than coast actually (could also have incense though).

Yeah, I was thinking of the hill SSW, just for visibility- could then move either 1E or 1W within the same turn to settle, depending on what you see and prefer for resources, if there's not a better spot revealed in the fog. 

If you're tempted to move in the opposite direction to grab those two rice + whatever might be in the fog, to the grassland hill S / SE / SE; you'll still have a move left over, and will grab more forests should you elect to then SIP.

The starting location is unacceptable for the Svarts IMO, so whatever you do, don't settle in place, where there's no good commerce tiles and only a single forest to exploit. 


To sum it up, I'm tempted to go with Volanna but I'm not sure I actually understand how a Svart game works.

I think you've got the hang of it already, but briefly stated:

* Kill barbs early and often to level up the core of an elite combat force and potentially secure some Satyr.

* Eliminate or cripple an opponent with Scouts if the opportunity presents itself.

* Prioritize Education, Hunting, the FoL tech, HBR, and Priesthood, preferably in that order. 

* Kill neighbors who are complacent with your T1 and T2 recon units.  Punish anyone foolish enough to settle aggressively against you.  Crush magic-oriented civs and the Lanun before they can get off the ground and threaten you. 

* Build a horde of PoL, T2, and T3 Recon units, with Adept support.  Rampage around the world until you force a concession.  Be prepared to research Sorcery if your regular troops aren't sufficient. 

* You will never have enough PoL. 

* Forest everything so that your territory is an unimaginable nightmare to invade. 

* Ignore the Archery unit line.  Don't bother with Melee units beyond Swords. Recon units with Mobility promos are going to be better than Mounted units 95% of the time.  Religions other than FoL are largely pointless, unless you need collateral and for whatever reason can't produce Illusionists within a reasonable timeframe. 

* Should you somehow find yourself entering the late game with no practical way to win by Conquest / concession, adopt the Ashen Veil, Sacrifice the Weak civic, and a civic which allows for unlimited artist specialists, build Ritualists, and finally dare the world to stop you, as you plow toward a cultural victory by running dozens of artists in your giant cities.

[Tarkeel]

This looks like a great thread to learn more about FFH, and I'd like to semi-dedlurk you. I'm saying semi becaue I did see the map and start overview and provided some very basic input on them, but I honestly don't remember any details because I didn't understand what I was looking at.