Amelia Wrote:Explain that picture.
It's "Bunny screams" by E. Munch.
Amelia Wrote:What is wrong with your combination, and why?
Thoth Wrote:the main problem is that the Svarts always get rushed. 
Mardoc Wrote:Now, now, that's only when they're played by Sareln or someone whose name is sorta similar to Sareln 
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[SIZE="1"]And if that's not a general rule, then I guess we're about to find out[/SIZE]
Where to start...
Thoth and Mardoc have it right, Svarts always get rushed, but there's a reason for this.
Fall from Heaven already makes it difficult to stay focussed on a tech path, to not pick up this or that tech because it's cool or nice to have. The Bad Elves have it even worse, because they have so many possibilities to play the game.
The Svarts need too many techs to get all the goodies. They need Poisons for their Hero and Assassins, they need Hunting for Sinister Hunters, they need Knowledge of the Ether for Arcane Adepts, Way of the Forest for Ancient Forests, Priesthood for blooming... the list goes on. Important techs like Festivals and Bronze Working get delayed because "I want to land WoF on T73".
I could point out to Sareln's game in PBEM 1, where he picked up Animal Husbandry to improve a plains hill Sheep,
and so his Scouts could pick up the Subdue animal promotion. Now, unless the land around the capital forces your hand (see Serdoa in PBEM2), in FFH2, you don't pick up Animal Husbandry as your second or third tech. I'm not saying he would have survived the Winter Priest rush if he skipped the tech, but he might have had a chance if he spammed Warriors and gotten BW asap.
I won't be able to expand on Selrahc's game due to spoilers, but from I could see through Thoth's posts, his Svartalfar suffered from the same affliction - important techs get delayed to pick up "nice-to-haves". Now this might work in Single Player, but in MP, that gets you rushed (right, Thoth?
) because you become what people in the business call "A juicy target".
The Svartalfar don't have an anti-rush Wordspell, summoning enraged Treeants. They get Veil of Night, which makes all my units hidden nationality...
"Gee, I wonder who's behind that attack force of 7 HN Sinister Hunters?"
Oh, and my units can kidnap settled GP's from other people's cities...
"Gee, I wonder who just stole my settled Great Prophet. Is that a Svartalfar Hunter I see running into the forest?"
Don't get me wrong, I look forward to the challenge, but I just wanted to explain the difficulties I'll be facing.
On to the leader, Dain, previously of the Amurites. Philosophical instead of Raiders is slightly better to help with the Svartalfar economic game, but still a far cry from Arendel (Creative/Spiritual), or even Thessa (Expansive/Arcane).
I'm playing a couple of test games, to get the feel of the Svarts and Dain as their leader.
My impressions so far:
1) Workers: they suck -> I'll need tons of them -> Worker - Worker start a possibility.
2) Agriculture as starting technology = Good -> Depending on the number of non-forest tiles/Resources, probably Calendar as next tech, for Agrarianism.
3) I'm really bad at the GP game. Depending how many tiles can be improved with the Worker pair -> AC - Mysticism for God King and Elder Councils -> Sage specialist
4) My best starts are those where I skip Hunting - Way of Forest until T75 at least. - Exploration to give those Workers something else to do, then probably Education for cottages.
5) I don't want to skip Crafting - Mining as most Elven players do. I want to be able to grab Bronze Working (if Copper available) when I need it.
6) Early Writing for cheap Libraries seems a given.
7) Collateral - no idea (Elves have no catapults)
8) Academy with first GSage seems best thing to do - if KotE bulbed, adepts would have access to Inspiration (nice with Philo), Blur (meh) and Treetop defenses (whoopdedoo).
More later...
