FFH II PBEM VIII Lurker's Lurking Thread (For Lurkers) [SPOILERS]

[Square Leg]

I bet a tenner Sareln gets rushed.

[Bobchillingworth]

I guess there still isn't much to say about this game yet. I think that Ravus should have gone after Sareln with that Wolf Rider- not just because I want to see Sareln get rushed again, but because putting some pressure on the Elves before they've got archers or Gilden makes a lot more sense to me than just having it uselessly sit around at home. Although his whole AC rush plan, while novel, doesn't make much sense either. A game plan should never rely on the AI behaving intelligently with a handful of super-units. Far too often I've seen the Horsemen just fly off into a mountain range and refuse to ever return. Plus even all four Horsemen at once can't really kill too many units at a time, and they'll be fairly trivial to just stall with skeleton / other summon spam. And the AC rush tech path is really lousy for the Clan. Should be interesting to watch, though!


I'm a little surprised that no one has yet thought about trying to get Mind III Gibbon over to the islands ASAP- I think a 22 Strength killer would be well worth a beeline to Deception & Optics (especially since Gibbon would be great for terraforming / combat spell support as well).

[Selrahc]

I think there are some serious problems in the Armageddon rush. It should still be quite entertaining.

Problems:
1. Map is too big and spread out. Horsemen have more chance of getting lost.

2. AC will be too hard to raise. This strategy is really only massively effective when on 2 or 3 player games, when each point increase to AC is worth a percentage increase or more. To be viable with this many players requires either the last days setting enabled, or the players to get a lot of AC increasing events.

3. Related to this, the way that the armageddon gambit works is to chain the events one on top of the other super quick. Blight->Horsemen->Avatar->Armageddon all within the space of 30 turns. That leaves all foreign civs crippled by sickness, enraged units and a deleted military while the horsemen are rampaging. If it ends up taking 60 turns to get from blight to Armageddon then the civs will have time to recover and address each crisis individually.

4. If the beeline to the Warrens of Ragnarok is dedicated, it leads to economic collapse. If the beeline is not dedicated, other players have a fairly good chance of spotting the intention and stealing the wonder. Mist already plans to do this just on the strength of seeing the Clan in the Game.

5. Why does Ravus want to summon Hyborem? I get that it will be entertaining, but geeze. That is self sabotage on a monumental scale. To summon the one civ that benefits more than you from Armageddon, with no guarantee that they will help you. If he was planning to switch over to Hyborem himself, I could understand it. As it is, he seems to be planning on spending his entire game setting up the ideal conditions for a Hyborem victory. If you want to summon Hyborem to make the game more interesting and help you raise the counter, fine. But let Hyborem worry about getting his own manes and territory.


Now the Hyborem plan does have one interesting side effect that Ravus mentioned. It opens the door for a religious victory for the AV. There are some very easy steps the Hyborem player can take to avert this however. Spreading a second religion around an empire will drastically decrease the percentage, and Esus is ideal for that purpose. Not to mention the fact that Hyborem could just decide to bring the fight straight to the Orcs and steal the Veil holy city for himself. I think this aspect of the plan is quite innovative, but would work better if there was an easily placated AI Hyborem who would mindlessly accept manes and spread veil giving the clan an easy religious victory when the great Armageddon population culls came. It *shouldn't* work against a human. Maybe it will though.

[Bobchillingworth]

It's not even turn 50 yet, but I'm going to call this game as Sareln's to lose. Considering how incredibly inhospitable this map is he has by far the best civ (although breeding pits make the Calabim competitive as well), and of his opponents most seem to be either floundering for a good plan (Mr. Yellow, Amelia) or stuck on a convoluted and/or lousy plan (Ravus, Mist). Mackotti apparently lost interest a while ago, if it's even still him playing the turns. Sareln by comparison has expanded well and the "typical" elven warpath which I believe he intends to follow sells itself rather well for this game.



I'm still disappointed that nobody has hit upon the idea of vitalize / domination Gibbon yet. I think he'd be good enough here to make beelining him close to being a One Right Strategy.

[Bobchillingworth]

I don't understand what most of the players here are going for :|



Mist wants the Runes for SoK for defense? But the Runes is an expensive tech for so early, and bronze warriors or even just regular axes are just as good and significantly cheaper. Plus going RoK -> Priesthood -> Deception and all techs in-between sounds like an excessively delayed and perhaps not particularly effective plan for defense against powerful fast mounted units. The invisibility from the Noctis might even hurt- it means that Mist can't blockade any roads he builds to deny them to the Commando Horses.


Amelia wants the Runes for... uh... I have not the slightest idea. Just, none. How the heck does very early Runes help the Amurites? She's building farms everywhere but is ignoring CoL? I really can't see any scenario where that play makes sense.


Mr. Yellow is apparently telegraphing his rush intentions and has decided to not settle the incredibly lush oasis of FP close to his capital anytime soon.




Also a map criticism [MARDOC DON'T READ]:



How the heck are the Bannor supposed to even play on this map? Mist doesn't seem to have complained much because he's got some weird tech path in his head and is attempting an ill-advised culture win, but seriously. If he wanted to actually run a Crusade, is he really expected to be working a ton of plains cottages? I guess he could make cites which worked a plains farm for every plains cottage, but that would effectively halve the number of towns he could have compared with if he actually had some grassland or FP to work with instead.

[Mardoc]

I don't understand what most of the players here are going for :|

I'm afraid I agree with you.

Mist wants the Runes for SoK for defense? But the Runes is an expensive tech for so early, and bronze warriors or even just regular axes are just as good and significantly cheaper. Plus going RoK -> Priesthood -> Deception and all techs in-between sounds like an excessively delayed and perhaps not particularly effective plan for defense against powerful fast mounted units. The invisibility from the Noctis might even hurt- it means that Mist can't blockade any roads he builds to deny them from the Commando Horses.

I think he's planning longer term than this; I'm not sure what he's planning to use for defense except maybe tribute. He wants Runes so that he can feed angels to Basium, and RoK is the cheapest of the good religions. He's either got no short term defense plans, or he hasn't told us about them.

Edit: No, you're right, he did state he wanted to use Soldiers of Kilmorph for defense. I must have subconsciously forgotten because it didn't make any sense to me .

Regarding Nox Noctis - every unit has a 'Reveal unit' spell available which would let him block roads. Or does it not work properly?

At least he's Spiritual, so RoK isn't as bad from a pure economic perspective, unlike:

Amelia wants the Runes for... uh... I have not the slightest idea. Just, none. How the heck does very early Runes help the Amurites? She's building farms everywhere but is ignoring CoL? I really can't see any scenario where that play makes sense.

Nothing to add here. Maybe if he was Spiritual - but even then I'd think CoL would matter more; he's already in Agrarianism.

Mr. Yellow is apparently telegraphing his rush intentions and had decided to not settle the incredibly lush oasis of FP close to his capital anytime soon.

To be fair, his rush intentions were pretty clear as soon as he picked Tasunke instead of Rhoanna. Although I don't see how convincing people to build defense is going to help.

Ignoring the FP - well, yeah. Um. I'd say he was worried about defending it, but he's freakin' Tasunke of the Hippus with a plan to rush people!

Also a map criticism [MARDOC DON'T READ]:

How the heck are the Bannor supposed to even play on this map? Mist doesn't seem to have complained much because he's got some weird tech path in his head and is attempting an ill-advised culture win, but seriously. If he wanted to actually run a Crusade, is he really expected to be working a ton of plains cottages? I guess he could make cites which worked a plains farm for every plains cottage, but that would effectively halve the number of towns he could have compared with if he actually had some grassland or FP to work with instead.

Ok, maybe I did overreact a little to you, Bob.

I did try to include a lot of food resources, and if he ran Agrarianism/Sanitation, he could support 2 cottages/farm plus what the resources give him. Although it averages plains, there's some grassland and plenty of rivers and etc.

Plus, well - plains is going to slow everyone to some extent, not just the Bannor. Everyone will have less food to play with and a harder choice on Aristocracy. You could be right that it hurts the elves least, but it won't until Sareln's made it at least to Leaves + Priesthood + time. If anything, I'd think the Bannor want the game to be slowed so their cottages have more time to develop - it doesn't do them any good to be able to slap down a cottage on every tile if they get attacked when they're still villages.

[Ilios]

So, how many players are going for the Runes in this game?

[Bobchillingworth]

Urgh... Amelia is making such an awful decision that I really want to say something, if for no other reason than to keep the game competitive, but I know that I'd be really upset if I were playing and some lurker started offering advice like that. If he can't take the mild hints that Ranmar and I have implied with our questions about why he wants the RoK, then I guess there's nothing more that anybody can do. At least if Mist beats him there soon he won't have wasted *too* many beakers.

Regarding Nox Noctis - every unit has a 'Reveal unit' spell available which would let him block roads. Or does it not work properly?

Ah, I totally forgot about this Although if you're revealing defenders to block super mobile horses and of course keeping some in the cities, I have to question how much use you're really getting out of the invisibility at all. Tasunke is probably the worst person to rely on the Noctis against (except maybe Decius of the Calabim). It's still a cool wonder, but against him I don't think it can justify the many techs needed, unless you wanted Gibbon too (which actually would be a good play for the Bannor here, get some vitalization going).

Plus, well - plains is going to slow everyone to some extent, not just the Bannor. Everyone will have less food to play with and a harder choice on Aristocracy. You could be right that it hurts the elves least, but it won't until Sareln's made it at least to Leaves + Priesthood + time. If anything, I'd think the Bannor want the game to be slowed so their cottages have more time to develop - it doesn't do them any good to be able to slap down a cottage on every tile if they get attacked when they're still villages.

This is true, and their start isn't nearly as bad as it would be if one or more other players were in a much greener environment (I should confess here that I've never actually seen the entire map, just the player starts you and they posted views of in various threads). It's just a little harsh on the Bannor because they'll need sanitation and construction before they can really feed a good number of cottages, and since cottages take forever to mature any Crusade will be delayed quite a bit. Plus unless they have a high happy cap they won't be able to work as many towns as if they had had more grassland, since some citizens will be stuck on mostly useless farms (one for every one or two towns, depending on how fast Mist wants his cities to grow). Mist of course hasn't done himself any favors by settling his capital in a rather poor location which seems to have deliberately ignored his food resources.

[Mardoc]

I agree on both points about Amelia. It is a mistake to go for Kilmorph as the Amurites, and the players would be outraged if you didn't let him make that mistake. He'd do much better to go for either other econ techs, or simply straight for KoTE. The Ashen Veil shrine is as nice and doesn't divert your tech path from what you really want as the Amurites.

Ah, I totally forgot about this Although if you're revealing defenders to block super mobile horses and of course keeping some in the cities, I have to question how much use you're really getting out of the invisibility at all. Tasunke is probably the worst person to rely on the Noctis against (except maybe Decius of the Calabim). It's still a cool wonder, but against him I don't think it can justify the many techs needed, unless you wanted Gibbon too (which actually would be a good play for the Bannor here, get some vitalization going).

I think it totally depends on the balance of forces. Some things Nox Noctis does help with, if you've got enough troops to also garrison cities:

• Wounded units can be invulnerable just parked in the countryside.
  
• So can workers
  
• Corollary: you can attack a stack just to pare it down, without worrying about losing the wounded units to a counterattack. As long as you have good 1-on-1 odds, it's worth doing
  
• Tasunke doesn't know where's a safe place to park - mobility advantage is less meaningful when you don't know where the stack is you're avoiding
  
• Combining 2&4 - you can afford to spread out your reaction forces, if you have them
  

It's true, this all assumes you're not fighting on a shoestring - that the horses can't simply walk up to your cities and start razing. Nox pays off the most if you're playing a game of attrition or surprise. I think if I were playing it, and I had enough garrisons/palisades/etc, I'd never block a road, just follow him around with axes or soldiers of kilmorph and kill a unit every turn.

This is true, and their start isn't nearly as bad as it would be if one or more other players were in a much greener environment (I should confess here that I've never actually seen the entire map, just the player starts you and they posted views of in various threads). It's just a little harsh on the Bannor because they need sanitation and construction before they can really feed a good number of cottages, and since cottages take forever to mature any Crusade will be delayed quite a bit. Plus unless they have a high happy cap they won't be able to work as many towns as if they had had more grassland, since some citizens will be stuck on mostly useless farms (one for every one or two towns, depending on how fast Mist wants his cities to grow). Mist of course hasn't done himself any favors by settling in a rather poor location which seems to have deliberately ignored his food resources.

Yes, Mist deliberately moved toward the commerce. At the time I was afraid that was game-winning, but now I'm less sure. I guess he's trading a less effective Crusade for an earlier one?

[Bobchillingworth]

So plan is set. Get horses, destroy the western barb town, raid the elves and attempt to get something nice out of it and then finally gather up and march north-east towards the Calabim!

PLAN:


Step 1. Piss off the leading civ in hopes of extracting vague concessions.

Step 2a. Run across the world to assault the second-place and most dangerous civ.

Step 2b. Do not attempt to attack weak neighbor, who has decent land and only intends to buy you off in the distant future.

Step 3. [strike] Profit [/strike] Get crushed beneath a horde of tigers and/or vampires.



Edit: I also forgot Step .5, raze well-placed free barbarian city