Woohoo! Pass the ale and cue the bawdy drinking songs.
Now we can begin the drawn-out process of overthinking every minutae! Starting with:
Opponent Analysis!
What exactly are we up against? In turn order:
Sian as Arendel Phaedra of the Ljosalfar. Very strong pick. Arendel was one of the best leaders in base FFH, and she's gotten some substantial (indirect) boosts in EitB. Near-impregnable in the midgame thanks to their hero and worldspell, the elves are stronger than anyone in the endgame, at least economically. Their two main weaknesses: no special war-toys of their own (though Arendel can pick up all kind of religious goodies), and their start is painfully slow. As for their leader: Sian didn't have much luck with his first foray into MP FFH (also as Arendel). I haven't followed any of the BtS games on this site, but he was in the second Planetfall game where I was dedlurking Mardoc. Based on that game, I'd guess he's inclined to skimp a bit too much on the military. Well, if that's his weakness, he's chosen a good leader to compensate for it.
Yell0w as Thessalonica of the Elohim. Spiritual and Industrious: two good builder traits. Worldspell that also makes them pretty much rush-proof. My guess is that Yell0w intends to play builder, but the Elohim "tolerant" trait makes it reward to play warmonger as well. If so, I doubt we'll be appealing targets: he'd probably rather have a city from the Kuriotates or the Calabim. As for the building: he's the only other leader in game with the Ind trait, so our main competitor for wonders. But we should have the edge in that department once we get our production multipliers in place.
Jalapeno as Decius of the Calabim. Decius is Org/Raiders. The Calabim might be the strongest all-around civ in the game. And with Flauros nerfed, Decius is probably the strongest leader for them. Org means half-priced governor's mansions, which gives them a huge bonus to production. Vampires are probably the most dangerous T3 units in the game. They can promote to M2, haste themselves, and use enemy roads thanks to the Raiders trait. We should be careful to avoid giving them a road connection to our territory. Fortunately, the Calabim are also slow to start, due to an inability to build Elder Councils and no economic bonuses in the early game. Jalapeno's been on RB for a while, but I don't think he's played in any of the FFH games yet, so I'm not sure what to expect.
The Black Sword as Cardith Lorda of the Kuriotates. Another very strong pick. They're the only civ in the game that should be off to a faster start than us. Also the only civ in the game who can execute a strong early rush. Centaurs can be built without stables, don't require a horse resource, can be 4-movers with no promotions (and 6-movers with promotions), receive defensive bonuses, and are available at HBR (which the Kuriotates can reach quickly). In other words, they're terrifying. Our only hope is that either TBS (as I shall henceforth refer to him) chooses another target, or decides not to rush at all. The Kuriotates can also be played as a builder civ, and it's easy to get distracted by all the cool things they can build... as we well know. TBS seem to be a newcomer to RB, so again no idea what to expect.
WarriorKnight as Cassiel of the Grigori. Probably the weakest of the civilizations chosen (with us coming in second). Philosophical trait is nice, but you end up having to choose to emphasize generating ordinary great people (in which case, why play the Grigori?) or adventurers. Adventurers are awesome against a foolish AI who has no idea how to deal with them. But in MP, I'm skeptical. He could try to pull off an early rush with melee heroes, but that sounds like a good way to lose them against a canny opponent. If he doesn't, then his main asset is sitting around gathering dust for most of the game. Of course, there's the possibility of a terrifying late-game with several twincasting archmages. But I suspect that the game will be decided long before anyone reaches Strength of Will. Anyway, let's hope that WarriorKnight does go the arcane route: it'll be nice to get some use out of our magic resistant trait.
So, what does it look like? I'd rate three of the leaders as strong (Arendel, Decius, Cardith), two as mediocre
(Arturus, Thessalonica) and one as weak (Cassiel). It looks like it should probably be a quiet early game: only Cassiel and Cardith might be inclined to rush, but neither is forced to. Two leaders which can't really be rushed (Arendel, Thessalonica) means that if a rush does take place, we're in dangerous spot. But if I was planning a centaur rush in a game like this, I'd probably target the Calabim. Dwarves are short and harmless, right?
Alright, enough about the other guys? What about us?
We'll be playing as Arturus Thorne of the Khazad.
I haven't played the Khazad much in SP, so lurkers should feel free to correct me if I've got something wrong.
1) Almost all of our units will be dwarven. This gives double movement over hills: could be handy for scouting in the early game. Gives 25% resistance to poison damage, which is probably irrelevant. But it also gives a +25% bonus to workrate, which is huge. Also, dwarven units built in a city with the Deruptus start with 2xp. That's an early wonder worth having.
2) We can't build mages. So I'm inclined to forget about the arcane line altogether. At some point we might want to pick up
KotE and Alteration to build haste adepts, but that can (probably) wait until those techs are dirt-cheap.
3) Our palace gives Earth Mana, Law Mana, and gold. Which does not inspire me to rethink the question of going down the arcane route. However, Law mana from the palace means we only need 3 mana nodes to build a tower of divination: something worth looking at later in the game, especially since we'll probably be production powerhouses. Also, our palace gives +20% defense in all cities, which should help us appear less attractive as rush targets.
4) We have a much stronger catapult UU, the trebuchet. Siege units can take mobility promotions in EitB. You do the math.
We also get a stronger version of the cannon, but that's unlikely to be relevant.
5) Khazad melee units can create Battering Rams. It requires 3 turns in a forest tile and the Engineering tech, and creates a vastly inferior version of the Trebuchet. I don't see this ever coming up.
6) Dwarven druids are amazing. And not as crazily hard to get in EitB: we don't have to go up the nature line at all, since Commune with Nature is unlocked by Arete. It's an expensive tech, but could potentially grab it by Tower of Divination if we can find the mana nodes.
7) Our hero is Maros. Available at iron working, a melee unit with 6 offensive strength and 12 defensive strength,
in addition to being able to use melee weapons (so 8/14 in practice). Also gets +50% defense in cities. Fortify him in a city and it's going to require overwhelming force for the enemy to take it.
8) We get a special version of the forge: the Dwarven Smithy. Rather than giving a flat +25% bonus to production, it gives
a base of +20%, +10% more if we have copper, +10% more with iron, and +10% more with mithril. In addition, we can build it at double speed thanks to our Industrious trait. Strong incentive to go down the metal line.
9) Dwarven Vaults: give bonuses or penalties depending on how much gold we have onhand. At less than fifty gold per city, they give 2 unhappy faces in each city. This is where we'll be in the early game, as soon as we get our second city up. 50-99 gold per city, and they give one unhappy face. 100-149, they do nothing. 150-199, they give one happy face. 200-299, they give two happy faces and +10% production. 300-499, and they give 3 happy faces and +25% production. 500 or more, and the production boost goes up to 40%.
Basically, the dwarven vaults are a trap. To take advantage of them, we need to turn off science and stop expanding, both of which hurt us a lot more than the vaults help us. But being a dwarf isn't about doing what's easy or sensible. It's about digging shiny things out of the ground, carefully polishing them, and stowing them away where no one else can get their grubby hands on them. Fortunately, we get a bit of help with that:
10) World spell: Mother Lode. Gives 25 gold for each mine in our culture, and has a 10% chance of turning each plains tile into a hill. Playing thematically means having plenty of mines, which will make the worldspell pay off handsomely. For example, we could put 4 mines in the BFC of our capital. If that's typical of what our cities look like, then the worldspell could take us instantly from empty vaults (2 unhappy faces) to normal vaults (no bonuses or penalties). Or from normal vaults to abundant vaults (2 happy, +10% production).
We've got two main things going for us: we're strong early because of our workers (which work faster thanks to Dwarven, and we can produce faster thanks to Industrious). And we're strong late (at least potentially) because of our production multipliers.
So, as I mentioned earlier, I think we want to take advantage of the workers to snowball as quickly as we can, ignoring our vaults.
Of course, we need to adopt Runes of Kilmorph, or our dwarf cards will be revoked. For civics, I think our eventual target should be Aristocracy/Consumption/Arete/Agrarianism/Overcouncil. We aim to put a mine on every tile that is a hill, and a farm on every tile that is not a hill. Dwarven workers will let us do that fast, and we expand until we run out of room. When that's done, we fire our worldspell and start building vertically.
Militarily: we've got Trebuchets for collateral. The main issue is mobility, especially with the Calabim and Kuriotates in the game. For this, I think we want chariots. They're unlocked by techs we want for economic reasons (construction and trade), they synergize well with going down the metal line, and they're the fastest units we're able to build. Arete unlocks paramanders to defend our cities and stacks, and Bambur to partially compensate for not having any arcane units.
Early techs: obviously, agriculture first. Next two techs should be calendar and mining (probably calendar first) to unleash our economic engine, and then exploration so our workers always have something to do. After that, I'm not so sure. Given the starting shade and the gems/incense in our BFC, I think the situation might call for a beeline towards Code of Laws.
If we don't beeline Code of Laws, I assume we go for mysticism next to unlock God King. In which case: might it be worth postponing the revolt to Agrarianism until God King is available? (Probably not.)
Finally: Runes of Kilmorph doesn't give culture. Where are we going to get culture? We could aways use thanes to pop borders, I suppose. Might it be worthwhile to make a grab for the drama bard? We'll want festivals early-ish to build markets; we could build a carnival and aim to get a bard out as our first GP. I think it's probably a lousy idea, but thought I'd put it out there.
All Khazad units get magic resistance for free in EitB, as well as the traits listed above.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
(April 25th, 2013, 13:45)Merovech Wrote: All Khazad units get magic resistance for free in EitB, as well as the traits listed above.
Very good; missed that one.
Plans for the opening:
Settle in place, shade settles as a sage. Plains hill + great sage + Khazad palace means the capital will be outputting 4 hammers per turn, which makes 5 when building a worker. So we can get a worker out in six turns by spending 4 turns working the oasis (8htp) and 2 turns working the deer hill (9hpt). If my sandbox is accurate about tech costs (which it rarely is, but probably is close enough) it'll take 7 turns to get agriculture. No point in having a worker with literally nothing to do, so I say we spend turn 0 getting 25% of a warrior completed. Then we can finish a warrior in 2 turns in case of emergency, so we can feel good about sending our starting warriors out to explore.
Yikes, I'm way behind! Assume I agree with your analysis, except where noted - otherwise this is going to be a book of a post.
Quote:Yell0w as Thessalonica of the Elohim. Spiritual and Industrious: two good builder traits. Worldspell that also makes them pretty much rush-proof. My guess is that Yell0w intends to play builder, but the Elohim "tolerant" trait makes it reward to play warmonger as well. If so, I doubt we'll be appealing targets: he'd probably rather have a city from the Kuriotates or the Calabim. As for the building: he's the only other leader in game with the Ind trait, so our main competitor for wonders. But we should have the edge in that department once we get our production multipliers in place.
I'm less sure. Elohim aren't too much of a warmongering civ, but Yell0w is a warmonger.
Quote:The Black Sword as Cardith Lorda of the Kuriotates.
Yep. I'll add one bit: centaurs are strong rush units - but Kurios gain the least benefit from rushing, which is probably a wash.
Quote:So, what does it look like? I'd rate three of the leaders as strong (Arendel, Decius, Cardith), two as mediocre
(Arturus, Thessalonica) and one as weak (Cassiel). It looks like it should probably be a quiet early game: only Cassiel and Cardith might be inclined to rush, but neither is forced to. Two leaders which can't really be rushed (Arendel, Thessalonica) means that if a rush does take place, we're in dangerous spot. But if I was planning a centaur rush in a game like this, I'd probably target the Calabim. Dwarves are short and harmless, right?
Frankly, I don't think yell0w will be able to resist hitting someone. We should make sure to pick up Trebs earlyish if we're near him - especially if his other neighbor is the elves. And, well - if we have Trebs earlyish, we might look to give them some XP...
(April 25th, 2013, 12:32)HidingKneel Wrote: 2) We can't build mages. So I'm inclined to forget about the arcane line altogether. At some point we might want to pick up
KotE and Alteration to build haste adepts, but that can (probably) wait until those techs are dirt-cheap.
Definitely agreed. Higher priority if we don't get Bambur.
Honestly, though, I think that Trebs could be the go-to unit all the way to late game. A big stack of them should annihilate just about anything. So Haste is less important to us, since it can't speed Trebs and we need those badly.
OTOH - Repair is available to us - it requires Dwarven, not Luchiurp. Being able to keep the Trebuchets useful every single turn, and especially being able to use them in a counter attack after they've been redlined by magic? High value. Still, it definitely should come after Construction and probably Iron Working - Repair seems to me to be a spell mainly good for continuing an offensive.
Quote:4) We have a much stronger catapult UU, the trebuchet. Siege units can take mobility promotions in EitB. You do the math.
I think the Trebuchet has to be our primary army. Combined with whatever it takes to deliver them to target.
Quote:6) Dwarven druids are amazing. And not as crazily hard to get in EitB: we don't have to go up the nature line at all, since Commune with Nature is unlocked by Arete. It's an expensive tech, but could potentially grab it by Tower of Divination if we can find the mana nodes.
It's true, they might be accessible. And 75% dmg caps are awesome. But hopefully by the time we get there, we've got a stack of doom-trebuchets, and don't need more collateral.
Quote:7) Our hero is Maros. Available at iron working, a melee unit with 6 offensive strength and 12 defensive strength,
in addition to being able to use melee weapons (so 8/14 in practice). Also gets +50% defense in cities. Fortify him in a city and it's going to require overwhelming force for the enemy to take it.
...or sufficient collateral and a couple warriorpults. I'd rather do our city defense with a stack of Trebuchets poised to hit anyone in our territory.
Still, he's worth building.
Quote:8) We get a special version of the forge: the Dwarven Smithy. Strong incentive to go down the metal line.
Yes, and might actually be worth building, too. At least in high-hammer cities. What I really want, though, is the Guild of Hammers. We might have a good shot at that if we can push the early game snowball hard enough.
Late game, that could be +50% for Smithy, +40% for Vaults, + 20% for Command Posts, and one city with a Heroic Epic on top. We ought to be able to rival the Bannor for late game army creation speed.
Quote:Basically, the dwarven vaults are a trap
Honestly - I think they're a trap early, but a boon late. 500 gold/city is a ridiculous price when that's the first 4 techs - much less so once we're talking about it being half a later game tech. Meanwhile, it really is a lot of bonuses, and happiness/hammers are exactly what we want late game regardless.
(April 25th, 2013, 12:47)HidingKneel Wrote: So, what's the gameplan?
We've got two main things going for us: we're strong early because of our workers (which work faster thanks to Dwarven, and we can produce faster thanks to Industrious). And we're strong late (at least potentially) because of our production multipliers.
So, as I mentioned earlier, I think we want to take advantage of the workers to snowball as quickly as we can, ignoring our vaults.
Of course, we need to adopt Runes of Kilmorph, or our dwarf cards will be revoked. For civics, I think our eventual target should be Aristocracy/Consumption/Arete/Agrarianism/Overcouncil. We aim to put a mine on every tile that is a hill, and a farm on every tile that is not a hill. Dwarven workers will let us do that fast, and we expand until we run out of room. When that's done, we fire our worldspell and start building vertically.
Macro sounds good. I'm a little bit tempted to suggest cottages as well, but I suppose Aristograrianism will get us to the chariot/treb stage, and that'll likely be all we need to win.
Quote:Militarily: we've got Trebuchets for collateral. The main issue is mobility, especially with the Calabim and Kuriotates in the game. For this, I think we want chariots. They're unlocked by techs we want for economic reasons (construction and trade), they synergize well with going down the metal line, and they're the fastest units we're able to build. Arete unlocks paramanders to defend our cities and stacks, and Bambur to partially compensate for not having any arcane units.
Yes, agreed. And likely we also want an early Engineering. Chariots, Trebs, and perhaps a bunch of axemen/champions ought to be scary enough for anyone.
Quote:Early techs: obviously, agriculture first. Next two techs should be calendar and mining (probably calendar first) to unleash our economic engine, and then exploration so our workers always have something to do. After that, I'm not so sure. Given the starting shade and the gems/incense in our BFC, I think the situation might call for a beeline towards Code of Laws.
If we don't beeline Code of Laws, I assume we go for mysticism next to unlock God King. In which case: might it be worth postponing the revolt to Agrarianism until God King is available? (Probably not.)
Quote:Finally: Runes of Kilmorph doesn't give culture. Where are we going to get culture? We could aways use thanes to pop borders, I suppose. Might it be worthwhile to make a grab for the drama bard? We'll want festivals early-ish to build markets; we could build a carnival and aim to get a bard out as our first GP. I think it's probably a lousy idea, but thought I'd put it out there.
Honestly - especially when ignoring vaults and infrastructure, our happy cap will be quite low. I suggest we aim to live mostly without culture. Plant a lot of cities, but plant them primarily for first ring tiles - build a handful of monuments in spots that can give culture to more than one city. Once we get to late game and can grow, we should also have the hammers to put up monuments with.
If we're going Aristograrianism and then hitting the worldspell, Sanitation is a high-priority tech. The Drama bard is very useful for that slingshot.
(April 25th, 2013, 13:45)Merovech Wrote: All Khazad units get magic resistance for free in EitB, as well as the traits listed above.
Assuming we can get a couple XP on starting units (say, by way of Command Posts), this should be great for us. Figure out what the opponent is using, and grab Lighting/Fire/Cold/etc resistance, for a unit with 70% magic resist. Make him something strong, and that's a unit very hard to attack.
(April 26th, 2013, 08:32)HidingKneel Wrote: Plans for the opening:
Settle in place, shade settles as a sage. Plains hill + great sage + Khazad palace means the capital will be outputting 4 hammers per turn, which makes 5 when building a worker. So we can get a worker out in six turns by spending 4 turns working the oasis (8htp) and 2 turns working the deer hill (9hpt). If my sandbox is accurate about tech costs (which it rarely is, but probably is close enough) it'll take 7 turns to get agriculture. No point in having a worker with literally nothing to do, so I say we spend turn 0 getting 25% of a warrior completed. Then we can finish a warrior in 2 turns in case of emergency, so we can feel good about sending our starting warriors out to explore.
Seems reasonable to me - assuming a double check of Agriculture cost once we have the real game. And, honestly - it might well be worth going for a double worker opening, especially if River of Blood isn't cast T0. We've a lot of farmable tiles - I doubt we'll have trouble with too many worker turns.
Welcome back, Mardoc! Hope the move went smoothly.
(April 27th, 2013, 18:19)Mardoc Wrote: I'm less sure. Elohim aren't too much of a warmongering civ, but Yell0w is a warmonger.
I dunno... he wasn't playing warmonger in XXIII: he was running a super-light military because he thought that that the Seven Pines would give him a sanctuary effect. This time he has a worldspell that will definitely give him a sanctuary effect: I wouldn't be surprised if he played the same way. Thessalonica does strike me as a builder leader, but I suppose Spiritual is a pretty good war trait (though not until late in the game).
Quote:Yep. I'll add one bit: centaurs are strong rush units - but Kurios gain the least benefit from rushing, which is probably a wash.
Good point. Also, it looks like TBS wanted the Khazad also. Common theme: civs that reward vertical growth. That makes me think he's going to want to build.
Quote:Honestly, though, I think that Trebs could be the go-to unit all the way to late game. A big stack of them should annihilate just about anything. So Haste is less important to us, since it can't speed Trebs and we need those badly.
They'll be important units for us, no doubt. But I could see a big stack of trebuchets getting torn to shreds by a big stack of centaur chargers, who would be able to run circles around us. I'll feel a lot safer if we've got some chariots in the mix.
Fortunately, they're along the same tech path and require the same building.
Quote:OTOH - Repair is available to us - it requires Dwarven, not Luchiurp. Being able to keep the Trebuchets useful every single turn, and especially being able to use them in a counter attack after they've been redlined by magic? High value. Still, it definitely should come after Construction and probably Iron Working - Repair seems to me to be a spell mainly good for continuing an offensive.
With luck, we can give that job to Bambur. Not sure where Arete should fall in our plans, though. Need to try a single player game as Khazad, I think.
Quote:
Quote:7) Our hero is Maros. Available at iron working, a melee unit with 6 offensive strength and 12 defensive strength,
in addition to being able to use melee weapons (so 8/14 in practice). Also gets +50% defense in cities. Fortify him in a city and it's going to require overwhelming force for the enemy to take it.
...or sufficient collateral and a couple warriorpults. I'd rather do our city defense with a stack of Trebuchets poised to hit anyone in our territory.
Still, he's worth building.
Worth building, not worth prioritizing. I think we probably want to hold off on smelting/iron working until we've got almost everything else in place (construction, trade, sanitation, arete, possibly currency).
Quote:
Quote:8) We get a special version of the forge: the Dwarven Smithy. Strong incentive to go down the metal line.
Yes, and might actually be worth building, too. At least in high-hammer cities. What I really want, though, is the Guild of Hammers. We might have a good shot at that if we can push the early game snowball hard enough.
Agreed, engineering could do amazing things for us in the late game, and is very thematic.
Quote:Honestly - I think they're a trap early, but a boon late. 500 gold/city is a ridiculous price when that's the first 4 techs - much less so once we're talking about it being half a later game tech. Meanwhile, it really is a lot of bonuses, and happiness/hammers are exactly what we want late game regardless.
Good point. Though 500 gold/city in the late game could be quite a lot, depending on how much room we have/how much land we've managed to take from opponents. No worries, though. We'll find a way to fill those suckers .
Quote:Macro sounds good. I'm a little bit tempted to suggest cottages as well, but I suppose Aristograrianism will get us to the chariot/treb stage, and that'll likely be all we need to win.
I suppose if we're running agrarianism, farms on plains tiles don't make a lot of sense. But running low happy caps, we can probably just ignore plains rather than cottaging them.
Quote:Honestly - especially when ignoring vaults and infrastructure, our happy cap will be quite low. I suggest we aim to live mostly without culture. Plant a lot of cities, but plant them primarily for first ring tiles - build a handful of monuments in spots that can give culture to more than one city. Once we get to late game and can grow, we should also have the hammers to put up monuments with.
If we're going Aristograrianism and then hitting the worldspell, Sanitation is a high-priority tech. The Drama bard is very useful for that slingshot.
So maybe worth considering. We can make good use of both drama and sanitation, and the combination might be worth spending our first great person on. In that case, we could aim to generate a bard right around when we get the prereqs for sanitation in place. Also, working a bard specialist itself does something for our culture issues, if we do it outside the capital. In that case a carnival will take a fair numbers of turns to get up, but dwarves are good with hammers...
Quote:Assuming we can get a couple XP on starting units (say, by way of Command Posts), this should be great for us. Figure out what the opponent is using, and grab Lighting/Fire/Cold/etc resistance, for a unit with 70% magic resist. Make him something strong, and that's a unit very hard to attack.
I doubt this will come up, though I suppose it's possible we'll end up squaring off with Grigori mages in the endgame...
Quote:Seems reasonable to me - assuming a double check of Agriculture cost once we have the real game. And, honestly - it might well be worth going for a double worker opening, especially if River of Blood isn't cast T0. We've a lot of farmable tiles - I doubt we'll have trouble with too many worker turns.
Ah, right... should revise my sandboxing now that we know the Calabim are in the game. If we do decide to try to duck the Calabim worldspell, though, would we want two workers? There's plenty of farmable tiles but we won't be able to work them for some time. Especially if we spend time regrowing (or delaying our growth), I think one worker can probably stay on top of things early on, so our effort might be better spent towards a settler.
Another possibility is to play the Khazad as advocated here.
Quote:If you want to play your own version of Industry and Isolation™, follow these rules:
1) You can not found your second city until you have at least 1,000 gold. Remember to fully charge your dwarves before playing with them.
2) Once you hit overflowing Vaults you can never drop below it. Don't bring them back down from their high. It's a bad trip, man, and you don't want to see it.
3) All cities must be built on hills. The novelty of being taller than their enemies has not worn off for the dwarves. Bonus points if you build palisades and walls BEFORE you build your market and temple.
4) Never open borders with others, never trade resources, never accept vassals. The dwarves, like the cheese, stand alone.
5) Losing is Fun! If at first you don't succeed, research Construction sooner.
(April 27th, 2013, 20:19)HidingKneel Wrote: Welcome back, Mardoc! Hope the move went smoothly.
Yes, it did. I was surprised, I figured something would go wrong, but it didn't seem to happen.
Quote:I dunno... he wasn't playing warmonger in XXIII: he was running a super-light military because he thought that that the Seven Pines would give him a sanctuary effect. This time he has a worldspell that will definitely give him a sanctuary effect: I wouldn't be surprised if he played the same way. Thessalonica does strike me as a builder leader, but I suppose Spiritual is a pretty good war trait (though not until late in the game).
Darn people changing their playstyle just because the old one wasn't working...
Yeah, you might be right, he might be improving. Have to wait and see.
This is going to be a game where C&D is more important than usual, I think, because there are so many unknowns. Naively, I'd say that WarriorKnight is our scariest foe and fortunately weakest civ, but any of the newcomers could turn out to be quite good, and yell0w has been improving, as well.
Quote:They'll be important units for us, no doubt. But I could see a big stack of trebuchets getting torn to shreds by a big stack of centaur chargers, who would be able to run circles around us. I'll feel a lot safer if we've got some chariots in the mix.
Fortunately, they're along the same tech path and require the same building.
At base - we need a bigger, better economy, so we can build both. It's true, trebs can't kill or defend, so we need either chariots or champions or both along.
I kinda want a couple boar riders just to see what they look like, but it's not worth picking up Stirrups for. Guess I'll need to play a SP game for that.
Quote:With luck, we can give that job to Bambur. Not sure where Arete should fall in our plans, though. Need to try a single player game as Khazad, I think.
Well...he can only cast it once/turn. It's 25% healing, it'll be a lot more dramatic if we have, say, three casters in a stack to always max out our trebs, than if it's just halving the downtime.
Quote:Worth building, not worth prioritizing. I think we probably want to hold off on smelting/iron working until we've got almost everything else in place (construction, trade, sanitation, arete, possibly currency).
Yeah, Construction/HBR is the vital combo (remember, Trade no longer is a Chariot prereq). Everything else is a nice bonus, not a priority.
Quote:
Quote:Assuming we can get a couple XP on starting units (say, by way of Command Posts), this should be great for us. Figure out what the opponent is using, and grab Lighting/Fire/Cold/etc resistance, for a unit with 70% magic resist. Make him something strong, and that's a unit very hard to attack.
I doubt this will come up, though I suppose it's possible we'll end up squaring off with Grigori mages in the endgame...
Oh, you're probably right. It's a possible detail, if we're already committed to war against a mage-heavy opponent. And one that may make the magical opponents prefer alternate targets. But it's not something to plan for from T0.
Quote:Ah, right... should revise my sandboxing now that we know the Calabim are in the game. If we do decide to try to duck the Calabim worldspell, though, would we want two workers? There's plenty of farmable tiles but we won't be able to work them for some time. Especially if we spend time regrowing (or delaying our growth), I think one worker can probably stay on top of things early on, so our effort might be better spent towards a settler.
I never seem to feel that a settler before the second worker makes sense. One worker can pretty much keep up with the capital, true, but not also get a road to the 2nd city and a first tile improved (or poised to start immediately). Maybe Dwarven will make me wrong about that, but I doubt it. Low happy caps, low culture, and plenty of tech power should make that worse - more roads needed, no tiles ignorable.
In any case, we've 7 turns to decide. It probably depends mostly on what we find for a second city site. And what the other players do. T0 RoB is possible, after all, and so is everyone delaying growth: if we could get to size 4 before it goes off, regrowing from 2 is much easier than from 1.
Quote:Another possibility is to play the Khazad as advocated here.
I see no way that could win, but it could be a fun ride. Throw in an early Currency and frequent demands for gold from the other civs...
Edit: Also, it'd be handy if you could get me added to the tracker.
9) Philosophy -> Military strategy (unlock command posts)
10) Smelting -> iron working and Mathematics -> Engineering, in some order
11) Mithril working
Techs that may or may not be worth filling in at some point: Fishing -> Sailing (half price lighthouses), KotE -> divination (tower of Divination), Priesthood, Drama (if we don't get it via bard).
Quote:I never seem to feel that a settler before the second worker makes sense. One worker can pretty much keep up with the capital, true, but not also get a road to the 2nd city and a first tile improved (or poised to start immediately). Maybe Dwarven will make me wrong about that, but I doubt it. Low happy caps, low culture, and plenty of tech power should make that worse - more roads needed, no tiles ignorable.
Not only dwarven, but RoB itself means that our first worker will have an extra 5 turns or so to help it keep up.
My intuition says we want a settler before another worker. Need to test it in a bigger sandbox, and for that we need to know a little more about what our surroundings look like.
Quote:In any case, we've 7 turns to decide. It probably depends mostly on what we find for a second city site. And what the other players do. T0 RoB is possible, after all, and so is everyone delaying growth: if we could get to size 4 before it goes off, regrowing from 2 is much easier than from 1.
Yeah, it's tricky. For all we know, Jalapeno might have some crazy theory about his worldspell... I think I've seen people on CivFanatics advocate using it to feed vampires. That possibility makes me wary of delaying our initial growth.
But the double worker opening is definitely worth considering, so let's go with worker build rather than a warrior on turn 0.
Quote:Edit: Also, it'd be handy if you could get me added to the tracker.
.
Yeah, you might be right, he might be improving. Have to wait and see.