Winter Wonderland: Selrahc's FFH 2 thread

[Selrahc]

Here is the recent correspondence with PB, which I'm posting up mainly because it's amusing. He's probably posted it in his own thread.

Hey Selrahc,

Just to inform you that the Kuriotates' scout, Vanilla Ice, has once again survived the wilderness to find a bastion of civilisation.
In this case a race of short, stumpy, gold-loving humanoids, who talk with a Scottish accent. (Scots?)

As free info, their capital seems to be located in a zig zag fashion to your East, so if you picture a 'V', you and Cull are on the tips, while Sareln is in the trough.

So far Kuriotates exploration has been very much limited to Vanilla Ice only, as the barbarians have kept us hemmed in.
Hopefully that should change and we can start exploring more of the fog soon.

Kind Regards,
Pb, Scoutmaster and Always Prepared Boy-King.

Hi Selrahc,

Sorry quick correction:
I just pulled up the save to check, and it would be fairer to say that Cull is directly due East of Sareln, maybe a couple of tiles South.

Kind Regards,
Pb, Scoutmaster and Sometimes Prepared Boy-King

Thanks for that. In return let me tell you that I've encountered the other set of people who have a too close relationship with horses. Archduke's Hippus are down in the far south of the map, in a near direct line with my capital. This leaves just the vampires uncontacted. It's possible that they're also in the southlands. Starting to get a slightly clearer view on the map, but I never even had a scout, so things are still a little blurry. I'm going to try and rectify that soon however. I'll try and keep you updated with any interesting finds.

Regards
Selrahc

Dear Selrahc,

I feel the need to warn you:
Up until now we have found the Illian people to be both friendly and welcoming, but any further cracks of the equine variety may result in our -stable- relationship ending in a very un-neigh-bourly dispute.
Please consider yourself on tenterhoofs.

Awful puns aside, thankyou for sharing that info, it’s greatly appreciated. Can I push it further and ask for a rough estimate of tile distance from your capital?



Also, I noticed from your comments and the power graph that you produced a scout last turn. Is it coming in my direction? If so, let me know. I may be able to help out.

Kind Regards,
Pb, Hide-and-Seek Champion Boy-King.

Okay noted on the horses. Don't get so ratty.. Oh wait, that's where the scouts come from.

Looks to be ten or eleven tiles between archdukes northern border and my southern one after two border pops from each of us. Certainly some breathing room.

The scout will indeed eventually be heading in your direction, but for the moment he is going to be mapping out some locations closer to home. I'll notify you when I start my journey west seriously.

Hey Selrahc,

Lol, don't get me started on the ratmen, cheesy jokes are my speciality! ><

Thanks for the info on the Hippus, I'll definitely head over there at some point. My current priority however, is defogging and trying to fogbust around my cap.

Not so sure about sending the scout due West, you'll have to angle it a touch I think. We'll talk more when it becomes relevant, not a lot happening now apart from the damn barbs.
On the positive side, at least the game's moving smoothly.

Kind Regards,
Pb, Stand-up Comedian Boy-King

After which we started talking about the new FFH team multiplayer that's starting up.

Not much happened in the correspondence, besides the puns. More talking about map info and barbarians which has become pretty much the staple at the moment.

Of course it certainly looks like PB is a lot more on the ball than me when it comes to reading the demographics. I'm not going to be able to hide it when the priests come in, so it might be worth bringing him on board with my plan sooner rather than later.

[Selrahc]

Haven't posted up a demographic screen for a while.

Sareln is doing pretty well. He has a size five capital and is the person who has a higher GNP than me, since I've got a scientist an elder council and a monument he must be working high commerce tiles. But a size five capital is the max happy cap for the moment so he won't be growing any larger. He doesn't have a settler yet and hopefully he'll be building one soon.

[Selrahc]

I'd be doing more updates, but I'm basically doing nothing on my turns other than a little scout moving. It doesn't make for compelling reading. Am I missing anything out of the thread that you guys want to see? There isn't much going on at the moment other than waiting for philosophy to come in(due in 3).

[Adlain]

I'd be doing more updates, but I'm basically doing nothing on my turns other than a little scout moving. It doesn't make for compelling reading. Am I missing anything out of the thread that you guys want to see? There isn't much going on at the moment other than waiting for philosophy to come in(due in 3).

Now that you have diplomatic contact with most of your opponents, what's your current strategy to:

1: win overall
2: your indervidual strategy against each player now you have a few turns under your belt in this game.

[Selrahc]

Now that you have diplomatic contact with most of your opponents, what's your current strategy to:

1: win overall
2: your indervidual strategy against each player now you have a few turns under your belt in this game.

1. Depends on how well the early game goes. If Sareln folds relatively easily then I can move the priests on to defeat another player, either Cull or Archduke. If that also goes well I'll build some fresh axemen as back up for what will probably be incredibly well promoted priests and go attempt to grab a third skull for the trophy rack.

Ideal exit from the early game is me killing Archduke, Cull and Sareln. PB is in the wrong direction to attack after Sareln, so attacking him is completely out of the question and Bob is nowhere to be found.

In a scenario where most of the world is cleared out by priests of winter I'm going to attempt to settle as much land as possible and attempt to win a domination victory.

What is probably more likely is that I'll kill only Sareln but he'll either stall me to the point where continuing on to another player is foolish or kill at least one priest. The land freed up from the kill will give me breathing room to settle a nice little empire without undue border pressure. From there I'm going to tech up the arcane line and attempt to maintain good relations with my neighbours. The important thing in creating the empire is to have 4 mana nodes. With those mana nodes I'll create the various towers and eventually the tower of mastery.

The first tower to build is always the tower of divination. Depending on how fast I'm teching it will be used to grab either arcane lore or strength of will. Probably arcane lore. The next tower will either be the tower of necromancy if I feel like Death summons are more important to my military(which will be the case if I have nodes to spare for affinity), or the tower of alteration if I feel I can get by on Ice Elementals since the tower of alteration makes blinding light, charm person and slow much more effective. The last tower to be built will be the tower of elements as I'm not planning on relying overly on the elemental spells and the bonus is fairly weak.

I'm planning to hide my progress on the towers to a certain extent to try and prevent getting dogpiled. Towers can be cash rushed, and once I've reached Strength of Will I'm probably going to disable research(possibly getting pass through the ether first for that lovely nexus). With enough gold you can rush the tower of mastery in a single turn for the win. The ideal execution is to build the tower of elements one turn, then the tower of mastery the next and so go from having 1 tower needed to victory.

Probably people will work out my plan from seeing all my gold and dogpile me, but it's worth a try.

If I get attacked in the late game I'm going to run a stalling defence with the mages. Snowfall can devastate any mega stacks, blinding light can hold them still and ice elementals can rip apart their heavily wounded units. Immobilizing Hippus and Kuriotate stacks would be a necessity or they'll run ragged over my territory with their insane movement.


2. After the PoW rush I'm going to try and stay on friendly terms with the world and get mages online. Things seem to be going well with the Kuriotates but I haven't received any word back from the Hippus since I sent them a greeting and I've only had a few messages with Athlete and none with Cull. I'll need to try and get better diplomacy going on in the near future.

[Maksim]

Excellent post, thank you! It will, of course, be very interesting to see whether events unfold as you expect, or whether you are forced to adapt. A few more questions, please:

1) What tech path are you planning to take? In the next fifty turns, and over the course of the game?

2) How do you rate your opponents at present? In terms of in-game development, and potential future danger to you?

[Selrahc]

1) What tech path are you planning to take? In the next fifty turns, and over the course of the game?

The next 50 turns will hopefully see my teching capacity expand dramatically. The immediate priority is agriculture, followed by crafting and mining. After that I'll grab education, animal husbandry and calendar, probably in that order. That will take care of my worker techs for a good long time. Hunting is a necessity at some point in the future as I have a few deer resources nearby. Hunting is oddly expensive though(because it's a religion prereq and opens up T2 recon, annoying if you just want it to make camps), so I'll leave it for a while.

The next technology after that will be Knowledge of the Ether. Building adepts early gives them a good stock of experience for later. I'll follow KotE with Way of the Wicked to get pretty early slavery in the go. Festivals would be nice to get around this time as well. Bronze working will be researched to give me some decent military units to hold me over until mages. The next tech will maybe be divination, and the adepts will go and make some nodes. Hopefully I'll have a good few cities by that time. Cartography is a cheap tech and I'll grab it whenever I start to be irritated by city maintenance costs.


After that I'll grab some more utility techs interspersed with moving down the arcane line. Sanitation, Horseback Riding, Writing, Trade, Fishing and Currency are all pretty important. I don't want to put off getting Sorcery for too long however as without mages I'm kind of a sitting duck, relying on just bronze(hopefully) axemen for protection.

2) How do you rate your opponents at present? In terms of in-game development, and potential future danger to you?

Sareln is looking pretty tough actually. He has a good population despite stasis and River of Blood, and his score shows he has a few techs. He may have gotten himself a nice event. I'm hoping he'll be thinking about getting a second city rather than protecting himself. Sareln seems pretty knowledgeable about the game so he might see the PoW rush coming, but hopefully not. Either way I think I can definitely take him and he is too close for comfort.

Archduke looks to have been knocked around a bit by the vagaries of the map. Kind of hard to tell exactly, but he's sitting pretty low in score and doesn't seem to have contacted anyone. Probably having some barb troubles. I think Archduke doesn't know that much about FFH, although that might be wishful thinking. The Hippus and their extreme horses could be a big threat later on. He is probably slated as my second target if Sareln falls easily.

Cull seems to be doing pretty well. I'm actually not too worried about the dwarves long term though. The slow spell can really mess up a dwarven attacker as they don't get too many fast units. I think my immobilization based magic strategy should work well against him.

Pocketbeetle moved his starting settler around a few times. He isn't all that developed right now and seems to be having barb troubles. He probably has some nice land for long term use though, and I think he has the knowledge and skill to become a major player. Centaurs are scary units that work well against magic(speed AND defence, ugh). We've got quite a lot of breathing room though and hopefully friendship will prevail for a good long time.

And lastly Bob. The mystery player who nobody seems to have met. If the Calabim really are in extreme isolation that bodes poorly. Left to their own devices the Calabim could easily build a giant stack of crazy super vampires then smash the world. Ideally someone finds and slows down the vampires with warfare. Ideally that person isn't me.

[Selrahc]

And now we've found the missing vampires. Turns out my guess about them being in the Southlands was dead on. Or should that be undead on.[SIZE="1"] (I mean technically FFH vampires aren't undead, so probably not.)[/SIZE]


Bringing a bloodpet to meet a bunch of vampires is a bit like bringing a juicy antelope steak to meet a starving lion.

And that rounds up the set. We've met blood crazed maniacs, weird animal hybrids, short grumpy people, backstabbing elves and horse shaggers. Makes you wish you'd stayed back at the village really.

As far as I know I'm the first person to complete this task, due mainly to blind luck. Now that I've met them it seems there really are too many names in this address book. It's almost time to remove some of these people from the world.



In other news, we completed a warrior who is named Rime(an archaic word for frost), North Wind the scout has found a tribal village to integrate peacefully into our empire [SIZE="1"][I.E ruthlessly subjugate][/SIZE], the second elder council is two turns from completion and philosophy is nearly done.

[darrelljs]

Nice . Do you have a PoW ETA yet?

Darrell

[Selrahc]

Rough estimate is Turn 75-80. Philosophy will be done on turn 50 and I hope I can get the white hand ritual completed in 25 turns.