Well I should be going to bed, but hey what about some Final Thoughts instead? Non-Balz players from PBEM VII probably shouldn’t read them, since I’m don’t want my opinions about the civ to influence that game.
First, final pic:
![[Image: 2011-07-30_00001.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10367439/2011-07-30_00001.jpg)
My last skeleton army, ironically forced to fight with a spam army to try to recapture one of my former cities. Obviously I have no chance of killing anywhere close to all of the defenders, but the AI is just going to disband the units, so I sent everything in after casting Dance of Blades and Rust. Result- killed a random Clan warrior and another PoL- suck on that, Iskender!
Okay, so time for my final summation. This will be fairly short, since I think (hope) that I've done a decent job explaining my rationales for my various hair-brained schemes already. Really, my feelings about this game can be condensed to a singe statement:
I should have won.
"Oh wow, Bob" You say to your computer screen, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Real humble of you
"
Well. I do partially mean that I should have won the game if not for the Sons of the Inferno. I firmly believe that I was the favorite to win by good odds by turn 100 or so, and a quick skim through some of the spoiler threads seems to validate that largely everyone agreed as much. In fact, I got dogpiled for it!
By the way, before I go further, a note about the Sons- I gave uberfish a lot of crap here about the Sons being so accessible, but having now read the map thread I know that apparently
nobody involved with this game, as either a player or lurker, had any idea that the Sons could be captured with the Clan world spell. And why would anyone- patch O (or maybe N) was largely made
to address that very issue. So really the sole blame for the Sons being present falls on us players, who voted for a stupid game option- and me above everyone else, for suggesting it in the first place. So I apologize Uberfish, for being a dick about the Sons position on the map. Overall I really enjoyed the world you gave us, and you did exactly what I've said that a mapmaker should do & give the players exactly what they ask for.
I also do not blame Tredje / Mardoc for using the Sons. I would have done the same in their position, and considering that my Ultimate Plan involved capturing the
rest of the Sons for myself, I can hardly claim any sort of moral high ground. There are some actions in FFH which are so gimmicky that they should never be allowed- abusing disbands to move a couple dozen Golden Hammers into one city is a good example- but they're few and far between, and given how the mod hilariously abuses the concept of "balance", exploits are for the most part just another feature for players to enjoy.
Anyway, while I am convinced that I could have won (albeit not without a considerable degree of difficulty) without the Sons being present, what I mostly meant by my statement was that I have only myself to blame for my loss. Overall I think I actually played rather well. Certainly my commanding pre-dogpile position was abetted in great deal by four of my opponents getting involved in expensive / crippling early wars, but I still think that I did a pretty good job building up a powerful economy without any economic traits. Where I really screwed up was with getting too greedy regarding Drama / when to use my worldspell.
I've read the teeth-gnashing in the Lurker's thread about my Veil obsession. Well, what can I say, there's a lot of truth to the accusations that I'm addicted
Having admitted that, it didn't cost me anything to talk idly about various Veil-based plans because as I pointed out a couple times when I was playing, many of the techs leading to the Veil also were required for Deception, and so I could continue to hedge between competing plans until I finally had Way of the Wicked & KoTE (which I wanted even with Gibbon). And indeed, when it came time to actually make a decision I did end up going for Gibbon as I should have from the start. Although had I actually somehow been able to get to Beasts of Agares before the Clan / Sidar did too much damage I think I'd have been about as well off, if not even better than with Gibbon
Drama was a complete mistake, though. Had I forgone it and deployed my worldspell after I had Trade, I'd have had Gibbon in time. Besides Bronze Working, which I needed for resources and PZ defense anyway, I didn't actually research any "optional" techs before Deception. I never even got Construction, which actually hurt a lot in the war thanks to my own rivers working against me. Ah well, such are the perils of being too greedy.
Since I'm typing this up as a stream-of-consciousness type summary, I’ll abruptly segue now to some random thoughts about the war itself.
First, once Esus was founded at low odds in Ocleus instead of my larger religion-free backlines city, I didn’t have a chance at Gibbon. Yes, I moved my nightwatchman to a really stupid location. No, it didn’t matter. He would have died regardless before I could get him to Jubilee, since I lacked Cartography to secret him through Serdoa’s borders, and I didn’t have enough workers handy to road all the way to Jubilee before the Clan could have intercepted him. I guess I could have emptied Coombe to try to block the way, but that never even occurred to me. Not only do I not know if that would have worked, but Coombe was vital for buying me time to get more adepts ready in Hexam and Jubilee (and mage guilds up everywhere else). If I surrendered Coombe then Jubilee would have been up next, and I don’t even know if I could have built Gibbon there in time before the city would have fallen, without Coombe to spare me precious turns. Trying to build him in Hexam would have meant even more turns wasted due to the long transit time. So I strongly dispute that losing the nightwatch was what lost me the game- yes, it was the final nail in the coffin, but I contend that it was over regardless when the religion founding RNG decided to moon me.
Second, Iskender’s basing hawks in my territory when I knew well that he was going to declare shortly was indeed terrible. I also had no idea that it had even ever occurred until I read the spoiler threads, since I wasn’t actually playing the turns when that happened. Oh well.
Third, this game made very clear how much of a factor luck is in FFH. I’d have been in even worse shape if I hadn’t been able to get a 1-turn trade route connection with Sareln just before he died so that he could gift me the body and metamagic mana (which I obviously feel was entirely legitimate play), and it was luck that I happened to have two adepts ready who could take the promotions as soon as I had it. Far luckier was getting Elementalism from a lair. Tredje got incredibly lucky with the Sons, and with getting two archers from the Goblin forts. My start was helped in great deal due to getting calendar from a hut immediately followed by +1 pop from the immigrant event. SL barely managed to hold on vs. Serdoa thanks to luck. Any number of individual factors could have easily changed the entire outcome of the game.
Fourth, as is surely abundantly clear, I’m not a particularly great tactician. I’m okay at coming up with “interesting” plans, but my preferred method of combat has always been to hit stuff with simple collateral and then just use stack attack to wipe everything out. Hence a very large part about why I love the Veil so much
SL criticized me in his thread for losing interest in the game so quickly once I got declared on, but honestly spending like 15 min a turn looking over possible skeleton move zones was simply torturous. I’d have never, ever given the Axe to my skeletons so that I could pass it between them when I sent my huge waves in- it would have been useful for sure, but like Hell I was going to spend the time handing it off between 60 units or whatever every time I wanted to attack. When Mardoc got too cocky initially upon taking over and I gave up entirely to desperation shortly afterwards, it was a great relief to simply select “stack attack” and throw everything into the grinder en-masse.
Okay, now for the part of the summary titled “why Iskender is a steaming moron” =)
I actually don’t hold any sort of personal grudge against Iskender, but I’m sorely disappointed to read his explanation for why he sided against me. Yes, as I’ll get to shortly in my conclusion, the Balz are very scary and Keelyn is broken. Yes, it was in his best interests that I fall behind. But it made no sense at all for him to actually join in against me. As I told him in our final chat, it would have been far better to join in against the Clan or to a least keep out of the conflict. As a 1 on 1, the Clan and I were about evenly matched, and we’d both stagnate each other. With Iskender providing the decisive bulk, the Clan are now several cities richer, still have their Sons (now with extra promotions!), and are at this very moment planning to give him a very fitting comeuppance. I believe that Iskender’s errors in judgment can be summarized in the following bullet points-
• His plan did little to actually advance his own position. What did he get out of it, besides the security that the Clan wouldn’t attack him instead (which he likely could have simply gotten by offering a mana loan and pointing out the obvious that I was the greater threat)? Oh wow, he leveled up a few PoL to shade level. I killed about half of the ones he sent, so I’d hardly call that a great victory considering the amount of hammers he invested in them and the WW he had to put up with (plus the lost trade routes). If he really wanted to cheesily level up units, I even told him that I’d have been willing to supply endless cannon fodder to whack. In comparison, if he had attacked the Clan while they were busy with me, he’d have not only weakened them substantially, but potentially picked up some very nice land for himself (and gotten a very grateful ally in me).
• He ignored his own hero. He was terrified about what Keelyn could do with Gibbon. Keelyn can certainly pull off some madly broken shit with the hero of Esus. You know what hard-counters a fairly squishy hero spellcaster hero unit? A heroic invisible assassin with a weapon specifically made to kill heroes, that’s what. Goddamit, Iskender.
• He hasn’t put sufficient thought into win conditions. The Clan are only going to win through domination or conquest, either of which means that he’ll certainly have to fight them. Yes, he has indeed realized this and is trying to work with SL to counter them in the future. However, there was no reason to assume that *I* was determined to win through one of those methods! I’d have been happy to try for a religion win or maybe tower if I thought that I could continue to out-tech him. Yes, I had my Sons-capturing plan, but I’d have agreed to a Forever NAP if Iskender was willing to go all-in with me as an ally. His tendency to assume the worst of people’s intentions played strongly against him in this game.
• He seems to have forgotten that the Clan have units beyond the Sons. Does he not realize that with half the map under their control they can spam out ludicrous numbers of Iron Chariots or Ogres or whatever? Is he not aware that Clan aren’t even expected to win their games with the Sons, and that they have many dangerous and capable units of their own? Has he forgotten that Sheelba is Organized, and will hardly be slowed down by having several new, well-developed cities? So wow he’s finally going to get assassins to try to take down the Sons (who will probably eat them for lunch anyway, assuming they even ever defend, but that’s another issue). What the heck are assassins going to do against a horde of 80 hasted, aggressive Clan melee units? Jack shit is what.
• Finally, he hasn’t even understood his own deals. He goes out of his way to sell me out at the start of the game to the Clan to get some security, and the Clan don’t even think that their stupid arrangement precludes them from attacking him. Ridiculous.
This is starting to dominate my conclusion and sound like the boring part of the Declaration of Independence where it just devolves into listing the various personal failings and nefarious deeds of King George III, so I’ll cut the roast short. I do want to say though that I am disappointed to find out that there was a conspiracy against me from so early on. It almost makes me emphasize with Sulla’s persecution complex, except I’m not even the best FFH player on this site (or second best, or third, or…
This is one reason why I’ve been adamant that PBEM XI be a CTON- if my “reputation”, such as it is, my place on the scoreboard and especially my Civ makes people wet their beds, they’ll at least have to come after me without coordinating a doomsday alliance through some sort of sinister secret cabal before we even have contact
And to wrap this increasingly meandering crap up, I’ll say a few words regarding Keelyn. Would I play as her again? Hell yes. Keelyn is brokenly good. She’s
unbelievable. I honestly think that she’s the best leader in the game, with the caveats that she’s weak for the first 100 turns or so, and the Amurites are theoretically better if given obscene amounts of time to develop and prepare. Many of us already knew about the Gibbon / Hemah water elemental spam before this game even began. I hope that I’ve demonstrated how it gets so much worse. 20 adepts can make an army of 60 skeletons and 40 puppets. This is a large enough force to take cities well into the late middle game. On the defense it’s so bad that Tredje gave up the PBEM format entirely due in part (I think) to how painful it was to deal with. Without fire elementals to assist, there wouldn’t even have been any way to pick off Adepts in cities. To be clear, Keelyn can easily produce so many units in a city every turn that it is impossible to kill them off quicker than she can replace them- and that’s assuming she doesn’t just slam them into your face repeatedly turn after turn.
And that’s not even close the whole of it. What if I had had Halls of Mirrors? I’d have had my own Fire Elementals to sit on the defense, and as illusions they’d have healed after every combat (indeed, not getting Alteration ASAP and whipping some was probably a large mistake on my part)! If I had used Taskmasters I’d have had hundreds of free hammers thanks to slaves from picking off the massed units needed to break through my skeletons. What if had been able to get mages- specters would have been much more deadly to anything except the elementals, had fear, and thanks to being “puppets” wouldn’t even have been vulnerable to destroy undead! When there’s literally no way to break through a spam defense except to somehow top it yourself or pray that you can do enough economic damage to force a disband, a leader is
BROKEN.
Keelyn is a menace. She should never, ever be allowed to develop to the point where she can get any of her toys into play, unless you can get some excellent security treaty with whoever is playing as her or balance her out. I realize that I just said in my Iskender-rant that having it out for me from the start was lame. Well, it was- because I’d have been willing to consider long-term peace, and most importantly because there was a substantially greater and more immediate threat in the game. It’s not fun for the community at large if one civ is effectively verboten because they’ll inevitably be dogpiled just because what they can do. But if you can’t get real security from her, and there aren’t greater evils to first conquer then yes, the best counter to Keelyn is preemptive action.
Well, that’s been my rambling and hopefully coherent summary! I’d like to extend a great “Thanks!” to Hes and DaveV for being my dedicated lurkers, offering suggestions, guidance, and playing turns when I could not. I really appreciate it =)
I’m happy to answer any questions anyone has to the extent that I feel like it
