[Spoilers] A more civilized age - Arendel of the Ljosalfar (Uberfish)

[uberfish]

Welcome to the official Elf thread, where our pretty but mostly harmless civilization attempts to survive in a world full of savage beastmen, psychotic clowns, religious fanatics, giant death robots, vampires, pirates, and probably vampiric pirates for all we know. Did we miss anyone out?

With that said, the Summer Court always welcomes guests, the more the merrier, so pull up a chair and stay a while... Our chief diplomatic advisor, whose name I am informed translates into the human tongue as "uberfish", has prepared a briefing for you.

[uberfish]

All right, first off the more you lurkers reply to the thread the better quality reports you'll get, so feel free to post away!

I'm also new to PBEM, so any non-spoily heads up on game quirks caused by the format would be greatly appreciated.

So, before we even have a map, we already have an interesting scenario caused by the civ choices: 6 civs inclined to tech up early, and one hardcore rusher (Doviello.) That creates an easy game plan for the Doviello; find the most promising target and take them over! Because the game is on quick speed, they're unlikely to be able to take out more than one civ before the other players have sufficient defence. So the problem for the other players is whether to go for a heavy early military investment to deter attack, or focus on economy to keep up with the other civs.

Fortunately for me I picked a civ with good defensive qualities that should hopefully encourage anyone planning a rush to target someone else:

- Creative for border pops (better city placement, early warning) and extra cultural defence
- Bonused archers and an early hero meaning that researching Archery early is more attractive than for other civs. Axemen take very heavy losses trying to kill archers in a city
- Once I reach Way of the Forests, my world spell summons strength 10 treants on every forest within my cultural borders which last for 5 turns - enough to tear up early to mid game armies

I don't know much about the other players, apart from Darrell who has played in some SGs with me and I know to be a good player; but it's always best to assume that everyone is competent until proven otherwise.

[Mardoc]

Well, how can I resist an invitation like that?

I'll be watching with bated breath and mostly vague and unhelpful comments, since I plan to read everyones' threads. Can't tell you much about PBEM, either, except that from my reads of other games, expect people to generally have a higher level of game skill (at least micro) due to the slow pace, and diplomacy seems to matter a great deal.

I've seen some impressive stuff done with Cloak & Dagger score and demographics interpretation - to the point of predicting early wars well in advance due to figuring out an opponent's tech path and builds. There's a Civfanatics thread floating around somewhere with details on how to do that; if you want I can find it for you. Of course, it about triples the time investment in the game, so it might not be your cup of tea.

In general, if you're looking for opinions from the peanut gallery, I enjoy reading about your train of thought, rationales for action, analysis of game mechanics, and the like. So far you've talked about the Ljosalfar, but I'd be interested to hear your take on the other civs as well.

My biggest question is, however, what do you intend for your path to victory? Unless you get a tech lead, I can't see elves being much for an offensive war, so presumably you're thinking one of the non-conquest victory paths? That still leaves open a great deal, though.

[uberfish]

I've seen some impressive stuff done with Cloak & Dagger score and demographics interpretation - to the point of predicting early wars well in advance due to figuring out an opponent's tech path and builds. There's a Civfanatics thread floating around somewhere with details on how to do that; if you want I can find it for you.

Oh please do, I know next to nothing about it.

My biggest question is, however, what do you intend for your path to victory? Unless you get a tech lead, I can't see elves being much for an offensive war, so presumably you're thinking one of the non-conquest victory paths? That still leaves open a great deal, though.

Yeah, Ljosalfar don't have a scary unit like vampires or fireball golems. I'm hoping this works to my advantage diplomatically; there's no rush to kill me before I tech to some overpowered unit. So I can keep my options open for a long time. As I see it here are the good offensive timings if I need to attack someone:

- at Bronze level, there aren't any aggressive leaders in the game so my warriors/swords are just as good as anyone else's.

- with March of the Trees if people settle too close to forest, I'd prefer to use this to gently discourage people to settle near me and keep it as a defensive card though

- with religious units in the midgame, Arendel has Spiritual to switch around and boost disciple units combined with good production and I intend to make full use of it. It's possible to do Ratha/Ritualist stacks with a priest of kilmorph for their buff spell, or something equally silly.

- with anything late game really, when everyone has access to t3/t4 units and city for city the Elf economy is unmatched. Given the bonuses I get for druids, Feral Bond / Animal Mastery / Commune with Nature will most likely be my endgame tech line of choice.

As for the builder victory conditions. Culture is slow and eats up a huge amount of your economy. Altar requires 6 great prophets (meaning: no academies, golden ages, engineered wonders) and enough research to get to archmages 4 times over... Not at all practical. Tower of Mastery though is probably quite doable given how powerful my late-game economy will be if I get there, and certainly something I'm going to keep in mind, especially if I can land the City of a Thousand Slums.

[Mardoc]

Ok, I found two sources. First, the civfanatics demo info: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy...aphics.php

Second, a post from SilentConfusion here at RB, inside a spoiler thread, so I quote it below. Already checked - he only discusses game mechanics, nothing about the particular game.

From what I've seen of C&D work, it's pretty well dependent on keeping close track of everything on the demo screen and score - you can't go from a score of 253 to 'therefore they have....', but if you observe a change of 6 points, and couple that with what you know from other sources, you can usually figure out what they did to get those points. At least in the early game, while there's still only 1-2 cities and therefore not really that many variables. And if you've been doing that all game, then you do in fact know what all they've gotten.

For examples, the best I know is Sullla and Speaker's thread from the ended Pitboss 2 game: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3658 At 242 pages, you won't read it all, but they made a nice table of contents after the fact on the front page, which includes a 'Cloak and Dagger' section

I think these are smart questions to ask, and fortunately I can answer all or almost all of those questions. So here I go. Almost all of this was learned of from Realms Beyond members and pieced together on my own and self-tested, so only the explanation and verification and not the content is my own work. Perhaps some of the demo people would prefer to keep their tricks little-known, but I'm of the opinion that it's better to be open and share with everyone. I can do an article in a public place if one is desired as I have gathered all the information in this area that I could find and put it together for my own use as I couldn't find a good article that had it all. For now I will answer your direct questions as you were clever enough to ask. I still think this falls under game mechanics questions and is not related to your game in particular. I think questions about how the game works are always fair game.



The population score is map dependent. No way to tell ahead of time what each pop point will be worth. It depends on the total amount of food on the map. Hover over your score and look at the Pop score. It should have a fraction x/y. Each pop point is worth (5000/y). The reason for the variance is the way the number is rounded. As with most decimals in Civ it is FLOORed, meaning it is rounded down to the nearest integer. So say that (5000/y) gives you 4.61. If your pop is 1 your pop score is 4 (4.61 rounded down), but when you go to pop 2 your pop score is 9 (4.61 + 4.61 = 9.22 rounded down). This is an increase of 5 instead of 4. That's all that's happening here and with other scores that vary (they all do to an extent).



Land Area is only a little more complicated than the Pop score. The Land Score is also map dependent, so again hover over score and note the Land fraction x/y. This time each land tile is worth (2000/y). The only thing that's a little trickier is that you don't get the score bonus for your land tiles until they've been inside your cultural borders for 20 turns. The rounding and point variance is exactly the same as described above.



Points per wonder don't vary from map to map. They are always worth (5000/310) each. This comes out to about 16.13 each. The rounding is the same so if you build enough eventually you'll get a gain of 17 instead of 16, not that most people build that many wonders, but it could happen. Not sure why it says 5/316 after palace score. It should say x/310 (I just checked to make sure). The number 310 is 5 * 62 (the number of wonders available to build), so in the fraction x/y, I think x is the number of wonders built * 5. But that's not your Wonder Score. When you settle your capitol your Wonder score is 16.



You are correct that that is only for Ancient Era techs. Tech Score is not map dependent either and each tech is worth (2000/334) * Era. Ancient Era is 1, Classical Era is 2, etc. This works out to Ancient Era techs being worth about 5.99 points. This is why everyone starts with 11 points (before you settle your capitol you don't get Pop or Wonder points). 5.99 + 5.99 = 11.98. This is 11 points rounded down, but for a while after that techs will be worth a multiple of 6 points. So The Wheel is 5.99 points and Alphabet is 11.98 points. You add all the techs you have together and then round down to get the Tech Score.



I have found descriptions of how score is calculated on CFC, but no real complete guide on the practical use of it. Some are taking to using NoScoreMod these days to eliminate this part of the game. I have mixed feelings as to whether that's a good thing or not.

The score is not dependent on Difficulty. The Land number for the map does indeed take the total available land tiles into account.

[Maksim]

Checking in as a global lurker to ask lots of questions in numbered lists, especially about economic, diplomatic, technological and other peacetime developments, and write the occasional short and hopefully amusing vignette about the daily lives of your subjects.

Why don’t we start with these:

1) What were your reasons for choosing this civ\leader combo? Was this your first choice?

2) How do you see your early tech path – a rush towards the Way of Forests, or a more leisurely pace picking up other techs on the way? Or do you have a more unorthodox game plan in mind?

3) You chose a Good leader for your civ. Good doesn’t get to build Druids – do you have a plan to get yourself to Neutral alignment?

And this...

Dear Diary,

Well, this was an exciting month! The representatives of all the tribes have gathered – I think I was the youngest there! – and decided that since the long winter is finally over, we should settle down and rebuild our ivory towers. So we set off to work immediately, establishing the committee and several sub-committees to run our society (I’m on the Mapping and Flower Decoration sub-committee!).

Three great elves competed for the chance to become our great leader. Lord Amelanchier was the first to present his case. He spoke about defending ourselves a bit, but then started talking about roads – these strange paved things, shown as lines on old maps – about how our warriors could run as fast alongside them as we do through our forests, even if these roads were built by our enemies. I must admit he didn’t make much sense – why can’t we just run through the forests, it’s not like we have even seen a road, and why would we ever want to fight anyone?

Next was Lady Thessa – she did a magic lights show, which was really nice, but then gave a long lecture on the importance of bathing in the lakes, and brushing your teeth with treebark twice a day. She seemed a bit strict, and not that nice, so I didn’t like her very much.

Finally, Lady Arendel was up. She gave a great speech on empowering the inner elf, asked us to write a short poem or draw a picture to connect to our ancestors’ spirits, and then her helpers gave us all some healing crystals. I made mine into a brooch!

Anyway, then there were some discussions about who made the best case for leadership, and Lady Arendel won – I’m so happy for her! I’m so looking forward to the future right now!

[uberfish]

Checking in as a global lurker to ask lots of questions in numbered lists, especially about economic, diplomatic, technological and other peacetime developments, and write the occasional short and hopefully amusing vignette about the daily lives of your subjects.

Loved it, keep them coming!

1) What were your reasons for choosing this civ\leader combo? Was this your first choice?

Oh yeah, the obvious question - she's pretty but what's she good for. I believe this is going to be a diplomatic game and therefore my top two choices were strong economic civs without an obvious gameplan. For example, Calabim already have a large target painted on their heads before the game starts because everyone knows how good vampires are.

Arendel was my first choice because I think I can make a defensive stance work diplomatically, but it was a very close one. I'll let you guys guess the second choice.

2) How do you see your early tech path – a rush towards the Way of Forests, or a more leisurely pace picking up other techs on the way? Or do you have a more unorthodox game plan in mind?

I'll likely be getting WotF pretty fast as the techs on the way are useful. Which other techs I get first depends on the map. I probably won't skip education. Even if I don't have to cottage in a hurry, Apprenticeship and getting all those warriors 1* is important.

3) You chose a Good leader for your civ. Good doesn’t get to build Druids – do you have a plan to get yourself to Neutral alignment?

It's easily done with Spiritual religion switching, which I'm going to be doing anyway to pick up different flavours of religious units.

[uberfish]

thoughts on the other civs in game:

Flauros/Calabim

Strengths - Financial. Obnoxious world spell that speeds their early growth and slows down others. Probably the most feared unique unit in the game, Vampires. Their national hero is almost immortal on top of that.

Weaknesses - A large target painted on their head before diplomacy even starts for the above reasons.


Hannah/Lanun

Strengths - Financial. Only civ that can really make good use of coast tiles. Best improvement in the game by a long way with pirate ports which you can usually fit 2 per coastal city. Can out research everyone else early game for these reasons.

Weaknesses - Their land based army is pretty poor, they have Raiders but nothing great to use it on. Their unique champion and Knight replacements are actually a downgrade.


Varn/Malakim

Strengths - Great early economy from floodplains, can switch traits into financial later on to help further. World spell spawns one free priest per city, they will religious rush basically every game. Given the title of their thread I'm going to guess they will rush for Chalid (who is rather broken.)

Weaknesses - Those floodplain heavy desert locations tend to also have poor health and poor production.


Beeri/Luchuirp

Strengths - Free engineers early from world spell which they can use to rush wonders. Given time they can build a rather scary stack of fireball throwing invisible golems supported by repairing adepts.

Weaknesses - Golems are slow, slow, slow. Did I mention slow? Since they don't promote and aren't living they can't get mobility or haste. This makes them highly vulnerable to backstabbing when they're out attacking someone, especially if they left Barnaxus at home for safety too.


Perpentach/Balseraph

Strengths - 3 traits even if random will on average be stronger than two, since most leaders in FFH are given one strong and one weak trait, and you get a variety of discounted buildings to build as your traits switch. Easy access to Charm Person and Dominate spells via the ranger/druid line. Mimics can steal promotions from units they kill. Puppetry helps keep their mages safe.

Weaknesses - Mind tricks don't work on golems at all making Luchuirp their natural enemy. If I were playing this civ my first goal would be to get them killed.


Mahala/Doviello

Strengths - They can upgrade all their warriors to axemen for 20 gold and then summon wolves with their world spell to help out... yeah. Someone's probably going to die.

Weaknesses - Can't conquer the world this way on quick speed, the second or third civ should have defences up. Research is naturally bad with no libraries, they'll need to take and consolidate territory to put themselves on an even footing.

[uberfish]

Since the subject of Hyborem has been brought up in the discussion thread, let's talk about him a bit.

Hyborem can be summoned by Ashen Veil players by researching the tech Infernal Pact. This tech also unlocks a couple of other nice things for the dedicated Ashen Veil follower: the Sacrifice the Weak civic (half food consumption) and Infernal Grimoire (free tech.) Once he is summoned the lands around him start turning into hell, which destroys food specials and, importantly for me, forests.

The main way to stop this is the level 1 life spell Sanctify which can push back the spread of hell; this also makes it a very useful spell for fighting demons as they get bonuses for fighting on hell terrain. Ljosalfar happen to start with this situationally useful mana source, fitting with their focus on defence over attack. It's also possible, depending on the map, to fill up empty space with culture and units to prevent Hyborem spawning near you if you suspect someone is going to summon him, also known as the "somebody else's problem" defence.

[Mardoc]

According the manual,

The AC affects many things. Hell Terrain will only spread to Ashen Veil players lands until the counter hits 25, then it will start to spread to unowned tiles. At 50 it will start to spread to other Evil players lands and at 75 it will start to spread to Neutral lands.

Is this not still true? It would seem that you'd be protected from Hell terrain regardless as a Good leader. Or are you thinking more in terms of continuing to expand?

It would also seem to me that keeping the armageddon counter low would protect you, although admittedly I don't really know how to do that in a multiplayer game if people are trying to raise it simultaneously.