We just watch. And Judge. FFH PBEM III Lurker Thread.

[Selrahc]

The place to insult/demean the actions/players of this game. Delete as appropriate. Or compliment, or just secretly discuss or whatever if you insist.

[Selrahc]

KInd of sensing a slightly schizophrenic approach to the Sheaim. Which often comes if you play them "Lore appropriate" Ashen Veil.

Problems:

1. Not sure that specialist economy will work until Arcane Lore is researched. For a large portion of the game he'll be able to run 2 sages/city, getting 4 beakers each. I think he'll be forced to add aristofarm to the mix until he reaches arcane lore and the cap on sages goes away, and the amount of beakers they provide goes up.

2. Based on this rather anaemic research strategy, he is going to be pushing up the religious line all the way to infernal pact? It kind of dilutes the path to higher magic. Although at least he'll get diseased corpses and ritualists out of the deal. Based on the planned tech progression I'm doubting we'll reach higher magic at all though (apart from mobius witches).

3. Sheaim magicians don't go for tower of Mastery. Sheaim don't want to dilute their spectres by faffing around with mana swaps, and they don't even need to build other nodes thanks to the mobius witches and their random spells. Every node that isn't a death node is almost a waste. Sheaim don't even really need archmages, so even tower of divination probably isn't worth it.

Personally.. if you're going for magical Sheaim I would use OO for preference. Its a cheap quick religion, it has some useful cultural benefits, and it gives them a heroic archmage unit. Not the most efficient pairing in the game, but at least it keeps them focussed on the Arcane.

The only way Ashen Veil will play into the arcane game will be via the Infernal Grimoire making a lightbulb of Arcane Lore/Strength of Will easier, helping to recoup the beaker costs involved in getting there.

[Bobchillingworth]

Mr. Yellow seems to also be going for the lore approach. The Order is a neat religion, but it has a lot of overlap with things that the Bannor, especially Sabrathiel, already do well. Free Crusaders are largely redundant when you already have free demagogues of the same strength, which have the advantage of no unit cost. The special Order maintenance-reducing buildings aren't very important when you're Organized. You can't even run the unique Order civic, since it's in the same column as Crusade. Personally, I think that the Veil would serve him much better, that way he wouldn't need to train a large number of mages for collateral support.



Warrior Knight seems to know the mod well, but I think his plan to rush with Monks is misguided. Priesthood isn't available that early on, and monks are horrendously expensive. For the cost of one strength 6 monk, you could have something like 8 strength 4 copper warriors, 4 strength 5 copper axes, or a strength 6 + and extra move and a withdraw chance HA and an axe. If he really wants to rush someone, a bunch of HA or chariots would be cheaper and just as effective, if not more so. Monks I think are better used as healers for mounted stacks (promote to mobility I so they can keep up), or as situational support units.

[Selrahc]

As the Bannor I'd say go for an early runes of Kilmorph, to get the Mines and at least one priest. Later on switch into maybe Veil for collateral damage, or Overlords for more situational collateral damage, plus awesome Stygian Guard, or Empyrean for awesome support troops+Chalid.

Order, like you say, comes with a lot of unneeded overlap. The priests do at least confer a useful buff for large stack attacks though.

[Selrahc]

Lanun thoughts, which I'd probably best not say in the Lanun spoiler thread:

The biggest problem with the Lanun is lacklustre military units and production.

Octopus Overlords solves the military units problem. Stygian Guard are incredibly good. Cultists are incredibly good if the enemy is anywhere near water.

In order to boost production it is necessary to adopt conquest, or find another means to do it. This will still leave relatively little production for infrastructure however.

Accordingly, I find it can be a good idea to briefly adopt Fellowship of Leaves. Long enough to build a crack team of Bloom priests. By foresting large areas of the land and building Lumbermills, Lanun can put out perfectly acceptable levels of production.

Lanun should probably stay in FoL as long as possible, just to get some free ancient forests. A switch to OO is only necessary after fanatacism is researched and you are starting to build up military forces.

Octopus Overlords might not be necessary at all though. Other religions give good military solutions. I would generally go with the Overlords as its the most fluffy option, but Veil, Order and Empyrean would all be good alternatives to buoy up the military. And are probably slightly better if the fighting is going to take place away from the coast. In choosing a religion to go for after switching out of leaves there are a lot of options.

The Lanun dominance of the sea isn't actually that backed up by units. The Heroic ship is really their only special edge that would normally come into play. They are forced to the coasts to run their economy, so might focus on the sea more. But if someone seeks to challenge them, they don't really have a specific trump card. Octopus Overlords can be good, because that is the real key to ocean dominance. If the Lanun don't dominate the oceans they have a lot to lose, as their economy is tied to access to the sea. If however the other players don't seem to have any interest in the ocean techs, and are taking Lanun ocean control as a read, then OO represents an over-investment in the ocean, when Lanun power is really lacking on land.

[Maksim]

So, this is the first FFH PBEM game with super-fast four-move settlers, which means that our players have a bit more choice in their starting locations. With greater power comes greater responsibility – or at least, more opportunities to miss. So, how are the players doing?

WarriorKnight of Elohim



A generally good and fertile starting position that is difficult to get wrong. Settling 2E of the wine is a very good choice – with two food resources in BFC (there's a corn, not visible in this picture), expect to see quick settlers and workers out of this civilization soon.

Irgy of Sheaim



His capital position looks better than it is, short-term – the jungle covering the gems is a major obstacle, requiring Crafting, Mining and Bronze Working to get to. That’s a lot of beakers to invest in early game. Still, the location will be powerful later on.

Is going Mysticism first the right move? It costs almost as much as Agriculture and Crafting combined, after all. Personally, I’d be more tempted to go Crafting -> Agriculture -> Mining > Mysticism -> Bronze Working here, getting a worker out ASAP to build a winery, rice farm, riverside farm, then two riverside grassland hill mines. Perhaps even go for BW before Mysticism.

Mr. Yellow of Bannor



Settling in place is debatable – the water tiles will not add much, whilst going one tile south brings a few more riverside tiles into BFC. Researching Agriculture is an obvious starting move, but is Ancient Chants -> Mysticism the best play afterwards? What is the worker supposed to do, just build farms?

Nyktorion of Ljosalfar

[img] http://i.imgur.com/T2TmT.jpg[/img]

This one is interesting. Solid initial decision to move settler onto the hill one tile east. The move tells him that there’s a land tile 1N of the crab, and that there is more land to his east. However, trusting the circles in FFH for settling decisions, and moving further east, is not necessarily the best idea.

As he did go another tile east to settle, his capital ended up coastal. Now, it’s a good spot for the short term – two forested silks, a cow, a corn, a crab, but it’s not the best; later on, elves will have high population cities, and those cities, especially the capital, are best placed working forests. With this city, he has access to only four forests, and the capital picks up nine coastal tiles – yuck!

Another move would have been to go 1 SW afterwards and settle 1 NW of the corn. This is an inland spot that would leave room for a fishing village later on top of the ancient tower. This would give him access to corn, both silks and ten (!) forests in total for a much stronger capital (though further city placement would be more problematic... on the other hand, really strong capital probably makes up for it).

The initial tech path is quite clear here – Agriculture -> Calendar -> Ancient Chants. Afterwards, I’d strongly consider a detour to Education to start laying down cottages, and also for Apprenticeship. Next city could probably go either 2W of the corn, or 2W 1S.

Mardoc of Lanun



Another trick starting position. The correct thing for Lanun is to ignore land tiles altogether, and go looking for the best spot, which is the spot that can support two pirate ports (being able to support three is awesome; so is having pearls on top of two ports).

Initial warrior\scout movement suggests two great possible locations – in the south, there’s space for a city with pearls and two pirate ports; in the east, settling on the jungle hill village grants three pirate ports.

Neither option is taken – instead, Mardoc settles in such a way as to block off some of the prime coastal tiles to the south-east, as mentioned by Amelia.

Not the best opening move, but the starting position is forgiving enough, and Lanun are fast techers.

Thoth of Malakim



A reasonable move for the settler, with several floodplains in BFC. Only three hills, though (mining the sheep hill might be a good idea later on).

Interesting choice of going for Mysticism first, but is backed by a solid plan of an early Great Prophet bulbing Runes of Kilmorph. We’ll see how that works out.

[Bobchillingworth]

If I were Nyk, I'd explore the Sepulcher- it's far enough away that if it spawns an assassin or something he can get a couple warriors up to defend in time. It also makes a lot more sense to explore it now and possibly get a great person or golden age, rather than risk someone else stumbling across it and taking the prize for themselves. It doesn't seem like exploring the lair has even occurred to him, tho.


Also Mardoc made about the worst settling decision possible (barring something obscene like settling one tile off the coast). 1SW of the rice would have been much better. As it is, he missed a cove, missed a pearls in the fog, and has practically no production.

[uberfish]

Lair exploration before even 1 warrior is risky, I think Nyk's right that a monster spawn at this point in time would really set his early scouting back heavily.

[haphazard1]

Heh. Couldn't resist laughing at this from the Bannor thread:

So far i'm a little dissapointed in the land around me....

One turn later:

Seriously, this land is beautiful!

The initial exploration phase of the game can be fun like this.

I also saw that apparently there is a river desert -- non flood plain -- where the Malakim started. I certainly did not intend that; have to go back and recheck the original map before I started alterations. I may have missed fixing that tile after an edit, probably part of shuffling units. Oh well...I got most of the changes and starting units and tech stuff right. One slip isn't too horrible, although I should have caught it.

[Ilios]

Lair exploration before even 1 warrior is risky, I think Nyk's right that a monster spawn at this point in time would really set his early scouting back heavily.

Thoth doesn't seem to have any qualms doing just that...