[SPOILERS] Iskender and the Sidar

[Iskender]

DON'T MOUSEOVER! KEEP IT MOVING!

Hey look! A nonogram!

[Iskender]

Enter the Sidar:



The screenshot pretty much says it all: no unique buildings, no blocked units, two unique units. The Sidar would be a pretty much a generic civ if not for their special ability:

"Level 6 or higher units can Wane and become Shades, which can be turned into Great People."

Wow! So if I adopt Apprenticeship and Conquest and Theocracy, build Form of the Titan, Dies Diei and 6 layers of the Altar I'll my disciple units will have instant 22xp, only 4xp short of becoming shades! Did you fall for that? I did. It does work, but mass produced Shades are in the same bag with FFH dragons, or Auric Ulvin - once you're able to get them work you've already won the game by other means. Still, I am going to chase the pipedream of having massive amounts of Shades in the end game, because that's what Sidar is about, right? I'll just try harmonize it with another strength of Sidar which is:

a nice synergy with the recon line of the tech tree. Sidar have no Unique Building other than the Palace, but their both Unique Units: Divided Soul and Ghost, and their hero - Rathus Denmora, are in the recon line. Divided Soul is a fancy hunter that can teleport himself on a distance up to two tiles and Ghost is an assassin that can turn himself invisible (not superb, as Hawks and Magic Eyes can detect this kind of invisibility). Rathus Denmora is a weak hero, basically a Ghost with the Hero promotion, but he comes to Erebus with the powerful artifact weapon - the Nether Blade. The blade gives +2 Death combat and +80% vs. Heroic units and can be attached, like Orthus Axe, to any unit. It's not a "WIN" button of course, but still a nice thing to have for the mid game, before Shades (hopefully) begin to pull the Sidar up.

Sandalphon

Sandalphon's traits are Defender and Industrious. Defender doubles production speed of buildings that provide defensive bonuses: Archery Range (10% def), Palisade (10%) and Walls (25%). It also gives most unit types a free Homeland promotion: +10% strength within the player's borders and +10% withdrawal chance. Obviously, it's not a top tier trait, it's still useful though. Cheap 40-hammer Walls coupled with the 10% strength increase can reduce attacker's odds to a hazardously low level, forcing him to use cannon fodder for redlining the defenders, or look for an easier target. Defender also enables a neat trick: giving Horsemen Flanking I, II and III for a total 85% withdrawal chance and then upgrading them to Horse Archers with an amazing 95% withdrawal making them ultimate pillage beasts. Unfortunately in this PBEM there are two Summoners and one Puppeteer so even a 95% withdraw unit can be easily dispatched.

The other Sandalphon's trait is so bad that it makes Defender look like Raiders. Overall, Industious just saves a couple of hammers throughout the game and that's all. On a positive side: Os-Gabella is also stuck with Ind :neenernee

Sidar Palace

Sidar Palace has an interesting feature: it increases the output of every specialist and settled Great Person by 1 (not Priest's and Great Prophet's though):



It makes the Sidar a perfect civ to run Specialist Economy. God King coupled with Agrarianism is a great civic combo for SE: GK allows specialization while Agrarianism takes care of the feeding. I'm curious how it works out against the allmighty Agristocracy. There are wonders and civics that further increase specialists' output up to 7 beakers for the Sage, but I'm not going to chase them at all costs.

Sidar Worldspell

Into the Mist gives all units owned by Sidar the Hidden promotion. A unit with Hidden can be only seen by units that see invisible, such as Hawks, Radiant Guards or Rathas. Attacking, pillaging and casting spells removes the promotion. It's worth noticing that also Settlers and Workers get Hidden from Into the Mist, in their case a permanent one since constructing improvements doesn't remove the promotion.

When to use the world spell? I wish I knew... It doesn't have a tech requirement so it's possible to pull a crazy stunt on turn 0, make the starting settler invisible and move him to the other end of the map making a mess out of starting positions. Crazy, but could work on some maps. An invisible warrior rush is a nice option, devastating for the unfortunate victim but difficult to leverage by Sidar.

Shades

Shades can be settled (only) in Sidar cities as specialists:









Let's just ignore the Bard and focus on real stuff. To get maximum benefits from specialization Sidar should have only two specialized cities: the merchant city, with the Bazaar and the science city with Academy. The trick is to balance the amount of sages versus merchants in these cities. I'm leaning towards prioritizing the merchant city as it gives bigger bonuses (150% with Bazaar and God-king Palace vs 75% with Academy and Library) and because cash, unlike beakers, never goes to waste That's the plan for the late game. If I manage to get a Shade or two from fighting early barbs they'll most likely be settled as Great Engineers.

[Iskender]

This one too

[Sciz]

Looking forward to see how you do!

Sidar are an interesting civ, I'm a bit nostalgic for them because I used them in my first ever FFH2 game

too bad Sandalphon isn't too great though

[Mr. Yellow]

Checking in as Ded. Lurker. There's several things i'd like to talk of regarding the Sidar, but i'll wait till you're done with info.

[Selrahc]

I'm hoping you'll be able to give us a good showing from the Sidar, because I've never been a big fan. Lots of hassle for little reward... I hope you can change my mind.

[Iskender]

Looking forward to see how you do!

Sidar are an interesting civ, I'm a bit nostalgic for them because I used them in my first ever FFH2 game

too bad Sandalphon isn't too great though

Hey Sciz. Yeah, there are better combos than Industrious/Defender out there, but most of them were picked out in the previous PBEMs, so unfortunately I can't use Sandy as an exuse for getting pummeled

Checking in as Ded. Lurker. There's several things i'd like to talk of regarding the Sidar, but i'll wait till you're done with info.

Hey dude, feel free to comment already or as soon as I complete the introductory posts. I have a kind of a master plan, which I'd like to gradually reveal as the game progresses. I'll PM you the outline for evaluation.

I'm hoping you'll be able to give us a good showing from the Sidar, because I've never been a big fan. Lots of hassle for little reward... I hope you can change my mind.

Yeah, there will be hassle, quite a lot of it, but I hope the reward will be adequate. Nice to see you here Selrahc


Post #2 updated with basic info about the Sidar.

[fantasticsid]

Hi, Lurker here. Signed up so I can ded-lurk this thread, as I have a fondness for the Sidar (and the SE in general, really.)

I'd imagine that a lot of the SE micro which is an annoying PITA in SP or realtime MP games won't be such a massive deal if you're only playing one turn a day or so - at the very least you'll be able to check that the game hasn't screwed up your specialist assignment before ending the turn

[Iskender]

Hi, Lurker here. Signed up so I can ded-lurk this thread, as I have a fondness for the Sidar (and the SE in general, really.)

I'd imagine that a lot of the SE micro which is an annoying PITA in SP or realtime MP games won't be such a massive deal if you're only playing one turn a day or so - at the very least you'll be able to check that the game hasn't screwed up your specialist assignment before ending the turn

Hi there!

Indeed, this endeavor will be quite MM-intensive, with not only switching tiles and specialists, but also nursing the wannabe shades until they're ready to wane. Any ideas how to make it simpler or more effective are welcome!


Post #2 updated with Sandalphon and Sidar Palace info.

[Selrahc]

Any ideas how to make it simpler or more effective are welcome!

Passive xp units can eventually be really handy. No ideas for the early/mid game though, beyond the obvious of running xp civics.