Varn of the Illians - Serdoa and WK playing it cool

[Serdoa]

Hello to Warriorknights and my thread for FFH2PBEM12.

We will play as the Illians, cold-hearted bastards with a powerful rush-possibility called PoW. Though we won't use it. Yeah, unusual I know. But I don't like rushing. We will instead go for a nearly direct beeline for Wilboman as I really feel this hero needs some "screen-time".

Pair that with Horsemen and it will look like



Well, unfortunately it won't as you can't put him on an elephant So I guess we will do the obvious priest-rush after all.

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Edit: For my convenience our opponents and their pick linked to the post where they are discussed in detail:

Krill/Kyan - Kandros Fir (Fin/Agg/Ing) of the Clan of Embers
SL - Amelanchier of the Hippus
Sareln - Kandros Fir of the Sheaim
Mist&Ellimist - Varn Gosam of the Sidar
Amelia - Einion Logos of the Grigori

[WarriorKnight]

Well this thread is looking rather empty. Let's fix that up a bit.

Illians are fun. Stasis, if used correctly, can practically give you a free kill, and the POW's are a perfect way of accomplishing that. The palace gives you the only reliable source of ice mana in the entire game, whereas controlling Letum Frigus would give you a monopoly of it (you also get AGG if you get there first, but Adaptive wipes that out). The Temple of the Hand means that you can settle regardless of terrain and deters people from attacking you. The deepening is the only other worthwhile ritual aside from the white hand and causes global freezing, which annoys everyone but you. And of course as Varn you don't have the usual downside of no religion.

The rest of the stuff is rather meh. Wilboman is not on a path that the Illians usually take, and Drifa, Auric and the High Priests are too late to be of use. Javelin throwers are probably worse than regular archers, and the priests are better anyway. Assassins can gain hidden if they are in snow, which doesn't change much since hawks can see hidden anyway. Samhain spawns frostlings which attack everyone including you, but since the clan are barbaric there's little upside to it. And all your units start with Winterborn, which probably won't make too much of a difference.

In this game though, everyone except the Sidar has rushing potential. The clan can get wolf riders extremely early if a goblin beats a wolf, and their worldspell can be fairly painful depending on barb activity (plus Ogres and warrens are scary late game). The grigori have adventurers that won't easily fall if they've been around a while. The Hippus have Raiders horseman extraordinaire, and their worldspell is a major threat early on. Finally the Sheaim have AGG Pyre Zombies which is scary enough, but thanks to Winterborn all your units are weak to fire too.

Might add more later.

[Serdoa]

WK introduced the Illians nicely. They seem to be strong in annoying people (Stasis), strong in ruhsing one (PoW) and don't seem to have much more going for them. Basically you can rush someone, be hopefully successful, have then double the land of everyone else - and go into strike because you have built Temples of the Hand and don't get any commerce whatsoever

What I basically tried to figure out the last days was:

1.) What to do against CoE in the late game? They will have tons of units and we cannot outproduce them nor do we have stronger units then them looking at the melee line.

2.) What to do against Hippus in the early to mid game? They will run circles around us with their Horses and with Slow alone we won't stop a potential 5-move-Horsemen. Thinking about that... does Horselord, Warcry (or how their worldspell is called) and Haste stack?

3.) What to do against a Agg-PZ-rush in the early to midgame?

4.) What to do against Grigori and Sidar? Honestly, that was a thought at the back of my head because they don't seem to scary right now if I look at our other opponents.

5.) How to not cripple our economy completely with a PoW-rush? Cottages or Aristograrianism? Do we even PoW-rush?

6.) When to use Stasis? Somewhere T0-6 so that no one will have a worker for 20 turns into the game? Or T45+ so that someone might get issues with Orthus? Or do we keep it for later when we rush someone so that we won't get counterattacked?

7.) What to do in the late game? If we go for PoW, then it seems the right call to go on to Way of the Wicked and get AV for Ritualists as well as Deception for Gibbon. As far as I understood Ritualists can be build with any religion as long as we have a Temple of the Veil. Only issue is getting to them before someone else gets to Gibbon.

8.) How to defend our borders against those Hippus? Yes, I had that already but I really am at a loss how to do that. With 4 moves they can easily move as far as I can with roads in my own territory. No matter how I plant cities they can fork them. Even 10+ Horsemen seem like a pretty credible threat - if we have enough warriors everywhere (drain on economy...) to defend they still can pillage us back into the stone-age.

All in all I think we have the second-worst civ for this kind of game (directly behind the Grigori). But I try to talk about our opponents (and our civ) later in more detail.

Btw: Selrahc, are you around and would have some tips for the Illians? I feel they could need your help to win this time

[Selrahc]

Btw: Selrahc, are you around and would have some tips for the Illians? I feel they could need your help to win this time

The Priests are very good. With a free mobility and potency promotion, they will be even more frightening.

Ice terrain takes 50% longer to improve and doesn't get riverside bonuses. It's a decent terrain type for you, but avoid doing the terraforming unless you've got a genuine purpose behind it.

Unless you're seriously willing to put the work into micromanaging a cottage economy, go for Aristograrianism.

A lot of my other thoughts are related to the Arcane Line, and how I would do it better. Or the horse line, which is another place the Auric Illians are quite good. Both of those are more Auric specific though. I think you'll probably be focussing more on spiritual techs.

3.) What to do against a Agg-PZ-rush in the early to midgame?

Slow.
Pretty much shuts them down. If you can get the priests to defend, you're in for a big advantage.

As far as I understood Ritualists can be build with any religion as long as we have a Temple of the Veil.

Nope. Sadly not. They won't abandon you on religion switch though.

[Serdoa]

Krill/Kyan - Kandros Fir of the Clan of Embers

[COLOR="Orange"]Worldspell

"For The Horde"[/COLOR] Converts 50% of the barbarion orc population to CoE-units. Several games here at RB have already shown what can be done with that, everything from "pretty much nothing" to "win outright". Getting some archers to choke other players can be enough. And it is useable while Stasis, so can be used to counteract our world-spell if we use it early. Though honestly I am not sure if I would even care about that as long as we are not the target of those units - as discussed already most of the civs in this game are pretty good early rushers so losing one early won't give me sleepless nights.


[COLOR="orange"]Hero

Rantine[/COLOR] Available at Bronze Working, this hero costs 120 hammers, has 4 str (+25% against melee), 1 Move and can convert Barbarian cities to CoE. I don't think that Krills gameplan revolves around this hero though, maybe they won't even build him.


Unique Units

I have only listed those being notably different to the original unit and coming early enough that one has to care about it. The others are either nice toys or simply a change of the unit graphic. Sometimes not even getting a new unit name.

Wolf Rider: Can be build with Horseback Riding. Don't need Horses nor Stables. Despite that it is the same as a Horseman without the First Strike. That still means Str 4, 3 Move. And possible to build with just 3 techs discovered. Or with no tech if a Goblin (Scout replacement) defeats a wolf. Just a few of them should be enough to pillage another player for a long time. Or - if getting it early enough - one might be enough to simply move in if someone lets his capital undefended or has only one warrior in it before another one can be built.

Shaman: Same unit as an Adept though I think they do have a faster workrate. The Civilopedia does not show that, though I am pretty sure I have seen it in one of my games. Somebody knows more or do I need to test ingame?

Goblin: A scout replacement which is cheaper (10 hammers instead of 16) but has only 1 move. That should weaken the initial scouting for CoE a little bit, though they will either get that back (and then some) via their worldspell or simply by defeating a wolf, upgrading that Goblin to a Wolf Rider as written above.

Ogre: The unit everyone fears - or rather the possibility to build two of them at once via a Warren (unique building, we come to that in a moment). Ogres do cost 180 hammers instead of 120 (normal speed) for a champion which they replace. They do have Str 8 instead of Str 6 though but lose the 25% bonus against melee. Still they are clearly the stronger unit when paired with the warren. And they can use Bronze/Iron/Mithril so are potential 10-12 str spammable units. They have however only 1 move.


Unique Buildings

CoE Palace: The Palace provides Fire, Nature and Body Mana. It also reduces War Weariness by 40%. Nothing special I would conclude and probably nothing we have to think about the first 120+ turns.

Warren: This one on the other hand we have to think about. It comes at Masonry, so pretty early and costs 120 hammers. That sounds much (1 Settler around) but the effect is so strong that you don't really have to think too much about the costs I feel. The effect is to double any unit produced except for naval, siege, hero and national units. It won't give the second unit any benefits for XP though. Still, thats crazy strong I feel especially paired with Krills love for pink dot settlements. Get a second city, get that in both cities, use the hammer strong one to produce your military units and the other one to produce 2 settlers at once, then 4 workers, then 2 settlers. No one can hope to settle faster then those guys. Not to talk about unit spam later on. Really, the only thing holding them back from spamming the map might be all those rush civs around and maintenance. Though Krill has shown in a BTS-game that he is able to ICS and I guess it will be easier in FFH2 after you got the first 7 techs. His leader choice (Kandros Fir - Agg/Fin/Ing) makes that even scarier as all units will have C1 (even those produced second in the warren), Fin will let him spam cities with Aristograniarism and if he gets RoK he will not even break a sweat when he does it.


Blocked Buildings and Units

Mage Guild Not needed to train Shamans, so no loss at all as this building does not provide anything on top of the possibility to train Adepts.

Stable Wolf Rider do not need Stables and the Clan can't produce Horse Archers or Knights, so again a building they simply don't need.

Library and Alchemy Lab No libraries and Alchemy labs will hurt the clans ability to tech. But only later on, initially they should be as quick as anyone else due to unrestricted leaders but won't have a starting tech.

Horse Archer, Knight, Cannon, Arquebus As already mentioned the Clan can't get Horse Archers and Knights. Thats good I suppose, at least they won't outrun us. They also can't get Cannons and Arquebus but I don't think that changes much if anything. In a game where Mages can do more and better collateral and can summon units no one needs slow-moving siege units.


[COLOR="orange"]Leader:

Kandros Fir (Fin/Agg/Ing)[/COLOR] Financial will help them tech faster, something they really need I think. Aristograniarism seems the obvious play for them. Aggressive will help them in the early game (2xp enough for S1) and later on to produce better units with their warrens. Ingenuity was probably only icing on the cake, I am not sure that they do have any play planned around it (not like Fin/Agg/Ing Sheaim).


Thats it with the Clan of Embers. I strongly feel that they are the clear favorites to win this game if they don't get unlucky by getting rushed early. But Krill has for diplomacy Kyan so I assume that whichever rusher is near them will happily give them gold for being allowed to attack someone across the world

[Serdoa]

Hey Selrahc, nice to have you here And thanks for your input. To answer to it:

I don't mind putting in the micromanaging work for a cottage economy tbh. Playing at most a turn a day and having a slightly less stressful life then some months ago I should have the time for it. The issue I have with it is more that I fear pillaging. FFH2 gives you plenty of tools to do that and I don't see many tools to prevent it. Of course you can scout with Hawks or Floating Eyes (if you get the mana needed) to be aware of any incoming threat, but that takes some time to setup and with Hippus 5-6 move horses (so 10-12 on streets) I don't see it helping all that much.

A lot of my other thoughts are related to the Arcane Line, and how I would do it better. Or the horse line, which is another place the Auric Illians are quite good. Both of those are more Auric specific though. I think you'll probably be focussing more on spiritual techs.

Please, share those thoughts. I was thinking about switching to Cha with Varn at turn 70 anyway, so he is not that much different to Auric (he isn't at all if we ignore Defender and Agnostic). My idea was getting 8xp Ritualists to Mages (should be quite doable). With Cha + Potency (do they keep it as Mages?) it should be possible to create quite a scary mage-force relatively quickly. Or a mixed mage/ritualist force. But I have also thought about Horses (every other unit feels slow compared to a Mob2 Horse Archer), though I was not sure how to play that tbh.

[Selrahc]

Please, share those thoughts. I was thinking about switching to Cha with Varn at turn 70 anyway, so he is not that much different to Auric (he isn't at all if we ignore Defender and Agnostic).

For horses specifically, Defender+Cha is a powerful horseman set. It allows easy access to two promos, and a boost in withdrawal rate. 75% horsemen/chariots or 85% withdrawal HA are very easy to get with Auric and work very nicely for a mobile, hard to fight force. It really does rely on Auric though.


Going along the mage set, I was more thinking in terms of late game economic power. In the closing turns of the game my specialist economy kicked into high gear, and actually pushed me to equal PB's GNP. If I'd specced for it earlier in the game, it would have been even scarier. Scholarship+Caste system+Great Library+Illian Food can result in the best specialist economy in the game. Transitioning into it from an agristocracy would work well. Means Lightbulbing Arcane Lore somehow and pushing for early Taxation.

Ice Elementals will suck as a long term prospect unless you get access to the Frigus. S5 is not a strength you can rely on long term. The effects from Blinding Light and Maelstrom can probably begained easier from religious units. If you go for instant mages, Hosts are a little better than Ice Elementals as your summon both due to the multi turn effect and the fairly easy possibility of getting multiple law nodes to add it to every mage for free.

[WarriorKnight]

1.) What to do against CoE in the late game? They will have tons of units and we cannot outproduce them nor do we have stronger units then them looking at the melee line.

I can think of 2 solutions.

1) Don't let them reach the late game. While they aren't as bad as the Sidar early on, they don't have the rush potential that you, the Sheaim or the Hippus have. Taking them out early would mean you don't have to worry about them later.

2) Abuse magic. Divine magic is your main strength and it's fairly easy to get good arcane units too. That will be your only edge against warren boosted ogres. With enough spellcasters you can disable them easily enough and eliminate them with summons quickly.

2.) What to do against Hippus in the early to mid game? They will run circles around us with their Horses and with Slow alone we won't stop a potential 5-move-Horsemen. Thinking about that... does Horselord, Warcry (or how their worldspell is called) and Haste stack?

Yes they all stack unfortunately. Early game the best thing you can do is use Ice Elementals from the Priests since thanks to Ice mana affinity they are stronger than horseman. Against horse archers and chariots it'll be more difficult but fortunately Amelanchier has no economic traits.

3.) What to do against a Agg-PZ-rush in the early to midgame?

Priests, again. Hit them with slow and then spam ice elementals. Just make sure to stay out of range of the splash damage and you'll be fine.

4.) What to do against Grigori and Sidar? Honestly, that was a thought at the back of my head because they don't seem to scary right now if I look at our other opponents.

Grigori should be able to hold their own defensively due to adventurers. However with agnostic holding them down and Einion as their leader I doubt they will be able to keep up economically in the long term unless they rush (IMO Amelia will attack someone anyway thanks to Tolerant). Sidar are the late game economic threat, but given the rush capabilities of everyone I doubt they'll last that long.

5.) How to not cripple our economy completely with a PoW-rush? Cottages or Aristograrianism? Do we even PoW-rush?

You have to build the POW because, if nothing else, you need them to stand a chance at defending against what everyone else has. And if you have them, you might as well rush someone with them if they can't defend against the Priests.

As for economy, you probably won't cripple your economy by getting the Priests but rather by successfully rushing. IMO Aristofarms > cottages simply because you get more commerce sooner and the long term downside isn't worth that (or neglecting the food that comes from farms).

6.) When to use Stasis? Somewhere T0-6 so that no one will have a worker for 20 turns into the game? Or T45+ so that someone might get issues with Orthus? Or do we keep it for later when we rush someone so that we won't get counterattacked?

Difficult to say when exactly. I would rather save Statis for when we attack someone, as that prevents people from slaving/rushing out units to counterattack. Don't want to be too late though.

7.) What to do in the late game? If we go for PoW, then it seems the right call to go on to Way of the Wicked and get AV for Ritualists as well as Deception for Gibbon. As far as I understood Ritualists can be build with any religion as long as we have a Temple of the Veil. Only issue is getting to them before someone else gets to Gibbon.

Are you confusing Ritualists with Savants? Ritualists are the AV Priest, can only be built when AV is state religion, and have the awesome Ring of Fire spell. Savants can be built in any state religion, and can upgrade to mages if they are level 4.

Why Gibbon exactly? If it's just for the heroic archmage, I think Hemah would be a better option since OO provides several other advantages while CoE doesn't have much else. He isn't even that much further away if you build the Infernal Grimiore and take Arcane Lore with it.

8.) How to defend our borders against those Hippus? Yes, I had that already but I really am at a loss how to do that. With 4 moves they can easily move as far as I can with roads in my own territory. No matter how I plant cities they can fork them. Even 10+ Horsemen seem like a pretty credible threat - if we have enough warriors everywhere (drain on economy...) to defend they still can pillage us back into the stone-age.

Yeah, it's difficult to find a definite counter against them. Probably have to rely on good diplo and sticking to your strengths (which is POW's early, Divine/Arcane magic later on).

Worldspell "For The Horde"

Kandros isn't Barbarian, so the Clan can't use For the Horde. Likewise Rantine loses his ability of converting barb cities (although he's still useful for a early Shrine of the Champion).

Shaman: Same unit as an Adept though I think they do have a faster workrate. The Civilopedia does not show that, though I am pretty sure I have seen it in one of my games. Somebody knows more or do I need to test ingame?

Major advantage of Shaman is that they don't need a mage guild to be built. Aside from that though they aren't different from regular adepts.

Please, share those thoughts. I was thinking about switching to Cha with Varn at turn 70 anyway, so he is not that much different to Auric (he isn't at all if we ignore Defender and Agnostic). My idea was getting 8xp Ritualists to Mages (should be quite doable). With Cha + Potency (do they keep it as Mages?) it should be possible to create quite a scary mage-force relatively quickly. Or a mixed mage/ritualist force. But I have also thought about Horses (every other unit feels slow compared to a Mob2 Horse Archer), though I was not sure how to play that tbh.

I'd think carefully before deciding about CHA on t70. You probably won't be in the position to abuse CHA upgrading until roughly t130 or so (although that's a very rough estimate) and until then you could be something like FIN. Savants upgraded to mages do keep potency, although there is a problem of needing to be promoted before upgrading (so you should try and have enough nodes to get spells for free).

Compared to horses, magic does feel quite slow. But SL has you outclassed in horses with Raider Hippus so I'd stick to Arcane/Divine magic. Summons, unlike horses, are very expendable and with Spell Extension can move quite far. Plus magic has several useful spells to abuse.

[Serdoa]

I can think of 2 solutions.

1) Don't let them reach the late game. While they aren't as bad as the Sidar early on, they don't have the rush potential that you, the Sheaim or the Hippus have. Taking them out early would mean you don't have to worry about them later.

2) Abuse magic. Divine magic is your main strength and it's fairly easy to get good arcane units too. That will be your only edge against warren boosted ogres. With enough spellcasters you can disable them easily enough and eliminate them with summons quickly.

With disabling them you mean the spell Blind?

Yes they all stack unfortunately. Early game the best thing you can do is use Ice Elementals from the Priests since thanks to Ice mana affinity they are stronger than horseman. Against horse archers and chariots it'll be more difficult but fortunately Amelanchier has no economic traits.

The fear I have is that even his 4 Str units will be fast enough to run around my units. Ice Eles are fine, but won't help to catch them if they simpy run away. Guess I will have to take much more time to carefully analyze potential paths for them and find small spaces to hold them back.

You have to build the POW because, if nothing else, you need them to stand a chance at defending against what everyone else has. And if you have them, you might as well rush someone with them if they can't defend against the Priests.

As for economy, you probably won't cripple your economy by getting the Priests but rather by successfully rushing. IMO Aristofarms > cottages simply because you get more commerce sooner and the long term downside isn't worth that (or neglecting the food that comes from farms).

I fully agree with the PoW. I mentioned not building them but I can't see any way how you would play instead. What I realized is that you are pratically at Slavery when you have researched up to the PoW which might be an interesting civic for us. I try to plan our early game out today. Guess I'll make a post today later sometimes with my results, detailing which techs I would research, which civis to adopt and so on. Though that depends slightly on the map as well.

Difficult to say when exactly. I would rather save Statis for when we attack someone, as that prevents people from slaving/rushing out units to counterattack. Don't want to be too late though.

I am not sure saving Stasis for an attack is worth it. Sure Stasis coupled with our attack could potentially wreck someone. On the other hand, not having them get their first worker or tech before T20 seems to be quite a strong play as well - probably even stronger then using it on an attack. It pretty much should guarantee that we have the strongest economy for some time. Of course we do have to devote some hammers to the PoW, but apart from that we don't need to research anything we wouldn't research anyway. I am not sure but I feel that if we can leverage this spell we should at least be better able to defend ourselves against PZ-rushes, Hippus-rushes, CoE-rushes or Grigori-rushes (). Tbh I think hurting everyone a bit is better in the long run then hurting one civ massively.

Are you confusing Ritualists with Savants? Ritualists are the AV Priest, can only be built when AV is state religion, and have the awesome Ring of Fire spell. Savants can be built in any state religion, and can upgrade to mages if they are level 4.

Yes, I did confuse them.

Why Gibbon exactly? If it's just for the heroic archmage, I think Hemah would be a better option since OO provides several other advantages while CoE doesn't have much else. He isn't even that much further away if you build the Infernal Grimiore and take Arcane Lore with it.

I guess I thought about Gibbon simply because we get several techs we need for him (and AV) pretty surely anyway so it seemed to make sense. Though having to keep CoE with a spiritual leader is bad. Guess I'll let this idea die.

I'd think carefully before deciding about CHA on t70. You probably won't be in the position to abuse CHA upgrading until roughly t130 or so (although that's a very rough estimate) and until then you could be something like FIN. Savants upgraded to mages do keep potency, although there is a problem of needing to be promoted before upgrading (so you should try and have enough nodes to get spells for free).

I should be in the position to abuse it with the PoW pretty much from T70 on. Though with Potency that might not be necessary. And after them you are right that there is some time with no units to abuse it. Guess we have to see how the game develops.

Compared to horses, magic does feel quite slow. But SL has you outclassed in horses with Raider Hippus so I'd stick to Arcane/Divine magic. Summons, unlike horses, are very expendable and with Spell Extension can move quite far. Plus magic has several useful spells to abuse.

Probably thats simply because I love mounted warfare. And in FFH it is even stronger. After Selrahcs explanation about Auric and horses I also understand why SL picked Amelanchier as his leader. Anyway, I guess whoever starts near SL is either going to rush him first, make big concessions or will leave the game early.

[Serdoa]

Going along the mage set, I was more thinking in terms of late game economic power. In the closing turns of the game my specialist economy kicked into high gear, and actually pushed me to equal PB's GNP. If I'd specced for it earlier in the game, it would have been even scarier. Scholarship+Caste system+Great Library+Illian Food can result in the best specialist economy in the game. Transitioning into it from an agristocracy would work well. Means Lightbulbing Arcane Lore somehow and pushing for early Taxation.

Thats actually the reason I wanted to play Sidar because I would love to make me a specialist economy. And Sidar with a Phi leader do have a relatively interesting way to get to Taxation quickly, namely building a Market, getting a Merchant specialist, bulbing Mathematics, building the Bazar of Mammon and using the now possible 4 Merchants for some more GMs to bulb and reasearch the way to Taxation. It's quite crazy how much money you can make with just 3 cities at 100% research rate. Get a civic which you can use to buy stuff and take even more emphasis on the money (RoK + shrine in the Bazar city) and that should be quite crazy. Well, I am sure I have overlooked something there but it was fun in my testgame anyway.

Speaking of bulbing: In my SP-games I realized that I had to get 67 GPP for my first great person but the second one showed 201 GPP. I thought that should be 134 and was wondering, is that changed in FFH and I did never notice it or did I stumble upon a bug?