[Spoilers]Auro is prepared: You shall not pass!

[Qgqqqqq]

How are you finding things?

[Aurorarcher]

Well, I did finish Blood of the Phoenix only to get disappointed...



but...





Oh well, most of the units get a second chance anyway. I guess it doesn't work with Demons/Undead, shame it's not mentioned in the civilopedia... I guess it makes sense that it only works with living units but my Dragon got the promotion anyway but it cannot be hasted. So is my Dragon a living unit or not is the question? I have tons of units and now my Dragon can defend two times so hopefully the promotions are kept. It will be difficult for coldrain to finish me off but xist is now almost dead. Also for some reason Bing decided to declare against xist also.

Basically I'm just building Longbows now and waiting for him to come after me. Taking Edoras back seems unlikely but it'll be my ultimate goal before coldrain kills me. Obviously the game is lost and has been the case for long time but we shall see how long this can go on.

[Aurorarcher]

Some after game thoughts:

I really liked this game, probably one of the most enjoyable game I've played even when I lost the game. I had fun playing with Kuriotates and their unique abilities. I had a very good economy with powerful research. I also had fun attempting Culture Victory although I never got close. Still, I enjoyed the preparing. Also, never ever I though I would build Eurabatres the Gold Dragon.

Okay what went wrong?

1. Culture Victory is very difficult.
2. I was relying on Dave to get his Mages and get into longer fight against coldrain which didn't happen.
3. I invested a lot hammers into it teching many religious techs I didn't use much or even at all (Order, Empyrean, RoK total of ~2500 beakers). Those could've given me Mages of my own (well, I would need to get the xp to upgrade but yeah). I should've revolted into Empyrean before I went AV to build couple Rathas as they start with Sun II. Could have helped a lot against coldrain and maybe delay him capturing Edoras.
4. Not building adepts earlier. I basically ignored magic (like I said in my thread earlier). Not smart. One of the worst of my mistakes in this game. I was simply too "locked in" into building temples and start the culture spam.
5. Not reacting into coldrain's power spike earlier (before the war started).
6. Getting SPI as my trait. I don't see it much of a wrong choice considering my plan but ARC obviously would've been a lot better overall.
7. I underestimated how powerful magic is even though I've used it myself many times.

Some other thoughts:

Ultimately the game was lost to coldrain's brilliant use of Mages combined with Chariots and other units. Obviously he had a plan and he executed it very well. Maelstrom paired with Fireballs worked like magic. I saw what I did there, yes. Not taking anything from his good play but I think there is almost no defense against mobile Mages with a lot of spell extensions. Other than maybe Magic Immune Dragons. Maelstrom is also a very powerful spell having range of 2 tiles. No other spell hits every unit in that range (some spells hit within 2 range but only one tile). Maybe it would be weaker if it only acted against one tile with most units? Or then make its range only 1? The latter makes it a lot weaker obviously. 

So what I would change?

Make promotions protecting against Magic more accessible. What do I mean by that? Well...

1a. Make Magic Resistance promotion available without any combat promotion requirements (requires C3 now). Here is an example of the promotions I'm talking about.



I'm not totally sure how +20% against lighting works but it should help some I guess (against C5 Mages it doesn't make much if at all of difference though). It sure helps against fireballs, spectres etc. a bit as well.

Then there is this promotion. Requires Magic Resistance.



It says +50% Resistance to Lightning Damage. With this promotion (and Magic Resistance) one could get up to +70% against Lightning. Similarly with Resist Fire.

Is that too powerful defense? Still requires 2 promotions so one would need to "waste" couple potential combat promotions in order to defend better against magic. Maybe make mages or arcane units in general unable to gain these promotions themselves? This Weakens Khazad a bit as they gain Magic Resistance for free but it's not a big deal in my opinion.

1b. Make Magic Immune promotion available? Require Magic Resistance + C5? Or is that too strong? That would likely only be available to heroes or other units gaining a lot of xp. I don't like this idea that much but just throwing it in anyway.

2. Adepts/Mages can't promote to Mobility 1. That would make them a lot slower and easier to attack against.

These changes are suggestions to make defending against magic easier. I have some other thoughts regarding other balancing ideas but maybe I'll post about those later.

[Qgqqqqq]

GG Auro! You played a good game. Not sure I've ever seen Blood of the Phoneix before and there were lot of cool moments in your well reported jousting.

I think culture might not be viable in FFH2 given the speed at which games move. If it is viable, it likely needs significant fallback zones and long grindy games, which is difficult to achieve. Still it was a worthy attempt. I tend to think Kurios need to aim to whack other players down to maintain their early lead, though I believe a Tower Victory has won before.

Appreciate all the suggestions. When I get a moment I'll collect them into the EitB thread so we can discuss collectively.

[coldrain]

<snipped picture of eidolon not getting immortal promo>

Oh well, most of the units get a second chance anyway. I guess it doesn't work with Demons/Undead, shame it's not mentioned in the civilopedia... I guess it makes sense that it only works with living units but my Dragon got the promotion anyway but it cannot be hasted. So is my Dragon a living unit or not is the question? I have tons of units and now my Dragon can defend two times so hopefully the promotions are kept. It will be difficult for coldrain to finish me off but xist is now almost dead.

I didn't notice during the game that eidolons didn't get the immortal promotion, maybe I would have seen it later. There would have been enough trouble with the immortal Dragon anyway!

I was very impressed with your juiced up economy (with only three or two cities!), every turn I was nervous to open the save and see what super unit would pop up in the event log, or what tech you had completed recently!

I actually thought you would use the Grimoire for high priests of Veil, or maybe sorcery, but I never saw the Dragon coming in until you had built it. You were definitely the toughest opponent in this game, thanks for playing.

[DaveV]

Great game as usual. I thought that tier II priests disappeared if you change religion, and couldn't understand what you were doing with your multiple religions and swaps between them. When I realized you were building a stable of priests, it made a lot more sense. Culture victory probably isn't achievable unless you have a lot of space for counterattacking. Or, like Q said, if you kill or cripple most of your opponents first.

About the merchant payoff and the lair exploration: I saw us as being in a cold war state at the time; I didn't want to give you too big a toll for the merchant passage lest you use it against me later. The lair was a case of do unto others before they do unto you.