Winter Wonderland: Selrahc's FFH 2 thread

[Dantski]

Remember God King is 50% gold not commerce

Thanks for the updates

[Selrahc]

Remember God King is 50% gold not commerce

Ah yes. I keep forgetting that. Still... well worth the early switch. I'm definitely going to need the hammers.

[Selrahc]

Trait analysis of the enemy leaders in the game and how they relate to the civilizations.

First up I'll look at the lady leaders.

Faeryl Viconia is the Winter Queen of the Elves who became too used to power during the age of ice. Forced to relinquish power to her sister she instead led the elves into civil war to retain her position.
Faeryl Viconia has two traits that don't exist in base Civ. Arcane and Raider.

I'd raid 'er alright. *rimshot*[Bad pun. Bad sarcastic caption monster]

Arcane is a trait related to magic and I don't think it fits in too well with the dark elves. Spellcasters(as well as heroes) have a rate of passive experience gain that results in a few free promotions. This is important as spellcasters gain spells from promotions and require them to be able to upgrade. Arcane drastically ramps up this passive experience gain. It also allows double construction speed of mage guilds. Now this is a useful trait for arcane focussed civilizations like the Amurites but the Svartalfar arcane line is not suited for anything but a support role due to the unique illusionist units. Everything the Svartalfar summon gains the Illusion promotion, meaning that it can't kill. This makes the Svartalfar magic line very good as a support for their recon, but not suitable as a primary concern.

The raider trait is rather more powerful. It gives the commando promotion to almost all units. It also doubles the amount of cash received from pillaging improvements. Now this trait synergizes very nicely with the Svartalfar. The main weakness of recon units is their penalty on attacking or defending cities, and their mildly lower strength. The dark elves account for the lower strength with their civilization traits, but still face the difficulty in taking cities. The commando promotion(which allows movement along roads in enemy territory) allows the Svartalfar to bypass the heavily fortified enemy cities and attempt to attack their foes in the places where they are least expected. If the foes have rock solid defences then the elves can pillage improvements to pay for their army many times over, while crippling their opponent. Without raiders the Svartalfar would be a much worse civilization.


The Svartalfar have no other option but to pick Faeryl, so there is no real comparison to be made. For my money a trait like Creative or Charismatic would have been of far more use to the civilization than Arcane is, and wouldn't have left the Svartalfar unbalanced.



Rhoanna is the Queen of the Hippus mercenary group and is trying to bind her people together into a closer grouping. She represents the more honour bound and decent side of the group and is generally a diplomatic envoy sent to attain contracts.
She has expansive and financial, an ideal set of builder traits tied to one of the most warlike civilizations in the game.



Expansive has been changed somewhat, it still adds to health but in FFH it makes the building of settlers go at double speed. Granaries however are much weaker, storing only 20% of population growth, with slavery pushed substantially back in the tech tree. It also doesn't add to worker production. This trait has no particular synergy with the Hippus, but would be a good bonus for almost any civilization.
Financial is unchanged, but is possibly more powerful than in base civilization. There are some powerful civic combinations that become especially incredible when empowered by financial. The Hippus love money, their hero can create a powerful horse army from nothing with enough financial backing. Their empires also have a tendency to become oversized quickly and the financial trait can help them avoid an economic crash.

The Hippus do not have a powerful economy. They have an average economy(which is a lot better than the dregs like the Clan or Doviello), but a focus on war that means it probably won't be highly developed. Rhoanna makes it competitive but will ultimately buckle to the power of the big boys like the Lanun, Ljosalfar or Khazad eventually. The strength of the Hippus is war and for that I prefer Tasunke. With aggressive raiders he may get to the more powerful units slower, but when he does they pack one hell of a punch. Not that Rhoanna is bad, she would be an incredible leader for almost any civilization and works well enough. I just don't think she plays to the power of the Hippus.

[darrelljs]

The Luchuirp worldspell creates a half dozen or so free engineer specialists

Well, to be exact it creates a Golden Hammer in every city. This hammer can be attached to a unit for +1 strength, or it can be settled in a city to create a free engineer specialist. The trick used to be on turn 1 (take the PHI leader) cast the world spell and get a fast Great Engineer. Now the world spell requires Masonry, so I tend to rush out to 5ish cities as fast as possible, cast the world spell, use scouts to move the hammers to one city, and settle multiple free engineers.

Darrell

[Selrahc]

Well, to be exact it creates a Golden Hammer in every city. This hammer can be attached to a unit for +1 strength, or it can be settled in a city to create a free engineer specialist. The trick used to be on turn 1 (take the PHI leader) cast the world spell and get a fast Great Engineer. Now the world spell requires Masonry, so I tend to rush out to 5ish cities as fast as possible, cast the world spell, use scouts to move the hammers to one city, and settle multiple free engineers.

Darrell

Yes indeed. The Luchuirp world spell is possibly my favourite one as there is a lot of nuance and strategy to its use, and it carries a lot of power with it. Early use is better, as it is for a lot of these spells, but choosing to do it at 4,5,6,7 or even more cities is something that can really be puzzled over. I would normally do it at 6, because that is normally the point at which I pause and develop infrastructure before continuing to land grab.

The Luchuirp have a lot of early game work for a big payoff in the mid-late game.

[Selrahc]

Ick. Skellingtons.

First sign of barbarians. I predict we'll be seeing a lot more of them before the game is through.

What we are seeing is a barrows, a barbarian tile improvement that will spawn skeletons until it is destroyed. Skeletons are nothing special, with a strength of only 3 so it won't be that hard to kill the defender. A barrows is a weak lair, and is removed by exploring. Exploring can yield positive and negative results, although there is a bias towards the nastier end of the spectrum. Epic lairs like "Braedrun's Well" yield powerful results on either end, and things like dungeons offer a moderate result. Barrows are quite common and there is an incentive to destroy them, so exploring them will generally yield only weak results on either end.

Either way, that is a barbarian held tile of some strength. I'll need to get a decent expedition together to break it which ruins its potential as a second city site.

[Selrahc]

Not much happened in today's turn, so it's time for the explanation of the last my unfulfilled choices for civilizations.

The Lanun

Yarrr matey!

During the age of Ice the people who would become the Lanun took to the seas, sailing to the places least affected by the winter. They developed into pirates and traders with an unparalleled mastery over the water.

The Lanun under Hanah have the most overpowered economy in the game, as long as there is coast to ply. It sets up as fast as the Kuriotates, but has almost as much long term potential as the elves. The only grey spot for the Lanun is their relative lack of production, but even here they can be buoyed up by civics.

How does this work? Well the Lanun gain three bonuses to working water tiles. Firstly every single water tile in the Lanun empire produces 1 bonus food, making them all 3 food tiles with lighthouses. Secondly the pirates get pearls, a bonus sea resource adding massively to commerce that can only be spotted by them. Lastly they can produce pirate coves, a sea borne improvement that massively adds to the yields of water tiles. These three factors combine to make any sea site into a potential commerce monster city, particularly under financial Hanah. Adding in some of the sea based wonders(particularly the Great Lightnouse) just makes them insane. All this can be set up quickly and easily at fishing, without the long term investment required for the Elven monster cities. The land of the Lanun is used to bolster their production, with mines and lumbermills. The best solution to lack of production however is the conquest civic, which adds food surplus to the building of all units rather than just workers and settlers.

The economy then is incredible. The military on the other hand is sorely lacking. With no decent unique units for land combat(most replacements being actively worse on land) the Lanun are not well suited to military combat. The traditional solution to this is to use a combat focussed religion(particularly Octopus Overlords) to do the heavy lifting in combat. I had a different idea in mind.


Guardian Angels

The plan was to switch civilizations to the Mercurians. The angels can be summoned into the world at Fanaticism, and unlike the Demons will join forces with the civilization that summoned them in permanent alliance. I think the computer can handle a built up economy reasonably well, so it would have been a straight swap to playing the mercurians, while the Lanun teched for me. The angels are quite possibly the most powerful military civilization in the game... depending on a few factors. Whenever a unit dies and has a good religion it returns as an angel, and whenever a living unit under the control of the Mercurians dies it returns as an angel. These units retain their full experience, and can be upgraded into incredibly powerful elite angelic units. With two powerful wartime traits, a supply of units that can even come from enemies or your own casualties, and incredible elite units the Mercurians would be more than capable of handling the military side of the game.

This idea was fourth on my list for a reason however. I've only rarely played the civilization switch(twice with Hyborem, once with Basium, although the Basium one does rank second in my Hall of Fame) so I'm not entirely familiar with playing it optimally. It would have required a lot of tester game experimentation. Illians, Luchuirp and Sheaim I've played lots of times, and have a better handle on how they work. It also means relying on letting the computer handle an important role.. against capable human opponents.

Anyway, that concludes the round up of the other civilizations I considered, and I hope it was informative. I'll get back to talking about the game I'm actually playing now.

[Ilios]

So if I get this straight, you summon a new civ, take them over and your original civ becomes an AI?

[Selrahc]

Yep. But there are two and they both work somewhat differently.

The Mercurians are summoned intentionally by building a wonder. When summoned they become permanent allies with the civilization that summoned them, taking the city that built the wonder as their capital. The mercurians are forced to declare war on all civilizations that worship the Veil, and drag their summoner along with them.

The Infernals are summoned by researching a technology. This technology unlocks a lot of powerful options for the Ashen Veil religion, so they may end up as a byproduct of other ambitions. They will generally be well disposed to the summoner(and all other Ashen Veil civs), but don't form an automatic alliance.

You don't need to switch to summoned civilizations, and if you don't the AI handles them. The AI for both of them is incredibly grouchy and war minded to anyone who doesn't share their beliefs. Bit like Isabella or Justinian.

[Rowain]

Surprises me that the pirates can summon the angels. Which lawabiding Angel will align itself with a pirate.