Us being the Kurios, is the available avatar still a horseman or rather a centaur?
Unsure whether to go for horseman/centaur or archer. Mobility seems very important, but possibly you can get a lot of XP from sniping incoming barbs with arrows from a hill. Both can upgrade to a centaur archer, so there's some room for cooperation there.
Axeman feels boring and slow, but will be useful for city conquest (however, it's the killing blow that counts. A centaur doesn't need to be part of the sieging stack ).
Mage/priest will come in too late. I also haven't touched FFH in a lot of years, maybe somebody will come up with a strategy/mana pick to make an adept worthwhile? With death you can summon a skeleton at least, right? But you still need to research Magic before getting serious and then again, you're slow.
Hunter... Would be nice if somebody picks one, but it will be difficult to get the other players on the upgrade path, the upgrades are far away, and city attack malus also sounds like a problem.
Actually leaning pretty heavily towards the horseman, in particular if it's a packaged horse and man.
Do you mean Favored instead of Sinister for the free Lightbringer promotion? Sinister is only for recon units, though it could probably be forced onto a Lightbringer.
Nope, meant Sinister for the +1 attack bonus. Should be able to add it via Worldbuilder. I'm certainly open to be persuaded otherwise, but IMO the +1 move, +2 attack, and +1 defense boosts from the promos I suggested are necessary to make the Lightbringer competitive with other options.
Also, separate from the SG, would there be interest in playing the Beeri game as an Adventure? Been ages since we ran one for FFH, and I don't mind whipping up a scenario, if anyone wants a SP challenge.
(May 24th, 2020, 14:22)Bobchillingworth Wrote: Ah, I rather enjoy chaos in these games, and would prefer to avoid delaying sets to discuss techs, so having a confused and contested tech path for our competitive SG seems a more a feature than bug.
My concern with a lower difficulty is that I'd prefer the game not turn into another comp stomp romp; therefore, my vote is that we stick with Deity OCC AW, and have already-upgraded T2 units to compensate.
* Large map with medium or high seas. Pangaea. Note- looking for a lurker volunteer to generate!
* Restricted Leaders; The Sinister Six will be Cardith of the Kuriotates, for Adaptive trait shenanigans, while the allied hapless AI tech mule "Peaceful Villagers" are led by Einon of the Elohim.
* Orthus is OFF
* Acheron is ON
* All Unique Features enabled
* If a player has two or more player Avatars in a stack which is about engage in battle, and one of the Avatars is that player's own representative unit, they must always make the first, lowest-odds attack with their personal Avatar (sending in other fodder units before any of the six fight is fine)
Chaos is good . I'm just not sure how hard OCC Deity (with team civ) actually is in EitB. I would point out that T2 units (S4-6ish?) against baseline enemy (S3, up to S5 quite quickly on Deity/Normal?) is a smaller advantage than the S8 v S2-3 in the BTS game, although heroic promos should help with that. EDIT: of course, while winning should be possible, it's not actually the point of the game here ...
While bigger maps give more flavour - and that Acheron and All Unique features work better - they can also be a slog. Why large rather than standard?
Anything other than Ljos makes the archer choice particularly challenging, but yeah, that's up to the players and the advantages / fun of the Kurios probably outweighs anything else.
EDIT: Oh, and I think that the ErebusContinent map script with high cohesion might be an option if we care about flavoured starts for the other civs. I'm not sure that we do
Why no Orthus? I'd have thought that hoping for him to show up nearby would be good in this variant.
I'd also suggest that if we have any mage avatars, we allow the first, "free" promotion at each tier to be defined by the avatar owner, so that at least they get some control over which spells they get ... it's just too fundamental a part of the build, and I suspect that being denied any choice about it would reduce the fun factor for the player.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Settings, setup and scoring sounds good to me. Also my name has r in the middle .
Is it allowed to throw someone else's Avatar to almost certain death? For example moving an adept too quickly into wilderness...I can certainly think of other situations as well.
(May 25th, 2020, 05:47)Aurorarcher Wrote: Settings, setup and scoring sounds good to me. Also my name has r in the middle .
Is it allowed to throw someone else's Avatar to almost certain death? For example moving an adept too quickly into wilderness...I can certainly think of other situations as well.
You lose 20% of your score if you kill off somebody else's avatar.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
(May 25th, 2020, 05:30)shallow_thought Wrote: Why large rather than standard?
Copy-pasted that setting over from the BTS game, where it worked well- AIs were far enough apart that they couldn't keep the team perpetually stuck playing defense, but also couldn't all be eliminated in short order if our units proved initially unstoppable against them.
(May 25th, 2020, 05:30)shallow_thought Wrote: Anything other than Ljos makes the archer choice particularly challenging, but yeah, that's up to the players and the advantages / fun of the Kurios probably outweighs anything else.
Archer will start with the Ljo +1 attack bonus; won't have the same T4 promotion options, but the Flurry isn't a massive upgrade anyway, if we even tech that far.
(May 25th, 2020, 05:30)shallow_thought Wrote: Why no Orthus? I'd have thought that hoping for him to show up nearby would be good in this variant.
I'm concerned that his Axe will be too unbalanced, and would prefer the game not devolve into antics over which Avatar possesses it. Other equipment is either significantly less powerful or arrives late enough that I'm less concerned about the impact on the competition.
(May 25th, 2020, 05:30)shallow_thought Wrote: I'd also suggest that if we have any mage avatars, we allow the first, "free" promotion at each tier to be defined by the avatar owner, so that at least they get some control over which spells they get ... it's just too fundamental a part of the build, and I suspect that being denied any choice about it would reduce the fun factor for the player.
I'm okay with adding this to the rules if no one objects.
(May 25th, 2020, 05:47)Aurorarcher Wrote: Also my name has r in the middle .
My brain keeps reading it as "Aurora Archer". Too confusing!
(May 25th, 2020, 05:47)Aurorarcher Wrote: Is it allowed to throw someone else's Avatar to almost certain death? For example moving an adept too quickly into wilderness...I can certainly think of other situations as well.
Yes.
Also, updated the scoring with a large penalty for anyone who gets us or our AI buddy eliminated, just to add some incentive to take things a little seriously if we're on the verge of losing.
). 
. I'm just not sure how hard OCC Deity (with team civ) actually is in EitB. I would point out that T2 units (S4-6ish?) against baseline enemy (S3, up to S5 quite quickly on Deity/Normal?) is a smaller advantage than the S8 v S2-3 in the BTS game, although heroic promos should help with that. EDIT: of course, while winning should be possible, it's not actually the point of the game here ...
. 