Winter Wonderland: Selrahc's FFH 2 thread

[Selrahc]

The barbarian unaccountably did not suicide on my warriors. Odd. He is running around being mildly irritating, and making me reassign tiles. Can't take him out though because of all the forests, and because he is across a river.

Meanwhile my exploring bloodpet has found a decent place to settle with a wet corn, plains hill plant, river and incense. I'll put up my choices for second city when my settler gets a little closer to completion.

Need to think of a good wintery name too...

[Ilios]

How many turns are needed to research Philo currently? Will you be switching to the civic that increases GP production by 50% (can't remember the name) and run a Scientist?

[Selrahc]

Haven't got mysticism yet so I'm not entirely sure. It'll start out with a ridiculous number of turns to research, probably over 60. That will drop rapidly as I get the second city and the elder councils up and running. I could maybe have finished mysticism now if I'd run for maximum GNP, but that would have drastically hampered growth.

And yes, I'll be switching to pacifism. Going to do a double switch as soon as mysticism comes in, in which I'll have a look at the other civic choices as well.

[Selrahc]

Mysticism is due in next turn and the current ETA on philosophy is 27 turns. I'm hoping to bring that down to around 19-20 turns. What was I thinking when I said 60? No idea. It isn't even that much on normal speed.

[BobRoberts]

FFH time warp effect?

Thanks for the reporting!

Was wondering what your worker plans were?

[Selrahc]

At the moment I don't have any workers. Eventually I plan to build some.

The way I'm going up the tech tree would leave them with very little to do for quite a while. The plan is that once I've gotten philosophy I'll grab the worker technology. Hopefully elder councils, an early academy and sage(scientist) specialists will mean I'm not too far behind in research power.

I'm thinking of going for agriculture first, followed by crafting and mining then it gets a bit undefined. Education, Animal Husbandry and Calendar all have reasons to take them. Calendar will help shore up expenses on plantations, unlock the agrarian civic and give a little happiness. Animal husbandry will let me connect up the cow and any other animals, and maybe reveal horses. Education will let me make some cottages to power up the economy. Of course I do have the oddball fourth option of researching way of the wicked to unlock slavery, which would make the early game play a lot more like a standard game of CIV. Difficult choice to make, and it will depend heavily on where I choose to settle my second city.

[Selrahc]

Who needs to learn to farm, fish or fight when you have a vague sense of spirituality?

Mysticism is a key early game technology for many reasons. It unlocks a powerful early game civic(which we'll get onto in a second).
It also allows you to build elder councils. Elder councils are one of the buildings that you'll want in every single town. They're a dirt cheap building which adds 2 research points. Every city in the game wants to have a Market(+2 gold, -1 research) and Elder Council. They're basically this games granaries as far as necessary city improvements go. [Granaries on the other hand are pretty weak, storing only 20% food and with no real easy access to slavery.]

They also give access to pagan temples, which let you run early priest specialists and give happiness when in the religion civic. Not nearly so vital. The Illians replace this with the Temple of the Hand. This is the building that makes their trademark ice fields. Building one is an irreversible decision so shouldn't be entered into without due consideration. I won't be building one just yet.

The other big bonus of Mysticism is that it is the gateway technology to unlock research on the 3 early religions. Anyone looking to quickly found Octopus Overlords, Fellowship of Leaves or Runes of Kilmorph will need to prioritize mysticism.


Would Super-God-King be taking things too far?

I did a double civics swap this turn. From Nationhood to Pacifism and from Despotism to God King.

In FFH there is a choice of 3 civics in the cultural values column from the beginning. Nationhood adds to military production and decreases war weariness. It is the default civic for the Illians. Pacifism decreases military production and increases war weariness but also gives a 50% boost to Great Person production. Since I want to generate a great sage ASAP this is my current choice. The last early choice is religion. This can generate a *lot* of happiness... for the non agnostic civilizations. It's based around temples and state religion, I can only build one temple and can adopt no state religion so I won't be using this civic. Normally Religion is a good choice for a long long time, but Nationhood and Pacifism offer such marginal bonuses that they'll be replaced as soon as you have access to later civics.

God King is our only current choice in the government column besides the default despotism. Despotism isn't quite useless; it comes with a -50% war weariness bonus. Best to switch out of it as soon as possible though as it has a hefty penalty to maintenance based on number of cities. God King is the standard early game civic. It adds a nice bonus to the capital, but it gives a maintenance penalty based on distance from capital. It can power up your early game but can't be sustained long term. In the near future the two long term civic choices in this category will be opened up. Aristocracy gives a minor reduction in maintenance costs but the real bonus is that it turns farms into commerce generating improvements at the cost of food production. Combined with Agrarianism which adds bonus food production from farms and the farm becomes godly. The other choice is City States, which reduces maintenance costs by a hell of a lot. This comes at the penalty of reduced culture, increased chance to flip away from your civilization and increased war weariness. Despite the negatives the economic benefit of this civic is pretty immense. I'll probably be running with city states rather than aristograrianism but it's another tough early game choice for the Illians. The other civilizations have an easier decision. The Financial Hippus and Dwarves should run aristograrianism, the Forest based elves should run city states with cottages, the Kuriotates should stick with God King and the food centric vampires should go with Aristograrianism.


In other news

Coinflip battle against a Lizardman is coming up. They're strength 4, but with the various bonuses on the bloodpet it should be close. Lizardmen take a penalty in attacking cities, so they probably won't destroy your civilization. They definitely pose a danger to your units though.

It also means there is a definitely a ruin somewhere nearby. It spits out Lizardmen until I send an army to go shut it down. Kind of like the barrow.

[Ilios]

What's the plan for the Great Savant? I wouldn't think you'd use him to bulb Knowledge of the Ether. Settle or Academy?

[Selrahc]

Academy. Getting Knowledge of the Ether so early isn't really necessary. A settled sage would be good for getting early technology but would become irrelevant in the long term. An academy helps me with the early stuff but will be better in the long term.

[Selrahc]

Alright I've been putting this off in favour of just getting on with everybody, but if I haven't killed/crippled one of my neighbours in the first hundred turns then I am playing the wrong civilization. Continuing without having decided is a bad idea. Down that road lies the madness of mercy, the craziness of clemency and the lunancy of leniency. Also the thesaurus of alliteration.

So. I've got to pick now, or at least soon. Two contestants. One will be spared and hopefully befriended. The other will be ruthlessly executed by a trio of mace wielding ice thugs and their translucent minions. There are a number of factors that contribute to this choice. Long term and short term. Then there is the whole issue of diplomacy and friendship. Feh.

Short term factors determine whether my fanatic friends will fight to a flawless victory. My little winter priests are my *only* source of units with medic promotions. Medic units don't just help the stack heal faster, they also cure the variety of crippling illnesses that my units can be inflicted with. This means priests never go out of fashion, and losing any of them will have long term military repercussions.

Fortunately for me these two civs should be relatively susceptible to my wintry charmers. As I've discussed earlier the Hippus or Khazad could *really* put a crimp in my fiendish plan. But just because there aren't serious roadblocks doesn't mean there are no roadblocks.

The Kuriotates have the world spell legends. This isn't too powerful as worldspells go. It adds 450 culture to all cities. Great for a landgrab, and to culturally secure borders for a long time. Of course the other thing it does is stand up a decent cultural defence for a city. That would certainly make things more difficult.

The Svartalfar on the other hand are elves. This is more than just fluff. Every svartalfar unit gains the elf promotion, which allows double movement through forested squares and gives bonuses to forest combat. Nasty.

On the other hand the Svartalfar early game is normally dominated by scouts. They have an offensive bonus which makes them as good on the attack as warriors but twice as fast. When I play the elves I never build a single warrior all game. The thing is my minions and their ice elemental bodyguards will be too powerful to usefully attack. And scouts are awful on the defence. If Sareln makes the standard Svartalfar play he will be slightly easier to attack. However it will also heavily lessen the impact of my slow spell which can be a major factor in avoiding casualties among the priests.


Long term factors determine how much of a threat the civilizations will be to me later. How well they can handle my tricks and how likely they are to play nice, trapped in the shadow of the lord of ice. Frankly though both sides vex me greatly. The tricks they have work well against some of my key advantages, or emphazise my disadvantages. Let's start with Kuriotates.

From the very early map analysis I'd say the Kuriotates are in the far west of the continent. I've had no word that they've found anyone west of them, whereas I hear reports of dwarves beyond the elves. For most factions this would put a lot of pressure on our relationship if I controlled the land to their east and there were no other choices. The dragon cultists are a little different though. They only need a little land for economic reasons. The rest is all for tactical control and resources, which seems a lot easier to deal with diplomatically.

On the other hand the fact that they don't need the land neatly pulls the teeth from my greatest deterrent against invasion. Most foes would be loath to invade a foe sitting on endless worthless ice fields. The Kuriotates though couldn't give a hoot. The ice fields are just going to be used by insignificant colonies.

On the plus side though, there won't be the same border tensions. Most races would hate to have my cities on their borders due to the encroaching ice. Kuriotates wouldn't care. I hate having borders with most civs since the Illians find it impossible to win a real cultural border war due to lack of religion. I think even the Illians can beat a colony.

The Svarts pose a different problem. It can be summed up in the word "Raiders". I'm planning on running an economy based off cottages and that is bait to a raider civ. The ice fields mean they won't want the land, so will have no qualms wrecking it. The ice fields also mean that it takes me substantially longer to replace pillaged improvements. The raiders trait is horrific. Of course the Kuriotates can pull the same tricks via the adaptive trait, but since they could also just conquer my land they have less reason to do so.

Both civilizations are fast fast fast. Centaurs are the backbone of the Kuriotates and are movement 3 with the potential to cast sprint for bonus movement. The Svartalfar are only movement 2 but the commando trait makes up for some of that. Either way the slow spell is made a lot worse. All the more reason to get to blinding light and charm person quickly.

Controlling Frigus is a long term priority, and that sits in the direction of the Svartalfar. I'm going to need to settle in that direction and it might be possible to keep the enemy capital if I attack in that direction.


Diplomatic concerns are the final factor. We're still in the nascent stages of the game and neither side has really given me more than a glimmer of how future relations will turn out. However at the moment Pocketbeetle is the clear winner diplomatically. He's talked more, been slightly friendlier and seems to have some tensions with Sareln meaning he may be easier to bring on side. Also, and I do consider this fairly important, PB didn't break my fricking Frigus bonus to escape a lion

Alliances can have some real impacts on this game despite the lack of tech trading and the inability to gift units. Being a magical mercenary is a real possibility as a number of spells can be cast on allied units(or lands). Trading mana nodes adds a new dimension to resource trading. There are also wonders that can be moved from city to city. Priests can build temples of their religions. I think the potential is there for a meaningful alliance of give and take even in a non-tech trading game.


At the moment my inclination is to invade Sareln. But I'll do some more thinking. Still got some time to decide in. Once I have decided though I'll have a really clear short term diplomatic and military goal.


[I'll probably come along with some semi relevant pictures later to break up this wall of text]