I'm fairly new to Civ4, and very new to FfH (great mod btw). I've finished games so far as both Ljosalfar (cultural victory) and Khazad (domination victory). For me at least, the Khazad game was much easier. Khazad lagged a bit in growth, but it blew the elves out of the water in producing hammers, gold and culture.

The main issue for me was that as a dwarf the natural tech path of developing my melee units and my religion naturally guided me to the right technologies. While researching these I got along the way the economic improvements I needed (or they were very near on the tech path I was developing). For the elves I had to constantly make tough choices about developing my main cultural techs or going far a field to develop my economy. The second issues was just figuring out how everything worked... the magic system I'm still confused about.

During the games a number of questions came up that I was hoping someone could shed some light on. Also included is some balance feedback.

1. Is it a bug that Khazad starts with warriors and not dwarven warriors?

2. Having the advanced elf scout units require iron/mithril is just silly. I have no problem having them require something, but why should it be something at the end of the melee unit tree? Why not resources that are revealed along the way within the scout tree?

3. Along the same lines… is it the expectation that a civilization can specialize in just one of the main attack unit trees (mounted, melee or scout)? Or should you be required to research multiple branches? As it stands now (at least for AI play) you can easily get away with units from the melee or scout trees. Especially since you can use promotions to specialize units rather then relying on the base unit type. Plus, each tree has more then enough strong hero/national units at the end to give you the AI crushing power you need without relying on the other tree.

4. Is it right that warriors can upgrade to archers or rangers? Shouldn’t their upgrades be restricted within the melee tree?

5. The Way of the Earthmother/Arte very strongly supports the dwarf military and economy. It is similar to the Way of the Forest/Hidden Paths but has two major advantages. First, the path opens up a hero unit. Second, it pretty much guarantees the religion’s founder access to iron, a critical element if developing the natural dwarf/warrior path. The economic benefits are similar (the elf version is a bit better I think, but it requires a civic). I would suggest that the elf Hidden Path wonder also give a critical component for elves… either incense, reagents or something required for advanced scout units (not iron or mithril).

6. For dwarves, getting pyramids is just a very short skip away from their main tech path. This gives them early access to labor civics. For elves, you either have to chase pyramids and risk being out-tech’d to your religion or go very far a field to get the option to spend gold to hurry production.

7. Putting mobility 2 and woodsman 2 on an elf ranger is way, way too much. Why would you ever take a 3/3 mounted unit over the comparable 7/2 ranger? Ohh, you can invest even more in the mounted chain and get a 5/3 mounted unit… shesh. Even worse, the mounted chain doesn’t have any 7/3 units… the next step up is the 12/3 national units (and of course the 12/3 unit requires you research to the very end of the melee unit tree to get the appropriately named “lames”.

8. Why do adepts get channel 1 and get experience with time, but not prophets or disciples of leaves or thanes? The civilopedia entry seems to indicate that they can get magic promotions, but without channeling nothing happens. This is especially bad because without access to incense you get NO divine casting. On the sorcerer/summoner side you only need reagents for the channeling 3 casters. By the same measure, why are channeling 3 sorcerer/summoners so much deeper in the tech tree then high priests?

9. Just how do magic promotions work? The civilopedia indicates a stormwarden can take promotions in any element provided you have the right node… but I never see water as a promotion option (even though I can promote adapts to water). Are priest units restricted to only some nodes?

10. Could the elves get a version of bloom that can reforest improved tiles? Or give them an ability to destroy their own improvements?

11. Just what is so great about elf cottage spam? With the dwarves I followed the strategy of mining every hill and for non-hills mixings and cottages (using the minimum farms required to keep the population growing). This gave me enough food and outstanding hammers and gold. Dwarf religion and tech both improved production and gave access to buildings to further leverage production. With elves I used only the minimum number of farms to grow and cottaged everything else; as ancient forests spread I converted farms to cottages. This gave me enough food, poor production and outstanding gold. Elf religion further improved the gold, but no buildings/civics to do anything with that gold where in the elf scout/religion techs (certainly nothing like the chopping, forge, workshop, lumbermill, dwarven vault or the dwarven smithy you get in the melee tree). It wasn’t until very late in the game that I finally got the tech’s to leverage and do something with all the gold and finally make up for the lack of hammers. Just how do you make elf/cottage work in the early/mid game, especially if you have to rush for religion and pryimids and world heros while maintain current on your scout forces?

Pel

I'm fairly new to Civ4, and very new to FfH (great mod btw). I've finished games so far as both Ljosalfar (cultural victory) and Khazad (domination victory). For me at least, the Khazad game was much easier. Khazad lagged a bit in growth, but it blew the elves out of the water in producing hammers, gold and culture.

I'm surprised. Did you go for Fellowship of the Leaves with the elves, and did you notice that you can build cottages and farms on forest without cutting it down ?


The main issue for me was that as a dwarf the natural tech path of developing my melee units and my religion naturally guided me to the right technologies. While researching these I got along the way the economic improvements I needed (or they were very near on the tech path I was developing). For the elves I had to constantly make tough choices about developing my main cultural techs or going far a field to develop my economy. The second issues was just figuring out how everything worked... the magic system I'm still confused about.

During the games a number of questions came up that I was hoping someone could shed some light on. Also included is some balance feedback.

1. Is it a bug that Khazad starts with warriors and not dwarven warriors?

Not a bug exactly, but something that has not yet been done. The existing dwarven warrior is for Luchuirp, and cannot be given to Khazad because it cannot upgrade to dwarven soldier. The team is waiting for some new art to add a special warrior to Khazad.


2. Having the advanced elf scout units require iron/mithril is just silly. I have no problem having them require something, but why should it be something at the end of the melee unit tree? Why not resources that are revealed along the way within the scout tree?


I don't know about silly. Iron and mithril make good weapons, after all


3. Along the same lines… is it the expectation that a civilization can specialize in just one of the main attack unit trees (mounted, melee or scout)? Or should you be required to research multiple branches? As it stands now (at least for AI play) you can easily get away with units from the melee or scout trees. Especially since you can use promotions to specialize units rather then relying on the base unit type. Plus, each tree has more then enough strong hero/national units at the end to give you the AI crushing power you need without relying on the other tree.


Yes, I'd say that this is intended. Just keep in mind that if you overspecialize, you are vulnerable.


4. Is it right that warriors can upgrade to archers or rangers? Shouldn’t their upgrades be restricted within the melee tree?


It is right. The melee and archer trees start in the same place. And scouts can upgrade to hunters or horsemen.


5. The Way of the Earthmother/Arte very strongly supports the dwarf military and economy. It is similar to the Way of the Forest/Hidden Paths but has two major advantages. First, the path opens up a hero unit. Second, it pretty much guarantees the religion’s founder access to iron, a critical element if developing the natural dwarf/warrior path. The economic benefits are similar (the elf version is a bit better I think, but it requires a civic). I would suggest that the elf Hidden Path wonder also give a critical component for elves… either incense, reagents or something required for advanced scout units (not iron or mithril).


The leaves' hero is close by the main path (Guardianship of Nature if I remember correctly). And it opens another overpowered hero. Druids are just around the corner.
And while you may not get iron, the recon/nature branch gives you all the terraforming you can eat. From Ancient Forests to creating new forests to transforming deserts and tundra into plains and prairies.


6. For dwarves, getting pyramids is just a very short skip away from their main tech path. This gives them early access to labor civics. For elves, you either have to chase pyramids and risk being out-tech’d to your religion or go very far a field to get the option to spend gold to hurry production.


Pyramids have been taken out. They were overpowered in my opinion.


7. Putting mobility 2 and woodsman 2 on an elf ranger is way, way too much. Why would you ever take a 3/3 mounted unit over the comparable 7/2 ranger? Ohh, you can invest even more in the mounted chain and get a 5/3 mounted unit… shesh. Even worse, the mounted chain doesn’t have any 7/3 units… the next step up is the 12/3 national units (and of course the 12/3 unit requires you research to the very end of the melee unit tree to get the appropriately named “lames”.


True.


8. Why do adepts get channel 1 and get experience with time, but not prophets or disciples of leaves or thanes? The civilopedia entry seems to indicate that they can get magic promotions, but without channeling nothing happens. This is especially bad because without access to incense you get NO divine casting. On the sorcerer/summoner side you only need reagents for the channeling 3 casters. By the same measure, why are channeling 3 sorcerer/summoners so much deeper in the tech tree then high priests?


Priests do get experience with time, and channel I and II. Prophets and disciples are just not casters (yet).
By the way, depending on the religion, you need incense, reagents, or gems to build priests.


9. Just how do magic promotions work? The civilopedia indicates a stormwarden can take promotions in any element provided you have the right node… but I never see water as a promotion option (even though I can promote adapts to water). Are priest units restricted to only some nodes?


Only magic casters (adept and their upgrades) can choose their magic spheres. Divine casters are stuck with what they get (which is actually quite good) and have their own specific spells within those spheres.


10. Could the elves get a version of bloom that can reforest improved tiles? Or give them an ability to destroy their own improvements?


Elves can destroy their own improvment. On the other hand, recon units (for all civs) cannot pillage, so you need to bring in something else.


11. Just what is so great about elf cottage spam? With the dwarves I followed the strategy of mining every hill and for non-hills mixings and cottages (using the minimum farms required to keep the population growing). This gave me enough food and outstanding hammers and gold. Dwarf religion and tech both improved production and gave access to buildings to further leverage production. With elves I used only the minimum number of farms to grow and cottaged everything else; as ancient forests spread I converted farms to cottages. This gave me enough food, poor production and outstanding gold. Elf religion further improved the gold, but no buildings/civics to do anything with that gold where in the elf scout/religion techs (certainly nothing like the chopping, forge, workshop, lumbermill, dwarven vault or the dwarven smithy you get in the melee tree). It wasn’t until very late in the game that I finally got the tech’s to leverage and do something with all the gold and finally make up for the lack of hammers. Just how do you make elf/cottage work in the early/mid game, especially if you have to rush for religion and pryimids and world heros while maintain current on your scout forces?


You did notice that you can build cottages on the forests themselves ? Without chopping them ? Giving you that +1 hammer on cottages ? And they will eventually grow to Ancient Forests, for an additional +1 food ?

Ok, I covered some points. Maybe I'll edit the other ones in later.

1. It's intentional. I can't remember the reason anymore, but Kael explained it once in the bug thread I think.

3. Yes, specialisation works very well. There is no big need to research the archer line if you allready got the meele or scout techs.

4. This seems to be intentional as well. Afaik Warriors are the only meele units that can upgrade to archers. And if they lost the archer upgrade, the Luchuirp wouldn't be able to upgrade them anymore in the early game.

5. I have allways viewed those two religions as equal. Runes gives more gold so you can research at a higher rate, but it doesn't add any culture. You still have to build obelisks everywhere (Or run Case System with Pyramids, but this does only work in SP and won't work at all in 0.16). Leaves gives you free culture in every city and free food via ancient forests. On top of that leaves gives you some better defence with treants and that evil ancient-forest-movement-bug ;)

7. Well better ask Sureshot about this mounted/recon problem :D
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=184741
Kael seems to be going to chance this anyway.

10. You can pillage all improvements with units, even your own.

11. Elf cottage spam is great because ancient forsts with town provide just everything, commerce, food and some production. And why are you saying that you can do nothing with your gold playing elves? What gold? :D Just increase the research rate and convert gold into research. If you are still getting gold at 100% research go expand. And I don't think that the elves have much less production than Khazad, they can grow and expand much faster in the early game.
Not being able to chop is no issue for the elves, you do not even want to chop your forests. Workshops? You need several techs that add +1 hammer to them to make it worthwile. Ancient forests give +1 food/2 hammers right away and can have an improvement.

edit: damn, got beaten to it while writing

Welcome :)

Khazad is definately a quality civ, in case you didn't notice, their mines are also unpillageable and have increased chance of finding resources. Which means one day even if you don't have gems (the required resource for Runes Stonewardens), that one day you will.

The Elves have their benefits, cottage spamming is a good tactic, though its a risky business if you're up against actual opponents. I was a little confused about the need for metals for the higher recon units, but the lower and middle ones are quick and powerful, making them ideal offensive units and city defenders early on. Hopefully that will change :p

You picked two fun civs to play, thats for sure.

Thanks both of you for the replies. Some clairifications/details:

1. Just what are the rules for ancient forecasts? I started seeing them show up, but I couldn't get how or why it was happening. I was assuming it was just part of the game. Is it tied to the Way of the Forest? How quickly does it spread and what can you do to speed it along?

2. I knew I could build without destroying forests (at least farms and cottages... mines didn't work). So that gives ancient farms (+3/+1/+0), ancient towns (+1/+2/+4) and mines (+0/+3/+0). Thats leaving out civics and assuming no arete, sanitation or arcane lore, as they are either infidel or late game techs. Keep in mind, that as part of his normal development a dwarf will get the forges, dwarven vault and dwarven smithy... that gives him a +110% hammers (assuming he has access to copper and iron). An elf gets a butload of happyness and +1 gold from forests (I'm assuming it has to be worked). However, he doesn't get any +% multipliers to hammers or gold without teching outside of the scout/religion trees (but the dwarf can do that too for even more bonuses). Long-term the elf was fine... as I said, my main problem was that I was really suffering in the early/mid game with not enough hammers and too much gold. Note, in the end-game I found the dwarf had just has much beakers/culture/treasury as the elf. Though he wasn't making as much cash of his cottages... his hammers were so high that they converted to just as many, if not more beakers/culture/treasury.

3. Sigh, I didn't realize I could pillage my own enhancements with melee units (I was all rangers and heros). I developed as I could (favoring forests) but I assumed once I had the magic I could reforest everything. Unfortunately I had no incense on my map, so I had to wait until I could get my druids/end-scout heros to caste bloom and vitalize. At that point it was too late to make much of a difference (vitalize was great, but everything I wanted to bloom was enhanced). Knowing now how it works, if I knew I could get incense I would have avoided developing non-forecasts as much as possible, and then only built farms/mines on non-forested tiles. Then when I got the adepts and priests I could have pillaged/reforested much more effectively.

4. What is this ancient forecast bug you mention? Was I exploiting somehow?

Thanks,
Pel

If you are running leaves as state religion every forest inside your borders has a small chance to turn into an acient forest every turn. You don't get ancient forests with other religions. I don't know the exact value of this chance, but it's much bigger than the chance to find ressources in mines. You can assume that in the late game all your forests will be ancient forests when you run leaves.

And don't worry about that bug. It doesn't happen often anyway. If you have units standing on an enemies ancient forest and move more units onto that tile, sometimes some of the units that were already standing on the tile are moved away, losing all their movement points.

And your numbers for the anicent forest tiles are somewhat wrong. Ancient forest gives +1 food, so ancient forest/grassland with farm is 4/1/0 and with a town it's 3/1/4. For elves ancient forest/grassland is like flood plains with added production and more health.

When you follow the Fellowship of Leaves, your forest slowly become Ancient Forests.

As for mines, the elves cannot build them on forest at all.

Ancient forest bug : it is not big, just that sometimes when an enemy tries to move into one of your Ancient Forest (or you try to move into someone else's) you get thrown back to where you started. You certainly weren't exploiting anything :)


Regarding the larger picture, you probably cannot afford to develop only the recon path with the elves. Unless you manage to conquer everyone early. The elves have a strong economic and production advantage in the early game from being able to build cottages on forests, and a late game advantage with Guardianship of Nature that enable their cities to reach a very large size, but militarily the recon line is probably not enough by itself.

Just to add-on the magic issue. You start off by building adepts which gain experience randomly over time. When you have the required tech and the required resource you can upgrade adepts to conjurers or mages. Conjurers and mages can be upgraded too when they get enough experience (archmage and ?). These 2 magic units have access to spells that you have mana for - e.g. if you have water mana then they have access to water spells. Palaces and other buildings can give you mana as well as mana nodes (when developed by adepts or workers after getting alteration/necromancy/etc techs).

Priest units work similarly but slightly differently.

Priest units have access to divine spells (except the Ashen Veil version who also have access to sorcery spells IIRC), conjurers have access to summoning spells, and mages have access to sorcery spells.

And your numbers for the anicent forest tiles are somewhat wrong. Ancient forest gives +1 food, so ancient forest/grassland with farm is 4/1/0 and with a town it's 3/1/4. For elves ancient forest/grassland is like flood plains with added production and more health.
Floodplains add 3 food and 1 commerce from the river on top of the terrain (initial terrain is desert which gives 0 yield). Ancient Forests only add 1 food and 1 production, so floodplains are still better when you vitalize them, unless you try to substantiate health, sickness, conditional happiness, into yields.

and about mana, 1 of a type gives you the ability to learn that spell sphere, 2 of a type gives you the first spell sphere of that type for free, 3 gives you the first and second spheres for free, and 4 etc.

Well I always thought that being able to create flood plains/plains or flood plains/grassland was a bit overpowered anyway. 5/0/1 or 4/1/1 without a ressource and any improvements, that's insane. But at least your are not able to get forests on top of that.

lol imagine Flood Plains/Grassland/Ancient Forest with a Town LoL ! :P

not possible tho, forests and floodplains are features.. and knowing whats a feature and whats terrain can allow you do really screw up other peoples yields lol

I know, but just imagine it.

One thing you should remember is you have played the the #1 and #2 economic powers in FfH. IMO, both realms run "too hot" for inherent reasons. For a contrast play the Clan of embers. The barbarians will leave you alone, which really helps getting started. But your R&D suffers ... play that realm next and you'll notice the difference. :)

Thanks for all the replies. Three other quick questions (two off-topic).

1. What are the rules for forests spreading to other tiles? Is it enough of a chance for an elf to just not develop non-forest tiles?

2. Is there a way to flag units/buildings to not show up in the automated production drop down list?

3. How do you get rally points to work?

Pel

1 - I don´t know, but whenever I play Ljosalvar or Fellowship of Leaves I just dont improve tiles (you can build roads) so forests grow. FoL priests can cast Bloom, wich grows a forest, so it isn´t long until all my Empire is full of forests.

2 - Don´t know.

3 - Good question, someone answer please I need it too :P

Thanks for all the replies. Three other quick questions (two off-topic).

1. What are the rules for forests spreading to other tiles? Is it enough of a chance for an elf to just not develop non-forest tiles?

2. Is there a way to flag units/buildings to not show up in the automated production drop down list?

3. How do you get rally points to work?

Pel
1) Forest spawning is not something you want to rely on. However, when I play Ljosolfar, I will concentrate my improvements on forests (and I only build mines to get mineral resources). Once I'm left with no other forests to improve, I'll try to only build farms and go for Aristocracy (civic) until I get the ability to Bloom, then I change those farms to forest-towns.

Of course, this strategy depends heavily upon your map. Sometimes I just suck it up and build towns on clear land because, even if I destroy it later for Bloom, it's better to have my cities pulling in the extra commerce if they're big enough.

2) I wish there was, but there isn't.

3) Click on the city name bar to select the city, then hold down Shift and right-click (I think) on the rally destination.

- Niilo

Thanks again for all the replies. Based on the feedback I got I went back and replayed the map and it went much, much better this time. Key changes:

1. Seeing as I didn't have incense, I didn't persue the priesthood path until it was necessary for druids... this let me develop the scout, religion and basic economic techs much more smoothly.

2. For the early game, my priorities were basic worker techs (farms and cottages), way of the leaves/hidden forests, scouts up to assasins and adepts just far enough to cast spring. Once those were established I got more basic economic techs (pastures, plantations, mines), then drove to druids. Once I had my forest making druids, I split drove to medicine (for health) and taxation for the civic and monetary improvements. These techs matched my growth very nicely.

3. For my military, I skipped archery for the hero and rangers and just went with assassins. Assassins were much stronger offensively then either the hero or rangers with their +100 to melee. Their +100 melee allowed me to very easily clear my continent of my only rival without loosing a single attacking unit. Their weakness on city defense suited me fine... assassins with mobility 2 and woodsman 2 were more then capable of killing attacking barbarians as they came in in waves of 1-2 at a time. By the mid game I had 12 or so assassins all at level 6-9.

3. Again, the mobility 2 and woodsman 2 combo was very overpowered. perhaps it would be better if their movement bonuses didn't stack?

4. This time for worker development I cottaged every forest, used farms on floodplanes, and whatever was appropriate for resource nodes. Every other non-forest tile I left undeveloped with no real harm to my economy. Once I had the druids I was able to forest up all my territory very quickly. This worked much better then the first time.

5. I noticed that I couldn't cottage a forested hill, but I could once it became an ancient forest. Is that a bug or intended?

Thanks for all the feedback.

Pel

a cottage can only be built if theres 1 food atleast, the ancient forest adds the 1 food necessary to forested hillplains

3. Again, the mobility 2 and woodsman 2 combo was very overpowered. perhaps it would be better if their movement bonuses didn't stack?
perhaps movement 2 should give -1 terrain movement cost?

perhaps movement 2 should give -1 terrain movement cost?

Movement 2 should be generally blocked for recon line ( so that mounted are the last that can get it...)

The base movement of recon is already higher than meele, and I don't so why they should move twice as fast as the others.

Movement 2 should be generally blocked for recon line ( so that mounted are the last that can get it...)

The base movement of recon is already higher than meele, and I don't so why they should move twice as fast as the others.

Individuals can move faster than groups. The recon line is supposed to represent light military units that are able to work very well in terrain-based warfare and move quickly. Honestly i think they're supposed to represent the "guriella style warfare" that we know and love/hate. However, to make them effective their strengths have been quite high, which has had the negative consequence of making them nearly "simply" superior to standard military units. Personally id like to see recon and military units revamped to provide each their own venue of playstyle, but am clueless as to how that would work. I mean, how can you make a light military unit VERY effective in some situations and weaker in others? Considering there is no real "retreat" in the game or even "hit and run." Personally, i think recon units should have FAR smaller str numbers, but free 100% withdrawl and the ability to withdraw even if out of movement points. That would make them excellent hit and run. Conversely, Cavalry units should be positioned to replace the recon units current status as uber move-kill units.

Sample Specialties:

Melee - Standard Fare (perhaps city-attack speciality line)
Archers - Standard Defensive fare (Perhaps city-defense line)
Recon line - Guriella warfare and "feild combat" (Perhaps withdraw line)
Cavalry - Hard hitters, fast movers (Perhaps replace Recon's current useability)
Seige - City Takers (Catastrophic Collateral damage)
Magic-users - Utility belt ranging from city siege, to topography change.


Honestly, if we switched the effective ways that recon and cavalry work, but keep the same sorts of requirements, we may have solved the dilema with cav units.

-Qes

With movement, I think the main problem is that the +1 movement affect seems to be factored prior to the x2 movement in hills/forest. The result is that a +2 movement ranger in woods has an actual move now of 8. Even higher movements are possible with roads and the elf/dwarven traits. I much prefer low/movement games where having the right forces at the right place before the war begins is important. For movement I would make the following changes:

1. Base movement for mounted/flying units is 4, recon 2 and foot 1. Foot heros would be base movement 2.
2. +2 movement only available for heros, mounted or flying units.
3. The movement effect of the elf/dwarf traits, and the level 2 woodsman or guerilla traits is a -1 terrain movement modifier (you shouldn't need the religious tech to be able to use this promotion however). Only recon units should be able to get the level 2 woodsman/guerilla promotions.

For relative unit strenths and abilities I would do this:

1. Standard melee should be the base, with no bonuses or penalties against other units.

2. Mounted units have the +1 strength to their melee counterparts. Not receiving defensive or fortification adjustments more then balances out their movement bonus. They should not be able to take city raider or defensive promotions. For offense in the field, horses should be preferable.

3. Archers are good. Same strength as melee with a +25% defensive bonus.

4. Pikemen should have a -1 strength as normal melee, but only a +50% versus mounted. Should be unable to take +1 movement (they are even slower then other foot units).

5. Axe should have a -1 strength as normal melee, but a +25% bonus versus other melee units.

6. Recon should have a -1 strength, a -25% city defense, a -50% city attack, their current bonuses versus animals, and the woodsman and guerilla 1 promotions. That gives them a great defense while out in the field, but offensively they will be restricted to attacking stragglers and weak units until they get some promotions. These effects also mean that you can't rely upon rangers for city defense and sieges.

7. Assasins would have a -5 strength, a -50% city defense, a -25% city attack and a +100% hero attack.

Pel