Kael has asked me to update the civ strategy tags from my old Manual thread into 0.16. I'll do my best with it, but as I'm just one person and don't actually get to play FfH very often, I thought I'd ask you folks to suggest your best civ-specific tips for the best coverage. Do Bannor have a neat synergy with the Ashen Veil? What is the best way of playing the Malakim? Have you just the sneakiest strategy ever for abusing the Kuriotate Settlements? Post it all here, and I'll pick the best parts for inclusion into the "Dawn of Man" strategy texts.

Well for Bannor, I find an early grab of Runes then Bronzeworking then Festivals can get you the money to maintain a decent sized army (Guardsmen, their Unique Unit for Axemen, will help lower city maintenance costs as well) and large empire, not dependent on peaceful relations. Once the empire is solidified you can usually pump out commerce enough to do a quick founding of the Order. Another good method is to get mysticism followed by education, and if you're lucky you can be the first to get writing and grab philosophy or code of laws with the free tech, and then work your way to an early founding of the Order.

The Khazad are a slow growing civ, you want to make certain that your gold reserves are able to take another city without your vaults being empty. As such they are a good choice for a turtle style of game play. Make a beeline to Way of the Earthmother for Runes, education for the cottages, festivals for markets. After you have your money making trinity up and running you should be able to be running at 90-100% science and still be making at least a little profit. Always be making a profit

The key to success with the Khazad is your vaults, overflowing vaults will give you +25% Great People, +3 Happy, and +40% Hammers per city while empty vaults will give you -2 Happy per city. The formula for your vaults is amount of gold divided by the number of cities. (thank you FFH wikipedia)

* 000-049 Gold in treasury per city: Dwarven Vault (Empty): -2 Happy
* 050-099 Gold in treasury per city: Dwarven Vault (Low): -1 Happy
* 100-149 Gold in treasury per city: Dwarven Vault: No effect
* 150-199 Gold in treasury per city: Dwarven Vault (Stocked): +1 Happy
* 200-299 Gold in treasury per city: Dwarven Vault (Abundant): +10% Hammers, +2 Happy
* 300-499 Gold in treasury per city: Dwarven Vault (Full): +25% Hammers, +2 Happy
* 500 or more Gold in treasury per city: Dwarven Vault (Overflowing): +25% Great People, +3 Happy, +40% Hammers

This has the downside of making the Khazad player naturally unwilling to spend gold to hurry production in a city, since rushing in one city can mean a loss of production in _all_ cities. To conteract this you have to have a pretty good idea of how much money you can spend without lowering your vault level.

Your biggest advantage is production. Your cities can get a bonus of up to 115% production with overflowing vaults, a machine shop, and a dwarven smithy with iron, copper, and mithril. If your opponents make the mistake of letting you get past your somewhat weak opening game then you will be able to crush them in the mid to late game with the amount of troops that you can pump out.

Your biggest weaknesses are magic and the lack of the archery line for cheap city defense.

I believe I left a short paragraph in the wiki under the Malakim. Will that be satisfactory, or should I expand it?

I just started trying to play the Khazad -- boy it is hard to expand with them! Interesting challenge. How about this for the Calabim (expanding on what you had):

Calabim:

You won’t get vampire units until the midgame. With Code of Laws you can build Governor’s Manors and then, with Feudalism, you can build vampires in cities that have Governor’s Manors. Nonetheless, some special abilities give the Calabim a strong start. You can build a breading pit to help your cities grow quickly. You capital also starts with a Vampire Governor, which gives you a boost in your capital from the very beginning.

Vampires can feed on your population to gain experience or on other units in order to heal. So you may want to set up some cities that grow extremely quickly (or would, if you weren’t eating them just as quickly). Since you are creating large populations anyway, this Civ works well with the Octopus Overlords and Ashen Veil, since these religions allow you to sacrifice population to finish production.

Vampires also have access to body and death magic, so you should try to create a death node as quickly as possible (your palace starts with body mana but not death).

Worth to mention on Calabim is also about the Moroi.
The Moroi replaces Axemen, and have the same stats but come with a self-cast version of Burning Blood. Moroi can alos be granted Vampirism at level 4, instead of level 6 that most units have to have to be granted Vampirism. So it can be a good strategy to mass produce Moroi, while having a fewer amount of well experienced Vampires to lead the pack. Grant Vampirism to all level 4+ Moroi.
A unit with Vampirism can eat other units for health, it can feast on population for experience, and it gets +10% Strenght and +x% extra heal in all territories.

Vampires also have access to body and death magic, so you should try to create a death node as quickly as possible (your palace starts with body mana but not death).
I'm pretty sure that the vampire's spells don't depends on your mana, so you should build other nodes for your mages, you'll get death for free.

Doviello:

The Doviello don't get many buildings, and are poor tech racers. Therefore, the best strategy is to keep your opponents weak right from the beginning - you should ignore religions and head for Bronze Working, only filling in low cost builder techs as necessary to keep your cities growing. You should also look for opportunities to take weakly held enemy cities while still in the very early game, either to raze (usually) or to add to your empire (if they are in very good locations that are easy to defend).

Generally, I will create a small core of high-production cities and then develop them, rather than expanding. I will try to found Pact of the Nilhorn so that I can get the Giants, to use as siege machines. Other than that, I'll only create Markets and Courthouses - everything is subordinated to military production.

The idea is, let your opponents do the hard work of founding cities, religions and the like - you will take what you need over the corpses of their troops. You need no fancy Civics - go cheap cheap cheap as otherwise maintenance costs will cripple you. You need no Adepts or Priests. What you need is melee units, and plenty of them.

Once I have Bronze Working I will have one of two choices:

If I have Copper in my borders, hook it up and start cranking out Doviello Axemen in every city. (Because you do not need a Training Yard to create them, all your cities can join in the fun right away).

If I don't have Copper, I need to get it as expediently as possible. I start building hordes of whatever my best unit might be (usually Hunters) and take it.

After Copper is hooked up, almost constant warfare is the theme. I attack the most powerful enemy civ first, and use units up almost constantly - your economy is weak, so it is better to fling your units into the fray, rather than nurse them up to high level. Dead units cost no maintenance :) I will attack at low odds, if I am reasonably certain my second attacker will finish off the enemy - not to say you should be reckless, but your first concern should be killing the enemy, not protecting your own.

Once you have taken 1 city from your enemy, decide if you want to raze it or keep it (usually raze). I generally raze about 2-3 cities for each one I keep - there is a great danger in over-extending yourself, so you want to grow slowly, and keep your opponents growing even slower.

You want to head to Trade now so that you can demand techs from your defeated foes. As soon as one war is done, start another with the next strongest opponent. Don't let the AI sit and build its military strength - you want to have it so that even if 2 or 3 of them gang up on you, they do not have the offensive forces to threaten you with defeat. Once some of your units have survived a few battles and gotten powerful, set up a strong reserve near the centre of your kingdom that you can use to kill pillagers - promote these units up a few levels, then rotate them out and use them as mop-up troops behind your hordes of fodder.

Sometimes there will be a weak Evil civ you can induce to assist you in your wars - do so, but don't neglect the opportunity to stab them in the back if they have something you need, or if you're just feeling frisky. Make sure to demand tribute whenever you can - check every 10 turns or so to see what the other civs will give you.

By the early mid-game you should have an empire at least twice as big (more likely triple the size) as your nearest opponent. By demanding techs, you should be still in the middle of the pack as far as science goes. Now head to Iron Working, and use your Battlemasters to conquer everyone - just keep pushing them out and out and out, always attacking, isolating one opponent at a time if you can. Get siege weapons and build the War Machine last, and use it to finish off whoever is still alive, although by this time you are usually so far ahead you can afford just to overwhelm people with stacks of veteran killers.

The key is that you must never stop warring - if you are at peace for more than the 4 to 6 turns it takes to redeploy your armies for another offensive, you are not being aggressive enough. You want to win by domination by no later than the late middle game, before your rivals completely outstrip you technologically.

In summary, play them as the barbarians they are, and you will be rewarded. If you don't, you will be marginalized and beaten.

There is some great information here. But Xuenay as you go through it look for general strengths/weaknesses and new features that you can mention at about a paragraph length. Anything more specific is pushing the the players to play a certain way, which defeats the point.

Well for Bannor, I find an early grab of Runes then Bronzeworking then Festivals can get you the money to maintain a decent sized army (Guardsmen, their Unique Unit for Axemen, will help lower city maintenance costs as well) and large empire, not dependent on peaceful relations. Once the empire is solidified you can usually pump out commerce enough to do a quick founding of the Order. Another good method is to get mysticism followed by education, and if you're lucky you can be the first to get writing and grab philosophy or code of laws with the free tech, and then work your way to an early founding of the Order.

That sounds like pretty general advice, not all that specific to Bannor.

I believe I left a short paragraph in the wiki under the Malakim. Will that be satisfactory, or should I expand it?

An update to 0.16 would be good, at least.

general is a good way to be so you dont try to tell people how to play and take the fun out of it.

but those tactics are especially good for bannor, since they lack creative and need many cities for land grabs.. but whatever

I'll save the update for when .016 comes out.

Amurites:

1. Easy spell lv3 = Druid + Govannon.
Teach your druid death, body or chaos then upgrade it to lv 3.
2. Easy combat5 movement3 lv3 summon = Druid + wizard/conjurer + cave of ancestor.
Create Combat5 + SpellExtensionII using wizard/conjurer + cave of ancestor, then graft flesh with Druid.
3. Easy combat5 SpellExtensionII wizard/conjurer = wizard/conjurer + cave of ancestor.
Create Combat5 + spell you like using wizard/conjurer + cave of ancestor, promote another SpellExtensionII + MovementI + spell you like using wizard/conjurer + cave of ancestor, then graft flesh them.
4. Deathbow = Firebow + Govannon.
Teach your Firebow death then learn deathII

Thanks to everyone who suggested strategies, I incorporated some of the stuff into the new strategy tags. A lot went unused since I needed to fit into a short space and couldn't be too specific. But advice from this thread did go in there. :)

Well, i play on a low difficulty(chieftain(im a noooob))And with elfs but i think every one cand do my stategy, in the beginnning i have problems whith orthus and i go for writing, BUT do not dicover it, then i go for runes, when getted runes, i go for writing and use the free tech for arete and create bambur, the orthus slayer

Well, its a good strategy but you won´t be able to do it on Prince+, you will miss or writing or the runes tech if you do this.

On even a medium diffculty if you dont make a beeline for Writing AND get a few free techs along that line from goody huts, it's likely that writing will get discovered by someone other than yourself.

At least thats how it is with Marathon speed.

I play with normal...but marathon snt bad, you earn A bit in it, the units got the same move, anarchy is thesame and so on

Ya I always miss writting, and need to go STRAIGH for a religion or ill miss it too...

Edit: I play on normal

Vampires also have access to body and death magic, so you should try to create a death node as quickly as possible (your palace starts with body mana but not death).
You may want a death node, but it won't help your vampires; they start with Body I, Death II, Channeling I, Channeling II, and Sorcery regardless of your resources. The primary reason to get your first death mana is to allow your arcane units (http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/FfH_Arcane_Units_%28Unit_Category%29) to gain Death I. Also note that Body II does not have the resource restriction that Body I has; Body II only requires (Sorcery or Octopus Overlords or Runes of Kilmorph) and Body I and Channeling II.

This means that your Vampires are just as effective of spellcasters without mana as with mana.

a fine idea with the , i think its evryone is building a life node, whatever you do, build a life node and in late when you have arcmages you can do the spell that awaken a hero and destroy the node, then you can just build another one with a good hero!

Tested yesterday night : the FfH2 Sirian Doctrine :D

1/ get OO a start building Drowns
2/ get Bronze and secure copper
3/ tech to Sailing
4/ build something like 2-4 Triremes


The strategy bascically consists in loading triremes with Drowns (the +1 cargo -1 str crew settings help) to invade coastal cities from the seas. The triremes can bombard in relative security from the seas, and Drowns can attack amphibiously cities that have 0% defense. After the attack, the Drowns can get back into the ships and heal while the ships transport them to the next city. This is quite safer (less city defense) and faster (healing while moving, ships move faster than Drowns even in ennemy cultural borders) than classical land-based invasions. It can also be played fast if you're lucky enough to have copper in you land (I hadn't in my current game, I had to invade the Armurites first which delayed the thing a bit), mainly because sailing is on the same path as OO so after founding/getting OO and Bronze you really are one tech away from triremes, and because Drowns and Triremes don't require any building to be built first in cities so they can be mass-produced right away (Drowns may require OO to have spread in the city though, I'm not sure).


It gets better when :
- playing Lanun (+1 move for all ships)
- adding a disciple unit in one of the ships for faster healing rate
- protecting the triremes with +1str crew'd & combat promoted ships in case of water-based retailation
- teching to warfare for the city raider promotion line

Heres one for grigori:
Make much adventurers but make sure youll save at least one!
When doing it go directly on adept, mage and archmage stage (elven first if not having mana aviable!(And elementalism))

Go for adept, builld mage guild and upgrade an adventurer to hero adept when aviable build nature node and upgrade him whith nature one.
Upgrade him whith a lot til lvl 5 and go to a citie and upgrade to mage if aivaible, go for nature 2 and other til lvl 8, then build archmaged when aivable.

Upgrade him whith nature three and go vitalize the land so theres grassland evryvere.

That shall improve much in economy when having ice turned to grassland!

All from gandhi rules, signing off XD

Can't you just build a druid?

Whatever, here i came whith a long posting i beenn working´on for ages and gamestation cames and say "why dont you build a druid"

But still, smart idea
But still you not only can make vitilize with a lvl 10 archmage...

Yeah you could also have him buff your other adventurers as if they were a party in an RPG, that's true, or throw six meteors a turn.

Any thought on how the play with clan of embers effectively?

I tried it last weekend and got beaten badly, twice. The ability to be at peace with barbarian was really useful but the tech penalty was killing me. I think that the basic idea is trying to go on the offensive as soon as possible but doing so with warrior is almost impossible. A city on a hill with a fortified warrior is very hard to conquer with warriors.

In terms of tech choice in order to play offensively
1) go for agriculture, animal husbandry then horseback riding: you can build worg rider (60 shield). Advantage: don't need to build a building or control a horse ressource. Disadvantage: not such a great unit.
2) go for crafting, mining, bronze working: you can build orc axeman (60 shield) and rantine (orc hero). Need bronze and training yard and it is an expensive tech path
3) go for ancient chants then education (agriculture required) in order to get the +2XP apprenticeship civic. however, this path doesn't open up new units, it improves the current type you can build (probably warrior).

Lastly, doing anything of the above will definitely slow you down you terms of empire expansion (new cities and harvesting ressources) and you cannot conquer new cities.

thoughts anyone?

Warriors, Warriors, Warriors and more Warriors... If you are fast enough its not so hard to go to war with warriors, and Clan of Embers have reduced unit costs... But you need to be fast or you will fall behind.

clan of embers .....

1 - settler rush , you dont really have to defend much since barbs wont attack you.
2 - rush for knowledge of ether
3 - build witchdoctors like there is nothing else
4 - research necromancy
5 - build barrows in each and every spare tile you can.
6 - get summoning for conjurors and nightmares
7 - follow with soul debt and such to get real summoners
8 - at each and every step that you can trade away your summoning techs
9 - watch your points close ... if you get over 50% higher then top player your screwed.
10 - research ashen veil as soon as you feel comfortable
11 - get theology for T4 upgrade to ritualists (this gives hellfire)
12 - sit back and defend .... and watch armegeddon happen to your enemies

mu ha haha ha

The one time I played Clan of Embers I couldn't help but concentrate on pumping out goblin scouts to search out those wolves. Eventually, I had about 5 worg riders running around while everyone was still stuck with warriors. With these uber troops I took out a couple of civs that looked at me funny (or had something I wanted, like dwarven workers). Between me and the raging barbs, 7 of the 18 civs were knocked out in the first 200 turns (marathon) and I had an awful lot of empty space around me for expansion.

What I really like about being aggressive this early in the game, especially with movement 3+ troops, is that I can steal all the workers I need. I typically take a long time to build my first worker due to other priorities or the raging barbs.

- Niilo

Amurites (Velledia) (sp?) + Overlords.

Get those archmages fast, and Flesh Glolem them. Lets you build any number of Sorcery III units. The Cave of Ancestors is the critical point to getting the levels up fast!

(You can obviously do the same trick with any spell unit, but the slow level-ups tend to be quite restrictive)

Additionally, I find the early military boost from the Drown etc helps make up for the Amurites being fairly weak early on.

Sorry to ask this, but since I haven't really been able to play the game for all the magics, could you explain more in detail your strategy? I think I remember Flesh Golem being a spell, but I don't know what it does. Nor have I ever played as Amurites, so the Cave of Ancestors is greek to me.

As far as Embers go, the afor mentioned strategy of finding wolves is good, but I always try to mop up all the huts I can with them. It can give you a great early tech lead. I try to find a starting local with a 3 hammer hill and build about 4-6 goblins and 3-4 warriors. The goblins go hutting while the warriors take on early animals to gain experience (don't delare on the barbs though). I also only play on ultra-huge maps so this may not work as well on smaller maps.

Sorry to ask this, but since I haven't really been able to play the game for all the magics, could you explain more in detail your strategy? I think I remember Flesh Golem being a spell, but I don't know what it does. Nor have I ever played as Amurites, so the Cave of Ancestors is greek to me.

Should have been clearer!


Cave of Ancestors is an Amurite thing that gets your Adepts some immediate xps based on the mana you have : it's not uncommon to be able to get an adept up to the next level as soon as he's built.

A Flesh golem is made by a spell (Overlords or Runes Divine III); it merges two units into one, averages the strength, but keeps the promotions of both. So if you use a spell caster as one of the sources, the golem can cast spells.

Use an archmage, the Golem keeps the archmage spells, and you can build another archmage!

Not totally Civ specific, but the Cave makes it work especially well for the Amurites as their "time to build" for an archmage can be a lot lower.

The Khazad are a slow growing civ, you want to make certain that your gold reserves are able to take another city without your vaults being empty.

I actually think this is backwards. Khazad need to go for an early and rapid expansion. You start with lousy levels in the vaults anyway, so expanding early doesn't lose anything. If you wait to build up gold, each of those first few cities really slash your per-city ratio in the vault. You immediately lose a large portion of the advantage you spent so long building. Land builds economy, both in terms of raw commerce production and the necessary resources for happy/healthy. It's imperative to grab it early.

Happiness is an issue with empty vaults, so you'll quickly hit pop caps and switch to creating Settlers and Workers (stopping pop growth is no penalty). With a Market/Merchant specialist economy it's possible to get to 3-5 cities with decent cash flow. At that point you should have a good supply of resources, cottageable land, and workers to set it all up. Great Merchants will be on the way for more income (and food in your GP farm). Then you can settle in and fill the vaults.

I'd like to see short histories of the civ in the DoM text. I think the rest should just explain the civ's unique units and abilities. I find that any suggestions about strategy (such as the Ljos former text) is limiting.

I agree with the Clan of Embers goblins to worg riders strategy, unfortunately, they don't seem to do that in .25 anymore. Hopefully it will come back in Shadows...

If your vaults are stopping you from expanding, build Pact of the Nilhorn. It's not too bad once you have mining. Use those giants to attack some unfortunate neighbour's capital. Make sure it's a capital though, because those giants are kamikaze troops, softening up defenders so your warriors can move in for the kill. Think of it as an early bonus like the stonehenge, building it rather than worker --> settler. And yeah, shoot for that great merchant asap.

I tried Clan of Embers, but the unfortunatey thing is that it's too successful. So successful, in fact, that I soon keep a lot of very good cities, a couple dead neighbours, and then I became too advanced before my cottages even mature or I have code of laws. Then my economy plummets while the barbarians start attacking me.

The Amurite flesh golems trick... it's tricky to manage and slow, but pretty powerful. True to their flavour perhaps - they're more builderish than warmongering despite their magical might, unlike the Bannor.

I do have a question playing as Ljosalfar - does anyone have a good build order that can ensure I can get mages casting fireballs as quickly as possible? I could adopt the order and use ring of fire, or use OO and drowns combined with economic advantage of being able to build forested cottages, but it really doesn't make up for the fireball's ability to remove cultural defenses. And the Guardian of nature civic just seems to provide way too much hapiness and health to easily pass up...

For Amurites get Bronze Working early to build a Forge. This will usually get you a Great Engineer. Start building the Tower of Divination, using the GE, but put it on hold as you work toward Arcane Lore. Then complete the Tower to get Strength of Will and you are building Archmages about a hundred years before the competition.

EDIT: Drat! I just realized that Forge has been pushed back to Smelting in 0.25.

I love the Amurites nearly as much as the Lanun however I've always had issues with them, I finally perfected my strategy with the Amurites and I thought I'd post it here. This strategy stunts your civ and your tech early for a huge leap in the end. Dain is the preferable leader for his Philosophical trait to help get more Great Sages.

Beeline towards Writing for the Great Scientist. *gasp* Actually use him as a Specialist in what you plan to be your big science city. Get working on cranking out the Great Library in that same city and using the ability to pump Great Sages in other cities to feed your science city Great Sages.

After you've done this turn around and now head up the magic route, make sure and grab the Catacomb Libralus in your best production city, which is most likely your capital with God King. Don't waste production on Mage Guilds in other cities, focus on building up some warriors to deter the AI from attacking while your prepare yourself. These warriors will be invaluable as Fire Bows latter. Also don't neglect your Elder Council! Those +2 Beakers are precious to you, especially when calculated with the Libraries you already have.

Once the Catacomb Libralus is built take a time to build up your mage force. While it may be tempting to start dumping points into Fireballs and other nasty attack spells these are your golden ticket mages. Pump Spirit, Mind and Earth and make sure to get them to Sorcerer as quickly as possible for Spirit and Mind II. With these guys you have an extra 25% defense, +1 Happiness, +4 Culture and best of all +4 beakers. Once you've done this you can set about putting out some Adepts and working them towards blaster casters or summoning whores, but your first and foremost goal is to get the city helpers. DO NOT under any circumstance delve into Summon Skeleton, Haste or Dance of Blades, you'll regret it as your Hero who will be coming soon will pass out all the love to everyone, yes everyone! And in fact I recommend taking your horde of Workers and making sure they all have them. A Haste on a worker could save him from enemy horse and a Skeleton popping up will certainly give attackers pause.

Your next goal will of course be to get to Arcane Lore and put the Crown of Akharien in your science city, by now you should have no less then 5 Great Sages and there special academy and if your lucky you could have even more!

Govannon comes with the same tech as the Crown of Akharien so make sure and pump him out from your production city at the same time your science city is working on the Crown. Even though its a science city the number of Great Sages you have there should be perfectly sufficient in pushing the Crown out rather quickly.

Here you are, with this set up you will lag behind in various tech areas but if you've been trading your advancements away you should be pretty even with just about everyone else. However with Inspiration at every city and the Crown and all those Great Sages together (don't neglect Religious Scholar Civic!) you'll have a massive amount of beakers allowing you to get ahead in the tech race and run on 40% or less. Add in the Ashen Veil if you aren't surrounded by Good civs and this will help your beakers tremendously, but remember you want to avoid war until Govannon is in place, once you have Govannon you can raise an army of Skeletons sufficient to knock over most Civs, so using something else like Runes or Leaves to sway your neighbors is always preferable to the beakers granted by the Ashen Veil.