Since Shadow was out I played the Svarts. more than any other civ. So far I have developed a successful starting strategy for them. However I still have so many doubts concerning their synergy with either FoL or CoE.

I believe adopting FoL early in the game just goes without saying. Just being elven is enough (economy and production boosts are evident). Additionally FoL gives the Svarts one more early strong recon unit (Fawns) that will benefit from the extra strength their hunter lodge gives. Priests of Leaves are early spell casters who can cast poison blade adding +1 poison attack to your recon units. (Fawns already have +1 poison). Fawns are upgradeable to Satyrs later on further enriching your mid-late game Recon line along with Assasins and Rangers.

Given the above obvious synergy with FoL my question is: How beneficial would it be to adopt CoE? Founding CoE might be questionable as well as its benefits come with adopting it anyway. I like to hear from you guys as it becomes problematic for me at the middle of each game, as I feel capable of winning without making the shift.

well, CoE does have some powerful features... I think either one works well with Svartalfar.

FoL first, but you don't need to found it. You can trade for the tech after Ljosalfar or whoever gets it, or tech it yourself.

But go for CoE so you have that founded. Use FoL till you got ancient forests everywhere, then switch to CoE.

It takes forever to get ancient forests everywhere so waiting for that is not really possible(as the game will most likely be over by then...).

Well, not everywhere.

I don't agree with Grey Fox, either religion works well.
Guardian of Nature is very powerful, and you have 2 Heroes which are better suited for Faeryl since she can easily have good summoners without a hero. Not to mention FoL High Priests. Also, the only good feature of CoE (besides the Hero) that you need to be a follower is the sneak attack. You can make shadows without following it and you can be a member of the Undercouncil without following it. Overall I think they are equally suitable, but FoL is probably better.

Building shadows without state CoE is a bug. But Undercouncil really needs only Deception and being not good. Sneak attack is nice but not too general. Stealing is still too dangerous. I prefer to have a high chance to lose a unit rather then small chance to start a war. And it encourages Save\Load. Human is weak. :) What else? No religious relation penalty with AI. And Gibbon which is an ultimate one-time two-edged weapon.

As builder I prefer FoL for Guardian and divine spellcasters.

What CoE is really good for is a religious victory. But it is too specific and risky as you should rush.

I highly doubt that building Shadows without state CoE is a bug. It is quite a simple fix so if it is really a bug it would have been fixed since patch a. Shadow Riders however require state CoE.

Being a builder myself I sure agree with you. I find myself so reluctant to make the switch. Also FoL is a religion that you invest a lot of micro management to use it to full potentials. (I just can't lose the opportunity that these new forests become ancient ones).

I highly doubt that building Shadows without state CoE is a bug.

What you say?

It is a bug since Kael said that "shadows are no longer available to everyone, but only to council followers". Maybe they only need religion present in the city?

I thought this was clear. Shadows require CoE religion to be present in a city. But so far they don't require that CoE be adopted as state religion by the civ. There are two separate XML tags for these two separate settings. My point was that missing to set the tag for state religion is such a simple bug that can easily be fixed. The fact that it hasn't changed up till now means that it is intended.

<ReligionType>RELIGION_COUNCIL_OF_ESUS</ReligionType>
<StateReligion>NONE</StateReligion>
<PrereqReligion>RELIGION_COUNCIL_OF_ESUS</PrereqReligion>

I don't think you need to have a priest's religion as your state one to be able to upgrade them to the top level; obviously, you need it in order to build them but after that I don't think it's necessary (at least I got away with it in a recent Svart/CoE game). They don't abandon you on religion switch either.

Having said that, I think FoL is a great way to start a svart game, and then you can use either of the FoL or CoE synergies depending on what you feel like. Either way, highly promoted shadows and alazkan are deadly to rival defenders, being able to kill fortified longbows without prior bombardment. Having Orthus' Axe on any of them makes it even more ridiculous.

Gibbon is nice to have, but then, so is Yvain. :) I think it just comes down to what you feel like doing at the time.

Yeah, read my Faeryl Viconia story for some display of how powerful Alazkan the Assassin can be. A pretty poorly played game, but a pretty good game story.

Since you cannot spread Esus by choice unless it is your state religion, I think it is intended.

A pleasant bonus if it naturally spreads, and an extra problem if you try for Esus religious victory

Yeah, read my Faeryl Viconia story for some display of how powerful Alazkan the Assassin can be. A pretty poorly played game, but a pretty good game story.

Alazkan is indeed so powerful. I just hate that he (being an assassin) has the nasty tendency to kill the least powerful unit in a stack. So I just get him or his mirror wasted on a worker that I don't even end up capturing him. I do feel that the marksmen promotion needs adjustment. It should give the player the option to choose which unit to attack or at least workers should be ignored when present in some stack.

Anyway, Alazkan is Svarts hero so I got him anyway with or without CoE.

Alazkan is indeed so powerful. I just hate that he (being an assassin) has the nasty tendency to kill the least powerful unit in a stack.

Yeah well its bad when it attacks a worker, etc. But other than that it's the best way to level almost. At least the safest. Since you will always get the best possible odds. True that equals the least XP per win, but its better to win many battles with a higher certainty to be alive afterwards.

bring along extra assassins for those workers, its a free xp for weak units, use alazkan and his mirror for the tough ones

bring along extra assassins for those workers, its a free xp for weak units, use alazkan and his mirror for the tough ones

I started doing that. I bring on Assassins and Shadows with Alazkan and just reverse the order of attack. i.e. I attack with my weakest unit first then the stronger etc.

In my current game I was forced to switch to CoE. The Ljosalfar queen who was pleased with me asked me to cancel my deals with Jonas. She was in war with him. I thought it was a good chance to DoW Jonas. (He was doing extremely well in this game). Few turns later and after taking one city and razing another Arandiel DoWed me :eek: . I can't figure out why on earth she did so. Now the three of us were in war each against the other two :crazyeye: . As they both were FoL the unhappiness in my cities became crippling. I converted to CoE buying enough time to take some more cities and to raze the AV holy city and bring the AC down.

I don't think you need to have a priest's religion as your state one to be able to upgrade them to the top level; obviously, you need it in order to build them but after that I don't think it's necessary (at least I got away with it in a recent Svart/CoE game). They don't abandon you on religion switch either.

Having said that, I think FoL is a great way to start a svart game, and then you can use either of the FoL or CoE synergies depending on what you feel like. Either way, highly promoted shadows and alazkan are deadly to rival defenders, being able to kill fortified longbows without prior bombardment. Having Orthus' Axe on any of them makes it even more ridiculous.

Gibbon is nice to have, but then, so is Yvain. :) I think it just comes down to what you feel like doing at the time.


Nope. It USED to be so, but now priests DO abandon you on a religion switch. At least High Priests do.

[...] I thought it was a good chance to DoW Jonas. (He was doing extremely well in this game). Few turns later and after taking one city and razing another Arandiel DoWed me :eek: . I can't figure out why on earth she did so.[...]

I can :)
You razed Jonas' city and increased the AC to a level when the Alfar AIs declare war to each other. This is scripted. You didn't think you were supposed to be friend with your best enemies for ever, did you ? ;)

I can :)
You razed Jonas' city and increased the AC to a level when the Alfar AIs declare war to each other. This is scripted. You didn't think you were supposed to be friend with your best enemies for ever, did you ? ;)

I suspected that but the AC was low and as I said I later razed the AV holy city bringing the AC down by 7 points. Anyway Arendel came crawling to me later when Jonas kicked the hell out of her a--. This time I finished him totally and got one more holy city of his. (The man had actually founded three religions). I however was short sighted enough to hand over Hyle to Arendel after capturing it. For my dismay I found out that it is both FoL and RoK holy city.

Nope. It USED to be so, but now priests DO abandon you on a religion switch. At least High Priests do.

I am sure priests don't abandon you when switching religion. I still have my priests of leaves after switching to CoE. I don't know about hight priests as I didn't got the chance to upgrade my priests before the switch. I can say that the upgrade is not available. Also my fawns can't be upgraded to satyrs (very disappointing).

In general I think only heroes abandon you when you switch away from their religion. Hopefully someone can confirm that.

Hight Priests abandon you when you switch religions, but normal priests do not. Its always been that way (or at least since I began playing a little over a year ago)

I suspected that but the AC was low and as I said I later razed the AV holy city bringing the AC down by 7 points. Anyway Arendel came crawling to me later when Jonas kicked the hell out of her a--. This time I finished him totally and got one more holy city of his. (The man had actually founded three religions). I however was short sighted enough to hand over Hyle to Arendel after capturing it. For my dismay I found out that it is both FoL and RoK holy city.

You can easily see if a city is holy city on the world map...

You can easily see if a city is holy city on the world map...

I know. I just wasn't paying enough attention at the moment :blush:

Hight Priests abandon you when you switch religions, but normal priests do not. Its always been that way (or at least since I began playing a little over a year ago)

Inquisitors will also stay (and keep all their spells).

True, Inquisitors stay, not losing any promotions or their religion either. However, only Inquisitors of your state religion can cast inquisition.

Hi Kalimakus

Couldn't help posting on this thread as I'm having the same dilema.

I play marathon huge emp/Imm games and quite naturaly (naturely :) ) go for FOL because of prerequiste techs:- hunters and elder councils.

I tend to find that by turn 400 (first quarter) most of my neighbours are FOL and, if I've pushed sailing, most of my continent.

Thats the problem...It's MY continent!!!

I'm now left with the option of intercontinental "expansion " which is expensive and my fellow AI buddies are useless at. Or interneccine squabbling and culture wars whose long term effects are to weaken your (MY) continent and economy, only to get beaten up by a crusading Varn /Sabathiel or out teched by a raging lunatic wearing a clown's costume! With the dwarves on your (MY!) continent and RoK its easy.... But when everyone is FOL...you got a problem.

This is when I'm starting to think about CoE.

FoL is great, mainly because guardian of nature is so broken at the moment... +10 happiness (or more) to a religion whose real bonus is added food production. This means you can still Max pop your cities but don't need to worry about imported luxuries and war weariness. Whereas, in the more peaceful bulider /out-teching games, open border agreements are a requirement for trade route commerce. HN is the way to go and spiders are only good upto about the time that your friends start sending in hunters.

I don't know about you but I dont want my friends sharing MY barb training ground just because they happen to be on MY CONTINENT!!!

I'd suggest building up both equally and using FOL for war (the long-term continent crushing type) and CoE for peace.

That's a strategy the specfics will vary with each game.

Darkheart

I know exactly what you are talking about. It is why I only play on terra or pangaea maps now. In the last game however the same one religion for them all syndrome returned back to hunt me. So yes CoE was the answer. It could however be any other religion for that matter. I might have gone extreme and adopted AV and pushed the AC till it is blight. Being elves with FoL for long time means the least harm possible due to blight. I also work with a CE so only farms for resources and every tile else is cottaged.

My point is: CoE is an option for the Svarts as it is for any other civ. FoL is almost a must. It is IMO more so for them than it is for the Ljosalfar.
This makes me think that if Ljosalfar is a balanced civ then the Svarts are overpowered by all means.

Hight Priests abandon you when you switch religions, but normal priests do not. Its always been that way (or at least since I began playing a little over a year ago)

Nope, it wasn't. I believe it's happening since when High Priests are religion-specific. Which is less than a year, I think. Or... time flies. Inquisitors aren't religion dependant.