The Sidar are an interesting idea. Free GPs for level 6 units! Wow! Your GPs are even 30% better when settled!

The only problem is... how do you get to that point? The traits of Industrius are not the greatest for running a GP farm early, and the Homeland promotion is...pretty terrible. Aside from using free leaders and running a Adept Program under Dain (Arcane/Philosophical super man) whats your favorite strategies for the Sidar, especially at the start?

What I was thinking was...
Tech for Education and get the Library built ASAP. Use the free sages.
Go Pacifism and try to stay alive while building up GPPs.
Begin a farm economy with agriculture / aristocracy.
LONG RUN
Get Adepts, grab any techs that give free experience when building a unit, and move on to Summoners or Conjurers.
Start setting Sages (or lightbulb!).
Get all your cities destroyed by an army of Gregori Archmages or the Khazad Runes Machine.
Post on the forums.

Whats your Sidar strategy?
Can you use religion? It seems basically impossible to ever get enough of an altar built to crank out disciple units straight to be Waned, and if you DID reach that point you would have won anyway with Archmages. Am I wrong with my math?

Sidar are easy to play

Turn 1 - tech Mysticism, switch to God King and Nationalism( pacifism is unsupportable in the early game)
Turn X- Build Elder Council, assign sage.
Turn X - Tech Writing. Build libraries and the great library. Pop the sage into an Academy.
Turn X- Research Knowledge of the Ether. No reason to bulb it if you have another Sage up, it's a cheap tech.
Build a mage guild somewhere and stick some adepts on autobuild..

win 100 turns later.


I once did the Altar of the Luonnatar thing, cranking out one turn Crusaders to immediately shade. I honestly didnt like it that much, it was soooo slow to get going ( no sages sucks) and when It did get going, it was exploitative. Up down up down left right left right A B A B start win.

Thats what I was thinking about the disciple units.

With the mages you can turn them into GPPS while working towards REAL mages, then unleash the fire!

PS Grab death mana somewhere in there and raise a skelaton army with huge promotions with all the adepts you have waiting around to go into the grinder.

I really wish Wane worked in a better way. Adepts shouldnt be able to wane.

What is wane? and how did you manage to get the crusaders starting at level 6? I think the best i managed was late level 4

wane is the ability that turns level 6 units into shades

I always play Sidar with ragin barbarians. Tech Mysticism immediatly and change to Nationhood/God King. Creat Around 5 warriors at different choke points in your region. There will be enough barbarians to get at least a couple shades.

I usually aim for a summoner army. Since I'm continually switching experienced units into GP I need a strong army. Thus summoners can create large amounts of units that don't need strainging. This combined with 3 archmages to buff your summons gives very strong armies.

The Sidar are probably the only civ able to win a cultural victory with the amount of Great Bards they can get.

As a side point, killing Barbatos with Rathus Denomra is incredibly fun. I also make that a quest for myself.

What is wane? and how did you manage to get the crusaders starting at level 6? I think the best i managed was late level 4

Altar of the Luonnatar, Conquest, etc.

I'd love to see a game where you have enough exp comming in from various sources to immediately GPP discipline units. At that point you've not only won, you've pretty much done everything else too.

The REAL question is what do you at the start, not the end, to get Sidar rolling successfully.

The summoner strategy, btw, is a good one.

EDIT: FACEPALM. Discipline units auto gain exp still. For some reason (since its been a while since I played FFH and all my recent games were with RoK and their warriors) I forgot that. Having priests come out almost at shade level would be very very good.

Basically...

I hate Sandalphon's traits. Defensive gives units homeland promotion. A 10% bonus is less then aggressive. 10% withdrawl chance really means 90% chance to NOT withdrawl. If I had 100 units, having 10 of them survive would be beneficial. Having 10 units means a 10% means none, or a couple survive, and the odds are too random to count on.

Industrious. To build wonders that are not that big a part of the game. Is there amazing wonders out there I'm just missing? The Great Library I guess... Also it lets one build forges faster. Forges from Iron Working which is in a tech tree no one is touching anytime soon (focusing on auto-exp units like disciples or adepts) because of the way Sidar work.

I know Phi/Arcane would be good, but I'm not seeing Sidar listed as "top races" on any list. Is there some way we could tweak Sandalphon a little?

People play the Sidar way too pacifist for my tastes. Sitting around waiting for adepts to mature is lame. Plus the earlier you get those shades the better the game will go.

Just build a small number of cities, build plenty of warriors/axmen/whatever and go hunt barbarians. They'll keep coming and you keep cutting them down. Always be sure to attack first, you get far more XP that way. Once the barbs run out declare war on your neighbors. Make sure you don't have any hills or forests adjacent to your cities. Keep nice sized stacks inside your cities and cut down the AI stacks when they get close.

The AI will keep sending wave after wave. If they are too slow about it declare war on multiple civs. The AI sucks at invading. Just keep cutting down their stacks.

I had an excellent OCC win as the Sidar. I went to war with like 3 or 4 civs at the same time and crushed them all with my one little city. :)

My strat is battlemages (combat mages with body 2 combat 5) combined with enchanted arrows archery units (for defence)

if you have 97-99 chance to win you attacking with mages (fast xp for getting shades)
if chances are low - just wait and defend with archers, barbs love to attack , even with single units.
Wit hEnchantment mana from palace you have very big advantage early in game = +20% strenght warriors boost, and +1 strenght all archery units later, when you have sorcery. + 50% faster archery range cost from trait.
play defencive, found few cities, and leave some peace of not settled territory for while (it should be not aviable for rival factions, lets say some piece of jungles between your cities only.) The barbs will spawn there and you will have your own training ground .
Warmongering is not so good, but is optionm, but still you need tough combat 5 mages and archers, and alot of them.
If you have bad, disturbing rival starting near you you should just use your enchantment advantage. +20% strenght is equal to Aggresive trait bonus. + your warriors will be moving 2 tiles because of easy to get haste spell. = perfect rush when you have your 1st adept ready. ( body 1 enchantment 1 -----> +20% strenght, movement 2 warriors)

Just tested on emperror lvl, me and 3 other random AI.
Round map. Got Sabathiel, Os-Gabella and Faeryl.
Faeryl got up in ranks so i killed her. Killed very fast. Got conquest and just killed city by city with such stack:
3 warriors, 1 kilmorph soldier and 2 adepts. (1 adept = enchantment 1 body 1 2nd = spirit 1 body 1 - +1 move always (its even better than mobility, because you move always 2 if you cast spell after move, + 20% strenght to warriors and soldiers, + healing rate, city raider promotions.)
That was pretty easy.

The sidars possibility to have Elder council earlier (they starting with Chants), their better sages, very nice combo of starting mana from palace, starting with pacifism (for earlier GP from Elder council) . Then you found Runes (once you have KoE), and then stomping neightbours under fresh conquest. Your easy to get Kilmorph soldiers (no training yard required) are very nasty rush with enchanted blade and haste and courage casted.

What I found rather amusing was being Council of Esus, sending loads of Nightwatch in to pester your enemies, then declaring their nationality when they reached level six, and sending them home to live in my overspecialistised capital. Rinse and repeat.

If you're a slightly more aggressive and goal-oriented player than I am, there is a lot to gain here. You ruin your enemies without needing war, and at the same time they are feeding your economy.

Also, of course, they get druids. So if you select one city to settle all your specialists in, you can make a ton of grasslands workshops and watermills, serving your production needs, while the specialists keep your economy and research afloat.

In summary, I quite like the Sidar.

What I found rather amusing was being Council of Esus, sending loads of Nightwatch in to pester your enemies, then declaring their nationality when they reached level six, and sending them home to live in my overspecialistised capital. Rinse and repeat.

don't forget the shadows ;) . Even though they're limited, they're still usefull since it's basically impossible NOT to get them to level 6

Sidar are tech monsters, in my last MP games i was getting just to enourmous pace of teching. Same wit immortal lvl single play vs AI.
After worker techs and writing beeline for Arcane Lore with OO as religion.
Lightbuble : Arcane lore, Elementalism, Alteration, KoE.
At point you have Scholarship running and Crown built in specialists city , having library, great library , asylum you can run your economy at 0% for resereach and still be 1st resereacher among all rivals.
After i have Arcane lore stuff i go for Druids. This way i have 4 heroes - Baron, Hemah, Saverous, Rathmus , 3 druids, poison bladed ghosts, rangers, Rathmus, and heap of mages. In case i need meat units i build warriors fast and make drowns 60 p/u.

Up down up down left right left right A B A B start win.


Lol this made me feel so old. Except for me it was usually select start.

And it starts up up down down ;)

thats all about that sidar have too much reproduction, but low old age death rate?

edit: well its my fav MP race.

And it starts up up down down ;)

Its actually B A B A not A B A B too lol

God we suck.

Tried out the shadows, my goodness, they are brilliant!

Shadows to great engineers, after a few rounds of that, you can crank out a new shadow every time you trade one in. Great stuff!

heh, the only problem with the shadow strat i've found sofar: the AI seems to run out of troops to kill. With 3 shadows, i actually cleared 12 AI cities of troops all-together (i.e. killing them faster than the AI could build them). Remaining production can of course be used to build up more nightwatches, to harrass a 2nd neighbor.

Well, the wonder of shadows is you can move steadily down the food chain, as you crush each neighbour's units.

I'm playing with No AI build requirements, so their units are up to tech, therefore killing them is harder. I end up moving from city to city, avoiding archers and picking off adepts.