So I have played it a few ways, but every time by turn 100 there are unstoppable armies of barbarians and Doviello pounding me. This last time I even had the eagle killing my best units.

I have 4 cities in the starting valley, but once I lose the barbarian city I took they just keep coming and I get wiped out.

I am apparently doing this completely wrong. Suggestions?

Help!

A lot of people focus very heavily on defence for he first 100 turns, just build archers and place them at chokepoints. Eventually you should be able to break the offensive.

Thanks. I will try that again.....just tend to get behind in tech and over whelmed.

I can hold two cities with a few warriors in each easilly untill I have finished teching through most of the science tree..

As others have said, it is important here to avoid the normal Civ technique of producing buildings and get troops out. You have to survive the initial waves, get scouts out, and then build the cities up later.

Best wishes,

Breunor

I, too was having quite a bit of difficulty. As Breunor pointed out, the thing that saved me was going W-W-W-W-W-W in my first city before building even a worker. Then on my tech tree, I focus on getting to archery so I can bombard with my archers. After that, I usually go settler, settle the southern choke point, and move on from there.

I usually pick Ephona as a hero unit and send her out to fight frostlings to get some combat promotions so I could upgrade her to sorceress, then she really kicks ass. Keep churning out warriors, with Ephona's help you'll have no problems taking away cities from Dovielo and making him your best friend. After that it's just a mop up, especially if you act nice with the ogre event.

I kept getting wiped out using a Civ mindset. Instead of assuming the game should be almost over by the end of the tech tree, try focusing on not seriously going out till the tree is complete.

I put cities in the choke points, and just slipped recon out. By the time tech was done, had explored the map, and built a powerful well equipped army. Just left the little matter of flattening the Dovellio/Illians, which went smoothly then.

I still say that the best way is to turtle up and send recon units (including Caerbulin) straight for the Chancel. That gives you KotE for free, so once Caerbulin is killed off you can get Epona and instantly upgrade her and use fireballs.

I send out the scout hero early on to gain xp and capture animals. If he has enough promotions capturing Fiaca (the giant eagle) isnt too difficult.

Hrmm I kinda did the opposite. I found that if I turtled at the 2 choke points, I could never come out ahead because without copper, my low tech units couldn't compete with their high tech units.

Eventually I changed my tactic and the first thing I did when I finally won was spread out immediately, take the barb city to the southwest and then build a city on the hills with the copper in the bfc. Then I filled in the 2 chokepoints and I think I put another city southwest of the copper city. That cut the Doviello from a main resource and made it much harder for them to expand to the east and crush me. Eventually they built up and headed around the north side of the map but I had upgraded archers and could hold them off pretty easily.

What I usually did was build two large platoons of archers and place them at both choke points. If you build enough, you can survive the Doviello-Illian rush and get at least a good 50 turns of peace with only a few Frostling attacks.

What I usually did was build two large platoons of archers and place them at both choke points. If you build enough, you can survive the Doviello-Illian rush and get at least a good 50 turns of peace with only a few Frostling attacks.

What I usually did was build two large platoons of archers and place them at both choke points. If you build enough, you can survive the Doviello-Illian rush and get at least a good 50 turns of peace with only a few Frostling attacks.

triple trouble?

Yes. That was very odd.

I took my two starting scouts to the chancel right away, got epona to sorceress and killed lots of doviello with her. It was a simple matter of steamrolling once I got the ogre event. I took Doviello cities and razed Illian cities, teched to the max and built some mammoth riders to take care of Drifa. Fiacra got me the godslayer piece from the island so I did not need the boat. Frost Giant castle fell to a fireball, but I guess that's nothing new. By the time I actually went back to get the sword fixed, there was just about nothing left to train Kylorin on.

i've never actually finished this game. The furthest I ever got was having the dovidello capitulate.

Ive beaten it. Used Caerbulin and upgraded him to an assassin. Had him hunt things all over the map. Made a few other assassins and used them to weaken Drifa then killed her with Caerbulin. Built up a large army and led it against the Doviello and got them to capitulate. Then I forged the sword, and had Caerbulin escort Kylorin to Mulcarn. Rather simple as long as you survive the occasional triple-stack attack of Illians, Doviello, and Frostlings.

I started with Benennlus. He starts off a fair bit stronger than an other unit. Sent him out to earn a bit of xp, after which he was pretty much unstoppable. I brought him home to defend against the attacks, withdrawing to heal occasionally. The attacks just ended up making him alot stronger. I was far behind on tech, and i didnt have copper anyway, but it didnt matter. I used the hero to take the Dovi cities almost singlehandedly, with just some units to cover him as he healed. I ended up finishing out the tech tree a few turns before I forged the sword.

What I hate is the masses of forest at the choke point.

I nearly bused by computer when I found out that the 2.8 Javalin thrower in the forest defends at 7.6 or something.

The worst part? the only iron resource I could find was in Doveiello territory, and he had macemen already :)

I have never completed the game, closest i got was stuffing the Doiello by keeping them in their capital and occasionaly their second city. I used Epona to defend and tonnes of catapults on attack. At the start I sent Caerbulin but he got killed by Fiacra and (really embarrased about this) i lost belenus to some Frostlings. I got the catapult idea from something that an AI did to me in real civ. I had a machinegun, a grenaider and a rifleman defending my city. The AI sent approx 20 Trebs and 2 footmen and one the battle. Thanks for the tips from everyone though, they will help me.

I just played this for the first time with standard settings. I can't imagine how anyone could beat this first time out without cheating. I got an ogre to join me early. Eventually got to level 12 with him. Without that I wouldn't have survived at all. And I had to reload to keep him alive. I don't get this game. Once the dragon shows up and corners my army, I can't even injure it. I don't know what to do from there.

I had Caerbulin, captured the eagle with him, built cities at the two choke points with archers and it was pretty much a battle of attrition from there. Caerbulin was killed so I got Belenus and he stormed over the Doviello and, with help from pikemen, the Illian. I rushed Kylorin to Mulcarn as soon as I got him because I had spared the stag. Ended up winning with Drifa on my doorsteps. I count that a win :p

I'm very confused by some of these replies. For example: An ogre event?

I chose Espona (spelling?) and immediately explored, while building a worker and a settler. I discovered some frostling lairs and took them out, since the mod mentioned that they can randomly generate monsters. I quickly took over the first barbarian city that you encountered, and connected a road back to the first city.

One of my scouts eventually got promoted enough to be able to tame animals, though I can't say it ever really helped me defend. It did really help out with exploring the map though.

Eventually Espona came upon the free tech building, and I got the Sorceress upgrade. After that, plus with all the promotions she had, she pretty much took out the Doviello civ by herself (having heal-on-the-move helped a lot too). She's insanely powerful!

I didn't let the Doviello's surrender, I took them out completely -- I needed their cities after all ;)

I kept on exploring, and moved north-west where I bumped into the Illians. Espona took them out, one city at a time. By this time I had Longbowmen, who are great at defending. I would have expanded faster except that I couldn't produce Longbowmen fast enough to keep up with Espona.

By this point Espona's fireballs were killing Ice Giants.

I did eventually bump into the Eagle, who attacked Espona and died, but I didn't realize it was so special. I saw the Stag once, but never again. I guess that's related to an event as well?

I found a very lush green land to the very north, kinda middle of map, and took over that town as well. Is that the Giant city? Otherwise, I have no idea what people mean by that.

I figured I might as well take out Illian completely, and moved up and took out the last Illian city all the way in the very north-west corner. Eventually, at the very end of the game, the Ice Giants took it back.

It was only about 3/4 of the way through the game that I realized that animals could be used to benefit a city. Silk from spiders, dancing bears from Bears, mammoth camp from Mammoths. That's all I noticed... wolves and panthers didn't seem to do anything.

I only saw Drifta (spelling?) the dragon once I forged the sword. Is it possible for the dragon to come out before then? I was cocky at first, and was going to fight it with the Kyorlin and Espona. Had to reload once I realized it was strength 80! But then I prepared better and built 30 longbowmen before forging the sword. They each did 1% of damage with their Artillery attack, and after 3 or so rounds I just rushed the dragon with some archers. After 4 or so of them attacked it the dragon died.

After that it was just a matter of wandering around and discovering stuff. The Illian guy stuck on an island disappeared on his own -- I guess when I wiped out the Illian civ -- so I never really saw what happened with picking up the orb. Though I realized afterwards that I shouldn't have moved the orb -- my Illian-conquered cities quickly became snowed over.

I did find an ice castle eventually, in the south-west, but it just had animals in it.

There was one event where a Doviello priest wanted refuge or something like that. I burnt him :devil: I thought the text for when you burn the priest was really well done!

I can't believe how many things in the game I missed. Not sure how I'd play the game without Espona though -- being able to attack twice a turn, once at range with no chance of getting damaged, and being able to bombard and also do artillery damage, is just so powerful.

Ok, killed that damned dragon with 40 bows and a bunch of mammoth riders. After that there are no more challenges to the game. Epona was able to kill that Taranis with a fireball. So what's next for the game?

You're supposed to have Kylorin kill Mulcarn (in the west of the map, south of Garduk). The dragon is there to motivate you to do it quickly; I don't think you're supposed to be able to kill it.

Yeah, except that doesn't work when the dragon is between Kylorin and Mulcarn.

Yeah, except that doesn't work when the dragon is between Kylorin and Mulcarn.

That sounds like a problem. Run away and try to distract Drifa, then send Kylorin back out, and hope to Amatheon that Kylorin doesn't die.

If you spare the stag Kylorin will have three moves instead of just one.

If you build a city really near Mulcarn and don't put the pieces together until you get there then Kylorin won't need those movement points.

If you spare the stag Kylorin will have three moves instead of just one.

I don't think everyone sees the stag in every game. And having Kylorin run like hell until he evades Drifa doesn't seem a great option in all cases either. Once we know the damned dragon can be killed, best to just lure it into someplace where it can be done away with.

btw: Which FFH mod should someone play next?

The first time I saw the stag I got the event 2 more times the same game. The last time I killed him, so I didn't get any benefit from sparing him the first 2 times.



I'd say you should go on to the main mod, FfH 2. You should familiarize yourself with it before starting on the modmods like FF, which have of late seemed to suffer from considerable feature creep and generally don't respect canonical lore as much as I'd like. Maybe you could then move on straight to my modmod, but chances are it will still be quite a while before I release one again. (I can't seem to bring myself to bother trying to strip away all that FF content while keeping the base code that I want to use in my version, since it seems like such a daunting task.)

So I played the game through 1 more time(probably the last). Just to make sure I got it all down. This time I killed Mulcarn and Drifa on the same turn. So even though I ran for Mulcarn, I still had to fight Drifa. I missed on the earlier game how ridiculously easy it is to promote up a pike phalanx. Is that a feature or a bug? You can give one all of the level 1 and 2 promotions with hardly any experience points. And then, because it's still at a low level and experience, it is very quick to get the higher level promotions. And you don't need to use the World Builder to do it.

Here's the dragonslayer after the kill. Only level 2. But the Drifa took refuge on a wooded hilltop after meeting 38 archery barrages. Which would normally be a safe place, but not the way the game allows a pike phalanx to be built.

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/2059/civ4screenshot0019n.jpg (http://img196.imageshack.us/i/civ4screenshot0019n.jpg/)

At least you aren't getting pounded anymore.

Hm. I rarely have trouble: build a worker first, then warrirors, with the occassional training building. I always start with Epona, for the GPP/education benefit, which I find helps alot.

Sending raiding parties into the Doveillo lands, especially once you capture some strong animals like bears, can be good: destroy their infrastructure, and they lose a lot of steam.

This thread got me to give this a shot. After 5 attempts I think I've found the strategy that works for the beginning of the game:

Your first priority must be to castrate the Dovellio. You must be aggressive and attack. Do not allow them to tech. Do not allow them to get big. You must give them hell as quickly as possible. Early on their armies will be defended by only a javalin thrower or two and a warrior or two. A stack of 10 warriors will take a city almost every time. Don't mind the losses, just replace them while expanding as quickly as possible.

In my current game, I've annihilated the Dovellio and just passed Mulcarn in score, even though he has better tech than me, sort of. He has pikemen and longbowmen. I have mammoths. Speaking of which, Urslo or whatever it's called, the Dovellio capital is the most important city to capture. It's on amazing land with sheep, fur, mammoths, and copper. And then iron is just a stone's throw away.

To actually castrate them, you need to focus on military. Don't build many buildings, if any at all. Get a worker out then start massing warriors. When you have four or five of them go out an attack. The starting valley is good for three cities including the capital. The first city should be on the hill next to the wheat. The second city should be in the top right corner nestled between the two hills and river, but not adjacent to the lake. I've found that city has become my production center.

When you have 8 or 9 warriors lead by a hero (I go with Epona), take the barbarian city close by, but do not get too attached to this city. It's right in the path for crazy amounts of blizzards and every single tile will turn to tundra. It's a shame because that site had the potential to have a population higher than 2. Anyways, as you expand don't worry about obelisks, just make warriors. Get Archery as soon as you can and keep pushing forward. Make a city on the hill near the horses. Keep going west.

And that's as far as I am right now. I've gotten one piece of the Godslayer and the Dovellio eliminated. It took me awhile to get the barbarians to die down a little, but I managed it. Next I need to explore a little.

Oh yeah! One other thing. There's an awesome work around for getting mammoths faster. Instead of building mammoths directly, put your research slider down to 0 for awhile and build up gold. For every 145 gold you get, you can turn a scout into a rider. And in the time it takes to make 1 mammoth normally, you can make 4 or 5 scouts and promote them up.

Wow I must do things differently. I always get Eponia and build two cities at the choke points. Everything goes smoothly, sort of, and eventually i win. And dang I shouldn't have killed the stag lol