I was looking at the Strategies section to understand the quirks of the different civilizations I want to try out and I love the Top Ten Tips thread. But I brazenly tried to asked them tips for Kahdi and Austrin. For my bravery, I was rewarded with the Austrin tips but was stringently reminded that I need to ask in the FF or FF+ thread... :D

And they were right. FfH and FF have some very different mechanics now, that employing some of the tips there would have been ineffective. So to help those who are new to FF/FF+ (or those like me who have never been good at civ...I just love the tinkering :lol:). Please post some of your tips on playing FF/FF+! :D

Actually, this is a very good idea. If people post some good strategies, I'll put them in a concept section for the civ. ;)

Beware of Hamsters

Any tips for playing Kahdi?

Do you want this thread to be FFPlus only? Or FF, with sidenotes for changes in gameplay due to FFPlus?

-Colin

The second option would be best. Easily adapted to FF concepts that way. ;)

Archers are a key to early combat. If you can train them up and upgrade them with Drill I & Archery I, you can soften up dangerous units (even things like an experienced Orthus) down to a point where warriors or axemen/swordsmen have a chance of taking them out. And you should defend any strategically key forts with archers, fort commanders are useful but need backup if their position is subject to attack by even a small enemy stack.

The key to a strong early and mid-game economy is not just worked tiles and specialists, but also free beakers and gold from markets, elder councils, and the guilds. Its well worth getting two early merchants and two early bards, so you can build guilds like Kingfishers, Farmers, Fabriforma, and the Masquerade. The investment will pay off quickly and grow exponentially as your empire grows and acquires more resources.
Trade is always good to have but becomes most powerful once you have Astronomy and open borders with foreign empires on other continents.

Bannor tips: (Fall Further PLUS, Version 22)

Leaders:

I personally think Sabathiel makes the best Bannor leader. Organized isnt that great but charismatic is awesome for your military. Most of your units will start with 0 xp (demagogues and units recruited by commanders/donal lugh) so getting them (and their commanders) their promotions faster is a big bonus.
+1 happyness for all cities also helps in the early game.

Dont be fooled by tethiras instructor trait, unless it gets changed it only works for units BUILT - something you ll rarely do playing bannor. It does zero for your army of demagoues, recruited troops, great commanders etc. etc.

The main reason to play with decius is obviously his trait that allows for building units/buildings of the original civ in conquered cities which can be very nice if you
capture calabim cities for instance.

Other 2 leaders i forget the name of but they got nothing on charismatic sabathiel or Decius.


Your first city:

I d suggest making your first city your future GP farm and Wonderbuilder so best would be a city with at least 1-2 food resources (corn,wheat,rice,cows, pigs, sheep, mushrooms, deer etc. etc.) and good production capability.

1. Early Game:

Technologies:

Ancient Chants -> Mysticism -> Agriculture -> Education

Buildorder:

1. Worker
2. Warriors (until Mysticism is researched)
3. Elder Council (as soon as Mysticism is researched)
4. Pagan Temple
5. Cleric
6. Warriors / additional clerics until city hits happycap
7. Settler (when city reached happycap)

Improvements:

Worker should prioritize building improvements on food resources (should have settled next to atleast 2 of those), even if it takes 15-20 turns since you don’t have the proper techs yet. After food resources are done switch to building as many cottages as you have population available to work them.

Civics:

As soon as mysticism is researched switch to Godking AND Pacifism (takes only 1 turn of anarchy if you do it manually, i.e. don’t switch when asked to by the advisor)

Great Persons:

As soon as the elder council is finished assign one sage. With pacifism it doesn’t take long till you get your first great sage who should build an academy.

Military:

DON’T send your troops outside your cultural borders (aside from the starting scout who should try to get as many goody huts as possible before something big and mean unevitably eats him) - they ll stand no chance against the masses of deadly beasts wandering around since the latest version of FF+.
Save them up for later. Every unneccary lost warrior just means an even more evil beast (giving a str 9 cave bear xp to get combat strenght promotions is a BAAAD idea ) and less warriors should another civ declare war on you.


2. Next Stage of the game:

As soon as education is researched your goal should be getting fanatism as fast as possible but obviously some sidesteps like going for calendar if you spot lots of dye, cotton, sugar etc. resources are okay. Keep turtling since warriors & clerics cant do much other than fend off barbarian attacks.

Don’t be too selective regarding a spot for your second city (and 3rd/4th) – running around outside cultural borders is very dangerous even with multiple warriors as escort since the latest version of FF+. As long as it can work some cottages its good enough, special resources are just a bonus.

Keep producing settlers in your godking capital and make sure every city is always defended with 2 warriors which is enough to fend off early barbarians – in addition a “quick reaction force” of 2-3 warriors and a cleric should make sure your improvements aren’t plundered / your workers aren’t killed by barbs . New cities should immediately build a worker and after that warrior. The workers should build cottage after cottage after cottage – best improvement there is for bannor.

When you have 4 cities stop expanding - your godking capital can now switch production to the bone palace since you ll already have researched philosophy by that time. I rarely see the AI going for it so normally it shouldn’t be an issue getting that wonder first. the golden age and the engineer GPP it gives are nice and its not like you have much else to build before reaching fanatism other than even more settlers/troops (which would kill your economy).

If you get attacked before reaching fanatism you should normally (maybe not vs doviello ^^) have enough warriors to at least hold out until donal lugh and crusade can save your ass. you can easily recover from one lost city (unless it was your capital). But for this its really important that you werent wasting any troops to feed beasts outside your cultural borders before.

GPPwise you ll like get a second sage before fanatism/before the bone palace is finished. I d recommend settling him in the academy city for faster research. After the bone palace is built, don’t assign any specialist as you ll want to guarantee an engineer next (from the bone palace bonus to engineer GPP)

3. Finally there – you have researched Fanatism.

Build Donal Lugh in your capital. If you are already in a war you might have to use donal asap, else leave him in the safety of your capital for 13 turns which is enough to get him to level 5 with sabathiel as leader.

Take the following promotions: Combat Strenght I -> Corporal -> Sergeant -> Combat Strenght II -> Master Sergeant.

Now Donal Lugh can lead 5 units, giving each of them a 20% xp boost and 25% strength. If you re still not in a war go out and take on some animals/barbarian but remain close to your borders still. Small Dragons and cave bears can still tear donal a new one until he got some more promotions and with his high defensive strength + guardsmen he s always the first to get attacked unless seriously wounded.

If you spot a skeleton make sure to use donals recruiter promotion in your biggest city and then let donal kill it to refresh the promotion ( I haven’t actually tried this in FF+ yet since I didn’t find undead to kill in my latest bannor game, so if this was changed – ignore this tip ).

Anyhow. Donal Lugh is amazing. His xp will skyrocket if you use him/his troops properly and he can turn into a captain at lvl 10 and general at lvl 20. As general he s able to lead up to 9 troops (with commanding influence I-III promotions), giving all of them up to +120% strength (45% from battle commander I-III, 25% from master sergeant, 50% from general) alongside other bonuses. You haven’t seen a stack of doom until you seen one led by donal lugh ;)

Small reminder: as soon as donal lugh takes the captain promotion he can no longer get many promotions since captain turn his unit combat into commander.
I highly recommend getting all the combat strength promotions and the “Commando” (allows movement on enemy roads) before that happens. Don’t waste a promotion before lvl 10 on mobility, woodsman or guerialla …. these he can still get as a commander.

enough about donal ….

if you are in a war or can see one coming soon your tech research should focus on getting Order asap since it gives the most benefits for an early war (blessing your demagogues, valin phanuel) and is faster reachable than…

…empyrean, which you could go for if you still have some time until war becomes unevitable.

The pros of Order:

-lower maintenance costs thanks to cathedrals
-great happyness boosts from social order civic
-good early hero with valin phanuel and nice lategame hero with sphener.
-up to 80% converting defeated units chance with sphener and tier 3 priests.
-Bless is a great spell to buff your stacks of demagogues.

The pros of Empyrean:

-Chalid
-Chalids / Tier 3 priests Crown of Brilliance weakening enemies for your armies
-Chalids ability to get the amazing Valor spell.
-Free Sun mana from the Empyrean shrine. Do a quick research of KOTE, train an adept and start creating floodplains in your river tiles.

I prefer empyrean but on higher difficulties with aggressive neighbours you might not be able to afford researching the many more techs it takes to get it.

If you weren’t involved in a war yet, I d suggest starting one as soon as you have your religion of choice and can assemble enough crusaders.


4. General tips for the rest of the game

-Since Sabathiel can build command posts anyhow there s zero reason to waste the recruiter promotion of donal lugh and great commanders on it. Especially not considering that most of your troops wont be BUILT anyhow.

-Your capital should get all the military buildings and be allowed to grow as big as possible to get the most out of the recruit ability from donal / great commanders.
Its generally a good idea to not immediately send your recruited troops/demagogues to the front but let them sit in the capital for a few turns until they are lvl 2 or 3 (goes fast with sabathiel, have I mentioned how much I love “charismatic” ? ) so they can grab mobility I and corporal before going to war with their commanders.

-Once you got the bone palace, stop assigning any specialists so you can make sure your next GP is an engineer in order to build a master smith (when you have the tech for it) which can further boost your armies with nice equipment. Try to get as many great engineers and therefore master buildings as possible – this will give you more and more engineer slots and more and more production capability.

-After you have fanatism and went for order (and don’t plan on switching to empyrean) catch up on earlier techs and get catapults as fast as possible. after that go for bronze/iron working since it’s a good boost for your armies.

-After you have fanatism and went for empyrean you ll want chalid asap. between chalids crown of brilliance and a donal lugh led attacking army, you wont need any catapults. get bronze/iron working and then theology for more crown of brilliance.

-Don’t ignore the magic tree. You ll have huge armies that all start with 0 xp so every buff to their strength is welcome. And with every melee unit having the guardsmen promotion as bannor – your adepts are safe of annoying assassins. If you go for empyrean you ll also get sun mana from the shrine which together with an adept means you can turn your rivertiles into floodplains over time.

Most of those “tips” are pretty obvious stuff for veterans I guess but hopefully this post motivated some people to try out bannor in FF+. I m having a blast with them as chain of command and crusade mechanics have amazing synergy.

I normally don’t build masses of troops. I m more the “turtle until national units come around” player who fights his wars with highly promoted mini-armies.

Bannor have an entirely different vibe to them that I really enjoy atm.

ALTERNATIVE strategy i d call "Easymode"

after building your first settler to found your second city research cartography and build the pact of nilhorn.

Larry, Curly and Moe are amazing early game units:

a) hidden nationality is not only good to annoy neighbours, its also a great way to get great commanders fast since killing units of enemy civs = great commader points. and an early great commander is worth a lot in FF+.
b) 2 movement points + ignoring difficult terrain + movement on peaks = you can decide where to fight. if you re smartly using peaks to your advantage you can avoid getting any of them killed pretty easily - just watch for griffons/dragons until they got some better promotions.
c) they get better as they age and can use bronze & iron weapons so they remain usefull for the whole game.
d) with their bombard ability you wont need catapults.
e) when you dont find anything to kill with them they can build improvements & roads
f) playing Bannor its a good move to make one of them a master sergeant so the other 2 get 20% more xp and 25% higher strenght.

just be warned that this removes almost any challenge from the game ;)

Dont be fooled by tethiras instructor trait, unless it gets changed it only works for units BUILT - something you ll rarely do playing bannor. It does zero for your army of demagoues, recruited troops, great commanders etc. etc.


:eek: I had not thought about that.... I'll move the trait to OnUnitCreated, rather than built. Will affect any free units, as well as demagogues. :goodjob:


That was a very well written strategy... Got any more? :p

sounds good valk, and while we are it, rally (bannor worldspell) is bugged - doesnt work even when in crusade mode. button is greyed out and you cant cast it (and no, the amurite worldspell wasnt used i.e. not causing this )

I'll check into the worldspell.

Just wanted to say that the trait is now working as intended. Makes Tethira rather more powerful, I think. ;)

No offense ment, but that really isn't that great a way to play the FF Bannor. So I suppose that I've been tricked into giving another set of tips and tricks. Note, I'm going to aim this towards FF in general, and put in notes and tips about things to do for FF+ (just like this note here).

1. Leader. You have the choice between Spiritual and Industrious, Organized and Charismatic, and Organized and Conquer. (Note, FF+ adds a Strategist and a Tactician Leader as well, as I haven't used them before, it is up to you to try them yourself.) So what is the real difference between them? Organized and Charismatic means that You'll be able to get command posts in every city, and that you'll be able to level your units up at 1.5xp, 3.5xp, 7.5xp, etc. instead of the usual 2/5/10. This of course is very advantageous in getting 0xp demagouges and other units to be useful fast. However, Spiritual and Industrious isn't that bad a combination. The primary thing to remember is that at Fanatacism, both Order and RoK get a disciple unit who is good in combat. As that is a priority tech anyways, you can then get a different unit to base your armies around instead of the usual Champion/Demagog spam. Why is this Important? As a spiritual leader, all diciple units start out with mobility 1 and potency - the only important one here is mobility 1, which would make the core of your army fast moving, a definite benefit.

2. Use. In regular FFH, the whole goal of the Bannor is to get to fanatacism, switch to crusade, and spam demagog's like they're going out of style. Not a bad way of doing things, except that many other civs would have won by the time the bannor got to that point. This mostly left them as a basic civ with nothing special. FF changed that by adding The Bannor Chain of Command. This then is what you want to be using to make the Bannor special. To note though, ANY unit can join the chain of command and benefit from it, and nothing requires that the chain of command is full. Because of this ability of the bannor, I find Great Generals to not only be worthless, but actually to be a detriment in many cases.

3. The Bannor Chain of Command. The chain of command is a fairly simple concept that can rapidly grow to MASSIVE power. The simple part. Any unit can take a promotion, corporal, which increases the amount of xp that units higher in the chain get. Once they are a corporal, they can take a promotion Sergent, that allows them to command a unit (this is available once they are level 3). When they are Level 5, they can take the promotion Master Sergent, which allows them to command a second unit, and gives a promotion to all its followers that increases its strength by 25%. Then, when they are level 10, they can take the promotion Captain, which gives another command slot, and a promotion to all units under it that makes them free and cause no war weariness. This promotion also changes the unit to unit-combat Commander, allowing it to take all the commander promotions. Sadly, at this time these promotions only trickle down 1 level, to the captains followers, not to the followers of the captains followers. Lastly, at level 20, a unit can take the General promotion, which gives him more command slots, and gives an additional 50% boost to its followers strength, for a total of 75%.

4. What does this mean? Start pumping out warriors at the start of the game. Level them up, try to protect your higher level units, until you can get a master Sergent. Then, once you have one of those, give him command of a few units, and send them out hunting. Note, in FF, you will want to send hunters out with them to deal with the massive animal spam. Work at it, and try to get a Captain. Once you have one of them, you are set for the rest of the game. Take and put as many master sergents as you can under the captain, with as many sergents as you can under them, with as many corporals as possible under them. Every unit will be free and get +25% strength, and every kill that one of your under-units makes gives xp to EVERYONE above them. So if a corporal makes a kill, it will give xp to their sergent, their master sergent, AND their captain. Form up an army under the captain, and then march of to kick someones ass.

5. Hero's. Hero's make Excelent Captains. All that free XP puts them at level 10 nice and quick, and then they just need to take the captain promotion and they're set. An important thing to note though is that you may not want to send Donal Lugh or Baron Halfmorn up the chain of command, because of a particular quirk in the chain of command at the moment. As it is now, the chain of command will not let anyone promote higher than a unit that has commanded them in the chain - so if a corporal has been commanded by a sergent, they cannot themselves become a sergent unless first commanded by a master sergent. This makes it hard to get generals. But because Donal Lugh and Baron Halfmorn can command units, without being in the chain of command, put anyone under their command and then they can promote as high as they want, because someone who is "unranked" ranks higher than a general.

6. Teching. Due to the power of the Bannor Chain of Command, the bannor can excel pretty much wherever they want. So you can go down the recon line, the archery line, the horse line, the melee line, the religious line - whatever you want to do. As a spiritual leader, you have more synergy with the religious line, so feel free to go down that. But the bannor aren't restricted to anything, or restricted from anything. You may want to research Fanatacism, and running Crusade isn't a bad way to generate a massive army to stomp all over your opponents. But whether or not you use it is up to you - it isn't needed for Victory.

7. Religion. Again, religion is entirely up to you. Runes of Kilmorph and Order have the best synergy here, but if there is a different approach you wish you pursue, go right ahead and do it.

8. Magic. There aren't any restrictions here. However, there are some better uses for magic than others with the bannor. The big thing is that you will have a large army. Therefore, you're probably going to want to have buff spells - courage, enchanted blade, flaming arrows, poisoned blades, etc. Fireballs are always nice. But due to army size, you're probably not going to be worrying about the mages being the backbone, only a supporting unit. If you want to mod it yourself though, you can allow mages/archmages to still grab spells once they are commanders, allowing them to become commanders AND great spellcasters - what more is there to want?

9. Notes for Fall Further. As of right now, Fall Further hasn't made any changes to the Bannor. There are however some changes that they have made that will make the bannor play differently. The primary one here is the Animal Changes. Yes, Capital letters are needed here. It is VERY important - BUILD HUNTERS. You can't survive outside your borders without them - and with the chain of command, you can start your conquests at any time in the game. So use hunters as escorts. Use them to hunt down animals. DON'T send them out on their own - use squad systems, with a commanding officer and everything to give your hunter packs enough protection against unexpected things - like you just killed the bear and discovered the hungry COMBAT 5 CAVE BEAR right next to you... again. You want to keep your units intact - NOT feed the cave bears... and dragons... and wyrms... and spiders... damn they must have reaaaly wanted the wilderness to be wild in this mod.

10. Have fun. Experiement. Discover what you like to do the most. And most importantly, KILL THOSE DAMN CAVE BEARS... grr... i hate cave bears... I even hate them more than spiders... which is saying something.

Hope this different viewpoint helps.

-Colin

First off, well said... The Chain of Command radically alters play style for them.

1. Leader. You have the choice between Spiritual and Industrious, Organized and Charismatic, and Organized and Conquer. (Note, FF+ adds a Strategist and a Tactician Leader as well, as I haven't used them before, it is up to you to try them yourself.) So what is the real difference between them? Organized and Charismatic means that You'll be able to get command posts in every city, and that you'll be able to level your units up at 1.5xp, 3.5xp, 7.5xp, etc. instead of the usual 2/5/10. This of course is very advantageous in getting 0xp demagouges and other units to be useful fast. However, Spiritual and Industrious isn't that bad a combination. The primary thing to remember is that at Fanatacism, both Order and RoK get a disciple unit who is good in combat. As that is a priority tech anyways, you can then get a different unit to base your armies around instead of the usual Champion/Demagog spam. Why is this Important? As a spiritual leader, all diciple units start out with mobility 1 and potency - the only important one here is mobility 1, which would make the core of your army fast moving, a definite benefit.

We've added three Emergent leaders, with new traits: Instructor, Imperialist, and Strategist. Keep in mind, with all of these leaders you can gain an additional trait, based on your choices as you play... Makes these leaders very malleable.

Instructor is the star here. All non-Siege/Naval units created (as of next patch... Currently only those you build) gain one free promotion. Not an extra level, but an entirely free promotion... Means you'll get your Captain quite a bit sooner, as you can get to it a level earlier.

Imperialist is a bit weak at the moment. All cities founded start with a BFC, and you get +100% Great Commander emergence. As you said, GC's are weak for the Bannor atm.

Strategist is rather different. It grants Tactics 1 to all units... Faster route to Blitz, but weaker than Aggressive. It also grants Battle Field Tactics to GC's, allowing for the Formation promotions for Melee followers... Decent, but still a bit weak. Where the trait excels is with fast attack units. Tactics grants both withdrawal and defense... Lets you hit them fast, and get back out of the way. I'm planning on buffing it a bit as well.


9. Notes for Fall Further. As of right now, Fall Further hasn't made any changes to the Bannor. There are however some changes that they have made that will make the bannor play differently. The primary one here is the Animal Changes. Yes, Capital letters are needed here. It is VERY important - BUILD HUNTERS. You can't survive outside your borders without them - and with the chain of command, you can start your conquests at any time in the game. So use hunters as escorts. Use them to hunt down animals. DON'T send them out on their own - use squad systems, with a commanding officer and everything to give your hunter packs enough protection against unexpected things - like you just killed the bear and discovered the hungry COMBAT 5 CAVE BEAR right next to you... again. You want to keep your units intact - NOT feed the cave bears... and dragons... and wyrms... and spiders... damn they must have reaaaly wanted the wilderness to be wild in this mod.

A few points here:

We have, actually, made one small change to the Bannor, that could change the playstyle a bit: Crusade is now in the Membership category. Can continue to run other government civics, and don't have to defy the Overcouncil.
I'm working right now on a way to limit animals by tech... Then the Dragons and upgraded animals (Cave Bears, Elk, Packs, so on) will spawn after any player has hit a certain tech.... And the lesser animals will stop spawning. ;) Should make it easier to deal with the wilds early, but they'll be worse in the late game. :p

Instructor is the star here. All non-Siege/Naval units created (as of next patch... Currently only those you build) gain one free promotion. Not an extra level, but an entirely free promotion... Means you'll get your Captain quite a bit sooner, as you can get to it a level earlier.


Not quite. It means your captain gets 1 more promotion, before becoming a captain. Captain REQUIRE's having the unit be a level 10 unit. Therefore, free promotions, while nice, don't get you to captain any faster. Now, I'm not saying that its useless, far from that, its like having aggressive without being restricted to just combat 1. But it won't get you to captain faster (except by being able to get xp faster from being stronger... but that isn't necessarily true when compared to charismatic).

-Colin

Ah, true. Well, at the least it lets you take an extra promotion, making the units more likely to survive to captain level... One of the drawbacks of the CoC is that you need to take quite a few promotions that don't add any direct combat benefit, making the unit easier to kill. This helps with that, either by an instant Combat 1 or by taking the first step towards Captain for free.

No offense ment, but that really isn't that great a way to play the FF Bannor.


no offense taken, i didnt make it clear enough that i was talking about Fall Further PLUS, Version 22 and edited my post to make that more clear from the start.

I dont play FF but i guess the wildlife in it is similar to FF+ before the latest patch, so i would play bannor exactly like you do, i.e. getting some good commanders as fast as possible. no "turtling" necessary.

The wildlife in FF+ is drastically different though since v22 (think "my little pony" (FF) versus "Jurrassic Park"(FF+) ). Maybe i m just having bad luck but a stack of 5 hunters doesnt return home as 3-4 high level hunters like it did in earlier FF+ versions/ most likely base FF - instead it doesnt return at home at all and leaves a bunch of mini dragons, cavebears, griffon packs that are even more dangerous than before because they got some nice xp from you.
All that research/production/gold wasted for nothing but a minor chance that you might get lucky and have maybe 1 remotely high lvl hunter survive.

Btw while this may sound negative, i am actually really enjoying the new dangerous wildlife of FF PLUS although i admit being sceptic before. Not being able to get some highly promoted elite units from slaughtering easy animals and therefore getting a huge advantage for an early war (like readercolin suggests) makes for a nice change of pace and offers more challenge then before.

i m right now in an immortal-difficulty bannor game (played emperor before mostly and wanted to see if my strategy holds one level higher) and got fanatism around turn 170-180, so imho it doesnt take that long. didnt get the bone palace (beaten by one turn), had pretty bad luck with my neighbour (xivan led calabim, currently has twice the points i do) so i decided to take things safe and wait for chalid before engaging.

i m now turn 230ish and been in war for 5 turns, looking good so far but there s 2 stacks of vampire doom en route to meet my chalid/donal army that will probably decide if i can take a city of him or lose the game ^^ would feel more comfortable if Rally worked since i only have 15 demagogues right now but in Crown of Brilliance we trust ;) - cant wait to get home from work and see how it goes.

Aoleleb's Tips for playing as the Legion of D'tesh the Doom Fortress Way (One main city):
1) Quarries and Graveyards are your friend. They both eventually get +4 :hammers: and +1 :commerce:, albiet at different techs. Necromancy and Arcane Lore for Graveyards, Construction and Guilds for Quarries. Quarries also require Slavery running for +4, but if you aren't running that, I'll have to hurt you.

2) Run Slavery. Always, no exceptions. Your population depends on slaves, and anything that increases your chances of getting them is always nice.

3) Your mounted and melee units have a promotion that at first glance seems like a poor trade. It's called Wretched, and it gives -2 :strength:, No xp from combat, and a 15% chance to take slaves after combat. It also however, gives+1 Death Affinity This is to every melee and mounted unit you have. It is completely viable to skip the arcane line as D'tesh (except to get the boosts to Graveyards) and go down the Mounted line for an entire army of Horsemen of the Apocalypse

4) Forts: Learn it, Live it, Love it. Your forts allow you to grab things like Death Mana and Infused Ash without having to spread your population too thin, or having to deal with those annoying build order pop-ups.

5) There is absolutely no point to keeping enemy cities. Raze them and send the population back to your Spire of Doom.

6) It is worth noting that once you expand far enough in your conquests, and if you have the Nexus (you should), then you may want to set up "Staging Points" to get your One-Unit-Armies around faster.

7) Death Mana, just to reinforce that fact. When your Warriors have 9 :strength:, it's a beautiful sight.

8) It is quite possilble to destroy your enemies with peace. Open Borders + Watchers = Fun. Your Watchers have the Searing Heat promotion, which will turn any square they end the turn on into Wasteland. Surround your "friend's" cities with Watchers and watch as the population slowly dwindles.

Eventually, your Doom Spire will get so big you can pretty much build anything in one turn. Have fun ruling the world.

Haha, awesome. :goodjob:

Only thing I'd add is that the recon line is permanently invisible... And under Thanatos, gains extra strength. Perfectly viable to build nothing but scouts to attack with. xD

A different guide to Sheaim (for Fall Further+):



After the bannor guide I wanted to do a sheaim one but quickly realized that doing the standard “beeline for AV and own the world with ritualists” guide would be pretty boring and obvious for anyone but newcomers (and I think anyone who s already playing modmods for FFH is probably not a newcomer).

So I ve had a “different” game and wanted to share it. Its not as powerful as AV sheaim of course but still fun and has some good synergies….

1. Leaders:

Os Gabella. Why ? Malchavic = only 1 trait and that trait is pretty weak. I think he s intented to be an emergent leader capable of getting another trait but currently doesn’t work that way making him the worst possible leader choice for the sheaim.

Ophelia IS an emergent leader but for my strategy not interesting as it benefits a lot from having the summoner trait. Now of course Ophelia could get this one via emergent mechanics but its always a gamble and I don’t like reloading to get the better results.

Tebryn is the slightly worse Os in general but even more so for my strategy. Both share summoner so that’s good but the Arcane trait is pretty useless as passive xp gain for arcanes in FF was nerfed into almost uselessness and therefore potency is merely good for the spell strenght bonus but that one isn’t that big of a deal imho.
Since Os makes a good wonderbuilder and it lies along the critical research path the catacomb librarus is pretty much guaranteed to be built by me, so I ll have mage guilds for free which beats mage guilds for 50% less hammers.

So I m recommending Os Gabella for the important summoner trait and since many wonders come in handy in this strategy , industrious is also put into good use.

2. Religions:

What makes this guide different is that we aren’t going for the obvious Sheaim religious choice and early-game-winner-thanks-to-ROF.

Instead we re taking the other evil: Octopus Overlords. Why ? Well for starters hemah comes at Arcane Lore so you get a good Hero at your critical research path.
Secondly Asylums help with research and thirdly the Tower of Compliance (faster built thanks to Os Gabiella gives you a truly awesome city.

But even though we re talking OO, please note that playing on water heavy maps versus the AI is like playing chess against kindergarden kids. And playing OO on water heavy maps is like cheating when playing chess against kindergarden kids ;)

Also in this guide priesthood(tsunamie), fanatism(stygian guard) and theology (summon kraken) aren’t key techs so the naval power of OO isn’t even a goal.

3. Critical Research Path:

We don’t want to overrun the world with hordes of ritualists and diseased corpses, that’s too easy for us. Instead the key is the arcane path: getting to strenght of will as fast as possible to get eaters of dreams, collecting death mana like crazy and drowning erebus in hordes of pumped up spectres & wraiths.

4. Your starting city:

Most of the time you wont start near water (especially with flavourstart on) but if you do, chose carefully. Obviously water has some benefits: we re going for OO so we ll have to research fishing & sailing anyhow. and workboats don’t stop citygrowth like workers. good good. Please keep in mind however that water is terrain later on since it cannot be improved (oceans) or can only be marginally improved (coasts -> fishing villages) – it got nothing on a city with many rivertiles and cottages/farms.
Since your first city should be your future main city (capital and city with the tower of complanency) I d only recommend settling near water if you can get a location that has as little ocean as possible, preferably more land than water tiles and at least 2 good resources in the water.
Else go for a city with preferably no mountains in the BFC, many river tiles, some food resources, you know the drill…

Personally I took a coast city, but it was a really good starting place with many resources and more land than water tiles.

5. Your starting phase:

Set up city, have your warrior guard it and send the scout out looking for goody huts till something inevitably eats him. Build a worker (workboat) and send him out to improve any resources. Built a second warrior.
Tech to mysticsm, adopt godking & pacifism in one strike and build an elder council & a pagan temple while you are researching knowledge of the ether. assign a sage when the elder council is finished and when your first great sage pops turn him into an acadademy.

(If you decided for a coastal city research fishing before mysticism obviously and keep churning out workboats till the best coastal and resource tiles are improved.)

After KOTE is researched build a mage guild, an adept and then a settler. Meanwhile research fishing (if you hadn’t already) -> sailing -> message from the deep. The 2 warriors and the adept (who should immediately take death I so he can summon a skeleton and from there on combat promotions) are usually more than enough to defend your city from barbs. if you got some money from exploring before your scout was eaten you can drown your warriors as soon as you founded OO.

After the settler is done, switch production to a planar gate and then the catacomb librarus as it will give you another slot for a sage, 2 great sage points / turn , boost research and having mage guilds in all your future cities without building them is great especially with planar gates and mobius witches.

Look for a decent spot for a 2nd city but remember to be carefull about the new dangerous wilderness:

1. stay close to your cultural borders
2. have your adept and his skeleton escort the settler
3. the skeleton is expendable so as long as only 1 tough beast is attacking you cant really lose your adept or settler since you can always resummon skeleton next turn.
4. if you see a dragon or a huge bear – RUUUUUN!

A coast city is not a bad choice for your second city if its near some water resources.
Since you wont build the Tower in that city it doesn’t really matter if it could have much better tiles later on – its just another city for building a planar gate in afterall and if possible near a raw mana node (doesn’t have to be in the BFC , third culture ring is fine)

Also important: don’t found your second city before you found OO. most of the time the bigger city will become the holy one but I ve also experienced how a freshly founded city with 1 population became the holy city while my 9 pop capital didn’t.

Anyhow back to research: Go for Mind Stapling after founding OO to get your first good unit (saverous), the nice asylums and most importantly: the tower of complanency which should be built in your capital asap and from the on it can grow and grow and grow until it runs out of food.

After mind stapling research necromancy -> sorcery -> arcane lore.

Great sages can help with that via bulbing though you ll have to bulb alteration first which isn’t that great but one cant really help it.

The good thing with getting the tower of compliance is that you don’t (yet) need all those techs that unlock other happiness bonuses to grow your capital. And since your workers can build any improvement anyhow (just takes a while longer, but not a big issue imho ) you can focus on getting good at the arcane stuff fast instead.

When the tower of compliance was finished in your capital you should start building a sizeable army of adepts (5-6) for future use. its also about time to drop the research slider a bit to get some gold running so you can upgrade those adepts to mages once you hit sorcery.

Adepts with death mana make good explorers thanks to the easily replaced skeletons always defending first as already mentioned above. A stack of 5 adepts accompanied by 5 skeletons means you only run the risk of losing an adept if there s more than 5 attackers ;) So get those adepts some xp that they can be upgraded to mages later.

Don’t risk saverous exploring, he s not that strong and mini-dragons (who are much faster then him) eat him for breakfast until he got lots of promotions. I actually wouldn’t even waste time building him until somewhat later and use the production for adepts instead.

But that depends on your neighbours. with a powerful & aggressive neighbour nearby (or that isle which spawns stygian guards) its of course a lifesaver to have Saverous defending especially since he can get xp fast thanks to being a hero.

5. Becoming awesome

Hopefully your exploring adept/skeleton army will find a barbarian town or two to take over, preferably near raw mana nodes. If you cant help it, you ll of course have to do the settling yourself…

Raw mana nodes are important since you really want that tower of necromancy and you re still missing out on shadow, dimensional and entropy mana to build it (death and chaos comes from the sheaim palace). If the unique features Blair of Lacuna (dimensional) and Bradeleine s Well(entropy) are nearby, those are good substitutes as well.

If you are lucky and find more mana nodes … death death death. As soon as you have the tower of necromancy ALL your mananodes should be death (one for metamagic to train an adept in dispel and have him dispel the entropy/shadow/dimensional nodes and turn them into death ones – but if your lucky you might get a mobius witch starting with metamagic , then you don’t even need that ).

Works really well for sheaim as thanks to mobius witches you ll sooner or later get casters for every important spell/buff anyhow so you aren’t missing out on other spells in the long run.

If you get caught in an early war don’t go too offensive. with adepts&skeletons you have zero chance taking cities on higher difficulties and even mages with spectres will find it troublesome until you can pile up death affinity.
You definitely shouldn’t START wars until AT LEAST hemah is available, I d recommend waiting for strenght of will though if you can afford it.

Build an alchemy lab as soon as you can. I m not sure if the event is guaranteed to happen once the first alchemy lab is built or just a chance but mary moebius is a nice bonus and even without her the research bonus is nice.

Anyhow your capital should be building an alchemy lab, the crown of arkharien and hemah and before and after that: cultists to spread OO to your new cities and settlers to spread new cities if you don’t find enough barbarian ones.

Your other cities wont grow very big since you don’t have access to all these happiness bonuses from all the techs you missed out on (unless you traded for them with other civs) so its best to simply build a worker to improve its surroundings, a planar gate, an elder council and from there on : adepts, adepts, adepts (as you have a mageguild in all cities thanks to catacomb).

I think its very flavourfull: that one supercity thanks to the tower of compliance and plenty of small cities located near mana nodes and not having many buildings other than the planar gate feels very much like an evil mages civ.

Anyhow, it’s a long way to strenght of will but once finally there you can definitely take the war to your neighbours. If you did everything right you ll have 8 adepts/mages with enough xp to be turned into the sheaims awesome archmage UU / liches.

Since the AIs build their cities close to each other and their consume soul ability comes in very handy, especially combined with the summoner trait. Your wraiths will wreak havoc.

6. A few tips on how to promote your arcane units:


adepts:

death I unfortunately is a must for every starting adept until you have 2 death nodes and get it for free, but without death I you wont have skeletons and thus take a massive risk when sending your adepts out to gather xp. Later built adepts can of course skip it when they get it for free.

after that all you need is combat strenght I-V so your summons start with empower I-V promotions.

once you have those promotions the next important is getting fire I&II (palace mana). fireballs can bombard, cause collateral damage and most importantly are an alternative when fighting enemies highly resistant to death magic.

spell extension becomes important when you have strenght of will but not before.

eater of dreams (archmage UU) should definitely get fire 3 as well. before you can pile on massive death affinity fire elementals are often a better choice than wraiths and they also cause collateral damage.
chaos is also pretty usefull for “wonder” and mutating your casters: a “weak” or “enervated” adept isn’t utterly useless since it doesn’t effect his summons so the risk is much less than with melee units.


moebius witches:

unless you cant afford it because your neighbour is attacking and you need every unit there is you should destroy any moebius witch that spawns with spellspheres you don’t need so you have a chance for getting a better one next time.

You definitely always want moebius witches with:

….Air: because Maelstrom is a great addition to your offensive arsenal to weaken enemies for your mages & summons
….Body: hasting & regenerating your adepts/mages is very very usefull
….Ice: Slow is a great spell and later on you could upgrade this witch to get snowfall
for amazing offensive potential.
….Entropy: Pit beasts are somewhat meh except in the early game but corrode is very usefull weakening enemies.
….Sun: turning rivertiles into deserts is very handy since those deserts will upgrade into floodplains after a few turns. also blinding is a good spell to annoy your enemy with.
…Metamagic: scouting with the eye is very handy and dispelling mananodes to turn them into death ones is very important.
…Mind: inspiration is nice in your capital, charm is good and later on domination comes in handy. good all around.

In the early game Moebius witches that start with death, fire or chaos are also usefull as you can get spectres, fireball and mutate before even researching sorcery.
But since all 3 spellspheres are palace mana …. they become kinda pointless on witches as soon as sorcery is researched as then your mages can get those spells anyhow.

The other spellspheres are mostly meh until you get to strenght of will, of course then spells like Valor (law), Spellstaff (Enchantment) and others will come in very handy but the tier 1&2 spells of those spheres are not really usefull to you.

When I reach strenght of will (and have 4 death mana so any upgraded mage/moebius witch will get death 3 and therefore also lichdom for free) I ll make sure to upgrade the moebius witches first that have spellspheres that I definitely want the tier 3 spell off (law for valor, ice for snowfall, mind for domination etc.) and turn them into liches. after that come the actual eater of dreams who are upgraded from mages that already have combat strenght I-V so they get the most out of summoning.

7. the endgame

up to you, really. after strenght of will you have everything you need to wage wars though of course its no godmode on higher difficulties so be carefull and don’t piss off every other civ at once. I d suggest researching the techs now that unlock other units from planar gates, improve your economy and chose your conquest targets by the number of mana nodes you can get.

I personally liked going the recon route to unlock manticore´s and to have rangers that could capture the mini-dragons. I ended up with 4 different mini-dragons which made at least a bit up for winning before I ever got to Abashi ^^

Also start raising the Armageddon counter via rituals & razing since that makes your summoned units even stonger thanks to the sundered/stigmata promotion.

If someone summons hyborem and he s not too far off you should probably focus on killing him before he gets too powerful and spreads too much hellterrain. Also makes sure that you get the nice “Gela” item off him. His units will be a tough nut to crack with death & fire summons so better do it before he has too many of them for you too handle.


Anyhow, I know the “collect death mana and have fun with eaters of dreams” is not terribly original either but as far as I guess most people playing sheaim focus on AV early and therefore often don’t get to strenght of will before they won the game (whether they actually won or stop because the game got too easy), so I m hoping doing it this way and with a different religion was at least interesting to some readers.


Suggestions:

The arcane trait needs fixing. With potency almost useless due to low passive xp gain & caps in Fall further it’s a pretty bad trait, one of the worst.

Spiritual not only gives potency, it also gives mobility and it also gives no anarchy from changing religion / civics. And as everybody knows…. since savants can upgrade to mages spiritual pretty much means that even your arcane units will get potency anyhow PLUS mobility (which cancels out the one free promotion that you could argue is lost by going savant -> mage instead of adept -> mage ).

I m not sure if my memory is playing tricks on me but wasn’t Arcane at one point in base FFH supposed to also give 1 free promotion to each arcane units ?

That would be a welcome change. In the life of an archmage that d total out as 3 free promotions (1 at adept, 1 at mage, 1 at archmage, obviously on top of the free ones they already get) so it d be a pretty usefull trait.

Interesting strat... Never really thought of OO Sheaim. :p

1. Leaders:

Os Gabella. Why ? Malchavic = only 1 trait and that trait is pretty weak. I think he s intented to be an emergent leader capable of getting another trait but currently doesn’t work that way making him the worst possible leader choice for the sheaim.

Ophelia IS an emergent leader but for my strategy not interesting as it benefits a lot from having the summoner trait. Now of course Ophelia could get this one via emergent mechanics but its always a gamble and I don’t like reloading to get the better results.

Tebryn is the slightly worse Os in general but even more so for my strategy. Both share summoner so that’s good but the Arcane trait is pretty useless as passive xp gain for arcanes in FF was nerfed into almost uselessness and therefore potency is merely good for the spell strenght bonus but that one isn’t that big of a deal imho.
Since Os makes a good wonderbuilder and it lies along the critical research path the catacomb librarus is pretty much guaranteed to be built by me, so I ll have mage guilds for free which beats mage guilds for 50% less hammers.

So I m recommending Os Gabella for the important summoner trait and since many wonders come in handy in this strategy , industrious is also put into good use.

Woops, I forgot to make Malchavic Emergent. That'll be fixed. ;)


4. Your starting city:

Most of the time you wont start near water (especially with flavourstart on) but if you do, chose carefully. Obviously water has some benefits: we re going for OO so we ll have to research fishing & sailing anyhow. and workboats don’t stop citygrowth like workers. good good. Please keep in mind however that water is terrain later on since it cannot be improved (oceans) or can only be marginally improved (coasts -> fishing villages) – it got nothing on a city with many rivertiles and cottages/farms.
Since your first city should be your future main city (capital and city with the tower of complanency) I d only recommend settling near water if you can get a location that has as little ocean as possible, preferably more land than water tiles and at least 2 good resources in the water.
Else go for a city with preferably no mountains in the BFC, many river tiles, some food resources, you know the drill…

Personally I took a coast city, but it was a really good starting place with many resources and more land than water tiles.

You should be able to improve all coastal/ocean tiles with either Fishing Boats or Whaling Boats. ;)


5. Your starting phase:

1. stay close to your cultural borders
2. have your adept and his skeleton escort the settler
3. the skeleton is expendable so as long as only 1 tough beast is attacking you cant really lose your adept or settler since you can always resummon skeleton next turn.
4. if you see a dragon or a huge bear – RUUUUUN!


Haha, won't have as many big animals early on next patch... But you WILL have an invisible marksman, with like 1 :strength:. Keep a scout with you, or the settler will be lost. ;)


Suggestions:

The arcane trait needs fixing. With potency almost useless due to low passive xp gain & caps in Fall further it’s a pretty bad trait, one of the worst.

Spiritual not only gives potency, it also gives mobility and it also gives no anarchy from changing religion / civics. And as everybody knows…. since savants can upgrade to mages spiritual pretty much means that even your arcane units will get potency anyhow PLUS mobility (which cancels out the one free promotion that you could argue is lost by going savant -> mage instead of adept -> mage ).

I m not sure if my memory is playing tricks on me but wasn’t Arcane at one point in base FFH supposed to also give 1 free promotion to each arcane units ?

That would be a welcome change. In the life of an archmage that d total out as 3 free promotions (1 at adept, 1 at mage, 1 at archmage, obviously on top of the free ones they already get) so it d be a pretty usefull trait.

Hmm... That would be a good change to Arcane, and would make it useful. I think I'll do that. ;)

Haha, won't have as many big animals early on next patch... But you WILL have an invisible marksman, with like 1 :strength:. Keep a scout with you, or the settler will be lost. ;)


I hate you. I just wanted to let you know. I hate you... alot...

-Colin

Edit: On the other hand, don't marksmen not target units with no combat? So they won't target workers (unless they took the hardy promo's) if there are other units on the tile?

Actually, I'm not sure here. Workers DO have a unitcombat, in order to gain their promotions, but they may not be targeted if there's a better unit on the tile... Will have to test this.

And really, the hamsters are easy to kill. Just keep a scout with you, like I said. Should be done anyway for the spiders. ;)

The hamster thing sounds like a riot... but again, a reminder to do nothing unescorted, and a little prize if you capture it and bring it to a city anyhow!

Hamster Wheel? :lol: Already in.

Jotnar tips for RiFE only, aimed at Diety difficulty with extra barbarian units.


Pick your starting city location carefully! This will be your only city for a very long time so it is important that it be a good one. The ideal starting location will have the following properties:

Jotnar cities utilize 3 rings, not 2. Keep that in mind when picking the city location.
Next to a river on at least two sides. This provides improved defense and access to city improvements that require a river.
On top of a hill for defense.
Lots of rivers nearby so that nearby tiles can be converted to Flood Plains.
Lots of hills nearby for high production yields.
Resources which provide only food and health bonuses (e.g. deer).
Minimize all other resources (for the first city only!), you need these tiles for mines and farms, not specialty resources. Yet you do not want to loose the availability of the resource by using the tile for something else.
Not on the coast (for the first city only!)
Do not worry about mountains, they can be changed to hills later by Egrass the Founder.

City Configuration

Start off building only Wild Trolls. These will be the backbone of your early exploration army and a powerful contingent of your late game army.
Pause building trolls only long enough to construct any improvement which adds gold or science (e.g. elder council).
Set the city to focus on Food and Hammer resources (bottom-right of the city screen) until a minimum of 4 trolls have been built. Then switch to Food and Science for the remainder of the game.

Technology Path: Mining -> Mysticism -> Way of the Earthmother -> Resource Technologies as needed (e.g. Agriculture) -> Knowledge of the Ether -> Construction -> Festivals -> Iron Working (and any prerequisites along the way).
Early on, only explore the world to the extent that you can do so from the tops of mountains, and then only when absolutely necessary! Exploration is not worth risking early game units which will become extremely powerful late game units as they age!
Upgrade all Jotnar Citizens to Huscarl units as soon as money is available. These will be the defenders of your empire. Use them in groups of 2 or more Huscarl units and one Troll unit to hunt down barbarians and gain experience, but only when they threaten your empire! Do not leave civilization borders!
Any time Giantkin units are not fighting barbarians, use them to build improvements. Focus on resources that provide hammers, then those that provide food. Build commerce improvements only once your city has sufficient food for maximum size and sufficient hammers to produce buildings at a rate to keep up with other civilizations.
Once sufficient improvements have been constructed to keep the home city productive, happy, and healthy, build forts. Build lots of forts. This will be the primary way you expand your empire, not with cities!
Build Egrass the Founder as soon as possible (at Knowledge of the Ether)
Be wary of fighting early wars. Let your units gain in power and experience fighting barbarians and animals as long as possible.


If you have followed the above, you should be able to build a small but very powerful army which can defeat any other civilization. Owning the holy city for the Way of the Earthmother along with

Other civilizations will probably get far ahead on the technology tree. Keep track of their progress. Once they can trade technologies and have several important technologies you need, it is time to fight a war. The goal here is to fight only until the enemy civilization is willing to trade all of its technologies for a peace treaty.

By the end of this first war, if all has gone as planned, a game victory should be near certain.

I mentioned this in another thread but it seems appropriate here. Two words:
Ranger kills Hamster ->Minsc and Boo!

Or Hamster defeats ranger, I suppose. Though that's pretty unlikely.

The Balseraph despite their chaotic undertones are pretty much non-chaotic to play, focusing on either culture crushing or mimicry, with adopting the Council of Esus you can really drive home the point with whats his face, stealer of civilizations.

You'll want to play your mimics and to reflect that you'll want to go down a rather snarly research path in order to best utilise them as soon as possible. You'll want to start with either teching to Horseback Riding OR Fishing and Mysticism.(1) from there you'll want to decide to go to writing or bronze working.(2) This might be a good time to branch out from the rigid tech path and obtain situational techs like culture bonuses if Ascheron crashed your party.(3) Assuming you now have Deception-Warfare-Iron Working you should now think about invading someone, and invade them soon, you'll want to go back and pick up an auxillary military tech, mathematics.(4) If you've manage to survive thus far it's time to start managing your hopefully large empire by picking up the final key part of the Balseraph... Civilization, Drama.(5) This late in the game is virtually unplannable, and as such it's best to play defensive and conservative with your tech points.(6)


1: Mysticism is always an easy first for the bonus hammers but it may be wiser to hit up fishing first if you plummeted near a coast, otherwise go for horseback riding to set up Trade
2: You might want to consider getting some research ability before you head down the military path, since you're already on the way to it, but if barbarians are axing 'questions' at your door, it might be wise to obtain bronze working
3: The next point assumes you're going straight to mimics AND deception.
4: The reason being after the slight detour of situational techs its best to start rushing to gettings mimics AND deception, leveling them up more so they can survive combat through withdrawal chances and blitz so they can potentially gain the promotions they're missing and being great defenders
5: Since you've neglected your population or cannot gain more populations due to impending angry faces it might be wise to gain access to happy face boosting techs that are the balseraphs seemingly disturbing forte. (combining balseraph happy face harvesting and FoL makes for some pretty gigantic cities :|
6: What now, you're on your researching own now, the game has become far too dynamic to plot out effectively and is best to proceed defensively and cautiously.

There isn't a full set of ten tips just yet. But, this will just explain the tech advancement to best utilise the Mimic on its own, even if there are stronger strategies for early WAR/Culture Crush/City Booming (FoL + TREEEEEEEEEEES anyone?)

Jotnar tips for RiFE only, aimed at Diety difficulty with extra barbarian units.

Start off building only Wild Trolls. These will be the backbone of your early exploration army and a powerful contingent of your late game army.

By the end of this first war, if all has gone as planned, a game victory should be near certain.

Fothal, I tried your strategy for my second ever Jotnar game (the first was several FF+ versions ago and ended in disaster). It didn't work, because all of my wild trolls went crazy on me and ended up attacking each other and dying. I was left with no units at all. I lost ten trolls in a row, so gave up the game. Was I doing something wrong?

Hunting tech makes your trolls loyal and gives them +1 offensive strength. This applies to all the ones you control as well as those you build for the rest of the game, and doesn't require any hoops like constructing buildings.

I strongly suggest going for AV as the Jotnar because STW completely kills their growth penalty, giving them the same 1.5 food/citizen as any other civ running STW. Skip researching way of the earthmother, you've better things to worry about (hunting, tracking). I think it's best to go KotE -> divination for Egrass, a life node, and a spirit node if you have a second raw mana, then Way of the Wicked -> AV -> Pact while you build your mage guild/adepts/nodes. When hyborem spawns and hell breaks loose, you'll be ready for it.

Ouch, we may need to block them from that....

To be honest, I want to move their food requirement to civ infos (Maybe trait, makes it more usable for others). Then have it modify the value before civics do, and move civics to a modification of the requirement rather than setting it... Which would mean sacrifice the weak would make them need 2.5 food, not 1.5. ;)

If you did that I'd go for order as the Jotnar for the extra courthouses and free law mana.

I could see a very Lawful giant society... Was already considering having Kasghenal a Lawful Neutral leader.

Lawful Neutral? Does that mean you plan on expanding alignments past the sad little attempt that is Grey Fox's year-old broader alignments option?

There's two threads on the subject. I'm not planning, it's already in. :lol: (At least, it is in my version of the mod; Not the released one. Not sure when I will release, lots of xml work left to do in regards to the Alignments... And one or two major projects being worked on by the team that may make it in the next patch)

Of course, it's not finalized and will undergo significant changes in the future, but the current system works perfectly for what it was designed to do. ;)

Description of the expanded Broader Alignments system

Description of the Lawful-Chaotic Alignment Axis

Bump for more entries :)

Anyone have any tips on using the sidar? I've always found that I never employ their racial ability to 'wane' as I find using those high level units for the purposes of defending my empire or crushing my foes to be far more useful.

Anyone have any tips on using the sidar? .

I never play sidar, but I remember there are some tips about them in another thread...
Look for "regular" FFH strategy forum, there you'll find a thread named exactly the same as this one. I think those hints should be useful in Rife too, but I do not know wich difference there are between Rife and FFH Sidar, apart from the different adventurer spawning mechanics.

Sidar have not been changed at all; Adventurer spawn is the Grigori. ;)

Anyone have any tips on using the sidar? I've always found that I never employ their racial ability to 'wane' as I find using those high level units for the purposes of defending my empire or crushing my foes to be far more useful.

They are the ultimate cannon fodder civ. Don't use five units when twenty will do the job.

Start spamming warriors and sell your mother for an extra xp. Any that survive their first battle will get a nice chunk of xp. From then on have them pick off damaged units until they get the magic 26xp, at which point you wane them into Great Engineers or occasionally a Great Merchant to support your vast army.

As the tech becomes available, build whatever units gains 26xp the fastest. Mounted with Ride of Nine Kings, Adepts for the spells or Disciples with the Altar.

In particular the Altar is great with Confessors, they give you experience whether they live or die.

Heroes are also great, almost instant wane fodder.

Sidar have not been changed at all; Adventurer spawn is the Grigori. ;)

Ahem... Always get the two mixed up, I never play Grigori either :p
Still, my advice is valid, there are some good tipsin FFH strategy forum!

Anyone have any tips on using the sidar? I've always found that I never employ their racial ability to 'wane' as I find using those high level units for the purposes of defending my empire or crushing my foes to be far more useful.Here's what you do:

1. Take the Charismatic leader, I think his name is Mirrough.
2. Set up a reasonably good production city.
3. In that city, build the Ride of Nine Kings, a Command Post, and the Hippodrome.
4. Build the Form of the Titan.
5. Adopt Conquest and either Apprenticeship or Civil Service.

Congratulations! You now have a city capable of producing Horsemen with 20xp, which with Charismatic is enough for level 6. Enjoy your mob of free settled great people.

If you prioritize the horsemanship line of techs, this is entirely achievable by the midgame. Once you're there it's hard to lose; if you're too lazy to crush the rest of the world under your iron heel you can just settle a bunch of Great Artists and win by culture.

I'm actually doing that strat now - though I doubt I'll finish the game since the outcome has already been decided. The thing is though.. how are you supposed to survive until the mid game? Most of the other nations get some sort of commerce bonus. I don't think the +1 science from those 1-3 science specialists really cuts it. The only nations that don't get a commerce bonus get a war bonus (bannor, hippus, grigori). By the way, to that note.. bannor are insane in the membrane with their chain of command. That last strat posted for them was what I did to the letter. Funny thing though.. I managed to get a mage somehow in charge of the highest level of the normally highest level of chain of command. He had 800xp at the end of that game.. and could only cast level 2 spells - har.

Hi

I was thinking to test he doviello once the new patch come out (mostl with the baron to test the new emergent leader system) got any tips (as i am not a good player ;) ) thanks!

They are the ultimate cannon fodder civ. Don't use five units when twenty will do the job.

Start spamming warriors and sell your mother for an extra xp. Any that survive their first battle will get a nice chunk of xp. From then on have them pick off damaged units until they get the magic 26xp, at which point you wane them into Great Engineers or occasionally a Great Merchant to support your vast army.

As the tech becomes available, build whatever units gains 26xp the fastest. Mounted with Ride of Nine Kings, Adepts for the spells or Disciples with the Altar.

In particular the Altar is great with Confessors, they give you experience whether they live or die.

Heroes are also great, almost instant wane fodder.

It seems pretty odd that in order to get the most out of the sidar you need to be
a) using your people like cannon fodder and
b) also be a warmonger.

Stop me if I'm wrong but isn't this not particularly fluffy? I know there's plenty of strategy tips like OO sheaim here that are good but not fluffy either, but this seems the only way to properly utilise the original mechanic of the sidar, otherwise you may as well be playing a generic civ - which is a shame. In some of the other strategies listed here it still feels like you are playing as unique civ, but there is a variation to the obvious route.

I've always thought of the sidar as quite isolationist, preferring to study away their extended lives as they begin to lose interest in outside affairs. Any intervention they do undertake is done through the undercouncil and assassins. It's a shame that trying to play in this manner isn't too effective or interesting for the sidar since they're lacking in unique mechanics to do this.

Hi

I was thinking to test he doviello once the new patch come out (mostl with the baron to test the new emergent leader system) got any tips (as i am not a good player ;) ) thanks!

Hello :crazyeye:
The whole idea of the doviello is to get on top in the very early game.
I tend to play the doviello very aggressively, you start with Lucian, a pseudo-hero who is only really useful for the start of the game since he's only strength 4, and promotions gained help extend his use to the bronze axemen/archer era. Therefore you need to be hitting civs hard and fast before they tech too far up the tree to maximise this advantage.

Make loads of warriors and send them with lucian straight to your nearest neighbour's capital. You get free wolves which have 3 movement spawning in your capital to start with so scout out the location of your neighbours early with them - they can even enter territory without open borders. If the enemy is hard to shove then start duelling your troops and get a few warriors nicely promoted to help soften the defenders. When you get to bronze working you can actually upgrade warriors into axemen (sons of asena) in the field, so there's no need to send them back to friendly territory, just keep pushing on and taking out other civs (or bargining for free techs) until you have a significant enough advantage to establish yourself a strong empire for the rest of the game.

You're also at peace with the animals which is so much more useful in RiFE because animals are so much stronger in this mod than in others, and will prevent other civs from expanding quickly, whereas you can afford to be a bit less careful with sending a few warriors to escort each settler.

You're also likely to start out in tundra since the doviello have flavour for that area, so once you have bronze working then go straight for the recon tech line to reduce build times on the excellent yaranga improvement which grants food and production on ice/tundra tiles.
For religion, fellowship of leaves has quite good synergy since yarangas do not remove forest and will give you very nice yields when coupled with ancient forests, plus if you went down the hunting line to start with then it won't be difficult to get anyways. Guardian of nature + yarangas in ancient forests = massive elflike cities :D

sorry, that was really long.. :goodjob:

Thanks , any tips about the best way to use the animal promotion from the den?

Can't say I've made any extensive use of the kindred promotions themselves other than them being a handy bonus - you'll be making a lot of military so put the good animal den buildings like bear or mammoth in the high production cities to get a lot of troops with the free promotion, but your most experienced units are likely going to be older and won't have any of the kindred promotions. Still, it's handy for any of the new units that make it to higher levels.

I think that building the totem in a city allows you to start spawning that type of animal however, which means that you can start spawning mammoths at horseback riding.
Mammoths are great because they can be upgraded to strength 9 mammoth riders which are pretty handy to have around even past iron working.

I'd advise looking at the Doviello+ help tab in the fall from heaven concepts section of the pedia if you havn't already, it's got a good description of the new features for the doviello. Think it's a little out of date, but only by a couple of versions since council of the wilds isn't in game anymore but some of the additions mentioned are pretty recent so you could probably rely on the information in there pretty solidly.

Can't say I've made any extensive use of the kindred promotions themselves other than them being a handy bonus - you'll be making a lot of military so put the good animal den buildings like bear or mammoth in the high production cities to get a lot of troops with the free promotion, but your most experienced units are likely going to be older and won't have any of the kindred promotions. Still, it's handy for any of the new units that make it to higher levels.

I think that building the totem in a city allows you to start spawning that type of animal however, which means that you can start spawning mammoths at horseback riding.
Mammoths are great because they can be upgraded to strength 9 mammoth riders which are pretty handy to have around even past iron working.

I'd advise looking at the Doviello+ help tab in the fall from heaven concepts section of the pedia if you havn't already, it's got a good description of the new features for the doviello. Think it's a little out of date, but only by a couple of versions since council of the wilds isn't in game anymore but some of the additions mentioned are pretty recent so you could probably rely on the information in there pretty solidly.

Actually, the info there is up-to-date for the newest version. Just not for the team version; Large changes there. :lol:

Council of the Wilds is very much in game, it's in the Membership category.

I'm surprised noone's mentioned Scavenger; So long as your units keep fighting, they are maintenance free. And steal weapons. Allows the Doviello to fund a massive army, if they make sure to use it. ;)

I have been lurking here for a while, but I finally decided to contribute since I have found these forums to be so helpful. In full disclosure, I am not an expert by any means (in Civ4 or FFH+mods), but I think my points have some validity. Maybe one of the resident experts can fix these up. So, without further ado...

Cualli

1. Population Rush. I never really knew what this term meant until I played the Cualli. The Cualli reap amazing yields from the jungle terrain where other civs cannot, especially if there are food resources nearby. What will limit your city size is happiness, but this will not be an issue. Make sure you use your population to your advantage (see below).

2. Inherent Terraforming. Lands under Cualli control will slowly change towards wetlands and will eventually be covered in marsh. This is great for food, without a doubt. However, I have been unable to build improvements on the marsh, so if your city needs production then crank out those workshops. You can take the food penalty since your other tiles should be producing more than two food. The natural climate change also mean that you can settle wherever you want. See a clump of resources in the desert but have no water I adept? No problem, as long as you are patient (but the water adepts do speed things along).

3. Starting Position. Flavor start will put you in the jungle, but you may or may not be along the coast. I would recommend against settling the coast for the first city unless there are two or more resources in the BFC since the jungles are just plain better. If you do settle the coast, you might want to plan on the Heron Throne.

4. Woodsman Promotion. Gives a great boost within your borders, and hopefully a significant amount of terrain outside is jungle as well. Really helps with early exploring, especially since all lizardman units get two (double?) move in the jungle.

5. Tech Priorities. I would not prioritize worker techs for the Cualli. You will only really be building improvements on resources since marsh will take over, so look for Mysticism (God King) followed by an early combat tech or two depending on your situation. Hunting is always nice in RifE, Archery will help if you are being invaded, and Bronze Working will allow you to go on the offensive (though this may be skipped, see below). Standard stuff there. However, from here I suggest beelining to Priesthood and Way of the Wicked, in that order.

6. Happiness Comes From Resources. Due to the tech priorities, you will not be getting a lot of happy buildings. As a result, focus on keeping your population happy with resources. Luckily for the Cualli, the jungle is full of happy resources: dye, sugar, gold, and, most importantly, gems. If you do not have gems you will need to go to war to get them.

7. Priests. Just because you are agnostic does not mean you can ignore the priest line in RifE. It just means your civilization cannot adopt any of the major religions. The Cualli Priests of Agruonn are a force, as are their upgraded Shadow Priests. Furthermore, the hero is obtained by upgrading a Priest or Assassin. To get Shadow Priests, you need gems. See how it all ties together? Anyways, these units are no joke, and can easily replace swordsman with bronze weapons since both units are strength 5 and can take city raider promotions. What truly makes the Priests effective, though, is their body and shadow mana spheres. Keeping two Priests with each stack is a great strategy, especially when invading. One priest focuses on body magic for haste and regeneration (when those pesky archers defending the city use ranged attacks on you) and the other for blur and shadowwalk to negate some of the defenders' advantages. While I have not played that far yet, I bet Graft Flesh is perfect with these guys too.

8. Blood and Sacrifice. This unique starting civic is essentially a modified version of slavery. Don't change out of it. Ever (well at least through the mid-game). This one civic in conjunction with the fact that your cities will be growing out of control (literally, you won't be able to assign enough specialists) means that you can sacrifice population almost whenever you want to. This allows you to pump out early buildings (elder council, library, etc.) to really give you a boost, and then when your cities get really big (and unhappy) you can rush early wonders when they are halfway done. This civic allows you to keep up with your building infrastructure while churning out units.

9. Conquest. It takes a slight balancing act to know when to use food for population to go into buildings and when to use it for units, but the point is food = production. If a city will grow to unhappy, make it produce units for a bit. If a city is unhappy because you just whipped its population away (yes, it's easy to get carried away), make it produce units until the unhappiness goes away and it can grow again. Again, this takes some balancing. I would go for conquest once you are ready to make priests, but before would never hurt.

10. Slave Drive. The Cualli World Spell creates a Slave Pit in all of your cities, which essentially gives you four free citizens (ie. hammers). As you can guess, this spell is best cast when you have a large number of cities. I see two points where you might cast this effectively: once you have captured your continent (or hold an optimally large number of cities), or if you go on a city-founding spree. New Cualli cities take a while to get running since they likely do not have a lot of hammers and do not yet have a large population, so if you spam a few cities and cast your world spell it will help them get off the ground that much faster.

Comments and critiques are more than welcome. Like I said, I am no expert and refuse to post my difficulty level due to embarassment :lol:. I can assure you it is not Settler :goodjob:

And, of course, thank you to all contributors to FFH and modmods (and modmodmods etc). We need more activity and discussion about specifics of strategy and gameplay around here, and I am more than welcome to contribute and ask silly questions.

I'm surprised you didn't mention to beeline poisons for the cualli. Their major leader gets a +50% production bonus to them, and it's a great way to steal workers from your neighbors.

Very nice writeup. ;)

I should mention that the Cualli WILL gain a new mechanic (not in the next patch, though, as it requires some new code to do correctly), but it's one that should mesh well with all the others; Really, it differentiates them better from the Mazatl (and other civs) in a fun way. And should only hurt you if you don't play as you should. :p

To be perfectly honest, I didn't realize that heading for poisons was such a strong move since I am midway through my first game with them right now. The civilopedia says that Assassins can upgrade to Shadow Priests, but I would definitely recommend upgrading a Priest first to get the Hero with Body III and flesh golems with water walking (also comes on the priests).

Come to think of it, spamming Priests with xp makes for a pretty mean "early" flesh golem as the Cualli.

I guess I will put in a request while I am here for the Khadi. I haven't heard any discussion on them (aside from the lore basics), and the other civs just plain catch my interest more in terms of unique playstyle. What do Khad and his followers have going for them?

To be perfectly honest, I didn't realize that heading for poisons was such a strong move since I am midway through my first game with them right now. The civilopedia says that Assassins can upgrade to Shadow Priests, but I would definitely recommend upgrading a Priest first to get the Hero with Body III and flesh golems with water walking (also comes on the priests).

Come to think of it, spamming Priests with xp makes for a pretty mean "early" flesh golem as the Cualli.

I guess I will put in a request while I am here for the Khadi. I haven't heard any discussion on them (aside from the lore basics), and the other civs just plain catch my interest more in terms of unique playstyle. What do Khad and his followers have going for them?

Honestly, the Khadi have nothing unique going for them. They are the bastard offspring of the Amurites and the Sheaim, and impinge on both civilizations. :lol:

They are the only civ currently planned for complete removal. All that will remain is an Amurite specific event.

Can anybody share some Mechanos tips? They look fun so I started trying them. They are! Just I have no idea what to tech for and build.. or in what order.

Most every game I shoot for ancient chants -> mysticism which gives the "God King" civic.

God King is very strong, though depending on how much room you have to spread out you may wish to consider going straight to Cartography (for City States and the always-awesome Pact of the Nihlorn) in place of Mysticism.

Your other major tech priority is Construction. This gets you Organ Guns, which are awesome, and the Artisan's Workshop, which lets you run an Engineer specialist, which lets you get Great Engineers, which lets you build the Steamworks and the Master Siegesmith. The Siegesmith offers special promotions to siege weapons in exchange for gold; they're very expensive, but also very powerful, and as a bonus you get free gold and engineer GPP.

The Mechanos' major advantage in war is the sheer brokenness of their siege equipment, so grab onto that with both hands. If you want an easy game you can load some guns into a transport and fire in safety from there, but honestly I'd consider that an exploit. Up to you though.

Can anybody share some Mechanos tips? They look fun so I started trying them. They are! Just I have no idea what to tech for and build.. or in what order.

Most every game I shoot for ancient chants -> mysticism which gives the "God King" civic.

As above, but here are some other tips:


Make use of your heroes. Goliath, Lenora, Ferris, all of them are strong and can often be used in conjunction with each other.
Dominate with Machines. Try not to waste hammers building LIVE units, but rather Mortars, Airships, and Organ guns. If you do build living units, use Handgunners (Longbow UU) since they are super powerful with ranged attacks and strong offensive capabilities.
Attack from the Air: Handgunners on Dirgible Fleets make for some of the strongest, mobile forces you will have. Ten handgunners = ten ranged attacks that you can make and move around, even over water. This is even better when you use Lenora's Letters of Marque to gain HN for all air units in the stack.
The Ordo: Spread it ASAP with your Adeptus unit and build Clock Towers in your cities. They provide Science, Culture, and slots for specialists. They're your "Temple" of sorts, and the Steamworks will get stronger for each city that has Ordo Machinarum in it.
God King: Use it. You want the bonus to stack with the Holy City and Steamworks bonus, and you can support a large empire (12 cities~) if you really pile the bonuses in your capital with God King active.


To Summarize: Your primary Tech Lines will be Magic for Adeptus and Adeptus abilities and Refineries, Construction to give you your siege, and Bowyers to give you your Hand Gunners. Make use of your Aerial fleet to dominate your foes, and spread the Ordo Machinarum to all your cities while collecting Refined Mana to pump your Steamworks and keep your empire supported off of your capital.

As above, but here are some other tips:
To Summarize: Your primary Tech Lines will be Magic for Adeptus and Adeptus abilities and Refineries, Construction to give you your siege, and Bowyers to give you your Hand Gunners. Make use of your Aerial fleet to dominate your foes, and spread the Ordo Machinarum to all your cities while collecting Refined Mana to pump your Steamworks and keep your empire supported off of your capital.

Definitely the construction tech line is THE line to go down as the mechanos, the quicker you get those steam tanks the better. They are just a little bit awesome :)
As for the magic line, it's important to get the extra spells that the alteration/divination/elementalism/necromancy techs give the adeptus units, but there's no real need to go any further up this tech line than that.

I believe that the ordo machinarum is due for phasing out at some point, I think Valkrionn's mentioned its removal a few times already, so spreading the religion for boosting the steamworks won't be a strategy to count on for much longer. That said, for this version at least it's a no brainer to go spread the ordo far and wide, it's a very good religion to have given that you're assured the holy city.

Two things I'd like to add though, and firstly it's the ease that the mechanos can access great engineers. Clock tower and the holy shrine allow you to get some early great engineers that most civs will only be able to get slightly later on, and at a greater cost if they've already popped a few great people already. This can get you almost first choice on any wonders that become available on the tech line of your choosing.
Engineers are by far my favourite specialist to get, due to their wonder rushing, or founding master buildings, and for mechanos a great engineer will bag you the ordo shrine (again, not for long but oh well :)) as well as their tech discoveries being linked to the two lines that matter most - construction and metal lines. I'd advise running exclusively engineer specialists in your cities for almost all of that game (possibly sage at some point to get academies or to quickly access the adeptus abilities)

Secondly is the affinity that's been talked about already in these forums. As it stands, mechanos have an affinity for refined mana which is +1 ranged str and +10% damage cap to ranged attacks. The palace and steamworks each provide 1 refined mana so you're basically assured +2 ranged and +20% cap on all siege units. Get yourself a refinery on one more mana node and you've got yourself organ guns that have a ranged attack which can kill units outright since it has a 100% damage cap. No other unit IIRC can kill with a ranged attack so while I'm not in favour of such a powerful siege unit that's available as early as construction, this would be the way to cause maximum pain to your enemies as mechanos. This can be devastating if combined with high mobility flying transports, as mentioned above.

Definitely the construction tech line is THE line to go down as the mechanos, the quicker you get those steam tanks the better. They are just a little bit awesome :)
As for the magic line, it's important to get the extra spells that the alteration/divination/elementalism/necromancy techs give the adeptus units, but there's no real need to go any further up this tech line than that.

I believe that the ordo machinarum is due for phasing out at some point, I think Valkrionn's mentioned its removal a few times already, so spreading the religion for boosting the steamworks won't be a strategy to count on for much longer. That said, for this version at least it's a no brainer to go spread the ordo far and wide, it's a very good religion to have given that you're assured the holy city.

Two things I'd like to add though, and firstly it's the ease that the mechanos can access great engineers. Clock tower and the holy shrine allow you to get some early great engineers that most civs will only be able to get slightly later on, and at a greater cost if they've already popped a few great people already. This can get you almost first choice on any wonders that become available on the tech line of your choosing.
Engineers are by far my favourite specialist to get, due to their wonder rushing, or founding master buildings, and for mechanos a great engineer will bag you the ordo shrine (again, not for long but oh well :)) as well as their tech discoveries being linked to the two lines that matter most - construction and metal lines. I'd advise running exclusively engineer specialists in your cities for almost all of that game (possibly sage at some point to get academies or to quickly access the adeptus abilities)

Secondly is the affinity that's been talked about already in these forums. As it stands, mechanos have an affinity for refined mana which is +1 ranged str and +10% damage cap to ranged attacks. The palace and steamworks each provide 1 refined mana so you're basically assured +2 ranged and +20% cap on all siege units. Get yourself a refinery on one more mana node and you've got yourself organ guns that have a ranged attack which can kill units outright since it has a 100% damage cap. No other unit IIRC can kill with a ranged attack so while I'm not in favour of such a powerful siege unit that's available as early as construction, this would be the way to cause maximum pain to your enemies as mechanos. This can be devastating if combined with high mobility flying transports, as mentioned above.

Ordo Machinarum will be removed, replaced by Airandamar. A religion which the Mechanos do NOT found; They're going back to Agnostic.

As for ranged affinity... It is staying, but the units are being nerfed. And some will lose access to it.

Definitely the construction tech line is THE line to go down as the mechanos, the quicker you get those steam tanks the better. They are just a little bit awesome :)
As for the magic line, it's important to get the extra spells that the alteration/divination/elementalism/necromancy techs give the adeptus units, but there's no real need to go any further up this tech line than that.

I believe that the ordo machinarum is due for phasing out at some point, I think Valkrionn's mentioned its removal a few times already, so spreading the religion for boosting the steamworks won't be a strategy to count on for much longer. That said, for this version at least it's a no brainer to go spread the ordo far and wide, it's a very good religion to have given that you're assured the holy city.


IIRC, you still need to tech to Alchemy or something for Refineries, which is on the magic line.

And yes, even if the Ordo is removed, I was basing it off of the current version. Because of the breadth of changes for the next version, it's going to require an entire new set of tips because the strategies will be so different.

IIRC, you still need to tech to Alchemy or something for Refineries, which is on the magic line.

And yes, even if the Ordo is removed, I was basing it off of the current version. Because of the breadth of changes for the next version, it's going to require an entire new set of tips because the strategies will be so different.

Refineries require Steam Power, which requires KotE. Alchemy is on the construction line, actually.

All the magic techs the Mechanos want are KotE and it's offshoots; Steam Power and the 4 schools.

IIRC, you still need to tech to Alchemy or something for Refineries, which is on the magic line.

And yes, even if the Ordo is removed, I was basing it off of the current version. Because of the breadth of changes for the next version, it's going to require an entire new set of tips because the strategies will be so different.

Alchemy boosts the yields of the refinery, but the refineries themselves can be constructed at steam power by an adeptus. Alchemy only requires engineering I think so it's actually on the construction line, but a link to the magic tech tree may not be such a bad idea. It seems that the mechanos can kill a lot of birds with one stone (or tech tree, since most of their UU and UBs are on the conscruction line) so linking alchemy to the magic tree sounds pretty good, I think.

Edit: Oops, valk beat me to it on this one :)

And sorry, I wasn't dismissing any of the strategies relating to the ordo that you posted for this version by stating that it was due for removal, I was sort of trying to say that many things will need re-evaluating when the new RiFE comes along.

Thank you all most kindly for your replies. Also, thanks much for giving heads up as to how they're changing in the newer version. Much appreciated.

How about a request for using some of the new mechanics for the original FFH civs like the Bannor chain of command on the first page?

Most of the civilizations did not receive new mechanics. I think the amurites may have recieved a boost in experience to their apprentices though, which can change into any type of unit now, along with the ability to temporily gain channeling II, allowing you to construct archers with force II (fun times!) Marksman range 3 ftw.. I think their champion unit got moved to the magic line, making it a good idea to beeline Arcane Lore. So for the amurites, I recommend getting archers as one of your prerequisite techs, then go for agroistacracy, and try to found as many remaining religions as you can after researching knowledge of the ether. Of their leaders, Dain the caswaldan is good for pumping out great prophets with his philosphical trait, but if you feel like trouncing the countryside with undead pick up naxes and research necromancy. Next you should probably pick up sorcery and arcane lore. Then bronze working and then strength of will. Mind that you'll still need all the economy techs along the way, but sacrificing some of them for the gain of battlemages is worth it. If you can get some law and force mana, Tya Kiri will let you stomp everyone with firebows if you wanted to go to war early. Just force mana would be fine if you are okay with your units rampaging around every so often..

Most of the civilizations did not receive new mechanics.

That's not true, actually. When you take the sum total of RifE (so our changes, and FF's changes), the only civs left untouched are:


Balseraphs - Don't need it.
Calabim - Again, don't need it.
Hippus - Haven't gotten to them.
Lanun - Don't need it.
Ljos - Don't need it.
Luchuirp - Haven't gotten to them.
Mercurians/Infernals - Don't need it. Though if you make Basium Evil you'll have a surprise.
Svarts - Don't need it.

So 9 out of 32... That's not most. ;)

I think the amurites may have recieved a boost in experience to their apprentices though, which can change into any type of unit now, along with the ability to temporily gain channeling II, allowing you to construct archers with force II (fun times!) Marksman range 3 ftw.. I think their champion unit got moved to the magic line, making it a good idea to beeline Arcane Lore. So for the amurites, I recommend getting archers as one of your prerequisite techs, then go for agroistacracy, and try to found as many remaining religions as you can after researching knowledge of the ether. Of their leaders, Dain the caswaldan is good for pumping out great prophets with his philosphical trait, but if you feel like trouncing the countryside with undead pick up naxes and research necromancy. Next you should probably pick up sorcery and arcane lore. Then bronze working and then strength of will. Mind that you'll still need all the economy techs along the way, but sacrificing some of them for the gain of battlemages is worth it. If you can get some law and force mana, Tya Kiri will let you stomp everyone with firebows if you wanted to go to war early. Just force mana would be fine if you are okay with your units rampaging around every so often..

All Amurite units have a chance to be created with spells (based on what you have, and buildings in the city). Their Apprentice UU can upgrade to different unitcombats, and any Amurite unit with Channeling 1 is able to take Channeling 2 when the reqs are met.

Wait, you mean making Basium evil in the code or through in game events? I now want to go check this out to see what you're talking about.

What did the elohim get? The monk thing from FF? I Guess I wasn't taking those changes into account. And building adepts is much better, since they can start with 15+ experience points, and an extra promotion ^^. How would you go about making basium evil btw.. ashen veil doesn't spread to his cities I thought.

Wait, you mean making Basium evil in the code or through in game events? I now want to go check this out to see what you're talking about.

Any method. It's accomplished via an autoacquire promotion when the Mercurians are Evil. ;)

What did the elohim get? The monk thing from FF? I Guess I wasn't taking those changes into account. And building adepts is much better, since they can start with 15+ experience points, and an extra promotion ^^. How would you go about making basium evil btw.. ashen veil doesn't spread to his cities I thought.

The monk changes, the traits for all UF's, etc. Nothing RifE did specifically, but that's because FF did it well enough that I didn't have to. ;)

Building adepts is good, yes. That's why you build the adept (the Apprentice, adept UU), and can then upgrade it to a Mage, Spellsword, Firebow, etc. ;)

Make Basium evil by using BA. Convert to White Hand or OO, and then build things which push you the rest of the way.

Also, in response to new Sidar strategies, Hunting is a great early tech since the House of the Grey (Hunting Lodge UB) gives one :) and one :health: with the starting mana, giving cities a nice early boost.

Yeah.. I just mostly don't really like the sidar. Their mechanic nerfs you too hard. Level 6 units are tough to get and you want to keep them for upgrading later. Personally I think this would be much better if you could only 'split' with each unit every 6 levels at the cost of the most recent promotion. So you could still effectively have a level 5 unit, and the spirit wanders back to the capital to create a great person.

Yeah.. I just mostly don't really like the sidar. Their mechanic nerfs you too hard. Level 6 units are tough to get and you want to keep them for upgrading later. Personally I think this would be much better if you could only 'split' with each unit every 6 levels at the cost of the most recent promotion. So you could still effectively have a level 5 unit, and the spirit wanders back to the capital to create a great person.

I agree, and it's really their only unique mechanic, aside from about 3 UUs on the recon line. They feel a bit bland compared to the other RiFE enhanced races that have recieved a lot of love, especially since you don't see much variation from other civs until you get a unit to level 6.

Looking at the pedia entry for the sidar:
Shades, men who have traded portions of their soul for immortality, the Grey are detached from the events of the world. Only intervening to protect themselves or striking out to destroy undead (they see undead as aberrations despite their own use of magic to extend their life), they are happy to keep to their hidden cities, out of the eyes, and the wars, of the younger races.
I'd like to see some more of the isolationism aspect encouraged for sidar players. Possibly accompanied by a mixed builder/recon heavy playstyle, with maybe some emphasis on the anti-undead aspect.
A possible idea is to have sidar units have promotions at certain levels which are similar to the jotnar artisan promotions, means you have to keep your units at home to get the most out of them, but it doesn't mean you lose your unit.

:mischief:

?????
(To Valk's reply)

:eekdance:?

:rotfl:
is it a secret??

:eekdance:
:eekdance::eekdance:
:eekdance::eekdance::eekdance:
:eekdance::eekdance::eekdance::eekdance:
:eekdance::eekdance::eekdance::eekdance::eekdance:
:eekdance::eekdance::eekdance::eekdance::eekdance:
:eekdance::eekdance::eekdance::eekdance:
:eekdance::eekdance::eekdance:
:eekdance::eekdance:
:eekdance:

He means watch this space.

He means watch this space.

:nono:

:jesus::undecide::splat::think:
:think::hatsoff::aargh::think:
:wallbash::eekdance:
:hatsoff::aargh::viking::eekdance:
:pat::lol::aargh::ninja::splat:

Cookie to the first one to translate.

:nono:

:jesus::undecide::splat::think:
:think::hatsoff::aargh::think:
:wallbash::eekdance:
:hatsoff::aargh::viking::eekdance:
:pat::lol::aargh::ninja::splat:

Cookie to the first one to translate.
No, just that we have plans.

No, just that we have plans.

Cookie for you, sir. :lol:

I enjoyed making that post. :p

Cookie for you, sir. :lol:

I enjoyed making that post. :p
Heh, and I enjoyed deciphering it.

And I enjoyed reading your exchange.

Is it against forum rules to repost things from other threads? I was thinking it might be useful to include discussions/strategies in civ-specific threads in here since this thread will (hopefully) remain on the front page while the others may not.

:nono:You shall not eat of the forbidden fruit.
:jesus::undecide::splat::think:Be like Jesus and treat others like you want to be treated yourself. The fish slapping is an analogy to the current state of affairs. Fish because we are in the age of pisces, the age of the fish. The slapping and the afterthought is to represent patience. We are at the threshold of something here.
:think::hatsoff::aargh::think: Those who expect further divulging will only be frustrated.
:wallbash::eekdance: And if you take it far enough you will only run into a wall. It's the state of frustration where you can't do anything.
:hatsoff::aargh::viking::eekdance: But if you chill and don't freak out the reward will be yours.
:pat::lol::aargh::ninja::splat: So much like a child destined to become a ninja, the fish will be dealt out. It is destiny.

You shall not eat of the forbidden fruit.
Be like Jesus and treat others like you want to be treated yourself. The fish slapping is an analogy to the current state of affairs. Fish because we are in the age of pisces, the age of the fish. The slapping and the afterthought is to represent patience. We are at the threshold of something here.
Those who expect further divulging will only be frustrated.
And if you take it far enough you will only run into a wall. It's the state of frustration where you can't do anything.
But if you chill and don't freak out the reward will be yours.
So much like a child destined to become a ninja, the fish will be dealt out. It is destiny.
My interpretation is so bland compared to yours. Now I shall have to sit in my corner and cry myself to sleep. Terribly sorry about the thread hijack.

:nono:

Cookie to the first one to translate.

I feel like I've just been smacked down but I'll take that as
'Good things come to those who wait' :D

You shall not eat of the forbidden fruit.
Be like Jesus and treat others like you want to be treated yourself. The fish slapping is an analogy to the current state of affairs. Fish because we are in the age of pisces, the age of the fish. The slapping and the afterthought is to represent patience. We are at the threshold of something here.
Those who expect further divulging will only be frustrated.
And if you take it far enough you will only run into a wall. It's the state of frustration where you can't do anything.
But if you chill and don't freak out the reward will be yours.
So much like a child destined to become a ninja, the fish will be dealt out. It is destiny.

I lol'd. :lol:

My interpretation is so bland compared to yours. Now I shall have to sit in my corner and cry myself to sleep. Terribly sorry about the thread hijack.

Yours WAS correct. :goodjob:

I feel like I've just been smacked down but I'll take that as
'Good things come to those who wait' :D

Pretty much, yes. ;)

Request time! Dural?

Maybe not Dural, since I don't tend to play them.. but I can do a malakim one. :p

So, the malakim have gotten a lot of love in RifE (were actually one of the first things to be changed) and require a whole new strategy to usual city placement and managing the economy. Figured I'd do a general overview of some of their new features and then go on about the crusader strategy.

*Leaders:
Varn Gosam is the one to go for, no question. The malakim have powerful synergy with disciple units, so the spiritual trait, with potency and mobility for all disciples - as well as no anarchy - is a great bonus, and far outweighs Kane's organised trait.
Varn also has adaptive, which he doesn't really need if I'm honest, but it makes him a top tier leader. There's very little advantage to choosing Kane unless you insist on being neutral or you just really like the underpowered organised trait. I personally feel that Kane should get some bonuses for the malakim recon line, since they appear to be more closely related to the pre-Lugus malakim (which Kane was in charge of in the scenarios).

Both leaders have the charismatic trait which is all fun and games and works very well with the strategy I've written below.

Then you have Decius, which is a nice extra if you feel like playing malakim in a different way to the way I've outlined below. All units you own will get the same bonuses in desert as your homegrown malakim units so there's no downside to conquering everything and experimenting with some combinations. (how about scions? get a necropolis and all those floodplains won't ever cause you a problem)

*RifE changes
-Climate change to desert - this is both a blessing and a curse. Basically you get better unit strength on desert and plenty of commerce and food from floodplains, but this comes at the cost of loss of hammers, unhealth from floodplains and a sharp reduction of useful tiles.
-Dunespeak promotion - all malakim units get this on desert. It's great, basically. Maybe too great :) Adds movement, sight range, desert strength, immunity to first strikes, heal while moving and visibility of hidden animals. You should always be the one to attack if you're fighting in a desert if possible, you get the +strength and they get a -defense penalty for being on desert and you have enough movement to get away!
-Bedouin sits - These unique improvements slowly upgrade from
sit-->camp-->gathering-->village, and they take a while to do this.
You can only place them on non-floodplain desert tiles, with at least 2 tiles distance from one another and they stack with scrub improvements. These improvements effectively reduce the problem of having less workable tiles, since a fully upgraded bedouin village will supply the same amount of food as a floodplain and gives a nice amount of commerce.
-Oasis boost - oases are awesome for the malakim, all your adepts get a Lugus' Gift spell that allows you to create an oasis as long as it isn't within 5 tiles of another one. Plan well and grab an oasis for every city if you can.
-Trade over desert without roads - this isn't in yet I believe, but Valk's already said it will be in the new version. Effectively you trade over desert like it was sea. A pretty cool addition considering that everything in your culture range will be desert, and the +30% food you get from the yield of each trade route.

There are far more other new mechanics, UUs and the mirror of heaven events being the main ones that come to mind but these are the main ones to think about economically. Look in the pedia for more info, the malakim+ section is well covered.
Always place a city near a river - floodplains are your only source of food without 60+ turns of bedouin sit improving (trade routes will help but don't rely on them till you've got a lot of cities). You'll be very starved on hammers initially - eventually you'll rely on great prophet specialists and workshops/mines to get those for you. This is compensated by great commerce and food yields and you are doing things wrong if you arn't ahead in tech most of the time.

*Strategy
First of all, some general economics things.
-Settle near a river! This is really important.
-Stick cottages, farms or workshops on floodplains, bedouin sits on as many other tiles as possible, but the former improvements are generally a higher priority to start with. Use mines on hills.
-Try and plan it so you've got an oasis for each city, and maybe a resource that provides a few bonus hammers. It means the city is useful straight away, and doesn't require as much nurturing.

So, how do I play malakim? Well first I get mysticism for godking and the pagan temple unique building. Then I assign priest specialists, and will then try to get bronze working to get some reasonably strong defenders, since there's little chance of being able to rush out a few extra warriors if a hill giant kills a few defenders.

After this, I rush to found Order, then go to fanaticism to gain access to crusaders. By this point of the game you should be running apprenticeship, and have a few levels of the Altar of the Luonttar. Combined with your UB that's a lot of experience for new disciple units (even more promos than usual due to charismatic as well), and combined with the free promotions from the spiritual trait, and the ability for the crusaders to use metal weapons, you get a highly mobile, better-than-champion force of units that destroys anything in the desert, and is very capable out if it. Once you start running the theocracy civic these guys become even more powerful.

Although this can be done with any religion, I think this is most effective for Order, because its side benefits also work well with your high food-low production civ. Social order increases your happy cap so you can utilize the abundance of food, the order temple increases military unit production and the confessor's bless spell is just very useful.

Ultimately it's down to a choice as to what religion you choose, since malakim are good with all of them. Some religions like FoL or AV can upgrade their 1st tier disciples into recon or arcane units in order to get high XP for these units. Either way, religion is a central theme for them and you should be looking to get a few levels of the Altar to complement this.

That is all for now :crazyeye:
Please feel free to fill in any gaps/point out mistakes/criticise my order-malakim :)

I actually recommend running conquest instead of apprenticeship, since you'll have production probems and going runes of kilmorph for your early religion (so you can build mines on those normally unusable tiles). Later you can switch to order or empyrean as you like. Personally I prefer empyrean and running down nations with chalid. Oh and don't forget to build some citadels of light on tiles you can't work! An extra +15% strength to every unit within three tiles is nothing to scoff at.

I actually recommend running conquest instead of apprenticeship, since you'll have production probems and going runes of kilmorph for your early religion (so you can build mines on those normally unusable tiles). Later you can switch to order or empyrean as you like. Personally I prefer empyrean and running down nations with chalid. Oh and don't forget to build some citadels of light on tiles you can't work! An extra +15% strength to every unit within three tiles is nothing to scoff at.

Don't forget the fact that any enemy unit that comes within one tile of your Citadel of Light will be hit by a pillar of fire. ;)

I actually recommend running conquest instead of apprenticeship, since you'll have production probems and going runes of kilmorph for your early religion (so you can build mines on those normally unusable tiles). Later you can switch to order or empyrean as you like. Personally I prefer empyrean and running down nations with chalid. Oh and don't forget to build some citadels of light on tiles you can't work! An extra +15% strength to every unit within three tiles is nothing to scoff at.

Agreed, I overlooked conquest because it's a little off the tech path I usually go on but now you say it it's definitely worth the detour since it solves all production issues.
I think the religion is a matter of personal taste, there's a small element of whether you go for the disciple army or the god-like Chalid. In my opinion chalid is the only reason to go empy for any civ. Order has a few more toys to play with, and empyrean has one very big one.
I also tend to run theocracy exclusively as soon as it becomes available because the benefit is widespread to a lot of disciples, and having multiple religions makes running theocracy less worthwhile.
If you're going for the powerhouse chalid, or anything other than disciple army it's probably better to horde religions, build dwarven mines, and run the religion civic for maximum happiness since the zealot promotion is unlikely to make a difference if you're only going to (mainly) use one superdisciple.

And yeah, I missed out on the citadels of light, mainly because I never build them:blush:, but yeah they're definitely useful to have around when I've captured a fort early and it's fully upgraded.

Also forgot to mention about their mounted line and camel/horse stables and the switch between the two types of mount, and also the fact that malakim mages can summon sand lions. I believe the latter isn't mentioned in the pedia :)
Strength 6 summons with +40% strength in deserts is nothing to scoff at either given the time that they arrive...

Don't forget the fact that any enemy unit that comes within one tile of your Citadel of Light will be hit by a pillar of fire. ;)

No... :):):):)ing.. way. That rocks. Had no idea. But um.. empyrean has more going for it than just chalid. That fire spell their priests cast is pretty brutal. I don't like actually risking any of my attackers. I prefer softening up the defenses. I think I've gone through games (without reloading) with close to a 1% death rate =D. Of course the computer is stupid.. so maybe that's not boasting much. Plus let's not forget all their unique units can cast hold on all the attacking units, nicely putting them in a desert tile on which you can assrape them ^^.

But um.. yeah.. it's a preference thing. I really like trying to play the races to their given flavor.. honestly I figure if one of the other religions works better, it was done wrong.

So... let's do the next one.. this isn't really a top 10 or anything anymore. I was hoping to get the matazl in here after Cualli, but we sidetracked a bit so.. fun times.

Leader:

There's only one, so theres no choice. Hianthrogh is spiritual for your wyvern defenders and unique priests, so they can move with mobility. That means 3 speed defenders! Good times. He also has the defender trait which will become important for our strategy portion

Rife Changes:

Honestly I don't know if rife changed anything from Fall Further. I think the swamps may give more food with tech upgrades though, so you pretty much don't even need to build farms

Strategy

The matazl make for excellent turtlers until you can summon coatlann the wyvern (your powerhouse!). Since your terrain autoupgrades, I recommend researching archery as your first tech to pump out blowpipes. Since your leader is defender they automatically start with city defense I, (I think this might require a palisade or city walls though) which means you can take city defense II and III while skipping the first one. Along with his +10% bonus to strength within his own borders and some fun matazl jungle bonuses you'll be able to keep enemies out of your territory for a long time. Now it's on to techs. I recommend researching some commerce techs, and probably beelining for drama for the great bard (though I don't know if that will be the case anymore once the guild changes come in.. but for now, you can auto change everything into a sheep, so good times).

Next up you'll want to research either currency or priesthood depending on if you are subject to a war or not. Currency will let you switch to lost lands. Which by the way.. if you position all your cities next to coastal squares.. and build the great lighthouse, you will easily have 7+ traderoutes all giving you 2 food and 2 production. Plus the harbor adds a nice +50% to that! Of course you need to build that many cities since lost lands only let's you trade with yourself.. so that comes to expansion! Build anywhere and everywhere. All those crappy desert tiles will eventually turn into wonderful jungle terrain. Which by the way.. never ever build an improvement on a forested tile, as it will destroy the forest, when you could have otherwised gained the extra production from having a jungle there.

Once you have a nicely teched empire going, start your research towards coatlann the wyvern, which will require Theology, Righteousness and arcane lore. Yeah that's a lot of techs, but well worth it. Plus you'll get paladins along the way since your leader is good (try not to change this by switching to undercouncil or something >.>). It's pretty much game once you get your hero. He has a spell exactly like Acheron. It does 50-100 damage to all surrounding enemy units and summons a meteor. So launch your catapult volley then cast and watch the defenders fall!

As a side note, you may want to research some of the magic techs a bit earlier than normal, since their priests and temples are tied to them.. plus you'll want creation adepts in all your cities.

No... :):):):)ing.. way. That rocks. Had no idea. But um.. empyrean has more going for it than just chalid. That fire spell their priests cast is pretty brutal. I don't like actually risking any of my attackers. I prefer softening up the defenses. I think I've gone through games (without reloading) with close to a 1% death rate =D. Of course the computer is stupid.. so maybe that's not boasting much. Plus let's not forget all their unique units can cast hold on all the attacking units, nicely putting them in a desert tile on which you can assrape them ^^.

But um.. yeah.. it's a preference thing. I really like trying to play the races to their given flavor.. honestly I figure if one of the other religions works better, it was done wrong.

Well, so long as you have a unit in the fort, yes. Works slightly differently for the AI (no unit req).

It's done via a python-on-move call, does between 10-40% fire damage, and creates the Pillar of Fire effect. It's the entire reason I moved the Citadel from a building, to a unique fort upgrade.

At the time I barely knew what I was doing in python, so I was fairly proud of it. :lol:

So... let's do the next one.. this isn't really a top 10 or anything anymore. I was hoping to get the matazl in here after Cualli, but we sidetracked a bit so.. fun times.

Leader:

There's only one, so theres no choice. Hianthrogh is spiritual for your wyvern defenders and unique priests, so they can move with mobility. That means 3 speed defenders! Good times. He also has the defender trait which will become important for our strategy portion

Rife Changes:

Honestly I don't know if rife changed anything from Fall Further. I think the swamps may give more food with tech upgrades though, so you pretty much don't even need to build farms

Strategy

The matazl make for excellent turtlers until you can summon coatlann the wyvern (your powerhouse!). Since your terrain autoupgrades, I recommend researching archery as your first tech to pump out blowpipes. Since your leader is defender they automatically start with city defense I, (I think this might require a palisade or city walls though) which means you can take city defense II and III while skipping the first one. Along with his +10% bonus to strength within his own borders and some fun matazl jungle bonuses you'll be able to keep enemies out of your territory for a long time. Now it's on to techs. I recommend researching some commerce techs, and probably beelining for drama for the great bard (though I don't know if that will be the case anymore once the guild changes come in.. but for now, you can auto change everything into a sheep, so good times.

Next up you'll want to research either currency or priesthood depending on if you are subject to a war or not. Currency will let you switch to lost lands. Which by the way.. if you position all your cities next to coastal squares.. and build the great lighthouse, you will easily have 7+ traderoutes all giving you 2 food and 2 production. Plus the harbor adds a nice +50% to that! Of course you need to build that many cities since lost lands only let's you trade with yourself.. so that comes to expansion! Build anywhere and everywhere. All those crappy desert tiles will eventually turn into wonderful jungle terrain. Which by the way.. never ever build an improvement on a forested tile, as it will destroy the forest, when you could have otherwised gained the extra production from having a jungle there.

Once you have a nicely teched empire going, start your research towards coatlann the wyvern, which will require Theology, Righteousness and arcane lore. Yeah that's a lot of techs, but well worth it. Plus you'll get paladins along the way since your leader is good (try not to change this by switching to undercouncil or something >.>). It's pretty much game once you get your hero. He has a spell exactly like Acheron. It does 50-100 damage to all surrounding enemy units and summons a meteor. So launch your catapult volley then cast and watch the defenders fall!

As a side note, you may want to research some of the magic techs a bit earlier than normal, since their priests and temples are tied to them.. plus you'll want creation adepts in all your cities.

Mazatl are getting some nifty changes next version (some for balance reasons, some in order to improve the worldspell), and the version after that will get around 3 new leaders. :p

Thanks for the Mazatl tips, I wasn't quite sure how to play them since the Cualli just seemed to have it figured out in the jungle. If it was a duel between the two, who do you think would take it?

On another note, I am in the middle of a Jotnar game and I wanted to add some tips that I don't think were mentioned.

1. I know it has been said before, but play Hephaestus. Seriously, the guy lets all of your units (except archery?) have access to weapons promotions and gives you bonus production on tiles.

2. Your cities need to be either on the coast or on the tundra. I know this sounds strange, but bear with me. The main issue with Jotnar population is the extra food, which may imply loss of production in order to get larger cities. Not so with tundra cities. Build yarangas on the tundra/forest, which will give you nice yields throughout the game. Sea farms are ridiculous with food yields, plus they help the gold situation a bit.

3. Early cities will have a hard time with production since early tile workage is automatically set to grow population and Jotnar citizenry require an extra food. It is well worth it to let these cities grow (since they will become powerhouses), but getting over that hump may be particularly frustrating with this civ. I don't really have any recommendations to solve this besides build your improvements with your units and wait for them to be worked. If your capital has spare time (which it really shouldn't - up the difficulty if so), crank out Thrall Militia and sacrifice for production. Otherwise, get that city up in pop fast.

4. You need money, period. Gold upgrades the only real units you will get, so start saving early. Sea farms help kill two birds with one stone. Lumber mills + Ancient forest also work wonders, but when do they not? RoK is nice to have even if you don't convert, though spreading it can be a pain.

5. Your army will be mainly Wild Trolls, but contrary to other posters I suggest waiting until Hunting to even build one. The clever troll promotion, which is not really a promotion, is given automatically then (which I like), so start cranking them out. Since they have 3 movement and ignore terrain, you will quickly make up for lost exploration time. Once you get bronze weapons, you have a 5str 3mov unit that can sit on mountains, capture animals, and take promotions against specific unit types. Really great stuff.

6. Egrass the Founder (who doesn't have Seakin! Fix this!) is your hero, and a pretty solid one at that. He can spread religions if you don't want to waste one of your units as a disciple UU, but he really shines as a solid early army leader. Egrass with a handful of trolls that have a few promotions can take out anything, really. So far, I have used this army to steamroll three opposing civs since Egrass can bombard. I have to say that I grabbed him Orthus' Axe and the Black Mirror, so he is a powerhouse. Be aware - his attack comes from elemental/poison (you get the idea) combat, so mainly use him to bombard and cause ranged collateral damage, letting your trolls finish off the rest. Have him build improvements if you have nothing to do, especially sea farms (if Seakin gets implemented).

7. Use your Great Commanders to seed future city spots with forts. When you claim any fort (I think it's for ones you build), make sure a Herredcarl is your fort commander. If not, delete the fort commander and reclaim the fort to get this UU. He can single-handedly hold forts and then upgrade to a city. Really solid idea to start working on improvements in future cities early.

8. SLAVES! Humanoid slaves become Jotnar citizens and then fun units (get gold). All other slaves become Thrall Militia and therefore free units.

9. Thrall Militia = cannon fodder. Especially with weapons promotions (which only some seem to get?), your militia can hold their own against most invaders. If not, they are easily replaceable (see: SLAVES!) and your sorties from your cities can take out the rest of the invaders. Send a group of these guys on dangerous improvement missions (like connecting cities!), they will be ok.

10. WAR. War with the Jotnar is really a must for a few reasons. One, you get slaves. Two, you get gold from pillaging and capturing cities. Whether or not you choose to keep the cities is a subject of debate. While popular belief on these forums dictates that one should play the Jotnar as a small empire with one city for each Hall, I would argue that it is possible to maintain a somewhat large empire without falling behind in techs. Most importantly, build courthouses. Most of your science will come from buildings, so get that important infrastructure going. It's not like you are going to build units (unless you run short on Wild Trolls, but your well-promoted ones should last you for the whole game honestly).

Not a complete list by any means, but I think it includes some facets left out elsewhere (such as city site - was a big ? in my mind until I played them).

I think the Jotnar need a new World Spell. It is exactly the same as the Chislev one, word for word even though the UB is different. Also Egrass needs Seakin. Finally, can someone fill me in on the packmaster promos?

Packmaster is horribly horribly broken. Essentially you need the animal type to be nested in the city (or have access to ivory) and you need to have the woodkin promotion. You then purchase -packmaster- and then purchase another -packmaster- type. Probably bear or elephant. You get the listed bonus to attack and defense. You can also add this to jotun and then upgrade them into titans for a fun rediculously powered immortal unit. On a side note.. I think there is a bug with titans.. supposedly you need legendary status to become one.. but you don't.. instead it 'adds' that promotion to any unit you upgrade to it. Much of this I suspect will be changed.

Erm and to ask your question about which one would win.. it depends on if it's computer controlled or not. The cualli have a much better chance of winning if they just prevent the matazl from building anything in their territory until they get their leader out, which will happen much much sooner than coatlann. However.. if the matzl manage to survive long enough to summon him, it's pretty much over. The combination of flame breath and acid spit is enough to wipe out pretty much any civilization that doesn't have fire protection.

For the vs. question I was thinking theoretically if they were both played to their optimum.

One more question about the Jotnar that I have not solved: What is the best way to get great people? It seems my population is needed significantly more for working tiles than running specialists.

Because of the way Boss units work for the Clan of Embers, I feel that a set of 10 tips for those who are used to playing them from the original FFH would be nice. I randomed them on my second time ever playing RiFE, and until then I had no idea how powerful the Boss units were. Basically, in Multiplayer, if you’re the closest civ to a CoE player who finds you in any decent amount of time, you’d only survive if you’d settled in a high-production area and focused on nothing but Warriors from turn 1, and even then you’ll probably only survive until he gets enough bosses to summon 5 warriors a turn.

For those of you who don’t know, the Boss unit replaces the Scout for the CoE; they function as recon units still with 2 movement, and you start with one. He begins with the ability to command 3 units, but that's not nearly as important as his ability to summon units for gold, depending on what technologies you have researched. These units start with For the Horde, which gives them a +10% chance/turn of going Barbarian, but they also have an Enlist ability which removes that promotion for 50 gold, making them yours permanently. No, none of this is in a tooltip or civelopedia entry anywhere. The technologies you need are odd – Animal Husbandry, Hunting, and Trade being the 3 major ones, although I usually skip Hunting because Cyklops are smaller versions of Hill Giants with less attack than Wolf Riders for 10 more gold, and I very rarely run across enough Fur resources to make that much research viable. Assuming they get village gold early (and you almost always will), the CoE are able to rush earlier with more troops than any other civ in the game, all without crippling their economy in any way, shape, or form. In fact, while they’re running around doing all this summoning, the Barbarian trait allows them to expand much faster than any competing civ so they can keep up their momentum. These troops also start with higher power/skills than you’d expect for the technologies you need to research, and this strategy ruthlessly exploits this to conquer your opponents as quickly as possible.

Map/Leader
1. Don't be stupid and pick an Archipelago map or something - you can do continents (it'll slow things down)...but because of what that does to the AI, Pangaea is the more obvious choice. Start as Sheelba. Jonas' disciple buffs are nice, but generally speaking I try to eliminate at least 2, hopefully 3 rival civs before I even consider adopting a religion. The free Command I promotions are a huge help for this strategy, as well. You'll also end up becoming a sprawling civilization a lot more quickly than any civ that isn’t Barbarian, so the civic upkeep decrease ends up making a big difference (gold is HUGE if you're using Bosses). However, Expansive does allow you to pump Settlers like there's no tomorrow, which helps a lot for early resource grabs, so Jonas isn't necessarily a poor hero - Sheelba just fits this strategy far better.

Strategy
2. Hopefully you don't have Flavored Start turned on, because it'll highly prefer Jungle, which on the face of things is okay but we'd have to waste our extremely valuable starting time either relocating or clearing Jungle so our city can grow. You need a couple good food resources (or grassland/floodplains near rivers), but beyond that prioritize commerce over production - you'll only need one tile within the 8 immediately adjacent tiles to give you at least 1 production. In fact, if you get a good set of flood plains/grasslands with food and commerce resources around but no forest or hills in sight beyond that one production, awesome - we'll be mostly producing workers and settlers anyway and it helps a cottage/sage/merchant economy.

3. Found your city ASAP - I give myself a single extra turn to get my settler on a hill so I can get early vision and spot nearby villages. Immediately have it build a Boss, and shift-click a second Boss as well so you don't forget. Between Barbarian and the cultural border, you're completely safe if you're playing against the AI, so explore around with both your Boss and warrior. While it seems underhanded since you're allied with the Barbs, explore any open lairs with the warrior as long as you don't have to go out of your way - you can't risk losing the boss to Crazed or something, but you can nab several nice rewards if you get lucky, including gold. Obviously it's much better if the boss nabs Villages, but it's more important to get as many villages as possible while those rewards are easy to obtain. I would give serious consideration to using my World Spell immediately after the Barbarians spawn; not only does this help me find enemy civilizations faster, the units have no upkeep (you'll lose them soon enough though) and they can nab villages for me as well! It's even possibly for you to get enough Barbarian units near a single civilization to end them right then and there. You can also save it for later - specifically for a potential awkward point where you're up against a heavily-reinforced Doviello and you either don't have Wolf Riders or you just don't have enough gold to crack them.

You need at least 100, preferably closer to 200 gold from village rewards before the animals come out in serious force. If you don't get this, either scrap the game or try a different strategy, but maybe 1 out of every 4 games I play has me with less than 100 gold by the time barbarians spawn. Also, there are only a few other potential results - recon units almost never get hostile villagers, so if you're not getting gold you're probably nabbing some free technologies that might give you enough science ramp to go the more traditional production route.

4. My research path goes as follows: Agriculture > Animal Husbandry > Education > [Crafting & Mining] > Calendar > Exploration > Festivals > Horseback Riding > Trade > Cartography (adopt City States) > [Crafting & Mining] > Bronze Working > Smelting > Iron Working. You should get Crafting and Mining after Education if you'd get enough commerce out of it, but you really really really want to tech to Trade ASAP. If you have absolutely no Plantation-capable resources within reach, you're going to have to decide whether the +6 gold per city plus the Great Merchant(s) are more worthwhile than the early bombardment ability. Those are the only technologies you need, and I highly suggest tanking your research rate in favor of gold and mass-producing Bosses once you’re finished with Iron Working, although some Champions for defense is never a bad idea.

AH gets you Wolf Riders, which are 4+1 poison with 3 movement for 30 gold - this is more than enough to take out Axemen pre-copper, and with a couple promotions or enough bonuses from being in the Boss's army, they'll take down Archers just fine. After Education, you should kick down your research rate and prioritize gold enough that you can hire enough wolf riders to take down your next target; the pillage gold should be enough to Enlist the ones that survive. Trade will get you Hill Giants for 70 gold, which start at 5/7 with 50% collateral damage (2 units) and the ability to Bombard for 20%; although the tooltip and Civilopedia entry don't mention it, they'll take Iron Weapons upgrades to get to 7/9 (maybe Mithril too, but you're Clan; if you get that late in the game you've probably lost already). Once again, after Trade, you might want to kick down your research rate even more, as Smelting and Iron Working give small returns compared to a much larger number of Hill Giants attacking your opponents.

Gold is far, far, far more important than Science with this strategy. Essentially, after Iron Working, you're either going to end the game or have only a couple opponents left to deal with. At that point, if you've been focusing on commerce, your bosses will be able to mobilize a far larger force in a short period of time than you could possibly dream of producing otherwise, so even though you could field 8-strength Champions, you'll probably end up sticking with Hill Giants.

5. At this point, your second boss should have finished and begun exploring. If you're in a central area and have yet to find an enemy civilization, have them explore separate directions, otherwise rush the second boss up to the first and stack them. Depending on difficulty, you may have to stack your bosses regardless because of the increased number of warriors defending early on higher difficulties. Just remember - and this is extremely important - be super cautious if animals like Cave Bears hit the board. You cannot afford to lose a Boss at any point in the early game, but this is probably the worst time for it to happen. You should pretty quickly run into an enemy civilization (well before they could possibly research Archery), and your boss(es) should be sitting outside the borders. If that civilization is very strong early, such as Doviello, they'll be favorably disposed towards you anyway so I might suggest skipping them, but very few civs will be strong enough to stop you this early. Now it's time to have some fun.

6. Be very liberal with your summons. They are there to be sacrificed so your high-experience Enlisted troops can finish the enemies off. You can sit outside the enemy base (assuming no catapults, otherwise have a couple units ahead to soak up that damage) and spend 2-3 turns summoning to crack a really tough one. It works extremely well. Generally you should only Enlist when it makes sense, because 50 gold is almost 2 Wolf Riders; you want several high-experience Wolf Riders, but there’s no reason to enlist every troop that survives. Remember that you can summon 3 warriors for the price of a Wolf Rider, and if you're facing enough low-power enemy troops, it might make more sense to just summon warriors earlier and hit critical mass, and then just summon wolf riders when you reach the base to deal with Archers.

7. Easiest-case scenario is somewhat distasteful - you manage to finish Animal Husbandry before your boss(es) reach the first civilization. You should still find them well before they could have possibly researched Archery, so summon a couple wolf riders and a warrior, add them to the Boss and slaughter the defenders (if they have a lot of warriors use straight-up warriors, though). Enlist any high-experience Wolf Riders – they’re way too useful to just let them go Barbarian, and at 30 gold a pop, it ends up being more worthwhile to keep the better ones.

If you have only one boss at the target civilization and it’s before AH, then hire a warrior, have it join the boss's army, then declare war and move one tile towards the city. Repeat this twice more, and you'll be sitting outside the enemy city with 3 warriors attached to your Boss. Summon a 4th warrior and send the three you just summoned into battle, attaching the 4th and following up with him and then your Boss (use Waaagh!) if you need to. You should be able to destroy the civilization if it's early enough - if you need more than 6 warriors, you'll need a second Boss because the chances that one of your warriors goes barb is way too high at that point; even 5 warriors can be hard to gain and keep with a single boss.

If you have two bosses, step into the enemy's borders before you summon, which will give you up to 6 warriors attached to 2 bosses - if you need 8 warriors for whatever reason, you can start outside the borders, but there's a decent chance that one of them's gonna go rogue. 2 bosses should be enough to eliminate almost any civ in the game if you come at them early enough.

After you take over, if the city's too far or :):):):) for commerce just raze it. Otherwise, leave all your warriors at the city, and have it produce a warrior first thing. It's not worth the 50 gold to have even a high-experience warrior just sitting in that city, and you should be able to get that new warrior up before or soon after the remaining warriors go rogue. If your bosses were the only ones left, you’ll want to at least wait until the resistance period is over, but you should be okay leaving the city undefended for a bit. After the warrior is produced and fortified, produce a boss, then a Monument and continue as you would any normal city. The bosses should prioritize the increase-minion strength promotions before anything else.

7. After you get AH, make sure you always run a gold surplus, and consider making it a decently hefty one (one set of wolf summons for 3 bosses is 90 gold, but you'll more than likely need gold for two sets plus another 50 gold for enlisting the ones that survive). After your third boss finishes, pump out a warrior for defense (finally), then a couple workers, another warrior (for escort) and a settler. Then focus on workers and settlers (and escorts!) as needed - you want to spread as much as possible to maximize happy and commerce resources to get your cottage economy working well which ends up producing even more commerce. Favor locations with enough food to let you run specialists and cottages. If you tech to Festivals, be sure to assign a Merchant in every city after you build the Market. You may be able to bulb Trade with the Great Merchant, but off the top of my head I don't recall whether another researchable technology will prevent that from happening. In any case, you can always settle him for 6 more gold a turn, which is huge combined with the +6 gold/city you're already getting.

8. During that expansionary period, your 3-4 bosses will hopefully have eliminated a couple more rival civilizations with the ridiculously-powerful Wolf Riders (for that point in the game anyway; a summon-able 5-attack, 3-move unit with no city attack penalties by turn 30 or so is just ridiculous). Don’t summon more units than you need to, and try to summon them as late as possible. Be sure to continue to Enlist high-experience Wolf Riders, because they quickly become your bread-and-butter unit. Add a boss for each Civ you defeat; you may not need them now, but they'll probably come in handy eventually. Continue to expand at a rapid pace – being at peace with the Barbarians gives you a ridiculous advantage compared to other civs, and you need to ruthlessly exploit it. Hill Giants are expensive, and you’ll probably favor Wolf Riders for a long time besides the odd couple Giants to soften up stacks, but you’ll need more and more gold as time goes on. It’s imperative that you focus solely on expansion for commerce and slaughtering every civ you encounter, because the later the game goes, the smaller your edge gets, although if you have enough Bosses and gold you can make up for almost any deficiency.

9. Eventually you’ll hit Trade and be able to summon and enlist Hill Giants. With your army of workers, you should have no problem making sure you have a decent road network to the front lines so you can get Bronze Weapons to them once you get a chance. Hill Giants are your sacrificial shock troops – you summon 3-5, bombard the city, then next turn send them in first to get the enemy stacks to the point where your experienced troops can mop up. You may not want to Enlist them right away, besides one for defense on eac h town you take, because they’ll slow your army down and 5 power is plenty at this point in the game with the collateral damage if you summon enough of them.

10. Have fun managing a conquer victory well before any civilization gets to Champions! It can get a little formulaic after awhile, and it becomes really obvious when you have too much momentum to lose, but the sheer power of having 6 bosses drop 18 Wolf Riders on some poor city is exhilarating.

i think the clan are a bit overpowered now... i like the general idea of the boss, but hes just so op. mainly because he can drop a fort in just a few turns anywhere he likes outside borders...repeatedly, and simultaneously he functions as a great commander, pretty insane for a starting scout replacement.

I quit the last game i played as clan because it was just no challenge, i had the game in hand on monarch by turn 100, albeit on quick speed. I was actually throttling my growth because i was getting to big and didn't feel like barbarian bashing although it was quite doable...i had already crushed 3 empires (who were the most powerful on erebus aside from me) and added their best to my horde. the rest would have been even easier.

There are some changes coming in the next version.

oh i know, and im trying my best to wait patiently... :P

don't suppose theres a tenative eta on the big update?

so i can plan some vacation from work. :D

Well, for one thing, the Boss unit is being expanded to the full recon line. ;)

lol
"him boss, him bigger boss, him da bossiest boss of bosses"

Boss -> Big Boss -> War Boss

"Da Warboss is da biggest and da meanest and da greenest. He krumps all dem humies wot getz near der Waaaagh."

Yeah, there's always a point in almost every Civ game you win where you just know it's already happened, and that happens with plenty of civilizations. I just can't think of a single civilization that has that happen as quickly as CoE. Quick speed is probably harder than normal speed, wouldn't it, because the enemy civs will research and build more by the time your Bosses get there? It's like the same thing as the Lucian Cold Iron problem on Epic, except we're dealing with a summoner instead of a hero. I feel the same way on Normal speed, where once I've crushed the first couple civs by turn 100 I know there's no way I'm going to be stopped. That extra room for expansion is so invaluable when combined with the invulnerability to Barbarians, and as long as I don't Enlist too many troops, the combination of low-technology and low-power will always keep my score low enough to stay allied with the Barbs.

Edit: just refreshed the page instead of seeing if another one was made from the number of replies. Glad to hear it, because as it is it really is too hard for me to resist using Bosses if I random CoE.

Next up is Scions of Patria playing for a conquest or gone to hell victory.

Leader

Xivan T`nava - Specifically for his charlatan ability. Charismatic is nice for getting high level units faster too

Rife Changes

Scions get +1 production from desert now, which should help out your starting location a bit, but you`ll still want water mana to change all of that to plains eventually (so you don`t get burning sands). They can still build reborn, I think, but it won`t matter with what we`re going to do here.

Strategy

What we are aiming to do is create a world filled with disease, the 4 horsemen and lots of hell terrain, all being fueled by Eidolons with Swords of Klarkash. So your first techs should be to research masonry and build a worker (to get those patrian artifacts) then towards mysticism and switch to god king (also gives you their unique unit). After this get some basic economy techs, and pump out a great sage (you might want to hold on to it) research towards way of the earthmother (you don't need to found it) and arete for mine's of galdur

Next you'll want to research towards corruption of spirit to found ashen veil. If you are beat to it, you`ll probably have to capture it later on.. might be worth a reload at this point though.Once you get your Stigmata built, you are ready to set about conquering and probably start the production of a great engineer. Diseased corpses make for good basic attack units early on. Next you'll want to research priesthood then Infernal Pact. Start researching towards Fanaticism while you`re building the infernal grimoire (and stop it partway if you would otherwise build it first). Make sure you are razing any city you find and setting the reborn back to your capital (or other cities). The faster you can get to 30 armegeddon counter, the better.

If you`ve managed to survive long enough to build Eidolons you probably also have your great engineer. Save him to build a master smith in one of your cities. Next, build out 4 Eidolons from whatever city you have your Stigmata in, then you can trigger your charlatan ability, this will give your eidolons the ability to use weapon bonuses (so iron weapons in this case). Your next line of research should be necromany then elementalism and arcane lore. After you get arcane lore you can send your units back to the city to equip swords of klarkesh. You`ll want 1 water mana and as much entropy mana as you can find. The water mana is to change all your land to plains so it doesn`t become useless burning sands. The entropy is to beef up your Eidolon`s. Which should already be 18 str (+1 from entropy, +2 from iron weapons) + x% of half of whatever the armegeddon counter is at. Have fun razing and stomping the land with your uber eidolons that will just keep getting stronger.

Another alternative research path would be to iron working instead of arete (not too bad a choice considering the unit line you get with the scions) then engineering, and pick up mithril working with the grimoire, and research to the eidolons the old fashioned way. Will take a little longer but you`ll get starting 20 strength Eidolons instead of 18. There are two seperate notes here.. the first is not to build the Eidolons directly. Either build a spiritualist (recommened) and upgrade, or build a diseased corpse, buy it the plate upgrade, then upgrade it (only do this if you`ve gotten mithril working first though, or you`ll just lose it). Note this can also make your eidolon`s strong but I don`t think it`s worth the penalty of being affected by undead type spells.

Anyone got some tips for Sheaim, and dragging the world to hell? - It seems a bit straight forward, but still, I'd like a few pointers :)

worldbuilder ... :D

Rofl.. I'll post something.. eventually.. it was actually pretty darned tough since the plague kicked the crap out of me worse than the computer when it came around.

Does anyone know which resources turn into snake pillars? I don't use Ashen Veil much and always forget to check ahead of time. It seems one thing you're going to want to do is avoid improvements that find those resources.

Honestly, the Khadi have nothing unique going for them. They are the bastard offspring of the Amurites and the Sheaim, and impinge on both civilizations. :lol:

They are the only civ currently planned for complete removal. All that will remain is an Amurite specific event.

Hey now, I just around to trying the Khad, and I'm a fan. I like the spawning gate mechanic, and I think getting all the non-demon spawn is a unique enough effect to support its own civ. The gnosling/thade/psion line is also interesting.

The cheap (3rd level mages) are also very nice. There are some more things that could be done to support the civ, like making Khad a bigger badass, along the lines of Mother, or making him available at Arcane Lore, and making the big choice more meaningful, but there's enough to work with here that I don't see the reason to cut them.

Maybe give them the ability to create mana nodes, since they're the Oghma civ.

Well, I think that it isn't only due to their "nothing unique"-ness. The Austrin are kinda bland as well, as are some other civs. But those, they're liked by many people. I'm not sure the Khadi are. To be honest, I like the idea of a middle-eastern civ quite different from the Malakim (which strikes me as really Egyptian flavored) but probably not centered around one unknown guy like the Khadi are.

Hey now, I just around to trying the Khad, and I'm a fan. I like the spawning gate mechanic, and I think getting all the non-demon spawn is a unique enough effect to support its own civ. The gnosling/thade/psion line is also interesting.

The cheap (3rd level mages) are also very nice. There are some more things that could be done to support the civ, like making Khad a bigger badass, along the lines of Mother, or making him available at Arcane Lore, and making the big choice more meaningful, but there's enough to work with here that I don't see the reason to cut them.

Maybe give them the ability to create mana nodes, since they're the Oghma civ.

The spawn mechanic IS strong enough to support it's own civ. Which it already does. The Sheaim. :p

The Kahdi are already gone. They will remain as a unique event for the Amurites, and that's it.

There IS a civ in development that may replace them, but it is a modmod so we'll see how they are developed. ;)

Just wanted to say that, after playing a few games with them the Kahdi turned out to be one of my favorite civs, their mechanics may be nothing new but it's not like they're a Sheaim clone either, after all they have their unique mages and an emphasis on Mana nodes that's even heavier than the Amurites'.

Anyway, I doubt there's much point in arguing at this point of time, just wanted to leave the message that there is someone who's going to miss them.

(And perhaps we'll get lucky and someone has enough skill and time to spare to make a Kahdi add-on/modmod.:))

Personally I think more is better (so long as the "more" is working properly, and so long as it doesn't bog down the game's loading time). So I'd prefer changes and additions as opposed to a removal, but I never really use the Kahd, so I wouldn't care all that much or anything.

They aren't being COMPLETELY removed. They will remain as an Amurite event, which one option will allow for the Kahdi to split off on their own. Considering making this event happen every game, but it could be too much that way.

So does this mean that they won't really be removed, butt rather their appearance will be tied to an event (kind of like the Infernals and the Mercurians, just somewhat more random)?

Since I'd actually appreciate that, I've been wondering for a while where all those highly specialized civilizations come from if the Thaw is supposed to have only just ended. ;)

So does this mean that they won't really be removed, butt rather their appearance will be tied to an event (kind of like the Infernals and the Mercurians, just somewhat more random)?

Since I'd actually appreciate that, I've been wondering for a while where all those highly specialized civilizations come from if the Thaw is supposed to have only just ended. ;)

Not quite. More along the line of Koun. Not an actual civ, no ability to play as them.

Summary of event options:

Kahd breaks away violently, several of his gate summons spawn, strong gate is placed in the city, he is at war with you.
Kahd breaks away peacefully. Fewer summons placed, strong gate, he is your ally.
Grant Kahd governorship of the city; special gate is spawned, reducing city yields drastically (meant to show that it's doing it's own thing, for the most part). Stays under your control.
Make Kahd a Field Marshal. Only added when that modcomp is finished.

So you won't even get the "please lead my civ because I suck" event from the Kahdi?

No, the Kahdi will not be a true civ. Even if Kahd breaks off on his own, it is as an amurite faction.

Only need one tip for the Balseraphs.

1. Make a lot of Mimics.
2. Have your mimics fight people.
3. Make an archmage who uses body mana.
4. Graft Mimics onto a flesh golem.
4. OH GOD.

Since the above was a little bit lackluster, I'm going to go into a thread about going about acheiving a cultural victory with the balseraphs.

Rife Changes

There were some new leaders added to rife, as well as the masquerade from fall from heaven, which will give you a healthy bonus to culture and commerce (though likely to change) but perhaps more importantly give you access to the grandplayhouse, which includes a method of gaining more happy from raising culture rate.

Leader

We're going to go with Melisandre, largely because her expansive trait will fix the health problems most of our cities will be having (oddly with the balseraph, happy isn't as much of an issue as health). She also builds smokehouses and the like at double speed which will help with slavery. Not to mention she leaves herself open to acquire either philisophical or financial (I actually recommend the latter, but it's tough to get).

Strategy

So if culture is our most important trait we definately need a religion that suits it, so we're going to go with (you guessed it) octopus overlords. Those Lunatics will be the bread and butter of our army, and the fact they are insane plays well with this civ, since you'll be mutating them anyway.

First techs you should be getting will be festivals (just beeling straight for it) as this will let you build markets, freaks, and gypsy wagons, (you will likely also have dye and silk within your borders as balseraphs) and animal husbandry. Try to research octopus overlords to found the religion (this isn't all that important though), and if you are beat to it start researching drama instead, for the free great bard (fabricaforma) and grand playhouse.

Your next line of research should probably include masonry, mining, code of laws, construction, mind stapling, and bronze working, then towards way of the wicked. If you don't get philosophical from researching philosophy, try building the bone palace (only bother if you have marble in your territory). You'll be switching to undercouncil and slavery at this point. Next you want feudalism for the wonder and royal guards. Any other techs after this point are icing on the cake, you can probably destroy many nations with your mutated lunatics, but you'll mostly just be keeping them at home. Uber player tip - putting lunatics in caravals prevents them from going insane and rampaging your borders.

Mana wise you should try to get 1 water mana (hopefully from The Necromicon), 1 creation mana (to help your cities grow faster), and 1 sun mana, in that order. The rest should probably go towards chaos mana to automutate your units and so hema can start casting wonder puppets earlier. Don't worry about law mana, that +60% strength bonus from going insane is only a detriment when you are trying to mount an organized offensive, and you'll mostly be sitting at home.

Before I mentioned that happiness isn't a problem with the balseraphs, and this is primarily because of the freak show and slaves. Any time you build a freak that doesn't have positive mutation modifiers have him nestle himself in a city, any of the good ones should later be upgraded to mimics. Get into the habit of building warriors for temporary happiness in cities with an arena, to slaughter after you use rush build with slavery. If for some reason you get someone else to join the undercouncil with you, try voting for the slave market thing immediately, and ram out a bunch of slaves to 'add to freakshow' Don't be afraid to switch some of your science to culture instead to boost happiness.

Civic wise, you probably want to run religion until you can get consumption or liberty. Slavery until industry, and agroistacracy pretty much the whole game. Build farms.. farms everywhere (thus the importance of water mana). The faster you can get your cities to grow the more production you'll have. Once you hit liberty, switch to purely culture and pop your worldspell. Put all your cities on maxxed out great person production with bards. Use at least one of those bards to give you another golden age. Your enemies will declare war soon, so prepare. Good luck!

Important wonders for you are: Theatre of Dreams, Hall of Kings, Sylivan's perfect Lyre.

Could anyone post some Legion of D'Tesh help?

The Legion has been reworked for 1.3 so you'll probably have to hold off until that is out.

Which is why I haven't replied (Legion are one of my favorites to play, so I could actually provide a guide for them); They've been changed so heavily that my advice would be unusable in the current version. :p

O man, I cant wait!

Which is why I haven't replied (Legion are one of my favorites to play, so I could actually provide a guide for them); They've been changed so heavily that my advice would be unusable in the current version. :p

/faints from excitement/