Your Top Ten Tips for Your Favorite Civ

Maybe you're right Senethro. To me, the Doviello seem very boring without much going for them... but in the hands of a skilled player who enjoys playing them, that doesn't mean anything. I should know. In several other games, I regularly play civilizations/characters considered underpowered by just about everyone else... but I still dominate with them, because I know how to play to their strengths. Granted, when I encounter a skilled player of an overpowered civ or character, I'm wiped off the map - but usually get comments at the end of how well I did with them.

I would like to play you again in multiplayer though. I don't really know who would win; the last time I remember playing you when you were Doviello, I didn't have a clue what I was doing... I was Falamar, and tried invading you with archers. Yeah... didn't work out so well. Now that I know my way around FFH though, it would be a fun game.

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Oh, and while I was playing around with the Luchuirp, I found something cool... It's a very late-game technique, but it's fun. Not exactly Luchuirp-specific either, but more of an OO tactic.

Anyway, when you get Hemah, upgrade him with Combat V, Spell Extention II and Body III. Summon a Flesh Golem. You will want x4 Shadows(Guilds), A Cultist with Combat V, a Cultist with Drill IV and Blitz, a Cultist with Magic Resistance and Fire/Lightning/Cold Resistance, a Warrior with Enchanted Blade, a Slinger with Flaming Arrows, a Scout/Hunter with Poison Blade and various units(Warriors are good) to Mutate and give Strong, Heroic Offense/Defense and Cannibalize and somebody with march.

Add everything to the Flesh Golem. You now have:

An extremely magic-resistant, water-walking, invisible 14/13-strength marksman unit that can attack multiple times per turn, with +170% strength, 3-6 First Strikes, 3 Movement, +10% healing after each fight, heals 30% each turn automatically, and can cast Tsunami. If you somehow get a mounted unit with Flanking III and add him in, it now has a 50% chance to survive fights it somehow doesn't win as well.

If you want a defender instead of an attacker, or a non-marksman unit, use Crossbowmen instead of Shadows for a hit of -1 offensive strength, with the loss of Invisible and Marksman. If you're just plain sadistic, add in a High Priest with Command III or a Werewolf(better yet, both!) to gobble up enemy units and add them to your own side.
 
Actually, you can get it a bit better with a flesh golem (its easiest with the calibam, and their vampire lords can summon them too). It also definately isn't OO specific. How to do it:

strength 17 - OO high priest, summon kraken, feed kraken to flesh golem. Next best options are phalanxes, followed by beastmasters (crossbowmen can get it up to 10/15, note, if you feed it crossbowmen till it's defense 15, you can feed it beastmasters till it is attack 14, giving you a 14/15 unit).
combat 1-5 from your choice of unit (vampire/priest/mage are easiest here)
Drill 1-4 from your choice of unit (vampire/priest easiest here)
Flanking 1-3 (horseman required)
Blitz (either a unit with drill 4/blitz here, or from mutate)
Flying (feed it a hawk)
Hidden Nationality (kraken works here, or one of the other available ways)
Marksman (assassin)
Subdue animal/subdue beast (ranger)
medic 1/2 (priest, medic 3 from high priest (can get from upgraded priest?))
March (upgraded priest/stygan guard)
City raider 1-3 (melee unit)
City defender (archery unit)
Woodsman 1/2 or guerilla 1/2 (from anything, but requires arete/guardian of nature to get level 2)
Guardsman (bannor/melee unit/aristocracy unit)
Aerons Chosen (assassin... kinda rare though)
Cannibalize (undead unit/mutate)
Heavy/strong etc (mutate)
Water walking (stygan guard... but you might as well just use a hawk and ignore this...)
Magic resistance etc. (vampire/priest/mutate)
Poisoned blade/flaming arrows (recon/archery unit - use this AFTER you get it up to max strength)

The only thing that a flesh golem can't do is cast spells, they are specifically blocked from this. The Calibam can upgrade them the easiest, while the lurchip/khazid can repair them with adepts with enchant 1. As it is a body 3 spell though, it is easily usable by everyone (well... except the khazid). Also, it will be an illusion if casted by the evil elves or if casted by gibbon, and you can have 1 for every unit with body 3.

-Colin
 
Flying (feed it a hawk)

Ho! I never thought of that... and it eliminates the need for Water Walking as well.

Reason I went with OO is it gives the earliest Archmage hero(Hemah) excluding Gibbon, who only summons illusions. It also gives access to Water Walking, but like you said, don't need that with Hawks.
 
Can I get some tips on the Kurioates? I've been playing them for this one game and I'm doing really well. Just like to know some basic stuff about them, thanks.
 
Can I get some tips on the Kurioates? I've been playing them for this one game and I'm doing really well. Just like to know some basic stuff about them, thanks.
Hmmm... Only played them around 5 times total, but in general...

1) Centaurs are your friends. They are one of the most powerful units across all civilizations. They have the mobility and strength of mounted units, but can fortify as well; don't worry about Archers or Longbowmen, Axemen or Hunters; Centaur Archers will do just fine.

2) Max out yields in your main cities. I usually try to place my three cities so they have the best allocation of resources/tiles, then pop Legends to have all tiles workable almost immediately. You will want a lot of food so you can work all the tiles.

3) Aristogarianism is a good civic choice. Food combines with gold will greatly improve your cities' power.

4) Umm... not much left to say. Order and AV are both insanely powerful civics for the Kurios. OO is decent if only because of the Tower of Complacency. Empyrean is good if you want chalid spam, but it lacks the economic bonuses of Order and AV.

5) Oh, yeah. If you don't have it already, get Cartography. It eliminates maintenance in your settlements(not cities) even if you aren't in City States.
 
An completely alternative view of the Kurios is to run with God King, you only have 3 cities so the maintenance costs are low. You can probably found a religion given your great starting economy so you'll have the option to move your capital to the religious city for extra cash. You probably want to get those high commerce enclaves so build lots of cottages. Build an extra worker at the start as you have lots of land to work in those 3 cities.

Make sure you build scouts at the start to find your best 3 city sites and don't let opponents crowd you out. After that grab as many resources as you can with settlements. You'll probably have to use your world spell after you've built your settlements to give them a cultural push, otherwise your opponents could dominate them with culture. You will often want to assign the person in each settlement to be a specialist. This also gives a clue to how you can get more value out of these settlements with wonders and civics. Remember that priests can build a temple in a settlement even though a settlement can't build anything by itself.

Militarily you probably want to run with centaurs plus something else fast, so researching fireball casting mages is a good idea. Airships would be great for moving catapults but they come too late. Don't wait around in the mid game assuming your big cities will give you a win as the other nations can get more big cities and overhaul you quite easily. Don't be afraid to move onto an adaptive military trait such as raiders if you want some wartime clout.

Basium is an interesting option for the Kurios and he provides the military might to finish off a game started well by the Kurios. The Mercurians can take all the settlements and do something useful with them. The gate will however require one of the big cities and it takes a long time for the replacement third city to be productive.
 
You'll probably have to use your world spell after you've built your settlements to give them a cultural push, otherwise your opponents could dominate them with culture.
I think it's better to use it as soon as you drop the third city, though it depends on how crowded the map is. Opponents building cities too close to your cities is much more serious than losing a few settlements. Additionally this provides a lot of safety (important if you rushed the two settlers) and allows the cities to grow very rapidly.

Later on you can use disciples to get some quick culture in settlements that need it.
 
I'm willing to tolerate a little pressure on my Cities' Sprawling Crosses from foreign cities early on, in order to ensure the security of my settlements from cultural pressure. For me, waiting to use Legends until I have placed my built settlements is the better choice. Often, this will allow me to place settlements such that the cultural expansion from Legends willl then place cultural pressure on my opponents' cities. Sometimes I am able to convert a few of their cities into additional settlements of my own in this way. Once I use Legends, the effect on my real cities culture becomes the same as if I'd used it earlier (albeit, with the potential cost of not getting to work some tiles sooner).
 
if you intend to build the mercurian gate with the kurios, it pays to plan ahead, decide beforehand the settlement that will become your third city and place it appropriately ( same with the ciy which will become Basium's capitol ), and build the gate ASAP, for example rushing it with money.
 
strength 17 - OO high priest, summon kraken, feed kraken to flesh golem. Next best options are phalanxes, followed by beastmasters (crossbowmen can get it up to 10/15, note, if you feed it crossbowmen till it's defense 15, you can feed it beastmasters till it is attack 14, giving you a 14/15 unit).
combat 1-5 from your choice of unit (vampire/priest/mage are easiest here)
Drill 1-4 from your choice of unit (vampire/priest easiest here)
Flanking 1-3 (horseman required)
Blitz (either a unit with drill 4/blitz here, or from mutate)
Flying (feed it a hawk)
Hidden Nationality (kraken works here, or one of the other available ways)
Marksman (assassin)
Subdue animal/subdue beast (ranger)
medic 1/2 (priest, medic 3 from high priest (can get from upgraded priest?))
March (upgraded priest/stygan guard)
City raider 1-3 (melee unit)
City defender (archery unit)
Woodsman 1/2 or guerilla 1/2 (from anything, but requires arete/guardian of nature to get level 2)
Guardsman (bannor/melee unit/aristocracy unit)
Aerons Chosen (assassin... kinda rare though)
Cannibalize (undead unit/mutate)
Heavy/strong etc (mutate)
Water walking (stygan guard... but you might as well just use a hawk and ignore this...)
Magic resistance etc. (vampire/priest/mutate)
Poisoned blade/flaming arrows (recon/archery unit - use this AFTER you get it up to max strength)
-Colin
I've played around with making flesh golems better and I agree with all this and have a few things to add.

You can get the basic strength well above the best creature you can sacrifice if you do it carefully. Some promotions, a great commander and equipments can all increase the basic strength of the sacrificed unit. So for instance if you're using krakens which have a a basic strength of 17 then the flesh golem will increase until it reaches 17. But if you attach a great commander to the kraken it will be 18 strength and when you sacrifice it the flesh golem will increase to 19, that's 18 and the great commander, which can be removed and attached to another kraken.

Similar tricks can be played with the mutate spell which can add to the sacrificed unit's strength with the Strong promotion and the 2 Heroic attack and Defence. These promotions are added to the golem but increase the basic strength at the same time. The Bless spell and StoneFlesh (from mutate) can be used to boost the basic strength of the sacrificed unit and these also transfer the spells (both of which last for 1 combat).

But the most flexible way to raise the base strength of the unit is with equipment. These are better than promotions (initially) since they boost the sacrifice but are not added to the golem, like a Strong promotion is. I've used Gela, Orthus axe and the Rod of Winds is especially good with several air nodes. Using those and a great commander I raised the base strength of my flesh golem to 24 and with promotions (from mutate and other spells) it was about 29 / 28. If you want to boost the base strength as much as possible try to avoid using units with bronze or iron until the end as their promotions will boost the golems overall strength making it harder to add more strength.

In order to get the best out of the mutate spell I have used a stack of Priest of Leaves to cast tigers. Cast mutate on the tigers, then pick any tigers that have good promotions and no bad ones and add to the golem. If one Priest has combat 5 then his tiger will have empower 5. That is a cheap and easy way to get all the useful mutate promotions. Again be sure to not add any promotions that boost strength until you have finished adding krakens (or whatever the main strength booster is) to base strength. Add a kraken with the strong promotion and all the equipment you can muster at the end.
 
Puny humans now you get Clan GUIDE from diety player!

1. Grr Axemen good Rantine also good get fast and chop stuff!

2. Sheeba good lots of cities for units Rarghh

3. Fire is good burn stuff lots! siege stuff for weak humans hahaha Haste also good fast armies to crush things! Get shaman early so they strong later! Fire body you start with so make good use.

3. If Illians make statis then you use For the Horde! FREE UNITS make lots of war PILLAGE STUFF GRRR

4. Make good army cities, conquest lots of food and make men fast with lots of warrens!

5. Rantine gets free cities from stupid orcs take them!

6. Watch barbarian orcs, they make big attack you follow and pillage stuff!

7. Cut out a strong empire early and then get lots of gold to make more cities with warrens to make a lot of orcs!!

8. Early religion dumb get more orcs and fire mages then take somebody elses. Council of Esus is good you fight them all and kill them stupid casters with hidden assassins hahaha! Spread council all over map and hit armies where they are weak. Attack fast and smash stuff before they rally.

9. Late game Nexus is good pump out two ogres at once and teleport them to front lines you have big swarm they die now.

10. No more talking go kill stuff stupid
 
Some amazing tips for bannor, one of the most powerful war races in the game are focused around easily the best hero in the game

Donal Lugh

So yea he seems just ok right? In a diety game today this hero cast recruit no less than 15 times massing an army of epic proportions, between crusade and endless swarms of undead pyre bastards assaulting my land from the shahiem borders I had a stack of 60+ units where I was disbanding the weaker ones like hunters early in the game and easily overwhelmed their armies and took over the world in a laugh,

Keys to this hero.

1. Big pop city
2. Get him movement speed promotion
3. Adept assistant just for him with haste and movement speed of his own to move this hero back and forth from the front lines to give you an endless supply of troops.
Of course this only works vs civilizations that have undead and demons but that is still not too uncommon especially vs the Shahiem
Enjoy
 
Some amazing tips for bannor, one of the most powerful war races in the game are focused around easily the best hero in the game

Donal Lugh

So yea he seems just ok right? In a diety game today this hero cast recruit no less than 15 times massing an army of epic proportions, between crusade and endless swarms of undead pyre bastards assaulting my land from the shahiem borders I had a stack of 60+ units where I was disbanding the weaker ones like hunters early in the game and easily overwhelmed their armies and took over the world in a laugh,

Keys to this hero.

1. Big pop city
2. Get him movement speed promotion
3. Adept assistant just for him with haste and movement speed of his own to move this hero back and forth from the front lines to give you an endless supply of troops.
Of course this only works vs civilizations that have undead and demons but that is still not too uncommon especially vs the Shahiem
Enjoy

in wildmana AI likes to summon skellys everywhere, so there it is no problem at all.
 
LUCHUIRP

I'm relatively recently back and have really benefitted from this thread. Some of the suggestions on here have left gaps that were likely assumed to already be known, but that as a newer player I had to discover for myself. Here's what I've learned from the synthesis of reading this post and playing the Luchuirp in single player, which I realize is broadly regarded as too easy for the veterans even on deity but which can challenge me consistently during the early game on Immortal (or just obliterate me... thanks, 1st Immortal game starting me on a continent with Balseraphs, Doviello, and Clan!).

I. Faction Advantages: Hybrid Synergy
In addition to those outlined in the manual, the Luchuirp get exceptional value out of certain tech lines. When I used to play SMAC, the factions were often categorized as Momentum (aggression), Builder, or Hybrid. One of my favorite factions, the Gaians, were exceptionally good at deriving Momentum advantages from tech lines that were more commonly used for Building, killing two birds with one stone. The Luchuirp are likely the best faction in FfH at this kind of doubling up on tech outputs; it begins with Construction, a tech I have a hard time staying away from with any faction for the twin bonuses of Siege Workshops and irrigating Farms. The Luchuirp also get their Axemen replacement, Training Yard replacement (with +1 culture), and their Hero at this tech. Engineering and Machinery continue this trend, giving the Luchuirp Momentum AND Builder edges from a single line of techs and giving new, easily confused players clear guidance on what to grab.

II. Early Techs
- A. Play the map. Resource techs (Animal Husbandry, Mining, Fishing) vary by map and blanket statements cannot be made about their priority - usually Agriculture, Calendar, and Education are the typical start, but with enough Gems or Gold Mining may be a valuable grab. Regardless, your early game goals are a mix of teching to Calendar / Code of Laws to get Aristocracy and Agrarian up and running while grabbing Bronze Working* or Archery** if you're seriously threatened by local hostiles.
* Bronze Working is pretty bad for Luchuirp in the early game, as their Warriors cannot upgrade to Axemen. However, if you've spammed Warriors early, upgrading them all to strength 4 may help you avoid chronic researchers syndrome i.e. you're just building your first Sculptor's Studio when your opponents BSOD takes your town. Bronze Working is weak for the Luchuirp, but it gives its advantages pretty much instantly.
** While Archery is the usual defensive tech of choice, Dwarven Slingers lead you down a bulbing path you may wish to avoid. However, not dying is more important than the damage that Archery does to your bulbing options.
- B. Early victory = Kote and Construction. Once you've gotten your economy / bare bones defenses down, your key goals are Knowledge of the Ether and Construction, which will give you everything you need to win your first serious conquests. If you're particularly pressed, moving to KotE 1st will give your Warriors access to Enchanted Blades, which will in conjunction with Bronze Working give your Warriors a little extra oomph; however, Construction 1st is usually beneficial, to give you time to build Sculptors Studios or Siege Workshops in your cities (notice the OR - you want to be building Catapults at the same time as Wood Golems, not all one then all the other). In the pre-Assassin early game, you only need a couple Adepts in your BSoD to give it incredible endurance.
- C. Maximize the spoils of victory. I like to research Trade after KotE and Construction, in preparation for wearing my 1st target down to the point where he's willing to give me all his techs. Again, you may wish to avoid Archery if possible - even for free, it throws your Engineer's bulbing priorities in a particular direction. If you're interested in Iron Golems before Gargoyles, you should also avoid Mathematics. One tech the computer often researches early that you're particularly keen to get in this stage is Warfare, which is critical to you for reasons explained below.
- D. Religion. I'd avoid early religion, especially since you're probably going to be bulbing so many Engineers it's hard to found most holy cities - try to pick it up a religion in Trade and a holy city in conquest. No single religion is particularly critical to the Luchuirp. Pretty much every religion has something to offer them - the Order and OO are personal favorites. AV works great here as well, having the best synergy with any faction save for the Sheaim, but it makes me sad to corrupt the kindly, befuddled dwarves that profoundly.

III. Luchuirps, the Home of the Great Engineer
- A. Wait on your Worldspell. While it's tempting, and perhaps necessary in Mp, to spend your worldspell asap, I have found that the Luchuirp can effectively gain an effect similar to the Philosophical trait / Sidar Wane if you can wait until you have 5-7 cities. Barbarian cities are especially tempting targets to make this happen, as it doesn't matter if your city is still in rebellion, Gifts will still trigger. Bringing all the hammers back to a central city with Scouts and deleting them there will allow you to plant all your Engineers in a single locale, which gives you a sizeable increase in hammers and also supercharges the amount of GPP available at the time. Picking up Warfare unlocks the Heroic Epic, which doubles GPP output in its location; you'll be cranking out your first 3-4 great people in no time.
- B. Bulb. Once you've got your 5-7 settled Engineers + the Industrious trait + whatever other production resources are located in this city, you really don't need to utilize the Great Engineer's ability to finish off Great Wonders early. Instead, you can use your Great People to lightbulb certain critical techs. The first seven Great Engineer lightbulb techs are:
1. Engineering (Gargoyles)
2. Mithril Working
3. Machinery (Clockwork Golems)
4. Smelting
5. Blasting Powder
6. Bowyers
7. Iron Working (Iron Golems)
This is a fantastic list for you. The presence of Bowyers ahead of Iron Working is the reason that it's best to wait on Archery/Slingers if at all possible if you want to get Iron Golems asap. You'll need to research Mathematics manually if you're interested in the Gargoyle line - it ranks in #52 on the Great Engineer priority list.
- C. Pick your Path. It's either Gargoyles or Iron Golems. The latter are significantly better offensively, but the former offers nice Builder bonuses such as Gambling Houses (for managing happiness without sacrificing health), Guild of Hammers (VERY nice pickup for the Luchuirp, even with Industrious - Forges are necessary for Iron Golem creation and the +1 hammer for Engineers synergizes wonderfully with your Worldspell), City of a Thousand Slums, increased road movment (helps your slooooow Golems a lot), and gets you closer to Taxation/Guilds/Mercantilism/Machinery. At Immortal+, it's easy to miss out on Wonders if you don't push for them.
1.Iron Golems probably benefit most from a mix of bulbing and straight research down the same path to grab them asap - strength 10 Iron golems with Empower V are simply overwhelming against Bronze-wielding archers and axemen. Continue the Golem/Adept/Catapult combo.
2. Gargoyles are significantly weaker offensively than Iron Golems while costing identical production, with their one significant advantage being that they produce 25% faster with Marble. One implication of this is that you may wish to manually research Elementalism and Sorcery while bulbing your way to Gargoyles, as a Fireball thrown by an Iron Golem = a Fireball thrown by a Gargoyle. Enough Fireballs will kill virtually anything, but the defensive power of a Gargoyle is significantly better than that of a Wood Golem.

IV. Combined Arms: What else besides Golems?
- A. Golems Rule (kind of)! Golems are fantastic troops - able to be healed by a spell readily available to Adepts while other armies need to wait for their High Priest units for instant healing, resistant to many damage types, pre-upgraded by Barney, and some of the most prolific Fireball-throwers available in the game. On the other hand, they can't learn from experience, can't get better weapons, can't be effected by buffing spells, and never get any faster than a move of one.
- B. Options for diversifying your forces away from Golems.
1. Chariots. Your "horsemen" as the Luchuirp are pretty terrible (contrary to what is shown in the manual, they are strength 4 movement 2). However, your Chariots are the same as everyone else, they unlock with Trade (which you will want to get the most out of your conquests), and they are built at Siege Workshops (which you will want to provide Catapults until you get Blasting Workshops). Therefore, they require minimal additional investment to toss into your forces, making them an attractive option for those looking for quick troops without a lot of fuss. Their speed (3+upgrades) is extremely useful as a complement to all your 1 speed golems, and they are reasonably good offensive units when upgraded with Iron or Mithril.
2. Octopus Overlords. Usually a conversion I make as a result of being surrounded by Neutral/Evils. As mentioned earlier in this thread, you can Drown all of your early game experienced Warriors to continue to proceed in parallel to other cultures - Drown for Axemen, Stygian Guard for Champion. This is an especially nice combination with bulbing the Iron Golem path, as this will keep your squamous, non-euclidean hordes armed with superb weaponry all the way through. While others have mentioned the savage Dwarven Druid as a benefit from this path, I'm also particularly fond of gaining access to Slavery for mid-game conquests (which is prohibited by the base Luchuirp good alignment) - newly converted cities are often both cranky and starving due to lack of culture, and whipping their useless population away for your Monument/Market/Sculptor's Studio gives these cities a great intro to life in the Luchuirp Empire. You also get the very unreliable but entertaining option of Slave->Lunatics through this combo - I find I can virtually never control my Lunatics, but they do hit very, very hard.
3. Crusaders. The Order is already a superb choice for managing a large, sprawling Empire due to its Basilicas (especially with a Financial leader whose reliance on Aristrocracy means he doesn't want to have a mega-financial capital through God King). If you wait to switch to The Order until after Fanaticism, you can count on picking up a significant horde of Crusaders, which has to one of the game's best deals - a Confessor for 120 hammers gets you guaranteed city conversion + a Temple of Order worth 120 hammers + a 75% chance of a Crusader worth 120 hammers. If you're converting said large, sprawling empire, you're going to pick up a serious number of Crusaders along the way. The downside, of course, is that once you have a large empire you've often already won - this will help you win faster, however, which still helps on points.
4. Mercenaries. Currency isn't a bad tech even without building the Guild of the Nine, but mercs can really tip the balance, if for no other reason than that they allow your golem horde to avoid attrition through city defense to maintain a critical mass of Fireballers. Remember that Industrious + your worldspell really cranks out the Wonder easily; might as well use it for a Wonder that matters the whole game, especially if you're setting your gold rate especially high to benefit from Gambling Halls. Bonus stupid fact: Fireballs can summon Mercenaries.

V. Magic Picks
- A. Golems Love Enchantment 1. Ideally you nab an extra source of Enchantment mana, for the additional happiness and so that every one of your Adepts starts with Repair. If you're mana starved, though, skip it - Fire mana is your top priority for Blasting Workshops.
- B. Debuffs: Entropy and Metamagic. Your Golems cannot use weapons or benefit from buffing spells, but they are pretty tough customers without them - an Iron Golem has the same base strength as a Mithril Wielding Champion. Wherever possible, you want to strip your opponents of the benefits of their weapons and buffs and force them to fight your Golems naked. Dispel Magic and Rust are therefore extremely useful offensive additions to your repetoire. Entropy 2 and Metamagic 1 are also pretty good - the Eye gives you excellent intel on your enemies, which helps you prevent your slow Golems from proceeding down the wrong paths, while Pit Beasts actually put in good service in conjunction with a hail of Fireballs - they can often stick around for 2-3 rounds in a long siege, grabbing City Raider upgrades to heal themselves and continue bashing away. And, of course, once you get Entropy 3 you've got one of the nastiest offensive spells in the game.
- C. Mage Protection: Death and Earth
Your Golems really want a mage around with Repair. Enemy Marksmen also want you to have mages around to provide them with soft targets, and your Golems can't pick up Guardsmen. I usually just use Royal Guard and a Guardsmen upgraded combat hero (Saverous with Fear is nice). Theorycrafting suggests, although I haven't tried it, that Stoneskin should make your mages tougher than Wood Golems, even discounting the lost point of poison against the Golem. The same theorycrafting suggests that Skeletons should be weaker against Assassins than your Mages even without Stoneskin.
- D. Grab a Tower of Elements
You want Fire Mana for Blasting Workshops. You start with Earth. You want Metamagic for recon and debuffing. You might consider grabbing Water (ideally through the Necronomicon constructed by someone else) and Air to slap Strong on all your Fireballs. If you're going to be tossing dozens of them around every turn, you might as well make them hit as hard as you can, and Metamagic will allow you to respec your mana later.

VI. Late Game Wonders
- A. Nexus. Everyone loves the Nexus for military and financial applications, but the fact that Golems are as slow as it is possible to be and still move means you love it more.
- B. Birthright Regained. When you're looking for that last oomph to either invade another continent or power through the Tower of Mastery in record time, casting Gifts on a fully-formed Empire is hard to beat. It's especially easy to shuffle those Hammers around with the Nexus.

Ermmm... that's all I got.

P.S. Generic tip: If you want to get a city out of revolt faster, throw in a level 1 Disciple and sac them for bonus culture - viola, instant happy. Doesn't work with Savants, for obvious reasons. Not always a good idea if the city in question is still surrounded by enemy culture - better to conquer more cities in the duration of the revolt to push back enemy culture.
 
- C. Mage Protection: Death and Earth
Your Golems really want a mage around with Repair. Enemy Marksmen also want you to have mages around to provide them with soft targets, and your Golems can't pick up Guardsmen. I usually just use Royal Guard and a Guardsmen upgraded combat hero (Saverous with Fear is nice). Theorycrafting suggests, although I haven't tried it, that Stoneskin should make your mages tougher than Wood Golems, even discounting the lost point of poison against the Golem. The same theorycrafting suggests that Skeletons should be weaker against Assassins than your Mages even without Stoneskin.

I'm not sure exactly what the formula is for marksman. However, a quick test indicates that while assassins will target an empower 0 skeleton over a combat 5 mage, they will not target an empower x skeleton over a combat x mage (even though the mage is stronger). My guess is that "reduced chance to defend the stack" (which is granted by channeling promotions, among others) translates into increased chance to defend against marksmen. In any case, this indicates that any skeleton summoned by a particular mage is too strong to protect that mage.

Edit: I guess one solution would be to promote Life II on one of your mages and use Destroy Undead to damage all of your skeletons. (Conveniently Luchuirp start with life mana.)
 
Channeling gives "reduced chance to defend the stack". Basically what this means is that each level of channeling reduces the units chance to defend the stack by 25%. This means that an adept with channeling 1, but no combat promotions, counts as a unit of strength 2.25 for the purposes of defending the stack. In actual combat, it is still strength 3, but any unit with strength higher than 2.25 will defend before an unpromoted adept. The only thing I am unsure of is whether or not this stacks - does channeling 1 give -25%, channeling 2 give -25%, and having both give -50%? Or does channeling 1 give -25% and channeling 2 -50%, but the unit has a -50% chance of defending?

Something to note is that priests, high priests, and druids have the channeling promotions as well. Priests have channeling 2, high priests and druids channeling 2 and 3. However, they don't have channeling 1. If it works the way of the first case, that means that they only have a -25% chance to defend the stack (this is also the reason why I believe that it works in this manner - a combat 5 mage will defend before a combat 2 priest). Another thing to note is that world units have a hardcoded 1/2 chance to defend the stack.

As for guardsmen, this promotion does two things in base FFH. First, it neutralizes the marksman promotion. Second, it doubles that units chance to defend the stack. This means that if you give barnaxus guardsman and combat 5, at strength 5 he counts as a strength 10 unit, while a wood golem would count as strength 9. At strength 7 with combat 5 (iron weapons), he would have a strength of 14, but an iron golem would be strength 15. Note that defending, %bonuses are additive, so sitting on top of a wooded hill, barnaxus would be strength 17.5, while an iron golem would be strength 20. This means that if you so desired, you could use barnaxus as a stack defender without having to worry about him being the primary target. On the other hand, if you don't want to risk him, you could replace him with a warrior who was given guardsmen, but a combat 5 warrior with guardsmen and bronze is counted as a strength 16 unit for the purposes of deciding who is defending.

Hope this helps.

-Colin
 
A. How are people doing these quick tests?

B. Does anyone know how first strikes enter into the calculations for Marksman? What number of combat promotions carries the tipping point between Stoneskin on a Mage and a Wood Golem with Empower 5?
 
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