Your Top Ten Tips for Your Favorite Civ

I like to get an Adularia Chamber and then rebuild all my mud golems so that they can work unmolested. I usually build Pallens Engines in all my cities when I get Sun Mana for the Tower of Divination. How helpful it actually is I'm not sure.

cabbagemeister said:

I don't like ToC for Calabim because it eliminates your Governor's Manor production. A giant size 35+ feast city is great, but a giant feast city with an extra 35 hammers per turn is just ridiculous. For this reason alone, I prefer Order and the Social Order civic for the Calabim (though of course vampiric Paladins are awesome too).

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But tower of complacency comes a lot earlier, and doesn't require teching too far up the religion line which isn't a huge use to the Calabim in most cases. Also, having one huge city (Tower + Slums + surrounded completely by farms + no arristocracy) is better on most smaller sized maps which are the sizes I prefer. You can get this city up to a more or less unlimitted size it seems, and so long as you don't feed too often the population will always recover between Feastings. Also, the Calabim need often need priests in the early game to help with combat before the vampires come online. OO priests are a lot stronger then Order ones for this purpose, and of course you get Hemah this way too.

Doug Piranha said:

Is it? My ideal starting promotions are mobility, death II, combat 1-5, which requires a nice even 50 exp. I'm usually happy if I can reach that experience level with five feastings (requires starting size 15).

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Emptiness said:

I see. I prefer to feast Vampires to an even more advanced state. I tend to have less of them, and use Moroi and Skeletons as fodder when necessary to increase the odds for my Vampires. Growing cities that large is just an invitation for a Blight/Pestilence disaster, and I don't do it. 15-20 would be a typical size where I would stop growth for a city. I station a Vampire in each city as its personal feeding ground, and Feast whenever that city grows above it's specific limit (which I've selected based on its food production capacity and notated in the city name as a reminder). Once a Vampire reaches a "finished" state I build a new Vampire to feast in the city and the finished Vampire joins my army.

I'm sure this is much more time-consuming and tedious than feasting one time from one city and just having more Vampires, however.

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I like to use a mixture of levels for Vampires, not all of them have to be high level or have all promotions. All of them have mobility of course. Some are high level and suited to cracking cities and tough opponents with combat and city raider promotions. They will often have Death 2 as well since their spectres will benefit from the 5 combat promotions. Some vampires will be minimal and only have a few promotions. They will have Regen or Death 2 not both. Being able to cast Haste, Regen or Death magic is useful for speeding up and healing other living troops and for defence. They're able to finish off weak or damaged opponents despite not having a lot of combat promotions and there are often plenty of those if fireballs or spectres have been used to soften defenders. It is a wasted opportunity to kill a badly damaged unit with a high level vampire that only gets 1 exp for the 99.9% chance. A low level vampire with (say) a 97% chance gets a lot more benefit and more exp. It seems the main cost to vampires is not the 180 hammers but the huge cost of Feasting to get to high levels which consumes enormous amounts of food.

sparker said:

I'd love it if someone would contribute a top 10 for Kuriotates, especially if it didn't involve an early Centaur rush of a neighbor. I've tried several games as the Kurios, and they seem to be the only civ I can't wrap my head around.

I understand where the push for an early Centaur rush in a few of the Kuriotate threads around here, but that seems so out of character for them...

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I second this.

loocas said:

I second this.

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Well, I don't have a particular strategy, but usually I build 4 warriors, build settler 2 more warriors then another settler. Once all three cities are in place, pop legends... and well, you're an economic superpower. Not much else to it.

I think the big thing about the kuriotates is deciding which religion you want. Your options are Order, FoL, AV, or the Overlords as each of these allow you to create supercities in some form or other.

The Kuriotates don't have massive happiness issues, they can build a settlement next to every resource if needed, and they also have their special buildings which give extra luxuries, which are unique and can be traded with other players.

For that reason, FoL or AV. FoL requires that you leave much of your land unimproved so you can have forests, which isn't ideal annd kind of defeats the advantage of the Kuriotates, lots of improvements. I would say get OO first and build the Tower of C in the city with the highest potential for growth, then adopt AV for Sacrifice the Weak, getting as many luxuries as possible to keep happiness up in your other cities.

Kurio:
don't forget, you'll be wanting the most out of your 3 cities, so make sure you have as little overlap as possible.
If possible, try to specialise your cities a bit. You've only got 3 (depending on map size ofcourse, i'm assuming standard), One pure city (enclaves/plantation/gold/gems) and one pure city (few farms, rest mines/lumbermills) would be ideal (even though hardly ever possible) and make the choice for where to put which national wonder a lot easier.
Kurio's get an additional upgrade from their cottages, adding another and another to the tile. They're great, get them asap (i.e. cottage spam).
Since you've only got a few cities, you don't need citystates or aristocracy for them. God king is very nice for them(make your production city the capitol).
Centaurs are nice UU's, in that, unlike other mounted units, they do get bonusses from terrain. This makes it a lot easier for them to farm barbs for exp (if you get them early enough).

just a few general remarks i know, but haven't played them recently so you'll have to wait for someone else to make a more indept-guide.

Agree with Godking. You don't generally want to be using Aristograrian with the Kurios because you want to cottage spam for enclaves, and you need your farms to produce as much food as possible to get the most out of your cities. Later in the game I think republic is quite useful for a few extra and the boost to GP production.

I think Kurios are all about city specialization, you'll only have 3 megacities and you gotta get the most out of them.

enclaves are awesome but take a lot to get, so you need to start building cottages ASAP.

your capital should be placed so that it will become a uber commerce city, so rivers, and enough food to cottage every tile in sight.

get education early and start building cottages like there's no tomorrow, the sooner you build them the sooner you'll have enclaves.

if done correctly, you don't even have to build a single cottage in your other 2 cities, and you'll only have 1 city which is vulnerable to pillaging.

keep some centaurs on nearby hills to look out for potential mischievous bastards, and take advantage of their crazy speed to kill them before they reach your tender, juicy cottages.

aside from the capitol, you'll have 2 other cities. one which is all about production ( heroic epic anyone? plus wonders when possible ) and one which imho should be heavily farmed and used as a GP farm.

do go 100% science and keep all your science in your first, cottagespammed city, with an academy it will become crazy soon enough.

since you only have three cities, you can't afford to suboptimal build order. luckily, your cities will be so specialized that it will be easy to tell useful buildings from useless ones.

Centaurs are fantastic. strong, fast, and they get defensive bonuses. they are pretty much perfect, no weakness at all. spam them, love them, do go up the horseback line because if you play it right centaur archers will be available soon, en masse and kickass. eh, that rhymes.

you WILL want to run God King all game and change your capitol from your first city. here comes the one big dilemma: GK boosts gold and hammers. hammers is easy, you have a city which is all about that. Gold, since you'll be at 100% science, comes from Merchants and Holy Temples.

Evaluate your game and choose where to place your palace in order to get the most out of GK. the choice is easy, either your production city or your specialist city, where you'll want to go merchant heavy if you place your capital there. don't be afraid to move your capital more than once if needed.

however, this will soon become suboptimal too. we all know how awesome the Bazaar of Mammon can get, so you'll want to build it soon, and after that you will want to move your capital there and not move it anymore. +150% gold? yes please!

since GK boosts both hammers AND gold, I'm not a fan of placing the capital+bazaar in my GP city. which brings me to the next important issue for the Kurios, RELIGION.

you will have lots of settlements, there's just no reason not to do that since you can also build settlers quickly thanx to expansive. normally, they are useless aside from resources. normally, that is. you WILL want to eventually adopt each religion in the game, and have one temple of each religion in each settlement. this will also give you specialist slots, settlements can benefit from specialists ( one specialist for each settlment actually ) but not from tile yields.

second, do try to found as many religions as possible ASAP. with all the religions you'll spread around, holy buildings will give a crapload of gold. gold, the one that gets a nice boost from GK+Bazaar... if you can get a holy building in your hammer city, you're set. more than one, you'll be Uber

the problem is that this strategy is dependent on luck since you can never really know where religions will spawn. they tend to spawn in the most popolous non-capitol city though, so do try to manipulate them into where you want them

of course, different strategies are also available, depending on the situation. you could use scientists as your main science production, guilds to specialize your GP city as much as possible ( or even mercantilism for infinite merchants+bazaar+GK , but mercantilism is generally not a great civic ) ... honestly, the possibilites are many, as is often the case in FFH

with all that religion switching, you'll hardly get heroes, but if you can pull it off ( hard ) I like Empy as a state religion, since you WILL be outnumbered by opponents and Chalid fits that fighting theme very well

regarding Legends, I generally like to use them late, and culture is easy enough to get as the Kurios so I don't like popping it early, I usually wait until I build all my settlements and then pop it to get as much as possible out of it.

I'm by no means a superplayer, so I'd greatly appreciate any flaw found in this post, and alternative strategies and suggestions

THE problem with kurio is that regardless of production you cant build more than 1 unit per turn and your cites have a burden to protect also settlements. Therefore during wars I suggest to swap to OO and use slavery civic for spamming OO units via slaves.

Also you can sacrifice one of your cities ( you can always build a new one) , summon basium and grant settlements to basium.

good point. going for currency early ( not a problem since it's a useful tech anyway ) and choosing industrious thanx to adaptive means good chances of getting the guilds of hammers, which solves the issue.

I do things slightly differently for my city specialization. One city is the GK capitol, one is the heroic epic, and one is the science city. Capitol makes wonders between buildings other two make Centaurs. I prefer to leave 8 or so tiles of non-river plains forest around each city, lumbermill them, and then spend a bit of extra time in FoL when religion hopping for the settlements to convert all the forests to Ancient Forest for 2 3 tiles plus a couple health.

I also go financial on my first transition then aristograrian. You still build mostly cottages for your economy, but the extra 2 from the 15ish farms in each city provide a substantial science boost to power you through the middle of the tech tree and switch back to GK once I hit Guilds (or whatever).

Note I don't play the Kurios much, since I prefer the Sidar for most of the things that Kurios are good for

nice touch about staying FoL for a while to spread AF, especially since you only have to spread them in 3 cities that you will build ASAP. Hidden Paths is also great in the meanwhile.

Sidar

1. Never stop fighting. The power of the Sidar comes from the shades. The fastest way to get shades if you're not playing Unrestricted Leaders is to fight. On a standard size Continents or Pangaea map without Raging Barbs, I normally get enough barbs to get 2 shades before enough fog gets busted to dry up the supply around turn 80-90. From there it's necessary to war dec your neighbor. I prefer the strongest one possible that's non-aggressive and not Sheaim. The goal is not to conquer but to get into a constant low level warfare in order to farm XP for your troops. When you finish off your neighbor or aren't getting enough fodder, war dec the next person. Never stop fighting.

2. Your troops are your future economy and are much better for it than buildings. Aside from the initial Elder Council for the academy in your science city or pagan temples if you're shooting for the Altar, your cities should be producing troops instead of infrastructure. The reason for this is that 70 nets you 2/ and a specialist slot if you spend it on buildings while a 25-70 investments gets you a reasonably good chance at 7 in your science city or 4+3 or 5+2 etc. The irony in this is that despite SE being Sidar's thing, only 2-3 of your cities will generally be SE oriented. The rest of your cities are like settlements that produce troops and research.

3. Your first research target is Military Strategy. Get your farms+resource unlock and beeline. The AI really likes that branch and it's much nicer to get the Command Post from the free Commander than having to RNG it up with GPP. The Heroic Epic is also crucial when your economy is based on generating troops.

4. Your military options are adept supported warriors/axemen, Horse Archers, and Crusaders/Parmanders if you Altar.

The horses are my preference because the extra 10% withdraw from Homeland gets Horse Archers to 85% withdraw in two promotions, making them highly reliable for shades while leaving promotions for mobility to allow them to get to the front line and back to shade quickly. Going horses also makes it easy to get Deception (Loyalty via Gibbon) and Honor (Chalid!).

For the metal line, I like to stick with axemen for a long time since the promotions make up for the lack of base strength and they're cheaper. Taking a few turns to grab KoTE pays big dividends since adepts give Enchant Blade, Blur, and Courage from palace mana.

There's no real trick to the divine soldiers, they just come out with an extra 8-12 XP over the metal.

5. Rathus is for waning. If you get poisons reasonably early (i.e. pick your military line and then go poisons) you can easily have one of your ghosts become Aeron's Chosen. The chosen is a much better assassin than Rathus is due to strength, CoE if desired, the 20% post combat heal, and upgrading to a shadow. Therefore Rathus' main contribution is his equipment, a shade, and the Shrine of the Fallen Champion in your Military Capitol. If enemy targets are convenient, I like to level him up through combat so that I can get Aeron's Chosen with a free promotion from the shrine.

6. In the startup phase, it's God King for production, Aristograrian for research. The Sidar are the second best God King civ (behind the Kurios). If you have a capitol with gold, settling your second shade as a merchant in the capitol allows you to run a 6-8 city empire at a 60-70% science slider. You get a decent second production city for your heroic epic and crank out wonders in the capitol. You run research by going RoK/Nationhood/Military State/Agrarianism, Soldier of Kilmorph rushing Elder Council+Libraries everywhere and forcing the scientists. SoK rushing is reasonably efficient from your capitol (15% loss) and excellent from your heroic+command city (55% gain) but the main reason to do it is the turn advantage since both cities are normally putting out 60-70/turn at this point versus 8-12 for normal cities. The upside is that this approach produces a huge number of hammers. Wonders are 5 turns. The downside is that it's slower research. I've done a few replays and I'm normally 20 turns or so later to the power phase than with aristograrian.

7. Starting XP is important for reliably producing shades. Civics that boost your starting XP significantly reduce the number of fights your units need to win in order to wane, resulting in faster specialist ramping and a higher rate of success. Here's the complete list:

* 2 XP - Theocracy
* 2 XP - Apprenticeship
* 2 XP - Conquest
* 2 XP - Form of the Titan
* 2 XP - Command Post
* 2 XP/level - Altar of the Luonnotar (disciple, 2-12 XP)
* 2 XP - Dies Dei (disciple)
* 10 XP - Ride of the Nine Kings (mounted) via Tower of Divination Warhorses
* Free Promotion - Shrine of the Fallen Champion (indirect boost, the promotion provides extra survivability)
* 1 XP/fight - Valor from Law III--Gibbon
* 1 XP/fight - Great Commander attached--I use spare GCs to get units through the 20s quickly at >99% odds and convert them to command posts once I move enough engineer shades to a third production city for instant 10 XP units.
* 2 XP - Soldiers of Kilmorph with the Brew House national wonder -- not really worth it due to SoK cost

Getting them all lined up begins the power phase of Sidar play since you start rapidly approaching 1 super specialist per turn and they're all running through the heaviest set of multipliers possible. I frequently hit 1200 in my science city before I run out of techs to research. Culture is even easier at 40 per specialist. For conquest, build your National Epic in the Heroic Epic city for regular Great Commanders and shuffle engineers into your support cities. Waves of 4-5 promotion Tier 3 units aren't quite as good as Vampires, but it's pretty close.

8. Position your troops so you'll be the attacker if possible. The rough formula for XP gain is round(P*opponent_str/your_str) where P is 8 for attacking and 4 for defending and the strengths are the ones listed at the top when you alt+hover. It's important to note that it's MORE than twice as good to attack because the rounding at reasonable odds works in your favor. This rule mostly applies to barbarians but also applies if one of your cities is being attacked by a relatively weak stack (use all your defenders but 1-2 ).

9. Understand Jump Points. The Civ combat system results in cases where a small increases in strength result in large increases in success rate. The most important one for the Sidar is the one where you're 5-10% stronger than your opponent. In this range, you get 5 XP for winning at 63% odds while you'll only get 3 XP for winning at 75% odds if you're 20-30% stronger. This is the most important advantage of the Homeland promotion. You can decide the level of risk you're comfortable with, but early on, I generally run my warriors twice at these odds if possible before taking all possible promotions. It's a 40% shot at 12-16 XP in two fights while promoting first gets you a 56-60% chance at 8-10 XP.

10. Only living units can be waned. OO, therefore, is probably the worst religion for the Sidar but the temples can be worth building (trade for the tech) for the scientist slot.

Bonus tips!

** If you are playing Unrestricted Leaders, Varn is the strongest leader for the Sidar by a mile (spiritual+charismatic+altar+confessors = ). I also like Faeryl for a change of pace from Sandalphon since the strengths change to Arcane+Recon.

** An easy way to get Knights with march is to avoid a training yard/archery range in your military capitol, build warriors once you can train them with 4 promotions, promote them Combat III+March and upgrade them to Horse Archers.

** Building the Altar up to V (fanaticism) is frequently a goal for me even when I'm not going for an Altar victory due to the +2 to priest specialists in conjunction with Theocracy. Add in the Hall of Kings and it's a one-stop new city assimilation package.

Note: I play with a slightly buffed Sidar at Immortal (usually)/Diety on Standard size Pangea/Continents maps at Normal speed. For the buffs, I extend Sever to the entire recon line and add +25% city attack to Hidden. The sever buff actually makes the biggest difference with Scouts since it greatly increases their speed and survivability. The hidden boost is because shadows are invisible and -25%, so why not invisible ghosts at -25%? It also makes the world spell actually useful...

[to_xp]Gekko;8516349 said:

nice touch about staying FoL for a while to spread AF, especially since you only have to spread them in 3 cities that you will build ASAP. Hidden Paths is also great in the meanwhile.

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Unless I'm really short on health resources and plan on staying FoL long term, I don't consider GoN to be worth the beakers. It only takes 15-20 turns to convert your forests.

yeah, the tech itself is definitely expensive. still, it might be worth it if you got a good research and plan to stay FoL for a good while for whatever reasons.

about Sidar, wouldn't going CoE and spamming HN Ghosts ( build nightwatch, upgrade to ghost for 5 gold ) be a nice way to get easy XP?

[to_xp]Gekko;8516617 said:

wouldn't going CoE and spamming HN Ghosts ( build nightwatch, upgrade to ghost for 5 gold ) be a nice way to get easy XP?

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The primary advantage of HN units is that it lets you farm your vassals. Actually fighting someone normally isn't a problem due to Sidar cities not having to go over 14-16 pop, leaving plenty of overhead for war weariness.

The problem with Ghosts is that they tend to attack with >99.9% odds for 1 XP/combat. This means two problems. The first is that it takes a lot of combats to wane so the specialist ramp rate is fairly slow. The second is that you tend to run out of targets fairly quickly, which is good if you're conquering and not so good if you're trying to farm XP close to home with mounted troops for fast shades. Using Loyalty from Gibbon helps to offset this, particularly in conjunction with Great Commanders to bump it up to 3 XP/combat and Orthus' Axe for the blitzing. With all three in place, HN Ghosts become a fairly effective option.

Shadowriders, however, are a considerably better option. Sure, they cost twice as much but toss them loyalty and Blitz, whack whack whack, 26 XP in a single turn plus higher movement. If production is really a problem, 120 per turn is only 10 settled engineers in your Heroic Epic city and you don't really need one *every* turn. They also come later, but not much later since you don't have to tech Bowyers and instead do Iron Working and ToDivinity Warhorses (which is like 4k longer). This also uses up far fewer of your vassal's troops so you get more shades before you run them dry again.

you seem to confuse Loyalty with Valor, Valor gives more XP from combats while loyalty is totally useless

good point about Shadowriders, although they come so late and you have only 4 of them, so I don't think a strategy can be centered around them, as much as I love them

the Sidar are so awesome and I'm definitely a builder, but they just don't do it for me. I get attached to my units, and waning the high level ones makes my heart drop

With sidars :
can you explain the mechanism for aeron's chosen?

how do you do to get aeron's chosen on an esus assassin? (I suppose it depends on the mecanism for granting aerons chosen...)

the first assassin to reach level 6 gets it IIRC.