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...