My new favorite way to set up Hyborem.

Hello all, just thought I'd share this gem with those of you that haven't already thought of it.

I've been doing the following to set myself to accept Hyborem as my new civ, and pump my town up to 99 with no unhappiness. It works on Monarch, but I havent tried it on the higher diff. levels.

1) Use a civ that starts with either exploration or ancient chants. (We are going to switch to Hyborem so it really doesn't matter which one.) The reason for this is so we are one step closer to mysticism or fishing, both of which we need.

2) Get a tech or two to help generate some gold. Education for cottages or calender if you can use it (without bronze working). This will speed up your research as gold increases commerce which increases research.

3) Get the Octopus Overlords religion, and mind stapling so you can build the tower of complacency. Make sure its your best town that you build it in. By now you should have at least 3 or 4 squares that provide 5 gold or more.

4) Go for philosophy so you can research way of the wicked and get Infernal pact. At this point I never have more than 3 towns. Do what you can to trade for priesthood during any of the following steps if anyone has it for religious dicipline. (This will give us unlimited priests.)

5) Get way of the wicked and start building prophecy of ragnorok in the town you built the tower of complacency in. If you don't have priesthood yet, get it now.

6) Go for Infernal pact.

7) 1 turn before it is done, (keeping in mind barbarian closeness and strength) disband all units except for 1 in your main town. (The one with the wonders)

8) Get Hyborem and immediately declare war and take that town. Put all your units in it as 2 or 3 civs usually declare war at this point.

9) Use your manes to increase the population level when you get them, and with prophecy of ragnorok you get 1 free hammer per priest. Religious dicipline will allow you to have unlimited priests. With no unhappiness due to the tower of complacency, each priest is really a free hammer and free great people points.

10) Now all of a sudden you have a town that has no unhappiness, and huge production even without workers or any worked tiles provided you use them as priests. I had my national epic here and was generating 430 or so great people points per turn. I managed to get my town up to size 75, building all units and non wonders in 1 turn, with wonders taking 3 to 10 turns on average. Eventually youll want to get the civic that allows specialists to get 2 free research per specialist. I usually go for corruption of spirit here while Hyborem kills neighboring cities for doomsday points. Once I have Meshaber of Dis I keep Hyborem in my main town as he doesn't get the blitz promotion but Dis does.

Don't build courthouses if you can help it, they seem to trigger war with the barbarians.

I'm sure there are other tricks but this is the one I have been using. Have fun!

One last thing I should mention. For reasons I don't understand, the better my unlimited priest town got, the better my other towns got as well. Not sure why that was happening, but no complaints.

180 pop, 854 hammers a day. 907 GPP.

That is indeed wicked! Who would have thought that a huge city of complacent priests would be that productive and great ppl producing. A possible way to reduce this exploit (if it needs fixing?) would be to disallow specialists in complacent towns or some similar mechanic.

It's not really an exploit unless you're hyborem, and to disallow specialists for all civs that build the tower would be overkill.

I don't know if this is so abusive that it needs fixing. Especially not vs a human, because ONE CITY can always be taken (pillar/ring of fire etc burns through stacks real fast)

That might not work as citizens give you +1 hammers, which is what the priests are giving. It would however kill the GPP points, though they are hardly needed. It would also reduce the gold as my priests were giving me +1 gold each. That would still leave me in this case with +70ish gold/turn.

I'm hoping this is a legitimate tactic however due to the fact it relies very heavily on Hyborem staying alive (which isn't easy) and that you only have a few towns so you can put your mane there. Also if you have two towns when you summon Hyborem you run the risk of the Holy City being in a different town than the tower of complacency and therefore you will never see Messhaber of Dis in that game. I usually gift my towns to intended target number two and wipe out my main civ as soon as I take control of Hyborem.

If it is unintended than perhaps the mane system needs a cap on the number of manes per town. That would fix it without changing the wonders, and it could still be a high number like 50 or so without killing it too much. I hope this isn't the case however, as I like to see it as putting all your eggs in one basket. Risky on many fronts.

Bringa said:

I don't know if this is so abusive that it needs fixing. Especially not vs a human, because ONE CITY can always be taken (pillar/ring of fire etc burns through stacks real fast)

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Indeed, I do however try to build my main town on top of reagents if I have them nearby so I get my own ritualists. This makes certain I get them, invading armies or not. You cannot see them in the screenshot but I have about 30 of them in that town, and you are right they totally obliterate all incoming stacks. I like to use them every turn and watch the "... shadow has been killed" messages fly by. =D

I actually use roving stacks of ritualists to kill enemy cities instead of Hyborem once I can build them. It's faster, more efficient, and I can build them in 1 turn.

I had to give it a try. I managed to get my city up to 99 population. This strategy works great!!!

Thanks for sharing.

Mesix said:

I had to give it a try. I managed to get my city up to 99 population. This strategy works great!!!

Thanks for sharing.

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Happy to share! Are you winning your game? =D

I tried it too and got to 93 Armaggedon Counter, having decimated 3 civilizations alredy (small map, 7 or 8 civs, dont remenber) and still going. Fun game, but I think I will stop it by now, I reached that "double-win" situation, where I can't lose and the game is just a matter of turns to end.

Religious Disicipline is so overpowered :/

With Hyborem or with the Altar, yes it is overpowered...

Quetz said:

Religious Disicipline is so overpowered :/

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if so then Liberty, Guilds, and Scholarship are all overpowered too lol

Guilds offers 2 unlimited types even, so doubly "overpowered" heh

its not overpowered, Religious Discipline is heavily useful for the Altar victory, but thats to be expected and makes sense.

The Prophecy of Ragnarok no longer grants an extra hammer per priest. You can probably skip that.

I'm using a modified version of this strategy. I played the elves and had them adopt Octopus Overlords. I played the good leader so adopting the religion only set me to neutral. I built the tower of complacency along with the Alter (currently level 3 or 4) and set my civic to agriculture. Almost every tile outside the city has a farm and my population is up to 36. I plan to build the Planar Gate and make this city the capital of Basim's angelic empire (taking control when I do of course).

It might not grow as fast as the Hyborem manes allow...but Agriculture works well too.

How unintend was that to have the elves adopt Octopus Overlords so that they could summon Basim?

Mesix said:

I'm using a modified version of this strategy. I played the elves and had them adopt Octopus Overlords. I played the good leader so adopting the religion only set me to neutral. I built the tower of complacency along with the Alter (currently level 3 or 4) and set my civic to agriculture. Almost every tile outside the city has a farm and my population is up to 36. I plan to build the Planar Gate and make this city the capital of Basim's angelic empire (taking control when I do of course).

It might not grow as fast as the Hyborem manes allow...but Agriculture works well too.

How unintend was that to have the elves adopt Octopus Overlords so that they could summon Basim?

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elves dont need OO to summon basium, anyone can, even the agnostic cassiel can summon basium.

I believe he meant not that he was forced to take OO as a religion in order to summon Basium, but that he found it to be the optimum way to do so.

farms are not the ideal way to do that with elves, agriculture would remove its production from every tile...

a size 36 city is easy to create without the tower of complacency without losing 20 base production from the agriculture civic lol

Makes sense. But it still is a fact that having the Tower of Complacency in a city where you will summon either Hyborem or Basium is one hell of a way to go, no matter what strategy you are going for.

Tower of Complacency is nice and all, but you can get the same effect with a spell, but for 3/6 cities, and without switching to a religion and winning the race to it.

Also, unlimited happiness is nice, but you still need health. When you go past your Health/Sickness limit, you begin wasting food.

Considering the Mercurian Gate is a wonder, it can be rushed, and running Guardian of Nature with tons of cottages is much quicker, you'll get tons of money.