Fellowship of Leaves Guide

Introduction and Sources
This guide is used to introduce new players to the world of the Fellowship of Leaves. The Religion Pageis an interesting place to browse through religions. In adition to that, my Council of Esus Thread is another religious thread. Screenshots will be added soon.

Basic Lore

The Fellowship is a very unstructured religion in Erebus's lore. It's patron god, Cerruneous, is the youngest an weakest of the gods. This means his authority over the religion is limted, and different strains are plentiful. For this reason the religion is purely neutral, as there is little agreement.The different groups are marked by similar characteristics, a deep respect for nature and life, though not any particular life. They all worship Cerruneous, though I think they also worship Sucellus and Amataon. A team member would be welcome to coorect me. The Fellowship is powerful among the elves, as well as sayts and other sub human races.

The Ancient Forests

A primary focus of the Fellowship is in forests. Forests in the Fellowship's land has two main features. The first is that these forests can turn into Ancient Forests, which increases the tile's food output. When enemies invade, ancient forests can soawn treants, or giant tree men, to defend your land. Whenever an enemy enter a ancient forest, neighboring wnciwnt forests have a 5% cchance of spawning Treants, which last for 3 turns. If the city nearby the forest has a Temple of Leaves, the chance of the treant spawning is increased to 15%.

Heroes of the Fellowship

There are two heroes that require a fellowship state religion, Yvain the Woodelf, and Kithra Kyriel.

Yvain the Woodelf- Yvain is a very powerful druid unit. He becomes avalable at Commune with Nature. He is a definte must have for any FoL player, as he is another unit to vitalize the land, as well as create forests to turn into Ancient Forests. (Civilopedia Page)

Kithra Kyriel- Kithra requires Feral bond, and is a mounted horse archer hero. He is one of the fastest units in the game, making even the Hippus jealous. (Civilopedia Page)

Saytrs and Fauns

Saytrs and Fauns are two units only available to the Fellowship.Fauns are buildable in any city, and start with woodsman 1. Level 4 fauns can be uprgraded to Saytrs, which have a specail ability called mesmerize. Mezmerize can be cast on any beast or animal unit within 1 tile of the caster, and converts the unit to the player.

Priest of Leaves

Priests of Leaves are very specail priests, they not only cast Divine spells, but also sorcery. This doubles their spells. Priests start with Life and Nature Magic, and upgrade to High Priests and Inquisitros like normal priests.

Guardian of Nature and Temple of Leaves

Guardian of Nature is a economic civic unlocked by a FoL specific tech, Hidden Paths. It allows hiuge cities,with the following bonuses.

• +5 health per city
• +1 happiness from forest, ancient forest, jungle

These bonuses, combined with the Temple of Leaves, gives huge cities. The temple of Leaves gives additional health and happiness in the city. It also allows the creation of priest of leaves, and happiness with incense.

Overview

The fellowship is all about two things, Huge cities and ancient forests. Using the religion carefully, you can create cities with no unhealth or unhappiness that are size 25+. Ancient forests are effective barriers and places to summon treants from.

Fellowship of Leaves Synergies and Strategies​

This section is used for refrence of some fellowship strategies, as well as synergies other players have suggested. Please share your strategies for this religion!

Ljosalfar/Svaralfar- Yor workers can build on top of forests, so you can get the effects of an ancient forest combined with a farm or cottage.

When in Hell- Hell is notorius for bringing bad health and unhappiness. Temples of leaves and Guardian of Nature is a good counter to offset these effects while you crusade against the defilers of nature.

Just wanted to say Rex, you make my Sig a better place

Hopefully someday Grey Fox returns and can add all of this into the PDF which will be included with the Mod.

Glad you like it.

When enemies invade, ancient forests can soawn treants, or giant tree men, to defend your land.

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lol wut? I wasn't aware of anything other than the Ljosalfar world spell that could do this. Enlighten me?

each time an enemy stack tries to enter a aincent forest controlled by a fellowship player, it has a 5% chance of spawning a treant for 2 turns. if the plot in question is in the radii of a city with a temple of leaves, the precentage increases to 15%, this makes the elves very dangerous to pillage even if they spam roads

I asked a similar question about whether the chance was by stack or per unit in the stack. Kael replied stating the chance was for the FIRST unit only to enter the square.

Xienwolf then came up with a brilliant one :-

More important than moving in stacks, it reveals that if you were to leave a trail of units in each ancient forest you would NEVER spawn a treant, because you wouldn't ever again move into an unoccupied Ancient Forest.

..... your attack strat for LJ's

Edit: Blaze is good

Is leaves really the answer to hell? Hell does not corrupt trees but destroys them. I would think another religion would offer a better bonus than just +5 health for city.

don't forget +1 happiness for every ancient forest in the BFC. Besides that, FoL is one of the most defensive religions in the game, cutting down the movement of all non-raider units to a crawl while continuously harrassing them with your woodsman 2 recon units (for this reason alone, i believe svaraltar is better for FoL than Ljos).

As for building up, please add the following subjects to your guide:
1. priests of leaves with nature 2 = bloom = forests in every non-mine/quarry tile. Also makes incense the most vital resource in the game for a FoL player (above the metals, reagents, horses etc)
2. hunters - fawns... which one to build? hunters get a negative multiplier for cities, but are cheaper and get a better bonus against animals (i think, correct me if i'm wrong).
3. farms-cottages. both a CE and a SE are very viable for a leaves player (elven expecially, since they can build farms and cottages on forests). CE because you've still got a decent food and hammer yield, while running cottages on every tile in your BFC. SE because of the high food yield and insane health/happiness.

As for strategies:
I prefer calender first (if you've got plantation res. within range, else skip this untill later), followed with education to get cottages running in your forests (i play FoL as CE). Writing if you think you can get the great sage, else hunting -> myst (can be switched around depending on deer/fur and need for hunters), then FoL. You should have found a city site with incense at this stage.
After founding FoL, go for drama for the great bard (song of autumn, unless you've got a civ like balseraph in your game who will likely beat you to it, in that case pop one or a prophet from your temple), then rush priesthood for your priests of leaves. with their poison blades and bloom they're one of the most important units for FoL.
Afterwards, get your remaining economical techs, then start persuing your recon line. Going for CoE is also viable (expecially for the winter elves).

This is the way i play a FoL civ, i'm sure there are other players around who play at a higher level than me, and have got a better strategy than this one. But hey, it's a start ;-)

Demus, I don't know what difficulty you play at, but I'll add my two cents for FoL Lsoj at Immortal difficulty.

1) Techs.
- Agriculture -> Ancient Chants -> Education (Cottages on every workable tile, including tiles that will later hold plantations) -> Mysticism -> Hunting -> Path of Leaves -> Calandar -> Festivals -> Drama -> Writing

After Writing, I will usually go down the Recon line until I hit Animal Handling (Early Satyrs), then I go for Trade (for Tech Trading, if that is allowed), and only then go I go for Priesthood.

Archery and Hidden Paths are floating techs that get researched based on perceived need. Archery tends to come early, but Hidden Paths can be delayed for a long time. Woodsman II is not worth the research cost and Guardians of Nature should only come into play when you have a few cities breaking the happy caps (with FoL, temples, and plantations, that shouldn't be happening until your cities are at least size 12 or so).

I tend to delay Priesthood unless my core cities are desperately lacking trees.

Units:
- Fawn vrs Hunter: Fawns are considerably more expensive, but are more solid against early barbarians with their free Woodsman I promotion. Spawn as many of these as you can and feed on Barbarians to get them all to level 4 or more. Once you get Animal Handling, you can upgrade them to Satyrs. Str 9 units with a few Combat promotions are enough to take cities. Later on, Satyrs will be reserved for domestic defence (they are usually strong enough to kill enemy heroes, especially once a Priest of Leaves has cast Poison on them). That said, Hunters should be spammed as well and later upgraded to Rangers and beyond. Fawns and Hunters should be the backbone of your military once you have enough production to wean yourself off of warriors.

- Archers: Great for city defence, poor for counter-attacking invading, obviously. Still, if you buod these early you can settler spam freely and not have to worry about losing your Archer-defended cities.

- Melee Units: You can forget about these until later in the game, when you may want City Raider Champions

- Priests: Good for popping forests, serving as medics, and support magic, but too weak and expensive for standard combat. Don't build too many of these.

- Adepts/Mages/Conjurers: Expensive tree that I rarely bother with. I build a few for basic spells and to quell any forest fires. I will try them out during my next Lsojofar game.


Tech trading: If at all possible, trade your religion off as early as possible, even if it is for an unfair trade. If no trade is possible and the other party has no religion yet, give it away. The more neighbours you have sharing your religion, the more secure your empire will be



Weaknesses of my style of play: Conquest gets harder the longer the game goes on. By avoiding the Magic tech line (and playing Lsojofar), I have no access to units that can lower a target city's cultural defence bonus. Coastal cities are still easy though, since Frigates can take the role of catapult.

Strengths: Strong domestic defence and quick expansion. Once I focus on culture, I can net myself cities via cultural flips. Knowing that, I build cities very close to allied cities before their cultural borders expand beyond the second ring. If that makes me a bad firned, so be it.

Great summary of FoL, but we’re still waiting for the update!

Incense is no longer required to bloom forests, it should be noted. A change welcomed by Priests of the Leaves throughout Erebus. Also, forest blooming doesn’t destroy previous improvements so there's no need to delay building in non-forested terrain.

I’d like to add my two cents; based on playing Deity/Immortal level.

AN ELVEN THING: EARLY FELLOWSHIP, SOME THOUGHTS
*Early founding is mostly an Elven thing as the religion helps leverage much of their traits, lies on a logical basic Ljosalfar research path and allows them their World Spell.

*An early FoL is relatively expensive. A civ focusing on a quick FoL often has to delay economic and military research. So consider whether you can do without mines or melee troops if you first spend over 2000 on the shortest of the early FoL paths: Exploration (210 free for Ljosalfars) => Ancient Chants (210) => Hunting (640)=> Mysticism (336)=> Way of the Forests (840) [which, btw, is rarely the actual path as it completely ignores some important short economic/military techs]

*Trading for the Ways of the Forest tech may be a more logical way for non-Elven civilizations to get the religion. Elves may benefit by gifting the tech as sharing a religion improves dipomatic relationships.

TECH PATH
I mostly agree with the previous posters' tech paths (as they relate to reaching FoL early). Of course, the actual path would vary according to the the player's starting terrain, resources, and proximity of enemy civs. On the Deity Level, I usually research Education (for the Apprenticeship civic and cottages) pre-FoL as it improves the newly founded civ's economy and military while being only a slight detour. If threatened, I research Archery before Mysticism or Education. Depends greatly on my civ's bloody neighbors.

After an early FoL, I think the founding civ is generally in no position to immediately continue researching techs capitalizing on the religion since the founders had to somewhat neglect much other basic economic and military research. Plans for Priests have to wait as Philosophy (672) and Priesthood (1344) are pricey techs - about as expensive or more than getting to FoL in the first place. It's rare that those two techs would be the best "next stage" in research. Same thing with talk of magic and mages – going for Knowledge of the Ether (672) and Elementalism (1344) should wait. The Poisoned Blades Nature II Spell for stronger Satyrs needs more commitment than is justifiable right after FoL.

*So the paths after FoL would likely diverge greatly as one exploits local resources, deals with predators, and adjusts an overall strategy due to his particular circumstances. I really would stress not starting down on an expensive research path at this point but shore up the basics instead.

UNITS
Basically, if you’re going for an early FoL, you’ll usually be relying on warriors (25) and scouts (25) and (for a time) the following military:

Hunters (60): Mediocre troops. I generally use few hunters if I’m an Elven player. Hunters are unable to pillage, attack cities with a negative modifier and defend them with no bonus. Their Woodsman I promotion is a plus but frankly the early Elves and other civs are frequently defending their cities not their forests. Outnumbered aggressive hunters don’t last long attacking AI stacks.

Fauns (90): I generally use few fauns - they arrive late in the path to FoL (at its founding!) usually after the raging barbarians disappear or enemy warrior rushes stop. Unable to pillage or attack/defend cities well, fauns' forest strength and speed is the same as hunters' but for a 50% higher cost. Waiting for expensive techs to be researched to make fauns upgradeable to Satyrs with the Poisoned Blade and Woodsman II promotion is not appealing for someone needing plenty of durable city defenders or city attackers yesterday.

Satyrs: An impractical late game fighter; very cool-looking. I almost never use them except as a novelty. It costs Tracking (672)=>Animal Handling (1600) & Animal Husbandry (336) as well as bunches of dead fauns (and some cash)to get a few level 4 faun survivors upgraded to powerful Satyrs (I'm not being sarcastic, btw, they really are tough. However, by then,there are other equally strong units that are buildable and cheaper.) Costing far more than founding FoL, Satyrs are not particularly relevant to an early FoL.

Archers (60): I use lots of archers if I’m an FoL founder. Good city defenders for civs that haven’t had the time for melee troops yet. Great troops for the Ljosalfar whose archers have a +1 attack strength, a 10% Forest attack strength, double speed archery range production and double speed palisades production (Amalenchier leader).

BTW, Warriors(25): I like 'em. Cheap, have a city defense bonus, can pillage, Ljo versions can get Woodsman I bonus, all-around good early units that have about 75% of a hunter's strength while costing only 41% as much. Worthwhile and inexpensive to upgrade upper level warriors.

Generally the other troop types are not early enough to be used often; melee troops needing Bronze Working or mounted soldiers using Horseback riding, for example, are not early FoL military. Getting axemen or swordsmen or horsemen first may mean not being an early FoL founder. Get them after and you’ll be defending a long time with warriors and hunters.

* Ultimately, I’d say archers are a real bargain for FoL founders, especially for Ljosalfar founders of FoL. For me, they’re almost standard operating procedure. For non-Elven civs, who still want to found FoL, I’d probably go with archers too as Archery is very easily reseached along the way.

[BTW, don’t count on the enemy being stopped or slowed down very often by Treant defenders. It's a myth. A 5% chance of Treants appearing is a 95% chance of no Treants appearing. Building a Temple of Leaves reduces Treant non-rescues to 85%, assuming the enemy even enters a forest tile. Oh well, at least every non-Elven player seems to makes a big deal out of Treants so maybe the possibility is worth something.

And visions of enemy troops slowing to a crawl because of Woodsman II promoted Recon troops are far off in the future (if it ever happens) as that promotion needs Hidden Paths (1344) which is a heck of a lot of beakers for a promotion available only to Recon troops and Beast units. (The Guardian of Nature civic eases the pain, but it's a high upkeep late game civic not of special concern here.]

just read this.

what does it mean, that othere is a possibility to spawn a defending treething for the FIRST unit entering territory? first EVER? fist AFTER DECLARATION OF WAR? or else?

Each turn, any unoccupied ancient forest tile within your nation that has an enemy unit enter it that turn has a chance of summoning a treant (you must have FoL state religion). If a stack of 20 axemen enters an unoccupied ancient forest tile, it doesn't "roll the dice" 20 times, it rolls it once. If, instead, the axemen individually entered an unoccupied ancient forest tile (even a tile entered and exited that turn by previous axemen) within your nation, each would create a possibility of treants for dinner. So moving as a stack helps invaders. Repeat next turn.

Some suggested when invading and moving through an enemy forest to occupy each forest tile along the invasion path so they'd never spawn a treant in those tiles because they were always occupied.

Anyway, unoccupied forest tile is the important condition; each time one is entered is the "first" time with regard to summoning treants. You can have fifteen separate tiles with their own firsts, or one tile with fifteen firsts.

ahhhhh.....

Short version of my previous wordy post:

An early FoL is expensive; worthwhile mainly for Elves.

Early founders need to play catchup before going Priestal or Magical.

Archer/Warriors make the most sense for early FoL founders.

Treants or Trecants? The 5% solution.

Rex rgis of Ter said:

Priest of Leaves

Priests of Leaves are very specail priests, they not only cast Divine spells, but also sorcery. This doubles their spells. Priests start with Life and Nature Magic, and upgrade to High Priests and Inquisitros like normal priests.

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Are you sure about this? I have not noticed any such thing. I haven't played Ljos in a while, but in my recent Svart game my priests of leaves could not promote along the nature or life lines (and given that I needed both Destroy Undead and Poison Blade in that game, I think I would have noticed if they could).

Did you notice the date of this? It was made (shortly) before the Sorcery and Summoning lines were merged in a major streamlining of the spell system. The Inquisitor unit was removed around the same time.

Also would like to point out to those to whom it is not obvious -- all that extra health allows your cities to grow huge, making this good for anyone who wants to grow cities, such as Kurio and Calabim.

For the Bals, it is worth founding if you're ahead and have spare beakers because the holy city is founded by a bard and you are likely to have extra bards.

MagisterCultuum said:

Did you notice the date of this? It was made (shortly) before the Sorcery and Summoning lines were merged in a major streamlining of the spell system. The Inquisitor unit was removed around the same time.

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Ah, I noticed the date but not the year...

cabbagemeister said:

Ah, I noticed the date but not the year...

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Yeah, it's a great summary but needs an update and screenies. Still valuable though.