Alexis VS Flauros

Turinturambar said:

Flauros is better: (Deity, normal speed, wildlands, living world and all unique features):

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This is the guy whos style I ripped off. Grey Fox, Meth, take note ;o

So, uhhhh.... want to tell us how to turn 300 beakers at 200 into that ridiculous game winner there? After turn 200 how much of the economy increase is conquest and how much is settled cities? I presume you're still using Aristo/Agrar due to all those farms?

Edit: Goddamn you're not even using AV there.

A Phil/Mysticism combo really needs the Elder Councils, which Calabim don't have. There's not enough economic power to use the beeline just temples. There aren't enough other options down the Mysticism path. Calabim should avoid it. Alexis should follow the alternate econ/GP path of:

Ag -> Calendar -> Festivals

This gives you food and happy resources to run specialists, plus extra commerce from calendar resources and Marketplaces/Merchants for economy.

Then -> Cartography for City States. You should be about ready to start conquering at this point. Marketplaces and City States will maintain a large civ early on.

Then -> Construction for Cats. By the time the opponents can produce real defenders, catapults will be coming on line. The only challenge once cats are coming is archers in cities on hills. You can pretty much conquer until you've hit the limits of the Market/City States economy.

You can settle down and build econ with twice the cities anyone else has and at the same time keep your highly promoted army on the move, plundering and razing so your neighbors never have a chance.

Senethro said:

This is the guy whos style I ripped off. Grey Fox, Meth, take note ;o

So, uhhhh.... want to tell us how to turn 300 beakers at 200 into that ridiculous game winner there? After turn 200 how much of the economy increase is conquest and how much is settled cities? I presume you're still using Aristo/Agrar due to all those farms?

Edit: Goddamn you're not even using AV there.

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I had a lot more than 300 beakers at turn 200. I'll check later, but I think it was at ~800-900.

I wanted to try how fast you can speed through the tech tree as Flauros and was quite successful.

Tech path was agriculture -->Calendar -->Education -->Code of Laws. Then I beelined trade to backfill techs like mining/bronzeworking and took feudalism from writing (Once you build your first library and have >75 gold in your treasury, the iron orb event will trigger. You can buy it for ~80-90 gold and shatter it for a free tech). That was at about turn 110-120.

After getting the essential aristocracy techs:Construction/Sanitation/Philosophy and Way of the wicked, I beelined Astronomy for intercontinental trade, then Engineering for the guild of hammers, followed by a beeline to Arcane Lore.

After that I researched the rest of the tech tree with help from the Eyes and Ears Network and an insane Khazad/Basium Alliance.

Civics were Aristocracy/Religion/Agrarianism all game. I switched labor civics from Education to Slavery to Caste System. I also adopted Overcouncil when it became available.

Early game I had a great start with Yggdrasil nearby and an early Great Prophet from an Event.
I never attacked another civ. It just did not seem worthwile timewise and deity AIs are pretty hard to crack with their XP boni and huge troop numbers.

I still have all the saves from the game if anyone else wants to give it a shot.

Might make for an interesting challenge: Who can reach the end of the techtree as fast as possible? I wonder if there is an even better economic leader, but Flauros with ORG/FIN and most importantly Manors is very hard to top.

Improvements are pretty much only Farms and Windmills. I may have built 1 or 2 cottages.

Turinturambar said:

I had a lot more than 300 beakers at turn 200. I'll check later, but I think it was at ~800-900.

I wanted to try how fast you can speed through the tech tree as Flauros and was quite successful.

Tech path was agriculture -->Calendar -->Education -->Code of Laws. Then I beelined trade to backfill techs like mining/bronzeworking and took feudalism from writing

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What kind of tech route would you take assuming human opponents who may choose not to trade and may be very aggressive? Something like this?: Agr --> Cal --> Mining (locate bronze, settle nearby) --> CoL?

(Once you build your first library and have >75 gold in your treasury, the iron orb event will trigger. You can buy it for ~80-90 gold and shatter it for a free tech). That was at about turn 110-120.

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Hot diggety! I didn't know you could induce this event artificially. Does the Library restriction mean Doviello can't activate it?

After getting the essential aristocracy techs:Construction/Sanitation/Philosophy and Way of the wicked, I beelined Astronomy for intercontinental trade, then Engineering for the guild of hammers, followed by a beeline to Arcane Lore.
Civics were Aristocracy/Religion/Agrarianism all game. I switched labor civics from Education to Slavery to Caste System.

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You drop Apprenticeship for Slavery even without Sacrifice the Weak? Would you do this with a civ that cannot feast for XP?

Early game I had a great start with Yggdrasil nearby and an early Great Prophet from an Event.
I never attacked another civ. It just did not seem worthwile timewise and deity AIs are pretty hard to crack with their XP boni and huge troop numbers.

I still have all the saves from the game if anyone else wants to give it a shot.

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Makes sense to me.

I'd be very interested to see the saves. What patch were they on?

Might make for an interesting challenge: Who can reach the end of the techtree as fast as possible? I wonder if there is an even better economic leader, but Flauros with ORG/FIN and most importantly Manors is very hard to top.

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The Alpha Centauri nuts over at Apolyton had a lot of fun cheesing their way to a 71 turn tech tree completion. Possible opponents to Flauros might be Kandros Fir and Varn starting among floodplains. My only successful Immortal game was due to my first 3 cities having 1 floodplain each. Significant early commerce for the Malakim. Finished about 40 turns behind this Calabim game, but could surely be refined.
Spr would allow lots of civic micromanagement and even their worldspell might be able to be used constructively if you used the Priests to build Veil temples everywhere.

Improvements are pretty much only Farms and Windmills. I may have built 1 or 2 cottages.

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People are surprisingly resistant to how good Aristo farms are. Even I had to horribly lose an MP game before I started re-examining my playstyle.

Senethro said:

Hot diggety! I didn't know you could induce this event artificially. Does the Library restriction mean Doviello can't activate it?

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I don't think you are inducing it, just making you able to get it. In Meth's MP patch this event will only give 50% beakers towards your current research or something like that.

You drop Apprenticeship for Slavery even without Sacrifice the Weak? Would you do this with a civ that cannot feast for XP?

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Slavery is very powerful for getting your infrastructure going. Especially considering you probably have a food overflow even despite the -1 food from Aristo. Especially after Sanitation.

Questions to Turinturambar:
When did you get your happiness boosts? Did you start with many happy resources? Did you use gambling halls or theaters or the culture slider at all? How early did your cities grow past size 4? How early did they grow past size 10? How early did they reach size 20?

Flauros can speed through the tech tree faster; I don't think anyone was going to argue that point. Other things besides tech rate matter, though. Having good troops to both survive and counter an early rush from a deity AI, for instance. It doesn't always come up (were you attacked at all in that game, Turin?) but when it does I'm glad to have picked Alexis.

My eyes were drawn to Arturus's tech situation - researching divine essence. That got an eyebrow raise out of me. It makes sense now, though. He got a big infusion of tech when turin researched Trade. Meh... never been a fan of the "single trade buddy" strategy in 4x games for that very reason. Having a neighbor keeping up with me in tech always makes me nervous, even if the diplo screen says he likes me a lot.

Going balls-to-the-walls trying to maximize my tech rate like that is something I just don't have the guts to try on Deity.

Meth's MP patch? and what would that be?

nealhunt said:

A Phil/Mysticism combo really needs the Elder Councils, which Calabim don't have. There's not enough economic power to use the beeline just temples. There aren't enough other options down the Mysticism path. Calabim should avoid it. Alexis should follow the alternate econ/GP path of:

Ag -> Calendar -> Festivals

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I never implied going only temples. Early Alexis bulbs a religion for happiness, but goes down the Education-->Writing route for science. Great prophets and priets generate gold at your capital, while other cities generate science via cottages. Your early economy operates at 100% science to maximize the effects of libraries.

I think bulbing an early religion plays a vital role in Alexis' early development, and religion is an important part of Alexis' ovrerall game. Losha is at Fanaticism for a reason.

For a long time I used to think Alexis sucked compared to Flauros too, until I figured out that Alexis required a totally different economic approach.

Grey Fox said:

Questions to Turinturambar:
When did you get your happiness boosts? Did you start with many happy resources? Did you use gambling halls or theaters or the culture slider at all? How early did your cities grow past size 4? How early did they grow past size 10? How early did they reach size 20?

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I only got 2 happiness resources very early from yggdrasil and cotton in the capital.
Later I got silk(~turn 100) after bronzeworking and incense after philosophy.
At about turn 130 I also had access to Runes and Public baths. They hit size 20 at about turn 195.

I never used gambling halls since I was researching at 100% for most of the game and I didn't try the culture slider. Could have been worthwile to switch to a pure specialist economy and leave aristo but I never really thought about it.

@Monkeyfinger
I wasn't attacked, I was attacked in previous abandoned attempts though and apart from getting clobbered by a ~turn70 Soldier of Kilmorph Rush from the aggressive dwarven leader I was always able to repel the attacks. Getting attacked hurts the tech rate of course.
Arturus is an absolute monster in that game, but my aim was not to win the game but rather to speed as fast as possible through the tech tree.

@Senethro
I have no experience with MP, so I don't think I can give useful advice there.

I use slavery to get the manors up in newly built cities and to make use of all the excess food by whipping unhappy citizens into infrastructure. I usually whip a manor followed by the breeding pit and granary/smokehouse. If the city grows over it's happy cap I whip a public baths/temples. I'd definitely use it with other civs as well. It gives you lots of flexibility and free hammers from slaves is a nice added perk.
As for the orb event: Yeah the doviello can't activate it. I only glanced at the code, but I'm pretty sure it's set to trigger immediately.

Initial and final saves are attached(patch v). Ignore whatever my cities are doing, I did not bother to manage anything in the last 15 or so turns.

Interesting, and thank you for sharing. Time to do some more rethinking.

As an aside, does anyone know if Doviello keep libraries from captured cities? I think I remember having the event with them before and thats the only way I can think how it could have happened.

Turinturambar said:

Might make for an interesting challenge: Who can reach the end of the techtree as fast as possible? I wonder if there is an even better economic leader, but Flauros with ORG/FIN and most importantly Manors is very hard to top.

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I needed 220 turns with Falamar (normal speed). It was on a huge map though, so the Deity AI could research stuff faster for me Your strategy is gold, I went sailing, then Octopus, then trade, then guilds for the tech wonder. After I had the wonder, I always gifted techs to AI to make sure they don't waste their huge research on stuff I already have. Yeah I know, it's not the way one should usually play

Turinturambar said:

Flauros is better: (Deity, normal speed, wildlands, living world and all unique features):

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What a weird screen shot. Are you *sure* this is normal speed? I don't often see the AI tech up that far in so few turns. Also, I can't really see how you are getting that much science out of that amount of territory from the shot, though it looks like a lot of aristocratic improvements. IS that map just larger than it looks? Also added to this that you seem to have the run of the show, but haven't decided to start conquering or anything. Just weird.

Is it so very difficult to believe? Cities * population * average tile income * research bonus = economy.

~17 (on the map) * 24 (educated guess) * 3.5 (Financial/aristo/farmspam) * 1.4 (Libraries, Academies, temples) = 1999.2

It's not that hard to believe, since he started the game with Yggdrasil...

Flauros breaks the bank in the sense
"Sir we have just received another cash shipment"
"WTF OMG I told them to stop sending cash, we are out of space..."
"Sir we have to put this somewhere"
"lets try the roof, no space anywhere else"
"Sir when we put the cash on the roof, it caved in..."
"Esus damn Flauros..."
yeah thats my take on Flauros

As for the AI, remember that part of his strategy was beelining trade and whoring it for all it's worth, which explains both how he completed the tech tree so fast and how insanely advanced his buddy Arturus is.

Can someone explain the screenshot please? In my deity games I normally go extremely aggressive and kill everything in sight or I go uber-turtle builder. In the pic he did neither and pulled out a very impressive research rate (although as a result of this his neighbor seems very impressive as well). In BtS I remember pulling stuff like this off with combinations of early wonders/tech trading/GP's, but I don't know how one would do it in ffh given the general lack of wonders/early source of gp's.

tech trading is much more powerfull in FFH than in BTS because of the high specialization. If you research the magic tree you should always have some techs to trade. Then you can trade your magic techs for recon techs, then magic+recon for archery techs and so on.

I'm going to disagree with the majority here and say Alexis.

Aggressive is a great trait to survive the early game (until you get your vampire factories going), and it also allows your troops to win in combat a touch more which provides experience and allows you to turn them into vampires. It also gives you that extra free promotion for your vampires to help make up for their inferior 5 strength rating (compared to the 6 champions get). That extra promotion plus a mountain of experience makes a big difference.

Philosophical in combination with a rush for Runes of Kilmorph makes the trait one of the best you could possibly have for the Calabim. Get Mysticism first, build a temple and get a priest specialist in the works. After that go for mining. By the time you have mining done you should have a great prophet and can bulb Runes of Kilmorph, saving a ton of research early in the game as well as providing the benefits of the religion much faster than you could otherwise. After that you can build your temple to Kilmorph, get 2 priests specialists working, and get another great prophet quickly to build the Tablets of Bambur.

This early Runes rush gives you Soldiers of Kilmorph. These are beautiful because you get 75% of the production back later in any city you want. This lets you get the economic boosts you need for your feeder/farm cities when you convert to high population Agrar/Aristo farms, but more importantly it gives you 4g per city and more happiness for larger cities. You'll be able to get cities with 50% more population early game.

Later on you can run a small number of "Feed" cities where the focus is on the +60% food retained upon population growth and lots of farms (Yay high level vampires!). You run other cities that are specialist economy (Lots of farms), and finally a couple other cities that are production (mines and just enough food to work the mines and the engineer specialists).

Once you get to midgame and it takes a ridiculous amount of GPPs to get a new great person, you can convert to Agrarianism and Aristocracy and smoothly covert to a aristo-farm economy with both your feed and economic cities now producing commerce. At this point you already have produced your first couple of great people (first 2 were priests, after that a couple sages for academies) so your beakers will be through the roof and your religion will be offsetting your city maintenance, troop maintenance, and inflation costs.

Outside of that, the Runes stabilizing your economy instead of Flauros will give you Enchanted Blades from Bambur (+20% strength) and Shield of Faith (+10% strength).

This leaves you in a situation later-game where you get combat I for free and +30% strength that you otherwise wouldn't, thanks to your ability to do the quick rush for Runes of Kilmorph that the philosophical trait allowed.

Get Mysticism first

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An early journey to Mysticism followed by another tier 2 tech like mining is like pulling teeth. Who cares that you can get Way of the Earthmother in a singe turn when the journey through the prereqs was so arduous and you have nothing but those prereqs to show for it?

You want crafting or calendar first if you have the resources that those techs can let you exploit, education otherwise. No matter what your traits. Get an economy going using the improvements from those techs and suddenly the turns you have to spend researching an early religion like RoK aren't so bad at all. You won't miss not being able to bulb them. Run a priest off of a pagan temple when you can, and have the resulting GP make a shrine.

That's the problem with Philosophical. It upgrades really super ultra bad strategies to the level of really bad. Color me unimpressed.

Also I think Empyrean's the best default religion, not RoK, and the facts are: None of the Calabim's unique features discourage the strategy of "pick the religion you like best overall", and you can't bulb slingshot to honor because the prereqs open up the top priority tech for prophets: priesthood. But even if you disagree with how high I rate Empyrean, the main point is that you sacrifice a lot beelining mysticism like that and philosophical just doesn't give you big enough compensation for doing it.

Alexis is competitive because of aggressive, which really is better than either of Flauros's traits. But Philo is a lead weight that drags her down to the level of "equal."