IMO, the best feature of FOL is the Ancient Forests. I genrally beeline FOL (especially when playing one of the elven civs) and let the Ancient Forests spread as much as possible. Once I have enough Ancient Forest growth, it is time to switch to a different religion. All of the Ancient Forests stay, and I can use the benefits of the other religion. I would recommend having both religions spread far and wide before the switch. To be honest, I think OO makes a better 2nd religion for the Svartalfar than CoE, but then I haven't played CoE enough to find its strenghts (if there are any).
Svartalfar - Council of Esus or Fellowship of Leaves?
- Thread starter Luckmann
- Start date
Luckmann
Esusian Epicure
Would you care to elaborate on OO making a better pairing than CoE, then?
Edit: D'oh. Meant "better than CoE", not "better than OO", of course.
I like OO for a variety of reasons. Most of the OO units can use water walking which makes boats unnecessary for invading enemies on nearby landmasses. The Tsunami spell has a way of softening up defenders in coastal cities (or near lakes) before other units attack. Hemah is a hero/archmage...need I say more?
citizenalex
Chieftain
Arrgh, I'm completely torn on this.What's your favourite combination and why?
Screw Council of Esus, dude. It's a cult that gives you its best traits without you having to convert to it. Just send your NIghtwatch over to whatever city's building recon units, and you end up with a 70% + chance that the unit will have Mask regardless of what your state religion is. Who needs Gibbon when you got 20 foot ass kicking tree that doubles as the World's most Awesome Terraformer during peacetime?!
Esus is the consolation prize religion out there. It's the scrapings left in the endroom bargain bin after every civ just raided Religion Mart and you HAVE to get your own religion...two words: No Temples.
JonathanStrange
PrinceWithA1000Enemies
BTW, the Ljolsalar need the FOL religion if they want access to their World Spell "March of the Trees" - without it, no World Spell.
I don't know if any other civilization lacks its World Spell unless it has a certain religion or tech.
The original poster said that someone mentioned delaying improvements until a forest had appeared in a tile - this refers to the old mechanic in which blooming a forest in a tile destroyed the improvements and so it might have been better for those who can build in a forest (like the Ljosalfar) to wait for a forest to bloom - anyhow, that hasn't been the case for a few versions. New forests, bloomed by Priests of the Leaves, do not destroy your improvements.
I use both FOL and COE depending on which Elves I'm leading although you can enjoyably use both as others have noted: one doesn't have to be COE. (I haven't used COE lately though, I'm assuming this hasn't changed!)
I don't know if any other civilization lacks its World Spell unless it has a certain religion or tech.
The original poster said that someone mentioned delaying improvements until a forest had appeared in a tile - this refers to the old mechanic in which blooming a forest in a tile destroyed the improvements and so it might have been better for those who can build in a forest (like the Ljosalfar) to wait for a forest to bloom - anyhow, that hasn't been the case for a few versions. New forests, bloomed by Priests of the Leaves, do not destroy your improvements.
I use both FOL and COE depending on which Elves I'm leading although you can enjoyably use both as others have noted: one doesn't have to be COE. (I haven't used COE lately though, I'm assuming this hasn't changed!)
Methuselah
King
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2007
- Messages
- 677
A few worldspells are tied to techs.
Balseraphs - need festivals
Bannor - need fanaticism.
Khazad - need mining
Lanun - need optics.
Luchuirp - need masonry.
Malakim - need priesthood.
Monkeyfinger
Deity
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2006
- Messages
- 2,002
Arrgh, I'm completely torn on this.
Screw Council of Esus, dude. It's a cult that gives you its best traits without you having to convert to it. Just send your NIghtwatch over to whatever city's building recon units, and you end up with a 70% + chance that the unit will have Mask regardless of what your state religion is. Who needs Gibbon when you got 20 foot ass kicking tree that doubles as the World's most Awesome Terraformer during peacetime?!
Esus is the consolation prize religion out there. It's the scrapings left in the endroom bargain bin after every civ just raided Religion Mart and you HAVE to get your own religion...two words: No Temples.
I have a mental image with people running off with empyrean, runes, fellowship, overlords and veil, and me standing there, looking between Esus and Order, racking my brains, then eventually choosing option 3: Whip out gun, stick in mouth, pull trigger.
JonathanStrange
PrinceWithA1000Enemies
Thanks, I wasn't sure about the Balseraphs and Bannor; I remembered playing them before and needed that World Spell but it wasn't available - but it's been awhile and I didn't know if things had changed!
Never played Malakim, but when I tried the Dwarves I had their World Spell handy - I must've researched their required techs and gained access without knowing it.
Generally though it seems to me that techs like festivals, mining, masonry, optics are stuff that most civilizations are going to need as valuable in themselves; whereas the 840 beakers spent on Way of the Forest, for example, is mostly valuable to someone who's going for FoL and/or the World Spell.
Senethro
Overlord
Why would elves go anything but early game FoL?
Luckmann
Esusian Epicure
Early game.. no reason at all.
FoL all the way, with Esus spread to all of your cities for the added benefits. Also, be sure to convert to RoK or Empy and then back to FoL at some point so as to become Neutral and get Druids. (Empy priests promoted to Druids are the best, of course, as someone else pointed out, so build four of them before converting back to FoL.) Unless you're completely opposed to that on lore grounds or something. Similar holds for Arendel Phaedra, of course, although she's much better at the temporary conversion, being Spiritual.
By the way, your custom leader? Ridiculously overpowered. Arcane/Charismatic is insane for magic. Fireballs everywhere! But, whatever works.
By the way, your custom leader? Ridiculously overpowered. Arcane/Charismatic is insane for magic. Fireballs everywhere! But, whatever works.
loffenx
Warlord
- Joined
- May 6, 2008
- Messages
- 265
CoE is my favourite religion, regrettably it is more cool than good atm. I've never understood why there's not a funciton to apply a certain religion to a certain unit, the current system with random religiousness (and CoE beeing last on the list) makes mask a too random ability to build a strategy on, imo. And the shadowriders so late they make a quite uninteresting addition to the religion, imo. CoE seems a bit lost between Civs already taking up the sneaky-shadows-theme (Sidar, Svartalfar) and other religions beeing way more powerful. Gibbon's impersonate leader can be a game-turner, but it is also very situational.
One part-solution would be to let the nightwatch upgrade to a wide variety of units, atleast to some in the recon-line, so that the CoE-religion-application and mask-availibility could be controlled.
As it stands im uncertain if either of the Shadow-civs, ie Svartalfar and Sidar, really benefit from adopting the shadow-religion, which is kinda dissapointing
(even though i love them all)
EDIT: Oh and none of their units can use inquisition! scandal! It's already less powerful not considering this, and then also beeing unable to achieve one of the most powerful victory conditions... poor CoE
One part-solution would be to let the nightwatch upgrade to a wide variety of units, atleast to some in the recon-line, so that the CoE-religion-application and mask-availibility could be controlled.
As it stands im uncertain if either of the Shadow-civs, ie Svartalfar and Sidar, really benefit from adopting the shadow-religion, which is kinda dissapointing
(even though i love them all)
EDIT: Oh and none of their units can use inquisition! scandal! It's already less powerful not considering this, and then also beeing unable to achieve one of the most powerful victory conditions... poor CoE
JonathanStrange
PrinceWithA1000Enemies
I agree, an early FoL is usually ideal for the Ljosalfar; it's along a very logical early research path for them, unlocks their World Spell, and increases their early defense.
The sooner they're able to start Priests of Leaves blooming forests, the better. A drawback for the Ljosalfar's though is their none too impressive lower and middle tier troops; mostly mediocre in any non-forest battle.
popejubal
Emperor
Edit:
After finding out that Council of Esus religion gives Hidden Nationality to recon units without being State, you can be damn sure I'm going to have it spread everywhere.
...and if you have the CoE shrine, you can make a heck of a profit off of it. It's 25 gold to spread CoE to a city and it gives +1 gold to the shrine to do so, so you start making a profit after just 25 turns even without gold bonuses on that city.
Build a few hawks in CoE cities until you have 1 or 2 that have that religion and you can fly the Hawk to your city or a neighbor's city, spread the religion for 25 gold and then finish the movement with the Hawk's recon. Next turn, move the Hawk to another city and watch as the bird's cries continue to bring more cities under your influence.
Just make sure that you don't do this to too many foreign cities unless you're okay with those civs switching to CoE as their state religion. If you are running OO or FoL for the diplomacy bonus, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot by making all of their cities CoE and then watching them convert and declare war on you (without having their units kicked out of your territory even!).
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