Ilians - begginers tips

Can someone summarize (or point me to a summary) of how the Temple of the Hand works and, specifically, what impact it has on your economy? I like the idea of it from a flavor standpoint but from reading here, it seems like it's not necessarily a great idea to build it if you're running a decent economy with improved terrain that's not forest/jungle. Is that right?

In my current game, I'm the Illians and just discovered I'm on a large island by myself (so that creating snow doesn't add much in terms of defense since the other civs aren't yet coming after me). Does turning things to snow help me in some way or is it just dropping my production? I like the happy boost I can get from the Temple but otherwise I'm debating just skipping it. What are the benefits? Is it necessary for the cooler (excuse the pun) Illian stuff like summoning Drifa and casting the Draw?

I'm still getting a hang of all the Illian-specific stuff, which is neat but could use more documentation (both here and in the Civpedia), so any tips would be great. Just made contact with other civs for the first time after 275 turns (well the Bannor used to be on my island. They declared war on me early on. That was a dumb move on their part), and discovered I'm actually ahead of the three I've met by a fair margin, which is fun, though I suspect there's another continent with some more advanced civs around somewhere, so I want to be sure I know how Illians work before things heat up...

-Kilrathi

[edited out double post due to lag]

basically, if the terrain is good already don't build it.

but if the terrain is crappy ( tundra/desert/jungle ) definitely build it asap. it will even turn jungles to forests

Temple has only one hidden effect: It turns Jungles into Forests. So building one in the middle of a forest suddenly makes your 1 food jungle squares produce 2 food and 1 production.

Other than that, I don't generally use them unless I have to. Snow terrain takes forever to upgrade, and you suck all the productive power out of the area when you build it. Not worth the +1 happiness with incense.

The other unintuitive thing to keep in mind is that snow terrain doesn't get +1 commerce from being next to a river.

So:

Hilly places encourage temples of the hand (more food to help work all those mines, plenty of hammers anyway)
Junk terrain like deserts, tundras and jungles encourage them

River tiles discourage them
Flat areas discourage them (enjoy your no hammers)

Hmm. I guess it's a balance thing to keep the Illians from being too overpowered but, by and large, it seems like building the Temple is generally a losing proposition. Interesting, then, that a flavorful unique feature really isn't that impressive...

I'd agree, Kilrathi, if they Illians actually were powerful. They aren't particularly. They just kinda get stasis, and three cheap mages.

I dunno, I really like how the Illians are competitive even if they get stuck with what most civs would call a horrible start. They can immediately make something good out of snow, tundra, desert, jungle, etc if they're pressed against tons of it, which happens. Sure you can chop jungle and spring desert, but chopping jungle is long and arduous and spring requires a trip to elementalism.

And the mages become Chalid-level in power one tech after Chalid, and stasis isn't just kinda there, it's really brutal if timed right (even if this just means hitting it when barbarians start pouring in.) Oh, also +2 happiness per city from turn 1 (enchantmnet + charismatic) is no boost to sneeze at.

I'd put the Illians among the top third of civs, easily. Without agnostic they'd be #2.

How are the mages so powerful? I'm not yet at the point of having them (and just got the Priests of Winter going -- are those the mages you're talking about), but I'm curious why they're so special... just having the ice elemental summon?

Monkeyfinger, who's your current #1? Balseraphs? I haven't played them recently but last time I did it was a great, fun ride (and that was without the vaunted Keelyn puppets, which I've never tried), but I like Calabim and Sheaim as well. The Illians are okay and I hear your point about the bad start not hampering them so much, though I have to admit all the "flavor" elements that were added actually aren't as fun as I'd hoped... I'll play out this game, I think, but I'm not sure there's enough there to go back and try them again.

The mages start out merely decent, with higher strength than a normal mage but only one (admittedly good) sphere, but when you get them to level 6 + theology they can upgrade to high priests, which can get Ice 3, which is an awesome attack spell. It's the same power as pre-nerf crown of brilliance, and priests of winter are a lot easier to level up to 6 than Vicars are.

Khazad (led by Kandros) are my #1 civ. From turn 1, they kick ass at so many things as long as they have money lying around: Troop strength, production, commerce, happiness. And getting money is easy in FfH, just turn the gold slider to 100% for a few turns and/or rely on the big shots of gold you get from capturing cities. And their strong game eventually leads them to dwarven druids and myconids, two of the best units in the game (for the same reason that high priests of winter are so good - really badass attack spells. DDs and high priests of winter severely damage stacks, myconids paralyze them)

Both dwarven civs > Sheaim > Calabim > Balseraphs, I'd say, and they're all part of the top third of the 21 civs, with the Illians and the Elohim being the other 2 (and the Lanun coming close, after them it's a big drop down to the next best.... Bannor I think? Meh.)

ive found that having illian mages with the level 1 ice spell basically prevents you from being attacked or delaying it greatly. I've had huge armies or stacks of armies come at my cities and if i have some mages in them I can just keep the armies slowed almost permanently, never moving or attacking. then i slowly pick them off with offensive units. all at mage level 1.

if you have an empire with choke points ( highlands or erebus ) your empire is basically impenetrable. you can stick tons of mages in your entry point cities and keep the enemy stacks paralyzed long enough til they sue for peace or you can upgrade them to mages with ice golems. or bring on the priests of icey doom.

Monkeyfinger said:

The other unintuitive thing to keep in mind is that snow terrain doesn't get +1 commerce from being next to a river.

Click to expand...

Mmh... why not keep this feature only for Illians ? I mean the +1 on river tiles ? That would make sense in my opinion, since Illians are absolutely not annoyed by snow and can keep up to work anywhere, even if rivers are ice-paralyzed.

And that would make Temple of the Hand far more useful, Nuh ?

(maybe that's been discussed before, but after some search, didn't find anything 'bout it).

*BumP*

(I'd really like to have some answers about this !!)

It would require significant SDK changes to allow specific civs to get bonus yields based on having a river on a specific type terrain. It would be easy to make Snow terrain have a commerce bonus from rivers for everyone, but that doesn't seem particularly appropriate.

The extra commerce also would indicate trade from navigable rivers. No matter how little the Illians mind the snow I don't think that rivers that are frozen over half the time are particularly navigable.

You could use a workaround and give the Illian UB pagan temple a +1 commerce from river tiles. It's simple XML change and should do the same.

<RiverPlotYieldChanges>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>1</iYield>
</RiverPlotYieldChanges>

MagisterCultuum said:

The extra commerce also would indicate trade from navigable rivers. No matter how little the Illians mind the snow I don't think that rivers that are frozen over half the time are particularly navigable.

Click to expand...

That's very true if you only think "boat" and usual potamology ; if I were Illian, I wouldn't, of course. Thanks for your answer anyway.

How about sleds?

hah hah, i saw sleds, and read shields "How does ariver give shields?"

While it's never good to be on the defensive, temples can make a great scorched (frozen!) earth tactic. You're about to lose a city? Rush a temple of the hand, turn it into garbage for everyone else. It's also fun when you have border cities and culture wars up against someone you aren't quite ready to go to war with. That ice extension will go into other people's lands and ruin their cities

Sephi, thanks! 'problem' solved