Rise of Erebus Khazad strategy

jackelgull

An aberration of nature
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I have always been fond of the Khazad from Fall from heaven 2. They had a focused research tree, massive production bonuses if they have gold in exchange for a lack of magic. I also love the lore of two close friends who grow apart.
This adds massively to their repertoire by making siege units more useful and adding the stonefire guild whose production bonuses are multiplied by the vaults.
Most people complain about how difficult it is to expand as the Khazad. It's not really, especially with Kandros being financial and imperialistic. Beeline to festivals then build markets in all your cities use the income from that to expand quickly. Cheap markets + cheap settlers= large empire. This turns a ruined economy into a stable one. Beeline to way of the earth mother. Make sure to found the Holy City, the shrine income is really needed. switch to RoK and go back for all the worker techs and cartography for city states . Use sons of kilmorph+ trebuchets(Once you get construction) as an attack force until you get to bronze working. Research Arete and then begin building mines of Galdur. At this point you can decide, keep the SoK with useful promotions to upgrade to paramanders, sacrifice the rest for production. Switch to Arete. By this point you should have many well established cities and a lot of dwarven mines. Afterwards head to mercantilism and switch mercantilism civic. This turns your stable economy into a monster. I did this and was making 600 gpt at this point.
Notes: The mercantilism civic adds 200 percent yield to trade routes but disallows foreign ones so when you war, vassalizing instead of destroying is generally a good idea as your vassal's cities count as domestic trade routes while receiving the foreign bonus. This strategy also requires specialists. Food resources help with that as well as flood plains. It is also good to note that for the khazad, watermills, windmills and dwarven mines are better than farms. Never build farms for food for the khazad.
 
You really should beeline God-King ---> Way of the Earthmother before you do anything else. You can pick up Festivals afterwards, but losing the Holy City is a crushing failure.

Early Mines everywhere are paramount, given their upgrade times and the value of having them upgrade. Kill any Clanhold Chieftain (or whatever their name is, the Fort Commander UU) you do not absolutely need because dat gold drain.

Your biggest challenge is the fact that you play in an extremely predictable manner: you expand at regular, affordable intervals, you heavily develop your domain and rely on those developments for your efficacy, and most damning of all you attack as a bog-standard force of melee units and siege engines, which makes you incredibly vulnerable to skilled players with magic-oriented civs or ways to control terrain effectively. You are also screwed if you can be raided effectively, but unlike the poor Kuriotates you have good options to avoid this.

Your biggest advantages are that early attacks (which you're probably not making, but still) or general exploration allow you to cross peaks (but not with your siege units, sadly), the religion you're locked into is the best in the game, your late-game siege is very strong, and you're nightmarishly difficult to assault after a certain point in the game. That last one is pretty much the biggest of the lot. No one wants to attack the Khazad if they have another option (unless the other option is lizards, dear god) and the difficulty of doing so sometimes gives you time to crank your economy up to unstoppable.

Your best match-ups tend to be other straightforward civs like the Bannor, the Kuriotates, and the Grigori. Your worst match-ups are civs that can rush you like the Clan of Embers or who can actually take your defenses without a fuss like the Mechanos. There are a lot of civs that you aren't very good at dealing with but who aren't very good at dealing with you, like the Austrin and the lizards (maybe - apparently the Mazatl can spawn 12-strength wyverns at, like, fifty turns in, which I'm assuming is my fault and not intentional).

For everyone else, using Stonewardens to create Peaks is a very niche use of Earth's Bosom; for you, it's magnificent if you can ever find the time for it. Setting up mountain ranges in key positions can be immensely frustrating for many opponents. I don't remember what happens to things like Forts if you put a peak under them. If they survive, that's awesome, but they probably don't.

Dwarven druids are awesome but realistically getting over there is a nightmare and for the same level of investment a mage civ is going to stomp your face in with their synergistic many-option'd mages, so don't do that unless you're playing against the computer.
 
Thank you for your in depth analysis. I really appreciate it. I have never played multi-player before because I am not entirely comfortable playing with strangers so I have not yet run into a civ that can wield magic effectively, but I have learned to create a mixed arms forced with chariots and assassins to deal with ritualists . I have also found that it is a valid strategy to replace dwarven defenders with arquebuses because they are more mobile and their ranged attack is more effective than Dwarven Cannons outside of cities. As for raiders, that is why I never delete any of my clanhold chieftains and this is why I squeeze in as many dwarven mines as I can as early as I can. By placing a chariot on each mine and building an efficient road network, my anti-pillaging force can respond to threats very quickly. Also the masters buildings are great to give your armies that edge they need to be the best, especially if you're making money at the rate I am.
Anyway, you seem very knowledgeable about this game, could you suggest to me how I should deal with the Hippus? At the start of the game, not only do they expand like bunnies, but of all the AI, they seem to be the only ones who can launch a decent rush with a good number of units. I play at Nobles level in Rise from Erebus at marathon speed. Any advice you could offer me would be greatly appreciated

Note: I generally research festivals first, because otherwise I can't expand without the gold from the markets, especially in the early game where I am not making much commerce. After play testing both ways I have discovered that without markets I can probably establish two, maybe three cities by WotE but with them I can easily get five to six and that those extra cities provide commerce to research WotE and I can keep the slider at 100%. In short with markets it takes me half the time to research Way of the Earth Mother than it does without them.
 
Note: I generally research festivals first, because otherwise I can't expand without the gold from the markets, especially in the early game where I am not making much commerce. After play testing both ways I have discovered that without markets I can probably establish two, maybe three cities by WotE but with them I can easily get five to six and that those extra cities provide commerce to research WotE and I can keep the slider at 100%. In short with markets it takes me half the time to research Way of the Earth Mother than it does without them.

I can't offer that much advice on what to do about the Hippus, but personally, if I want any of the three early religions, I find that the best way to get them is Mysticism first -> Build Pagan Temple and run a priest, probably switch to pacifism on the same turn as god king -> Great Prophet comes out roughly around the same time you get the prereq tech done (mining/sailing/hunting) and then you can bulb the religion tech while researching something else. I mainly play normal/quick, but I don't see why it wouldn't work similarly on other speeds.
 
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