FFH style ALC game

Are you planning aristograrian? If so you can hold off on education and do Way of the Earthmother (ROK) first. I'd then shoot straight for CoL so you can aristofarm.
Why in that order?

After that I'd do writing since that will make your later research go much faster as you build libraries and hopefully the Great Library.
Waste of hammers this early as the return is so poor, especially when we're Agg/Rai.

Why rush honor and then arete? If you are switching to Emperyan don't waste tech time on Arete
Weren't you reading? Great Engineer and Mines of Galdur.
 
ROK first because every turn delayed is a turn that someone else is researching it also. If one isn't worried about holy city then that is nbd tho.

If he is aristofarm on those rivers with the trade from the three big trade resource cities he has AND he uses his raider trait to supply 100% research +25% research pays for itself very quickly in those three big trade cities. Add to that a fair chance to get the great library and I don't see the issue.

Finally, I didn't know the Mines of Galdur thing was official strategy. Personally, if you're investing a great engineer just to get iron weapons a few turns earlier I don't see the payoff. With the area he has available to cover he will have at least one iron resource and I think more payoff would come from going down the metal line than these religious diversions. I'm not saying abandon religion, but the only reason I'd go ROK in the first place would be to have it as the state religion long enough to get temples in each town in order to improve gold output. Not some far flung way to get "early" iron with little additional benefit (since it's iron without forges or champions).
 
With a Great Engineer waiting to build the Mines of Gal-Dur I really think Arete should be researched sooner. Maybe RoK>finish Ed>CoL>Arete would be better. We already have access to Axemen, so Iron will be immediately useful.

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Personally, if you're investing a great engineer just to get iron weapons a few turns earlier I don't see the payoff. With the area he has available to cover he will have at least one iron resource and I think more payoff would come from going down the metal line than these religious diversions.
It will be more than a few turns earlier. Also, getting Iron from the Mines will mean that we can go for Currency and the Guild of the Nine, and have Mercenaries with iron weapons long before we would get access to Iron and Champions by going after Ironworking.
 
Hmmmm. I thought I posted, but apparently it didn't go through.

Holy cities are not a big deal, especially on the short timescale we're hoping to run this game on. The quickest route to Arete will be getting Code of Laws as quickly as possible.

Heres a rationalisation of Great Engineer for Mines of Galdur for you. It'll mean we don't have to spend 4000 beakers on Iron Working and so can buy 40 Mercenaries instead. Thats a game winner right there.
 
An extra 10+ gold per turn will be helpful in a marathon game in which we are talking about buying mercenaries. Also there's the benefit of increased rate of passive spread of the religion, which means more gold sooner and saves having to spend production to build disciples to spread the faith manually. There's also the benefit of the GEng :gp: points, and the ability to assign an engineer to further increase GEng :gp: generation. Having a second GEng to hurry the Guild of the Nine would be nice.

Of course all this hinges on our ability to produce a GProphet in the timeframe necessary. I haven't heard Mu'min mention that he's been working on one, so it will take a while to make one.

Edit: Oh, and ideally the Mines of Gal-Dur should be built in the RoK holy city so that the GEng :gp: points from that also add to produce that GEng faster.
 
Don't the Mines of Galdur allow 3 engineer specialists to be assigned? That would be a hella fast 2nd GE and wouldn't be too hard to manage with an Aristofarm city that had a highish happy cap.

Theres very few things that are worth delaying economy techs for and I don't think a Holy City is one of them. A Great Prophet settled and spending your hammers on military instead of disciple will be just as good for our purposes. It takes long enough at this early stage to even get 5 cities with RoK in them.
 
Ok i starting the next round. Trouble is i got 5 turns in and already te calabim used the river of blood spell, reducing the pop in all cities by 2, and the malakim grab RoK. So, everything is delayed/ going to take a little longer until my pops recover, and we will have to scrap the whole of the RoK/Acrete/Mines plan. The good news is that empy has spread to several cities. In fact all but two.

Tech plan is: Ed.(15) -> CoL(25) -> Sani(42) -> KotE -> Currency(70) -> Writing(30) -> Trade(30) -> Philo(20) -> WotW(22) -> Honor(55) -> Hunting(30 we need to expand north)
 
You don't need the RoK holy city to build the Mines of Gal-Dur. The idea of using a GProphet to build Tablets of Bambur is of course defunct, but early Iron is still within our grasp if we press on toward Arete. The AI doesn't place very high priority on it, so we will undoubtedly beat them to it. Definitely get to CoL before going after RoK, though (if you decided to go for it).
 
Yeah, unless the Malakim somehow also have a Great Engineer theres no reason to abandon getting the Mines of Galdur. Its a much cheaper way of getting Iron.

Also, do you have Construction yet? If not, it might be worth slipping it in ahead of Currency so by the time you have Trade and can build Chariots, you'll have Siege workshops to build them in.

Finally, I think its best to build the Guild of Nine by assigning 3 Engineer specialists in the Mines of GalDur city. Sanitation should help there - you can plan for this by building a Public baths then the Mines in a very high food city.
 
mmmm... you shouldn't ever need to do hunting at such a late time. You should be able to pretty easily trade for it by then or survive without it. Its economical benefits doesn't justify the amount of beakers.

As for construction, I'd suggest heading for trade first. I might even suggest writing > trade right after you get sanitation up. With trade u usually can pick masonry and possibly even construction off other civs for other techs, saving you the beakers. (usually Beeri would have construction early)

If no one has done drama (check for great bards in log), you should consider going for it when aiming for Sani, then using the G.Bard to bulb Sani. This gives you one more "useless" tech to trade to other civs for more useful ones eventually.
 
After he gets trade he can trade the basic economy techs for hunting. Someone has DEFINITELY researched it already.

Too bad about ROK, but I say still go for it. Of course I'm thinking of a civ with more like 50 cities instead of 11. Need that extra 3 gold in that case.
 
Just thought i would post a mini update, quite i few things happened.

First off, Carroc continued to hunt bears to the north, i gave him the mobility promtion, becuz i was fed up of his slow pogress and thought it will be useful in case he had to run away. He then made is way south, between me and the luchuirp, chasing a frostling. Once there i thought, might as well go over and see what they are up to. I was gobsmacked!:eek: no impovements except roads and a fort right next to the capital, one lone mud golem working on a farm and, the most unbelieveable the most, one lone warrior in the capital! WTF have they been doing! I thought about it for a whole 10 seconds then decided to go for it. A one man invasion!:devil:.

Moved Carroc to the border and the next turn declared war. Moved back in, mowned down the mud golem and ended the turn on a forested hill next to the capital. Next turn still only one warrior with a 96+% chance of killing him. Needless to say i took the city without even getting hurt. That was done by turn 340.
Few turns later CoL is finished and i start on writing intending to go Trade to see what techs i can back fill.

Next thing i hear is that Loki been's killed. How?! Then that penchy has lost a city to barbs! Then a really interesting thing happen. I finally got the harpy event and opted for the bard, intending to use him to for a great work to pop the borders and end the disorder. Only i notice that he bulbs drama, which gives a free bard. Great i thought! a free tech and i can use the new bard to stop the disorder. New bard arrives in the capital and i mouse over him to see what tech he would bulb. Santiation! A big tech that gives +1 food per farm. So for 15 turns disorder in a minor city we got 2 free techs!:goodjob:

I then made the switch to aristocracy, sorry forget to do that before, i put the science slider up a notch.

By turn 362 i have just finished writing and started Trade, that will take 19 turns, we teched Ed -> CoL -> Writing -> Drama -> Sani -> Writing ->. The luchuirp captial is ours and they are no more, we have founded the city site to the SW of the capital - the calabim borders were within sight - got a settler one turn away from founding the yggy tree site and hannah of the lunan has founded and converted to OO. The calabim are still at war with the malakim and have taken a city thats bocked access to the malakim and amurites. Graveholm is producing archers and the capital is producing settlers the rest of the cities are building improvement/ units as needed.

Tech wise i was thinking: Trade(19) -> Masonry(5) -> contruction(20) -> KotE(15) -> currency(38) -> philso(12) -> WotW(14) -> honor(36)

Unless you guys still think i should bother with RoK and mines of gal-dur. But frankly considering i would have to Tech Rok -> Acrete, spread RoK to the city that is building the mines and then acually build them even if rushed, it would be quicker to just research smelting.

p.s. I been assuming that the Gengineer only partly builds the mines thingy, is this correct? or does it build it all in one turn? if its one turn then it might be quicker to go RoK -> Acrete (52 turns) say 45-50 by the time i finish these 2 then 1-2 turns to build the mines? is that what would happen.
 
Smelting doesn't give you Iron, it just shows you the location. To actually use Iron weapons requires Iron Working, which is a much more expensive tech.

Just to recap, what is the rationale behind researching Honor? Do people want Chalid or do people just like the idea because Empyrean has been founded already?

Personally, I'm curious to see how effective 0% Science and 100% Mercenaries could be after Currency is researched. I think that with a full commitment to war then the entire world could be strip-pillaged with few casualties by Iron Mounted Mercenaries, preventing anyone else getting a tech advantage on the Hippus.
 
Just teched up to the end of trading and managed to get fishing, masonry, RoK and Hunting off the AIs. Im currently researching Contruction (13 turns) then im going to go Acrete and mines of galdur...Hang on a sec..

To actually use Iron weapons requires Iron Working,

will building the mines allow me to use iron weapons or just give access to iron? if it only gives access to iron won't i have to tech smelting and iron working anyway to use that iron? or is there a route to iron working that doesn't involve smelting?
 
You need the Iron Working Tech in order for your Mines to be able to give you access to their Iron resource. However, if you get Iron in some other way (such as a free resource from the Mines of Galdur wonder or the Infernal or Mercurian Palace) then you do not need the tech in order to use it as a prereq for units or in order to get the Iron Weapons promotion.
 
I believe that a GEng will build the Mines of Gal-Dur in one turn. As Senethro said, you should put it in a city with high food output so that three Engineer specialists can be supported. You'll also want a city that can afford the +2 :yuck: from the Mines. That will pop out a second GEng fairly quickly, to build the Guild of the Nine.

As for researching Honor, that was to take advantage of having Empyrean. That path would have made for a slower game than our current tack. With iron weapons and the ability to buy Mercenaries, we won't necessarily need to research anything after Currency.
 
Personally, I'm curious to see how effective 0% Science and 100% Mercenaries could be after Currency is researched. I think that with a full commitment to war then the entire world could be strip-pillaged with few casualties by Iron Mounted Mercenaries, preventing anyone else getting a tech advantage on the Hippus.

Actually, iirc, the price of hiring a mercenary isn't scaled by game speed.
If that is the case, this could possibly work very well on marathon speed, considering that the number of mercs you'd be able to hire would not be scaled whereas the amount of units built by others are.

I'm not sure if you would run out of steam halfway though, on the map I've tried this method on it was on a standard sized map which I packed additional AIs in--so I had a steady stream of cities/improvements to pillage to fund my armies.

On the whole it looks like a pretty solid idea, Iron mercs should be able to crack tier 2 defenders with ease, and with sufficient numbers, tier 3. If you are able to wreck everyone's economy by being on a constant war with them, you can be pretty sure you shouldn't see any tier 4 units appearing any time soon :lol:
 
I have played out the next round, ended the round on turn 452. I will post a full update tomorrow maybe, and the save, so if someone could then post some screenies that would be great.

In the meanwhile i will just say that i achieved all our objectives this round, teched all the techs except WotW and honor, which i ended the round on researching. We built the Go9 and now have 9 iron mercs, 2 chariots, a horsemen, a monk and Carroc to wage war with. I was thinking of hitting the illians first, they only have 2-3 cities as far as i known and they are evil, what more excuse do i need? So what does everyone feel about wiping out the illians first or should i hit some one else first? I was thinking we could go for a conquest victory.
 
Maybe I missed something, but, where are the Illians located? I haven't heard them mentioned before. My vote would be to go for something closer, like the Calabim or Balseraphs. Conquest victory seems to be something you are well set up for.
 
Yeah... Just start razing cities and pillage everything in order to keep your cash up. I'd set cities to basic infrastructure and purchase mercs at ever oppurtunity. Just keep pushing them out and send guys in different directions. I'd split your current stack of mercs into groups of 3 to go and pillage neighboring lands. All other troops go with one set of 3 towards the closest enemy to exterminate him. Every time you get enough cash buy mercs though. Eventually you'll have enough to overwhelm multiple neighbors at once.
 
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