Optimizing Sheaim Planar Gate play

Xuenay

Prince
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Jan 1, 2006
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Finland
Playing as the Sheaim, I'm often uncertain of how I should build Planar Gates and the buildings associated with them. Many of the buildings (Hippodrome, Weapon Smith) are pretty off the Sheaim's magical research path, and I'm unsure of how much time I should spent researching and building them.

I'm also a bit uncertain of how, exactly, the Planar Gate mechanic works. It says in the wiki that each Planar Gate allows you to have more units summoned, and you can at most have N units of each type summoned. But I seem to recall Kael saying that constructing extra non-Gate buildings has no effect on the amount of units you can summon, only their types. That was a long ago, though, so I'm not sure of how things are now.

Any seasoned Sheaimists around here?
 
Playing as the Sheaim, I'm often uncertain of how I should build Planar Gates and the buildings associated with them. Many of the buildings (Hippodrome, Weapon Smith) are pretty off the Sheaim's magical research path, and I'm unsure of how much time I should spent researching and building them.

I'm also a bit uncertain of how, exactly, the Planar Gate mechanic works. It says in the wiki that each Planar Gate allows you to have more units summoned, and you can at most have N units of each type summoned. But I seem to recall Kael saying that constructing extra non-Gate buildings has no effect on the amount of units you can summon, only their types. That was a long ago, though, so I'm not sure of how things are now.

Any seasoned Sheaimists around here?

Each planar gate increases the amount of summoned creatures you can have by one. The AC determines, however, the actual number of summoned demons you can have through the gates. So, in the long run, the number of creatures is a combination of AC and Number of planar gates, with the AC playing the major part in it.

I go for the Sheaim tech objectives early and, after I reach that, research the additional buildings for more stronger creatures.
The one I don't want to miss, usually, is the grove(for the Manticores).
Tar Demons are life-savers early on...Try to have one in each city.
 
From the manual:
•Under 50 AC: limit of 1 of each unit per Planar gate, 6% Chance of spawn per turn
•50-74 AC: 2 of each unit per gate, 9% Chance of spawn
•75-99 AC: 3 of each unit per gate, 12% Chance of spawn
•100 AC: 4 of each unit per gate, 15% Chance of spawn

The "each" part is a little ambiguous...
 
Mobius Witches are amazing. Unfortunately, they start out with 10 XP that are already "spent". That means you won't be getting any any promotions on them anytime soon, so if they don't have spells that you find useful, you're going to find them a lot less helpful.

How to fix that? All new spellcasters get free spell promotions based on the number of mana you have, so try very hard to get 3 Death mana as soon as you possibly can. That way any new Mobius Witches you get will automatically get Death I and Death II for free as soon as they show up through the gate. With the summoning trait and +3 strength for the Death Mana affinity, you'll find the Wraiths strong enough to take care of all your needs for a long time.

I also got Chaos II on a Mobius Witch once and I got to cast Mutate. You can't Mutate undead, so build Warriors, Mutate them and then either Drown them or turn them into Pyre Zombies in the appropriate city. Not every city needs every building, so you can build just the Mage Guild and the Planar gate in every city and then turn the city's efforts to more useful tasks (i.e. Workers/Settlers/military units and not buildings).

The Sheim are an especially good civ to build the FreeMageGuildInEveryCity wonder since Mage guilds are fairly expensive and since they make the Planar Gate amazingly useful all by themselves.

One last thought: Your Planar Gates can support more units and will summon them faster when the AC is higher. Don't let it get too high, though, because your empire cannot handle the pain that any of the 4 horsemen bring. Check the FfH manual for more details in the particulars of the Planar Gate.
 
constructing extra non-Gate buildings has no effect on the amount of units you can summon, only their types. That was a long ago

It hasn't changed.
 
Each planar gate allows more creatures as Doug Piranha said, and additional non-gate buildings have no effect on maximum number of creatures spawned.

Mage Guild, Public Baths, Gambling Houses do have an effect on the rate you get new creatures though.

Each turn each gate has a chance to spawn a creature. The creature spawned is always one that's allowed in the city. supposing you have 40 cities with Planar Gates at Armageddon, but only one with a mage guild. The maximum number of Witches you can get is 160, but you will only get about one every eight turns. Less if that city is also spawning Succibi.

So building spawn enablers isn't pointless. Each city should have at least one, and preferably more. When one builds a new enabler, one should prefer those that enable low population unit types, or that have a high attrition. There is no penalty for having "full" enablers, though.

Edit:

Also, as the Armageddon Counter rises, the time for a gate to max out rises, id est it takes longer for four creatures to spawn at 100 than it takes for one creature to spawn at 0. Combined with the ballooning Shearim are likely to do as the counter rises, spawn limits are likely to rise faster than creatures are spawning.
 
Mobius Witches are amazing. Unfortunately, they start out with 10 XP that are already "spent". That means you won't be getting any any promotions on them anytime soon, so if they don't have spells that you find useful, you're going to find them a lot less helpful.

How to fix that? All new spellcasters get free spell promotions based on the number of mana you have, so try very hard to get 3 Death mana as soon as you possibly can. That way any new Mobius Witches you get will automatically get Death I and Death II for free as soon as they show up through the gate. With the summoning trait and +3 strength for the Death Mana affinity, you'll find the Wraiths strong enough to take care of all your needs for a long time.

I also got Chaos II on a Mobius Witch once and I got to cast Mutate. You can't Mutate undead, so build Warriors, Mutate them and then either Drown them or turn them into Pyre Zombies in the appropriate city. Not every city needs every building, so you can build just the Mage Guild and the Planar gate in every city and then turn the city's efforts to more useful tasks (i.e. Workers/Settlers/military units and not buildings).

The Sheim are an especially good civ to build the FreeMageGuildInEveryCity wonder since Mage guilds are fairly expensive and since they make the Planar Gate amazingly useful all by themselves.

One last thought: Your Planar Gates can support more units and will summon them faster when the AC is higher. Don't let it get too high, though, because your empire cannot handle the pain that any of the 4 horsemen bring. Check the FfH manual for more details in the particulars of the Planar Gate.
Just a note: The free spheres from having multiple mana works with all arcane units, not just witches. This means that while having three Fire nodes(so all your Witches get Fireball automatically) is a good thing, any Mages you upgrade from Adepts will also have Fireball, so it's best to only upgrade Mages to Eater of Dreams/Liches(Unless you get lucky and get a witch with 4 or more good spheres).

My first game as Sheim I tried to rely on Mobius Witches(At leats early on) for spellpower. It didn't work so well - I eventually started spamming Adepts like I would with any other civ, and just used the Witched for auxiliary. That's what Planar Gate troops seem to be is auxiliary, you can't base your army off of them... which is a shame, because of how expencive Planar Gates are.
 
That's why you pump the AC up, the higher the AC the better they make core troops when you have 10 cities and the AC is like 75+ you get a monster every turn (or more)
 
I've been getting so many that I went back and deleted all of the Revellers and Chaos Marauders, still leaving each city with four Succubi and a mix of the other demons. Made my Unit Maint. much more happy...

But at AC 100, with 22 cities, it is common to get 3 new units per turn.
 
I've been getting so many that I went back and deleted all of the Revellers and Chaos Marauders, still leaving each city with four Succubi and a mix of the other demons. Made my Unit Maint. much more happy...

But at AC 100, with 22 cities, it is common to get 3 new units per turn.

meaning you should go build wonders!
 
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