Game diary: Diety, mages challenge with Tholal's mod

Horatius

Prince
Joined
Sep 30, 2006
Messages
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So, since I'm confined to a chair for the following weeks because of an accident (nothing serious, though) I decided to use some of my free time to do a game diary.

There is a lot of that stuff going on in the Civ4 strategy forum, but not much here. I assume that there's no interest, but I'm going to do it anyway :p (it will be nice to train my English too).

- maybe new players can learn something;

- maybe experienced players can tell me where I screwed up and laugh a little;

- maybe lore fanatics can add some flavor into this as well with their comments.


We are going to do the following challenge:
- achieve a diety conquest victory in FfH2 with the latest patch of Tholal's mod while respecting the following rule: no units are allowed to be built with the exception of the settler, worker, warrior, adept and heroes. Warriors can't be upgraded. (glup)

The idea is to achieve conquest with only mages. I've done this on lower difficulty levels but not on diety. Needless to say, death magic is needed to prevent us from perishing. All kinds of spells will be useful.

I've chosen the Amurites for obvious reasons but also because I don't really play them that often and when I do I play them in a too standard way until I get Firebows. I never really rush Arcane Lore and that never seemed like a good idea on high difficulty levels.

Okay, here is our leader:
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Here are the settings:
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And here is the start:
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I send my scout towards the tower to get more vision, but as luck would have it, it doesn't bust any fog in the East. Whoever built that thing just enjoyed the ocean view. I can't say I blame him/her/it.
My settler moves in to reveal a corn and comments that re-rolling is the coward way. Before I can clear my throat and start a philosophical argument with him about that point to eventually oppose him he just decides to take action and settles right there:
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Our citizens happily start to learn the art of farming and to train a worker (no risk, no reward - Barbs don't come from the ocean and we have a three hammer tile for a relatively quick second warrior).

This is the beginning of the Amurite's civilization.
Will we prosper?:)
 
- the first steps:

We meet Alexis and Sabathiel and get our scout unfortunately killed by a giant spider on turn nine. At least we got a hut for a little money before the other scouts, I guess...
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Losing the first scout this early is a big deal on deity while going worker first since we just lost our means to fog bust and potentially redirect the first couple of barbarians away from our city. Oh well.

After agriculture we decide to research crafting for the wine. Our worker starts the corn while there is still no barbarians in sight.
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The first barb approaches our borders on turn 19. Seems right for diety, although scouts can actually start meeting barbarian warriors after turn 10.
Our second warrior is about to pop so there should be no early accidents.
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Next turn we will start growing fast with the corn and the worker will go towards the floodplains. Now it's a question of being lucky enough so that no barbarian happens to step on the corn until we can get a couple of promotions with a warrior.

Actually, the barbarians only came from the north which meant that I had civs close by on the south and east.
Here, our city is starting to get mobbed but our bold worker is undeterred and doesn't stop at nothing while wearing a mocking grin on his face:
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Eventually we get a level III warrior (let's call him Little Pete) which steps outside the city to face the threats and protect his worker:
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That barbarian didn't last long.

We decide to start building a settler at turn 36 with only three warriors. The second floodplain is one turn from being improved and the wine will follow. Instead of using one citizen on the unimproved wine we could have used it on a forest grassland to be able to start building the settler in 19 turns, but this is slightly better for research. The wine will be improved soon and it will work out anyway.
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We also decided to research education for better warriors and a few cottages with the lack of commerce resources.

On turn 50 we realize that Sabathiel has just placed a city relatively close to us which is too bad because I would have liked to settle close to the pig, but this is deity, so...
We also get the "affluent Duke" event. Normally, early on, I usually choose the money but this time I chose the monument to make sure I hold on to that potential mana sorce and don't have to worry about cultural pressure.
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There is also a gargoyle there downstairs killing scouts, btw, and Little Pete is starting to prove himself a true barb killer.

On turn 51 I realize that a certain freak has been created:
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Can I say: Oh sh.........................................!!


To be continued...
 
Defend with warriors until Necromancy? Good luck with that :lol:

Don't underestimate cheap and fast bronze warriors.
Obviously we need luck, but if we boost relations and get copper it's doable because we spawned in a corner of the map. So, it's a question of whether the other AIs entertain themselves enough meanwhile or not.
 
Our settler is finished and we will build a second city to the right of the corn starting a monument immediately using the three hammer tile. Eventually it will grow with the corn. We build a second worker on our capital and eventually will spam some warriors with apprenticeship.
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By the way, you can see that I've made a big mistake. Why the hell do I have two warriors up there when my settler is ready? Well, I blame Little Pete. Little Pete was eager to kill more barbs to add to the trophy wall collection of his little room and he just kept going north with his little brother. He is three points away from level VI and I'm starting to believe the rumors that says that he wants to leave us for the Sidar...

I build my second city anyway unprotected, Civ4 vanilla style. I didn't get punished...

I follow up with exploration to eventually be able to trade with Sabathiel and Alexis that is close by on the east.
For things to work out for us, they need to declare war on each other. Odds are, they will.

My capital is here now working two cottages while slightly starving to pump some warriors faster:
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I built a cottage on the ivory since we will not research hunting and it is a two hammer tile.

We meet Amel who refuses to open borders with us although he already has cartography.
But more importantly:
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Alexis declares war on Sabathiel!:D
Excellent! Excellent! *Evil face*
I'm a lucky bastard but really, it was to be expected.

Also, Little Pete reaches level VI by hammering a skeleton.
 
We get Ale from Sabathiel and reveal more of the map. As we can see there is some serious border attention in the south east.
Cottages turn into hamlets and we research mysticism for God King for now and the elder council.
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More fantastic news here:
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:clap::clap::clap:

Unfortunately mining doesn't reveal any copper so, yeah, we are pretty screwed if we get attacked.

Meanwhile we get some villages, research writing for libraries and build our second settler after some warrior spam.
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We also razed a barbarian city in the wild North. A barbarian archer just came out as we approached it, I suicided a warrior on the city archer and Little Pete took care of business. He's almost level VIII.

By turn 112 our cities look like this:
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I wanted to place my third city on the tile above, but I wanted to guarantee that potential mana source, being scared of Alexis culture. I'm not sure if I did well there, but at least it can work the second city cottages as well. My cities are not going to get big for quite a while.

Fishing is researched for my third and future cities.
I also give fire mana to Alexis for a little boost in relations and open borders with Amel.

The war between Alexis and Sabathiel actually stopped, but my heart was put at ease when I saw that she only had hunters (and got the Fellowship of the leaves holy city).
Eventually she declared on Amel.

A few turns after:


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Excellent! Excellent!

We build walls simply to hopefully discourage attacks. Walls are no good to avoid getting pillaged if you are already in a war.

I actually don't usually build building defenses. In a normal game I'd be getting it on together with Sabathiel and Amel. I'm not good at turtling, I'd rather conquer someone else's economy. On diety, I think that the warmonger mentality is the best (you're mostly building units, anyway).

Our third city gets the Fellowship of the leaves for some culture and starts building a workboat. I decided to get archery for some lumbermilling to help with production.
I already had calendar and was planning to get festivals and animal husbandry next (we also have a sheep up there and more potential mana sources).

By turn 130 our cities look like this:
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Sabathiel also conquered the Fellowship of the leaves' holy city from Alexis and switched to that religion. I decided to switch as well for an increasing boost in relations, although I think that I was a little bit too quick on that and should have waited for a little bit more lumbermilling.

I don't think that I should go towards construction and sanitation. The cities will stay small and I'll go straight towards necromancy after animal husbandry while getting three more cities.
I'm also getting sugar from Sabathiel now.

Hopefully Alexis will hold on so that the war is long. But hunters may have a little bit of trouble against dozens of bronze axemen. Why hunting, Alexis? no copper? and why is that technology so expensive anyway?

It seems that I have been relatively lucky, but we'll see.
 
Okay, I saw the error of my ways. I should have played more greedily once war broke out between the other AIs. Pump the settlers, pump the workers, build cottages fast, run some specialists. Neglect production, neglect defense. Play diplomacy.

That means that I declared war on Alexis once the Bannor conquered her closest city. Sabathiel was also on war with the freaks that were on the south being trashed. Eventually I declare war on them too.
The freaks get out of the game (who says that they are overwhelming on deity?), Sabathiel declares on Viconia. Well, lets declare on her too.

Now that's playing diplomacy. Not a single enemy unit on my borders.
Sabathiel indirectly protects me, and it's too easy. I have death mana and he is friendly with me.
No punishment for weakness at all.

I meet the Elohim on the other side of the map which is the strongest civilization and I befriend them as well.
Necromancy, sorcery comes relatively fast. Eventually I trade that away for a lot of other technologies, tech currency and deception. In the end I also get mathematics and feudalism from the elves. Just lack taxation and need to finish up the gambling houses. Arcane Lore is not needed (what a surprise).


After some shameful turtling I have six little cities and more than 30 high level mages. Maelstrom, Fireballs, Blur, Haste, Blinding Light and free Spectres with four death mana sources. Gibbon summons earth elementals to protect the stack.

I took longer than I wanted, though, to get into conquest mode.
I make peace with everybody even though I didn't strike a single blow (that was weird, actually, but they were struggling).
What did I do after ?
Backstab the Bannor, of course. No one wants a big Bannor on conquest mode.
The Elohim vassals Alexis and declares on them too (hurrah).
Amel goes beserk and declares on everybody but me (lol).

Here is me going towards the second Bannor city with one of my two conquest stacks:
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A few turns after I have six new cities:
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Too strong I guess?
There was one turn I didn't summon any specters or earth elemental just to see the reaction and the only thing that the Ai did was just a little fireball.
 
The action started to pick up and dozens and dozens of units eventually started being killed very fast.

But telling things in order, we can see here that Amel became a vassal of Ethne after going mad in previous turns. We also see the usual example of the AI that has no trouble sneaking in to settle a little piece of free land, no matter where it is (it's seriously disturbing):
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What happened quickly next?
Ethne declares war on me and makes the first strike! I wasn't expecting this so soon.
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Holy cow! It's about time someone tried to punish me. Alright, let's do it!

You can see here that the AI is using a variety of spells:[/URL] Uploaded with ImageShack.us[/IMG]

Not for long, though.
Still, being attacked by three civilizations is not fun. Or is it?
No.

How about now:


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Now we are talking about! Fighting four civilizations (Sabathiel doesn't count anymore) IS FUN!

ALL WAR! Bring it on!

By the way, there's two Orthus' axes in the game!
My three movement specters appreciate.
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I also started to take cities and raze them, since it would be hard to defend them. It would just slow me down and allow time for the AI to rebuild its stacks.
One stack went for Viconia, and the other one, after crushing Ethne's conquest stack, went to weaken Amel to avoid opposition from him, since Alexis seemed already weak (she did capture for one turn my closest city to her, though).

I also remembered to use my mass specters for mass pillaging and put my new cities building wealth to avoid going on strike (It was not a problem, though).
I had about 50 wizards and I don't know how many warriors and skeletons.

Oh, me and Viconia were members of the undercouncil, and this came in good timing although we were in war with each other:
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Yes! No more iron for your Stygian guards from the Elohim, Viconia! What a shame (those things are hard to crack with just specters).

Viconia is using blinding light, so we have to be careful:
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It's a shame that she left that stack out in the open like that. Nothing tells me that the AI considers that the specters will be re summoned every turn and many of the mistakes come from that, I believe. I think that I only lost one wizard for an assassin, that was about it.

She could have tried to surprise me with blinding lights (not that easy since I was being very mobile and started afterwards to use several little stacks) and then just mob me with anything (btw, I completely forgot that I had a world spell to use).


Anyway, what do you say to this?
Can you believe it? The Elohim just made a sneak naval attack from the other side of the planet and completely caught me with my pants down!
DAMN YOU THOLAL!!!:
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Fun stuff:D
 
I seriously don't know where the hell did that come from. I mean, if you look at the mini map, it makes no sense. That boat took quite a few turns to get there, I think...

I was light on defense in that area. If the Elohim had used more horses...
Luckily, I got a new wizard on that turn that was close by. I also sent a privateer (that should have been there already) to chase the sinful boat.
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My city was not attacked but I did got pillaged. Eventually I took care of that little annoying stack.

A couple of turns later, Alexis tries the same funny business!:
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Cute try, Alexis. But not a chance, not there.
Even on a Pangaea map I have to get optics to deal with Tholal's nefarious boats.


The wars do progress quickly, and eventually Viconia has to give in:
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The AI cannot see any free land that he has to settle it. It just tickles those AI nerves.
Here, the Elohim settles near the place of a razed Amel city right in the face of one of my stacks.
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Seriously? Okay...

I don't need to tell you what happened there.

Blight also did happen which I'm sure hurt the AI production and city management decisions (which is what I wanted) and the horsemen started to spawn.

Oh, I finished up Sabathiel (I was forgetting about that) and Alexis also fell quickly:
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and I finally went after the Elohim's cities. I had seven death mana nodes and with caves of the ancestors I was producing more wizards instantaneously. It was over.
Their capital fell and that gave me the guild of the nine so that I could start keeping the conquered cities (Mercenaries are bought not built):
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All the demons that spawned were easy goners with a few spectres:
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Other stacks went to finish Amel (three civilizations had pieces of the altar in this game, btw):
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and I achieved the conquest victory on turn 294, which is not bad after a non-optimal and low resources start. The conquest mode phase was fast:
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So, basically I made Sabathiel my buddy, my faithful and protective wall - and then I made him cry.
And then I won.

If I had played standardly, I would have defended with archers and horses instead of creating tension by just playing with warriors early.
Or maybe I would have gotten iron from the Elohim and had defended with axemen and catapults. Or better yet, maybe I would have conquered someone early like the weak Alexis with axemen and catapults so that I could then tech currency and sorcery with more cities.

The map kind of ended up giving me an easy game. That, and the inability of the AI to respond properly against the heavy use of magic.
 
Nice work. I almost feel inclined to try it myself ... almost. It's just that my personal tastes are too different from this kind of play - I don't like early conquests, I'm more of a builder during early-middle game and prefer that AI's build up themselves too.
 
Nice work. I almost feel inclined to try it myself ... almost. It's just that my personal tastes are too different from this kind of play - I don't like early conquests, I'm more of a builder during early-middle game and prefer that AI's build up themselves too.

I know what you mean, but actually the Elohim were already in their late power phase game. A lot of strong and blessed disciple units and chariots, a lot of cities and wonders, two vassals.
They had arcane lore and righteousness and were two pieces away from winning an altar victory (I went back to a previously saved state and checked that out using cheat mode).
The Elohim did a very fine game.
 
Excellent write up, I much enjoyed reading your thoughts as the game progressed. Since I have yet to use the Amurites seriously at a high level I learned a lot as well. :)
 
Excellent write up, I much enjoyed reading your thoughts as the game progressed. Since I have yet to use the Amurites seriously at a high level I learned a lot as well. :)

Hey, thanks for the nice comment.
I'm glad someone learned something. I still think that I have to learn how to play better with this civilization, though, they take a while to get to their power phase :).
 
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