Civ / Religion best poised to leverage "shadow armies"?

Cliftor

Chieftain
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Sep 9, 2007
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Going off a strategy someone praised in another topic, for my next game I wanna try waging large undeclared wars. Religion I suppose is a given (CoE), although since I haven't tried it I dunno how it really works.

Advice and tips fora guy who wants to try something weird and new for his next game?
 
Svartlfar, the evil elves, have a world spell that turns ALL units into hidden nationality. You have to be careful about leaving single units where allies can see them, but that is your shadow army right there. No siege weapons, though. You'll have to settle for a lot of fire II mages.
 
Cool. I just got done trying out Ljsofar for the first time, so the shift should be painless.

I've been led to believe that the best strengths of Esus can be exploited without actually converting. How does this work?
 
Recon units built in cities with CoE (regardless of state religion) have a chance of getting that as their religion and if so they gain the 'mask' ability which allows you to turn Hidden Nationality on and off at will.

The biggest advantage of CoE as a state religion is that you don't get expelled from foreign territory when declaring war. So if you plan on warring without declaring war you don't really need it. However you do want to be sure that you have the holy city and the shrine. Being invisible in your own territory is brutal when combined with hidden nationality and open borders, particularly with assassins when combined with illusionist summons. The CoE hero is nice, but not as good as other religous heroes. In most cases the best bet is to play them like you do the Ljosfar, so get FoL early and run Guardian of Nature, instead of archers build lots of assorted recon units since your bonus will be +1 attack strength on all recon units. personally, I keep one city without a hunting lodge but with the CoE religion and build scouts there, if they get CoE (and thus the Mask ability) I will upgrade them, otherwise I scrap them or send them off to die while exploring lairs.
 
Svartlfar, the evil elves, have a world spell that turns ALL units into hidden nationality. You have to be careful about leaving single units where allies can see them, but that is your shadow army right there. No siege weapons, though. You'll have to settle for a lot of fire II mages.

"Settle" for fire II mages?? After being forced to use them because a civ I was playing couldn't make catapults, I can't imagine using anything else. I dont' even bother building siege workshops anymore.
 
Yes, I agree, given the choice between Catapults a la vanilla Civ were they are 1 Move per turn deadweights on my stacks, I'd prefer FfH2's inexpensive Mages with Haste and Fireball.

Anyway, so, ONLY recon units may receive hidden nationality, at random, from CoE cities. Got it.

So, that means the army, at full strength, consists of:
4 Beastmasters
4 Shadows
Azkalan
4 Shadow Riders (?)
Assassins and Rangers
<In open border situations, Priests of Leaves can offer passive support in the form of healing>

In the Civilopedia it lists the CoE symbol under requirements for Shadowriders, but does that mean it has to be my state religion or merely that the city building them has to have it?

And later on, Veil of Night gives Hidden Nationality to ALL my units. Seems simple enough.

The +1 strength to all Recon units will help offset the -X% city attack, and I use the Illusionist trait to weaken but not kill enemies in stacks for my Assassins to prey on for easy XP.

Any other cute quirks I'm missing?

EDIT:
Oh, I forgot Nightwatch. They're not Recon but they come with Hidden nationality at the start. Do I need CoE state religion or just a CoE city with an archery range?
 
Sounds like you have the basics there, now go forth and wreak havoc on your unsuspecting allies :)

Oh, I forgot Nightwatch. They're not Recon but they come with Hidden nationality at the start. Do I need CoE state religion or just a CoE city with an archery range?

Better yet, all Nightwatches start with the CoE religion and they can be upgraded into assassins. The downside is that they're longbow level units with a fairly expensive tech requirement and not exactly cheap to produce, but at least they're cheap to turn into assassins. If you actually get some other Civs into the undercouncil you can buy them without needing the bowers tech through some sporadic votes, but that's difficult to rely on.
 
Pact of the Nilhorn is really your first stop. 3 7-pointer stone giants right at the begginning of the game give you an edge you may well keep until the end. I forget the amount of times I had a lvl 20 Moe bashing s$%t up with blitz and commando...

Also... don't switch religions just to have a shadow army. Council of Esus still gives your recon units the Mask spell even if it ain't your state religion. It works on some system of odds that every unit built MIGHT have the chance to be a CoE with Mask. I never knew what those odds were, or how to fudge them for a better turnout, if anybody knows, please spill the beans...
 
Start off going for FoL. Use a Pagan Temple to generate an early Great Prophet and as soon as you've researched Way of the Forests, use him to Lightbulb Hidden Paths. You can now adopt Guardian of Nature about 35 turns early. The turn advantage from having early size 20 cities is incredible.

Use Nature II mages to give your recon units poison blade. Bring along a few City Raider Champions to suicide against tough cities. Sometimes they'll get lucky and give you a useful unit.

Build lots of fawns and XP farm the barbarians. Also use fawns to explore lairs and try to give them the kills if anything nasty pops out. This may require a stock of suicide warriors. Level 4 fawns upgrade to Satyrs which are 10/6 with Poison Blade Promotion and don't have a penalty against cities. Once thats done you can switch to CoE, though I'd stay in FoL as you get most of the benefits of CoE without adopting it. (Also, Leafy priests --> Druids.)
 
But I thought my strong Recon units have to be BUILT in a city with CoE in order to get Mask? Satyrs are strong, but they aren't Hidden Nationality at that point, right?
 
You can found CoE, but the 3 reasons to adopt it are Gibbon, Shadowriders and the Surprise War Declaration. Everything else about CoE will function fine while in FoL.
 
But I thought my strong Recon units have to be BUILT in a city with CoE in order to get Mask? Satyrs are strong, but they aren't Hidden Nationality at that point, right?
Indeed. :( This means, for example, that Alazkan never gets Mask - once you declare his nationality, that's that. :(
 
Actually, since Alazkan's a recon unit too, he CAN get mask if you build him in a CoE city and he gets CoE. I had that once and it was awesome; I just declared nationality any time Alazkan's health got low, healed him in my "ally's" city, and then Masked him again to keep killing my "ally's" units.

It's not such a great probability though, so it's probably not worth delaying Poisons to get Deception.
 
You can found CoE, but the 3 reasons to adopt it are Gibbon, Shadowriders and the Surprise War Declaration. Everything else about CoE will function fine while in FoL.


Actually there are other perks which should also not be overlooked and are exclusive to Esus.
One very important one for precisely the strategy discussed here is that it offers most of the benefits of running a religion without the hit to relations with non-CoE civs.
Better relations equals more hapless "friends" for a backstabbing surprise attack or for milking their units to train your masked recon... (especially if you join a council and extremely so if the council you join is the overcouncil.)
This perk in my experience is a close second to the ability to perform a surprise backstabbing without expulsion... (and its useful in any! single! non-all-war game unlike even the non-expulsion on declaration.). Its usually slightly more powerful than even gibbon. (this is especially true on higher difficulties.)


Also there are Nightwatches (exclusive to CoE) which upgrade to Assassins with a guaranteed Mask for a measly 5 Gold which is another big plus (especially for Sidar which can also hide their assassins for some :backstab:ing fun. :D )
Granted, the tech is horribly expensive, hence this is low on the list of reasons to really adopt the religion. But sometimes you get it via a hut or trade... ;)

In multiplayer in the current implementation most of these things are of course not all so much powerful. But there is not much the team could do about that (beyond changing the appearance of masked units and changing the religious display of the CoE civ to copy that of the current beholder...)
 
Actually, since Alazkan's a recon unit too, he CAN get mask if you build him in a CoE city and he gets CoE. I had that once and it was awesome; I just declared nationality any time Alazkan's health got low, healed him in my "ally's" city, and then Masked him again to keep killing my "ally's" units.

It's not such a great probability though, so it's probably not worth delaying Poisons to get Deception.

You should re-read my post and the post I quoted.
 
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