A different guide to Sheaim (for Fall Further+):
After the bannor guide I wanted to do a sheaim one but quickly realized that doing the standard beeline for AV and own the world with ritualists guide would be pretty boring and obvious for anyone but newcomers (and I think anyone who s already playing modmods for FFH is probably not a newcomer).
So I ve had a different game and wanted to share it. Its not as powerful as AV sheaim of course but still fun and has some good synergies
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1. Leaders:
Os Gabella. Why ? Malchavic = only 1 trait and that trait is pretty weak. I think he s intented to be an emergent leader capable of getting another trait but currently doesnt work that way making him the worst possible leader choice for the sheaim.
Ophelia IS an emergent leader but for my strategy not interesting as it benefits a lot from having the summoner trait. Now of course Ophelia could get this one via emergent mechanics but its always a gamble and I dont like reloading to get the better results.
Tebryn is the slightly worse Os in general but even more so for my strategy. Both share summoner so thats good but the Arcane trait is pretty useless as passive xp gain for arcanes in FF was nerfed into almost uselessness and therefore potency is merely good for the spell strenght bonus but that one isnt that big of a deal imho.
Since Os makes a good wonderbuilder and it lies along the critical research path the catacomb librarus is pretty much guaranteed to be built by me, so I ll have mage guilds for free which beats mage guilds for 50% less hammers.
So I m recommending Os Gabella for the important summoner trait and since many wonders come in handy in this strategy , industrious is also put into good use.
2. Religions:
What makes this guide different is that we arent going for the obvious Sheaim religious choice and early-game-winner-thanks-to-ROF.
Instead we re taking the other evil: Octopus Overlords. Why ? Well for starters hemah comes at Arcane Lore so you get a good Hero at your critical research path.
Secondly Asylums help with research and thirdly the Tower of Compliance (faster built thanks to Os Gabiella gives you a truly awesome city.
But even though we re talking OO, please note that playing on water heavy maps versus the AI is like playing chess against kindergarden kids. And playing OO on water heavy maps is like cheating when playing chess against kindergarden kids
Also in this guide priesthood(tsunamie), fanatism(stygian guard) and theology (summon kraken) arent key techs so the naval power of OO isnt even a goal.
3. Critical Research Path:
We dont want to overrun the world with hordes of ritualists and diseased corpses, thats too easy for us. Instead the key is the arcane path: getting to strenght of will as fast as possible to get eaters of dreams, collecting death mana like crazy and drowning erebus in hordes of pumped up spectres & wraiths.
4. Your starting city:
Most of the time you wont start near water (especially with flavourstart on) but if you do, chose carefully. Obviously water has some benefits: we re going for OO so we ll have to research fishing & sailing anyhow. and workboats dont stop citygrowth like workers. good good. Please keep in mind however that water is horsehockey terrain later on since it cannot be improved (oceans) or can only be marginally improved (coasts -> fishing villages) it got nothing on a city with many rivertiles and cottages/farms.
Since your first city should be your future main city (capital and city with the tower of complanency) I d only recommend settling near water if you can get a location that has as little ocean as possible, preferably more land than water tiles and at least 2 good resources in the water.
Else go for a city with preferably no mountains in the BFC, many river tiles, some food resources, you know the drill
Personally I took a coast city, but it was a really good starting place with many resources and more land than water tiles.
5. Your starting phase:
Set up city, have your warrior guard it and send the scout out looking for goody huts till something inevitably eats him. Build a worker (workboat) and send him out to improve any resources. Built a second warrior.
Tech to mysticsm, adopt godking & pacifism in one strike and build an elder council & a pagan temple while you are researching knowledge of the ether. assign a sage when the elder council is finished and when your first great sage pops turn him into an acadademy.
(If you decided for a coastal city research fishing before mysticism obviously and keep churning out workboats till the best coastal and resource tiles are improved.)
After KOTE is researched build a mage guild, an adept and then a settler. Meanwhile research fishing (if you hadnt already) -> sailing -> message from the deep. The 2 warriors and the adept (who should immediately take death I so he can summon a skeleton and from there on combat promotions) are usually more than enough to defend your city from barbs. if you got some money from exploring before your scout was eaten you can drown your warriors as soon as you founded OO.
After the settler is done, switch production to a planar gate and then the catacomb librarus as it will give you another slot for a sage, 2 great sage points / turn , boost research and having mage guilds in all your future cities without building them is great especially with planar gates and mobius witches.
Look for a decent spot for a 2nd city but remember to be carefull about the new dangerous wilderness:
1. stay close to your cultural borders
2. have your adept and his skeleton escort the settler
3. the skeleton is expendable so as long as only 1 tough beast is attacking you cant really lose your adept or settler since you can always resummon skeleton next turn.
4. if you see a dragon or a huge bear RUUUUUN!
A coast city is not a bad choice for your second city if its near some water resources.
Since you wont build the Tower in that city it doesnt really matter if it could have much better tiles later on its just another city for building a planar gate in afterall and if possible near a raw mana node (doesnt have to be in the BFC , third culture ring is fine)
Also important: dont found your second city before you found OO. most of the time the bigger city will become the holy one but I ve also experienced how a freshly founded city with 1 population became the holy city while my 9 pop capital didnt.
Anyhow back to research: Go for Mind Stapling after founding OO to get your first good unit (saverous), the nice asylums and most importantly: the tower of complanency which should be built in your capital asap and from the on it can grow and grow and grow until it runs out of food.
After mind stapling research necromancy -> sorcery -> arcane lore.
Great sages can help with that via bulbing though you ll have to bulb alteration first which isnt that great but one cant really help it.
The good thing with getting the tower of compliance is that you dont (yet) need all those techs that unlock other happiness bonuses to grow your capital. And since your workers can build any improvement anyhow (just takes a while longer, but not a big issue imho ) you can focus on getting good at the arcane stuff fast instead.
When the tower of compliance was finished in your capital you should start building a sizeable army of adepts (5-6) for future use. its also about time to drop the research slider a bit to get some gold running so you can upgrade those adepts to mages once you hit sorcery.
Adepts with death mana make good explorers thanks to the easily replaced skeletons always defending first as already mentioned above. A stack of 5 adepts accompanied by 5 skeletons means you only run the risk of losing an adept if there s more than 5 attackers
So get those adepts some xp that they can be upgraded to mages later.
Dont risk saverous exploring, he s not that strong and mini-dragons (who are much faster then him) eat him for breakfast until he got lots of promotions. I actually wouldnt even waste time building him until somewhat later and use the production for adepts instead.
But that depends on your neighbours. with a powerful & aggressive neighbour nearby (or that isle which spawns stygian guards) its of course a lifesaver to have Saverous defending especially since he can get xp fast thanks to being a hero.
5. Becoming awesome
Hopefully your exploring adept/skeleton army will find a barbarian town or two to take over, preferably near raw mana nodes. If you cant help it, you ll of course have to do the settling yourself
Raw mana nodes are important since you really want that tower of necromancy and you re still missing out on shadow, dimensional and entropy mana to build it (death and chaos comes from the sheaim palace). If the unique features Blair of Lacuna (dimensional) and Bradeleine s Well(entropy) are nearby, those are good substitutes as well.
If you are lucky and find more mana nodes
death death death. As soon as you have the tower of necromancy ALL your mananodes should be death (one for metamagic to train an adept in dispel and have him dispel the entropy/shadow/dimensional nodes and turn them into death ones but if your lucky you might get a mobius witch starting with metamagic , then you dont even need that ).
Works really well for sheaim as thanks to mobius witches you ll sooner or later get casters for every important spell/buff anyhow so you arent missing out on other spells in the long run.
If you get caught in an early war dont go too offensive. with adepts&skeletons you have zero chance taking cities on higher difficulties and even mages with spectres will find it troublesome until you can pile up death affinity.
You definitely shouldnt START wars until AT LEAST hemah is available, I d recommend waiting for strenght of will though if you can afford it.
Build an alchemy lab as soon as you can. I m not sure if the event is guaranteed to happen once the first alchemy lab is built or just a chance but mary moebius is a nice bonus and even without her the research bonus is nice.
Anyhow your capital should be building an alchemy lab, the crown of arkharien and hemah and before and after that: cultists to spread OO to your new cities and settlers to spread new cities if you dont find enough barbarian ones.
Your other cities wont grow very big since you dont have access to all these happiness bonuses from all the techs you missed out on (unless you traded for them with other civs) so its best to simply build a worker to improve its surroundings, a planar gate, an elder council and from there on : adepts, adepts, adepts (as you have a mageguild in all cities thanks to catacomb).
I think its very flavourfull: that one supercity thanks to the tower of compliance and plenty of small cities located near mana nodes and not having many buildings other than the planar gate feels very much like an evil mages civ.
Anyhow, its a long way to strenght of will but once finally there you can definitely take the war to your neighbours. If you did everything right you ll have 8 adepts/mages with enough xp to be turned into the sheaims awesome archmage UU / liches.
Since the AIs build their cities close to each other and their consume soul ability comes in very handy, especially combined with the summoner trait. Your wraiths will wreak havoc.
6. A few tips on how to promote your arcane units:
adepts:
death I unfortunately is a must for every starting adept until you have 2 death nodes and get it for free, but without death I you wont have skeletons and thus take a massive risk when sending your adepts out to gather xp. Later built adepts can of course skip it when they get it for free.
after that all you need is combat strenght I-V so your summons start with empower I-V promotions.
once you have those promotions the next important is getting fire I&II (palace mana). fireballs can bombard, cause collateral damage and most importantly are an alternative when fighting enemies highly resistant to death magic.
spell extension becomes important when you have strenght of will but not before.
eater of dreams (archmage UU) should definitely get fire 3 as well. before you can pile on massive death affinity fire elementals are often a better choice than wraiths and they also cause collateral damage.
chaos is also pretty usefull for wonder and mutating your casters: a weak or enervated adept isnt utterly useless since it doesnt effect his summons so the risk is much less than with melee units.
moebius witches:
unless you cant afford it because your neighbour is attacking and you need every unit there is you should destroy any moebius witch that spawns with spellspheres you dont need so you have a chance for getting a better one next time.
You definitely always want moebius witches with:
.Air: because Maelstrom is a great addition to your offensive arsenal to weaken enemies for your mages & summons
.Body: hasting & regenerating your adepts/mages is very very usefull
.Ice: Slow is a great spell and later on you could upgrade this witch to get snowfall
for amazing offensive potential.
.Entropy: Pit beasts are somewhat meh except in the early game but corrode is very usefull weakening enemies.
.Sun: turning rivertiles into deserts is very handy since those deserts will upgrade into floodplains after a few turns. also blinding is a good spell to annoy your enemy with.
Metamagic: scouting with the eye is very handy and dispelling mananodes to turn them into death ones is very important.
Mind: inspiration is nice in your capital, charm is good and later on domination comes in handy. good all around.
In the early game Moebius witches that start with death, fire or chaos are also usefull as you can get spectres, fireball and mutate before even researching sorcery.
But since all 3 spellspheres are palace mana
. they become kinda pointless on witches as soon as sorcery is researched as then your mages can get those spells anyhow.
The other spellspheres are mostly meh until you get to strenght of will, of course then spells like Valor (law), Spellstaff (Enchantment) and others will come in very handy but the tier 1&2 spells of those spheres are not really usefull to you.
When I reach strenght of will (and have 4 death mana so any upgraded mage/moebius witch will get death 3 and therefore also lichdom for free) I ll make sure to upgrade the moebius witches first that have spellspheres that I definitely want the tier 3 spell off (law for valor, ice for snowfall, mind for domination etc.) and turn them into liches. after that come the actual eater of dreams who are upgraded from mages that already have combat strenght I-V so they get the most out of summoning.
7. the endgame
up to you, really. after strenght of will you have everything you need to wage wars though of course its no godmode on higher difficulties so be carefull and dont piss off every other civ at once. I d suggest researching the techs now that unlock other units from planar gates, improve your economy and chose your conquest targets by the number of mana nodes you can get.
I personally liked going the recon route to unlock manticore´s and to have rangers that could capture the mini-dragons. I ended up with 4 different mini-dragons which made at least a bit up for winning before I ever got to Abashi ^^
Also start raising the Armageddon counter via rituals & razing since that makes your summoned units even stonger thanks to the sundered/stigmata promotion.
If someone summons hyborem and he s not too far off you should probably focus on killing him before he gets too powerful and spreads too much hellterrain. Also makes sure that you get the nice Gela item off him. His units will be a tough nut to crack with death & fire summons so better do it before he has too many of them for you too handle.
Anyhow, I know the collect death mana and have fun with eaters of dreams is not terribly original either but as far as I guess most people playing sheaim focus on AV early and therefore often dont get to strenght of will before they won the game (whether they actually won or stop because the game got too easy), so I m hoping doing it this way and with a different religion was at least interesting to some readers.
Suggestions:
The arcane trait needs fixing. With potency almost useless due to low passive xp gain & caps in Fall further its a pretty bad trait, one of the worst.
Spiritual not only gives potency, it also gives mobility and it also gives no anarchy from changing religion / civics. And as everybody knows
. since savants can upgrade to mages spiritual pretty much means that even your arcane units will get potency anyhow PLUS mobility (which cancels out the one free promotion that you could argue is lost by going savant -> mage instead of adept -> mage ).
I m not sure if my memory is playing tricks on me but wasnt Arcane at one point in base FFH supposed to also give 1 free promotion to each arcane units ?
That would be a welcome change. In the life of an archmage that d total out as 3 free promotions (1 at adept, 1 at mage, 1 at archmage, obviously on top of the free ones they already get) so it d be a pretty usefull trait.
). Please post some of your tips on playing FF/FF+! 
I had not thought about that.... I'll move the trait to OnUnitCreated, rather than built. Will affect any free units, as well as demagogues. 
and +1 
, albiet at different techs. Necromancy and Arcane Lore for Graveyards, Construction and Guilds for Quarries. Quarries also require Slavery running for +4, but if you aren't running that, I'll have to hurt you.
, No xp from combat, and a 15% chance to take slaves after combat. It also however, gives+1 Death Affinity This is to every melee and mounted unit you have. It is completely viable to skip the arcane line as D'tesh (except to get the boosts to Graveyards) and go down the Mounted line for an entire army of Horsemen of the Apocalypse
