[FFH] - Erebus in the Balance

Definitely like start 3. Would have preferred huts just because I want to see if there are any issues but I suppose in the interest of keeping this interesting its worth turning them off since Darrell is playing which means we'd probably end up with Arcane Lore on T4 from huts. ;) Other than that looks good to me. :goodjob:
 
30/20/10/10 seems a lot on Quick, so maybe change that to 20/15/10/10?

Anyway, gentlemen, start strategising! :)

 
If we SIP, there's only two tiles we can improve till Mining, so I'm inclined to move the Settler 2SE and found our first city. It would have a floodplain in first ring, and grabs wet Corn, plains Incense, plains Cattle, four floodplains in total, 3 hills and lots of river.
A second city could be founded below the southern (hidden by fog), sharing the Corn with the Capital.

An alternative would be to swing around the center lake and found SW-SW, losing the Incense but gaining desert hill gold.
 
So while we wait for Mardoc to agree with me as well, let's talk about Valledia.



In Vanilla FFH, Dain the Cas (PHI/ARC) is usually picked over Valledia(ORG/ARC).



Philosophical allows you to bulb your way towards Arcane Lore and Govannon, which beats the reduced upkeep and civic costs, and the useless half priced buildings the Organised trait comes with.

Erebus in the Balance has changed all that. As mentioned before, Valledia has now gained an extra trait, Ingenuity.



Ingenuity cuts unit upgrade costs in half, which is a big deal in FFH2. Unlike BtS, where upgrade costs are prohibitive (20 + three times hammer difference in gold)*, FFH2 allows you to nurture your best units and upgrade them when stronger units are available. So, normally, the cost to upgrade a unit in FFH2 is 5 + 2 times hammer difference. For a leader with the Ingenuity trait, the costs are basically reduced to 5 + hammer difference.

*thanks to Thoth for the correct upgrade formulas

So, for example, on Quick Speed, a 16-hammer Warrior would only cost us 19 (5 + (30-16)) gold to upgrade to an Archer.

This will allow us to do "fun stuff". :D

More later.
 
So while we wait for Mardoc to agree with me as well, let's talk about Valledia.



In Vanilla FFH, Dain the Cas (PHI/ARC) is usually picked over Valledia(ORG/ARC).


Philosophical allows you to bulb your way towards Arcane Lore and Govannon, which beats the reduced upkeep and civic costs, and the useless half priced buildings the Organised trait comes with.

Lighthouses and Courthouses aren't useless...they're just too damned expensive for what they do for a non-Org leader. 40h Courthouses and 1/2 priced Civics is pretty damn nice. Command Posts aren't as attractive for the Amurites as they are for other civs due to the CoA xp boost to Adepts but they do come in handy for some highly promoted mundane units.

Erebus in the Balance has changed all that. As mentioned before, Valledia has now gained an extra trait, Ingenuity.



Ingenuity cuts unit upgrade costs in half, which is a big deal in FFH2. Unlike BtS, where upgrade costs are prohibitive (20 + three times hammer difference in gold)*, FFH2 allows you to nurture your best units and upgrade them when stronger units are available. So, normally, the cost to upgrade a unit in FFH2 is 5 + 2 times hammer difference. For a leader with the Ingenuity trait, the costs are basically reduced to 5 + hammer difference.

*thanks to Thoth for the correct upgrade formulas

:D NP mate.


So, for example, on Quick Speed, a 16-hammer Warrior would only cost us 19 (5 + (30-16)) gold to upgrade to an Archer.

This will allow us to do "fun stuff". :D

More later.

:D Yeah, upgrading in FFH is a fantastic way to convert Gold into Hammers even without an Ingenious Leader. With Ingenuity and the cheap cost of Axes/Archers in EitB, upgrading warriors rather than building t2 units is definitely the way to go.
 
We really don't need unanimity all the time ;). I mean I'd generally like to be on the same page, but when it's your turn, you're :king:.

Yes, I'd be fine with 2SE. So long as our early cities go toward gold - but we won't likely have Mining before we have our first settler anyway. I figure first techs ought to be Agri-Calendar, of course, but I'm much happier not picking between food and commerce techs. Still - with a start like that, please don't do Mysticism first!

Organized with the EitB changes is actually a pretty strong trait. First - Sareln balanced civics partially by adding cost - but second, that extra 3XP/unit is clutch. It'll make it straightforward for us to produce insta-mages, actually letting us leave off whichever part of the recipe hurts the most.

And I'm fine with knocking down our early turnsets a bit shorter, too. It'll just affect you and me.
 
That said, I do have another possibility for consideration: what do you think of the Plains Hill 1SE of the eastern gold?

We could found it the same turn as the 2SE site, so we don't lose anything there. It depends on the rest of the BFC, which we might learn when we move closer - but a Plains Hill start is always a good thing, gold is good, and surely 5 floodplains is enough food? If there's something nice in its BFC revealed (like rice), I'd probably go there instead. Despite needing Mining instead of Calendar for our commerce.

I guess my thinking is this: for the tiles we know, it's a somewhat weaker site. But if there's something nice in the fog, it's got the potential to be even stronger than the 2SE site, so keep your eyes open.
 
That said, I do have another possibility for consideration: what do you think of the Plains Hill 1SE of the eastern gold?

We could found it the same turn as the 2SE site, so we don't lose anything there. It depends on the rest of the BFC, which we might learn when we move closer - but a Plains Hill start is always a good thing, gold is good, and surely 5 floodplains is enough food? If there's something nice in its BFC revealed (like rice), I'd probably go there instead. Despite needing Mining instead of Calendar for our commerce.

I guess my thinking is this: for the tiles we know, it's a somewhat weaker site. But if there's something nice in the fog, it's got the potential to be even stronger than the 2SE site, so keep your eyes open.

I can see a couple of problems with that site:

No fresh water + 4 floodplains = low health cap

and

No food specials. FP are nice tiles and all, but I'd take wet corn over FP any day of the week.

The Gold can be grabbed by a second city 1 NE of the Elephants (Wet Rice, Elephants + a bunch of river tiles in the first ring, gold is in our cultural boarders with the second border pop from the Capital).

I can see at least 3/4 strong city sites just from the opening screenshot. That implies that we want a strong food/hammer capital to get those sites settled ASAP.

Then we can start thinking about who we should DOW first. :hammer:
 
Lighthouses and Courthouses aren't useless...they're just too damned expensive for what they do for a non-Org leader. 40h Courthouses and 1/2 priced Civics is pretty damn nice. Command Posts aren't as attractive for the Amurites as they are for other civs due to the CoA xp boost to Adepts but they do come in handy for some highly promoted mundane units.

I agree, but in vanilla FFH, if given the choice, people will always go for Financial, Spiritual, Philosophical, etc, because they're just plain better than Organised.

And don't give me that crap about "Financial being overrated", because I seem to recall two games where you played an Adaptive leader, and your first switch in both games was to Financial. ;)
 
That said, I do have another possibility for consideration: what do you think of the Plains Hill 1SE of the eastern gold?

We could found it the same turn as the 2SE site, so we don't lose anything there. It depends on the rest of the BFC, which we might learn when we move closer - but a Plains Hill start is always a good thing, gold is good, and surely 5 floodplains is enough food? If there's something nice in its BFC revealed (like rice), I'd probably go there instead. Despite needing Mining instead of Calendar for our commerce.

I guess my thinking is this: for the tiles we know, it's a somewhat weaker site. But if there's something nice in the fog, it's got the potential to be even stronger than the 2SE site, so keep your eyes open.

Basically, what Thoth said. Even with the forests, our city would have an initial health cap of 3, seriously hampering our growth.

And it was indeed the plan to use our capital's second border pop to grab the northern gold tile and found a city by the Rice.

Alright, I should be able to play my turns tonight, and report it as well.
 
So, I open up the right save, and dive in.

I move the Settler as agreed, and found on T1:



Ok, so Beery probably moved on T0 as well...



Too late!!

I see a Barrows!



Yeah, dead Scout. :lol:

Notice the Balseraph Borders. :eek:

The Warrior returns just in time to defeat the incoming Lizard.



Followed by another one...



And another one...



The usual 'Micro to finish build and grow at same time'



Second Warrior finished:



Second Worker started:

T20:



Mardoc, Calendar should come online just in time for Worker 1 (finishing grass farm) and Worker 2 (newly built) to put a Plantation on the Incense tile.

As for the bigger picture, we're going to have to create some Lebensraum, and with Perpentach probably about to finish that most annoying of units, Loki, I think we can all agree the Balseraphs need to go first. Let's start thinking on how to take him out early.

As for tech choice, either we go Mysticism, as there are three plains forests that are 1/3/0 tiles when running God King (and maybe waiting for Mysticism to come in before revolting to Agrarianism), or we go Crafting -> Mining (and revolt when Ag comes in).
 

Attachments

  • T20 to Mardoc.CivBeyondSwordSave
    101.1 KB · Views: 50
As for the bigger picture, we're going to have to create some Lebensraum, and with Perpentach probably about to finish that most annoying of units, Loki, I think we can all agree the Balseraphs need to go first. Let's start thinking on how to take him out early.

As for tech choice, either we go Mysticism, as there are three plains forests that are 1/3/0 tiles when running God King (and maybe waiting for Mysticism to come in before revolting to Agrarianism), or we go Crafting -> Mining (and revolt when Ag comes in).

What do you think of going Education so that we can swap into Apprenticeship/Conquest? I'd rather build ourselves 9 CI/Shock warriors than a settler, at the moment ;). We could swap back to peaceful building once we're done with Thoth-style "peaceful building".

I ought to be able to play tonight, so hopefully you guys can weigh in before I commit us to going down that path.
 
Attacking with non-bronze warriors seems like a bad idea to me.

It is a bit odd, but CI/Shock actually would give us about even odds vs unpromoted warriors fortified in a city. And we don't have any guarantee of copper, of course.

On the other hand - we have Incense, and we want Caves of Ancestors eventually - I think I'll go Mysticism. Elder Council + CoA + Religion civic will put Cevedes in good shape to knock out whatever's next, with +2 happiness/+2 bpt. Maybe we can find a mana node and take our war with skeleton spam.

Looking at the turn log - Lucian was created a while back. Also an Adventurer was born in a distant land. That lets us know two more of our foes - Grigori and Doviello.

T24 - a wolf briefly appears IBT. And we have strange smelling stuff, that's worth a lot of moolah:

Cuts a lot of time off our Mysticism ETA.

T26 - it's probably overkill, but I'm farming all the floodplains for the time being. We'll likely want to develop them into cottages later on, but it's not like the workers have much else to do at the moment.

T30 - Beeri flashes a Combat I warrior at us. Makes me glad not to be trying for the infinite warrior conquest strategy, I suppose :mischief:


T31 - We're max size, have 4 warriors, and no buildings worth considering. I start us on a settler. Want that northern Gold city!

T33 -
Beeri's playing along, he's also declared a God King this turn.

We start on Crafting. Although we'll want Exploration soon as well, Gold first!

T35 - And I'm ready to turn the civ over to the next player (Gaspar, I think). I was perhaps a bit reckless, leaving workers on Beeri's border like that, but I think he's a Good guy and will leave them alone.


The settler will be born soon, and probably ought to head north. I think I'd go for Cave of Ancestors and Elder Council next, so we can get an Academy and the extra population in Cevedes. We've got way more tiles improved than we can use, the extra population can only help.

The Save
 
I agree, but in vanilla FFH, if given the choice, people will always go for Financial, Spiritual, Philosophical, etc, because they're just plain better than Organised.

And don't give me that crap about "Financial being overrated", because I seem to recall two games where you played an Adaptive leader, and your first switch in both games was to Financial. ;)

:p Yeah, and it wasn't my first choice in either. I wanted Philo in III but couldn't afford to divert hammers away from units. Philo would have given me a better medium/long term benefit but I needed a quick no-hammers fix. (and I did take Org as my second swap). In XI my initial thinking was to Org then Cha but I'd concocted a mad scheme to get me the three GCs I wanted (4 would have been nice). And given that some of my cities were costing over 20gpt in city upkeep I'm not convinced that I made the right call. It worked out in the end, but I'd have had a stronger mid to late game economy with Org.

Financial is very, very good and it's always very, very good. Philo and Org can be very very good, but they're a bit more situational.

What do you think of going Education so that we can swap into Apprenticeship/Conquest? I'd rather build ourselves 9 CI/Shock warriors than a settler, at the moment ;). We could swap back to peaceful building once we're done with Thoth-style "peaceful building".

I ought to be able to play tonight, so hopefully you guys can weigh in before I commit us to going down that path.

Remember that the AI gets bonus exp on higher difficulty levels in addition to it's production discount and low unit upkeep costs. It might be worth gunning straight for Bronze for some cheap EitB axes and then rushing with those. Even without copper, the higher base strength and +10% city attack will give us a lot of bang for 30h.
 
Top Bottom