FFH style ALC game

Go to war with whoever has the most cottages. With Raiders trait you can easily get ~150 by pillaging a Town 4 times. The expectation would be that you are not trying to knock them out of the game this time, but simply to gain XP by opportunistic attacks and gold for more Mercs. If you think you can take a city with fewer casualties than you'll be able to buy back with its loot value, then do it. Otherwise, I've got an alternative suggestion that I'm going to link into my tech plan proposal.

Priesthood --> WotW --> Orders from Heaven --> Feudalism (optional) --> Fanaticism (maybe) --> Divination (Build Tower) --> Righteousness (probably not).

Heres my reasons - Mounted units are weak and any improvement they can be given is very valuable. Getting a couple of Stonewardens who add that permanent +10% strength bonus is nice, but not essential. It stacks well on the Aggressive trait. Confessors will be more useful as they add 1 point of strength which is closer to 1.5 given the large numbers of %age promotions Hippus troops have.

I also think Order religion is a better fit as its cheaper to research, its temples and priests have better abilities than Empyrean and it has a Mounted hero. Its also a low effort religion - it spreads fast by itself and Acolytes spreading their religion often create a free Acolyte, who can spread his religion creating a free Acoyte...

Feudalism may or may not be a useful technology. My hope is that with long wars where veteran mercs are able to pillage everything but can't take cities, is that the Hippus army will continually grow while all others will shrink and become XP fodder for the mercs. The Hippus rating on the power graph may eventually become so high that CPU players will vassalise even without the loss of their core cities. Feudalism enables vassalisation.
Additionally, Feudalism enables Royal Guards - a mounted national unit. They'll be 6/10 with Iron weapons, which will be useful but lets examine their spell. Hope adds culture and Happiness which is useful for assimilating newly captured cities. Units in the city also gain the permanent Courage promotion. A little known effect of Courage is that units heal an extra 10% per turn, which I think works even while moving (can someone confirm?). Even if mobility promoted Confessors are used to heal and Bless the Mercs, I'm sure they'll be spending some turns unsupported and doubling the heal rate in enemy territory has helped me a lot.

Fanaticism probably isn't important. Instead of getting free Acolytes when Order spreads, you start getting free Crusaders. Probably not worth the cost, but worth remembering.

Divination --> Righteousness: If the game isn't over by now, theres not been enough killing! I think researching this tech would be a waste of beakers. But given that we may have a lot of Great Engineers shortly, why not build the Tower of Divination and pop it that way? Its a Tier 4 with few pre-requisites, making it easy to rush. It has an adaquate hero and 4 very high strength city crackers.

And heres another thing - Valin Panuel should be promoted with Drill so he can get Blitz.

Additional techs probably aren't even necessary in this situation. Turn the research slider to 0% and drown the world in mercs. Start researching Feudalism so that whenever we eventually finish it any AIs left can beg for assylum from the flood.

Heres my reasons - Mounted units are weak and any improvement they can be given is very valuable. Getting a couple of Stonewardens who add that permanent +10% strength bonus is nice, but not essential. It stacks well on the Aggressive trait. Confessors will be more useful as they add 1 point of strength which is closer to 1.5 given the large numbers of %age promotions Hippus troops have.

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Don't forget you get to keep your priests should you decide to swap religions. If you intend to swap religions, be sure to churn out a number of reserve Stonewardens so they can continue to cast Shield of Faith while your Confessors (assuming you went order), casts bless.

On a separate note, religion wise, if you are going for order just to cast bless every time you attack, why not AV for ritualists to burn before you attack? It'll work just as well imo.

Empyrean for Rathas is nice if you were having trouble handling larger stacks of AI stacks. However in this case where you seem to have a tech lead in military units, its usefulness diminishes.

Tech-wise, do go for Mathematics sometime if you intend to go for the 100% gold strat. You'd want to use that huge amount of happy faces from Gambling houses to offset the War Weariness you'd be getting eventually. Also, with that high happy cap, going for AV and running Sac the Weak would allow you to rapidly hit that cap and maybe whip out buildings faster.


*edit* ahhh and that reminds me..... since you have access to iron, I'd even suggest the good old Grimoire > Manevolent designs strat with AV. Since you -already- have iron, you'd be getting the full Mardero+4*Eidolons+4*Beasts of Agares just by using the grimoire to rush M.Designs. That's more than sufficient to clear even the most hardcore cities you'd face.

Not to mention, the ol'Grimoire is merely half the hammerage of the Tower, and doesn't require you to have enough nodes to get all the necessary mana.

I'm sold on that I guess. Heres an alternative tech plan.

Priesthood --> WotW --> Corruption of Spirit --> Infernal Pact --> Fanaticism --> Malevolent designs with a Great Engineer? --> Deception (Undercouncil, Great Sage and cheap gambling houses) --> Mathematics --> Some tech that gives a civic that allows unlimited specialists.

Some new offensive magic options would be available. If Stigmata on the Unborn is built then Adepts will have Entropy magic allowing them the Rust spell which removes metal promotions from enemies. Good on the attack. The Ring of Flames of Ritualists is an old mainstay - its just plain good.

Sac the Weak + Gambling houses is something I hadn't even considered before. I'd figured Rhoanna as a better fit for Ashen Veil due to Expansive trait. Might take a while to get going but size 30 cities do have a certain appeal.

you don't really need a G.Engineer for the Grimoire, its only 400 hammers iirc. That should be only 20 turns for a decent sized city =D

Introducing AV and Hyborem into the world means we will have to deal with AC events - as well as Hyborem, who will also have access to iron. Why endure that headache? For the ability to AoE the enemy's inferior units at the price of slowing down our army? To race to a tech that will enable us to build 9 powerful but also slow units? Unless I've misjudged the state of the other AIs, we won't encounter enough resistance to warrant risking that strategy.

Introducing AV and Hyborem into the world means we will have to deal with AC events - as well as Hyborem, who will also have access to iron.

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AC events affect everyone, not only the player.
Don't forget you'd have Rust with the Stigmata if you really need to kill Hyborem. Not to mention Mardero starts with it. Hyborem is merely a younger kid brother to Mardero, which you should be starting to build once you Grimoire M.Designs--just 20 or so turns away from summoning Hyborem.

For the ability to AoE the enemy's inferior units at the price of slowing down our army?

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Str 7 mercs might be strong, but don't forget that they do not come promoted with xp from civics/buildings etc. You'd definitely appreciate having some form of pseudo-siege in the form of Ritualists to crack the more heavily fortified cities--for eg. those hill cities with archers behind walls (which can be pretty common by midgame)
No one is saying you'd need to slow your army down to accommodate the ritualists--your horsemen can still continue pillaging the countryside for gold while your ritualists march for the core cities.

To race to a tech that will enable us to build 9 powerful but also slow units?

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Same as above. Use them to crack the core cities. Besides, Mardero already starts with movement 2 and there's nothing stopping you from grabbing mobility promos to keep up with the ritualists. In fact I'd consider Eidolons very mobile since they start with March and doesn't require you to heal on tiles to regenerate str.

Priesthood>WotWicked>Corruption of Spirit>Infernal Pact>Fanaticism = 116 Mercenaries

Even catapults will be unnecessary to crack core cities.

Right, i left off the mini update with the discovering of trading. I had a look around to see what was on offer and traded for RoK, masonry, fishing and a little later hunting and philio. In the mean time i tech to within one turn of finishing construction then converted to RoK so i could research acrete when i had finished construction. While i was teching acrete a capured a barb city which i gave to the lanun, who by the way, have split into two civs.

As soon as i finished acrete i fliped to acrete and started on the mines, which thanks to the GEng only took 8 turns and i started on currency for the Go9.

While currency was teching away i was producing horsemen then chariots and sending them off to find barbs and bears to kill for XP. Most died but i few made it to earn a few promotions. Also i captured cahir abbey, which i kept for a commerce city. I earnt a second Geng from the mines which i put aside for the Go9. currency finish. I started the Go9 and completed it in one turn thanks to the GEng. i than waiting two turns to let the capital finish the lib i was building, and saved.

So, the current situation is this:
Me, the malakim and amuruites are RoK
the Lanun, perpantach and Alexis are OO
and the Ljosalfar are empy the rest have no state religion as yet.

Alexis is furious at me (-11), but is at war with the malakim. auric, charadon and perpantach are annoyed with me. Penty has been teching war techs, and is in WHEOOH, but hates Varn more than me.

As i have said before we have 9 ironed mercs, 2 chariots, a horseman, Carroc and a monk called Cadfael. to war with.

Tech wise i was thinking WotW -> Honor -> maths -> Stirrups -> Smelting(can be'd GEng) -> IW -> Warhorses then work my way up the arcane or religious lines. The tech sider is at 60% with +15 in the green.

Heres my final answer.

Priesthood --> WotW --> Orders from Heaven --> Feudalism (optional)

The first 3 are cheap, so won't delay you from Mercing for too long. The last will enable you to win the game faster. I would only research Feudalism after defeating your immediate neighbours. Its easy to hold territory close to you, but holding territory far is better left to vassals.

Mu'min said:

[...] the lanun, who by the way, have split into two civs.

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Ug. Make sure you don't have any important units next to water when you go to war with either of them; war will incite one to cast Raging Seas, and the other will probably cast theirs immediately for the synergy. 2x Raging Seas is nasty.

Your expansion is based on the strength of your economy and one of the best ways to improve that is by spreading RoK to your cities and building the temple. The temple gives gold and lets you run another merchant. On marathon the best way to do that by building a stonewarden (costs 240 hammers) and using him to build the 360 hammer temple and spread the religion at the same time. So I think you need to research Priesthood next and spread RoK and temples to all cities.

Stonewardens are a great way to boost your troops and heal them as well even if you switch religions later. Although, I would stick with RoK and Arete as two strong economic civics. Your military strategy is based around the mounted mercenary and that needs gold. Running merchants with spare food will help finance expansion and with 20% boost from Arete could produce a few GMs in the long run.

Ok how about: WotW -> Honor -> Priesthood -> Orders from Heaven -> maths -> Stirrups -> Smelting(can be'd GEng) -> IW -> Warhorses -> Feudalism

I tech to honor to take advantage of the fact it has spread to most of our cities, build temples and start on a Gprophet, while that is working away, i tech priesthood and produce stonewardens. When the Gprophet comes along i flip to empy to build the shrine for the extra . At Maths i build the bazaar of mammon. Stirrups will open up horsearchers, and when OfH has spread enough i could flip to that as well to build another shrine with a Gprophet.

Well, you could, but whats the point? You've won. You can create enough mercenaries NOW to destroy the world, so why delay it by researching useless techs? The only useful techs now are those that speed up the win either by increasing the power of Mercs (Priesthood + Order) or fiddle the Victory conditions (Feudalism).

Honor is sub-optimal. You don't need temples.
Maths might be good for Gambling houses if you were playing an extremely long game, but for a significant tech cost and 200 hammers/city, its quicker to just spam Mercs.
Smelting is useless.
Iron Working gets you the Champion unit, or you could buy ~30ish Mercs instead.
Warhorses must cost in the region of 60 Mercs.
Stirrups is a useless tech. Chariots are better.

I don't see why you are researching WotW and Honor. You don't want to adopt Empyrean do you? The ratha is nice but not necessary for you to win, that will mostly be achieved with mounted mercenaries used en-masse. Tough cities can be softened by catapults to reduce defences and some collateral and the rest is a breeze.

You can't build Dies Diei yet anyway, since you don't have a GProphet. Besides that it only gives +1 gold per city which is peanuts. And the Empyrean temples provide +10% research just when you effectively want to stop research and accumulate gold to buy more mounted mercenaries . So you don't need to research Honor in the near future, so you don't need WotW either at the moment.

Just research Priesthood. That lets you build Stonewardens, which are a major boost to what you want to do. They, can heal your troops and boost them +10% with shield of faith. Other stonewardens can spread RoK and build the temple for 240 hammers. Each city will then give +1 gold for RoK and +2 gold for the temple and +2 happy (when you get those gems). If the city has 6 spare food (and most do) then you'll be able to run 3 merchants (temple, market and moneychanger) for another 9 gold plus 3 from market, giving 15 gold and with +25% this becomes 18.75 gold. That is without any commerce or the gold slider and is enough to buy another mounted merc every 5 turns

Well i been playing out the next round.

It started well. I wiped out the illians, pillaged every tile and burnt all their cities down. Then i moved on to to devio and started to give them the same treatment, but thanks to all the cities i was burning plus the balphs founding and spreading AV like it was confetti, the AC was nudging 30, so the last few devio cities i had to keep and gift to the ljosalfar, while at home i was franticly build health buildings.

Then i went after the dragon. At at the cost of 3 mercs and a wounded chariot, Carroc killed him off, Morkka died too, eariler while i was pillaging all the tiles.

Then the blight hit. Arrrrgh! blight is a b*^%h. Half my cities starved down to 1 pop, and were still being hammered by unhealthyness. The rest lost at least a third of their pops. At least one city had on the turn blight hit 50 faces. I had to max out the gold slider and buy health buildings to try and limit the damage.

So, now not much is happening. i got 3-4 cities with reasonable build times, my best hammer city can produce a chariot in 17 turns, compared to about half that before blight hit. I took out the lanun for extra cash. Most build times are in the 100's turns still. Basically im just waiting for my cities to recover before i start buying mercs and building units again. I wil post again when things start moving again. And i tech feudalism and the amurites and malakim vassaled to me straight away, so only 3 civs left now.