FFH style ALC game

Thats cute and all, but there can be 2 bronze warriors for every horseman, hammer-wise. Theres also nothing worth pillaging in the early game and given that the cities you're taking will become core cities, its only hurting yourself anyway. Withdrawal is nice, but is in no way necessary. Surviving fights? If you can't throw away your units on a murderous whim then you clearly haven't built enough of them.

heisenberg said:

I'm not exactly sure if going straight for horseback for horsemen really synergizes with the religion. I was never quite a fan of horsemen, even with the horselord trait.
Horsemen doesn't quite bring out the "highlights" of RoK imo besides the gold flow.

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Senethro said:

Why even bother with Horsemen? Why not just get Axemen, promote them with City Raider, then upgrade them to Chariots?

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That's true, but I don't suggest that we go after RoK. Granted, that would enable early Iron and synergize with Axemen/Chariots. However, it would delay access to a high-mobility army, which I think is a mistake for a Raider civ.

I suggest getting Horseback Riding and Stirrups before going after a religion. HR does give access to Horsemen, but more importantly it gives access to Mobility I. If our army goes the Horse Archer route then Iron will be unimportant, and there will be no need to detour to pick up religion techs before horse techs.

Also, I prefer Horse Archers over Chariots because of their superior defense; Chariots require defenders to protect them from counterattack (when fighting similar opponents, at least) because of their lower defense. Horse Archers in that situation fare better on the defense. This is important for an attack force or raiding party, because Chariots will be slowed down by the need to stay with better defenders. A raiding party of Horse Archers can move at full horse + Mobility II + Commando speed though enemy territory and will be more capable on the defense when counterattacked.

If we don't need to get Mines of Gal-Dur for iron then we don't need to follow RoK; the gold bonus is nice, to be sure, but I agree with the suggestion that we should aim for Order. Bless will be a nice boost, and the maintenance reduction of Basillicas will end up being a bigger economic gain than the gold from RoK (if the empire ends up as large as I expect it to become).

heisenberg said:

Rushing for Trade then going for Construction both lets you build Chariots/Rathas and to let you spread your farms through the fresh-waterless south if you go Aristofarms.

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Aristocracy is very effective, of course, but I think City States is the way we should go. There is a great deal of room around for expansion, and we are planning to rush the only obvious competition for it. With Rohanna I'd say Aristocracy would be the way to go; as Tasunke we won't be getting a third on those farms so it is less attractive.

Construction won't be necessary if we don't need to spam farms and aren't going to use Chariots, so we can put it off for quite a while. That will deny us Catapults, but I suggest that we don't need them for now. Research Cartography, adopt City States, and build Pact of the Nilhorn. The Stooges can be promoted with Mobility I, Combat IV, and then Commando. Once this is achieved they will be dramatically faster than Catapults, which can slow a Hippus offensive to a crawl. Once we eventually get Catapults they can be used for collateral damage, but while they are moving to a new city a Stooge (with defensive support) can have run ahead and already be reducing the city's defenses.

heisenberg said:

Str 4 horsemen doesn't really cut it at around Emperor and above

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Ah, but this game is on Prince.

Senethro said:

there can be 2 bronze warriors for every horseman, hammer-wise.

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I agree that building Horsemen is generally a waste. The aim should be to get to Stirrups and Horse Archers very quickly; Horseback Riding is a necessary stepping-stone to reach that goal. We might build a few Horsemen to have a mobile defense force, but building more would be a waste. We should stick with building Warriors and upgrade them directly to Horse Archers.

when I suggested Horseback Riding I wasn't clear on how I use it. In a Horsemen rush I use horsemen as catapults to soften defenders and have Mobility I melee units finish the job. The Mobility I becomes the real boon. Also, getting the horsemen ranked up allows you to upgrade them when you get stirrups. Generally speaking though I concur with the others that horsemen are not a good "backbone" military unit. I just find them more useful than catapults since I despise one move units.

Remember, not all xp comes from killing enemy civs. A lot, especially in the early game, comes from killing barbs. I usually have one salient or border that is a barb attack engine. In my current game I have at least half a dozen horse-based units that are very powerful now in the later mid-game because they got an early start killing barbs on the border. Many of them are now over 100xp and even though they aren't strong enough to take out a well defended city by themselves, they are plenty strong enough to assist once the defenders are Chalid-fried and fire-balled to a mushy softness. Horsemen can upgrade to chariots and horsearchers when the time comes both more. I usually upgrade the first three on a horse unit to buff strength; then the next two or three go to buff the retreat factor. This is the investment protector and its importance cannot be overstated (imho). A lightning fast attack that even when it fails succeeds at weakening your opponent is handy if your stack-mage was preoccupied casting something other than fireball or maelstrom, and you can pull your retreating camel-archer or ratha back to the safety of the stack and your five-star priests for quick healing in the field, well, that's just a sweet good feeling.

Also, shock promoted, 5-star mages are pretty useful, too. It's like they have a free blitz promotion and sometimes all you need are enough warm bodies to take out the last three mutilated city-defenders. But, I digress...

Alot happened in this round.

This round lasted from turn 112 and lasted all the way through to turn 305.

The tech path for this round was: AChants -> BW -> AH -> Fstivals -> Mysticism -> Archery -> Carto -> horseriding -> Started Ed.

following on from the end of the last round. I decided to warrior rush Os gabella. I quickly built 6 extra warriors, while my northern warroir came down from the north to spy on gabella's borders. I was happy to see that she only had 2 warriors guarding the capital. That decided it for me, i stop building warriors and switched to a worker / settler build pattern for rexing. I gathered up all 9 of my spare warriors and marched on her capital. On turn 138 i declared war, 2 turns later she was dead. She offered no resistance as i marched up and i was soon at the capital, where she had 2 warriors, a scout, a worker and 2 slaves. To my horror, i saw that she was on a hill, but what the hell, I attacked anyway. My odds started at 0.1% but got better. The first two warriors died, the third killed a warrior, the forth also died to a scout, the rest won and Graveholm was mine. And it was a very nice city - 4 FP, gold and wine with the mine and winery already built. And a settled bard.


While all this was going on my scout had succeeded in moving east past the gorilla's and found the Doviello, lead by Charadon, he also found 2 goody huts which gave gold and a map, unfortunately at that point Charadon's borders popped and the scout got stuck behind his border until Carto. I also made contact with the Calabim(turn146)

and Lojosalfar(turn167)


Around turn 170 someone completed the Samheim, which can only be completed by the illians, so bit of a in-game spoiler, as i hadn't met them yet. And all of a sudden frostling's started appearing and attacking as well a stream of lizardmen from the north, which prevented me from developing the area north of graveholm. In response i chopped a trainning yard in graveholm and started on axemen, not what i wanted to do with this city as i wanted it to produce workers and warriors, while the capital produced settlers.

A few turns later i got this news:

i assume it was the frostling's.

Anyway, progress on improvements, esspecialy the road linking graveholm, was slow, as the workers kept on having to run away from everything. Got the roads linked up and produced an axeman just in time it seemed. In turn 224 my axeman had just killed the closest lizard and destroyed the ruin. when i heard:

Close on the heels of that, in turn 226, this warning came:

Great i thought! Orthus's axe! Now where is he? Followed the little arrow only yo find that he was 3 tiles away from my southern city! I rushed all spare warrior's to the city and capital. While my axe, which was the only unit that i had that had a hope of defeating him, rushed down from the far north. Luckily, orthus decided to chill out in the hills, south of the capital, for a few turns and as my axe came down i got a event which gave him an enchanted blade. I attacked orthus with 2 warriors, who performed their duty as cannon fodder well, and injured orthus enough for my axe to kill. In honor of his deeds i renamed the unit Carroc the Brave.

After that things got a bit more peaceful, i built more axes which kept the barbs at bay, teched festival and mysticism and started building markets and eldar councils in my cities. Teched archery for the lumbermills. Got Carto. and opened borders and swapped maps with everyone except the calabim who didn't like me.
In turn 281 Acheron was created, he is out east on the other side of the devio. Loki was created. And Carroc found an Eccestiastic in a ruin. Who i sent to the capital. I teched Horse riding, because i wanted some fast units to finish exploring the map, and started on Ed. I finished the round founding Empyeam in the capital.
Sorry my srceenshots don't seem to be working at the moment so no state of the world pics.

Basically, i have 7 cities, the capital, graveholm, 2 in the spots north of the capital, one next to the mirror of heaven, one 1north of the two dyes to the south of the capital and the most recent between the banana's and silk by the end of the river that goes past the capital. There is two spots left in the first ring of cities - one to the east on the coast to grap the tomb and one to the SW near to the jungle. Our closest neighbours are the Calabim to the south and the Devio to the east. The other civs in the game are: Perentach (just ahead of me in all fields except score), Calabim, Devio, the lojosalfar, malakim, illians, luchuirp, armuites and lanun. the last two i haven't met yet.

We have founded empy. and got a Gengineer in the cap. im not sure what to do with him. im teching Ed. for cottaging the cap and maybe graveholm. Hunting will give us one more to the happy cap. and the science slider is at 60%. Im building the brewery house in the cap. for the happy resources and income.

If you need to know anything else let me know. and if the screen shot start working again i will post some pics.

So where to next?
Im thinking we need some vertical growth, that should allow us to plug those two city spots in our first ring of cities. After that we will need to tech trade or currency and maybe flip to city states for more cities and the next round of rexing. Currency will also give the Go9 and CoL is on its way to Currency. So should i go Ed -> CoL -> Currency -> Writing -> Masonry -> Contruction -> Trade. What about KotE and hunting? we will need some adepts with something to stop fear if we are to go after the dragon.

thanks

7 cities is good but AH -> Fstivals -> Mysticism -> Archery -> Carto -> horseriding were mostly wastes of time. Whats your tech income right now? You're going to get away with it at unmodded Prince AI, but now you haven't left enough time to build cottages and have them mature before the mid-game arrives. Given that an AristoFarm economy can be set up instantly, it is now your best option for gold income. Alternatively, you can just raze every new city you capture.

If you've got a GE from whatever then the most obvious thing to do with it is the Mines of Galdur. You get to keep them even after switching away from Kilmorph.

So my short to mid term reccommendations are to tech Code of Laws, Sanitation, Arete, KotE, Currency, Trade, Orders from Heaven, Priesthood, Sorcery via Elementalism. I imagine your armies as looking like Blessed Iron Chariots + Mounted Mercenaries, support columns of mobility promoted Iron Axemen, Confessors and Maelstrom Mages. (Alternatively, fireball mages if you can get enoug mana nodes.) The support would allow healing of mounted units and some city cracking ability.

Note that the above technologies are all relatively cheap, except for maybe Trade and Currency. The late Education may mean your economy is about to enter a lean phase, but this tech plan allows you to field Tier 3 units without having to do much waiting. Indeed, Blessed Iron Mounted Mercenaries may be strong enough and cheap enough such that you turn the science slider to 0 and win the game through numbers of units.

Other things to do with the GrEng:

build a mage guild in one city and rush build Catacomb Libralus. You have a high enough number of mana nodes in your immediate area to warrant this, imho. Three air for Maelstrom mages; three fire for Fireball-mages; two/three body for haste/regeneration mages; all three very useful warmongering mages; body adepts especially useful to keep up with the horses. Building adepts, teaching some of them inspiration and planting them in every city in your core area helps in three ways: the immediate effects are to add to the research level during a slower research period and act as a back-up defender of the city; the later payoff is all that time casting their spell earns the adepts experience that they can then turn, when the time is right, into instant mages with whatever kick-ass skills you've readied for them. You need a mind node for inspiration; but you will also have scorch from the sun mana of the Mirror, earth mana from the Stones, and sanctify from life mana from Sucellus. Sun mana also buffs Chalid , the Empyrean hero, +2 per node.

Build three libraries and then the great library in your best research city.


I would also expand to include the Yggdrasil and Pool of Tears.

I don't get the magic system. What difference does it make wherever i have one or two or three of the same mana type?

The More mana you have, the easier it is to get the spells of that sphere. If you have 2 Nodes of a certain type, all your adepts get the appropriate promotion for that sphere for free. For example, if I have two fire nodes, all my adepts get Fire I for free. This lets you save promotions for other effects, like spell extension, twincast, or Combat I-V.

rushing Catatomb on Hippus isn't exactly that effective imo.
Maelstrom etc is useful eventually, but to go down to Sorc on a non-Arcane civ isn't as effective as... say construction for cats beaker-wise.
Furthermore, you don't really have that many cities to really need to be able to build adepts out of, so maybe just a mage guild in one city just to produce a few adepts should suffice.

I'll agree with Senethro's comment on the tech path chosen. Its best to get Edu earlier to set up your economy if you were headed towards Cottage + City States.

Gal-Dur is still one of the best wonders to rush out early with the G.Engineer. But personally I don't really think its worth sinking the beakers into 2 religious techs if you aren't going to follow it.
But if you do go RoK+Gal-Dur, you should at some point in time hit either Currency to build the Go9, or Trade+Construction for chariots. Both of which gives you access to stronger units which can best utilize the Iron.

The other wonder to rush would of course be the Go9 itself. Hit Currency, and rush it. You'd be able to use your Bronze Mounted Mercs much earlier that way--probably >75 turns before you see Ironed chariots or mercs the RoK path.

I'd actually still strongly recommend going for Empy, even more so now that you have the holy IN your capital. Apart from my previous arguments for Empy (Rathas), now you have the optimal city to place your Bazaar'o Mammon in~

Tech-wise, I'd suggest:
Empy path: Edu > CoL (start farming!) > Sani > Currency (Rush Go9) > Trade > Construction (spread irrigation+Chariot+Cats) > Honor (Empy)

RoK route: Edu > CoL (start aristofarming) > Sani > RoK > Arete (rush Gal-dur) > Currency (start building Go9) > Trade.

Since you have already done festivals, you can always do Drama in place of Sanitation if you are pretty sure no one else has done it already (no great bards has appeared), then use the G.bard to bulb Sani (so no one else gets that bard).

Mages are useful since they are more mobile than Cats I'd agree, so if you want to use them you'd want to hit KoTE after the core econ techs are done, and churn some out to farm some XP. That said, I still do find that going for Sorcery wouldn't give you that city-cracking edge that early, or as much (since you can easily build out 10+ cats).

This area contains a very large proportion of flat plains. I think Aristocracy is a mistake. If it is combined with Agrarianism then productivity will be hurt by the lost ; without Agrarianism growth rate & city size will be hurt by the lost . If you expand to fill up your peacefully available space (which I think you should) then much of the benefit of Aristocracy will be lost to higher maintenance costs.

I recommend settling the 8th city a little distance from the capitol (near Yggdrasil, for example). Build order should be Monument>Market>Summer Palace. No matter which government civic you end up using it will be advantageous to finish the SP as soon as possible, for the sake of maintenance reduction.

Since you got the lucky break with Empyrean that changes things militarily. It's worth using Chariots supported by Rathas instead of Horse Archers, since we will want to get to Honor quickly anyway for the sake of forced religion spread and temple construction capability. That means you'll want access to Iron, and that puts the Mines of Gal-Dur back as a useful goal - especially now that you have a GEng waiting to build it instantly. A detour through RoK will use up some research, but will pay off in extra and early access to Iron.

A priest specialist should be made in two of the cities, as soon as possible, so that a first and second GProphet can begin brewing. Two holy city wonders with both religions spread to all our cities will pay off quite well for a large empire.

I recommend researching Education>Way of the Earthmother>Arete>Code of Laws>Writing>Trade>Masonry>Construction>Philosophy>Way of the Wise>Honor. Farm flat grasslands & FP, cottage flat plains, mine hills. Adopt RoK at WotE, spread the faith and build temples in all cities. Use the GEng to buy the Mines at Arete. At Honor switch to Empyrean, spread it and build temples.

Since this path will require us to research Construction anyway, for access to Chariots, we will have Catapults available. As a result, building Pact of Nilhorn can be low-priority or skipped entirely.

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Catacomb Libralis is nice, but I think because of the situation in this game it will be better to use the GEng on the Mines of Gal-Dur.

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If we had a GMerc to lightbulb currency then I could see going straight for GotN. Since we don't it will take a while to research. We could try to produce one, but I think a couple of GProphets will be a better long-term investment. I do think that we should build GotN, but not as our top priority. Going after RoK & the Mines will be faster, and early access to Iron will also benefit Mounted Mercenaries when we get them.

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Edit: Added in green changes to reflect the high cost of building Rathas.

The original thought I think many of us had was something more along the lines of City States w/ Markets and Temples of Kilimorph and a literally massive empire. That got lost though as people looked past it and started talking about the Mines of Gal-Dur and other build ideas.

For the record, I also recommended the FIRST settled city be between the pool of tears and Yggdrasil.

Anyway, my recommendation is for you to push towards ROK and focus on getting out your first (or next) GP as a Priest instead of sage so you can build the Tablets of Bambur in the city that gets holy city for RoK. After that, get horseback riding just so you can have a few mobile defenders on patrol as you send out settlers like there is no tomorrow. I wouldn't even think about mobilizing a military force until you hit 15-20 cities.

Really you can do a four city strategy to churn things along. Best production will be on settlers (alternate with defenders so you can continue to grow if not at cap), another will be on defenders, another (capped out) will be on workers, and a final one should quickly get a temple of kilimorph up and push out thanes to spread RoK to new cities.

With city states and RoK, Temple of Kili, and a market in the city, the economy will be stable throughout the REX and very strong after the REX.

Good luck!

Emptiness said:

This area contains a very large proportion of flat plains. I think Aristocracy is a mistake. If it is combined with Agrarianism then productivity will be hurt by the lost ; without Agrarianism growth rate & city size will be hurt by the lost . If you expand to fill up your peacefully available space (which I think you should) then much of the benefit of Aristocracy will be lost to higher maintenance costs.

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Theres nothing that forces an Aristofarm player to put farms on plains. They can have cottages as well. There are however enough grassland and flood plains tiles and enough fresh water sources to make it worthwhile. As for maintenance costs, I rarely find them significant enough to be worth building Courthouses for, and on Prince the extra income from farms will certainly be more valuable than the maintenance costs on 7 cities that aren't even size 10 yet.

I recommend settling the 8th city a little distance from the capitol (near Yggdrasil, for example). Build order should be Monument>Market>Summer Palace. No matter which government civic you end up using it will be advantageous to finish the SP as soon as possible, for the sake of maintenance reduction.

Since you got the lucky break with Empyrean that changes things militarily. It's worth using Rathas instead of Horse Archers, since we will want to get to Honor quickly anyway for the sake of forced religion spread and temple construction capability. That means you'll want access to Iron, and that puts the Mines of Gal-Dur back as a useful goal - especially now that you have a GEng waiting to build it instantly. A detour through RoK will use up some research, but will pay off in extra and early access to Iron.

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Its never worth using Rathas as a backbone unit, they cost 180 hammers. They're a support unit.

If we had a GMerc to lightbulb currency then I could see going straight for GotN. Since we don't it will take a while to research. We could try to produce one, but I think a couple of GProphets will be a better long-term investment. I do think that we should build GotN, but not as our top priority. Going after RoK & the Mines will be faster, and early access to Iron will also benefit Mounted Mercenaries when we get them.

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Just to add to this, since Merc are built with gold, not hammers, they detract from your economy. Committing too early too mercs might stifle the tech rate.

Its never worth using Rathas as a backbone unit, they cost 180 hammers. They're a support unit.

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Yep. That's why you should hit construction first for chariots, with Rathas later to bind down opposing stacks.

Aristocracy maintenance can easily support up to 10+ cities before its actually worth starting to build courthouses in the larger far-flung ones. An additional 1-2 maintenance cost per city (compared to C.States) is easily offset by the additional commerce from farm tiles.

Not much to say. I guess you have developt well, but a screen of your current holdings may give us some insight. I have only played ljosalfs sofar so i'm looking foward to this. /d

I like some of the other ideas expressed here for an overall strategy. I think way of the Earthmother, Arete to build Mines of Gal-Dur is a good way to go; then push on to Honor. However, at some point after Arete get KotE and begin building some adepts to take advantage of your abundant mana. Perhaps dedicate one of your cities to build the mage guild and adepts until sufficiently supplied; build a mind node first (research divination (?)) so that your adepts can cast inspiration and add to research. Since this game is at a relatively low difficulty level your game does not need to be optimal in order to dominate; so don't be afraid to try out some different things.

The only suggestion I haven't seen someone else make is to send someone out to the Yggdrasil build spot to fogbust so that the barbs don't build a sub-prime city of their own there.

Senethro said:

Theres nothing that forces an Aristofarm player to put farms on plains. They can have cottages as well.

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Very true. I guess I'm used to the idea of Aristograrian farming lots of tiles, rather than relatively few tiles. Personally, I think that the extra food from non-Aristo farms will be more beneficial in terms of city growth. A cottage only takes 30 turns to equal an Aristo farm's output, and more food from non-Aristo farms means additional cottages worked sooner. The actual difference may not be that great, however. I think that because of the game situation we will do fine either way we go. I prefer sticking with City States because I envision us growing very large quite rapidly. If we end up going with Aristocracy it won't kill us; we will just need to keep a closer eye on expansion rate.

Senethro said:

Its never worth using Rathas as a backbone unit, they cost 180 hammers. They're a support unit.

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Excellent point. I didn't realize they were so expensive.

I've updated my post with changes based on this information.

Emptiness said:

Very true. I guess I'm used to the idea of Aristograrian farming lots of tiles, rather than relatively few tiles. Personally, I think that the extra food from non-Aristo farms will be more beneficial in terms of city growth. A cottage only takes 30 turns to equal an Aristo farm's output, and more food from non-Aristo farms means additional cottages worked sooner. The actual difference may not be that great, however. I think that because of the game situation we will do fine either way we go. I prefer sticking with City States because I envision us growing very large quite rapidly. If we end up going with Aristocracy it won't kill us; we will just need to keep a closer eye on expansion rate.

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There have been threads and threads on this. In those 30 turns until the cottage equals an Aristofarm, the extra food from the aristofarm will allow the city to work an extra tile sooner. If that tile is also an aristofarm, then it'll have an even bigger headstart.

The first aristofarm doesn't have a great advantage over the first cottages, but the fifth one has a huge headstart that will be difficult to make up before a victory condition is met. The cottage player could use regular farms to keep his growth steady, but then he isn't working cottage tiles and so they will take longer to catch up.

A caveat: The happycap needs to be high for Aristofarming to work. If population growth catches up to happycap, then the headstart will begin to close. Public baths are necessary, Temples and Religion civic is advisable, happiness resources are a priority. Currency, Consumption and Markets may be a good match in this Hippus game.

Sorry my screenshots are still on the blink, i can take them but they come up just black, maybe its my settings...

Seems like most of you are saying go RoK and aristofarming -> then Honor and empy.

Shall i try going: Ed.(15) -> RoK(31) -> CoL(25) -> Arete(50) -> Sani(42) -> Currency(70) -> Hunting(30 we need to expand north) -> Writing(30) -> Trade(30) -> Philo(20) -> WotW(22) -> Honor(55)

The numbers are the turns it will take to tech at the current tech level, hopefully these numbers will fall as i build up the cities.

For city placement please refer to Feyd post #49 p.3 and my description at the end of the last update. My existing cities are where indicated on his maps and my future cities as well except for the Yggdrasil one, which im going to put 1N from Yggdrasil, on the coast.

I had considered that Yggdrasil location, but I opted for the +3 happy from the Pool of Tears.

I understand that placement though.

Oh... and you can post a save instead of a screenie someone else could then post the screenshots as needed.