FFH - A Shadow Introduction

[Ozbenno]

Let's see about bringing the armageddon (without crashes I hope).

I played 3 of the longest turns I have ever played. Unfortunately the hell terrain does not make this game very enjoyable.

We lost one city (abandoned) to Hyborem and one to the Avatar of Wrath. The question is...

Take it or not?



The city in question is possibly doomed anyway. All our arcane units are down south working on Jonas. I feel we should and continue the war on the rest of the AI and look at Hyborem later. If we continue on I'll probably abandon the city in question and try and get some troops up north and continue the fight. Eventually we should prevail (will take a long time though).

I now know why I've never let the AC get this high before. Once is enough.

[darrelljs]

Let the maggot have his city. He'll get his later.

Darrell

Originally Posted by Ozbenno

I now know why I've never let the AC get this high before. Once is enough.

Just out of curiosity, what's the tactic for dropping the AC when you have this many evil civs in the game? Razing AV cities?

Darrell

[Ozbenno]

I've managed to play 10 turns.

The good news. The AC hit 100



and we got peace with Hyborem.

The bad news, Rosier the Fallen and most of our troops were destroyed by the Apocolypse and Auric and Capria declared on us right same IBT

Two good things about the apocolypse, the lag on my PC disappeared due to lack of alive units I assume and it equally affected everyone else. Our southern army was less affected and was easily able to raze two more of Jonas' cities. We should be able to quickly mop up down here and continue the war.



Our economy is completely tanked but as we have already hit AC=100, we can raze all cities now and should be able to see it out.

I have a few troops heading to the north (no experienced ones). We may be able to continue on with Auric.

[Ozbenno]

How about a roster? uberfish, once most everyone's units died in the armagedeon, I found the lag to be much reduced. Do you want to give it a go? Otherwise, stuge would be up.


Roster:
Ozbenno
uberfish - possibly UP
stuge - also possibly UP
darrelljs
Morganknight
Conroe

[uberfish]

Lag is still rather bad, but playing a few turns now.

[uberfish]

Lag started getting worse as both Hyborem and ourselves started rebuilding units, so I played 6 turns before running into a stopping point. I'll have to go back on autoskip unfortunately.

The apocalypse seems more of a penalty for being evil than anything else. Not only was our economy wrecked, many of our best units died:



Dis is up to 80+ population now, so it looks like this is going to end with a final showdown between Hyborem and ourselves for control of hell-on-earth.

I revolted us into agriculture/aristocracy which helped the economy and switched some of the various military builds to Adepts so we can rebuild our conjurer crew. We have one 5* conjurer, too bad he can only summon crappy units like Azers which seem to lose to everything. So I decided to spend half our banked cash on finishing Ethereal Call and upgrading him to Eater of Dreams. The free promotions on eater got him up to Spectres and after 4 more XP we'll have wraiths. We are also getting a free demon every 1-2 turns from our planar gates, so our military rebuild is going faster than our enemies.

we got an event:



A demon lord offering you his daughter is probably a bad thing. But hey, we're evil anyway. In game terms we got another free demon, which is an 8 str succubus with the Charm Person spell.

Now for the main problem



We marched up to Jonas' coastal cities only to find that they are now on fire (sigh...) and we can't attack them. Funny how no one in the city seems to be bothered by the fire. So we either have to wait around for the fires to go out temporarily, or get elementalism and convert a node we don't have particular need for to Water so we can move adepts around to put the fires out. I've been sending spectres out to pillage towns, so that our army pays for itself at least.

Auric won't negotiate but Jonas will pay us off with tech for peace if we want.

By the way, 1 move units suck, any unit that's going to be used for offence and has base movement 1 really should be promoted to mobility 1.

[Ozbenno]

Thanks uberfish! I'll put you on skip again.

It's odd (given the stated goal of the Sheaim) that there isn't a special AC=100 victory just for them. We'll just have to claim it as a moral victory.

Roster:
Ozbenno
uberfish - skipped with lag
stuge - UP
darrelljs - On Deck
Morganknight
Conroe

[Madtown]

Lurker:

Just the mere fact that you guys have made it to armageddon speaks volumes towards the skill and dedication of this team. I know I usually quit by this point.

Props!

[stuge]

I opened the save and tried playing a couple of turns but the lag is too bad. It was manageable when building a diseased corpse was the highpoint of action but warfare is just no-no.

[Ozbenno]

Well, dare I say it (especially after Madtown's kind comments ), do we want to continue? stuge and uberfish can't play with all the hellfire, I'm marginal as well. Not sure how well Conroe, darrell and Morganknight's systems were handling it.

So, those who can keep at it or start a new game that doesn't have the goal of lagging everyone's systems ???

I must admit that the lag and general look of the hellfire everywhere made my last turn not that enjoyable.

[stuge]

There are still lots of cities to raze, a major PITA with a crippled army and a crippled empire.

We already brought the Armageddon around, how can it get more final than that? The game should end when the world ends, right?

Or, to put it another way, I'm itching for a new game.

[darrelljs]

My machine was handling it okay, but the turns were long and a bit painful. I generally like to play 'em out, but with two players down and out it is better to move on.

Darrell

[uberfish]

Really, I think we would be able to play it out to domination without any significant military challenge being put up by the AI. It's a shame that the lag is preventing us from enjoying the endgame, but I'd be happy to just call this a moral victory based on our original roleplaying goals and move on.

Shall I download the latest patch and roll us up a new start?

[Slvynn]

I have idea for terraforming :
Play as LAnun on Lakes map, Low water LVl and terraform Land into Water with using pirate ports :P

[Ozbenno]

Originally Posted by uberfish

Shall I download the latest patch and roll us up a new start?

I think so. I agree we've had a moral victory and we would have gotten a domination win in this one.

For anyone else interested in a FfH SG, we can either start up a second game using the same map uberfish rolls up, or a completely different game. Someone going to volunteer to run this second game???

[Ozbenno]

I was also going to suggest if anyone is able to grab this in the near future, post a got it and play as many turns as you can. I may do so tonight before loading up the new patch.

[darrelljs]

Originally Posted by Ozbenno

I was also going to suggest if anyone is able to grab this in the near future, post a got it and play as many turns as you can. I may do so tonight before loading up the new patch.

If you can get us down to two opponents remaining, I'll finish it off . uberfish, better put me at the back of the roster for the new one, just in case!

Darrell

P.S. Morganknight/Conroe, this is assuming you guys aren't wanting to play anymore turns...if not maybe we can take one pass through the remaining roster and let everyone finish off an AI?

[Ozbenno]

I just noticed as well that patch "L" is probably going to be released soon (has exploding pyre zombies ). We may want to wait until that is released before starting the new one.

I'll see if I can make any progress tonight darrell with this game (unless anyone else wants to have a shot in the next 6 hours).

[uberfish]

ok, here's the proposed setup for the next one

Paradise Regained

Difficulty: Immortal
Size: Standard, 6AI
Civ: Thessa/Ljosalfar
Map: Wherever I can find some crappy start with few if any trees. I'll find something or maybe just manually deforest a Fractal or something using the world builder and put myself late in the player rotation. FFH likes to put elves in the middle of a forest but that's not what we actually want here.

objective: Turn the barren lands back into the green and forested paradise they once were.

[Ozbenno]

Oasis might be a good option with few trees, but I think you may end up having to WB the start regardless.

Question: I know you can turn desert into plains and plains into grasslands with spells but can you plant trees?