Samhain - so unbelievably good?

Trying to play as Illians. It isn't all that succesfull, since I still didn't feel to sure about what to do & when...

But I started to be believe that in case of Samhain ritual the right answer to 'when' question is actually 'never'. I got the general idea, taking some risk, hoping to make life of your enemies harder etc. - no problem there.

But:
Playing as other civs, I have seen frostings near my borders more than once. The thing is: they never crossed it to attack my cities. Worse still, I once found Mokka (as the Clan, after scouting with units gained with their spell). He? She? or it standed in a single tile for 20 turns, doing nothing.

I feel there might be some issue with frostling (and especially Mokka) AI. But that might be (or not) a bug.

The real problem is elsewhere - it is so not worth it...
Because of the cost of the ritual.

Samhain = 12 warriors.

12 warriors is a power to be reckoned with (early game, of course). Morever, you have a complete control over that power. Compare that with a total randomness of the frostlings... not so hot, eh?

Don't like warriors? With all that hammers you can build a lot of the other stuff. The other stuff has a significant adventage, that you decide what it exactly is, and where it is build.

Bottomline: Since you have absolutely no control over it, and can be even (in theory) hurt by it, it is grossly ovepriced.

Tell me if I'm wrong, please.

beauregard said:

Trying to play as Illians. It isn't all that succesfull, since I still didn't feel to sure about what to do & when...

But I started to be believe that in case of Samhain ritual the right answer to 'when' question is actually 'never'. I got the general idea, taking some risk, hoping to make life of your enemies harder etc. - no problem there.

But:
Playing as other civs, I have seen frostings near my borders more than once. The thing is: they never crossed it to attack my cities. Worse still, I once found Mokka (as the Clan, after scouting with units gained with their spell). He? She? or it standed in a single tile for 20 turns, doing nothing.

I feel there might be some issue with frostling (and especially Mokka) AI. But that might be (or not) a bug.

The real problem is elsewhere - it is so not worth it...
Because of the cost of the ritual.

Samhain = 12 warriors.

12 warriors is a power to be reckoned with (early game, of course). Morever, you have a complete control over that power. Compare that with a total randomness of the frostlings... not so hot, eh?

Don't like warriors? With all that hammers you can build a lot of the other stuff. The other stuff has a significant adventage, that you decide what it exactly is, and where it is build.

Bottomline: Since you have absolutely no control over it, and can be even (in theory) hurt by it, it is grossly ovepriced.

Tell me if I'm wrong, please.

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I agree with you b, and don't build it when playing as the Illians. It is a waste of time especially when you need to get ready for the real barb invasion.

The AI Illians OTOH always builds it, and sometimes finds itself in a fix when the barbs come - often they are wiped out for beelining Samhain.

agreed, the frostlings should be friendly to the illians. and making the ritual repeatable would be nice

[to_xp]Gekko;7497805 said:

agreed, the frostlings should be friendly to the illians. and making the ritual repeatable would be nice

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I think the bigger problem is the frostlings don't do anything. Especially Mokka.

Ksi said:

I think the bigger problem is the frostlings don't do anything. Especially Mokka.

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That is (probably) a bug, which is (probably) easy to fix.

But, even with Mokka & frostlings actually doing something, it seems to me that the ritual still would be a waste of hammers.

I think it just costs too much. If it costs less (150) it wouldn't be such a bother to play. A fair bit costly, but not insane. Though, I would hope the frostlings would be a bit more aggressive, or just generally cooler. Maybe if the 'frostling' promotion passed 'slow' in combat to non winterborn units?

I believe frostlings should downgrade terrain into tundra and ice when killed. And be able to build something like frostling den to spawn more of them.

Then again the Frostlings can be scarily effective.. in my most recent game, on a huge map with all civs, Illians made Samhain pretty early, and as a result, Mokka and his frostlings relatively fast slaughtered every civ except mine accessible from where he spawned on the map.

I've seen things like what Taalen said happen. I was waiting for them to come to me because the civilization near me was just destroyed. After a while of nothing happening I sent out a Hunter or two to see if I could see where the Frostlings were. They were just gathering in a conquered city doing nothing. Most of the time Frostlings will seem extremely reluctant to even come into my borders even when there is a vulnerable worker for them to attack. For a while I thought Frostlings were classified as animals and it was some sort of mistake that they would venture into owned land rarely.

I forgot to mention, though, that I was using barbarian world, which definitely helped bring those civs down.

I'm thinking that making a Frostling's death cause the terrain to temporary turn to ice, making Mokka create new Frostlings the way werewolves make new werewolves, giving Mokka Death I and Ice I, Making Mokka's Cauldron a piece of equipment Mokka starts with, making the Frostling race have a chance to turn units barbarian, and letting Illian units/Illian unique Priests/units with Ice sphere promotions access a spell that can convert any unit with the Frostling promotion to their control (temporarily, as they'll still randomly turn barbarian) should be enough.

I'd like it if frostlings could create new frostling lairs, and keep the ritual priced the same or higher. Then you could give the frostlings animal AI (so they won't enter borders) for a number of turns after the ritual. That way, the frostlings will start out small but would grow in strength untill they eventually swarm on everybody. It also gives a strategic choice for the illians (do I want to use this early and possibly cripple my enemies later, but cripple myself slightly now?) and for everyone else (Do I go out and destroy as many frostling lairs as possible and weaken their attack or do I build up forces and try to take advantage of their attacks to help me defeat my neighbors?). It might be worth it to Make higher tiers of frostlings or give them some first strikes so they won't simply be an annoyance.

My first encounter with the Frostlings was in a Lanun game. I was playing in an Archipelago world, so I had heavily fortified choke points near my borders. Imagine my surprise when more than a dozen Frostlings (including Mokka!) spawned in or near my cultural border. I thought I was going to lose at least one settlement. I did lose a lot of tile improvements.

When I played the Illians, I build Samhain because it was fun, not because it was effective. I went on to capture Mokka, Tum-Tum, and Acheron in that game. In fact, that was the first game that I really started using the Command abilities (remember that you can graft them onto a Flesh Golem...)

i just captured mokka with one of my winter priests
all in all samhain is absolutely worthless - except for some more free EP on your units. but if you are unlucky you get pillaging riders all over you...

True, those riders can be really annoying when they pillage... and they appear in larger numbers (and usually earlier) than barbarian wolf riders.

That said, sometimes I find their warriors even more annoying when they take a leisurely stroll through your territory without stopping to attack your fortified cities and "die off".
At str 4, appearing usually very early, you simply cant dislodge them from your territory without risking losing warriors doing so.
Riders are so much easier to kill since they either suicide on your cities or simply because they do not get defensive bonuses

In my last game (FF, not FFH) I had two frostling archers fortify themselves on forested hills next to my capital for quite a while before I got a warrior enough promotions to dislodge them. Samhain and Stasis were both cast very early that game.

heisenberg said:

That said, sometimes I find their warriors even more annoying when they take a leisurely stroll through your territory without stopping to attack your fortified cities and "die off".
At str 4, appearing usually very early, you simply cant dislodge them from your territory without risking losing warriors doing so.
Riders are so much easier to kill since they either suicide on your cities or simply because they do not get defensive bonuses

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hbar said:

In my last game (FF, not FFH) I had two frostling archers fortify themselves on forested hills next to my capital for quite a while before I got a warrior enough promotions to dislodge them.

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I usually find this to be the worst of Samhain. I don't think I've ever lost a city to it (although once-a-while a Worker will get picked off by a Wolfy), but the Frostlings wandering around can be a bit of a pain. If I see Frostlings wandering through my territory, I do my best to lure them into a corner and surround them with Warriors. They usually just stay put. The worst problems Frostlings cause is just wandering about, meaning you can't have a worker in an adjected tile and if they choose to settle on a nice spot (like a Mine-Copper-Hill), your city loses out a bit on production. Average Frostlings I find aren't too bad, although it's a matter of luring/forcing them out into the open so I don't need to assault them in Forests or Hills (where I'll usually lose a Warrior). The Archers are the worst though, it takes forever to get rid of them. Their Defensive stats are simply too strong for the average Warrior (I even find Horsemen have problems with them). They particularly are the type I like to just corner in some out of the way spot with 3 or 4 Warriors and just forget about.

Also, on that note, Goblin Archers seem to be the same. They don't ever actually do anything in the way of attacking (short of maybe killing an unguarded Worker) or even pillaging. They just wander around your territory generally grinning and saying "Do something about us then!" It's a nuisance, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's "threatening". It makes sense for Barb Archers to be more defensive than offensive (after-all, its their speciality), but at the very least they should be doing some pillaging or something... I don't know why I'm encouraging them be even more annoying, but at least then it'd give me some real incentive to suicide-sling Warriors at them or fortify a good Warrior on all my tasty resource-spots.

Micky Onimusha said:

Also, on that note, Goblin Archers seem to be the same. They don't ever actually do anything in the way of attacking (short of maybe killing an unguarded Worker) or even pillaging. They just wander around your territory generally grinning and saying "Do something about us then!" It's a nuisance, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's "threatening". It makes sense for Barb Archers to be more defensive than offensive (after-all, its their speciality), but at the very least they should be doing some pillaging or something... I don't know why I'm encouraging them be even more annoying, but at least then it'd give me some real incentive to suicide-sling Warriors at them or fortify a good Warrior on all my tasty resource-spots.

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I think what you are saying about Goblin Archers is true and they are very difficult to kill. However, in my last game the AI was spamming the barb Archers (the vanilla ones). They mostly fortified and bombarded while a few attacked and pillaged. They were almost impossible to do anything about as, at the time, I had only Warriors and Scouts.

It's probably best used early, together with the Illian world spell.

I'm currently playing FfH on a very crowded map (huge, max of 35 players). Samhain was cast by the Illians (AI) fairly early on.

I also noticed (as some others have) that Mokka doesn't seem to do much of anything. He sat in the same place for ages in my game, until I moved a weak unit as bait next to him (which he attacked, allowing me to kill him the next turn).

I also think that the Frostlings, for the most part, seem to be extremely shy and reluctant to do anything. I had a Frostling Archer sitting outside my capital's borders for about 100 turns, doing nothing at all. He actually moved into my territory at one point, and I got quite a surprise... but he never attacked or pillaged anything. Checking the world builder (it's my first game ever of FfH, so I've allowed myself that luxury in this game), I actually found that he'd only moved because he was heading to guard the a barbarian city which had just spawned. He never laid a finger on me or any of my improvements!

In fact, as the game progressed, I had hordes of Frostlings passing through my territory, never laying a finger on me - all apparently on a mission to head to guard barbarian cities. At one point there was a large stack of highly promoted Frostlings (including two insane Archers with Combat 5 and some other promotions) that were travelling through my borders. I thought I'd lose a city for sure (I only had a couple of Warriors nearby)... but then, nothing happened! The army of Frostlings just waltzed right on by, presumably heading to a far-off barbarian city.

Is this a bug, or are the Frostlings intended to be this useless? It seems a bit silly that I would have hordes of them travelling right by my cities and never bothering to attack or even pillage anything. Yeah, I know I'd probably complain the other way around if the Frostlings were overwhelming me... but pillaging barbarians at least make sense. Barbarians which never do anything aggressive are just lame.