Suggestion for Civ/Religion for my 4th game (aiming for Altar victory)

After three games, two of which were military victories (domination and conquest) and the other was ToM but extensive warefare, I wanna try something new.

2 of the games were Runes of Kilmorph the whole time, the other was Sheaim/Ashen Veil.

I wanna try a builder/defensive civ and see how fast I can achieve that Altar victory. I've been eying the Ljosalfar and FoL, with the thought of keeping to my forests or something. Maybe the Sidar with their specialist economy? Your advice and thoughts? I just wanna keep expanding.

I have played:
Amurites, Runes of Kilmorph, large Erebus 7 Civs, ToM victory, Noble
Sheaim, Ashen Veil, large erebus 7 civs, Conquest, Prince
Amurites, Runes of Kilmorph, large tectonics 10 Civs, Domination, Prince

It was a mistake to do Amurites and RoK twice. I like them (Govannon especially) alot, but it just put off exploring what else this epic mod has to offer.

Personally, I tend to get Altar victories when playing the Kuriotates, the Ljosalfar, and the Sidar. I prefer the Kurios out of those... Mostly for the Centaurs.

elohim, hands down for the alter victory (obviously use the leader, i think its eigion logos, with the philosophical trait and as as many civics as u can for GP growth bonus or unlimited priest specialists)

as for what religion, whatever religion provides the most priest specialists from temple/shrine and/or civics for specialists or GP bonus growth.

Try Balseraphs with OO

just fun

I would imagine that alter victories would be most quickly achieved when using either an adaptive or philosophical leader. These would include:

Cardith Lorda (adaptive) - I played him to a cultural victory once. Its really easy to assign tons of specialists in the sprawling cities. A combination of enclaves and farms will give you tons of commerce and food and once you get a few steps up on the alter your priests will provide considerable production. For speed, you'll probably want to specialize one city in particular for farms/priests and the others for enclaves/commerce/science. I would guess that he is the most efficient alter victory choice.

Varn Gosam (adaptive) - I played him to an alter victory. Had one city that was focused on priests while the others were science and troop production. The troops would then detour through the alter city to get blessed before heading to the front lines. The nice thing about adaptive leaders is that they can specialize their traits early on to speed up developing your early cities. Once you get your priest city all setup you can switch to philosophical to leverage those great people points.

Alexis (philosophical) - Calabim start out evil so you'll need to either switch to neutral (RoK, Emp) or good (Order). You may want to read this Alexis Guide for tips on playing her. I think this would be a fun and interesting choice.

Cassiel (philosophical & adaptive) - Your early great people will be adventurers, but once you get a few priests assigned you'll start getting prophets. Their world spell more than makes up for the early setback once you get your specialist city setup. I think Cassiel would be another interesting choice.

Dain the Caswallan (philosophical) - Since you're burnt out on them, you probably shouldn't play them. Also, I'm not sure they'd be as fast as those above.

Einion Logos (philosophical) - Some nice synergies with their disciple units. Again, I doubt they are as fast as the other guys.

The last phase of the alter requires quite a bit of production. This could potentially be another plus for adaptive as you could switch to industrious if the timing happens to match up. Don't be afraid of building wonders that provide great engineer points in your priest city or assigning an engineer or two. Being first to research machinery might also be worth it. Great engineers will make short work of the last phase of the alter. If you plan to use Great Engineers, try to have your alter city be as big as possible when you use them since the number of hammers the GE will contribute is modified by the city's population (500 + 20/pop). Soldiers of Kilmorph produced in a different production city with heroic epic could also help out quite a bit. Slaves too if you're neutral.

u UNDER-estimate those synergies, JFSebastion

nah, J/K, i have no idea who's actually better/best,

but the elohim and eigion logos leader are certainly very good for the alter victory.

if interested i could elaborate on the reasons why i feel they are so good for alter victory.

I would choose the elohim with Einion Logos, and runes as religion, because thes get their GP very fast, you can get some engeniers from runes and rush the winning altar with soldier of k. When at war with the world, the worldspell helps a lot. And you know where to get the three pines to end the war with the world... The only problem is the research.
I think a not philosophical race could be as fast...
So sheaim with the veil could be a good choise too

smusebaer said:

So sheaim with the veil could be a good choise too

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I'd have to disagree........ Evil civs cannot build the Altar, and the Sheaim are unequivocally evil while following Ashen Veil. Maybe if you convert them to Order...

Cliftor said:

I wanna try a builder/defensive civ and see how fast I can achieve that Altar victory. I've been eying the Ljosalfar and FoL, with the thought of keeping to my forests or something. Maybe the Sidar with their specialist economy? Your advice and thoughts? I just wanna keep expanding.

Click to expand...

Ljosalfar+FoL is a perfect choice. Build one city for great persons (priests), one for production and the rest just commerce. You need only 6 great priests, so philo leader trait isn't really important.

Also, Grigori Luonnatars can build the Alter just as Prophets.

I was just about to suggest trying it as infernals, since they can get specialist sso easy.

But no evil civs, hmm.

Seon said:

Also, Grigori Luonnatars can build the Alter just as Prophets.

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I thought that ability had been removed quite some time ago. Was it added back in?

Valkrionn said:

I thought that ability had been removed quite some time ago. Was it added back in?

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No, it hasn't. The pedia entry for them needs updating. It's one thing to have no have information, quite another to have incorrect information.

hegemonkhan said:

u UNDER-estimate those synergies, JFSebastion

nah, J/K, i have no idea who's actually better/best,

but the elohim and eigion logos leader are certainly very good for the alter victory.

if interested i could elaborate on the reasons why i feel they are so good for alter victory.

Click to expand...

Yah, I was going to elaborate a bit myself, but it was late and they were at the bottom of my alphabetical list. I don't think they could build it as FAST as the others could, but that would be under ideal circumstances. In less than ideal circumstances, I think the Elohim would be really good choice since they can defend themselves so well and can combat the AC. I'd definitely be interested in hearing your take on it since I haven't played them much. I love reading strats.

smusebaer said:

When at war with the world, the worldspell helps a lot. And you know where to get the three pines to end the war with the world...

Click to expand...

Oh yeah! Three pines! Good point. Though its not guaranteed to be in every game unless you have the all unique features option turned on.

Looking back on my post I realize now that I wasn't taking into account the massive research requirements for an alter victory. So I would add any civ that has a ridiculous economy like the Ljosalfar and Lanun. Industrious could be good not only for the last alter, but also for the tower of divination which is probably the best way to get Omniscience.

Perhaps starting out with Ashen Veil for the Grimoire and extra science and then switching to neutral/good later?

Methuselah said:

No, it hasn't. The pedia entry for them needs updating. It's one thing to have no have information, quite another to have incorrect information.

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h.. Sorry, haven't played Grigori in a while

JFSebastian said:

Yah, I was going to elaborate a bit myself, but it was late and they were at the bottom of my alphabetical list. I don't think they could build it as FAST as the others could, but that would be under ideal circumstances. In less than ideal circumstances, I think the Elohim would be really good choice since they can defend themselves so well and can combat the AC. I'd definitely be interested in hearing your take on it since I haven't played them much. I love reading strats.

Oh yeah! Three pines! Good point. Though its not guaranteed to be in every game unless you have the all unique features option turned on.

Looking back on my post I realize now that I wasn't taking into account the massive research requirements for an alter victory. So I would add any civ that has a ridiculous economy like the Ljosalfar and Lanun. Industrious could be good not only for the last alter, but also for the tower of divination which is probably the best way to get Omniscience.

Perhaps starting out with Ashen Veil for the Grimoire and extra science and then switching to neutral/good later?

Click to expand...

even better, i might do a game (and report back), and see how good i can play them (elohim) for alter victory. i haven't played elohim recently for alter victory, but in the past older versions they were actually much more synergized than most people realized for actually GETTING the alter, not with miscellenous things like thier peace ability or defense ability as side help on the way to the alter. which is why i wanna/need to do a game. a lot has changed since than, and this may no longer be the case.

if others were to do games as well with other civs, we could realitivly see which civ is best (of course there's many interfereing factors too..like players abilities for 1, but it can still give a relative comparison as to actually which civs are better than others).

I beat my only altar victory so far (only try) with the Ljosalfar. FOL with them is economically monstrous - multiple size 30+ cities, which you actually have health+happy for (Guardian of nature) and food (every city is basically a normal city with 20 20 extra ). Theocracy is your obvious civic choice - when running that almost any leader can do it I suppose, but I'd think the elves may be fun, especially if you haven't played either of the elf civs before.

Well, I ended up going with Ljosalfar with FoL, and it was a BLAST. I did the Religion/Nature/Recon/Archery tech branches and got Werewolves for the first time. I had no idea who they worked, but quickly found out how cool they were.

It was a MountainCoast Standard map with 11 Civs. Early on I got a single hunter that was wandering the wilderness alone. I got Subdue animal for the first time since Age of Ice, which I remembered liking. He was on the far side of the map with an army of around 15 bears, wolves and elephants when Auric decided to break the peace. It was SO fun to stage a war front on the opposite side of my empire with none of the usual logistic support. Luckily, in a few ruins he found some Acolytes who helped heal.

Later on, my Werewolves had a similar wilderness spanning adventure and help in a later war in a similar way, on a remote front. It was great. The Elves are a great building civ, and I love how forests can amount to a free Farm on every tile for them.

After feeling that Govannon of the Amurites and Summoning of the Sheaim was munchkiny, I no longer feel that way now that I see that most everything is potent when leveraged properly.

Still a great mod, I'm gonna try something new next. I'm thinking a Religious victory or Culture victory.