Calabim early economy

[Chimera]

Just wondering what people do since they can't build elder councils. I keep running into issues as I usually build a couple councils and assign a scientist to keep research up early while cottages get going.

My tech order is generally agriculture, ancient chants, education, mysticism, secondary food tech (fishing/animal husbandry), and then towards bronze working. This is just really slow with the Calabim. Flauros doesn't suffer as much due to financial, but it is a problem for Alexis. Anyways, just wondering if there are any ways to help speed up getting an economy established.

Also, I'm a emperor+ player in BtS, but only recently found FFH2 and if anyone knows of good, current, guides, that would be great.

 

[retro V]

Get Mysticism first and build Pagan Temples in your first 2 cities. Set them to generate great prophets. With Pacifism and Alexis' Philosophical trait you can easily get 2 GP's before researching Education and then you can bulb Philosophy and a religion. The second GP must be finished before Education or it will bulb Priesthood instead. Depending on whether you researched Mining or Fishing, you can get OO or RoK for free. It's unlikely you can found RoK before anyone else, but OO is pretty easy. Doesn't matter if you don't get there first, you still get a Thane or whatever for free to start spreading the religion with.

Time it so you get the first GP from your capital since you can speed up the second GP in your second city by including a Bard specialist from an almost mandatory Obelisk without hurting the probability of a Great Prophet too much. Even if you do get a Great Bard instead, you may be able to bulb FoL as long as you have Hunting but have not yet researched Agriculture. If you do have Agri already (pretty likely when you need the farms to feed the specialists) then the Great Bard will bulb Festivals instead, and that means Markets so you can't really lose either way. I'm not sure if Great Prophets can bulb FoL, I think they give Agriculture if you don't already have it, then they go up the Festivals/Drama line before bulbing Way of the Forests.

Regardless, this is how I open the play with Alexis or any Philosophical leaders to make up for bad early economies. Also this is with 0.23 because I don't have the expansion But to answer your question about coping with poor early Calabim economies you need to make use of their traits. You already use Flauros' Financial trait to improve your cottages, now just try bulbing techs with Alexis' fast-generating GP's.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

alexis is phi-agg right? pounding on a weak neighbor from the very start might be worthwhile, you can keep them under pressure and then later ask a couple useful techs as part of a cease fire

damn alexis, she always DoWs on me... but she's hot

 

[Demus]

personally, i dislike bulbing for the simple mathematical reasons: a bulb is a one-time boost to your total accumulated science, a great specialist (or an academy!) will last for the entire game, easily surpassing those first few points.

Religions are an exeption to this obviously, since you get an additional bonus of reaching those first, as are other techs that allow for a first-reacher-bonus (drama, currency etc).

Still, i prefer flauros over alexis, for 2 reasons: 1. I'm generally a CE / mixed CE-SE player, and don't often go all-out specialists. 2. The lack of elder councils. SE's in FFH require those councils to get their early science going. Calabim have to wait for writing to get their first sages (that, or veil maibe, which is even further down the road).

Regardless of the strategy you're employing with calabim (vampires, or gifting to religious units), i'd personally head to trade as soon as you've established your first economical techs. The trading can usually fill up quite a few gaps in your early techs, the horsemen are usefull military units, and it lines you up for one of the council religions (or both if you're feeling like it).

 

[Immaculate]

Philosophical has an additional advantage in addition to cheap GP; you pay half the hammers for a library. That means that for Alexis, a library costs you the same number of hammers that an elder council would normally cost you.
Therefore, your tech order should be agriculture, ancient cants, education, and instead of mysticism for the elder councils, writing for the libraries.

Also, if you need it, you can use that first sage to bulb sanitation if you don't have mysticism but do have bronze working.

I was able to to do this in an online game posted here.

 

[Yashkaf]

personally, i dislike bulbing for the simple mathematical reasons: a bulb is a one-time boost to your total accumulated science, a great specialist (or an academy!) will last for the entire game, easily surpassing those first few points.

While that is undeniably true, you also need to account for "technological inflation". Getting an early tech can speed up economy immensely, which wil accelerate your advancement pace by a lot. For example, bulbing and spreading a religion will give you +1 in all cities, and save you the hammers from monuments. An extra tile per city is about +4 food/prod/cash. Multiply that by the amount of your cities and multiply again by the number of turns until you would've gotten to researching a religion anyway. A conservative example:

Bulbing Way of the forests = 950 h + 4 h/f/c * 6 cities * 100 turns = 3350 hammers food or commerce, discounting culture.

Settling prophet = 2 hammers + 5 gold per turn.

In short, it would take your prophet 479 turns to catch up with bulbing a religion. By that time (turn 550-600) most games are usually long decided.

 

[Fafnir13]

It's unlikely you can found RoK before anyone else, but OO is pretty easy. Doesn't matter if you don't get there first, you still get a Thane or whatever for free to start spreading the religion with.

I've gotten RoK in 2 out of 2 games I've started as Alexis. Maybe I'm just getting lucky.

The second GP must be finished before Education or it will bulb Priesthood instead.

Ooh, thanks for that info. I've only recently started bulbing, citing the mathematical reasons as Demus does, so I'm not quite as informed as others. If OfH is available for research, will it still go for RoK or other religions instead?

 

[xienwolf]

You cna get the full order preference for Bulbing in the last 2 or 3 pages of the manual. It's a lengthy list for each GP.

 

[MiKa523]

Fafnir13, what difficulty are you playing?
On high difficulty the AI gets Mining for free at start and if the Khazad are on the map, they'll go pretty straight for RoK.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Fafnir13, what difficulty are you playing?
On high difficulty the AI gets Mining for free at start and if the Khazad are on the map, they'll go pretty straight for RoK.

I'm still able to out race Arendal to FoL on Immortal, and she starts, I'm pretty sure, with Hunting. Course, that's with the Lanun, who are crazy economic badasses right now.

I think early game with Alexis, you want to do Mysiticism then Education. Get Mystie for a little expansion and perhaps to help you power out a military, and then use education as either a launching point towards the economic techs (AKA, taxation) or to continue the military effort via Code of Laws/Fedualism.

 

[Chimera]

Thanks for all the help. In general I don't bulb great people as it seems like a waste, but maybe I will have to pay more attention to it.

Immaculate, one problem with writing over mysticism is that you don't get access to the god king civic, which is a nice boost for a 1-2 city empire.

 

[Blackmantle]

@ retro V: The Bulbpaths have changed seriously since 0.23.
So bulbing religions is much easier now and you can bulb all of them if i remember right. (Don't know what happens when you research Philosophy before but i rather not do this before getting one of the early religions if i want any of them...)

So bulbing a religion + building a shrine (opening further specialist slots.) might be the better option for 2 GP.

Some Economic techs are indeed interesting to bulb. But thats more techs were the greath person just contributes most part of the research on higher difficulties. (+ getting a rather late tech early not only yields that tech but also other techs you can trade it for. So a one time vs. full yield calculation is not all that fair... )
Also thats very much down to which type of greath people i have at hand. Engineers rather go into wonders nearly anytime, Sages into Academies, Prophets usually go for shrines (some of the later ones like Nox-Nocturnis offer serious stuff.) or Altar of the Luonnotar (which is really powerful in any sense from Altar 3 upwards.).
Bards and Merchants i do use to bulb with at times though. Some of the picks for them are rather nice in midgame as well. (As are their possibilities for Shrines.)
The only greath people i settle regularly if Nonsidar are merchants since that greath specialists do rock most of them all if limited (with sidar the choices are much less limited so i settle much more balanced with shades.).
Of course bulbing Drama, Arcane Lore and Military Strategy(?) excluded due to the free GP and slingshot possible by it (as well as the excellent opportunities to trade those techs since they are not all that powerful beyond that free greath person most of the time). So thats worth it most of the time.

Holy cities can be conquered just as well if you have a respecitve AI near in question.
Just be fast so not all to much of the religious Units start to appear. I find founding a religion in question is highly overrated. That one desciple doesn't make such a big difference imo and the shrine goes to the owner of the holy city in question not the founder of the religion. So don't waste your time in an unessesary race and don't frown if you lose such a race by a few turns.

But the best chance for bulbing an early religion super fast is beeing evil and getting Ceridwens event + picking a greath Prophet (requires quite some luck and can't be helped by anything else, but is not all that uncommon. Especially with living World.).
Thats the superhighway to the early religion of your choice. Just be sure to have enough gold handy to pay her out.
In such a case it might indeed pay off to aim for writing and get a greath sage for an academy. Since you can shot for the early religion anyways. An early academy just does so much for science.

OO can be gained rather easiely without bulbing even in higher difficulties unless the Lanun are in and have a very good start.


Also bulbing Priesthood can indeed be one of the most interesting fastbulbs (since it yields military power, sometimes support and economic advantage by fast-spreading temples. Early Cultists or Priests of Leaves are amazing and can tip a game or at least a few early-midgame wars indeed. Even moreso than the priests of later religions in question.)

 

[Zechnophobe]

Also bulbing Priesthood can indeed be one of the most interesting fastbulbs (since it yields military power, sometimes support and economic advantage by fast-spreading temples. Early Cultists or Priests of Leaves are amazing and can tip a game or at least a few early-midgame wars indeed. Even moreso than the priests of later religions in question.)

If you are going with a military religion, it's amazing how effective bulbing your way down that tech path can be, just with a pagan temple or so. Getting Order 'early' can be truly impressive. Not only is Valin a fantastic early hero, but with the order spread effect, and access to what I consider the real strongest Priest unit, it gets nuts.

 

[Fafnir13]

But the best chance for bulbing an early religion super fast is beeing evil and getting Ceridwens event + picking a greath Prophet (requires quite some luck and can't be helped by anything else, but is not all that uncommon. Especially with living World.).

What's really fun is that it seems to trigger (for me at least) at multiple times in near succession. Just hope you have the gold for it.

Fafnir13, what difficulty are you playing?
On high difficulty the AI gets Mining for free at start and if the Khazad are on the map, they'll go pretty straight for RoK.

Monarch mostly. Could probably go higher(with my current Calabim strat at least), but I keep wanting to mess around with stuff I don't understand yet and that would get messy on higher levels.

 

[Yashkaf]

I'm beginning to think I myself don't bulb nearly as much. It would also be nice if you had an info tag telling you how much you would profit from a golden age, you could take that into consideration too. I just assume that if it wasn't worth it for one great bard it wouldn't be worth it at all, so I only start a golden age with the first bard to appear. I know this is off topic, but somebody who isn't as lazy as me should do a full review with heavy math for all the great people out there (pun intended).

 

[Zechnophobe]

I'm beginning to think I myself don't bulb nearly as much. It would also be nice if you had an info tag telling you how much you would profit from a golden age, you could take that into consideration too. I just assume that if it wasn't worth it for one great bard it wouldn't be worth it at all, so I only start a golden age with the first bard to appear. I know this is off topic, but somebody who isn't as lazy as me should do a full review with heavy math for all the great people out there (pun intended).

You mean on the effective beaker bonus of a 12 turn golden age with giving initial information?

Here's a quick check. Save, write down your current MFG and GNP, then hit the golden age, and compare. Multiply by 12.

So if you get a golden age on the first turn, you'll probably get something pathetic like +24 Hammers and +12 to 24 GNP, right?

Obviously, these numbers will always be a bit low, as they don't take into account growth during these 12 turns, but are a pretty good boundary case.

Of course, comparing it to a bulb isn't so easy, because you aren't taking into account two things:

1) Tech direction. A Golden age researches whatever techs you want, not what is bulb mandated.

2) Non GNP bonus. You get +100% of the base of your GPP during this time, as well as the production bonus, this doesn't translate particularly well, which will require the dreaded judgement call, bane of statisticians everywhere .

 

[Demus]

one more thing about bulbing: most of the time, you don't use up the full potential of the GP. When you're getting the tech instantly, this means the tech costs less breakers than you would normally get from the lightbulb. As far as i know, there's no overflow, so you've just wasted all the excess breakers.

I'm not saying it's naturally bad, i just prefer an academy or a shrine.

 

[xienwolf]

Well, in defense of bulbing (though I personally never have done it), there is the "unfactorable" bonus of the extra turns with the new technology. I know that there have been many games where bulbing Bronze Working would have meant a considerable power boost because my science was suffering (forced into a war) and researching it myself was nearly impossible.