Advanced Start and FoL

[cadamus]

Hi all,

I play in some mulitplayer games with two or three other people. To help jumpstart tings, we use the advanced start. One thing I have noticed is that if any AI in the game are the elves, they ALWAYS buy FoL. This means that if you want to play the elves and found FoL, you have to buy it. Is this intended?

It also seems to be a bad strategy as it tends to really gimp your starting towns (or the AIs for that matter). I tried it once, and I struggled a bit to catch up.

Also a general strategy question. If I do go ahead and buy FoL, am I better off researching hidden paths right away, or should I do something along the other tech trees first. I went trade in my last game, hoping to get enough research boost to get to hidden paths much faster, as in the beginning of the game it would take about 40 turns to get to it.

Thanks!

 

[readercolin]

Can't say whether it is good or bad to buy it - I don't usually play an advanced start that gives enough money to buy that off the bat (and I usually play without advanced start). However, I do have a few tips to advantage you if you do grab it.

So, to get FoL, you need to have exploration, hunting, ancient chants, and mysticism. This means that to start the elven economy, you are only missing agriculture and education (to cottage spam everything), philosophy/writing/priesthood (to forest spam), hidden paths for happiness, and lastly archery to defend your cities.

So, assuming that you weren't able to afford any of the other techs, the first thing that I would research would be agriculture/education, then start cottaging every square with your workers. With cottages going up, then I would snatch hidden paths, so that way you can start getting the happiness from all your forests - this will allow you to grow your cities as large as you want, and mean that you don't have to snatch any other techs for happiness with any urgency. Then I would grab either archery if you need to defend yourself soon, or priesthood so that way you can start spamming forests everywhere.

Running godking in the elven forests you should be able to outproduce your opponents and quickly expand beyond your initial position (you did place it in the forests, right?), and quickly grabbing education will give you all the early economy you need. Food will be solved by your ancient forests, happiness won't be a problem once you grab hidden paths, and health will be solved by your vast forests. Grabbing this may hurt your early conquest some, but will put you forth as a strong midgame power, and will boost you into the lategame faster than your opponents.

Your biggest opponents would be the lanuan building a strong ocean economy from the start, the calibam going straight for their aristograrian economy, or the dwarves running a powerful RoK/Godking with the shrine in their capital, or arete/aristograrian. If you can survive the early game though, you should be able to match any of these powerhouses.

Hope this helps.

-Colin

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I usually try to buy as many religions as I can in advanced start, but have pretty much given up on FoL and often also on RoK since the AI usually gets there first. What I find really annoying is that you don't get the free disciples if you found it in advanced start, but you already have the tech so you can't research it again for the disciple to spread it, you have to wait for it to spread naturally. Kael said he's look into fixing this a long time ago, but hadn't done anything yet. In my version I've been meaning to see about adding some python code to run at the end of the first turn to give out free disciples based on the techs you know, but keep forgetting.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

If you do advanced start and buy the tech you should be able to also place a disciple in your town after that. Granted it takes up one of your spots, but it's better than nothing. I'm not sure. You also might try changing your "player number" with the guy in last place. I have no idea if that would work, but it would seem they are buying it also and then when you hit end turn it founds on the first player that bought it?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

No, you cannot buy the disciple (or the temple you'd have to buy in order to buy the disciple) unless the religion is already in the city, and when you buy a religion founding tech the religion does not appear until the start of the next turn, when you are no longer in advanced start mode. The only way I've ever been able to buy a religious unit in advanced start is when I made the Infernals able to enter the game from the beginning and played as them, since they get AV in their cities automatically.

Also, the free unit Esus would give requires a much higher tech to build.


I'm not quite sure, but I think that when multiple players buy the same religion founding tech that the game randomly decides who gets the holy city, the same way religions are randomly assigned in future era start vanilla Civ IV games.

 

[cadamus]

In light of what I learned here so far (Thanks!), I think I am asking the wrong question. Is it worth the cost to buy FoL rather than just research it, just to get it first?

I don't get the disciple, but I still get the chance to build the holy building or whatever. That gets me a second nature mana and 1 gold per city with FoL. How big a deal is that? The second nature mana doesn't seem to do me any good other than as a trade for resources. The 1 gold per city is also nice, but I don't know that over time the extra buildings I could have built don't more than make up for it. I am pretty much spending 1/3 of my starting resources to get it. I am starting to wonder if I should just let someone else discover it and research it on my own.

Thanks again!

Cad

 

[Feyd Rautha]

If you look at the reqs for the holy building it requires the founding city (just like in vanilla). It's that little gold star in the right hand corner.

Of course nothing is to stop you from doing your hardest to find out who it was and where he is and warrior rushing the jerkface.

 

[JonathanStrange]

In light of what I learned here so far (Thanks!), I think I am asking the wrong question. Is it worth the cost to buy FoL rather than just research it, just to get it first?

I don't get the disciple, but I still get the chance to build the holy building or whatever. That gets me a second nature mana and 1 gold per city with FoL. How big a deal is that? The second nature mana doesn't seem to do me any good other than as a trade for resources. The 1 gold per city is also nice, but I don't know that over time the extra buildings I could have built don't more than make up for it. I am pretty much spending 1/3 of my starting resources to get it. I am starting to wonder if I should just let someone else discover it and research it on my own.

Thanks again!

Cad

Short answer: no it's not worth paying 1/3 of your resources.

I play the Ljosalfar alot and I virtually always try to found FoL, but as big a fan as I am of the religion, I probably wouldn't buy it just to get it first. I'd try to research it first, but I wouldn't pay 1/3 of my starting resources to get it. That's too pricey.

FoL, for the Ljosalfar, has the beauty of being along a natural tech Ljo tech path leading to Archery, God King civic, cottages, Gilden Silveric, cheap archery ranges, etc. so I'd prefer to research and pick up FoL that way.

How big a deal is the Holy City, the gold, the extra mana? Not having the extra mana has ever been a gamebreaker for me, so I wouldn't spend 1/3 of my starting resources to get FoL to build the religion's wonder. However, having the extra mana sure is nice and I do focus my teching to found FoL (when I'm the Ljos) - one can always use extra gold and the extra Nature mana from the Song of Autumn wonder. It does help for your magic users to start with higher level spells (Level II Poisoned Blade or Level III Vitalize) which can help out Svartalfar recon units killing or Ljo Druids terraforming.

Usually the mana situation for Ljosalfars is crucial only as part of the overall situation, that is if I'm hurting for mana nodes, I'm probably in trouble in lots of other areas. So I don't think an extra Mana source is to-die-for. I always try for the nodes though, because just as not having enough hurts, having a lot to trade with or for quicker access to higher level spells, that's always good.

(P.S. As an AI or human strategy, an early FoL can be a little chancey as to get it fast and first, the founding civ may have to neglect some basic economic and military techs and thus have to play a little catchup. Just FYI, an experienced player can see "Oh, I've got access to Mining or I've got the Clan next door, I'd better invent swords or something sharp first")