Age of Ice - getting pounded

[Terrance888]

What I hate is the masses of forest at the choke point.

I nearly bused by computer when I found out that the 2.8 Javalin thrower in the forest defends at 7.6 or something.

 

[Seon]

The worst part? the only iron resource I could find was in Doveiello territory, and he had macemen already

 

[Imaginia 1]

I have never completed the game, closest i got was stuffing the Doiello by keeping them in their capital and occasionaly their second city. I used Epona to defend and tonnes of catapults on attack. At the start I sent Caerbulin but he got killed by Fiacra and (really embarrased about this) i lost belenus to some Frostlings. I got the catapult idea from something that an AI did to me in real civ. I had a machinegun, a grenaider and a rifleman defending my city. The AI sent approx 20 Trebs and 2 footmen and one the battle. Thanks for the tips from everyone though, they will help me.

 

[Cutlass]

I just played this for the first time with standard settings. I can't imagine how anyone could beat this first time out without cheating. I got an ogre to join me early. Eventually got to level 12 with him. Without that I wouldn't have survived at all. And I had to reload to keep him alive. I don't get this game. Once the dragon shows up and corners my army, I can't even injure it. I don't know what to do from there.

 

[cypher132]

I had Caerbulin, captured the eagle with him, built cities at the two choke points with archers and it was pretty much a battle of attrition from there. Caerbulin was killed so I got Belenus and he stormed over the Doviello and, with help from pikemen, the Illian. I rushed Kylorin to Mulcarn as soon as I got him because I had spared the stag. Ended up winning with Drifa on my doorsteps. I count that a win

 

[Corwyn]

I'm very confused by some of these replies. For example: An ogre event?

I chose Espona (spelling?) and immediately explored, while building a worker and a settler. I discovered some frostling lairs and took them out, since the mod mentioned that they can randomly generate monsters. I quickly took over the first barbarian city that you encountered, and connected a road back to the first city.

One of my scouts eventually got promoted enough to be able to tame animals, though I can't say it ever really helped me defend. It did really help out with exploring the map though.

Eventually Espona came upon the free tech building, and I got the Sorceress upgrade. After that, plus with all the promotions she had, she pretty much took out the Doviello civ by herself (having heal-on-the-move helped a lot too). She's insanely powerful!

I didn't let the Doviello's surrender, I took them out completely -- I needed their cities after all

I kept on exploring, and moved north-west where I bumped into the Illians. Espona took them out, one city at a time. By this time I had Longbowmen, who are great at defending. I would have expanded faster except that I couldn't produce Longbowmen fast enough to keep up with Espona.

By this point Espona's fireballs were killing Ice Giants.

I did eventually bump into the Eagle, who attacked Espona and died, but I didn't realize it was so special. I saw the Stag once, but never again. I guess that's related to an event as well?

I found a very lush green land to the very north, kinda middle of map, and took over that town as well. Is that the Giant city? Otherwise, I have no idea what people mean by that.

I figured I might as well take out Illian completely, and moved up and took out the last Illian city all the way in the very north-west corner. Eventually, at the very end of the game, the Ice Giants took it back.

It was only about 3/4 of the way through the game that I realized that animals could be used to benefit a city. Silk from spiders, dancing bears from Bears, mammoth camp from Mammoths. That's all I noticed... wolves and panthers didn't seem to do anything.

I only saw Drifta (spelling?) the dragon once I forged the sword. Is it possible for the dragon to come out before then? I was cocky at first, and was going to fight it with the Kyorlin and Espona. Had to reload once I realized it was strength 80! But then I prepared better and built 30 longbowmen before forging the sword. They each did 1% of damage with their Artillery attack, and after 3 or so rounds I just rushed the dragon with some archers. After 4 or so of them attacked it the dragon died.

After that it was just a matter of wandering around and discovering stuff. The Illian guy stuck on an island disappeared on his own -- I guess when I wiped out the Illian civ -- so I never really saw what happened with picking up the orb. Though I realized afterwards that I shouldn't have moved the orb -- my Illian-conquered cities quickly became snowed over.

I did find an ice castle eventually, in the south-west, but it just had animals in it.

There was one event where a Doviello priest wanted refuge or something like that. I burnt him I thought the text for when you burn the priest was really well done!

I can't believe how many things in the game I missed. Not sure how I'd play the game without Espona though -- being able to attack twice a turn, once at range with no chance of getting damaged, and being able to bombard and also do artillery damage, is just so powerful.

 

[Cutlass]

Ok, killed that damned dragon with 40 bows and a bunch of mammoth riders. After that there are no more challenges to the game. Epona was able to kill that Taranis with a fireball. So what's next for the game?

 

[deanej]

You're supposed to have Kylorin kill Mulcarn (in the west of the map, south of Garduk). The dragon is there to motivate you to do it quickly; I don't think you're supposed to be able to kill it.

 

[Cutlass]

Yeah, except that doesn't work when the dragon is between Kylorin and Mulcarn.

 

[cypher132]

Yeah, except that doesn't work when the dragon is between Kylorin and Mulcarn.

That sounds like a problem. Run away and try to distract Drifa, then send Kylorin back out, and hope to Amatheon that Kylorin doesn't die.

 

[deanej]

If you spare the stag Kylorin will have three moves instead of just one.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

If you build a city really near Mulcarn and don't put the pieces together until you get there then Kylorin won't need those movement points.

 

[Cutlass]

If you spare the stag Kylorin will have three moves instead of just one.

I don't think everyone sees the stag in every game. And having Kylorin run like hell until he evades Drifa doesn't seem a great option in all cases either. Once we know the damned dragon can be killed, best to just lure it into someplace where it can be done away with.

btw: Which FFH mod should someone play next?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The first time I saw the stag I got the event 2 more times the same game. The last time I killed him, so I didn't get any benefit from sparing him the first 2 times.



I'd say you should go on to the main mod, FfH 2. You should familiarize yourself with it before starting on the modmods like FF, which have of late seemed to suffer from considerable feature creep and generally don't respect canonical lore as much as I'd like. Maybe you could then move on straight to my modmod, but chances are it will still be quite a while before I release one again. (I can't seem to bring myself to bother trying to strip away all that FF content while keeping the base code that I want to use in my version, since it seems like such a daunting task.)

 

[Cutlass]

So I played the game through 1 more time(probably the last). Just to make sure I got it all down. This time I killed Mulcarn and Drifa on the same turn. So even though I ran for Mulcarn, I still had to fight Drifa. I missed on the earlier game how ridiculously easy it is to promote up a pike phalanx. Is that a feature or a bug? You can give one all of the level 1 and 2 promotions with hardly any experience points. And then, because it's still at a low level and experience, it is very quick to get the higher level promotions. And you don't need to use the World Builder to do it.

Here's the dragonslayer after the kill. Only level 2. But the Drifa took refuge on a wooded hilltop after meeting 38 archery barrages. Which would normally be a safe place, but not the way the game allows a pike phalanx to be built.

 

[cypher132]

At least you aren't getting pounded anymore.

 

[Dean_the_Young]

Hm. I rarely have trouble: build a worker first, then warrirors, with the occassional training building. I always start with Epona, for the GPP/education benefit, which I find helps alot.

Sending raiding parties into the Doveillo lands, especially once you capture some strong animals like bears, can be good: destroy their infrastructure, and they lose a lot of steam.

 

[DerWille]

This thread got me to give this a shot. After 5 attempts I think I've found the strategy that works for the beginning of the game:

Spoiler :

Your first priority must be to castrate the Dovellio. You must be aggressive and attack. Do not allow them to tech. Do not allow them to get big. You must give them hell as quickly as possible. Early on their armies will be defended by only a javalin thrower or two and a warrior or two. A stack of 10 warriors will take a city almost every time. Don't mind the losses, just replace them while expanding as quickly as possible.

In my current game, I've annihilated the Dovellio and just passed Mulcarn in score, even though he has better tech than me, sort of. He has pikemen and longbowmen. I have mammoths. Speaking of which, Urslo or whatever it's called, the Dovellio capital is the most important city to capture. It's on amazing land with sheep, fur, mammoths, and copper. And then iron is just a stone's throw away.

To actually castrate them, you need to focus on military. Don't build many buildings, if any at all. Get a worker out then start massing warriors. When you have four or five of them go out an attack. The starting valley is good for three cities including the capital. The first city should be on the hill next to the wheat. The second city should be in the top right corner nestled between the two hills and river, but not adjacent to the lake. I've found that city has become my production center.

When you have 8 or 9 warriors lead by a hero (I go with Epona), take the barbarian city close by, but do not get too attached to this city. It's right in the path for crazy amounts of blizzards and every single tile will turn to tundra. It's a shame because that site had the potential to have a population higher than 2. Anyways, as you expand don't worry about obelisks, just make warriors. Get Archery as soon as you can and keep pushing forward. Make a city on the hill near the horses. Keep going west.

And that's as far as I am right now. I've gotten one piece of the Godslayer and the Dovellio eliminated. It took me awhile to get the barbarians to die down a little, but I managed it. Next I need to explore a little.

Oh yeah! One other thing. There's an awesome work around for getting mammoths faster. Instead of building mammoths directly, put your research slider down to 0 for awhile and build up gold. For every 145 gold you get, you can turn a scout into a rider. And in the time it takes to make 1 mammoth normally, you can make 4 or 5 scouts and promote them up.

 

[Celt_Cernunnos]

Wow I must do things differently. I always get Eponia and build two cities at the choke points. Everything goes smoothly, sort of, and eventually i win. And dang I shouldn't have killed the stag lol

 

[Tobiyogi]

I have done i AoI on "emperor", I can spread some beginner tipps: No, you don't need warriors, start with a worker. He will farm as soon as you have Agriculture. The first stack from Doviello will look for an entrance to your kingdom. If you have one warrior and one scout on the one forrested hill, he will turn around and go to the other entrance. In the meantime you send your units there. Only check with one scout what the enemy units are doing. The hunter hero can grab the huts and explore the map and get Knowledge of the Ether. You will eventually build some warriors, but start with a worker and very soon your first settler. The settler builds faster when you already have mines. Place your second city absolutely one tile west to the deer, because it can grow very quickly and share cottages with the capitol. the silver mine is not that important in the beginning because it does not raise the happy cap and the city won't grow very fast. go for pottery as soon as you can because you need those cottages river-side. Also you need hunting to improve the deer and for hunter units. You can ignore animal husbandry and bronze working for a while, because there is not much forest to chop and only one sheep (that you can farm). Try to raze the barbarian city, don't keep it. All enemy units will attack you there, it's not on a hill and units come from all sides. The 3. and 4. city should be on the 2 passage hills that lead out of your territory. You can also build one city next to the horses, but mounted units are not very helpful. It is rather a strategic settlement next to Doviello. Cities on hills are very easily defendable, with archers and longbowmen. Research longbowmen quickly because of their barrage, they hurt other units incredibly. You can ignore catapults and swordsmen. The siege workshop is much too expensive and you don't have copper or iron. To take enemy cities, it is enough to soften the defenders with Epona's fireball and barrage from Longbowmen. Try to destroy as many of Doviello's mines as you can. YOu can also destroy workers with the fireball. He should be slowed down in his research and unit production. you can at least prevent him from spawning units. On the other hand, you cannot avoid the permanent barbarian attack. You should slowly advance by archers on key point hills so you can reveal more and more of the map. It is like Civ 4, where is no fog, there cannot be barbarians. The attacks from Mulcarn are not so frightening, he is always a bit technically advanced, but the stacks are not very big. You can weaken them with fireballs and by consequence, they have to take shelter in one of Doviellos cities before they approach again. I think once you got Doviello, it is not so difficult anymore. The biggest mistake would certainly be to play too much on the defense. You need to go out to destroy improvements, to keep barbarians from spawning and to raze frostliing huts. If you defend too much, you will always be behind on techs, because your enemies can research fully. You must get Longbowmen before they get, because when you approach an enemy city where are Longbowmen, they will hurt your units too much. Last tipp: your big advantage is the charismatic trait. You get very quick and very strong promotions. Sometimes two promotions after one fight. Promotions are also stronger than in BTS, for exemple 40% defense on hills at once. In AoI, it is still more viable to make the others attack you, while you destroy their improvements. I reallly love this scenario and will maybe try again once more on "Immortal".

EDIT: Mounted Units ARE helpful, because Mulcarn loves to send big stacks of Longbows/ Crossbows while you don't have those technologies yet. If they come too close they will weaken you with incredibly powerful "barrage" (still possible when movement points are already consumed). Powerful weapon! So horsemen are the antidote because they have 40% vs. Archers in the scenario and they can even get "Cover" as first promotion.