Are the Sidar really as unstoppable as they seem?

[popejubal]

If the Sidar build only scouts and warriors in the beginning of the game with an occasional worker thrown in for terrain upgrade (farms to support mines and mines to build scouts and warriors), the Sidar can hit 26 XP on a few units pretty quickly.

The initial scout and warrior should hit 26 XP very soon as long as they don't run into a bear or spider. If they do, it's not a catastrophy since you'll have more warriors and scouts to follow up. An initial attack from a warrior and a followup from a promoted warrior can even take down an elephant a fair amount of the time, so go ahead and spend those hammers on units. Who needs a library when you could have a Great Scientist settled in your city instead?

I noticed that I was getting my first Great Scientist free from the tech tree to found an academy while my shades settled as Great Scientists in that city. That was the only city to build a library and other cities only built buildings as requirements to build appropriate troops as I researched new techs.

A Great Priest came early since I could still get great people with relative ease as I had ignored that side of the economy in favor of cranking out units and I got to build the Shrine to the God of Gold. A few Great Merchants settled in that city took care of all of my money problems and I would have moved the capital there to take advantage of the 50% gold boost from God King, but I was enjoying the reduced maintenance from City States so much that I ignored God King for the majority of the game.

I had Mages when other civs were just starting to build Adepts. I had Archmages while other civs were begging me for Elementalism. All of this was on Emperor.

Am I that good of a player or is the Sidar really that unstoppable? The early boost seems to be easy to leverage into an extraordinary advantage once you have rangers, mages or Axemen and the rest of the world... doesn't. Since you're researching more than twice as fast as everyone else in the early game, how can you go wrong?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

as long as they don't run into a bear or spider.

This is an extremely rare conditional that you're relying on for your shade strategy. And it's not even the only thing that can ruin it; sometimes the RNG will decide that a lion or warrior's 10% odds attack on your well promoted warrior will work.

Usually, the first few units you have getting into the thick of things will die, and you won't get your super early shade.

 

[slowcar]

26xp is just as much as my warrior needs for shock2, conquering a neighbour civ nearly alone. sidar get rolling when your altar puts 12xp+ units into the field which can be shaded after a combat or two - but by this time most games are won (or lost) anyway.

 

[onedreamer]

This is an extremely rare conditional that you're relying on for your shade strategy. And it's not even the only thing that can ruin it; sometimes the RNG will decide that a lion or warrior's 10% odds attack on your well promoted warrior will work.

Usually, the first few units you have getting into the thick of things will die, and you won't get your super early shade.

not to mention Skeletons, Lizardmen, Giants...

 

[Slvynn]

Sidar are great at resereach, but they are easy to kick early... Actually. If you let Sidar to sit and resereach in peace you doing wrong, and at some point he will outgrow/build/tech you.
To put shades to real advantage need hard job. Play with aggressive AI, smaller maps or Deity lvl , like alot people here as well as myself. Emperror is not challenging too much. Try Immortal for challenge. For short time resolutions Sidar are bit muddled. They rely on adepts. Their adept magic and traits good for Archery/metal line, while they seem to love recon line more, because of UUs and hero. Best way here as i see is fire mages with ghosts, but i'd took Nature mana then for Poisoned blade. At early start they mediocre, and most things happening then. They need alot of time to "warm up" really.
Also remember - waning make your army weak, while some civs can come with 50-100 xp units to kill your "cooking" adepts.
Lets say my lovely Bannor for example. They get Fanaticism, and you're dead.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Yeah, waning units isn't really a viable strategy. That is, it isn't something you can put your whole game plan behind, because the tradeoff of level 6 units, to a pittance of resources, is almost never worth it.

However, sometimes you'll notice a warrior or scout has done pretty well against barbarians early on, and then 'cultivate' it to level 6 for an early-ish boost. About the best you can do.

Their real strength come from the Great Library (The wonder, potentially buildable pretty early, grants at least 10 science points for your civ, and 8 GPP points. That's a whole mess of good) and Engineering (Free forge in each city, +1 production from Engineers means that any city can use a pop point up to get 4 production. Get the civic that gives you a free specialist, and you end up with +4 prod (+5 after the +25% from the forge)in all your cities, a very solid boost).

The only way you can 'farm' shades is via great commanders, and the council of esus. Invisible hidden nationality ghosts are great at building up experience, especially with a great commander. Detach the commander before you wane it, and start a new one. Also has the plus of weakening nearby civs.

 

[wilboman]

Yeah, I've found that the ideal way to play Sidar is with the Council.

All those lovely invisible and hidden nationality units that pick out the weakest guys in stacks, or have bonuses and fast movement rates in order to pick off isolated units, can be increased by about a level every two turns. So in twelve turns, you have a level six unit you can wane and send home, then rinse and repeat.

And, of course, the bonus is that you can do it without ever getting into a real life war.

Not that that matters much, at one point you will have units a whole tier better than those of the opposition, and when that happens, the fact that they aren't level six doesn't matter much.

 

[Mailo]

I'm just playing my first game as the Sidar in a multiplayer game with 2 others in my team.
We're playing at prince difficulty (I think, one up from default) and marathon, and barbarian attacks were just rampant in the beginning. 1-5 barbarian units every turn, for about 100 turns. Needless to say one city has 7 great engineers, the other 12 great scientists.

Granted, this might not be the usual setup, but in my case the waning payed of immensely, especially as the engineer city was set up first and produces an axeman every 2-3 turns.

 

[Slvynn]

sidar are great at assasin / firemage combo. Its one of standard strategies among people from hamachi who play mp exclusively. The best are svalts and sidar, but sidar temtation to wane strong unit is too hight, and waning not good always, because you can lose alot of power.

 

[wilboman]

I suspect they are brilliant for the OCC.

 

[Demus]

they're quite allright, but it's tough getting enough waning shades for them. Even with shadows, the boost isn't THAT good, compared to say the khazad rushing for RoK -> found council -> CoaTS -> dwarven shadows. The 3rd ring + dwarven vaults + dwarven smithies outproduce the sidar easily, and with the limited resources (only within culture of 1 city), it's tough getting enough normal specialists to get a decent GP production going. Sidar are still in the top 5 OCC civs though.

 

[Shub-Felty]

I think the Sidar are overpowered when it comes to Raging Barbarian games.. and Longer games (normal speed and longer).
Obviously from raging barbs you can basically Farm these barbs and gain many,many, GP's. As long as there is some barb population left, you can still gain XP and GP's the most basic way. It gets a little more difficult when you have to use less conventional methods to raise XP.
As long as you have plenty of production (2-3 Engineer's works well per city), you can pump out warriors within 2-3 turns, thus replenishing your lost troops via waning. Yes it can hurt to lose a lvl 6 unit, but if you can pump out a few more units to replace them, your back on track.
And in longer games, the waning strategy works even better! Basically it will take longer to do everything in Epic and Marathon modes, except combat. So being able to pump out a few GP's in 10 turns on Marathon mode is so much more INCREDIBLY powerful compared to 10 turns in Quick mode.
Of course you always have to be careful about being overrun by a stack of 25 units rolling through your land. But if you see them coming from a distance, have all your towns pump out a few warriors (with those engineers, 1-3 turns each warrior) and hope for the best. But this IS the downfall of Sidar due to their waning.

 

[Yaotzin]

The only way to balance the civs on all settings/speeds/sizes would be to remove their uniqueness. Yeah, sidar are strong on raging barbs/large/long games, so what? They're weak on small/short games, and clan or whatever is strong.

I prefer that variety to vanilla Civ's small differences but balanced system.

 

[wilboman]

The Age-Old argument: Lanun are strong on Archipelago, Khazad in Highlands, and so forth.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

actually if you make good use of their world spell, they can be pretty good in short games too....

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I don't think so. Their world spell is one of the weakest, imho. Unlike units with Invisible, Hidden units cannot move through rival borders, and of course the promotion is removed by casting or attacking. It should at least give Stealth instead of Hidden, so the units can hide whenever you want them to.

 

[Ecofarm]

Shades = pipe dream. It's too late, like vampire lords and dragons. Even for a "no-axe rush!" bts-mundane unit hating player like myself. There's just no way I give up a level 6 unit (possibly archmage or high priest or blitzing assassin or cr3 paladin) before the game is won anyway.

Yes, Sidar are unstoppable. In the sense that, if you can give up a level 6 unit for a super-specialist (no GPP), you are unstoppable already.

Make shades level 4 and Sidar might be decent in a competitive (or high-difficulty) game.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

I don't think so. Their world spell is one of the weakest, imho. Unlike units with Invisible, Hidden units cannot move through rival borders, and of course the promotion is removed by casting or attacking. It should at least give Stealth instead of Hidden, so the units can hide whenever you want them to.

Everything you said is true but there is one little thing you didn't consider.

Ready?

Pillaging doesn't remove the hidden promotion. This is normally not an issue since recon and animal units can't pillage (the only ones with access to the hidden promotion normally); however, when you're faced with hidden melee or cavalry its a different ballgame.

First, let's analyze the effect of a stack of hidden and mobility promoted horsemen or warriors in general. They can move into enemy lands undetected, meaning the enemy (be it player or AI) does not realize from which direction the incursion is originating. Thus, your cavalry or warriors can enter their lands and pillage at will with no effective counter available for a very, very long time. This is particularly useful in multiplayer, since you are ,essentially, in a defacto state of war with all players from the off (in most cases). In that situation hidden nationality means nothing and the ability to pillage at a whim with little to no risk is amazingly useful.

Now, let us move the analysis to single player. All of the above holds true for sp, with one exception. Pillaging still has effectively no risk for your units; however, your diplomacy will suffer if you do this with standard units. So you care about diplomacy? No problem! This is where the industrious trait comes in to play. Pact of the nilhorn gives you 3 hidden nationality giants (each with sentry 1 for improved scouting for pillaging purposes). Have apprenticeship up and you can promote them with mobility 1 right from the off or whenever you get around to horseback riding. Now you have 3 hidden nationality, hidden, mobility 1, sentry units that are ideal for pillaging without consequence.

Both of the above scenarios can destroy your opponents economy, particularly the latter as it has no consequences.

Hypothetically, if you hold off on the world spell, a hidden trojan horse could be useful in multiplayer, although I have never tried it.

On a completely different note, shades can also be used to effectively increase your archmage cap.

 

[Ecofarm]

First, let's analyze the effect of a stack of hidden and mobility promoted horsemen or warriors in general. They can move into enemy lands undetected, meaning the enemy (be it player or AI) does not realize from which direction the incursion is originating. Thus, your cavalry or warriors can enter their lands and pillage at will with no effective counter available for a very, very long time. This is particularly useful in multiplayer, since you are ,essentially, in a defacto state of war with all players from the off (in most cases). In that situation hidden nationality means nothing and the ability to pillage at a whim with little to no risk is amazingly useful.

1 problem.

Hawks, which cost about 1 hammer, and have range, see hidden (and invis!). All you need is hunting and a lodge. Then hit a peak every turn and the threat of hidden/invis is gone. Their detect hidden range is not the same as normal vision range, however, it's 3 tiles range to see hidden/invis IIRC.

Once my friends knew this, my Shadow strat was shelved.

I think hawks should be changed, and new birds added. A bird that you get with a ~100 research and build with ~10 hammers should not render INVIS useless. I don't think the base bird should even see hidden.

Also, sand lions see hidden and invis (and empyr can revelation). But both lions and priests are WAY later than hunting.

 

[Ekolite]

And also have a thematic reason for finding and revealing hidden units. I agree completely, I think that hawks in general need a lot of work done TBH, some sort of automatic target would be good so you dot have to micro it every turn.

Also, I think basic hawks should only be able to see units, not terrain (by showing only tiles with units on). How does a bird tell its master the lay of the land? It also shouldn't be able to see anything in forests.