Builders Conquest

[Gelvan]

I started a game with the planet generator 068 and distributed one world improvement on each of the 10 continents, one for every Civilization. The aim was to find out which of the Civ’s would do best, when they had time to evolve without early wars, and also to compare myself to them. I removed Barbatos the Lich from the game. The Civ’s were: Balseraph (me), Calabim, Shaeim, Elohim, Ljosofar, Kahzad, Grigori, Amurites, Malakim (Decius) and Cualli (FF). Difficulty Warlord.

Instead of building a big army, I concentrated on Jubilee and built every building available. There was not much room for cottages so my research was only a bit increased by Loki's Inspiration.

At turn 100 I looked in the world builder to find out, that Malakim and Ljosofar had 4 cities, and were quite ahead therefore. The Dwarfs and Cassiel had both only one city, even though I cleared their starting positions of wood at the beginning of the game. Sheaim and Calabim were doing fine, Elohim, Amurites, Cualli and me, had only 2 cities.

OO, FL and KM have been found around the same turn, by Kahzad, Ljosofar and me, I think that was turn 120.

I was playing builder style and was happy that I could be sure that no one ever attacked me before Optics, when “Shaeim Civilization has been destroyed”. That was a bit shocking, it was only turn 168, which is on normal speed at warlords difficulty without any contact between civ's quite in the beginning of the game.

I looked at the world builder and found out, they had been wiped out – not by a Gargoyle from a Graveyard, but merely by some nasty barbarian lizardmen, who appearantly had crawled out of their lair.

I closed the world builder and was thinking about a non-Ashen Veil game, hoping for the Calabim to take over the role of Os-Gabella, when… 7 (!) skeletons appeared at my city gates, where my first Drown was awakening in his afterlife. One Drown against 7 skeletons is a bit difficult. Luckily I had plundered most of the Lairs of my island a bit earlier and had enough money to torture some warriors into Drowns, and therefore I was still alive at turn 199.

How was everyone doing at turn 199?

Grigori: Unlucky, they encountered this Orthus guy and lost their thierd city to him. Some Axemen though.
Khazad: After a bad start, now they have their fav religion and 3 cities.
Amurites: Forest Start destroys AI: two very small cities.
Cualli: No-Jungle start destroys Lizardmen AI – Two one-people cities on hills and maybe 7 barbarian bears running around in the north of their island.
Malakim, Elven, Calabim, Elohim: Prospering, everything fine, 5 or more cities.
Balseraph: 3 cities and a new army – I need some settlers.

 

[Gelvan]

At turn 265 The Order was found by the Elves, and Flauros made contact with me, sharing his world map, a little bit earlier than Kandros Fir who has 6city's by now. Amurites and Cuilli still have 2 cities, I suppose they are lost for this game.

Orthus is sitting in his Grigori city, but he did no attempt to conquer another one. Therefore Grigori just built another one, so they have 4 now.

Flauros was once the most advanced, but I think these days are gone. I only have 6 cities, but I'm running the tech tree.

Malakim and the Elves are though the biggest ones with 10 cities each, followed by Calabim and Elohim with 7.

The religions did not spread, only Flauros seems to have researched FoL and recieved his Disciple of Leaves to switch the religion. I think that's another point, why FoL spreads often like hell: it is just the first thing anyone can research. And after waiting 40 turns to get it at second place - who would not use the Disciple to create the religion?

Scorewiese the Elves lead the game, while Flauros is thierd, after me, followed by Malakim. It seems that Flauros made the most of his worldspell "River of Blood" - the curves are quite interesting at that point. Khazad also made a huge step upwards, not sure what's the reason though. At the Powergraph it's a bit different, Calabim, Khazad and Elohim are together, while Malakim is thierd before me - the Elves are just skyrocketing.

Really strange ist Culture, where the Calabim have a HUGE step upwards 25 turns ago. They have no wonders, so I have no idea why.

I stop this game, maybe I start later a new one - or if someone with more experience wants to do the same, I think on continent for each civ is boring but also interesting to find out the strengths of the civ's that need a bit more time to get up their feet. .

 

[Yashkaf]

This is an excellent job, I hope the team sees this as well. There's a power ranking thread in the main FfH forum, and most people agree that the Ljosalfar are usually very strong when controlled by the AI. Almost in every game on immortal or deity I've played they founded FoL and were first, despite never going to war. The AI does have problems with the Grigori. Despite all that pacifism crap Cassiel tries to feed you, they really should be conquering cities behind a couple of super adventurers. Without religion they rely on many resources for happiness, and are much better at being the aggressor rather than the defenders.

I also agree the AI has a problem with a forest start. If my settler starts in a forest, I move so I have about 5-6 workable tiles, that's my happy cap anyway until bronze working. The AI will always settle a city on the first turn, even in the middle of the forest.

 

[Gelvan]

After this first game, when I saw that the wood elves AI has ruled even on Warlord difficulty, I concluded, that if they are that good, I just could use them in a Deity game with nearly the same setting (10 continents and Civs) and win easily, right?

Wrong. At first, it seemed all well, I settled, and had some luck with Ancient Chants, then researched Education. Cottage Spamming I remembered and it was fun (as it was in 0.24) to build them on top of trees, which is maybe the main reason the AI is so good with the Elves. My second settler was assaulted by a Goblin and a Bear who mad an unholy coalition. First (and proudly last) time to reload, then I built it somewhere else. After that, two Barbarian Citys were built on my really quite small island. (this time I did not use the world builder until I abandoned the game). I was attacking them with 10 warriors and had 2 level 5 units after that.

Not that bad for a beginner. This thought was a bit hampered when my cultural border met Flauros’. He was at 300 points, I was at 148. Somehow Cottage Spamming wasn’t working… I had a cottage EVERYWHERE – although no mines and not many GP and then I made one big mistake: I built a fifth city. Later in the game, this city would cause 9 upkeep for distance to palace… and the distance was not that far.

Okay. The most ‘cheating’ part was with the map. I selected “4 sea tiles to the next continent”. This lead to a war with Calabim, that was never fought. He had no Optics, and never researched it, I had Optics and no ships.

Instead of Rushing FoL I tried to beeline Octopussy’s Garden, but was cut short. Although later I still was able to found FoL, which is quite interesting regarding all the talk about it being researched and spread early. Not that it helped much, well it did a bit, to get an Ancient forrest everywhere before switching back to OO. (or OG in case of the Elves).

This time everyone had a good time, and so many troops, their economy should have been killed. Well that’s what Deity is all about… I’m not really looking forward to a “normal” Pangaea Deity game, where Flauros has 20 horses, 20 warriors, 20 hunters, and 3 Vampires when he decides to attack. While I – running the economy at 60% science can afford maybe 4 hunters and some warriors..

The biggest mistake was to NOT research Archery. Don’t ask me how I could overlook that my Elven Hero is in this technology. I researched it around turn 180 when Flauros “attacked”.

Fun with religions: The Shaeim and the Dwarfs were not special, just AV and KM, but real fun was the Empyrian Calabim Neutral guy, who was happy that I did treat my people bad (for some time in the beginning, because I *thought* to have a pleasured AI would mean no war, alas another mistake).

March of the Trees on a Continent map like this may seem completely useless, but I used it to fight off an attack at turn 250 from the Lizard tribe (Caravels and Assasins). This was of course not the best of ideas, because without the ancient trees, my economy took a huge draw back and to regrow everything took about 20-40 turns. Another use could be to wipe out early barbarian without building stacks of warriors. Or if Barbatos is nearby..

It was not really a succession game, but insightful for me, Deity is really more fun, than Warlord, although on a normal map, I really don’t see any chances for the HP. Well, said that, I should give it a try with Svartalfar a big map and not many opponents. Let’s see.

 

[Chip56]

(for some time in the beginning, because I *thought* to have a pleasured AI would mean no war, alas another mistake).

Thats true for elohim and maybe some other (initaly) good guys, but not for the bad guys and warloving ones like basium.

 

[Zechnophobe]

This is an excellent job, I hope the team sees this as well. There's a power ranking thread in the main FfH forum, and most people agree that the Ljosalfar are usually very strong when controlled by the AI. Almost in every game on immortal or deity I've played they founded FoL and were first, despite never going to war. The AI does have problems with the Grigori. Despite all that pacifism crap Cassiel tries to feed you, they really should be conquering cities behind a couple of super adventurers. Without religion they rely on many resources for happiness, and are much better at being the aggressor rather than the defenders.

I also agree the AI has a problem with a forest start. If my settler starts in a forest, I move so I have about 5-6 workable tiles, that's my happy cap anyway until bronze working. The AI will always settle a city on the first turn, even in the middle of the forest.

Ljos are definately the best AI for points, though I generally find the Belseraphs often doing pretty good overall. I think the Ljos strategy is simply the easiest for an AI to follow. You get to build on tiles with trees, meaning all your squares can get +1 production, and later +1 food. Not only that but you get hooked up with the strongest civic in the game, GoN. Add to that the double movement through forests, increases exploration speed, and starting with Hunting (On higher difficulty) meaning you get really powerful Barbarian killers (hunters). It just 'goes'.

 

[Yashkaf]

I think that until the other civs' AI catches up the Ljos need to be scaled down a bit. It's not fun when they dominate almost every game. In spite of that, I'm on my first game playing Fall Further, and Amelanchier is way down in the rankings (about 18th/26), even being Sandalphon's b@$&#, excuse me: "vassal" for a while.

 

[Gelvan]

I used Noble Difficulty just to give everyone the same chances. I made again a map containing 1 continents for 2 players, there were Capria, Decius (Calabim), Ethne, Amurites (me), 2 other Amurites (AI opponents), Arendel (Ljos), Varn Gosam, and Illian. The Aim was to have all religions be found by appropriate Civ's but somehow this did not work that well.

My "strategy" was to get as much science as possible and thereby Achieve a Tower of Mastery. In the very beginning I had some problems with skeletons but also a VERY nice second city position, with Rivers and a good place inbetween for a third one.

This helped me, because this time, I really cared for my warriors and upgraded them to swordsman quite fast, completely contrary to my initial strategy. The reason for researching Bronze Working were two plots of Silk in Jungle tiles near my Capital. And this was a big help against the barbarian hordes... AND the infamous Doviello, who died so early that I even forgot to mention them above.

With 5 cities quite in the beginning, I was able to beeline for the Ashen Veil, while building my first adepts. This was fun, even though I forgot, that this meant that Hyborem would appear, but more than that I forgot about Hell terrain entirely. After building my 6th city (in the middle of the jungle, only reason was to halt the barbarian lizardmen production), this nasty terrain appeared near my 3rd and first city and I was astonished to find out, that I forgot to build life mana.

Therefore I used the Amurite World Spell quite early in the game, or more exactly I intended to do so, when ANOTHER Amurite cast his. I wasn't aware before, that this meant that ALL and not only the mana nodes from the spell caster would go blanc.

However it gave me the opportunity to build life mana and from that point on built many adepts only to help me against these nasty fields of perdition.

Meanwhile Capria and Decius found the Order, both with around 1000 points compared to my 1500, and then allied! Lorewise this would be a quite interesting Scenario... Oh and Varn Gosam was a Vassal to Decius (Sun and Vampire er..) however odd it was, somehow this felt "right"... We will see, when the Civ Pedia Entry for Decius is made

So there were 3 countries - plus later Basium - who really were a bit on Order against Ashen Veil and Evil Empires like mine, who had by now 7 big cities, plus one very small. Hyborem on the other hand, survived hardly thanks to the technologies I gifted him, but after I gave him trade he really began to threaten the Elves and the Illians alike and causing havoc on their landscape. But he never fealt like allying with me, old bastard, not being grateful at all for creating him ...

The Fellowship of Leaves did them Elves for once no favour because it kept them neutral and so hell spread there easily. And burnt all their forests along the way. One of the AI Amurites adopted FoL and it was a bit behind, because of the Pass with the Gargoyles. Ethne also turned to FoL but being Good from the start they were not damaged by Hyborem's Hell. I have to add, that I played this game with FF and special Alignment option enabled, that gives you + and - on a scale from -500 to +500 ; Evil to Good.

Hell Terrain and the threat of the Capria/Decius/Varn made me research Runes of Kilmorph. No one had researched it even then, so I was founding it, and using Thanes to spread it in all my cities. After that I switched to it and was ... Neutral - not Good with +120 alignment points; the switch to Good was at + 170. So I had to build masses of Paramenders each contributing +1 alignment point. Then I researched Honor and adopted the Overcouncil (+24) and I was good at last. Hell was no longer a problem, and the big alliance was happy with me too. And not one turn to early: when I switched to Kilmorph Basium appeared and joined the big alliance...

The funny thing was, that Hyborem wasn't pissed of at first. But when the other Amurite which was an Evil OO worshipper wanted to declare war, if I don't turn my back on Hyborem, I did so, and was from then on in a state of "no talk". The B.A. declared war at all Ashen Veil players because of Basium, so I was quite lucky.

After that I just completed settlement of my continent and was aware that with Rites of Oghma a Tower Victory would be possible. So I beelined the tech and was starting building some towers, when that damned Overcouncil decided to outlaw Entropy and Death mana. I had to leave those fanatics and was therefore Neutral again.

One turn later, they declared war at me. It seems they did not care much about their ongoing war against Hyborem, who by the way conquered the holy city of the FoL. Ethne neither cared much about all of this world politics. Now I needed my lvl 8 mages and Archmages to push back hell terrain again, while defending my coasts.

I am still not used to 3.17 where you have to mass build ships, so my 4 Man O War's were wiped out quite fast. My military was also in a catatrophic condition being alone on one continent and all... The solution were adepts. With 17 mana Nodes and Cave of the Ancestor I could build Mages with Fireballs and Spell Extension II and secure my coast. Capria never managed to reach my land.

After that I declared war at the Elves who dared to attack a Barbarian city on my continent and the Tower of Mastery is only 100 turns away. The Mithril Golem is 40 turns away, and Blood of the Phoenix also is available.

Was a nice game

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

if your trying to have all the religions founded by "appropriate" civs, I'd try bannor ( order ) , elohim ( empyrean ) , ljolsafar ( FoL ) , khazad ( RoK ) , svartalfar ( CoE ) , sheaim ( AV ) , lanun ( OO ) . oh, and I really hope that the Ice hand religion from AoI makes a comeback in phase "ice" of FFH2 when the illians are fleshed out. that would make it 8 religions, and I like even numbers

 

[Gelvan]

That's true, but I don't wanted Svartalfar as an opponent and I wanted to see what way the Amurites would go - I thought if there are no Khazad they would build Runes to get more Wealth and thereby science or without The Sheim to get Ashen Veil to have much science directly. Well that's what I did, playing as Amurites. The AI considered it more from the diplomatic side and took FoL because these Amurites were weak and neighbours of Elohim who had adopted FoL from the Elves - but I was surprised that the other Amurites AI took OO instead of Kilmorph. Varn Gossam also did not found anything, the Empyrian were founded by the Bannor but did not spread wide, because Order was everywhere already.

Yes! I also look forward to the fleshed out Illians, I think the "Event" with Leptum Frigus is already VERY interesting.

Well the Aim was more on the "I want to win on Noble" side to be honest. But the Alliance of Bannor, Malakim and Calabim (the Decius tribes) was quite fun and full of lore in my imagination.

Also the "founding" of Hyborem by my Amurites and later the change to Kilmorph was a nice single player experience to me: "we have gone the wrong way, see all the hell terrain which approaches our farmsteads, how long shall we endure the failures of our greed in knowledge, we have to abandon this foul creature and work hard to regain our lost heritage, knowledge and Scholarship are the gifts of true work, not of going the easy but deadly way". Did I mention that I built the World Project that destroys every religion and building in all cities which is not the state religion after I switched to Kilmorph?

I actually increased the Armageddon Counter with Prophecy marked Paramenders to get a Good Alignment and the Mithril Golem.

Or the Alliance of Elves and Illians to destroy Hyborem (not very successfull, but still...) - this game was full of storys. And it's like that every time I play.. Just a great work this mod (and also the modmod). The best thing ever made.