I have an update on my civ reviews I wanted to share.
I played out a scenario with all the unique secondary trait leaders like Ophelia, Corane, Zaria Scheras, Reorx, Halfmorn, Lorelei Coral, etc paired in two civ teams. Also those that have a unique characteristic like Auric Ulvin, Risen Emperor, Jamal Dhakar, and Decius.
It meant multiple occurances of the Amurites which made life interesting. With Barbarian world of course - on load 14.4.7. It ran smooth without interruption to 646 at 6 MB of game memory per save on my machine which sometimes marks the point where that is a challenge on a crowded map, but turns got slow.
As Decius leader of the Malakim I was paired with Yakut-Kuriotates which worked pretty well. Some highlights of the game and challenges:
Although I had a favorable start I soon fell behind. It seemed to take forever for my workers to build anything - their priorities kept shifting or reacting to dangers. And the rapid desertification can be a handicap as well as a benefit. (Its almost a bit too negative for my liking akin to D'teshi wasteleand - a cancer when you capture a verdant area and it slowly turns to sand) I also could not capture any animal units at a time when I was very vulnerable - though I had the promotion.
For the very longest time I only had access to bronze as a resource while I was fighting scions khazad and amurites - they were starting to equip mithril before I could find iron, and mithril was another long wait. I confess I used worldbuilder to cleanse some of my remaining viable beastmaster, ranger and camel archer units that became withered, undead estranged and crazed, after I lost more than a few. Things were just going too slow and I had my hands full.
Something Malakim have to pay attention to is the unpredictability of their movement pattern. With their desert mobility and intermittent roads they'll sometimes take a much longer route through dangerous territory when you just want to go two places forward, or their actual movement radius is quite different than the game seems to indicate, and half the army gets left behind along the way. I had to compensate a few times by replotting a few moves to save stranded units - though I also broke spellstaffs trying to do it.
Decius as you know can create the unique units even national units of other civs - as long as at least one is your national flavour. So I had battlemages, centaur guards, boarding parties, etc. Interestingly, with good alignment I could upgrade rangers to spawn 4 Scion-like Redactors, when the equivalent druid is only available to neutral alignments. Eventually I had a weird undead or even demon entourage, and nightmares. That was ok since the world was going to hell in a handbasket - mostly evil rivals and a lot of Ashen Veil but the counter really climbed under Auric who had the Prophecy mark, then completed Draw, Drifa and eventually Auric Ascended.
But the biggest surge towards Armageddon was really strange, after defeating Hyborem I picked up former demon cities that had populations of 60+ even 147, that I deeded to Yakut who created an isolated colony vassal rather than try to maintain as they contracted. Along came a random Ira that razed two of them and in one turn the counter jumped by over 40 to 80+. I contended with demons hell land and all the world spells and curses thrown in. I'm not sure what mechanic caused that (was it related to Decius's unique ability when I inherited the cities?) I had to enforce peace with Seven Pines and undo some of the damage with Glory Everlasting, one time rituals. And forgot to mention, if the counter is still out of control, you are better off to raze the ashen veil holy city than keep it - as in my case the counter went up more, which doesn't help unless of course you're the Sheaim or Calabim I took it from.
More than most games played I really had to pay attention to diplomacy which was hard to maintain as the world heated up. I had one big break that was equally strange-
The first time I entered Mirror of Heaven, with 16 units, I suddenly gained 16 hero lightbringers I was able to upgrade into various units; Luridus, Archmage, Beastmaster, Paladin etc, though it was difficult to predict or plan what unit upgrades were available to choose.
Eventually I achieved dominance and built a contiguous empire reaching to the only other good team, fellow Empyreans Gimil-Luchuirp and Elder Malasa-Hamstalfvar. I gained a lot of great generals and for the first time had a number of units well over 200 even 300 xp. Though I received notice of a map to find the Godslayer, I never found it, nor did I encounter Auric Ascended in a bitter campaign - perhaps fortunate though I was looking forward to it. All in all an unusual scenario.