Lanun Deity Strategy Guide

[MarigoldRan]

You're Lanun. So if you don't start near the coast, respawn the map. You can justify it lore-wise: Lanun should start at the coast. This strategy guide is geared for standard Lanun coastal starts.

Most people think of Lanun as a coastal seapower and a little weak on land. They're not. They're actually insanely powerful on land because of their ability to leverage their commerce to get higher tier units out before your enemies can counter them.

Consider: if you're playing some other civ, by turn 100 you should have 3-5 cities, generating about 30-40 research/turn. As Lanun, by turn 100 you can easily have 3-5 cities generating 100 research/turn! On average, your research rate with the Lanun and Hannah especially should be more than twice that of any other civ.

What this means is that you can get Way of the Wicked faster than any other civ out there. Way of the Wicked and Slavery is the FASTEST and most efficient way to leverage your commerce into direct production because with Slavery you can convert the hundreds of barbarians you kill over the course of a game into workers, which means that you never have to build a worker again, allowing you to spend the resources on other things like Settlers or military. Furthermore, being able to whip means you can efficiently convert your massive amount of food into buildings or military. This build guide will cover how to use this Slavery strategy to dominate every Lanun start where you get a coast.

***********************************************************************

Initial Settle location:

Search for a Coast with 1-2 seafood and hills, especially forested hills. If there' s a lake tile nearby, even better. You will need the hills for production. The seas provide food and commerce.

First tech: Fishing (Duh).

Build order as you wait for fishing: 3-4 warriors followed by a settler. You don't need a worker because what's the point?

Once fishing is done, spam fishing boats for the fish and Pearl resources and the Pirate Coves. I play with MNAI so the Pirate Coves are built with fishing boats, which means I don't need to build workers. Place your first two cities in locations where you can get 2-3 pirate coves per city. With Hannah, each Pirate Cove provides an extra 2 commerce on top of the 3 commerce and 3 food for each unpgraded coastal tile. Once they upgrade to Pirate Harbors and Pirate Ports, they provide 4 extra commerce, one extra hammer and one extra food. A single Pirate Port produces 4 food, 1 hammer and 7 Commerce (!). Lighthouse adds an extra food. This is the most powerful improvement in the game and you can have 6-8 of them by turn 100. A Pirate Cove/Harbor/Port is literally a gold mine that also produces food! They're also unpillageable by barbs so you don't have to protect them!.

What this means is that with 3 coastal cities and 6 Pirate Coves/Harbors/Ports, you're generating between 30-42 commerce/turn from these improvements alone. Add in the other commerce generation sources from the normal coast tiles and you're hitting close to 100 commerce/turn. No other civ can generate commerce that early.

Two other interesting points about Lanun: since most of your worked tiles are going to be in the sea, you only need about 2 warriors/city to fend off barbs because the barbs have nothing to pillage! Even better: since you're working the seas and hills, you don't need to build workers, which saves a lot of production and food for settlers and fishing boats.

What do we use the commerce on? See below for Part 2
*************************************************************************************************

 

[MarigoldRan]

Part Two: Research Path.

Most Lanun guides talk about getting early OO. Totally wrong. OO is worthless because you lack the production to leverage it. Lanun military relies on quality over quantity, and the strongest military comes from the Ashen Veil with their Ritualists and Rosier. Furthermore, you want Slavery (Way of the Wicked) ASAP so you can leverage your Lanun seafood into production and the hordes of barbarians into workers.

Your tech path should be:
Fishing -> Ancient Chants -> Mysticism (for God King) -> Philosophy -> Way of the Wicked. Change to Slavery.

Most civs can't beeline slavery because their economy will crash. For commerce, most civs rely on education and cottages, which is why strategy guides for other civs prioritize techs like Education or Calendar. But as Lanun, you don't need Education or any other worker tech early on because you can get all your commerce and food from the seas.

Once you have Slavery, you can convert your excess food into production from whips. Even better, you can convert 1/4 of the barbarians you kill into slaves, which can serve as your workers, saving you a ton of production early game.

Next on the tech path:
Craftsmen-> Mining (so your slaves can mine the hills).

Then depending on map either:
Bronze Working if you need immediate defense or:
Corruption of Spirit if you have time.

Once you get Corruption of Spirit and build the (strongest early game) hero Rosier, you're completely safe because Rosier on his own with a few warriors can handle any early game AI invasions. And yes, as Lanun you can easily get Corruption of Spirit faster than anyone else because:

1. You're beelining for it. And
2. You generate commerce faster than anyone else in the early game.

Religion also gives an extra happy face for all of your cities, which is useful for more production.

Note how I'm skipping all of the worker techs except mining and fishing. As Lanun you don't need them! If you're generating too many slaves from the barbs, consider picking up Exploration and Agriculture so your slaves can build roads and farms if they have nothing else to do. As Lanun, again, you can get those techs easily and quickly. But the key to this guide is to get those worker techs AFTER you prioritize Way of the Wicked and slavery so you don't need to build any workers.

***********************************************************************************************************************************

 

[MarigoldRan]

Part Three: Winning.

By turn 150, assuming you're playing on a relatively open map like Tectonics, you should have expanded to 6-8 cities, preferably all on the coast with 12-16 Pirate Coves/Harbors/Ports. Since you prioritized slavery, you can also have about 10-15 slaves by turn 150 just by killing barbs.

Research prioritization:

Sailing for Great Lighthouse and lighthouses.
Trade for the Foreign Trade civic.

Combined, they provide an extra 4 trade routes per city. Once the Great Lighthouse is complete, and you have foreign trade, your research generation from a combination of trade and sea tils should be getting close to 200 beakers per turn (!).

How do we convert all that science into military? Easy. The Infernal Grimoire slingshot to Malovelent Designs

Malovelent Designs is a late game tech that provides a Str 14 hero and Str 16 Beasts of Agares which destroy everything in the early or mid game. Unfortunately, it costs like a million beakers to research, which is why most civs can't get it early. But as the Lanun following the Ashen Veil, you can get the Infernal Grimoire (which provides 1 free tech upon completion, assuming you meet the prereqs for the tech) easily.

So all you have to do now is this:

1. Research fanaticism (the prereq for Malevolent Designs) until there are only 8 turns left to get the tech.
2. Switch research to Infernal Pact (so that you can build the Grimoire).

The problem with the Infernal Pact is it summons Hyperborem. In MNAI, Hyperborem is smart, and prioritizes building the Infernal Grimoire, which means that you have to race him to get the Grimoire. To be safe, you need to get the Grimoire within 10 turns of summoning Hyperborem.

So:

1. Save a Great Person.
2. The moment you research Infernal Pact, start a Golden Age.
3. Swtich government to God King and start the Grimoire in your capital.
4. Your capital in a Golden Age with God King can easily generate 40-50 hammers/turn assuming you settled near hills. On Epic Speed the Grimoire costs 600 hammers so to speed it up, sacrifice your slaves.
5. Each slave converts to 15 hammers. If you have 20 slaves, that's already half the production cost of the Grimoire. With Golden Age and God King and sacrificed slaves, you can easily get the Grimoire within 8-10 turns of Infernal Pact, comfortably beating Hypterborem to it.
6. As you build the Grimoire, complete your research of Fanaticism. If you timed it well, you should be able to build the Grimoire on the same turn as finishing Fanaticism.
7. Use the Grimoire to get Malovelent Designs. Station Rosier in your captial just in case the grimoire spawns a Balor.

Once you've got Malovelent Designs you've won the game. On epic speed you can easily get it by turn 250. The Str 16 Beasts of Agares and the Str 14 hero in combination with Ritualists and Rosier, can steamroll everything in your path. Your enemies will probably still be using Str 5 or 6 swordsmen or archers against these uber late game units.

Declare war on everyone to keep the game interesting. At this point your greatest enemy is boredom.

 

[Calavente]

thanks for the strategy.
I rarely ever used AV so I think I'll try that next time.

/regards

 

[jackelgull]

After having tried this out on noble a few thoughts:

On lower levels, there really aren't enough barbarians to warrant a slavery rush. Unless you hunt for them, and even then unless you get really lucky, you could spend a third of the game getting one, maybe two slaves.

After mysticism, warfare makes a better first priority - conquest makes more sense in an early game high food, low happiness set up.

Slavery is still great for the Lanun but it makes a better second priority.

 

[Calavente]

I also tested that in Monarch... but with a "continent" map...
It was quite difficult to get enough barbs to get slaves for the rush of the grimoire.

+ Beast of Agares are great, but I really needed mardero to fight.
Indeed, all other civs are easy to crack down, but infernals spawned next to me and Hyborem + champions and longbowmen, directly born with iron weapons, this is a recipe to kill unpromoted Beast of agares.

otherwise it's fun (14&16str vs 4-6 str ) , but I'm still a long way from winning, I never did any fight before rushing, so there is a huge continent to conquer, and, maybe, some other civ will have the time to learn some tedious tech.