Recently I've fallen back into FFH2, and have ended up going for the extraextramod verions of MNAI from my previous modmod of choice Rise of Erebus due to better stability. However, most of the games I'm playing result in me lagging behind other civilisations very quickly. The few that don't I find it really difficult to work out what to do in endgame - my last 'successful' game was an amurites with a stack of 20 mages with fire II and law II and I was finding that I was unable to take over certain cities with large amounts of longbowmen defending them.
I'm generally more of a builder than an early fighter, and my ideal game in mainline civ would be to go for a culture or apollo program victory. I play Noble difficulty.
In case the issue is quick expansion: With all the games I play, I start by building 3 cities. main city build order: warriors to 3, settler, warrior, worker, warrior, settler, warrior.
Example games and issues I'm running into:
Amurites: My most played. My aim with Valledia is to rush to Aristogarian, then depending on if I've got aggressive neighbours I either go Bowyers or go on the Sorcery path to acquire lots of Law II and Fire II. If I don't go RoK I do not have enough cash to upgrade to mages (I tried going OO and with 5 cities and aristogarian I was down to 50% research for not being in the negatives). If I have someone like doviello, svart or embers nearby I can't get bowyers quick enough to be able to defend myself.
Elohim: Tried doing altar victory - was unable to get enough monks quick enough to defend against svart attacking. There were enough to stop them attacking me in the cities but I didn't have enough to leave my cities to attack them while they pillaged. And with the situation I was in, I didn't have any strong enough units or a large enough stack of units to be able to deal with an added hyborem DoW and the hero unit.
Ljosalfar: probably my most successful game - thessa and FoL, had illians attacking me after they killed kuriotates. Had 30/40 research from early to end of the war, and only survived because of using my world spell. By the end of the war was far behind all the civs on the other continent as what little economy I had had gone into the war instead of research and building, and the illian cities were next to useless for me.
I've been searching through old threads in the forums which is how I went from pure rush sorcery to looking at bowyers and aristogarian for amurites, but otherwise I'm really struggling with how to consistently survive midgame wars and how to close out a game after getting through a gruelling midgame. I think my main issue is my early game isn't working to safely get me to midgame.
Advice would be appreciated.
I'm generally more of a builder than an early fighter, and my ideal game in mainline civ would be to go for a culture or apollo program victory. I play Noble difficulty.
In case the issue is quick expansion: With all the games I play, I start by building 3 cities. main city build order: warriors to 3, settler, warrior, worker, warrior, settler, warrior.
Example games and issues I'm running into:
Amurites: My most played. My aim with Valledia is to rush to Aristogarian, then depending on if I've got aggressive neighbours I either go Bowyers or go on the Sorcery path to acquire lots of Law II and Fire II. If I don't go RoK I do not have enough cash to upgrade to mages (I tried going OO and with 5 cities and aristogarian I was down to 50% research for not being in the negatives). If I have someone like doviello, svart or embers nearby I can't get bowyers quick enough to be able to defend myself.
Elohim: Tried doing altar victory - was unable to get enough monks quick enough to defend against svart attacking. There were enough to stop them attacking me in the cities but I didn't have enough to leave my cities to attack them while they pillaged. And with the situation I was in, I didn't have any strong enough units or a large enough stack of units to be able to deal with an added hyborem DoW and the hero unit.
Ljosalfar: probably my most successful game - thessa and FoL, had illians attacking me after they killed kuriotates. Had 30/40 research from early to end of the war, and only survived because of using my world spell. By the end of the war was far behind all the civs on the other continent as what little economy I had had gone into the war instead of research and building, and the illian cities were next to useless for me.
I've been searching through old threads in the forums which is how I went from pure rush sorcery to looking at bowyers and aristogarian for amurites, but otherwise I'm really struggling with how to consistently survive midgame wars and how to close out a game after getting through a gruelling midgame. I think my main issue is my early game isn't working to safely get me to midgame.
Advice would be appreciated.