My girlfriend and I play FFH together on a team. Settings are generally standard size map, any map, raging barbarian, aggressive AI, wildlands, blessings of amathon, and living world, with time, cultural, and religious victories turned off. We usually stick in a random teamed pair of good, neutral, and evil civs (so 2 good on a team, 2 neutral, 2 evil), with some of the larger maps getting a 4th random team added. I usually select emperor difficulty, she selects either prince or monarch.
She has recently begun playing as the Ljosalfar, and been liking them alot. However, because of how much they focus on the archery line, my usual civ of the Khazid... doesn't really fit well with them. So far the ones that seem to have worked best from what I've tried are the sidar (because they don't really care what they have, just that they can get it to lvl 6), and the grigori (because the hero's are what really carries the weight with them). Do you guys have any ideas of a civ that would work better in concert with them (aside from playing as them myself - we don't like sharing the same civ).
The Svartalfar would be a good match, if you like playing them. She can focus on archery and you can focus on recon, and you will both benefit from sharing.
If she plays with Thessa then you might try the Amurites. You can focus on arcane and she will benefit, and her focus on archery will mean you'll get Firebows sooner.
If she plays Arendel Phaedra then I'd suggest you try Varn Gosam of the Malakim. She'll benefit from earlier access to religious units if you focus on divine techs, and you'll be able to do so sooner knowing that you'll have decent defenders thanks to her archery techs.
She usually plays as Arendel Phaedra. Now time to go off and play with the Malakim on my own to figure out how to use them well.
If anyone else has any other ideas, feel free to post them as well. I am definitely not adverse to trying a few different leaders to see which one tends to suit my playstyle the best.
I'd say Svartalfar. While one will 'naturally' center on Recon and the other 'naturally' on Archery, you will share a great many aspects.
The only caveat with that pairing is that both of you will want Fellowship of Leaves. Luckily, FoL have two completely seperate hero units. Divide them up between you.
Can you bloom or build improvements in your teammates terrain? If she can bloom over your improvements in your territory then being Svartfalar is much less attractive. If she can help you improve your land then Aristo-GoN Calabim (do the Financial-Organized leader by the way) with Ancient Forest-Farms everywhere would be a ridiculous powerhouse. In that case, she would focus on developing both of your economies (lots of workers and some priests) while you would focus on your military and production (manors and vampires). Seeing as you would be the primary source of military power, the archery line would be of much less importance. That may be somewhat boring to her, but my instinct is if she likes the Ljosalfar, she is likely to be a builder at heart.
The drawback is you have different alignments so diplomacy with the AI teams will be hampered.
I would not pick another builder civ to complement her. Pick someone who is strong militarily. That way you can always set it up so she is the economy and you are the hammer. Prioritize your important military techs over her military techs.
You can't cast Bloom in your teammate's territory, but you can gift a city to the elves and then after they create forests in all the improvements they can gift it back. She doesn't need to be consigned to the role of gardener in order to use that "strategy", but you do both need a taste for cheese.
(At a table outside the Sivfan Bar & Grill, in the Holy City of Hyll)
"The Svartalfars were the first to spring to my mind as our Dark Elf cousins working with us amused me. However, it's not just amusement and blood kinship that makes an Ljosalfar/Svartalfar team a useful suggestion. Others have already noted the strength of such a team.
I'd suggest though, as a general rule-of-thumb, that an Ljosalfar partner with a strong early military and decent melee line might be a natural pairing whatever the civ. The OP says he plays as Malakim which I know very little of personally. I did meet an aged Malakim traveller once who said he was a follower of the Varn Gossam - I'm not sure if he's their god or king - but it seems to me that the desert people and the forest folk are not natural allies at all.
Perhaps they could be since they'd stay out of each others lands? Maybe. Natural allies once their mutual enemies are gone, may turn on each other so a Malakim/Ljosalfar alliance may work in that respect. As an Ljosalfar, I try to spread forests, avoid road-building, vitalize deserts to grasslands, charge 5 cent tax on plastic bags, think green - but we're not so big on war. If I were chosing an ally, I'd probably go with a civ like the Grigori or Doviello, not for any synergistic effects but because I understand their talent for war."
One thing that can really pump up the synergy is picking non-elf civ and then essentially swapping empires at some point in the game. Each of you essentially gifts the bulk of their cities to the other. That way,
Also, any tiles that aren't yet overgrown with forests should get the non-elf's workers on them since elf workers are so very slow.
Finally, be sure to have the Elf work toward Fellowship of Leaves (obviously) while the non-Elf works toward a different religion. I really like the combination of FoL and Runes of Killmorph. The fact that Arete grants several Iron resources means that both of you can ignore the Melee path for the beginning of the game and then around the non-elf builds the Arete-Iron granting wonder, one of you makes a run for Bronze Working to build Axemen. Iron weilding Axes have enormous power when you get them early.
Just make sure that one of you makes a strong push for Trade early. Being able to share techs with each other is key to making the team work. Making a run along one tech path is good. Being able to move along two tech paths simultaneously is even better. Hmmm. Maybe the Hippus would be a good choice. Early blitz, both civs can have Raiders trait for coordinated attacks against enemies and Hippus naturally moves toward Trade in its usual tech progression, so they make a good ally for anyone.
Hippus's strong early game pairs well with the Elves' strong later game. Also, the Hippus can grab a few cities from a neighbor and that will allow the Elves to expand without needing to build their own settlers. Send along an elf warrior or two to grab workers from that first war since Elf-owned workers can build over forests even when the workers themselves aren't elves.
Won't gifting cities remove all culture? I know you can get it back eventually but along borders that could be troublesome. Plus doesn't it blow up all the buildings in the city when you gift them?
Yes, a girlfriend who plays civ (no she doesn't have a twin sister and she's MINE )
Bloom can only be casted in your own borders, so you can't cast bloom in an ally's terrain. I still have to test whether or not elven workers are able to build under trees when in a friends borders. As for trading citys back and forth, trading a city means it looses all its culture, but it still keeps all its buildings. That means that if you have a few buildings in it that produce culture, you can easily grab the cultural borders back within a turn or two. And then when you switch the city back, you still control all the culture that you had before the switch.
Also, to the people who said get trade or turn on each other later, we don't play that way. We play, custom game, us both on team one, pair of random good on team two, pair of random neutral on team 3, pair of random evil on team four, any remaining slots filled with pairs of random. This is in effect, starting the game with a permanent alliance, so we automatically share techs (and can assist each other in researching techs), and our borders automatically give our city's their BFC, unless the BFC's actually overlap. This allows me to settle my citys next to her high culture ones, and vice versa.
So far teams that we've tried, in order of the ones that seemed to go best to the ones that seemed to fail the most:
Sidar
Spoiler:
she had FoL, I had Empy (empy shrine gives +2 xp to diciple units - combined with theocracy, conquest, apprenticeship, form of the titan, military building (sacrifice a great commander to grab +2xp, +20% millitary unit production), and altar of the lunnotar, this city is able to produce disciples who are almost ready to wane right as they come out.) In this one, we were both more builder oriented, but the archers were great for city defense, and the sidar's ghosts went along well with the archers. Her longbowmen had +1 attack compared to mine, but I made up for that by using flaming arrows with enchantment mana from my capital. Really started rolling once we had bowyers, sorcery, and religious law. Still playing this one, but it seems to be going the best of all the ones we've played so far.
Malakim
Spoiler:
she had FoL, I had Empy (7 sun mana and strength 24 chalid was a bit OP - I never did get iron either...). It worked out ok, but we went alot more down the religious path than anything else. She ended up getting ToM victory while I was off killing people with chalid, 4 archmages and 4 high priests (the nexus is great for reinforcing newly captured citys). My little army did run into the problem though of so much to kill, so few places it could be at one time. Her sitting in a corner acting all builderish didn't particularly help my war-mongering either... but that's a different story.
Lurchip
Spoiler:
this one went surprisingly well. A quick grab of wood golems held me for a bit, then we grabbed archers and adepts. Rolling on down to engineering worked out well for both of us (got me gargoyles, she really liked the better road movement and the forges from the wonder). Then switched and grabbed bowyers. After grabbing mages, I started working on a ToM victory and we rolled on down to machinery, giving me clockwork golems and her flurry's. I won a tower of mastery victory while we held 70% of the world population and 59% of the land area (62% needed for domination victory).
Amurites
Spoiler:
this one worked out so-so. After getting basic techs and adepts, we beelined bowyers. After that we went down the sorcery line, but her longbows were doing significantly better than my firebows until I managed to get govornnan. Even then govornnan only worked out so-so (I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to use him - though stoneskin is ALWAYS better than fireball as the first promotion to take... then grabbing fireball or the drill line, your choice. But a firebow with drill 4/stoneskin... 7-10 first strikes is awsome), and by that point she was well on her way to conquering the world without my help. Partly though was playing a continents map... remind me to never do that again.
Grigori
Spoiler:
so-so. The archery line isn't the greatest for the grigori (upgrading hero's is very nice though). In the end, you get the option of either marksmen (heroic marksmen is a bit... overkill - they attack the weakest unit in the stack) or crossbowmen, who upon comparison to flurrys are very meh. Not being able to have a religion or run a specialist economy (unless you want to give up your hero's - didn't think so) also hurts the grigori. Would have worked significantly better if we had passed citys back and forth to have her improve them with cottages/ancient forests. On the other hand, giving up her archers and just pushing down the melee line yeilds very nice results in the end for the grigori - who doesn't like heroic immortals? Works much better paired with thessa than with arendel. In the end though, this pair didn't really yield very satisfying results.
Bannor
Spoiler:
Erm... about the only thing the bannor and the elves had in common was a love of cottages - which while making education a very nice tech doesn't really yield much else in synergy. To make the bannor truly shine, you need two things - crusade, and iron working. To get an early crusade, it really shoves the whole archery path rather far to the side. This means either a late crusade (doesn't really work well for the bannor), or late archer (doesn't really work well for the elves). On the other hand, you do go rather deep into the religious path, which is nice when she's playing arendel. What seemed to work best was beelining education, grabbing bronze working, then grabing archery and way of the forests, grabbing a religion for me (I ended up snatching order), grabbing crusade, followed by iron working, then proceeding to empty the map of AI's. However, this was a rather long tech path, putting us well into mid-late game before we were able to truly kick off the war machine. By the time we kicked off the war with the bannor, if I had been playing with the sidar we had been well into our battles, and if playing as the lurchip we almost had half the world by the time a crusade would have finally hit high gear.
And lastly, my favorite Khazid.
Spoiler:
IMO, it is tough to find two civs who synergize less with each other than the Khazid and the Ljosalfar. Maps with favor the elves tend to significantly disadvantage the dwarves, and maps that favor the dwarves (highlands in particular) tend to make the elves cringe. The khazid's extreme focus on the melee line also doesn't work out well with the elves focus on archery. Techs tend to be going back and forth (1 for her, 1 for me, 1 for her, 1 for me), with our techs not particularly helping the other out much. While we could each work our own paths, from previous experience we have found that this tends to put us even further behind than usual. The Khazid's lack of any sort of motivation to go down the sorcery line also didn't really help the elves who lack any sort of seige equipment. The only thing that we really agreed on was commune with nature (Yvain for her, dwarven druids for me). However, beelining commune with nature would leave her in a decent spot and me in a horrible one. In the end, we're usually able to win our battles by getting axmen, archery, then construction, and proceeding down the archery lines while my excessive numbers of axmen (80% bonus production - yes please) slowly grinded the enemy into submission. Also, while runes of kilmorph is great with the dwarves, I found that grabbing octopus overlords, fellowship of the leaves, or council of esus to work out better for the dwarven lategame, as it gives you someone who can cast vitalize (which you wouldn't get otherwise). All you loose from lategame runes is the decent early/midgame hero's (outdated by this point usually), and arete (better replaced by guilds imo) but you continue getting the gold from having runes in every city (+1 gold per city it is in, +1 gold per city from shrine). Genesis btw, only affects the building civ's terrain, so its better if the elves let the dwarves build it instead as its one of the few ways they can upgrade their terrain. Of the leaders, it would probably work best (if you can even say that) with armellchar (or however you spell his name), with arendel running a fairly close second.
More suggestions for civ's, or how to play civs well with them would be appreciated. We're having fun together, but I keep having the feeling that we could be doing better.
The archery line isn't the greatest for the grigori (upgrading hero's is very nice though). In the end, you get the option of either marksmen (heroic marksmen is a bit... overkill - they attack the weakest unit in the stack) or crossbowmen, who upon comparison to flurrys are very meh.
If I'm going to upgrade an adventurer along the archery path then I tend to make him defensive, so the upgrade to Marksman is pointless because he has all the wrong promotions. If you want to make a good "marksman" adventurer then use the promotion rather than the unit. Upgrade the adventurer along the recon path, being sure to get Mobility II, Drill IV, Blitz, and Combat IV, then once you've researched Precision he can take the Marksman promotion. A Beastmaster with that setup can be eating up to 4 units off of the bottom of a stack each turn, and has a higher base strength than a Marksman unit.
Of course if you two are not driving up the recon tree that that strategy won't help you.
Now, after trying FF and Orbis for the first time, I think that Mazatl were Exactly what I was looking for. The only question then will be whether we end up liking FF or Orbis more then
From FFH, FF, and Orbis (I highly recommend that you try orbis and FF out - they change alot to the game, and allow you to put in a kind of rotation with civ that keeps you from getting too tired of constantly playing 1 mod alone)
From regular FFH:
Malakim works well if you want to go down the religious path, though otherwise they don't synergize too well.
Sidar work well going down either the archery/recon or religious, seems like the one that best synergy, unless you're willing to do the dark elves.
Grigori works ok, but not really spectacular.
Lastly, the Amurites work out ok, but work better if you can convince her to use thessa.
From orbis:
The elves are quite frankly overpowered here. Ranged attack is killer in orbis, and the elves get a +1 ranged attack bonus. Getting gilden up to strength 9 without even using heroic upgrades is also a major boost to them.
Because of the massive boost in ranged combat, it also allows the grigori to work extremely well with them - having 6 heroic crossbowmen (orbis changed crossbows to be a non-national unit, strength 5, but can use metals), is very powerful, especially when you upgrade all 6 to be heroic arquebuses (now national unit with 6 allowed).
Maztal seem to have the best synergy... however, I wasn't really able to get them working well for me. My biggest problem was getting enough food for my city's when all their squares end up turning to jungle which gives -1 food and +1 production, which ment that all my citizens were working food tiles, not production or commerce, which quickly left me in the dust. This ends up with me recommending the grigori the most as having the best synergy.
As for others - I haven't messed with orbis Malakim, or the orbis amurites. I am also not sure about the sidar as I was unable to get my lvl 6 units to wane for me, so I am not sure what they did to them. As a note though, the Amurites did receive a rather large indirect nerf because of the new research path required to get past sorcery, which makes it MUCH harder to get their hero, as well as archmages. The new corporations are a big boost for them though, and they should always try to grab the corporation that becomes available at sorcery.
From Fall Further:
Have not tried FF much, as I experienced a problem with it crashing on me on trying to play a new game or a save game after reload. Latest patch did fix this bug for me though.
Maztal - they are awsome in FF, between lost lands (+2 trade routes in all cities, +50% production and food in all cities, but -50% commerce gained from trade routes), and their high food potential (marshes with deep jungle give 4 food and 1 production), make them a VERY powerful civ. The only thing that would be more powerful is if they were able to use lost lands AND the way of the forests civic that gives +1 happiness to all squares with jungle, forest, or ancient forest. Highly recommended if you're good at running a specialist economy.
Grigori - they received the same boost as in orbis, however there may be some differences in ranged combat potential. Either way, archer grigori is now much more viable both defensively AND offensively.
Those are the only two that I've tried from FF so far that seem to work well. The much larger number of civs though gives a great many more options to choose from so feel free to experiment.
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