The Momus feedback

[Kiwi Tyrant]

Whew, played this on Emperor level, won on turn 352, but a bit of a slog! I don't think I could handle this on Deity....

Spoiler :

* Should have made a 'canal city'; but as the scenario randomizes resources, I had my only mana node there and desperately needed a 'fire node' for the upcoming battle's. As a result I never bothered with the deadly Kraken's.

* Cities placed next to the north and east mountain passes proved critical to survival. Hawk's placed in each city gave a good 'heads up' warning.

* It's like an 'advanced start', so you can grow quick and get your base of 5 or so cities up and going. I found the starting civic's of God King & Conquest produced a good launching board!

* After studying earlier post's about this scenario, I went OO, held against the Calabim (used them as a buffer), and used Cultist's to take out the lakeside Infernal cities A.S.A.P!!! Thank's Schlalex, that tip was pure platinum!

* Inner Infernal cities on hill's were another story entirely. I made the mistake of trying to fireball my way in; no go bro, you'd need a large mage stack that would take too long to muster. You must use siege to make the opportunities hit quick and deadly, as Perpy keep's changing his mind, and you need a good roll at the Duke as he is very powerful both militarily and culturally, and will only get stronger!

* With OO, I used Saverous and the unreliable Lunatic's initially to hold back the hordes (in conjunction with Cultist's & Adept's). Once Dr Zoidberg and his clones came on tap I started really breaking out and razing. All unit's had to have the Mobility1 promo, especially to out-maneuver the slow Infernal, since I started with no horse resource. Actually, there were no horses on the entire map!

* At first, I was shocked and dismayed when I initially had mass war declared on me. Later, I was begging for war, just so I could get some progress going.

* Once the damn Infernal were taken out, I re-focused my main army to sweep east along the shoreline. That's when the Lanun World Spell did it's damage to speed thing's along!

* Sailed the Black Wind around to Cpt. Uldanor (who for some reason felt he had to maintain 10+ Galley's outside his capital) and just perpetually feasted....

* Beeri managed to stay alive with his single city. Yay!!, 'cause there's little I could do to help him if the crap hit the fan....

Overall, a good challenge. After the easy intro scenario, I was jolted out of my short lived complacency!

 

[GoodGame]

Finally beat this one on like Chieftain/Settler with a power stack of turtle knights and Chalid. Was still a little close in terms of turns. My only advice is to play defensive initially, and to capture Duke Sallos's cities at every opportunity, and then raze the others' cities. If you're lucky, you'll get horses, and then horsemen will make an easy, early rush, otherwise, stack archers. You might also want to play to Chaos nodes with the intent of culling for army full of desirable mutants.

 

[Lazylen]

Is Baron Duin Halfmorn not buildable in this game? I rushed Feral Bond (which is my usual strategy when stuck as the Lanun without any real water), but I can't build him. I doubt that it was built by anyone else, as I am the second most advanced in tech next to Perpentach.


Also, I haven't noticed any change in difficulty between Chieftain and Noble. I was at the same position on Noble, iirc my units were building at the same rate, and the Infernal are still 20 times as powerful as everyone else (yet they sit and turtle instead of attacking anyone).

EDIT: Just beat it. The key in this scenario (as far as I'm concerned) is Guybrush Threepwood. He's your first major hero, and with enough backup through mages and beastmasters, you can steamroll basically every city in the game within 3 turns of arrival. There's another good hero along the stretch that will allow you to wage war in two places at once, and beserkers will help to back him up. (Astrikal something)

as has been said, kill the Infernal ASAP so that you have the option of razing cities. I took the cities of the Hippus and the lower left civ (simply because I needed presence in that area in order to gain leverage on the Amurites). There will be a couple of civs that only have one or two cities (vamps, top right balseraphs, the triplets for me). The Infernal and Amurites are your biggest enemies (Amurites will constantly raid your left cities), and Beeri will usually stay clear of you (and will join the Overcouncil if you join it).

 

[Kyzarc Fotjage]

Was Chalid the other hero?

 

[Lazylen]

Chalid was my other hero, yes.

but that was before I was fully updated lol

I could have done it all with guybrush. Chalid just sped things up.

 

[Bravefish]

This was challenging at the start but after a couple of attempts I built the library from supplies and put all efforts into researching iron working. Got there pretty quickly and thanks to a early hut and couple of useful dungeons picked up trade and a great prophet and sage. Captured the two cities to the east quickly and started producing catapults and swordsmen like no tomorrow. Then once iron working came in produced a handful of boarding parties, guybrush and a couple of adepts to boost attack turns. The infernals had been fighting hard with the hippus and had depleted each other - walked over them quickly. The rest was a formality and won with 46 turns left. Got a bit monotonous once the infernals were destroyed, just a race against time to sweep across the map - there was no stopping guybrush and the boarding parties after catapults had done their job. Always reinforcing with 60 % city attack swordsmen at the end. 7 cities throughout all up.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Just finished this mod... 11 hours and some change and it was NOT a pretty victory.

Started out in bad spots because I saw borders almost as soon as I moved my settlers. Set up some choke points and focused on building. Got some good defensive buffs on my starting units and then set in for the long haul.

I tried to beeline for OO, but got beat by a couple turns by Perpenach. Picked it up anyway and built up a bit more defense. This is where I made my biggest mistake... I didn't focus on the Duke quickly enough. When he took out the Amurites I sent a bird flying over his direction and the SoDs he had roaming through his lands were scary. Constantly being supplied with more and more troops didn't make it any better

At this point I just had to start abusing him however possible. I just threw cultists up into his back area (the unsailable lake) and along his coast that linked to the central lake. When I finally built up a force of boarding parties and Saverous things started picking up. My cultists, Hemah, and a stack of Stygian Guards would roam about behind enemy lines bombarding his massive stacks and Sav and the boarding parties would slog through his weakened ground troops.

It was brutal. I lost The Black Wind to a roving stack of about 5 Privateers (ugh) and Guybrush Threepwool died quite unceremoniously when he was en route to fight with a far flung foe and Perp declared all players to be at war with me. I think there were two or three 20 stacks right next to him. Setbacks aside, I ever so slowly I pushed onward though and then I researched Mithril Working. Ugh! The ONLY source on the map was right by the Duke's capitol! That was all it took. As our friend the Duke pushed elsewhere in an all out war phase, I snuck about four cultists, six stygians and Hemah into the top lake and a fair size stack of boarding parties, mercenaries, and crossbows within striking distance. I crushed his capitol and then razed the two cities nearby to push back his cultural boundaries enough to get the Mithril.

After that it was just an issue of waiting for my troops to get where I needed them so I could raze town after town.

In the end it was a fun scenario but I'm VERY glad I finished it! Hopefully I never have to play it again!

BTW, ended on turn 421... never got a timer saying X amount of turns left. Was it removed in one of the patches?

 

[Bill Bisco]

Wow, I just lost this scenario on turn 660 on Marathon Deity. I was winning darn it! But getting massive armies of catapaults and Swordsmen takes time darn it! That time restriction is silly!

 

[samthedagger]

I managed to beat this scenario after a few unsuccessful tries. I decided my biggest mistake the first few times around was spreading my teching around too much, so this time I beelined to phalanxes and just turtled with three or four cities while defending with archers and all the defensive structures (palisade, walls, archery range). Managed to get a handful of useful wonders like form of the titan, heron throne, and city of slums. Once I got phalanxes I sent them up north with cats and some boarding parties to conquer the infernals who were way ahead in score. I then began teching bowyers to get longbowmen for better defense in the cities I'd be taking. Looking back, it would have gone a lot faster if I had just razed the cities as I'd gone. I adopted OO when it spread to my cities and trained a bunch of cultists and heal my SOD and cast tsunami when I approached coastal cities. For the late game I pretty much steamrolled every other civ with lightning-fast precision, but it took a while, there being so many cities on the board.

I like this scenario pretty much as is. I can't think of many improvements that need to be made to it except for the time counter. That really needs to go. I managed to finish with 16 turns to go and with the way the scenario is set up to keep the balance of power see-sawing so much that's not really fair.

 

[Corwyn]

Played on Emperor, and had tons of fun. I was actually a little sad at the end since it meant the game would be over.

I've just "upped" my level to Emperor, so I was not used to the AI beating me in score and tech'ing/building so fast. Was trying to research OO and build Heron Throne, but got beat to it (other civs got to them after only a couple of turns into the game!). That was a trend that was going to repeat itself: all the good wonders/techs would be researched before I had a chance to do so.

The krakens scared the heck out of me, and my one pirate cove in the middle lake was quickly destroyed, so I gave up on that. But the pirate coves in the Maelstrom lake turned out to be great -- this was my first "real" time playing Lanun, and I can see their appeal now!

I took 1 city from the civ to my right, then Pent changed the rules and we all moved up and I took a city from Beeri, and then another change and this time I took 1 city from the Amurites, and then I focused on them till they were conquered.

At first I was gifting cities to Pent, but then he was getting really powerful and I wasn't sure if I was going to need to take him out, so I stopped that.

I eventually decided to beeline to Bowyers and got to Longbows way before everyone else (other than Pent, he beat me to everything I think). Which was really lucky, since by the time I crushed the Amurites the Infernals had already killed Beeri and were truly scary... way ahead in score! So I knew I had to take them out soon.

Fortunately, Tsunami is silly over-powered. And the infernals didn't have Longbowmen yet... phew! I took over their capital pretty quickly, lost some adepts to assassins, then had to build and move up some slow catapults. The ritualist's Ring of Fires were really annoying though... you have to suffer a lot of damage (since cats only move 1 then can't bombard before getting hit) before finally taking out the inland Infernal cities.

Fortunately Saverous (I went OO... seemed very RP-appropriate) and Guy were helpful, as well as some Boarding Parties with good mutations and lots of City Raider promotions.

After a long hard-fought campaign vs the Infernals, the rest was pretty straightforward...

... or would have been except for Pent. His capital was a huge culture-generating machine, and was starting to swallow up my newly-conquered cities. I had to stop my war campaign and put 100% into culture, and build every culture-related building. And I couldn't retaliate... arggh. Only at the very end did I realize I could have used the cultists to sabotage his capital's worker improvements and get some minor relief. It was a real challenge to hold onto my nearby captured cities, and after a long while I was finally able to lower culture back to only 20%.

Was a little surprised to see that I had no access to Horses. In fact, the only spot that had horses was right next to Pent. Then at the very end, about 20 turns before the end of the game, I finally tech'ed to Archmages, only to discover I had no reagents... d'oh! Oh well, didn't need them. My Mages + Cultists took out city defenses and did enough AoE that even my weak-strenght units (like mages) could take out the defenders.

I didn't get a single enraged mutation, though the "Heavy" mutation was a real pain. Moving from one city to another was slowwww...

Anyhow, great scenario. This was not my second scenario though... it seemed way too scary when I read the description, so I went and did many of the other scenarios before coming back to this one. And looking at it now, I would have been decimated if I played this as my second scenario. I didn't even really know the rule after playing the "Menagerie", other than "capturing animals is fun!"

Seems like we need a guide on a good order to play the scenarios in.

 

[Cromagnum P.I.]

Are Pirate Cove immprovements removed for this scenario? Have they been removed altogether for the latest build? Is there a tech or civic I need before my workers can build them?

 

[Breunor]

Are Pirate Cove immprovements removed for this scenario? Have they been removed altogether for the latest build? Is there a tech or civic I need before my workers can build them?

Pirate coves are built by workboats, not by workers. They worked when I played it, they should be available at the start of this scenario.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Cromagnum P.I.]

I'm an idiot. Right after posting it hit me that as a Naval oriented Civ the ports would probably be water improvements. Yeah the work boats make the ports just fine. I got confused from some of the posts in the strategy thread. I also never realized work boats could do anything other than explore and claim resources. Thanks dude.

 

[Veqryn]

I thought this scenario was awesome.
This was the second game i'd ever played with fall from heaven, so I had little clue about how to beat it or play as the lanun. I didn't know about pirate coves, and I didn't know about tsunami, or about spring to turn deserts to plains. So consequently i had only 3 total cities, marginally sucky too. I also had no clue about techs or religion, so I got the kilmorph religion for no apparent reason.
But.... i did a great job turtling and getting my heroes to high levels, until i managed to take the duke's cities. Man that was tough. His guys were 8s and mine were 6s, so i pretty much had to kill each of his units with my two dwarf heroes and guybrush. I had no clue how to use magic, or that fireballs could bombard, so i had to spend all my resources on catapults. Trying to make it the 6 tiles into duke's culture to reach his cities with you catapults is a pain, especially when he seems to have infinite assassins. I think i reloaded my saves about a million times here. In the end i had to form a square around my catapults to get them to his cities, and even then i still lost about 20 for each city.
Just after killing the duke, beeri, the red guy to your right, and half finishing the blue and green guys, the game told me i lost. Pshhhh. I reloaded, went into world builder and won it by deleting all the enemy units.

Still, I think i will play it again, knowing what i know now.
What is the purpose of keeping beeri alive? Why, and how?

 

[Breunor]

I thought this scenario was awesome.
This was the second game i'd ever played with fall from heaven, so I had little clue about how to beat it or play as the lanun. I didn't know about pirate coves, and I didn't know about tsunami, or about spring to turn deserts to plains. So consequently i had only 3 total cities, marginally sucky too. I also had no clue about techs or religion, so I got the kilmorph religion for no apparent reason.
But.... i did a great job turtling and getting my heroes to high levels, until i managed to take the duke's cities. Man that was tough. His guys were 8s and mine were 6s, so i pretty much had to kill each of his units with my two dwarf heroes and guybrush. I had no clue how to use magic, or that fireballs could bombard, so i had to spend all my resources on catapults. Trying to make it the 6 tiles into duke's culture to reach his cities with you catapults is a pain, especially when he seems to have infinite assassins. I think i reloaded my saves about a million times here. In the end i had to form a square around my catapults to get them to his cities, and even then i still lost about 20 for each city.
Just after killing the duke, beeri, the red guy to your right, and half finishing the blue and green guys, the game told me i lost. Pshhhh. I reloaded, went into world builder and won it by deleting all the enemy units.

Still, I think i will play it again, knowing what i know now.
What is the purpose of keeping beeri alive? Why, and how?

Its been a long time since I played the Momus (and I agree it is really good, I think it is one of my 2 or 3 favorites) but I think there is a time limit - so you may have lost to the time limit.

If Beeri is alive at the end you can gang up on Perpentech with him. If you win, iirc, Beeri helps you in a later scenario.

Best wishes.

Breunor

 

[Broken Hawk]

FWIW, patch j. The scenario locked up as I captured my last rival's remaining city. I was able to get out with Task Manager. As usual, the SoD's behavior was strange. When I approached Dis, 20+ of the Duke's finest left the city. I walked right in uncontested and eliminated the Infernals. A stack of Beeri's warriors sat a couple of tiles away as I leisurely besieged and finally razed his cities.

 

[avalonnn]

Played this on Noble (Normal) and enjoyed it a lot. Got crushed the first time, figured it out the second time. Used a specific strategy that made it much easier. I felt it was a spell tutorial.

 

[shannonphillips]

Won on Noble, after what initially looked like a dicey thing against the Infernals (had to reload from save points a couple of times).

After the Infernals fell it was a cakewalk, although I was running out of turns at the end. I went clockwise around the board and wiped everyone else out. I took Beeri out along the way, so I didn't get to see the story choice with him at the end--I'm kinda sad about that. He sent guys to attack me though, so I wasn't feeling very friendly toward him or anything.

 

[OpheliaImmortal]

Theres a bit of luck in this scenario, imo. I had mulitiple, consecutive rounds of everyone at war with me

 

[GlobularFoody]

Fun scenario, but needs to be shorter! I just lost my second attempt, this was due to the time running out because I didn't feel like wiping the other half of the map. The only other civ left was the Infernals and they had infinite assassins that would kill any catapult or mage I built the same turn I teleported them to the front line city. This got extremely tedious as I had no heroes left alive and the Infernal had longbowmen...taking cities was boring.

I would suggest chopping this down to half the size it currently is and toning down the Infernals a bit. It took me all day of playing to finally lose to time running and I'm not going to play it again. Worldbuilder to the rescue!