Viable Culture and Wonder Victory under More Naval AI

[swapoer]

It has been a while since I stopped playing FFH2.
I beat the Endless difficulty of the Endless Legend recently and lost interest in that game at the same time.
I picked up FFH2 again last weekend with the MNAI modmod and the Emperor AI turned out to be too merciless for me. I turned the difficulty down to Monarch, but it didn't help.

I remember I beat the game in Emperor difficulty several times with culture and wonder victory. It seem MNAI do improve the AI much.

I would appreciate any suggestion or viable strategy to win culture and wonder victory in MNAI modmod. Because these two victories requires less tedious management of units, I always prefer them.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Have you tried the Balseraphs or Kuriotates? Those two strike me as the most suited towards culture. Khazad might work too if only because their insane production allows you to spam so many wonders, but in the late game it might be more problematic trying to balance gold versus culture.

 

[Azhral]

Khazad wonder building running RoK for extra production and gold isn't a bad idea.

I quite enjoy the "Increasing Difficulty" game option, starting on Noble (or Warlord but that's much much easier). The AI early rushes are defendable but still a challenge, and they get the usual massive boosts in the lategame so it doesn't get too easy. Provides a nice challenge for me throughout the entire game, even on Marathon speed and 1000+ turns.

 

[Devils_Advocate]

Play as the Kuriotates on a Huge map with all 19 of the starting civs and the Multiple Production option on. The number of rivals to contend with and the greater expansion required should make it more difficult for one player to achieve the sort of position of dominance necessary for one of the other victories; at the very least, it should take longer. Place your cities and settlements with the following in mind: You're going to summon Basium in one of those cities and give most of your settlements to him. Do so, and your team as a whole gets the benefits of megacities without the drawbacks of settlements! Why waste your Adaptive picks on Aggressive or Raiders instead of the economic traits to hurry to getting a teammate who has both?

There's a natural symbiosis between these two civilizations wherein the Kuriotates primarily build and the Mercurians primarily fight. You can do this and switch to Basium so that you have solid economic support built up, with the Kuriotates' Wonders, high research, good trade relations, etc. supporting your armies; or you can remain as Cardith Lorda and focus on managing your few megacities. (You need to either promote a settlement or capture an enemy city to replace the city that you lost to Basium.) The Kuriotates are the go-to civ for minimizing the level of management needed, and this approach takes that even further because you no longer need settlements and thus the units to defend them.

Since you're Expansive and Basium is Aggressive + Raiders, go on building new cities for your angelic ally as you please, thereby freeing him up to crank out more troops instead of Settlers. Rather than having a permanent 5th megacity of your own, it might even be worthwhile to repeatedly build a Granary, Harbor, Tailor, Jeweler, and whatever your current other trait favors in your most recent city and then give it to the Mercurians.