What's the best Esus civ?

[akatosh]

I want to play a game showcasing Esus' strengths, and am looking for the best civ that can really take advantage of CoE's few abilities. I reviewed my old civ/religion synergy thread as well as BvBPL's new religion thread for ideas. Essentially I am looking for a civ that has one or more of the following characteristics:

1) Has a synergy with the tech path to trade, which leads to deception.
2) Has a synergy with the tech path to way of the wicked, which leads to deception.
3) Has some special benefit from the Undercouncil.
4) Has some special benefit from an early heroic archmage, or an illusionist.
5) Has an assassin UU that can keep a unique benefit of some kind when upgrading to a shadow. (uses the nightwatch-->assassin-->shadow upgrade path to guarantee unit religion esus)
6) Has synergy with mounted units.
7) Can do something extra special with hidden nationality units (pillaging?)
8) Has a synergy with the tech path to Bowyers, which allows Nightwatch.
9) Wants to avoid diplomatic penalties for religion.

***10) Most importantly, doesn't have a very compelling reason to use a different religion. This eliminates Khazad, Svarts, Calabim, Sheaim, Bannor, Kurios, Clan, and most of the spiritual civs (who really want to use priests as much as possible.)

Taken together, this basically means slavery civs, and civs with raiders, arcane, and UUs at bowyers and poisons. This leaves 5 civs in my mind: Amurites, Balseraphs, Hippus, Sidar, and Doviello.

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Amurites get an arcane Gibbon who can twincast fire elementals very early. They can also supplement firebows with nightwatch at Bowyers (although it's not clear why this is needed) and can go nightwatch-->chanter-->shadow to make shadows with Escape (not clear why this is needed either, but certainly interesting.) Unfortunately Way of the Wicked is pretty far off Amurites' preferred tech path, and moreover Amurites will want a different religion eventually when Theology/Govannon are in.

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Balseraphs are really interesting. The obvious combo is Keelyn with Gibbon twincasting massive amounts of puppet summons, which is probably the strongest combo in the game until MNAI 2.5. The less obvious combo is using Gibbon for Domination puppets, which Perpentach and Keelyn can do equally well.

Balseraphs are also one of the two main slavery civs, the other being Doviello. Bals get bonus happiness and culture from their slave cages, and have 2 recon UUs that have a bonus chance to produce slaves. These recon UUs can be upgraded from Nightwatch, if you want to guarantee Esus for your Taskmasters (which will gain XP and then later upgrade to Courtesans when Guilds is in.) Of course, they still need an asylum to actually convert the extra slaves into military power. edit--this is wrong, they can use cast arena battle to turn the slave into a warrior with 1-7 xp. The warrior will still have to pay gold to be upgraded, but that can be financed by selling slaves. A lunatic would cost 65 gold anyway, upgrading to an axeman would cost 75 gold plus 1-7 xp and no enraged.

Finally, Perpentach has a random chance to draw Raiders. Build your Shadows and Shadowriders at this time if possible.

At the end of the day, with the exception of Gibbon+puppets, I am not sure if Esus is actually better than OO (overwhelming culture, slave-->lunatics) or AV (slavery+StW) for Balseraphs. Maybe Gibbon+puppets is so strong that it's enough. Or maybe start with Gibbon and switch to Hemah. Or switch back and forth when Perpentach gets spiritual.

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Doviello have a strong case for using Esus. Doviello's power is truly unlocked at Undercouncil anyway, so Deception is a priority tech for them more than any other civ. You might as well build Gibbon at that point and get an early mutation/wonder/regeneration caster.

Mahala also has raiders and can make good use of HN shadows and shadowriders. She also has a knight UU making Warhorses attractive. I am not sure if Doviello can build Nightwatches without archery ranges. The Nightwatch also provides a good city garrison alternative to Doviello, who normally have only the crappy javelin thrower.

As for Doviello's alternate choices, I was never sold on OO for Doviello. To me, slave-->lunatic is for other civs who can't make warriors out of slaves. The Stygian upgrade path is the same for Doviello as it is for any other civ, as an alternative to the regular champions. The difference is that Mahala can upgrade Battlemasters in the field but needs a temple of the overlords for drowns and stygians. This means you need to drag a cultist along with your offensive stack, or have your slaves go to the rear to upgrade.

AV Doviello is still great. StW+slavery is great synergy, not to mention StW's +20% gold, and the 1-move Ritualists provide good collateral cover to Mahala's 1-move melee stacks. But, it's an extra tech investment in KotE and Corruption of Spirit, and Mahala needs Deception anyway. So start with CoE and switch later if needed.

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Hippus are the premier horse civ and already want to Tower of Divination slingshot to Warhorses for Ride of the Nine and knights. 8 knights are better than 4.

Moreover, Hippus already want HBR, which leads to Trade, which they also want for chariots. Deception's just a short hop over.

Tasunke has raiders of course, and can create some havoc with 8 move HN units.

With Esus as the state religion, a horse unit with Esus religion can spread Esus and immediately let the city start generating culture and gold without the need for a disciple to walk over there.

I don't know that Hippus have any special use for Nightwatch, slaves, assassins, or even Gibbon (he's too slow to keep up with base 4-move horse stacks.) But Hippus don't really have any use for Bambur, cultists, Stygians, bloom, unyielding order, or the religious tech line generally beyond what any other civ gets from them. Rathas are nice though. Luckily it is easy to grab Honor and Deception both.

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Edit to include Sidar per Horatius' suggestion. Sidar can make most military lines work well for wane production--I prefer horse archers and altar-buffed Confessors, so I don't really use Undercouncil or their recon line much. However, they have the very powerful Divided Soul UU and a recon hero.

You can make a case to rush Deception even with a mounted Sidar strategy, purely because Gibbon is the earliest Valor caster available. More xp = more wanes. Also a mounted Sidar wants to rush warhorses for Ride of the Nine, might as well pick up 4 HN national units along with your knights.

If you want to play a peaceful Sidar, then CoE looks strong (but I haven't tried it.) The idea here would be rush Deception to get Nox Noctis +2xp to recon, and make liberal use of HN units from Esus to farm XP off of your allies and neighbors. Easiest to do with Shadows. Shadowriders can work well also combined with the above strategy.

The hard part is getting Esus onto your Divided Souls. I think only 20% of the units built in an Esus city will have the religion, so they are the only ones eligible to upgrade to shadows. So you need to spam a bunch of scouts or divided souls, and upgrade the Esus ones into assassins, and use those for the HN farming.

After thinking about it I really ought to try the horse/Esus combo for Sidar. I think having the early Valor on HAs could make a big difference.

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I am still at a loss as to how Esus is better than Leaves for Faeryl. GoN + ancient forest cottages > all. Leaves already has a good recon line that synergizes with Faeryl's Sinister trait. Sure, you want Nox Noctis for the invisibility and +2 xp, and you want Shadows for the general mayhem, but neither of those require CoE as a state religion.

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Thoughts?

 

[Horatius]

You have to put the Sidar and Svartalfar in there too, my friend, or the discussion is incomplete.

 

[akatosh]

Fair, Sidar should be included--using a lot of HN units to farm XP from your allies. What is the advantage to going Esus with Svarts? GoN with AF cottages seems so much stronger than anything Esus can provide.

 

[plasmacannon]

Svart's are Dark Elves. They can build improvements on trees retaining their health bonus and production on say a forested plains town tile and can move double speed through them.
They also have units that ignore city defenses when attacking. So, they don't need catapults to bring this down. Normal elves can't do this.
My friend is playing them in our multi player game this month.
Their Illusionist casts illusions instead of summons. Illusions can't kill units. This permits the Svart Assassins to pick off the weakened units.
Go the Hunter-> Assassin path and pick off Bears for xp, Dancing Bears & for later units.
Meanwhile go Adept-> Mage (Illusionist) to include in your stacks.
Remember, their the Svart World Spell makes their units barbarian. So you can attack without reprisal. Like Privateers in the normal game.

I have to say, I have been playing the Illians and have had a blast.
They have +10% Homeland defense, +10% Snow/tundra defense and a building that produces a permanent radius 2 snow tile, which gives them a base 2 food.
More food = pop up faster, plus they are charismatic (+1 happy). So more tiles being worked or specialists.
I've gifted a city where I built that snow temple and the snow stays even after I no longer own the city. So, the AI was screwed. LOL.

Find the Letum Frigus and gain the Aggressive Trait. That's Combat 1 for your Javelin Throwers too, which are 4 str archers, not 3. So, like Mali's Skirmishers in normal game.
I made 3 of your nodes Ice so I can get archmages with Snowfall automatically. Which is one of the best damaging aoe spells in the game and unlike elves, you can still build siege.
It damages units 40% up to a max of 80% and makes a radius 1 snow tile around the unit. So, when attacking a city, now their city tile is snow, giving your units their +10% attack in snow. That snow also trashes the food for that city for 4 turns. Longer, if you snowfall every 4 turns.

They also have the Stasis World Spell, which freeze everyone else's production and research for 15 turns.
That's great early on if you want to gain an advantage in expanding with settlers or a tech lead.
You can also use it just before you attack an empire preventing them from building more units to counter you.

 

[doktarr]

I think Elohim belong in the discussion, too. In the other thread, a lot of digital ink was devoted to the Gibbon/Corlindale combo and the possibility of building your shrine, resurrecting Corlindale, and getting two Flesh Golems out when they can still make a difference. But really, the big thing is the economic slingshot you can get by building Nox Noctis and spreading Esus with Esus Devouts who can enter all territories. It only takes 25 turns to make back each investment.

 

[scutarii]

agnostic civilizations can use some esus features... mask and shadows and to spread esus...better this than nothing...

 

[plasmacannon]

agnostic civilizations can use some esus features... mask and shadows and to spread esus...better this than nothing...

I played as the Grigori recently and researched to adepts first.
Then built a Mage Guild to upgrade all of my Adventurers to Adepts.
As soon as I tech Mages and Archmages, they will be upgraded to those as well.
Grigori are probably the fastest to reach 3 Archmages in the game.
You are right, they do feel like they could something else, but the power they will have with those Ams is very good.

 

[Calavente]

agnostic civilizations can use some esus features... mask and shadows and to spread esus...better this than nothing...

that's so right... at least the grigori have found the only religion they can use

 

[Qgqqqqq]

I made 3 of your nodes Ice

In base?

I agree, there is no synergy with the svartalfar, the overwhelming power of FoL elves just makes it impossible.. I think its probably balseraph/dovellio, but go with dovellio because the balseraphs crazy stuff will threaten to overwhelm using the religion. But while there's synergy there, and with all of them, I don't think its as strong as a normal religion plus agnostic esus.

 

[scutarii]

Mods with buffed esus religion -extramod for instance, esus is a great replacement for goldhungry khazad: holy city produces with wonder gold (the same effect as tablets of bambur) and later you can use spellcasting hero and some spells and shadow units; the strongest feature is "Extort" spell with certain esus units for khazad: free gold! Usually at higher levels human player wont get RoK holy city but can easily get nox noctis....

 

[Calavente]

and it is worth it to note that such way dwarvy khazads are thus able to get city defenders...heu.. tier III archers (which they currently lack). (oh... and dwarven shadows are a must. so are dwarven druids but maybe one can attain both )

however one can say that FoL gives those dwarves a ranger-like unit .. but satyrs need too much grooming to be equivalent to a tier 3 archer

 

[A Moon]

(which they currently lack). (oh... and dwarven shadows are a must. so are dwarven druids but maybe one can attain both )

Correct. CoE only makes Good civs Neutral (I think), so any non-Evil dorf leader can convert and build dwarven shadows and druids.

 

[BvBPL]

This eliminates... most of the spiritual civs (who really want to use priests as much as possible.)

Fair enough about the priests, but keep in mind that a spiritual civ can instantly swap religions. As a consequence, they can have tons of different priests all working together.

Of course you may lose your religious hero for this, but there is a loophole: if you switch back to the religion later you can rebuild the hero w/ his promotions in place if no one else already has. For a niche religion like Esus that is a real possibility.

I am still at a loss as to how Esus is better than Leaves for Faeryl. GoN + ancient forest cottages > all. Leaves already has a good recon line that synergizes with Faeryl's Sinister trait.

You don't need to run FoL the whole time to get the benefits though. Once your ancient forests sprout and you have enough Priests of Leaves running around to plant more on conquered territory you can switch to Esus and keep your ancient forests. You do lose GoN, which means a happiness and health hit, but if you prepare for this and do it after the blight has passed by it isn't a fatal problem. Just build some gambling houses and theaters and you should be all right w/ some culture spending. This might be something that only happens later in the midgame after you've taken over a fair share of luxury resources though.

Playing FoL for a while and then switching and subsequently storming your friends with sinister satyrs sounds pretty sweet to me.

That said, you probably wouldn't have Gibbon if you follow this strategy, unless there is no other Esus civ.

 

[Iwo Jima]

Why not Calabim?

Living in shadows suits to them.

- Shadowriders and Shadows with a lot of XP
- Additional Shadow Mana in Castle (for SRiders and Summoned Mistforms affinity)
- haste (good for assassins)
- Gibbon can make golem(illusion?) soon and even twincast golems later. And golems are easy to get a lot of promotions from vampires.

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Some additional thoughts:

- Esus gives peace, so it suits to builder style. So, Ind., Phil., Fin. leaders could use it

- good synergy with Trust (+3 diplo with everybode, Spirit III), so Bannor (Industrial Capria could use it for building Wonders), Elohim, Curio, Sidar (once again Ind. trait)

- Esus suits to slow races, such as dwarves. You can go to enemy cities before declaration of war, and when DoW, your forces will stay inside enemy borders.

 

[Calavente]

- Esus suits to slow races, such as dwarves. You can go to enemy cities before declaration of war, and when DoW, your forces will stay inside enemy borders.

that's so true ... both for kjhazad an Luirchips.
Why did I never thought like that ?

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Does that apply for all units, or only for the ones with CoE religion?

 

[A Moon]

All units.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

That's pretty good then. Even earlier, I never bothered to follow the CoE, always preferred the OO.

 

[Calavente]

the issue is that in multi, this is not an advantage as no human would give you open-borders... without treaties much more binding than the computer-enforced ones.
so in this Esus is not so good.
to adopt CoE should bring maybe something more.. but don't know what.

 

[A Moon]

I think the biggest problem is that it's trivial to tell if someone follows the Council or not.