Against the grey

[Demus]

Since there's no official bug/balance thread about this newly added scenario, i figured i'd start it.

Just finished playing it on prince, and tbh if i'm ever to revisit this scenario it'll be at least at emperor. The crossbowman you start with at the beginning makes this scenario a cakewalk. Just hook decius up and start a rampage. Even though he's designed as a defensive unit, 11 offensive strenght with additional first strikes makes for one hell of a unit when the only units the AI attacks with are axemen, archers and horsemen.

Also,

Spoiler :

kinda odd the scenario only ends when the malakim are taken out, even though the sidar are destroyed much earlier.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Hm, I thought the crossbowman was replaced with a longbowman... will look into that.

 

[Jabie]

COSMETIC BUG: There is no descriptive text on the scenario screen. In fact as the scenario screen is concerned, it's still "Coming Soon."

(There's also a cosmetic bug for the fomratting of the text on Wages of Sin, but that's another story)

 

[cyther]

It was pretty easy for me.

I guided my settlers both to the starting location and had two good cities and used the supplies to build a library.

I then got the Iron orb event and popped Warhorses for shadow riders which ate any unit that was thrown at them.

 

[TheGreatSteve]

Cities are largely irrelevent. Founded Esus, switched. Set up an Entropy node, then just wandered around the map, Withering and killing everyone with Gibbon and my starting vamp.
I'd suggest starting with the cities already settled, so you can start them off with a fair amount of buildings and improvements already in place. And put more Sidar cities in the south to balance it, which should also encourage them to attack me rather than wasting time making settlers.

Wraiths are a really obnoxious choice for lair guardians. Esus can't clear their Touch ability, so you end up either ignoring them or trying to figure out how to kill them with weak, expendable units.

More barbarians, less barb cities would be nice.

The whole thing seems kind of odd from a story side as well

Spoiler :

Sandalphon: Okay, you win. We won't try to murder you anymore. By the way, some big evil dude is gonna destroy the world, you should do something about that.
Decius: k

 

[ZeroZeroSix]

I got the 'global warming effect', is it intended ?

 

[Brokenbone]

I also got global warming events a couple of times, pretty strange.

Anyhow, I found it a sort of interesting map, though I was a little confused at first about the victory conditions, I played as Malakim and thought the idea was "vassalize Sidar." I crushed them into Capitulation, but the scenario couldn't end til I killed the Calabim.

Oddly I was able to make peace with both other Civs whenever I felt like it, this one might've been better off as a permanent war type of thing. I'd been ticked early on to see the Calabim declar peace with the Sidar, it took the pressure off them for sure... apparently to build things like stacks of 50 Ritualists of uselessness for me to go n' slay later.

 

[feydras]

Playing as Malakim, patch x, Monarch diff.

I put a lot of time into teching to Religious Law to build Chalid and was surprised to find i couldn't. Also couldn't build Vicars or Radiant Guards. I had Empyrean in my cities and checked the techs and had both Honor and Priesthood. If this is intentional it would be nice to have some sort of incharacter mention of this in the intro to the scenario. Without Vicars there was no way to heal from diseased corpse attacks when both the Sidar and Calabim went AV.

Another odd thing in the scenario was at one point i was completely unable to heal any of my 6 unit stack while they were in Sidar lands. They weren't poisoned and had been able to heal a couple turns prior next to the same city. They were pretty beat up but the Heal icon didn't appear. Once i moved them out of Sidar lands they could heal again, those that survived the ghosts anyway.

 

[ZeroZeroSix]

Wierd, I did it with the patch it was released with...'W' and was able to build Chalid, Radiants Guards and Vicars. About the healing issue, if your units where on broken/corrupted land then I beleive the only way to heal is with spell.

 

[TheGreatSteve]

Playing as Malakim, patch x, Monarch diff.

I put a lot of time into teching to Religious Law to build Chalid and was surprised to find i couldn't. Also couldn't build Vicars or Radiant Guards. I had Empyrean in my cities and checked the techs and had both Honor and Priesthood. If this is intentional it would be nice to have some sort of incharacter mention of this in the intro to the scenario. Without Vicars there was no way to heal from diseased corpse attacks when both the Sidar and Calabim went AV.

Did you switch to Empy? I've forgotten to do that on a couple of the scenarios where you start with a religion.

Another odd thing in the scenario was at one point i was completely unable to heal any of my 6 unit stack while they were in Sidar lands. They weren't poisoned and had been able to heal a couple turns prior next to the same city. They were pretty beat up but the Heal icon didn't appear. Once i moved them out of Sidar lands they could heal again, those that survived the ghosts anyway.

You said Sidar/Calabim went AV, did one of them build Stigmata on the Unborn? An Entropy mana would reduce heal rate within Sidar borders.

 

[subanark]

Is it intended that Calabim does not start with Smelting, but has Iron Working (which has the prereq of smelting)?

 

[cyther]

That would explain how I poped Shadow Riders.

 

[Homunculus]

interesting setup, especially with the way the RNG distributed the resources.
Production capacity on one side of a Sidar city, metals on the other side, with no connection between the two.

Needless to say my attack stack took a detour to get decent weaponry before charging the city splitting my empire. After that (and Chalid, obviously ) it was just a matter of producing city defenders fast enough to keep up with the offensive...

 

[Bitwise]

interesting setup, especially with the way the RNG distributed the resources.
Production capacity on one side of a Sidar city, metals on the other side, with no connection between the two.

Needless to say my attack stack took a detour to get decent weaponry before charging the city splitting my empire. After that (and Chalid, obviously ) it was just a matter of producing city defenders fast enough to keep up with the offensive...

I had very much the same experience, but better than Chalid was Decius on a Camel Archer (later a knight) who had about 400xp by the end of the scenario. He was a monster to throw at the sidar. Two turns after they were wiped out, the Calabim capitulated.

 

[Homunculus]

I had very much the same experience, but better than Chalid was Decius on a Camel Archer (later a knight) who had about 400xp by the end of the scenario. He was a monster to throw at the sidar. Two turns after they were wiped out, the Calabim capitulated.

Would have been if said camel archer with attached decius hadn't died on the first attack >99.9%.

Surprisingly, not returning Decius as in other scenarios at the time I played them.

 

[jprc]

Just finished this scenario, Monarch standard speed.
As others, I liked it.
Fortunately the crossbowman has been removed and the longowman, powerful but can not be used as a decisive attacking weapon.

Spoiler :

This scenario is quite easy IF you do not settle immediately where your units are at start. The map is divided into cells and only 1 passage lead to the next cell. If you control the passage ahead of you, you have your cell "safe" from main attacks, and it becomes a reserved zone for future developments. I call it my "The Israelien strategy": build colonies ahead, and everything that is between your main land and the outpost falls in your "reserved" area and will become yours sooner or later ...
No need to hurry. Just build quietly, block as much as you can the main passages, do not worry much at start of the big units located in some areas: they are stuck, and won´t attack you.
It turned out to be a quiet game where I just wait for Chalid, use Decius on the Camel for then taking out waves of axemen and others, and started to play the classic bulldozer tactic. As you can control very few passages, no fear of big attacks in your back.
I won after having Sandalphon and Fauros as vassal, with Chalid and Decius/Camel destroying cities in their path, just the 2 of them ...

After a scenario like "The Black Tower", where I invested 19h30 of my life, this scenario was relaxing, and introduced well Sandalphon's ghost units (boring at start...)

I continue my travel down the list of scenario, and I am very very pleased by the storyline, the art, and the ideas beneath all of them.
I would have pay for such a game... again, congratulation to the team. I can't wait to try the next one... Return Of Winter ...

 

[Kiwi Tyrant]

I played this as Calabim, Emperor....far too easy.
Replayed again on Deity.....still easy (though I had a 'heads up' by playing on Emperor).

What makes it too easy is the 'cell' layout of the map.
Essentially, I could get 5 cities up quick and capture the isolated Sidar city between my starting cities, making 6 all up, all the while relentlessly blocking the only 2 tile hill pass that lead's to the rest of the map! The enemy washes up against your 2 stack defence, feeding endless XP while you build under little pressure....

Everyone should be locked at war from the start. I made peace with the Malakim early on, maintained it, then broke it once the Sidar were destroyed.

Apart from that, the start up was just like jprc said^^. What I did do differently this time with the starting civic's was to go Pacifism (I've normally gone Nationhood with these scenario's) due to there being a starting Succubus unit. I immediately had it in the capital casting Inspiration to help focus on an early GS.

Spoiler :

I took the Sidar city of Zarka (Remnants of Patria), but razed everything else. I destroyed the next Sidar cities to the west (Skarlas and some other small one) and then pulled back and left a single, small defensive stack to guard the 1 tile pass in case the Malakim declared suddenly. I systematically bulldozed south, wiping the Sidar and then swung back to finish the hapless desert priest's. Maybe there need's to be some gap where the Malakim can get to you from the start, so there's a two pronged threat from the outset. This would apply a lot more pressure early on as to how to optimally distribute resources.

By the time you get to the Sidar capital, the single 'held' Crossbowman in there just doesn't seem scary enough. A Super Shade or something though....OOOooooo.

All up, not a bad scenario. A little like getting guided through a wide dungeon with choke point's. Enables you to comfortably Turtle if so inclined; your back is basically alway's covered. The stirring Decius campaign has come to a mellow ending I suppose. This throne just feel's so hollow.....

 

[cabbagemeister]

Just finished this one as Calabim on Monarch. I thought it was a little too easy. After the cool intro text about watching for invisible assassins and such, I was disappointed to find that the Sidar never built assassins, except for Rauthus. Walking up to cities full of assassins is terrifying because you know they WILL kill off your strongest units that survive the fights against the tough defenders. Walking up to cities full of axemen is just free XP.

 

[Kiwi Tyrant]

Yeah, I was expecting my worker's etc. to be picked off by deadly Sidar Assassin's. Nothing ever happened, and once I had the main 2 tile choke blocked they were as safe as a church.
To easily negate the Assassin threat I just give a couple of unit's the 'Guardsman' promo. This is very simple with the Calabim, as you have Vampire's feasting and building up insane level's of XP without risking death. They are probably too flexible, in that you can promo them up to be specialist city attacker's, first-striker's, stack defender's etc. A basic mix of 3 types of troop's (vamps, mages, assassins) will allow you to get away with murder on SP
But once again, I too was disappointed with the lack of enemy Assassin's. An Assassin heavy scenario would have definitely stood out from the other's and could have been a tense ending to the Decius campaign.....

 

[cabbagemeister]

Also extremely disappointing is that the Sidar are the ONLY AI civ that has no excuse to be stymied by a chokepoint, since Divided Souls can just waltz over any mountains they want. This could have been a really cool scenario where the map is set up to frustrate the player, with the player having to fight through an endless series of chokepoints and the AI just going around the chokes to attack your poorly defended backline cities. Maybe this scenario will be better when the AI learns to use the Divided Soul ability better.