Analysis: The Opening Game Unraveled

[Unser Giftzwerg]

I must agree, the strategy tested is clearly designed for the elves. Other civilizations should rush for other things :

Luchuirp : rush for construction. They are two techs away from Str 5 golems that don't need special resources, and Barnaxus. On the way, they might try to build the Pyramid (particularly if they have stone) and get access to powerful civics. Once they are there, time to claim a nice empire from their neighbours. They can worry about commerce afterwards.

Khazad : rush for runes. Ancient Chants, Mysticism (God King civic, elder councils), Mining (earlier if you have gold or gems nearby), Runes. Then, if you have room for expansion, you might head for festivals (market + temple of Kilmorph for 6 gold per settlement) and create a larger empire than what other civs could afford. Your commerce will take a hit, your science go down, but as you then develop you'll recover with a large empire. Or you could go for Arete, or Bronze Working, depending on your situation.

Lanun : A sea tile will replace a prairie+cottage tile. So go for fishing, then Overlord. A sea tile is not quite as good as a cottage in the long term, but no need to rush for education.

Hippus : rush for raiders, start harassing a neighbour

Other civilization may not quite have clear rushing goals (although anyone can rush for a religion), but if they have stone nearby they can try to build a few early wonders, by going the production road, then heading for (depending on situation) the Pyramids, the Prophecy of Ragnarok, Sucellius Tumb, Nilhelm Pact, the Catacomb Library, or The Great Library.

Still, that does not invalidate the results of the test : the elves, left alone, are unmatched for early economic development, and they get decent defensive units, and a hero, while doing it. And it is my opinion that they are too good at it, and need to be slowed down a little, as they have been.

I also think that giving them an extra 1 and 1 on most tiles (been able to work Ancient Forests) is a little too good in the endgame, particularly since that also takes away health, and probably happiness, problems at the same time, and 1 of something should be removed from elven cottages. By not giving them the Arcane Lore bonus, perhaps, or limiting cottage growth.

Great comments, though often the activites you describe will not occur until after the timeframe studied. This nuance is often overlooked. People forget how many turns are eaten up hitting End Turn at teh very beginning. What people think of as getting started takes place only after scores of turns have passed by already.

Anyway .... If you have an interest, play these scenarios as you described. Play them that way, and also play them going AC->Edu first, time your Worker build so its alive about the same turn Edu finishes, and plant Cottages everywhere you can as fast as you can. Don't pause to build a road, build a cottage. If you have a Marble deposit, build a cottage on it. Don't worry if it has to be paved over later. Cottage it up now and use it as much as you can. Cottage up as many hammer-producing tiles as you can afford to operate once the city happycaps. Get a start doing this ASAP after turn 1 as you can, and compare the development against the "rush-for" strategies you describe. Save the turn 001 file and reply each game twice, once each method.

I am NOT saying I am 100% dead-set gonna be correct, so there, ha ha. I AM saying this would be an interesting little test. I would be very interested in your experiences. And best of all, everyone with an interest can run their own trials, under their own prefernce set, and see results for themselves. Get a bunch of epole to reun the same experiment ... peer review!

Whew, I think that's The End.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Limits testing is a pretty general term, that's what I meant.


Now I'm going to quote myself.



I don't get it how one can read an insult into this. I even said, it wasn't meant as one, and I finally even took back that question (whatever that means). But you keep implying I insulted you.

At the same time you still do not take back accusations of lying and flaming. You keep ignoring points I make, and keep imputing things I haven't said or haven't meant to. I tried several times to take out the hot air of the discussion, while you keep on talking to me in a way I regard as pretty dismissive.

So I think it's better to finally stop participating in this discussion, it's the second time I feel bad for spreading a bad mood, and surely it's not what this great mod deserves. So no further posts from me on this issue.

There's more important things: Finding the were wolves, for example. Ha! Hope I survive the night..

edit: ok I see you're still working on your reply to me, it starts to sound better. Anyway, the main points remain, so it's better to drop out of the discussion... even if I'm tempted by that equa... I'm gone!

BS ... I specificly said you could not be lying if all you offered was your opinion. Scroll up a few replies...I've spent enough time.

As for the "flames", I just posted another long reply to you in which I thought I mentioned about a half dozen times how miscommunication resulted in you inter[perting comments directed toward respondants in general as directed specifically at you. Even when I say specifically they are not, you accuse me of still flaming you. When you do it, you wave your hand to dismiss the matter "Oh, I didn't mean it ... it doesn't matter." But when I point out examples of mis-communication ... for some reason it DOES matter.

Here I thought you were cutting with one edge of a two-edged sword. Turns out you've been using a sabre all along.

Laters.

 

[SchpailsMan]

I finally read it all. All this testing and summarizing must have been a lot of work, and I should thank you for providing us these results. I won't comment the analysis as some people have already pinpointed much of the things I would object to. Suffice to say that while I concurr with some of the things you've come to, I don't agree with the essential part of your conclusions. There's one thing that I think is worth mentionning though, because I guess it's the main element of the discussion that I disagree with, and as I understand them most of your conclusions are based on it.

You said :

If Ljosalfar outperforms the other realms under the mechanics that apply to all realms in general, how will they catch up? Even if growth totally stops until the game ends (something that I have never seen occur) how can a civ catch up if it takes longer to reach the same cap in growth?

The point is that I believe other civs don't necessary need to "catch up" in growth. Depending on your leader's traits, unique units and civ-specific synergies, you may well be able to bury the Ljos and crush half of their cities under your heels before you even catch up economically. Well, that's my opinion and I have no figures to show here to justify my point (and I'm still wondering how I can run a test case to check this issue in particular, it's not like I blame you for not trying).

I'm not saying that your observations are wrong or anything, but I do believe you focused too much on the economics (something the Ljos are meant to be very good at) and your conclusions don't take into account the fact that even the strongest economy won't stop an army of grunts marching to you.


That said, I've started a game with the Ljosalfar recently. I don't remember the exact map settings right now (I'm at work, typing this message during my lunch break), but I sure found some things easier than some of my previous games. For example, I kicked two civs out of "my" continent using Gilden Silveric and the PoN Stooges with amazing simplicity. Mind you, I'm not sure that I performed much better than a 0.13 game I played as the Balseraph, for example. Consider for example that the Fellowship of the Leaves won't give you the military edge OO or The Order will. I remember 0.13 games with the Balseraph and the Lanun, in which rushing to OO allowed me to build very strong armies and in both occasions totally dominate my immediate neighbours with amazing efficiency. When attacking with the Ljos, I often had to send in kamikaze archers and hunters (!), which would lead to heavy war weariness. And that was while having built the PoN and bringing hill giants to tear down the defenses in most of the cases.

For another note, I must mention that I had to send Gilden at ~80% odds when trying to take 50% def hill-based cities defended by Guerilla-promoted warriors (I don't know if this is part of Chalid's work, but I distinctly noticed that the AI would assign Guerilla to the units garrisoned in its cities... that's rather smart if you ask me). Of course, he soon leveled high enough to raise the odds, but I did get nervous a couple of times. He would also sometimes end up staying on a hill time with 1.5str or so, and I was luck that the AI wouldn't sacrifice a couple of warriors to take him down before he would heal. All in all, I'd say that using GS for in an early rush doesn't look to be a very reliable strategy to me. If your neighbour gets Runes or BW fast enough, GS just isn't strong enough to take cities on his own, and he doesn't even get City Raider promotions. In single player games, you'll probably never be confronted to an AI efficient enough to oppose much resistance this early in a game, but I definetely wouldn't bet that human players in a MP game would be that easy to take on. (then again, you mentionned a couple of times that you value SP games higher than MP games... well, that's a personnal opinion, so you might want to ignore the last statement).


Well, let me repeat this : I do believe it was very interesting that you ran this experiment, and the conclusions proved interesting to read and think about. I sure don't agree with some of your observations, but I appreciate nonetheless that you share your results with the community. I'm not sold yet on the Ljos being dramatically overpowered, although I sure find them much easier to play with, especially in SP games. I'm eager to read about experiments performed by other players in other conditions, the more data the better IMO.

 

[Ghostmaker]

Thre should be little surprise to find the /per-turn beaker output about the same. At the end of 200 turns these three realms had produced a similar number of beakers. What do you find suprising about these beaker numbers?

You also discount teh gold spent in maintenence as if that somehow had no affect in the game. The reason the elves pay more in maintence, is they have a whole lot more infrastructure to support. A poorer realm could not afford to support that infrastructure, but these Elves can.

Of course the maintenance money is wasted. You have a 100% increase in maintenance for 8 more shields. Is this a good deal for you?

"Providing they could have started at the same time as the Elves" If Both races had started from at the same time" Well, gosh, that's one of the main points. The Elves are positioned to start building Cottages before the 'average' realm can.

And actually, since Elves can build Cottages as fast as the 'average' realm can build cottages in Grass, even then the Elves would - in the vast majority of circumstances - develop faster and better. But the Elves improve faster plus they get a head-start (if the Elf player chooses to adopt this approach).

I still don't get it, maybe I'm slow but, elves need 2 techs for cottages as do the Khazad, the Lanun and even the clan. So were is the headstart? Some races even start 1 tech away from cottages, oh my god , how strong must they be?

The Dwarves had high exp because they happened to fight a lot of barbarians. If Aecheron has popped up next door to Ljosalfar, THEY would have the experienced army, and Khazad would have the rookies. That is why I compared hammer costs and STR values. Exp depended on the Barb, not the realm.

The point is that despite having no pressing threat, Ljo had the ability, the time, the techs, and the luxury of building more, better units than any other realm. Strange, is it not, that the Dwarves did not a build more units, despite having a NEED for more units? Why? Because they had pressing needs that ate up their hammers, despite non-stop Barbarian invasions.

Thats the point, because of having no pressing threats, the Ljo could to this. If attacked like the Khazad, much more early warriors would be needed.

Thank you for agreeing with me. I have been trying to make the point that forests are better terrain for Cottages than even Flood Plains. Most of my critics disagree with us on tis point. So it cheers me up to hear you agree with me. Thank you.

Your'e welcome

But they DO have him.

Yes and they are stronger because of it. So what, other races get their hero later, making them stronger.

Thank you for agreeing withthe basic premise. As for teh adjective of choice, you say potato, I say potahto.

Please read again, I only support part's of your "basic premise"

"Root Cause" does not mean "something that must absolutely be removed from the game.

Ljosalfar develops faster than other realms. Since they do this thing, there must be some reasons why they do so. The "Root Causes" are the aspects, some big some small, that contribute to this speed.

I now what root cause means, but thanks for the tutorial.

"So-called reccomendations." Thanks.

Please don't take it personally but most of your recommendations will break either the Ljo or the fellowship or both.

Cripes, Please do imply I some sort of villain who thinks Kael has not done a tremendous job. I am trying to contribute my skills such as they are You do not see me lecturing the art team how to cluster pixels, or telling the programmer what subroutines to use.

Thank you for taking the time to go through the data and to reply. I am sorry it took so long to reply.

I wasn't implying anything. I was merely stating, that the Ljo stand a chance in 0.15 and that I hope it stay's that way. I did in no way try to insult you, if you see in that way i apologice for it.

Greets Ghostmaker

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Hmm... Chalid really ought to study this thread when figuring out how to run the dogpile scripts for the AI. Unser can't seem to get a break here. At least it's mostly civil.

There isn't a whole lot I can respond to that Unser hasn't explained himself, but...

Of course the maintenance money is wasted. You have a 100% increase in maintenance for 8 more shields. Is this a good deal for you?

Absolutely. One or two for eight is a very good deal. Especially once you get a state religion, as the civic also gives +1 with state religion.

For another note, I must mention that I had to send Gilden at ~80% odds when trying to take 50% def hill-based cities defended by Guerilla-promoted warriors (I don't know if this is part of Chalid's work, but I distinctly noticed that the AI would assign Guerilla to the units garrisoned in its cities... that's rather smart if you ask me). Of course, he soon leveled high enough to raise the odds, but I did get nervous a couple of times. He would also sometimes end up staying on a hill time with 1.5str or so, and I was luck that the AI wouldn't sacrifice a couple of warriors to take him down before he would heal. All in all, I'd say that using GS for in an early rush doesn't look to be a very reliable strategy to me. If your neighbour gets Runes or BW fast enough, GS just isn't strong enough to take cities on his own, and he doesn't even get City Raider promotions. In single player games, you'll probably never be confronted to an AI efficient enough to oppose much resistance this early in a game, but I definetely wouldn't bet that human players in a MP game would be that easy to take on. (then again, you mentionned a couple of times that you value SP games higher than MP games... well, that's a personnal opinion, so you might want to ignore the last statement).

Odd. I found that rushing to archery and building Gilden allowed me to more or less have my way with the 2 warriors hanging out in their cities. Which raises another point:

Many of you have said that the Ljosalfar are supposed to be a great builder Civ. Then how can you justify their early game military superiority? Early hero combined with an early advantage means that they're pretty tough.

I'd guess that the vast amounts of opinionated posters sending out floods of angry demands to stop studying the Ljosalfar scared a lot of Unser's would-be allies away. That sort of thing seems to have stopped mostly at this point, but it's amazing how something done early can have such great effects later.

 

[Halancar]

My two Khazad games are played, but the analysis is missing yet. I must say I didn't do as well as Unser Giftzwerg in both cases. Is it me or the map ?

The short conclusion is : the production game did slightly worse at research, but ended with more science/turn, and it built a lot more things, including the Pyramid. An early rush to Pyramid is definitely worth it. And flood plains are vastly overrated, unless you also have lots of forests somehow to mitigate the health problem...
Oh, and the shorter route to Runes is the faster. But you do miss on a couple of techs on the way.

 

[Ghostmaker]

Absolutely. One or two for eight is a very good deal. Especially once you get a state religion, as the civic also gives +1 with state religion.

Sorry, please read my first post again we are talking about 20-25 for those eight . Still a good deal?

Odd. I found that rushing to archery and building Gilden allowed me to more or less have my way with the 2 warriors hanging out in their cities. Which raises another point:

Many of you have said that the Ljosalfar are supposed to be a great builder Civ. Then how can you justify their early game military superiority? Early hero combined with an early advantage means that they're pretty tough.

I said it before, I say it again, there is no early game military superiority. They are on par except for their hero, which by the way isn't so strong. I allready said, I might be a good idea to move him later, further strenghtening the Ljo in late game.

Greets Ghostmaker

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Thank you ScpailsMan, for your very thoughtful reply. You offer some calm measured critiques. But they are critiques, not accusations, and that is 100% cool. Allow me to touch on them since you took so much time to read, test, and reply.

I finally read it all. All this testing and summarizing must have been a lot of work, and I should thank you for providing us these results. I won't comment the analysis as some people have already pinpointed much of the things I would object to. Suffice to say that while I concurr with some of the things you've come to, I don't agree with the essential part of your conclusions. There's one thing that I think is worth mentionning though, because I guess it's the main element of the discussion that I disagree with, and as I understand them most of your conclusions are based on it.

You said :


The point is that I believe other civs don't necessary need to "catch up" in growth. Depending on your leader's traits, unique units and civ-specific synergies, you may well be able to bury the Ljos and crush half of their cities under your heels before you even catch up economically. Well, that's my opinion and I have no figures to show here to justify my point (and I'm still wondering how I can run a test case to check this issue in particular, it's not like I blame you for not trying).

I'm not saying that your observations are wrong or anything, but I do believe you focused too much on the economics (something the Ljos are meant to be very good at) and your conclusions don't take into account the fact that even the strongest economy won't stop an army of grunts marching to you.

I know I have explained this, but I have talked about a lot of things. There are a lot of details to sort out in one's mind. I have said repeatedly that it is possible to balance out a hot economy with a weak military. I have said this over and over and over.

I measured the economy for several reasons, all of which have been mentioned repeatedly, but once again, there is much te remember, and I have an edge seeing as I wrote it up. But there are two reasons I measured the exonomy: it is measureable. Full-scale war between Ljosalfar and Realm X is not. You measure what you can.

Seondly, the economy is hardly a trivial factor in the game. The toughest combat unit does not get built without hammers. No technological progress occurs at all without Commerce. Sure, a STR 10 unit has an advantage over a STR 7 unit. But the STR 10 unit that never gets built is no asset. And Three STR 7 units against one STR 10 unit flips the advantage the otehr direction.

What critics of my comments fail to appreceate is the full magnitude of the differences. Here we transition from data to opinion. I do not have enough data to say somethig like. "Ljo's economy runs hot, specifically at Warp Factor 3.1789." But I do have enough data to say "Ljo's economy runs so very hot I am skeptical the differences can be balanced in the combat portion of the game."

Yes, it is OPINION when I say Ljosalfar, OVERALL, is broken. But Ljosalfar's economy does run hot. That statement is really out of the realm of opinion anymore. That is the one accomplishment from this study. Little credibility exists anymore to the notion that Ljosalfar's economy is no different than any average Civ's. That much, at least, I think, is now accepted as true.

Now, if we agree Ljo's economy runs hot, that means it must be balanced out in some other aspect, right? The common example and the one you offered in the combat portion. OK, so how much balancing is neccessary? If Ljo can build two units to your one, how much weaker must those units be? Got a rought idea? OK, now the ratio is 3 units built to your 1 how much weaker still? Wht if the ratio is 4:1? Are we talking Ljosalfar with tier-4 uints at STR 4?

The exact numbers in the example are not important. What is important is the concept. It's fine in theory to balance out a hot economy with a weak military. But in practice the economic differences must be kept marginal. Small economic advantages compound themselves over time. If economic advantages are allowed to blow up too large, then the required adjustments to the combat portion too harsh.

That is, unless players here expect to see the Elven lands producing endless swarms of cheap units zerging out of the forests. This "human" wave method of warfighting seems more suited to Orc or Korean-era Red Chinese than it does to supposedly long-living, slow-breeding, every-life-is-too-precious-to-be-casually-risked Elves, but hey, what do I know about Elves? If that's what Ljosalfar is destined to becaome in ffH, then that just means I will be given the pleasure of slaughtering Elves over and over and over.

That said, I've started a game with the Ljosalfar recently. I don't remember the exact map settings right now (I'm at work, typing this message during my lunch break), but I sure found some things easier than some of my previous games. For example, I kicked two civs out of "my" continent using Gilden Silveric and the PoN Stooges with amazing simplicity. Mind you, I'm not sure that I performed much better than a 0.13 game I played as the Balseraph, for example. Consider for example that the Fellowship of the Leaves won't give you the military edge OO or The Order will. I remember 0.13 games with the Balseraph and the Lanun, in which rushing to OO allowed me to build very strong armies and in both occasions totally dominate my immediate neighbours with amazing efficiency. When attacking with the Ljos, I often had to send in kamikaze archers and hunters (!), which would lead to heavy war weariness. And that was while having built the PoN and bringing hill giants to tear down the defenses in most of the cases.

Once again, you study the period long after I did. If you have Giants and the like, you waited to start your war. In my game I could have started amassing Hunters and bum-rushed my neighbor. Just turn R&D down for a few turns, build Scouts in every city, upgrade them to Hunters, and in 5 or a dozen turns I would open the war with the capture of 2, probably three bordering cities. A pair of Warriors does not make for a very good defense in that situation. I'd loose 2 or 4 units per city? Pfft. Plenty more Elves where they came from. War Weariness? At this stage of the game there's plenty of room under the happycap. With half Eothim's empire gone before they got to move their first unit, the war would already be over.

I went for Leaves because that is the expected path. But Leaves itself did very little for Ljo's economy in my test. Look at all those root causes and reccomendations. Only one item in either list has anything to do with Leaves. All the rest are inherent to Ljosalfar, regardless of religion.

Yes, it did lead to extra Food production and that did help out. But Leaves was in effect for only the last third of the game. Ljo could have as easilly finished OO, or Runes. If they had gone Runes they probably would have done "better" in my test. The economic benefit from Leaves is "laggier" than for Runes. With Runes, you get your +1 Commerce right away, and more Gold when the temple goes up. If I wanted to demonstrate the military potential for Ljo, I could have taken OO. Then I could use Drowns instead of Hunters in my above example. O-u-c-h spells ouch!

Hell, in my test game, I could have invented all three religions, Runes, Leaves, and OO, before turn 200. Three religions, three temples/city thrown up at 50% cost, the ability to swap State relions every 10 turns with 0 turns lost in Revolution ... think what THAT realm could do to it's neighbors.

Militarily weak? Certain units are weak and certain vulnerabilities exist, but "weak" overall? I've not seen it in Ljosalfar. (Please notice the color of the text, Gentle Lurker.)

For another note, I must mention that I had to send Gilden at ~80% odds when trying to take 50% def hill-based cities defended by Guerilla-promoted warriors (I don't know if this is part of Chalid's work, but I distinctly noticed that the AI would assign Guerilla to the units garrisoned in its cities... that's rather smart if you ask me). Of course, he soon leveled high enough to raise the odds, but I did get nervous a couple of times. He would also sometimes end up staying on a hill time with 1.5str or so, and I was luck that the AI wouldn't sacrifice a couple of warriors to take him down before he would heal. All in all, I'd say that using GS for in an early rush doesn't look to be a very reliable strategy to me. If your neighbour gets Runes or BW fast enough, GS just isn't strong enough to take cities on his own, and he doesn't even get City Raider promotions. In single player games, you'll probably never be confronted to an AI efficient enough to oppose much resistance this early in a game, but I definetely wouldn't bet that human players in a MP game would be that easy to take on. (then again, you mentionned a couple of times that you value SP games higher than MP games... well, that's a personnal opinion, so you might want to ignore the last statement).

Well, let me repeat this : I do believe it was very interesting that you ran this experiment, and the conclusions proved interesting to read and think about. I sure don't agree with some of your observations, but I appreciate nonetheless that you share your results with the community. I'm not sold yet on the Ljos being dramatically overpowered, although I sure find them much easier to play with, especially in SP games. I'm eager to read about experiments performed by other players in other conditions, the more data the better IMO.

Yes, but every Civ has to deal with the AI building such units and so forth. Most Civs don't have a cheaply built, early-arriving Gilden Silveric to call upon. It's the relative capabilities that matter.

Thank you once again for all the time you spent reviewing my posts. I am sorry you had to (at least glance at) wade past all the times I blew my top. I was looking forward to post-test discussion, because I expected most of the responses would be thoughtfull, non-personal reasoning such as you have offered here. thanks again, and I hope my replies helped clarify my earlier points.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Sorry, please read my first post again we are talking about 20-25 for those eight . Still a good deal?

God King was never meant to be a civic for large empires. When you're starting the game, and a high upkeep civic will cost no more than two or three gold, those extra hammers (and extra from capital, too) can be a life saver. After that, it is prudent to swtich away from it.

I said it before, I say it again, there is no early game military superiority. They are on par except for their hero, which by the way isn't so strong. I allready said, I might be a good idea to move him later, further strenghtening the Ljo in late game.

Do you deny that the Ljosalfar get more hammers than any other Civ, without even having to feed/build mines? If not, then you must admit that every single extra hammer they get is one that others can't use to build military units, but the Ljosalfar can. Now, I don't know how big you think their hammer advantage is, but even something as "small" as 50% leads to a much bigger military. Something as big as 100% leads to an even bigger one. Unless you deny that the Ljosalfar get a advantage, you must admit that they have a stronger military.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Hi Ghostmaker. Thanks for coming back again with more thoughtfull commentary.

Of course the maintenance money is wasted. You have a 100% increase in maintenance for 8 more shields. Is this a good deal for you?

This in, for my money, like saying more cities are a waste because they raise maintenence values. Yes, it is possible for maintenence costs to be woefully inefficient. (Indeed, City 3 was placed to cut off an AI neighbor. If that neighbor was not so near, City 2 and 3 would have been placed elsewhere, and maintenece costs wold have been lower than we saw. Only the CLan had a less-efficient city distribution in my test.) But costs don't rise until you have somethign to maintain. Here's what Ljo gets for its money, in addition to the hammers yo mention.

One more city than anyone else and 2 ore than Khazad. Once city was only 5 turns old (and thus drove a spike in mantenence) .... that is an entire city worth of growth potential Ljo already has in place.

Ljo has the building already in place to produce 2 TYPES of 3STR units, Hunters and Achers. Only the Clan has such a building, a Hunting Lodge. No other realm has any such building in existance. Ever been attacked with STR 4-6 units when all you can build is Warriors? That's a wait seems to stretch foreverrrrrrrrl waiting for your first Archery Range to get built ... if you even own the tech.

Elder Councils in many cities ... Temples already up in most cities, compared to one temple each for the other three realms. ... bigger populations per city ... there are all sorts of things that money buys, not just more commerce and more hammers. Growing our Civ is sort of a fundemental point, is it not?

I still don't get it, maybe I'm slow but, elves need 2 techs for cottages as do the Khazad, the Lanun and even the clan. So were is the headstart? Some races even start 1 tech away from cottages, oh my god , how strong must they be?

2 Techs for Clan and Khazad and Lanun, yes, if they don't mind passing up on Exporation. That can pay off or backfire, depending on Your Friendly Neighborhood Raging Barbariaans. Except for Clan, who simply MUST rush to cottages IMO. Ljosalfar does nothave to make this tradeoff. But you are right, other realms can mimic the rush-to-Cottages opening. It's just riskier for them to do so. This is one of the things I would do differently if I ran the test again.

You are right about other realms. I am playing the Bannor right now...I built my first Cottage even sooner than Ljo did in my test (Goodie Hut luv!!!). I played Lucuirp a bit, and their Mud Golom have me suspecting an exloit lurks with them somewhere.

I have said a few times that the Rush-to-Cottage thing is bigger than just Ljosalfar. I think it is such a powerful opening, it will become more and more common. There are only two issues with somethig like this. "Sameness" between games, and too much too soon. If every civ develops very rapidly, then games have a tendancy to wrap uobefore all the real nifty late-game elements come into play. I wish the Ljosalfar thingdid not obscure this much more important notion. I think the concern has merit. It deserves thought and conversation, but that's lost in all the Ljo talk.

Thats the point, because of having no pressing threats, the Ljo could to this. If attacked like the Khazad, much more early warriors would be needed.

Eh? I'm sorry but I do not follow. Why does the lack of pressing threats allow a realm to build up an unneeded military? Why do pressing threats prevent a realm from postphoning economic developpment for deparately needed units? I listed the units destroyed in each game. If I remeber correctly, both Khazad and Ljo lost one Scout unit each ... perhaps Khazzad lost a Warrior also. So where are all these extra units? For proably 175 turns Khazad fought off the Barbarians with 1 Warrior / city, plus 1 mobile Warrior, plus 1 mobile Scout.

Yes and they are stronger because of it. So what, other races get their hero later, making them stronger.

This question is outside the scope of the study. It is an example of what I mean by saying such things are unmeasureable.

What can be measured is the numbr of units actually produced. Hammers already converted to units count for something in measuring an economy. I produced those extra units because I thought doing so would demonstrate how the economy could develop AND produce some military in the same time period everyone else had to pour it all into the economy. Ljo can go Guns and Butter early on.

What I would do differently next time is NOT build those extra units, and put the extra 500-750 hammers into more economic developments, thsu making Ljo's hot economy even hotter.

Please read again, I only support part's of your "basic premise"

Undesrtood, but you acknowledge that the elsphant in the room is, indeed, an elephant. You might think the elephant weighs less than I, but yo agree thre is an elephant in the room. This is not the universally-held opinion. i'll take it.

I now what root cause means, but thanks for the tutorial.

I'm sorry, but I read a lot of your comments that started off, "why is this bad?". Root causes are not good nor are they bad. They just are. If you know the Root Causes, you can target a cure. Otherwise, it is scattergun approach and hope for the best.

Please don't take it personally but most of your recommendations will break either the Ljo or the fellowship or both.

Well, I made only one reccomendation on Fellowship, I'm not sure if that would "break" them. But as for that reccomendation and all the others I made ... don't like 'em? Then do something else. Just don't do nothing. (Or do nothing but just don't be surprised to fight a lot of Elves in a lot of endgames. )

Kael began making changes. Ljo workers built at 80% efficiency. This one small change can bring big results. We'll see how that works, and go from there.

I wasn't implying anything. I was merely stating, that the Ljo stand a chance in 0.15 and that I hope it stay's that way. I did in no way try to insult you, if you see in that way i apologice for it.

Greets Ghostmaker

No problemo Ghostmaker. I think some people honestly do feel that pointing out a design flaw is akin to a personal attack on Kael, the Team, or disparages teh game as a whole. I'm very glad you do not see things that way. But I think some people do. I am disliked enough already, so I griped about it.

[Edit: There should probably be more 'blue' up there. But my dog is complaining, so that's gotta wait.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

My two Khazad games are played, but the analysis is missing yet. I must say I didn't do as well as Unser Giftzwerg in both cases. Is it me or the map ?

The short conclusion is : the production game did slightly worse at research, but ended with more science/turn, and it built a lot more things, including the Pyramid. An early rush to Pyramid is definitely worth it. And flood plains are vastly overrated, unless you also have lots of forests somehow to mitigate the health problem...
Oh, and the shorter route to Runes is the faster. But you do miss on a couple of techs on the way.

I'll go take a look-see at what you came up with there. Cool that you ran your own test.

 

[Halancar]

I'll go take a look-see at what you came up with there. Cool that you ran your own test.

Actually, by now my analysis is done and a thrid style played. I'll be curious to see what you think of the map if you can take the time to look at it, because either it sucks by the standard you set on your test, or I do

 

[Grillick]

Halancar, you may want to try simply using the map that Unser used for his Khazad game...That would most accurately portray the differences of the play-styles, don't you think?

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Halancar, you may want to try simply using the map that Unser used for his Khazad game...That would most accurately portray the differences of the play-styles, don't you think?

And...If you refer to the game notes file while you are playing, you might be able to see just where out game divere ... for instance, yo might not be so 'fortunate' to have Aecheron move in next door.

I will give your map a play, in the next day or two.

 

[SchpailsMan]

You raised 3 interesting points above I didn't actually think about (or maybe I just didn't think MUCH about ) :

1/ The Ljos could as well go for OO or Runes... and THAT would be bad (as stupid as it may seem, I kept thinking about ancient forests and haven't even thought about this possibility)

2/ The inherent production edge of keeping forests around also applies to military production. The Ljos can actually mass-build offensive units, and that doesn't sound quite right

3/ Arendel Pheadra (or whatever the spelling is), although you didn't name her directly, has a powerful combination of traits, Creative + Spiritual if I remember correctly. If the Ljos are given a chance to found several religions, Spi gets even worse since they can swap religions a lot without losing much until they get their religion-specific units.


I think I'll be running a particular test case this weekend, even sooner if I get a chance, trying to run exactly this strategy: get Arendel, try to rush to OO and Runes, try to get the better of both, and attempt a Drown-rush on the closest neighbour(s). That might be interesting. In fact, I'm not even sure I'll bother getting Gilden Siveric on the way, it's not like I valued him so much. Definetely worth a try.

 

[Halancar]

Halancar, you may want to try simply using the map that Unser used for his Khazad game...That would most accurately portray the differences of the play-styles, don't you think?

I tried, but his save his from 0.14d, and won't load at all under 0.15...

 

[Uberslacker]

Just as a general statement; I've noticed a lot of people concerned with the contradiction between what the classic/ cliched images of elves are compared to how they play out in FfH.

A systemless rpg fantasy setting that was around a decade or so ago (existed only as articles in a now defunct Australian rpg magazine' portrayed elves that can be easily fitted into the Ljosalfar. They were a long-lived race with a high fertility rate that practiced regular infanticide to keep their numbers down and they had a belief system that taught that one day they would be permitted by their gods to commit global genocide on all the other races and make the world pure again.

Another way to look at it is that, for example, vampires in FfH have been altered extensively from what might be called traditional as have many other races and cultures. I have no problem with elves not behaving entirely the way those of us raised on Tolkien and such might expect them to.

 

[daladinn]

unser can i suggest a test in this route for you?

playing the lanun,

tech for fishing while building palisades and warriors
tech for message of the deep while improving water tiles
tech for mind stapleing while making temple and drowning your warriors

then,
build severous and the tower of complacency in that order and decare war on EVERYONE. start moving the tech line toward fanatism . it will be almost impossible to root severous out of your city once he has the fear promotion and the war weariness buildup on the other sivs will cripple them. combine this with landfall raids from the drown. its very harsh to beat.

keep in mind how powerful slavery is
-- severous will take 1 slave out of 4 kills (sac for 10 hammer or make lunatic)
-- you can burn population doen to 4 am any non-wonder can be made from a size 12 city. typically you will find the lanun growing at 1 pop per turn

also keep in mind that a pirate cove is a WATER tile and most units cant cross it (use for tactical advantage) , also it creates a rivet to the sea for trade and monetary purposes

 

[Chandrasekhar]

A systemless rpg fantasy setting that was around a decade or so ago (existed only as articles in a now defunct Australian rpg magazine' portrayed elves that can be easily fitted into the Ljosalfar. They were a long-lived race with a high fertility rate that practiced regular infanticide to keep their numbers down and they had a belief system that taught that one day they would be permitted by their gods to commit global genocide on all the other races and make the world pure again.

That sounds... evil. Maybe the Svartalfar might be something like this, but I don't see the neutral (and Good!) elves being like this.

Another way to look at it is that, for example, vampires in FfH have been altered extensively from what might be called traditional as have many other races and cultures. I have no problem with elves not behaving entirely the way those of us raised on Tolkien and such might expect them to.

Well, they're living beings instead of undead, and they were first created by different means, but I think that the Calabim are pretty well what we'd expect a vampire-run empire to be like.

 

[mindlar]

A possibility for "slowing" the Ljosofar without actually changing their gameplay would be to slow their population growth rate. Elves are not generally considered to be incredibly fertile (for whatever reason) thus things that slow their population growth rate to me seems thematic.

Possibilities that I can think of:
1. Increased quantity of food required to grow (i.e. 20% more food per pop)
2. Increased food consumption (i.e. 3 food are eaten per pop).
3. Flat reduction in the amount of food generated (i.e. -2 food per city)