Can you be an evil builder?

[clut]

I always tend to play my games as either a good or a neutral civ.

Just for a change I decided to play as an evil civ. Settings were large map and 6 other AI civs. I'm happily plodding along, burning witches at the stake and waging a few wars here and there but I still like to build a little. I don't want an outright 'CRUSH YOU ALL' style victory. I'd like to keep my enemies in check whilst expanding and growing my own empire.

I have found though, that as the AC goes up, and Hyboreum enters the world (right next to me) I don't want hell terrain spreading to my lands but I know that being evil, it'll spread to me first. Is it still worth building my empire if I'm going to get hell terrain creeping in all over it?

The general trend i've found whilst reading through the forum is that evil civs want the AC to go up, but does this then screw them over with hell and blight at AC40 (I know blight affects all, but if you've got a bigger empire, it'll affect you more!).

 

[BeefontheBone]

Good builders have a definite advantage when hell shows up, it's true. I find builder victories a bit tricky in FfH - the altar's no good at all for evil players (and you really need to focus on it early) and the towers require conquest to secure the mana.

 

[clut]

Ok, so you're at a disadvantage when you play builder... what happens when you go off on a rampage instead?

You send tons of units out to pillage and maim, thus incurring large upkeep costs. As you pillage and maim, and AC goes up, hell spreads to your lands, making it more difficult to sustain your civ, and therefore less able to afford the upkeep on the pillaging and maiming.

Is there another way?

 

[westamastaflash]

When I pillage and maim as the sheaim, I burn the world to the ground. Lots of gold from conquering, no maintenance necessary...

 

[Monkeyfinger]

The Sheaim is the only civ that should run up the AC.

All other civs, regardless of alignment, should found Ashen Veil then sit on it so as not to let it spread. Great AC control method. Be sure not to build its shrine unless every civ is full of its religion, otherwise AV will passively spread out of control.

Razing cities isn't something I like doing, even ******** tundra cities quickly start making more than they cost. If you hate the idea of micromanaging their builds, just give them a long queue when you first take them and be done with it for a hundred or so turns, if not more. This applies to vanilla4 civ as well as FfH.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm pretty sure that the Infernals should run up the AC too...

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

An evil builder? Sounds contridictory to me. If you declare war on the Kuriotates, then negotiate with them, the boy-king's quote will answer your question. Well if you must...

The Sheaim are passive builders, but also vicious warmongers. I'm starting to enjoy them actually. I was giggly over grigori adventurer archmages because they come much earlier; well, if you farm up a city with agriculture civic, pushing the population to 40+, and then eat it all up to produce 40 wraiths with your Eater of Dreams, you just might be able to overwhelm even those 18 meteors a turn.

******** tundra cities do NOT make more than they cost. You have to look at marginal maintenance cost of your entire empire. I find that after you own about 30-40 cities, it's hard to justify taking another city for economic purposes. Of course, there are many good non-economic reasons for taking a city.

 

[loki1232]

I would consider the sheiam to be builder/warmonger hybrids. they can get great cities...which they then devour.

 

[Wyrmhero]

Its not that difficult to be an evil builder. You just have to be good at coercion and such things. If, say, you go AV, and bring Hyborem into the game, pay someone else to declare war on him. If you bribe enough people, Hyborem should be eliminated, and Hell will stop spreading. You should also combat the AC, using Sanctify on any Hell terrain you find. Then, you should last long enough to be able to stay ahead of anyone else, before gaining a tech advantage (as they may not sanctify their squares in the cross), and then decimating your opponents. You could even keep all your Great Prophets, and then convert to Order or RoK right at the end of the game, when you have omniscience.

 

[Ksi]

*Imagines an engineer cackling wickedly while building walls*

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Going for an OO cultural victory is an evil builder strategy. Balseraph's would be best, but anyone could try it. Being able to move around the perfect Lyre would be very useful.

 

[El_Duderino]

ive tried the evil builder before, but to do so i had to quickly find and kill all AV civs and destroy the AV holy city, but once you destroy the holy city its really not that hard

 

[Bluenoise]

Hell stops spreading if you kill Hyborem?

 

[kumquatelvis]

Evil doesn't require the Ashen Veil. Go Octopus Overlords or The Council of Esus.

 

[xienwolf]

Hell won't stop if you kill Hyborem, but it will always be in full force in his borders. So you can never completely remove it until you kill him.

 

[Calbrenar]

If you want to try an evil builder go Svaltafar on a creation map. You will be pleasantly surpised. You're evil and you can outbuild/research pretty much anyone in the game with ease.

As far as hell terrain goes. Build a Life mana. No hell terrain problems ever. Not that hard.

And as for eater of dreams don't bother with wraiths get pit beasts--10x better.

 

[tharg]

I have found though, that as the AC goes up, and Hyboreum enters the world (right next to me) I don't want hell terrain spreading to my lands but I know that being evil, it'll spread to me first. Is it still worth building my empire if I'm going to get hell terrain creeping in all over it?

I thought that the idea was that the sacrifice the weak civic compensated for having hell terrain, or maybe it was the other way round.

 

[clut]

As far as hell terrain goes. Build a Life mana. No hell terrain problems ever. Not that hard.

Can you elaborate on this??? does the life mana stop (or slow) the creep of hell terrain into your borders, or is it that the life mana grants access to the sanctify spell?

Also, what exactly does sanctify do? Does it turn hell terrain back to what it was before, or put out fires or what?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

He is talking about Sanctify, the Life I spell.

A plot become hell when its plot counter reaches 10, and returns to normal when it drops below 10. All tiles start at 0, but Infernal owned tiles are set to 100 each turn. Each tile that touches a tile with a counter of 10 or more has its counter increased by 1 each turn if it meets the appropriate conditions (based on religion, alignment, and the AC), and is otherwise reduced by 1.

Sanctify sets the plot counter of the caster's tile and all adjacent tiles to 0, thus reverting hell back to non-hell lands. It also gets rid of flames on burning sands when it turns them back to deserts, but won't get rid of forest fires. Also, when used on city ruins it reduces the AC by 1. It changes the real AC, not the displayed value. The displayed value is a rounded (or is it truncated?) percentage of the maximum possible AC, which varies based on map size, number of players, etc.

Hell can easily spread back, so relying on sanctify requires lots of micromanagement. Also, it does nothing to combat the AC (except when used on ruins), so it can't be used to avoid AC events like Blight, the 4 horsemen, or Wrath.

 

[evanb]

Going for an OO cultural victory is an evil builder strategy. Balseraph's would be best, but anyone could try it. Being able to move around the perfect Lyre would be very useful.

That's what I did, it was really fun