Clan of Embers - Early years strat

[daladinn]

just FYI , bringing hyborem into the world will push you into wars much much faster. i personally dont reccomend doing it until you have a patriarch and/or mardero.

also bringing in hyborem also brings in the other guy(wow memory blank).

something i learned recently (cant believe i did not know before). if you build the spiral tower you will gain 1 coin for every temple and every altar in every city. thats 2 coin per city additional income.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It seems that the using the Chaos III Sorcery spell to turn rival units into barbarians DOES NOT START A WAR, even without HN. (note that I had modded my version significantly, but I don't think I did anything that would stop the spell from declaring war if it did in the normal version). This is almost certainly a bug, but a very useful one for the Clan. It isn't really a early game strategy, but turning every one of your rivals' units into a barbarian before (of instead of) declaring war on them is really powerful. Unfortunately, the newly barbarian units don't seem to attack very often, even if several of them are right next to a completely unguarded city.

 

[xanaqui42]

my insight into the clan of embers.

sheelba is the weaker compared to jonas. but i will get into why in a while.

the very best tactic i have foudn with jonas is to go for the ashen veil. this requires having reagents or seeing reagents close by. the 2nd best route i have taken is the arcane route for summoners.

lets start with jonas the arcane.
1- build up as many cities as you can quickly. keep them close and tight with only 2 squares seperating them. NEVER build anything that is going to give you culture. you dont want it. this allows for cities to have 8 productive people , plus any specialists into overflow.
2- tech for writing as fast as you can. your going to live off having towns in every available square. once done with writing you need to head down the summoning path (KoTE ->necromancy -> conjurors). the reason for necromancy is multiple fold (skeles,specters,wraiths,barrows).
3- EVERY time you get a tech trade it away. EVERY TIME dont ever miss a beat. this keeps the AI loving you , and inderectly makes you stronger ....
4- once you have necromancy build barrows in any available square.
5- sit back and let the hoards of extra barbs slow down the enemies while your summoners provide all the military you need.

going for the AV is a bit more complicated but also just plain fun.
1- build your cities exactly as above
2- rush for mysticism ASAP. build both buildings and start making great people. wether you get a sage or a prophet wont matter at this point since your popping them for techs.research philosophy next then way of the wicked. by now you should have had a great person or 2 pop. if its a sage pop it for KOtE or save for the holy city. if its a prophet pop it for priesthood or any of the religious techs (the goal is highpriests)
3- once you found the religion you get access to disease corpses. immediately following you should have priesthood for ritualists. the next tech to research is the pact. DO not change to hyborem. build rosier, build the building for the tech, switch civics.
4- the goal here is to maintain peace with the barbs while clocking up the AC, force hyborem into as many wars as you can. remember kill off the other evil people first. the more the AV spreads the more hyborem will love you.
5- forgot , as soon as you get way of the wicked build the prophecy of ragnorok. in a quick game you can have the 4 horsmen in game as early as turn 150. getting them that early in the game makes them virtually unstoppable. and since you are at peace they wont attack you.
6- the goal here is to be the last man standing ... its a fine line but a total blast if you can pull it off.

hope this helps some people with playing the clan in a less mundane fashion.

Unless you object, I'll put this into the wiki.

 

[jwin]

I played a clan game trying to use the horsemen and avatar as weapons. Much to my dismay, three horsemen and the avatar were trapped behind my lines with Acheron. They can't cross my territory and I can't build a city there to pop them out because of Acheron's city. Oh well.

I used a different strategy than outlined above. I was playing on Emperor, so the top scores have stayed ahead of me and I haven't been at risk of loosing barb. I went for AV priests as the primary weapon, but let my cities grow big with farms. I used STW for extra food and whatever civic it is that allows military production with food. It was easier than having to worry every few turns about going in to sacrifice, but still produced units quickly. Even without as many specialists and great people, I have managed to catch up techwise with the other civs. Otherwise, I have had good success with the outlined strategy.

 

[daladinn]

jwin , you do know that you can kill the dragon and still have peace with the barbs? the only thing that will break peace with the barbs iirc is having too many points (which is why i limit cultural growth). after you remove the dragon and claim all that territory all those barbs with "pop" outside and start attack others.

 

[jwin]

I take it then that Acheron is an animal, so you can attack him like any other animal? I did not realize that. I think that might change some things a little.


edit: I went back and tried to attack him. All I did was move peacefully onto his city.

edit2: And casting ring of fire breaks the peace too. That really pissed them off.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Acheron is not an animal, he is a beast. You could kill him with HN units. You could take over Acheron's city without a fight using Rantine, but I think you may have to cheat to get his strength high enough for this to work.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Using the avatar as a weapon... now that's very cruel. Only way to take that thing down is to have tons of units with lots of first strikes. Is the AI programmed to deal with this meance though? If not then that's surely an exploit.

I doubt it's viable as an MP tactic though, because you still need the techs to expand to enough cities so you can support 90 warriors (90 counters). Although I would be very interested to see if a human player could build an empire and field an army in 300 turns that could take the Avatar of Wrath down.

 

[SwordofStriker]

Just one question here...

Building the Grand Menagerie was mentioned, but the last time I checked, you needed gorilla cages for that, and until patch 3.13 you can't do that. I even recall Kael mentioning fixing gorilla cages in his 0.25 changelog, but again it isn't in game until patch 3.13, so how are you guys building the Grand Menagerie if you can't actually build the pre-req buildings?

If I manage to subdue a gorilla and get it back to a city, then I simply delete the gorilla and world build my gorilla cage. I am just curious if there is another way to do this that I'm not aware of as the 0.25 changelog seems to indicate there isn't.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Simple answer: cheating.

Of course, it would not be difficult just to fix the problem yourself in the xml file/excel file editor. Just go the the unit section and put BUILDING_GORILLA_CAGE in the first building types section of the Building section under the Gorilla unit.

Also, the Menagerie is still working in ht pre-BtS versions