Conquering Erebus I: The begining of a FfH series

You have a lot of commerce in your capital; it might be worthwhile to get a library in there asap, followed by an academy.
He has 14 commerce in his capitol; he would have 22 in the second city from resources alone(assuming he goes 1W of the mountain). Much better place for an academy.
 
I played the next round... It's a long one, almost 100 turns... We got some good news and some bad ones, but I guess we got what's needed to improve our situation...

Expect the report in a few hours
 
Round 2 (Turns 55-152):


Sorry for keeping you waiting. I was almost ready with the report last night when my computer decided that it was time to take a break... I wasn't in the mood to write everything again yesterday, so I decided to leave it for today...

Well, back in the game. You can see that this round was long, almost 100 turns. That's because I wanted to get passed of the beggining, where things can be a little slow in FfH and because I wanted to end the round in a spot where some critical decisions ought to be made.

I started the round chosing mining as our next tech. If we could find copper in a good place, maybe an attack of Pyre zombies against Alexis could be feasible.

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So, how lucky are we today?

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Not so much... The only source of copper is in a very bad position... So, I decided to adopt plan B and beeline Corruption of Spirit after Code of Laws. Our techpath went Mining > Code of Laws > Mysticism > Exploration > KotE > Philosophy > Way of the Wicked > Animal Husbandry > Bronze Working > Warfare. The reason why I didn't tech Corruption of Spirit is because I bulbed it with a great prophet that I got using the priest specialist of a pagan temple. The turns I'd take to research it were spent getting bronze working and warfare so we could have more options for our invasion of Alexis.

Well, not much happened besides all the researching. I knew barbs would start to show up, so I took one of our warriors and attacked a lion that was roaming near the capital. Since it was in a desert hill, the odds were 50/50. Risky, but if we won, the warrior would gain some very helpful promotions against the barbs. So, how did he go:

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YES!! I gave him Combat 1 + Shock 1. He became a barb killer. By the end of the round, he's up to Combat 4 + Shock 2. He'll be a great asset in our war when i promote him to pyre zombie.

About barbs, they decided to start showing up:

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After that, it was a constant flow, coming from north and south.

After some turns, the settler the capital was building was done, and I sent him to found our second city, the only one I founded in the round. Probably a mistake, but I wanted to make sure Ashen Veil holy city would be our second one... With an academy and Stigmata on the Unbourn, it's going to be a very nice science city (and I'll make it our capital later, to avoid Infernals from taking over it).

I liked Emptiness suggestion to use the room to the north for three cities, but, since I wanted to get AV quickly, I went for the spot 1W of the mountain. So, Grottiburg was founded:

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With Code of Laws in, I revolted to Aristocracy:

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The rest of the round passed without many interesting things. Orthus spawned and was killed very quickly. Runes of Kilmorph and Octopus Overlords were founded in a distant land (Alexis adopted OO for a short time, but she later changed to AV, when in the same turn it spread to her).

Well, speaking of the AI behaviour, Alexis got a great merchant during this round. She sent him in a Trade mission to my lands, but, instead of doing it in our capital, she decided to use him in our second city:

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Not a very wise choice...

After some turns, I could make resource trades with Alexis, so I did this:

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A happiness resource for one that we won't be using for a long time... On top of that, the fair trade bonus got her to pleased...

She also founded a city north of our second one, her fifth:

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You can see in this last screenshot that Alexis used River of Blood, slowing down our progress to get AV.

I got open borders with her after she researched cartography. Here's a screenshot of her capital, Prespur:

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She has two shorter stacks of Morois, in the cities that border our second one.

Screenshot of her land:

AlexisLand0000.jpg



Only Adonias and Acaia are on hills, that's nice...

We finally managed to get the Great Prophet for bulbing Corruption of Spirit (actually, I had to research three turns by myself, he couldn't bulb it alone):

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And:

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At least we got the holy city where we wanted...

After that, I played a few turns to complete warfare and decided to stop. Where do we go frm here? I'll post some screenshots to help you deciding:

Land (with horses revealed):

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If I had settled were Emptiness suggested, both horses would be in the cities fat crosses...

Demographics:

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Civics:

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So, I think our main objective is to get rid of Alexis, trying to do it fast. My initial idea is to go God King + Nationhood + Military State + Conquest and start making an army of Pyre Zombies + Rosier + Adepts (I've already built a Mage guild in Galveholm). I could tech Sanitation (11 turns) before making the civic change, we would get a very nice boost to our production with conquest. Another thing we could tech is Priesthood (14 turns) to make some ritualists with Ring of Flames.

Another idea is to settle some cities to the south, farm the floodplains and try to tech some more before attacking. My idea is to tech to fanaticism, then tech Infernal Pact and use the Infernal Grimoire to get Malevolent Designs: Mardero + Rosier + Beasts of Agares + Ritualists can probably defeat everything alexis could get against us...

What do you guys think?
 

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It is just me, or does Alexis not have copper either? I would build as many Pyre Zombies as possible and attack now. Raze any large cities that do not have AV(This will quickly raise the AC) and then build some settlers to place them in more ideal locations. You can still raze cities with AV, but this will lower the AC slightly(not by much though, only ~1%)

Priesthood is probably your best option at this point. Ritualists are deadly; just make sure to build a Temple of the Veil before teching it, or you'll waste extra turns.
 
Getting Ritualists is vital at this point. Even with Conquest you will have trouble building enough Pyre Zombies to keep up with Alexis' production. AoE is the best way to cope with massive number of enemies.

Try to get an Academy in Grottiburg as soon as possible. It is important to make the most of the decision to found it 1W of the mountain, sooner rather than later.

There's a spot to the south, riverside on a hill that has the Gold and Copper within the BFC. I'd settle there next. The Copper isn't in an ideal location, but getting access to it is still important. Pyre Zombies make great suicide troops, but it's even better when they don't have to die to win. Be sure to sent a large group of Warriors with the settler, to absorb barbarian attacks on the way there (I recommend about 6). If possible, time your movement so that you don't run afoul of the Giant - but if that's not possible, then the Warriors will act as ablative armor for your Settler. The losses will pay off once you have Bronze Weapons.

Position defenders 1W of that city, to block barbarian incursions from the South. That hill will make a good spot for a Fort. You'll still need to defend the Copper (and road there) from pillaging, but all the improvements from the Capital to the southern city will be safe (once borders pop enough to prevent barbarian spawns inside that zone). Other city spots in this "safe zone" would be 1NW of the Reagents, and then 5E from that spot.

Definitely kill Alexis as soon as is practical. That's a problem that's only going to get worse.
 
Getting Ritualists is vital at this point. Even with Conquest you will have trouble building enough Pyre Zombies to keep up with Alexis' production. AoE is the best way to cope with massive number of enemies.
I disagree. 30 Pyre Zombies can kill 300 Axemen from collateral alone. In fact, they can kill 1000 Axemen. The point of Ritualists is to soften up enemies for your other troops; if you build too many Ritualists and not enough Zombies, Alexis will eventually deplete your Pyre Zombie stores and sell Ritualist Flanks at the butcher's shop. 2 or 3 Ritualists will save the lives of around 5 zombies each time you attack. Attacking 10 times means they saved 50 zombies, so they are very useful, but any more than 3 per stack is overkill.
 
Even 10 Pyre Zombies would probably be enough. The problem is that with only 2 cities it will be difficult to station 10 Pyre Zombies in each city to defend, because of the production cost and the unit support cost. Then trying to build a stack to go attack Alexis, and paying for unit abroad support on that stack. At some point the economic damage will be catastropic. Having Ritualists will reduce the number of total units that need to be built, and the number that have to be left defending cities vulnerable to counterattack by Alexis.

I was trying to agree with your recommendation to research Priesthood.
 
Round 3 (Turns 152 - 236):

Finally, we had some action going on in this game... That, of course, means WAR!!! :D

In the beggining of the round, I decided to tech Sanitation to boost our production while using Conquest, change civics and tech priesthood (to add some ritualists to the stack) while building Pyre Zombies. I started building Rosier in the Capital, while Grottiburg built Pyre Zombies.

After sanitation was ready, i decided to change civics:

CivicsChange0000.jpg



Very military oriented. If it wasn't for conquest we'd never have built a army large enough fast enough to fight Alexis, our cities are really production poor.

One turn before I revolted, Alexis came to me with a demand. Since she was pleased, I guessed it wouldn't be a problem to deny it... Well, it wasn't, since she kept pleased. One turn later, she declared war. I don't think that the declaration had anything to do with the demand, since it was done in the next turn, but I'm not sure...

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Anyway, war was our objective too, so no big deal. A very large stack of morois showed in our borders. Luckily, instead of heading to Grottiburg, they decided to go chill out a little in Adonias, Alexis city to the north of our land. Unfortunately, I'm not used of taking screenshots of stacks and I couldn't get one that showed the units that were in it. It was something like 30 morois.

AlexisDeclaredWar0000.jpg



Like I said, the stack went to Adonias:

AlexisStack0000.jpg



After some turns of bringing precious reinforcements to Grottiburg, Alexis decided to move her stack and attack. We already had Rosier by then.

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It was a bloody battle. We lost some units (I can't understand the units defending order... I didn't see any moroi with marksman, but sometimes it seemed that weaker units defended, even tough stronger ones were avaiable), but, due to pyre zombies (these guys are too good) dying damage, we managed to survive. Here's her stack after:

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I used our units in the city to clear up the remainings. Our highly promoted warrior, now upgraded to pyre zombie survived the battle, but he died at 98% odds clearing a almost dead moroi... Bad luck, but Rosier survived, so that's fine.

So, I started building Pyre Zombies to attack Alexis. My plan was to keep the cities that had Ashen Veil and raze the other ones. Even tough we'd lost some nice devoled cities, our goal is to raze the Armageddon Counter. An the war would go faster without the need of defending the captured cities.

Here's our stack when i decided to move to alexis lands:

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No ritualists yet, but I was confident on the strenght of the Pyre Zombies.

When i reached Nubia, another stack showed up:

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I got the screenshot ready this time. You can see that Alexis got vampires already. Later, the vampires flooded us with skeletons. So, the AI actually used summons against our stack, but it took quite some turns. By the time it decided to attack, Rosier was highly promoted already and they didn't do a scratch to him (he's level 13 right now).

With priesthood, I built two ritualists and started capturing cities:

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Nubia, captured and kept:

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Prespur, captured and razed:

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Morr'ta'nar, captured and razed:

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Acaia, captured and razed:

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And, finally, San'ta'ron, also captured and razed (we captured a lot of workers with the city):

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After that, Alexis was ready to talk about peace. Time to do a nice catch up in techs:

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We got the techs showed in the screenshot + archery.

If you look carefully in the previous screenshots, you can see that we met tasunke during the round. His lands are north of ours, separated by mountains. We made this trade with him:

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We did some resource trades too. Here's his lands (we got the maps with Alexis):

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So, here we are. I just made peace with Alexis to get the techs with the peace treaty. She's down to one city, so I'll heal, wait for the 10 turns, declare and wipe her from the map.

After I realized that the war was won, I revolted back to agrarianism and aristocracy. I spent a lot of turns in 0% research to avoid going bankrupt with the units upkeep. I selected Fanaticism to be researched after priesthood was done, because I plan to get Malevolent designs with the infernal grimoire. i'm doing 100% research now, but maybe I should turn it off again and wait for an academy in Grottiburg. What do you think?

We also have some settling to do in Alexis former lands. I think all cities should go in the same spots that Alexis' ones were, except for San'ta'ron, which, I think, should go 1SE to get the whales in the second ring. Do you thing we should farm over the fully developed towns or keep them?

The city that'll go in the place were Prespur were will be a very nice production city. I think i'll start the Prophecy of Ragnarok as soon as I settle it. Coupled with the heroic Epic this city will be our primary military/AC raiser city.

I switched Grottiburg and Galveholm production to settlers. After Grottiburg one is ready, i plan to employ 2 scientists and 2 priests to produce a great person. If it is a G. Prophet, I'll build the Stigmata on the Unborn and employ only scientists for an Academy next. If it is a GS, i'll make the academy and wait to pop another GP for the shrine (which can be built with a GS or a GP).

About Civics, I'm going to switch to Slavery. We could change to religion (to raise the happy cap) or Pacifism (to help getting the GP faster) too without anarchy. What do you think?

Some screenshots:

Civics:

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Alexis former lands:

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So, I think next round we should settle the avaiable land, finish alexis, get the needed GP's, tech fanaticism > Infernal Pact and use the grimoire to get malevolent designs, build Mardero and the Beasts of Agares and attack Tasunke. Probably raze all his cities and settle them again afterwards.

Another thing is about mana nodes. We got two in our lands. We need life mana to be able to use sanctify (if the infernals spawn near us) and water mana to use spring and turn the southern deserts into plains. I think shadow mana is a nice one to get, since coupled with our Palace Chaos and Death mana and the AV shrine Entropy mana, we'll be able to build the tower of necromancy, who makes our undeads stronger and gives one death mana. The next ones we capture should me turned into death mana, to further improve our summons (building the soul forge can help too).

I'll be waiting for your comments!
 

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:mwaha:

Well done. :clap:

In FfH you can extort a lot of techs from the AI... Those I got were all avaiable for trade, I could get a lot more if it was possible...

Funny thing is that a few turns before Alexis wanted one of my cities for peace (even after I razed her capital and second larger city).
 
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