Early game strategy? / Getting a good start

I agree that hitting you pop cap, and then pumping out warriors works well, but I do not think this is particularly orthogonal to Education...

I didn't say a FE warrior rush was opposed to Education, just that food development is faster and more flexible than working on cottages. Using Ed for xp to boost a rush might be a perfectly good idea, depending on terrain and resources, but that's not the same as advocating it for a CE.

Calendar-festivals was just an example because it's a fast line that provides food, a solid economic tech and specialist slots. There are multiple paths that benefit from a FE approach over the relatively slow development of cottages early on.
 
Considering how much easier it is to get early farm boosts in ffh(as opposed to vanilla),plus the ability to get unlimited of pretty much any time of specialist you might want, specialist and (perhaps even more so)hybrid economies seem stronger than in vanilla.
While wonders do help(gl, altar, forge/engineer wonder,theater of dreams), none are quite so make or break as the pyramids were. The same is true about civics, where you can run more of a hybrid there as well, rather than having to choose between two civics, one that helps towns and one that gives 3 beakers per specialist. I honestly don't find specialist economies all that much stronger than they were, esp late game(as we are comparing 6 beaker scientists with 6 beaker scientists, and the non scientists are only 2 sci, rather than 3, but prob have extra culture or production), but I feel one of the things that is most strengthened is the ability to run a hybrid economy, even early in the game.

I find due to happiness/upkeep costs, I tend to run hybrids rather than pure specialist economies(except perhaps when trying for altar or culture victories). I like to have a cpl of farms, and a cpl of cottages around even my first towns, so that you get a good bit of the fast growth, but also get the advantage of not needing 1.5 to 2.5 happy/healthy for every tile to get good yields(plus the fact that you can't run unlimited specialists at the start). Only with a few rare civs(bannor or kudorites, perhaps elves), does it seem to make sense to run as a pure cottage economy(and for the elves, even pure cottages turns into a hybrid, though I can see an argument for starting as more of a hybrid even before you get a decent number of ancient forests up, and as they come up transition the farms to cottages).

I'll admit I don't like rexing, which biases me somewhat, but I feel that the way upkeep is setup, the benefits of it with a specialist economy are somewhat outweighed by the costs.

One thing that these arguments have made me aware of is that I prob need to try to beeline Aristocracy a bit more, as it does allow you to run somewhat of a hybrid with just farms(and is easier to transition to from a all farm start if one believes that much stronger than a mixed start). Hate losing the ability to switch to city states though, but the 40% savings does help. It still ends up being less efficient on a per population basis, and early in the game, I find my largest limiting factor is happiness, not how quickly I can grow to max pop. Part of that is I have been aiming for later religions, and avoiding rok, oo and fol with most civs recently, habits I got into from expecting the dwarves/elves to research it for me perhaps. :)

In summary(since this ran on a bit longer that I expected) I guess I'm saying that I agree that farms are more powerful than cottages(but still less efficient on a per population basis), and that I'm really happy that hybrid economies are not only easier, but seem more natural than the weird situation that vanilla has where it really appears(even if its not 100% true) that you have to pick one or the other.

Edit: One thing I think alot of these arguments are missing, is the fact that specialist(and even hybrids to a lesser extent) lose out in to cottage economies is the efficiency per population(rather than per tile as we are usually looking at it), meaning higher civic costs, higher happiness/health requirements, and probably more cities(and higher costs due to that).
 
I think its decided during the map generation, choosing the civilization and making goals. E.g. - flood plains + hills w/o forests or several 3p tiles situation. Prolly i settled there because i want high production fairly quickly to REX or PWN someone. Obviously i wont cottage much. If we assume that i started a war then again i will prolly have improved tiles in conquered cities.
Overall i think that trying to calculate statistically what would be better farm or cottage economy is useless - too many viriables. Maybe i can move my settler and find 2 million flood plains or gold or w/e. Maybe Hippus is nearby - i want warriors? Maybe Illidans exist? Or maybe i can quickly research some techs + religion wich will work in combo with my land and make me the King? Add here different civs, leaders, lairs, resources, tech plan, luck and every single plan of settling first few cities at least. If you are that smart then WTH are u doing plaing computer games o.0
 
If you are playing on a lower level (Noble or below), then you may profit from sending out lots of Scouts to find Tribal Villages. At those levels, the goodies (gold, free units and techs) make the occasional losses (strong barbs) worth the risks.

The extra hammer from the Plains/Hills start can be extremely helpful in getting off to a good start. If you can find that on a river (extra Gold), you are in great shape. And if that is also a Coastal site, you can look forward to income from trade routes.
 
For many of my games, I make a beeline to the Runes of Kilimorph religion. I make sure to found it before I settle my first city. Because all of the tech prerequistes are extremely valueable (mining, mysticism, etc.), this is much more doable than say. . . researching sailing. I can almost found the religion by the time I'm ready to settle my first new city anyways.

The income bonus in your capital city will be huge once you build the shrine (I always get a priest GP before getting a sage SP). Just as important, the shrine will give you +2 GPPT for engineers, and allow you to assign one engineer specialist, which is extremely useful at this point in the game, because it's very hard to assign engineer specialists before forges and the guilds civic.

I then assign one engineer specialist, which gives me 5 GPPT engineers which will allow me to quickly get an engineer GP. At this point, I can either:

1) If I get attacked by a neighbor, I can rush the Mines of Galdur. That will instantly upgrade my non-warrior melee units to iron weapons. That's a huge boon this early in the game, where most of your rival civs will be lucky if they have bronze weapons.

2) I can rush the Great Library. I usually don't need to do this, because I make building libraries a priority in my three main cities, and I can use the Runes soldiers of Kilimorph to rush the libraries if I need to.

By this point, you'll have the ROK shrine in your capital, the godking civic, the Great Library, and melee units with iron weapons. You capital will be pulling in HUGE income, and you'll be producing 11 GPPT* without even assigning any specialists

* 1) two engineer GPPT for the shrine
2) eight sage GPPT for the Great Library
3) one engineer GPPT for the Mines of Galdur (however, I usually build this in a distant city, and sacrifice the one engineer GPPT because this wonder gives a 2 point unheathiness penality)

After this, I either research towards Engineering and build the Guild of Hammers. This wonder has a good synergy with your "engineering specialist" economy. I can also head towards the Fanaticism tech and use one of my engineering GP to rush the Mecurian Gate.
 
Hi folks, I finished my first game (started at emperor) with the elves.
I am now starting with Tebryn Arbandi and going evil.

I have massive happiness problems even though I found animal husbandry early in a town and can now subdue animals with a lvl 6 scout.
How can I even think of getting size 20 cities when I don't take leaves religion?
 
Well since you're Sheaim I suppose you would be going AV.
Its really not all about huge cities, smaller/numerous cities are a viable strategy as well--especially for the Sheaim, since:
-Running AV and spreading it to all your cities and building temples mean very good research/turn.
-The more you spread AV, the higher the AC is, the more summoned demons you get.
-The more Planar gates you have, the more demons you get.

And naturally as you spread out more you'd be able to grab more happiness resources and there you have your initial problem solved.
Not to mention further on you'd be running StW to solve all your food problems.
StW coupled with slavery (for whipping) or conquest (for unit spamming using food) is a pretty strong strategy imo.
Not to mention happiness wouldn't be an issue when plague strikes later on because all your population starts dying off (unless you grabbed the pact early and ran StW)
 
K AV means Ashen Veil. Whats StW? I recently found hunting tech also cause of my uberscouts and now elephants are defending my cities together with my normal warriors :-)
Thanks for the help
 
Hehe sorry for using acronyms XD
Also, early on pyre zombies are really strong units.
Against even a very heavily fortified city, a decent stack of zombies can easily crack it open--just make sure u kill everything in 1 turn :lol:
 
And this "all grassland" assumption favors the farms. Cottage a plains and you get hammers. Farm a plains and you don't. Though granted, all grassland is a pretty common scenario for commerce cities if you have sanitation (clear out jungle, win), so I won't object too much to this assumption.

This highlights a strange balance issue with grassland/plains in my eyes. With Erebus maps, there are plains-only zones.
 
FE vs CE.
Maybe it is too simple, but I usually put farms on grasslands and cottages on plains.

Sometimes cottages on grasslands if I hit the pop cap, but farms on plains seems an act of desperation. Maybe I am missing something?
 
its an act of desperation when you end up on a plains-only zone on erebus mapscript.
Either you restart and hope to get a better start :lol:, or you grit your teeth and farm the plains up, hitting calendar early for agarianism for a boost, though losing hammers, then try to hit sani early on to get 4 food out of a farmed tile.
 
its an act of desperation when you end up on a plains-only zone on erebus mapscript.
Either you restart and hope to get a better start :lol:, or you grit your teeth and farm the plains up, hitting calendar early for agarianism for a boost, though losing hammers, then try to hit sani early on to get 4 food out of a farmed tile.

or you just play a decent map from the beginning :P
 
I'm new as well & just played 1st time on Erebus map. It was Certainly different.
Anybody else have an opinion? Do you think the map the game designers made isn't the best one to play FfhII on?
 
I do like it best, but there are still some issues with it (i consider them minor but can very well understand people who don't like it.).

One thing to remember though: Cephalo (the one who designed the creation.py / erebus.py mapscripts) is likely still fiddling with the mapscript so you shouldn't give a final verdict on it before the last major "issues" with it are hammered out. No matter if you like it or you don't.

+ its highly customizable (directly in the erebus.py file) so you can try to fiddle with the settings to produce better results.

One basic rule stands though (at least so far):
It usually plays out much better on map-sizes medium and above. Below small its rather prone to produce results which are subpar.
(Also its a good mapscript to overcrowd usually which is easier / better the bigger the map gets. On medium + its easy to put as many civs as usual for a map one size bigger. Even 2 or 3 more than that usually works out fine.
I would go so far to say its borderline mandatory to get a really fun + rather balanced game.)
 
Not a fan of Erebus. It seems to play the same almost every game due to civ specific scripting.
 
Flavor start is fine for most civs but it throws the balance way off for a few, specifically the Doviello, Khazad, Clan, Malakim and I think the Elohim. The former 3 get badly nerfed while the latter two become unstoppable (if the Elohim have the change I'm thinking of). You need to pick opponents to avoid feeling the sting of that. The geography, with all the narrow valleys and the mountains, bugs me more.

Erebus wasn't made by the game designers, it was made by a fan and adopted into the mod by the team after most of the work was done on it.

As for my favorite? Lakes >>>>>>>> *
 
What about early units? Which units do you defend cities with and how many? How long do you wait to explore, and what do you use for that? What do I do about uber barb units guarding lairs?
 
It's up to you if you send a unit out rite away or keep both in your city. If you send one out, find skeletons: kill them. If you're paranoid about an early barb rush I suggest 3 units for your capital as you probably won't level them up much. Once you have a level 4 or 5 unit you'll say 'Hey! That archer doesn't look so tough anymore'
 
Back
Top Bottom