Feedback: Khazad

[Zechnophobe]

Zechnophobe:

If you're getting your early cities through conquest, each city you get is coming with big piles of gold attached. Thanks to that fact, 200 per city is not very difficult to get. And 2 extra happiness in those cities helps make them productive so much quicker, since they tend to have motherland yearning and war weariness acting as lead weights on them.

So, what you seem to be replying to, is my statement about '100% gold' not being a valid way to get money, unless you are not growing your territory.

Getting a bit of early game money via conquest is useful, but it generally just helps keep the status quo. Nice, in that you don't lose your bonus' too easily, but you'll still have the normal economic lag associated with early expansion.

Empyrean, like order, gives you extra military production in all cities, there's your civ-wide bonus. And Rathas aren't simply "nice", they make your empire nearly invincible. And yes, Chalid IS that good, now that almost everyone else has lost those army-busting attack spells that Chalid still rocks.

1) +10% military production comes from an Empyrean temple, which can be built independant of state religion.

2) How, exactly, do Ratha's make your army nearly invincible? Blind is okay, but it's not *that* good.

3) Chalid in a faction that could just as easily sport 4 Dwarven Druids? Keep this in context, we are talking about the Khaz here. (Also, doesn't changing to Empyrean make Neutral civs go to good? If so, then getting Chalid will also end up preventing you from building Druids).

Uberfish:

So what do you do, keep building monuments in all your newly built or captured cities? Build twice as many missionaries as normal and spend half on culture bombs? I don't like the sound of either of those measures.

Or you could, y'know, just research Drama, and have your little size 1 cities build Culture for 10 turns. Newly Captured cities are always worth culture bombing to take out of revolt, and the bigger captured cities will also build that first ring of culture in only a turn or two.

 

[Demus]

i fail to see why people want to pause their expansion early game untill they've got a decent cash flow. Khazad can basically expand just as freely as anyone else. You've got -1 or -2 happiness in your cities, but on all but the highest dif. levels, this is acceptable and can be countered by finding the additional happiness resources from your expansion*. Once you've got a nice early game empire set up, place mines on every hill in sight and cast motherload. Instantly, your vaults are back up to normal levels, without running behind (that much) on expansion. Obviously, the more players / land size are in the game, the more important this becomes, since there's only a limited amount of land available.

*: I know every civ can get this, i'm comparing turtling khazad vs. (over) expanding khazad

 

[PotatoOverdose]

2) How, exactly, do Ratha's make your army nearly invincible? Blind is okay, but it's not *that* good.

3) Chalid in a faction that could just as easily sport 4 Dwarven Druids? Keep this in context, we are talking about the Khaz here. (Also, doesn't changing to Empyrean make Neutral civs go to good? If so, then getting Chalid will also end up preventing you from building Druids).

Empyrean changes Evil to Neutral, everything else remains the same. While nothing makes your army invincible, Rathas come close in that a decent stack of them can completely disable almost anything that gets in the path of your army. I'm also fairly certain that Chalid is available significantly earlier than druids, but I may be mistaken on that.

 

[onedreamer]

Empyrean, like order, gives you extra military production in all cities

Nope, neither of them does. Their temples give this boni, hence you only need the religion in the city, not the state religion. In FFH getting extra religions is extremely easy thanks to the free disciple you get with the tech that founds the religion.

Khazad offer advantages that can allow an easy win on Monarch or Emporer due to production and happiness.
[...]
And lots of other ways to improve productivity. Like the wonder that gives free dwarven forge in every city, blasting powder (+1/mine), etc. Getting a free dwarven smithy in every city is HUGE.
[...]
Phalanx
Myconids
Crossbowmen
Dwarven hornrider
Dwarven druids
Good recon/assassin units (dwarven shadow is AWESOME with the ability to hide or declare nationality and marksman, and good stats. You can decimate AI nations with 4 of these before ever declaring war and march in with troops and take over).
etc.
[...]
MITHRIL GOLEM. 'nuf said. Too bad you need a high Armageddon counter for this which isn't documented in the civilopedia.

Best religion - Kilmorph. Free gold is WAY better than culture. Of course this isn't automatic, you have to research the religion, but it is a huge plus.

Heh, all this stuff is available to any civ. They aren't civ specific features, hence any civ can use them. Except maybe for elves with crossbowmen. The only thing you should have mentioned are the dwarven hero and their siege units, but you didn't.

how do people cope with conquering neighbor civs under Khazad?
[...]
I mean Khazad seem fun on paper, but in practice once the mid to late game arrive, I find myself turtleing not wanting to ruin the gold/city ratio

You plunder consistent sums of gold for any decent city, at least enough to be on par with the needed gold in the Vault (100 per city). Plus you get to control more resources. Although, I can't disagree with your second statement. In fact as I already objected to the OP, the Khazad are better in the early stages than later.

Well, the dwarven trait is nice for double move over hills, but really the only strength they have is in siege units and Druids. And siege are pretty weak in this game, so they only really get a unit advantage at the end of the tech tree.

Well, perhaps you should question your opinion about siege units in Civ4. I myself think they are by far the most powerful class of units, if not overpowered. They are the only class that allows you to win any defenses. In BtS, the devs tried to at least rebalance a bit the thing with the flanking attack, but in FFH this doesn't exist, which means siege units remain outstanding.

 

[onedreamer]

i fail to see why people want to pause their expansion early game untill they've got a decent cash flow. Khazad can basically expand just as freely as anyone else. You've got -1 or -2 happiness in your cities

well, not even . You only need to research the right techs (remember, some techs like the magic tree you can safely ignore with Khazad) and accumulate wealth from the beginning (let's say 30% to gold). The Khazad also get a coupla boni that many other civs don't:
- explorers with double movement on hills which increase the number of huts you will be able to grab, hence (most probably) the amount of gold.
- Financial trait with one of the leaders, Organized with the other.

 

[xienwolf]

Personally I just don't really bother with conquering any neighbors. I go for a Tower or Altar Victory and maintain a solid army that can repel any attacks made against me, but since I am doing so well I am quite happy to hand out free gifts on a regular basis, so nobody declares war anyway.

From time to time I might decide someone annoys me, or that I would like to have a resource which they don't want to trade for some reason. But in those cases it is late enough in the game I can pull nearly well over 500 gold in a single turn by dropping my science slider low enough (typically I don't even have to go down to 0% science).

 

[Zechnophobe]

Well, perhaps you should question your opinion about siege units in Civ4. I myself think they are by far the most powerful class of units, if not overpowered. They are the only class that allows you to win any defenses. In BtS, the devs tried to at least rebalance a bit the thing with the flanking attack, but in FFH this doesn't exist, which means siege units remain outstanding.

I disagree. In FFH, there are many other ways to achieve what siege does, and generally in a more efficient manner. For example, any civ with fire mana can fairly easily get fireballs, which are far stronger than catapults, and move at the speed of the mage. Maelstrom, Crush, anything that does stack damage, is also generally better than catapults. Also, since promotions figure in so much more in this game (And those are something catapults can't really get) most armies rely on them a fair bit less.

Thing is,the Trebuchet for the Khazad is a strong enough stand alone unit to warrant use when you don't have a high level force to accompany your forces. Their lack of mages also means they really NEED trebs more than other factions do, as well.

 

[onedreamer]

Zechnophobe,

first off, you spoke about game (ie: Civ4) and I mentioned Civ4. Anyways:

a) yes I will agree that in FFH siege units aren't AS powerful as in BtS COMPARED to other units. Yet, they remain absolutely devasting.
b) from what I have seen from the new magic system, Fireball and Maelstrom are top level stack damage "weapons". Catapults are not. Therefor your comparison is very unfair. In fact not only Catapults come much earlier than Mages, but Cannons are way more powerful than Fireballs both in bombardment and in damage, and have a higher damage limit than Maelstrom, although this one is tactically much better. Furthermore, cannons are more easily defendable. Also, one very important thing to consider is that you can build siege units straight away, but you can't do the same with mages. In FFH, where loosing a stack is extremely easy, this is a very important factor to take into consideration.
I would say that their only big flaw compared to BtS is the lost immunity to collateral damage. Hence they are counter to themselves, while in Vanilla Civ not even this works and siege units are practically unstoppable. Catapults and Cannons can get combat and collateral promotions. Why do you think they can't get promotions ?

 

[uberfish]

with RoK: Early game you want obelisks anyway, post-drama just build culture or whip a culture producing building in captured cities, I've never found lack of religious culture to be a serious problem. Another plus is that if you don't found the religion, whichever AI founded RoK tends to spread the religion to all your cities for free because they love to make money from their shrine.

The AI Khazad tend to underexpand and fall behind, probably because they put too much emphasis on not letting their vaults run low.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Zechnophobe,

first off, you spoke about game (ie: Civ4) and I mentioned Civ4. Anyways:

a) yes I will agree that in FFH siege units aren't AS powerful as in BtS COMPARED to other units. Yet, they remain absolutely devasting.
b) from what I have seen from the new magic system, Fireball and Maelstrom are top level stack damage "weapons". Catapults are not. Therefor your comparison is very unfair. In fact not only Catapults come much earlier than Mages, but Cannons are way more powerful than Fireballs both in bombardment and in damage, and have a higher damage limit than Maelstrom, although this one is tactically much better. Furthermore, cannons are more easily defendable. Also, one very important thing to consider is that you can build siege units straight away, but you can't do the same with mages. In FFH, where loosing a stack is extremely easy, this is a very important factor to take into consideration.
I would say that their only big flaw compared to BtS is the lost immunity to collateral damage. Hence they are counter to themselves, while in Vanilla Civ not even this works and siege units are practically unstoppable. Catapults and Cannons can get combat and collateral promotions. Why do you think they can't get promotions ?

They *can* get promotions. However, 1 xp per combat isn't going to get you far. That's for the max damage siege that you will use for most of the important part of the game.

The real issue here is efficiency. In order to take a stack to 50% strength, you need one or two mages with maelstrom. Similarly, Fireballs come from a suprisingly large number of sources, and they can both bombard and do collateral, turn after turn, without worrying about being lost.

Anyhow, while I do mention magic as often a better version of siege, I also think that the importance of the ROLE that siege plays is less.

FFH has far less 'impenetrable' city defenses. This is due in part because defensive units tend to be out promoted by offensive units. It's also because the % bonus you get for various things is smaller, excepting of course city defense promotions.

You can accumulate a fair number of defensive bonus' from many sources, but these are found in only a very few cities.

Further more, there are other ways around strongly defended cities. Assassins, for example, will make it so you really only have to kill the 2 or 3 'strong' defenders. Hero's tend to be so strong they can overwhelm equal era defenders.

Pretty much every civ, or a good lot of them, have ways to fight that don't rely on building siege workshops. There's really only a handful of civs that don't have an early hero, or a spell, or a special unit, or something that let's them bypass the normally potent city walls.

I'd say really only the Khazad and.. what, the Bannor? And the Khazad late game have Druids o' doom.

 

[nealhunt]

Most of the stuff in the Khazad early expansion thread is still more or less applicable. RoK, Festivals for Markets/Merchants (picking up Calendar on the way gives happy bonuses to help overcome low vaults as well), and just enough of the metal line to get a decent jump for conquest. Then econ out.

As noted, you get plunder from conquests, so as long as you don't let your turn-to-turn expenses get too terrible, you're not likely to drop far in the vault ranking.

Load all your Great Merchants into the RoK holy city and Bazaar of Mammon. Use the extra food from the GMs to run even more Merchant specialists there - huge cash cow city.

 

[onedreamer]

Zechnophobe, perhaps you will revaluate cannons if you actually try and use them. For example, you may realize that they can kill stuff, and consequently earn much more than 1 xp. I've easily had cannons with combat 5 steamrolling any city. And believe me, it's far easier to get cannons to these levels than mages, and it's far easier to defend them and heal them, plus they are not limited. The only real downside is that there is no way to increase their movement rate.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Zechnophobe, perhaps you will revaluate cannons if you actually try and use them. For example, you may realize that they can kill stuff, and consequently earn much more than 1 xp. I've easily had cannons with combat 5 steamrolling any city. And believe me, it's far easier to get cannons to these levels than mages, and it's far easier to defend them and heal them, plus they are not limited. The only real downside is that there is no way to increase their movement rate.

Edit: No I won't go there. I'll snark it down a bit.

Listen. Cannons just aren't a relevant unit in this game. They come from a very late game tech that is also a dead end. Cannons level easier to mages you say? They should, there is a pretty big science gap between the two. Ritualists, chalid, fireballs, skeleton swarms, Assassins... or just a good strong hero. All these things are either significantly faster, or significantly more efficient.

Let me drop the hypotheticals though, with what civ, and in what situations do you actually find you need to use Siege? Of course, this is assuming NOT the khazad, as the much strong khaz siege units has already been accepted.

 

[Arctic Circle]

Siege units, for me are a massive issue early in game. You can't go on a really good offensive and take a handful of cities from another player civilization, if you are reasonably equal without catapults. The collateral damage and the bombard city are -essential-.

Facing a city with walls and a huge pack of defending units, perhaps even built on a hill and with a palisade. Might even that your wife have an dwarven adept with Earth I sitting in a few cities just to throw 'stone wall'.

Without Siege units or equivalent (Pyre Zombies or Mages with Fire II) I can't see how you'd do it. And most important, catapults comes really early in game. Its better to attack with warriors and catapults, then say with only axemen or horsemen. Or even mages.

Or?

 

[WCH]

I agree that Siege is useless in FFH as most civs. I generally end up with a few National or Hero units with 200+ XP who can smash through city defenders without blinking. When I can get a 95% chance of victory against a Crossbowman despite their city walls... why would I bother bringing catapults?

I'm currently playing a game as Khazad. I've started a couple before but never finished. Never got the tech for Dwarven Druids or Dwarven Cannons.

 

[Arcite36575]

Edit: No I won't go there. I'll snark it down a bit.

Listen. Cannons just aren't a relevant unit in this game. They come from a very late game tech that is also a dead end. Cannons level easier to mages you say? They should, there is a pretty big science gap between the two. Ritualists, chalid, fireballs, skeleton swarms, Assassins... or just a good strong hero. All these things are either significantly faster, or significantly more efficient.

Let me drop the hypotheticals though, with what civ, and in what situations do you actually find you need to use Siege? Of course, this is assuming NOT the khazad, as the much strong khaz siege units has already been accepted.

I basically agree. In the first half of the game, artillery is very useful for many civs because you don't have effective magic, but in the latter half, you've got mages with Air II, the ring of fire spells, crush spells, pillar of fire, brilliance, etc. These units move so much faster than artillery, are easier to get techwise and are just as effective as artillery, if not moreso.

Even when I played as Khazad, I would never build their special cannons, because I could get my druids to move at +4 (base 2, 1 for promotion, 1 for haste) and because the "crush" spell would take the defenders down to 25% health.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Artillery has always been traditionally, the slowest moving division of any army. Even IRL, many modern armies like the US don't even use artillery anymore, prefering to rely on much speedier air strikes. I kind of see "attack magic" in this game as the IRL form of air strikes.

How about giving cannons +2 range? I think artillery back in civ III had +2 range. It still wouldn't be enough to make up for their large disadvantages, but it's a start.

 

[onedreamer]

Listen. Cannons just aren't a relevant unit in this game. They come from a very late game tech that is also a dead end. Cannons level easier to mages you say?

Gunpowder isn't a late game tech at all. It is for you because you are biased towards cannons. Gunpowder also provides +1 from mines and Arquebusers.

They should, there is a pretty big science gap between the two. Ritualists, chalid, fireballs, skeleton swarms, Assassins... or just a good strong hero. All these things are either significantly faster, or significantly more efficient.

Fireballs aren't better than cannons in any way. They do less bombardment damage and less physical damage. I have already said this, if you wish to contradict, then please go into details. Ritualists and Chalid require particular conditions. Skeleton swarms are usless against Longbowmen or Paladins/Eidolons etc. A strong hero is lost if he looses. Of course reloading the loss works better than cannons, I agree.

Let me drop the hypotheticals though, with what civ, and in what situations do you actually find you need to use Siege? Of course, this is assuming NOT the khazad, as the much strong khaz siege units has already been accepted.

I don't move to siege a city without 4 cats or 4 cannons, with ANY civ except the elves.


What I suspect is that once you get certain units you just quit the game.

 

[uberfish]

Catapults are useful in the midgame to crack walled cities before you can accumulate significant numbers of mages, once you have enough mages you can just maelstrom defenders to 50% which is as good as bombarding the city defences to zero and is much faster.

This being said Khazad are obviously designed to rely on siege and physical combat rather than magic. I think the crush spell should be changed to drop city defences to 0 instantly or something, collateral damage is just out of place on a dwarf UU. If they want collateral spells they should have to rely on religious units.

 

[WCH]

Currently launching a massive invasion force made up of Bambur, Maros, that other hero nobody likes, and a huge stack of cannons and champions. Modus operendi: move to outside a city, bombard, attack with three or four cannons, heroes finish off the couple remaining defenders without even blinking. Champions pad the stack, defending cities as I take them and fortifying key locations the main stack won't be able to get to for a few more turns (say, main stack takes one city, four champions fortify in the castle outside another city. Very convenient for the AI to build castles outside their cities). Pretty damn effective... losing an average one cannon per city, even well fortified cities. Stage of the game: haven't seen any National Units on their side yet (although I only just declared with my main rival), I'm 2 turns away from researching Mithral Weapons.

Acheron was giving me a lot of merde this run. Maros kept being too afraid, trebuchets couldn't get him especially weak. Then I attacked him with a single cannon, and suddenly he was left with 6.2/19. Holy merde-on-a-stick, that cannon died, but completely rocked his world. And then all the living units in the stack refused to take the kill, so I gave it to another cannon. That cannon now has 60 XP and is doing a damn fine job helping me sack Bannor cities.

No other civilization I've played as needed a unit like this, but it fills the gap left by archmages surprisingly well. The collateral, not to mention outrageous single-unit damage (Acheron to 6 st in one attack? As Svartalfar it took me three turns with two archmages tossing summons willy nilly at him to do that kind of damage), combined with the ease of pumping out an endless supply of them thanks to Khazad production makes them eminently worthwhile. These things wreck defenders... sacrifice two of them, and anything will die... and the collateral will make the rest of the battle a done deal.

and, best part, unlike archmages, they don't get completely screwed over by assassins... because you'll probably have 20 of them in your army, not just 4, and it'll take you like, 2 turns in one city to make a new one, not 1 turn in 1 city + 150 turns of waiting.

 

[onedreamer]

wonders of actually trying something instead of speaking on the paper or quitting the game before its end.