FFH - A Shadow Introduction

[stuge]

It was pretty painful, but I managed to play 16 builder turns. The remaining turnsets will be much more interesting.

14 turns to ethreal call. We can get it faster with heavy defict research. I noticed that Hyborem had over 1200 gold sitting around and traded him iron working. So our coffers are now bulging nicely.

Our cities are still pretty much locked on infra. Although it's hardly necessary. We could just build units until we get our dream eaters, forget about the economy and focus on a fast conquest.

BTW, it makes no sense to use avoid growth when we are in slavery. I whipped a lot of stuff, including the Guild of hammers. Galveholm was going to starve anyway due to unhealthiness. (Oh how I loathe that hell terrain.)

Hyborem is still fighting Auric, although no cities have changed hands. The rampant spread of fire around Auric's border cities may have something to do with that.

Capria and the Svartalfar are also fighting, so things are looking pretty good for the Armageddon. The AC is at 82.

I was pretty surprised to see the barb city of Zholub still standing. A certain dragon might be involved...

SAVE

 

[darrelljs]

Got it, should play in about 24 hours. Without looking a the save, I plan on finding someone to kill and razing all their cities .

Darrell

 

[Ozbenno]

Without looking a the save, I plan on finding someone to kill and razing all their cities .

Sounds like a plan

 

[uberfish]

Did we cast worldbreak yet? Now would probably be a good time if we haven't. I guess I finally get to see what happens at AC 100 since I've never gotten there

 

[darrelljs]

You know, it is funny how similar Barbarian units and Infernal units look .

Start off the turnset doing this bit of arrogant evil:

That's right, I whipped every city that I could in a vulgar display of power. I had fully planned on letting all that whip anger go away before handing off the save, but, uh, well...have I mentioned how similar Barbarian units and Infernal units look? I queue up troops in all cities, including some big bear looking things that supposedly raise the AC when built. We might need to whip those pretty soon .

I declare on the Orc and move in what troops we have. We got a few units through Planar Gates as well, A Reveler and some kind of Witch. They seemed kind of neat, although I lost the Witch because, uh, Barbarian units and Infernal units are really similar in appearance. Anyhoo...I'm marching through the Orcish lands, razing cities and just throwing summoned units away like they grow on trees. I can't imagine he has much left, I've razed three cities with really strong garrisons, plus one stack out in the open. The last two cities had almost no garrison. Yes, I can say with some certainty that our southern front is well under control. What's that you say? We only have one front? The thing is, I might have mentioned, that Barbarian and Infernal units are so close in visage as to be indiscernible to the naked eye.

So I'm about to take out an Orcish city, but when I go to summon units I notice one of the shiny buttons is something called Ring of Flames. I might mention that I've been playing mostly Grigori and hence don't have too much pracitcal experience with Divine spells. Anyway, I click the shiny button, it says something about splash damage being akin to a declaration of war so I hit cancel and look everywhere to see if any enemies are near. There is one non-Orc, non-Sheaim unit but it is clearly some kind of barbarian unit with the Axe and the dark colors and all that. So I go ahead and cast it, and next thing I know we are at war with the Infernals . Shoot, I think...that might suck. So I check out the situation up north and find that the little devils only have one city. One Fallow, size 61 city. Oh well, at least stuge and everyone else were nice enough to leave a good stack of units up there (including Rosier the Fallen I see...probably could have used him down south but it turns out he has more pressing duties). So I round up the troops and look to take out Dis. Gee, there sure are a lot of units in there. Oh look, they are coming out to play, but they don't play so nice. Rosier ain't dead, but the situation is grim and I decided to stop:

I don't mind playing on, in fact I prefer it since I'd feel guilty handing off this save . I'm just curious as to what people think we should do. My normal plan in this situation is to whip out troops and wait for the AI to do something stupid, but wow does he have a lot of bad guys in that city or what? Oh, it might be important to note that he made peace with the Auric. The good news is Auric declared on Capria, we could have been in a bad (well, worse) state otherwise. Hyborem ain't willing to talk, that's also probably an important piece of information.

@uberfish - BTW, I did cast Worldbreak. It damaged (heavily) all our enemies troops and seemed to wreck their lands somewhat. Made the first city easy to take. Wish I still had it .

Darrell

P.S. I revolted into Despotism, WW is a big pain in the patooka.

 

[darrelljs]

Here's the save, forget to attach it to the first post.

Darrell

 

[Ozbenno]

Well to win this thing we have to get through the infernal anyway, so we may as well try to finish them off now. Whipping out some troops and summoners (cave of ancestors should give us summoners/mages from the get go) should stabilise the situation. If it is too much we can look at a temporary peace.

Conroe is UP

Roster
Ozbenno - On Deck
uberfish - living the lag
stuge
darrelljs
Morganknight
Conroe - UP

 

[Conroe]

Got it for tomorrow ...

 

[uberfish]

Hyborem gets to collect souls when evil units die, which he can then add to one of his cities or upgrade into regular troops. That's how come he has a size 61 (!) city and huge army, we've been feeding him. I'm surprised he didn't manage to take anything from Auric with it.

 

[darrelljs]

Hyborem gets to collect souls when evil units die, which he can then add to one of his cities or upgrade into regular troops. That's how come he has a size 61 (!) city and huge army, we've been feeding him. I'm surprised he didn't manage to take anything from Auric with it.

Hmm...maybe killing all those Orcs wasn't such a great idea. I wonder if we should pause that war for a little while? There is a possibility that the AI with only one city is in turtle mode. That rather largish stack outside of Dis was the one he used to smack our stack, there is a chance he will move it right back in. Or just start taking all our cities guarded by single Warriors. Good luck Conroe .

Darrell

 

[uberfish]

Yeah if going for conquest it's most efficient to kill Hyborem asap before he gets a massive stack, but efficiency isn't our primary goal in this game anyway. I couldn't fix my lag especially since it seems half the world has turned into hell now, but I did get a chance to look around the save last night. Hyborem's stack will be easily taken out if we can get our ritualists/summoners to it. We can sacrifice the city closest to Hyborem if necessary to buy time, if we can't bring enough reinforcements to help Rosier
hold the position.

while I can't play I'll try and find some map settings for a terraforming scenario

 

[Immaculate]

I'd like to get in on that terraforming SG if you have anyone that doesn't want to continue from this game into that one. I have played three FFHs. One lasted till about turn 70 or so and ended with a bad-ass orc with an axe flaying my two cities. In the second, i was that evil elf lady and on a custom continents (6 continents), 18 civ, huge world and i dominated my whole continent very early and cast spring and bloom on every single tile except the floodplains and ran a huge cottage economy (food from ancient forests) with mined forest hills for hybrid cities. I had to pillage lots of unforested tiles that i had build improvements on then go back, cast bloom, then rebuild the improvements. My GNP went up, then down, then up again. I had enough when i killed the dragon and was walking all over other civs then realized i would have to click the 'enemy cities don't need to build archery ranges to build archers' button to have a real game and started a third one which is just getting started. Anyway, all to say that i have a bit of experience, but not much. soo... if you'll have me, i would love to join.

 

[Ozbenno]

Actually I think there is enough interest for starting up 2 new games as reverend oats and TriviAl have also expressed interest in playing the next game. Could play two games from the same save to compare strategies or play two seperate games.

I just finished a SP myself, playing Alexis of the Calabrim on no settlers, raging barbarians, aggresive AI, wild world at Emporer, was attempting a tower of mastery. Auric went crazy capturing barb cities from the get go and had plent of cities early by the time I captured my first barb city. Orthus appeared two squares away from my new city, promptly took it but I then trained up 15 blood pets and took it back. The bloodpet that eventually won got 50xp and wa promptly promoted and sent to acquire Auric's cities. I ended up building 3 of the towers and was ready to build my last node for tower of necromancy when I decided to end the game as there was little challange left. Loved the vampire gift, feeding off captured (or unhappy) cities to gain XP seems too easy.

 

[·Imhotep·]

lurker's comment:
@Mr. Ben of Oz:

I'm downloading the Mod right now and might be immensely interested to take part in an FfH SG...

 

[Madtown]

Lurker:

I'd be interested in a new FFH game also, as long as it's on a standard size map.

Difficulty is not as much of a problem with FFH because, frankly, the AI sucks and isn't smart enough to counter all of the cool tricks one can pull in this mod.

 

[r_rolo1]

lurker's comment:
I would be interested in playing a FfH SG ,but my experience in that mod is quite limited ( 2 half games.... )

 

[rumbold]

Lurker:

What's all this talk about the next SG?

Don'tcha gotta finished this grisly tale of death and destruction first.

 

[Ozbenno]

Just filling in time waiting for Conroe ......

 

[Conroe]

My apologies for the late notice, but something has come up. I am going to be unavailable for the next couple of days. So please skip me. Sorry about the inconvenience and delaying the game.

 

[Ozbenno]

Hopefully nothing too serious.

I will try and play this tonight.