FFH2 Challenge - Diety OCC Always War Pangea with Sabathiel of the Sidar

[Horatius]

A very relaxing and fun challenge. You can win from this starting position and map at least 80% of the time for sure. Assuming one knows the simple tricks, everybody can enjoy it.


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Even on extreme settings you can be a favorite to win playing FFH2.
Let's see some solutions.

EDIT: Oh, playing MNAI.

 

[Horatius]

Playing the Sidar with the charismatic trait means, of course, that you can shade more easily. That will be a big help in an OCC always war game since the way to tech will be to rely on specialists. The bonus to specialists that the Sidar palace grants is also of value in such a game.
I picked Sabathiel among the charismatic leaders simply because he is a favorite of mine and because he guarantees a command post (otherwise organized is useless in a OOC game).

Sabathiel is a curious leader. The fact that he can build a command post in every city and have the charismatic trait means that it's possible to build level IV units with the help of the appropriate civics (and/or form of the Titan). Sidar units will be two levels from becoming a shade that way (and, of course, it also means that you can amass mages, satyres, high withdrawal horses or city crackers pretty easily if you wish with this guy...(who cares for a few unpromoted demagogs from towns?)). Get the altar pieces and eventually disciple units can become shades right from the bat.

Of course, to have a shot in such settings we also need to have a coastal hill city in a corner of the map with at least one fishing resource . The start is good enough so we take it and the dice rolls.

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The scout is pretty useless to defend the territory without promotions so we can pretty much use it as a free shot and gamble with him. He is lucky enough to eventually become the first shade in this game.

Meanwhile, while the scout tries his path to might, we go mysticism, build a few warriors and designate one to mess around with the skeletons from the two barrows close by and another one to keep an eye on the Balseraphs borders, the closest enemy.

We build an elder council and, keeping using pacifism, will try to get an Academy as soon as possible, while the hordes don't arrive.
The tech path will be exploration, fishing, hunting, archery and poisons. Truly, a funky tech path, but, although there's an argument to get to archery right away, I want to unleash the ghosts as fast as possible and not tech useless stuff for the situation like crafting. Water tiles will provide some unpillaged commerce and food (for a while).

Valedia is not really the biggest early unit spammer in the game, anyway...


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[Horatius]

Eventually, the Balseraphs send a group of four warriors towards my city but my warrior down there just messes around with it: as the group moves forward, the warrior moves towards it as well, then as the group backs off to try to catch the warrior, he backs off as well. We do the same thing over and over this way gaining several turns.

We also get an Academy and another shade and try racing towards archery while there's still no threats in our face (a gamble for extra defense and better water tiles with the Hero throne was also a possibility, actually: at least money to upgrade).


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Soon, though, Sheelba (one of the biggest unit spammers) of the luchuirp comes along with a little stack but we are already finishing up archery, so we are in a solid situation.


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We are praying, though, for the Illians to not cast stasis just yet. It is very unlucky that they are also in this always war game because of that.

Also, the Luchuirp group unfortunately sits in our three hammer tile which is quite annoying. I switch to nationhood but I still need the hammers to build archers fast enough. I'll just upgrade one warrior that got guerrilla and shock to an archer and build the others while gambling with the rest of the warriors for experience (doesn't work, though, they mostly die without getting any lucky shots).

To remove the group from our three hammer tile we just take most of our defenders out of the city forcing it to move momentarily at least. That also prevents them from healing since they arrived a little bit damaged (crashing the nearby barrows).


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But the first fight may be finally about to begin as Sheelba arrives with more troops and so we need that fortification bonus. The balseraph group is still freaking out with that warrior down there (which is also preventing the plantation from being placed, lol).


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[Horatius]

After a few turns the threatening stack goes away by itself. Maybe because the AI realized that it couldn't do anything against my archers, maybe because it got involved in another war (most likely).

One might as well go back to teching faster and try to shade another unit.


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The Balseraphs do show up again. Unfortunately for them they cannot do anything against the hill archers, and it is now just a matter of waiting for Rathus to slaughter them with his 50% bonus against melee and equipment (actually most of that stack just goes away: meh, chickens...).


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So we teched education and now we move forward to learn writing.
Also, we will, of course, try to get the bonus of the Aeron chosen for a ghost and also try to build a library and the great library for better research with our specialists.


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A curious thing about Rathus is that he can pillage and then cast hide in the same turn to go unpunished by the AI. Hide is actually not bad against the AI since they do not build hawks (truth be told, though, since the AI started to use more mobility promos it's harder to just attack and survive a turn to hide again; we did lose a bunch of ghosts this game to out-of-nowhere-chariots when our best ghost was not protecting).


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Our best ghost?
Yes: behold the emerging nightmare (it will be):


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We seriously only attack with that unit above 99,50% for the rest of the game, lol (which is not hard to get).

We try to get more shades but it is hard because, unfortunately, the AI is not really attacking us with big stacks inside our territory, so our shade rate is not going to be very high in the near future. Might as well try to build some wonders for GP and shade Rathus....


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The Aeron chosen can take cities defended by warriors easily. We'll try to bring him to blitz as we advance towards military strategy.


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Not bad:


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That's a better looking city:


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We win the race for the great commander and just attach him to ghosts as needed since we can build a military post in the normal way.
And, oh, our workers doing stuff were captured but also some of them we just leave them by the enemy borders so that we can lure some units out of the cities (where it is hard to kill them, of course: coward AI...) making them easy targets. We try that several times and eventually we even get the Orthus axe (YEAH!).


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Seriously, with enough ghosts and nobody attacking us (what a sad state of affairs, truly: we need shades!...) might as well build the bone palace.


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Finally someone tries it's (bad) luck against us (sweet, sweet exp...). After horseback riding for mobility promotions we move towards deception. Gibbon can give us courage and enchanted arrows which can be very helpful in this always war game and may make us avoid wasting turns to go bowyers. He is also pretty much a free shade. Another reason to go deception is to get the Esus religion to build shadows, which is our goal.


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[Horatius]

More wars, more wonders. It's our Golden age:


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Let's build an altar piece. More experience for potential disciple units and a path to victory:


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Deception:


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Free exp (lol):


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We move towards guilds for the shadows. Gibbon boosts stuff and helps the ghosts:


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Our super ghost is just too strong right now:


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Our city at this point in time:


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More exp (but not many big stacks unfortunately) and hey, what the heck, let's build the pillar of chains for more hammers:


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We want that Gela!:


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Gimmie, gimmie:


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A city with just two warriors? Okay then:


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I can't say no to that (LOL):


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Altar victory is starting to be a plan (conquest, although possible, is too tedious with just one city anyway and I was already half asleep at this point in the game... (hey, it was late)):


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36 pts of strength. Not bad, not bad...


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Yawn:


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Can I heal inside your city? Thank you very much:


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More equipment:


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The game is done. The Aeron chosen just doesn't die unless I attack a promoted longbowman in a hill city (for a 1% chance of dying...)...

Btw, really weird that we could go arena battle with shadows if we wanted to:


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Hyborem is a vassal of Hyborem.
Ok, then...

Well, chalid is ours:


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Crown of Akharien was built indeed and we got close to 1000 beakers with the help of the appropriate civics that help the specialists get more beakers.
Our culture was big enough and we got some nightmare there in the corner for horses. And for some reason I went straight to omniscience resulting in winning the race for the plus one movement for naval units (lol...).

Also, our Shadow managed to get Perfect Sight! You know what that means! Perfect Sight! A rarity! No other promotion means that much...


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[Horatius]

Come to me, my children!:


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Only at this point in time did I realize that the Malakim was vassaling everybody (yeah, I was paying attention...). The Malakim was the civ least harassed by me, so while my shadows were wrecking everybody else apart it's no surprise that they managed to get the upper hand. A mistake that doesn't matter.
Meanwhile I switched to Runes of kilmorph to use arete together with pacifism for the GP birth bonus. I was having a hard time getting priests for the altar since my GP pool was polluted by the wonders, lol... I did shade the Order hero indeed and chalid, before. Curiously enough, Arthendain was still an option.


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With the wars stopping between the AIs, we finally get some big stacks towards our way. We're not that far away from getting all the techs in the game also, although we don't even have the amount of beakers that an always war game can provide for the Sidar at this point in the game.


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Argh... Another fail:


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Food for Shadows. Still, we can't prevent being pillaged, so we shade a bunch of merchants from all the exp for city food and money:


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Turn 382: first time our city is attacked: that's got to be a record in a diety always war game ---> only in FFH2 can this happen...


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Hellhounds against a 39 str Crossbowman: Proof that even the AI loses patience indeed:


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Oh, dang, they can actually win domination, lol:


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Well, I could raze some cities if I wanted to. Let's just see if I can win the game as a race though.

Btw, where's the cultists Mr. AI? Would not be enough anyway...


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Some units were captured, meanwhile. I do have the city of the 1000 slums, by the way, and population does not diminish, no matter the pillaging, with the merchants' food:


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Finally:


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More hordes: That's what I'm talking about! (where's the city raider champions, anyway?)


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That's it! (btw, first naval unit that threatens our work boats right there in the corner: that's actually really lucky, lol):


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Final shots (all of those merchants came just from the last attacks.This is why I wanted the AI to mob me sooner (not at the very beginning, of course), instead of making me go after weak targets in hostile land which costed me quite a few ghosts (freaking chariots)):


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I actually completely forgot to get druids and poison blade. Oh well...
I didn't forget to get the Nexus, though, lol...

Anyway, that's one of the ways to win AW games with just one city and how broken a non magic unit can become.
A fun game.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Did you rush the Altar?

 

[akatosh]

Horatius,

How do you get that detailed combat info?

 

[Qgqqqqq]

You can enable combat odds in the xml/player options (can't remember exactly - its not the config file but its somewhere in the assets). If you were thinking of something else, its been a while since I've read this.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

I think Advanced Combat Odds is there in the BUG options.