FFH2 Game Diary - Tya Kiri does it with priests. (Immortal, Terkhen modmod)

[akatosh]

I've been following the development thread on Terkhen modmod, and wanted to test it out with a full game diary. One of the leaders in the mod, Tya Kiri, caught my eye--as Spiritual/Sage of Amurites, she offers the opportunity to test out a strategy I've wanted to play for a long time: mage/priests using Govannon. The idea is to use spiritual to produce disciple army of different religions, backed up by Govannon's spell teaching ability. Stonewardens will summon spectres, Cultists will cast haste, and Priests of Leaves will buff their own tigers with courage, blur, dance of blades, etc.

I also quite like the Sage trait, in the initial testing I've done with it. It looks like it's intended to partially replace the nerfed Financial trait. Sage is nice because it gives +20% research, which is something you will feel starting on turn 1. It also gives +25% GP generation, so it's like a mini-philosophical. This is an especially nice trait for Amurites, who have multiple tech dependencies, and especially for my strategy, as I can run both priests and sages and use whichever one I get to bulb that tech branch and brute force research the other tech branch. The goals are Priesthood, 2-3 religions, and Arcane Lore.

I will be playing on Erebus Continent--standard, medium sea level, medium cohesion, more mountains, more rivers/lakes, city ruins ON. Game settings: Wildlands, Living World, Blessings of Amathaon, All Unique Features, Advanced Tactics, Puppet States.

Here is who we will be facing off against:



..in other words, a who's who of Erebusian archmages. Every civ that has an arcane leader.

Auric Ulvin - the master of ice magic, aspiring to godhood. The ancient enemy of the Amurites.
Tebryn Arbandi - the lich who would end the world, leading the Sheaim, the Amurites' rivals for magical supremacy.
Faeryl Viconia - the master illusionist.
Perpentach - the Momus, once the Archmage of Mind in Kylorin's Patria.
Thessa - she once killed her boyfriend just so she could cast a spell. Creepy..
Garrim Gyr - What's this guy doing here? Well, he is Arcane.
Shekinah - Hmm. See Garrim

Nonetheless, Tya Kiri is not impressed by this collection of wizards. Tya Kiri will prove that she can do it with priests.

 

[akatosh]

Without further ado, the start:



Move the settler to the plains hill...



Rich starting lands, especially nice for Amurites! Sun, Life, Fire, and Death mana all nearby. Now where to settle? On the plains hill for hammers, or near gold/incense for commerce?

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Could you reduce the size of your images?
Personally, 5S 2E for gold, floodplains and incense.
I'm not familiar with the modmodmod though.

 

[akatosh]

Reduce to what size? I did some 800x600 ones in the culture SG but they looked pretty lousy to me.

Terkhen modmod is built on top of MNAI's AI changes and EitB's balance changes. It adds some extra leaders and traits, and tinkers with some units and buildings. Overall it is similar to EitB.

5S2E is 2 turns away, you think it's worth it? With the plains hill and Mirror of Heaven, agriculture and the first worker both come in 11 turns (thanks to the Sage trait.)

 

[Qgqqqqq]

A size where I can actually read at full screen would be good
I'm not sure exactly, but personally I don't mind - possibly spoiler them as a compromise.

Yeah, I've followed the thread (but not downloaded, I dislike some of the changes), but clearly not well enough as I have no idea what (for example) the white powder to the west is, so I don't know if that (or something else I've missed) might effect a evaluation.

I think its the best spot, I'm not really sure if its worth 2 turns over, say, 2W 1S, or 1W 2S. The current spot is definitely inferior to those though - yeah the faster worker is good, but it gets no incense or gold, has no food resources (meaning the floodplains everywhere equal out) and only gains one foodhammer over 5S 2E and only two over the ones I listed.
5S 2E is better then the others listed because of a) plains hill start and b) incense, which will be unlocked ASAP on a floodplains start because otherwise we only have max 4 food tiles. I think thats probably worth the time. You also lose the ruins.
I basically think you're over-valuing the mirror over commerce specials.

 

[akatosh]

Problem with 2W 1S is 13 floodplains for +6 unhealth, and 1W 2S has 9 floodplains for +4 unhealth. Manageable later, but early in the game I have found that too many floodplains hurts your growth.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Still better for faster commerce.

 

[Doug Piranha]

Reduce to what size? I did some 800x600 ones in the culture SG but they looked pretty lousy to me.

Maybe 1024 or 1280 wide. Mixing text and huge images means those of us without massive monitors need to do horizontal scrolling to read the text, and that gets old *very* quickly.

Edit: or just crop the black out of the screenshots. Only the middle third of the two big screenshots is really relevant.

 

[scutarii]

I like sage trait: science buildings get nice boost, not OP, because of usually (science) buildings are too expensive. Alchemy labs also got reasonable buff in this mod mod.

 

[Terkhen]

Tya Kiri traits are meant exactly for this strategy. I'm very interested on seeing how it works in this game

 

[akatosh]

So I continued playing the save. I decided to settle in place for the hammers; it turned out to be the right decision, as you will see.

First off, crazy luck with lairs and huts.






This might completely invalidate the game, but that's part of playing FFH--sometimes you get Bareke and great prophet events, sometimes you start next to Yggdrasil, sometimes you get techs. Sometimes the AI gets these things and founds AV on turn 10 and builds the Heron Throne on turn 18, and 20 copper axemen show up on your doorstep on turn 70.

Overall, the main thing that made a difference was getting the early mysticism along with a hammer rich start. That allowed me to spam out warriors when this happened:



2 AIs settling this close means that I have to declare on them, or they will declare on me. Copper was not close by so I had to attack them early where mass warriorspam could prevail over their superior tech and production. I chose Svarts first as they were building a lot of scouts:





Ljos were next:




Two quick wars netted me 3 cities and a lot of experienced warriors. Saved hammers on settlers and made the AI waste some of theirs. Originally the plan was to tech philosophy and bulb priesthood for better units, but the early war went so well I changed tech to code of laws. Then something bizarre happened, that I have never seen before:



WTF??? This is immortal difficulty. I have never seen an AI offer vassal state so early in the game. I guess my early, quick and successful wars had something to do with it?

And if that wasn't enough...


3 free techs plus the Koun event is an insane amount of good luck for one game. I am debating whether or not to accept the event, or even if I should continue the game. I loaded the autosave and made a save game 1 turn before the event popped.

What should I do?