FFH2: Paradise Regained

[uberfish]

The Age of Ice is over, and the Ljosalfar awaken from their long slumber only to discover in horror that their beloved forests have perished in the long winter. Led by the Archmage Thessa, they vow to restore the verdant glory of their homeland that once was, no matter the price...



Map Settings:

FFH2 patch 0.30k
Pangaea (deforested)
Immortal
Normal Speed
No Vassal States


Variant rules:

All victory conditions are enabled, but we cannot win the game unless all territory 10 spaces or less from our starting position is cleared of Ice/Tundra/Desert and all non-special titles are forested. Hyborem, as a force of destruction, must also be defeated if he enters the game.

Generally, read the Civilopedia entry on Thessa. We will play accordingly.


Roster:

Uberfish
Stuge
Darrelljs
Morganknight
Ozbenno

1 more spot

reverend oats was the first reserve for this, so first grab of Conroe's spot is yours (followed by Immaculate, Imhotep, Madtown, r_rolo1 and Monkeyfinger)

Feel free to open the save, move the scouts and comment!

 

[Al-Iskander]

Yay! Looking forward to following this one too

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

Can I grab that last spot on the team?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

If by some twisted miracle reverend, immaculate, imhotep, Madtown, and rolo all back off... I will too.

I found another FfH succession game and, being inexperienced with SGs as I am, don't want to juggle 2 at once.

You understand.

 

[Madtown]

I didn't make it into Inhotep's game so I'll sign up here too. Immortal is above my level though as I've only won a game on emperor thusfar. I also have very little experience with the elves post shadow. Still, I'd like to give it a try with some veteran players if you'll have me. That is, if Rev, Immaculate, or Imhotep don't want the spot.

 

[Ozbenno]

Checking in.

Looks a decent job on deforestation.

Settling in place would leave one ocean square we can't really use. Two suggestions are 1S for the extra hammer of settling on a plains hill, or 1SW to leave the hill for mining and brings another hill (can't tell whether plains or not) into play (as does 1S actually).

Agriculture seems the obvious first choice as its our only resource. We should look at heading straight for a religion (are we looking for Fellowship) as they will go quickly at this level.

Tomb of Sucellus is a good score.

 

[stuge]

Reporting.

Will post some comments when I have time to open the save.

 

[darrelljs]

Dang uberfish, I understand killing the forests but what did you do with our hills ? Without the ability to look at the save, I would saw 1SW is a good move to settle. I did some quick tests earlier, and to cast Bloom the tile must be free of improvements. This makes acquiring it the utmost priority, but to get Bloom we need Incense. Without Incense, we could be in for a rough ride!

Darrell

 

[reverend oats]

Disregard previous version, I'd love to join.

 

[uberfish]

I moved both scouts and moved the settler 1SW to reveal more terrain, which should improve the assessment of our position. There is gold just below the Tomb of Sucellus that didn't show up in the last screenshot for some reason. To the northwest is another world special, the Remnants of Patria. This was added in Shadow and is a 1/4/0 tile that improves to 1/6/0 with education.



This gives us a very interesting choice. Founding on the hill by the Remnants doesn't look like it'd be a great capital long term but would give us strong early production before any improvements come into play. The alternative is the more conventional move of founding on pigs/wheat/gold, which uses the palace culture to good effect for the needed first border expansion.

Waiting for input.

I'd suggest some of the people who wanted a spot start their own team, there seem to be quite a lot of reserves

 

[darrelljs]

Well, if we aren't going to do a Worker anytime soon, I would think early game production is king and we would found near Patria. Also, the spit of land we are on now seems easy to seal off, so we can settle it at our leisure and concentrate on making a competitive land grab towards the AI.

Darrell

 

[Ozbenno]

1W of where settler is now seems all right. Gold, wine, wheat and Tomb of Succellus. 3 hills (including gold). I don't like the patria site for capital as it has no fresh water (fine for city 2 or 3).

 

[stuge]

I'd go 1SW, saving the wine/sheep/marble/patria for a future city.

 

[reverend oats]

Either the gold site 2S of wheat or the hill 2S of Patria would work for me. Just in the interest of putting all the info out there, Patria gives +3 happy to the city with it in its radius.

 

[darrelljs]

Patria gives +3 happy to the city with it in its radius.

That coupled with the number of health resources (4) in immediate view really makes me like the Patria site that much more!

Darrell

 

[uberfish]

If we founded on the hill near Patria we would gain an extra 3 hammers/turn from turn 1 over a conventional start, to be further boosted after Mysticism/Education. Which is really massive and would give allow us to get to a second city quickly. This second city would have to go 1E of the Tomb to get resources in the first ring but can be fed with Agriculture Grassland farms.

the main drawback to that plan is that the Pigs are left in an inconvenient location.

 

[Ozbenno]

A city on the hill south of the pigs isn't the worst city of all time.

I'm being convinced of the merits of patria city.

 

[Morganknight]

I am thinking the plains 1 S of the sheep. Patria will become 1/8/0 with feudalism, if we happen to research that direction. That early production bonus even without techs, means we would be foolish not to include it in our initial city cross. my suggestion would include 2 Wines, the Sheep and the Marble. While we may eventually want to move our capitol, this city would serve for a good long time. And health will be the least of our problems. We are expansive and we will be surrounded by forests, lol.

 

[darrelljs]

Hah...for some reason I figured we were the Creative/Spiritual leader, I didn't realize we were the Expansive/Arcane one. Now uberfish's comments on taking advantage of Palace culture make way more sense .

Darrell

 

[uberfish]

Ok, everyone's checked in now so we're good to go. Most people seem favourable or at least tolerant of experimenting with founding near Patria, so I guess it'd be a good time to experiment!