FFH2: Paradise Regained

[darrelljs]

Okay, played 15 turns. Started off by switching to Guardian of Nature, we had many angry citizens spread across the lands, and this got rid of all of them. I spent most of the turnset pillaging our mines, plantations and farms, then blooming them, then restoring the improvement. This is almost done, there are about 4 mines left. There is a Sheep and some Incense to the west that need to be improved. After that, cottage all those forests, we are working several unimproved ones right now . Oh, and all the desert is now back to plains. On the war front, I move in and attack Vargstad:

Good news, Rossier is dead (nice tip on the Axe switching cheese!). Bad news, several units moved back into the city IBT and I could not take it. IBT, Hyborem demands 250 and I tell him to take a hike. He has enough on his hands, but would later declare war on Kandros Fir. Here is how the southern front developed:

Nasty little stack of Pyre Zombies there, but someone had given us enough Mobility promotions that I could attack and take the city from two scares away . I didn't see any reason not to make peace, for map + gold. One of the benefits of being a good guy and on the council is lots of Friendly AIs. So, I made some trades with no fear of becoming too advanced:

I waited until Yavin finished before making this deal. I also queued up Genesis, even though I know it is not good SG etiquette:

Forge first might not be necessary, given we have Nature Mana. I do think Genesis is very worthwhile for us though, we have lots of plains and tundra, and it is certainly in character. Let's see, what else? We discovered a source of Gold. I outlawed Death, Entropy and Shadow mana just to be in character a bit. Oh, tech path. I went for Arcan Lore for the Crown, it really is the game's best Wonder. Unfortunately some of the AIs already have the tech, they have at least a 10 turn lead. Someone clever should figure out a way to nail this one . Anyway, I figure Archmages are something we will want soon, so a Strength of Will beeline is a good idea. We have some Mages, but they don't have enough XPs yet to upgrade. Not sure being Arcane how long it will take. I used our Great Prophet to build the Altar, I agree with uberfish on that one. A Great Sage was born at the end, he is unmoved. I'd lean towards Academy, although he'll bulb Arcane Lore (about 1000 beakers left).

Darrell

 

[Morganknight]

Good set! Got it for tonight.

 

[uberfish]

Where is Hyborem anyway? I didn't see any territory belonging to him when I looked over Stuge's save earlier, and it would be a good move to banish him now while we're at temporary peace with Tebryn. Once the Sheaim war restarts, it'll feed Hyborem lots of Manes as we saw from the last game.

 

[darrelljs]

It is very hard to spot, but he is in Kandros Fir's land. There is some Hell terrain right next to Yonna, we need to make sure we keep the AC low enough so it won't wreck all of our good work. We have a very nice stack to the west, I would think it is enough to kill him now if you want to try it.

BTW, I would remove the Forge from Hyll's queue, and just go straight for Genesis, the Nature Mana makes it a bad order.

Darrell

 

[Ozbenno]

Nice work. I'd like to see the end of Hyborem. Can we use the council to pile him?

 

[reverend oats]

We should probably get some life 1 adepts near Yonna.

 

[Morganknight]

Argh! I had a nice indepth post all ready to go for my set and lost it all when I tried to add the saved game. Please accept an abbreviated version, as I make another attempt.

275> built the Academy in Hyll - a nobrainer as the GL is already there. cancelled the free Life mana we were sending to Alexis. I plan to build more workers this set. Our small band is not nearly big enough to terraform at the rate we need.

276> We want a steady stream of Mages coming down the pike, so I set Bruti on indefinite adept duty. With the Altar, our Druids are built with enough experience to start out with Nature III. They are sent north to terraform.

278> Joy! Hyborem is banished.

Happiness is not an issue, so as Arcane Lore finishes, we convert from Religion to Scholarship. By popular request, we start researching Strength of Will. However, I think we should go Religious Law>Theology next. With the Bannor, Sidar and Calabim following Leaves, the power of calling Holy Wars should not be overlooked.

281> I convert one of our high experience hunters into an assassin, Black Velvet, and found the assassin's guild, Aeron's Bounty, in Hyll. Recon units, i.e. Rangers, Assassins, Fauns, Shadows, will start with two extra experience when built in citys with AB. I set Velvet on a great pilgrimmage to spread the guild to our western cities. Eaca and Yonna are teh only ones left without the guild.

286> The Sheaim start a Golden Age.

287> We retain supremecy in the Overcouncil. Sabathiel and Sandalphon are in our pocket. We pass a "Single Currency" which gives all particants an additional trade route in all their cities. Other votes that remain on the table include Open Markets, Liberty and Public Healers.

Don't use the Druids to upgrade plains. Genesis will do that for us. Remember to rebuild the improvements you have to destroy before blooming.

 

[Ozbenno]

OK, looks like I'm up. Will be able to play tomorrow night.

The demise of Hyborem is good, its just Tebryn that is causing AC issues now. I'll probably work towards getting the army up to strength on that border.

Religious Law and Theology seem all right. Divine Right for Inquisitors could be all right as well.

 

[stuge]

Nice turnsets there.

Are we planning to wipe out Tebryn at some point? He's just going to be a PITA from now on.

 

[uberfish]

Yeah we need to prepare for war with Tebryn again. If we leave him alone he'll just attack us again anyway, as we're his only possible target and he hates us.

BTW if we want to mod our slightly poorly thought out victory condition a little so that we aren't forced to backstab our allies I'd be fine with that.

 

[Ozbenno]

Actually, I think an altar victory is best for us now. We won't have to attack any friendly civs (Kandros Fir might have to go though).

 

[darrelljs]

Looking good! Did you pillage Towns to grow forests? I really wanted to, but didn't have the courage .

BTW if we want to mod our slightly poorly thought out victory condition a little so that we aren't forced to backstab our allies I'd be fine with that.

I liked your Tower idea, isn't their a late game ritual that blows open new mana nodes and resets the existing ones? I bet we could do it without backstabbing, especially with some good uber diplomacy!

Darrell

 

[uberfish]

If we banned death mana and so on doesn't that prevent us from building the Tower of Necromancy?

 

[darrelljs]

If we banned death mana and so on doesn't that prevent us from building the Tower of Necromancy?

Oops . Can we leave the Overcouncil to build the last Tower?

Darrell

 

[Ozbenno]

It seems just about everyone is at war with Tebryn except us. Kandros has a middling stack just about to hit the front. If anyone asks I'll join in.

If we start up a war, not sure if we should be razing the AV cities and resettling or keeping and getting Inquisitors later?

Well here goes...



How ugly is that???



Bassium appears.



Alexis starts to take down Tebryn from the south.

We use fireballs to bombard the city down to 0. I still have rather bad odds with the Beast so I use a summoned Griffon and another fireball as sacrifices. It works well and now Kithra can take it down



Still leaves many troops inside so it will take a few turns to bring it down.

A council vote came up so I proposed we all dogpile Tebryn.





How the hell can he produce these things? They're like 500 hammers a pop.

Anyway, sacrifice Griffon. Kithra is wounded and I don't want to risk the Baron on 75% odds so sacrifice a longbow as well and then the Baron completes the job. I loose a druid at over 90% later as well.

Genesis completes.

All the tundra is gone and I'm completing our last two forests as well, just pillaging the cottages first with druids standing by on both squares. So we can win anytime after about 2 turns from now OK

I destroy the Sheaim units down to 1 injured corpse in Vargstad. As I've played just over 10 turns I'll leave off here and we can decide whether we raze the AV cities and resettle or inquisitate them later (I'm for the later). If we want to do that we can take it straight away.

Strength of Will is still 26 turns away. We can probably do with more druids as well.

 

[darrelljs]

Nice! Does killing the beasties drop the AC? I'm assuming they have them queued up in multiple cities, so there might be a third lurking around. Only way it could have popped up so quickly. Uh...I forgot to ask, did we start the Crown anywhere yet? That would be a good idea.

I'd actually rather raze, because I think the current city sites suck. I don't have a strong opinion though.

Darrell

 

[Morganknight]

I thought all spaces within 10 tiles of "Awakening" had to be terraformed. It looks to me that there is a big chunk of Bannor and Khazad lands in the way. We will have to conquer them to win...

darrel, the Crown was built by the Khazad before we even finished researching the prerequisite tech.

 

[uberfish]

We should keep cities placed on decent sites and just inquisition them later to purge Veil, and raze cities placed on crap sites. The AI tends to build too many cities for a given amount of land, resulting in some awful cities.

 

[Ozbenno]

BTW, the most reverend oats is UP.

Its a razer then. We have to terraform the Bannor lands close to awakening? Tricky.

 

[Morganknight]

Several sets back, I took the liberty of placing signs to mark our Manifest Destiny. Northwest, Southwest, Northeast and Southeast Forests demarcate all of the land within 10 tiles of Awakening. Future war with both Bannor and Khazad would appear inevitable.