FFHnub - Can't lose, can't win?

[BurN]

Thought I'd try FFH as I generally like anything epic/fantasy and am pleasantly surprised.

Playing my second game atm on immortal/epic/Erebus standard size/Rhoanna. I'm in a winning position with 30 cities or something but I have a strong Capri (14 cities) on a green continent with the mercurian city.

1. I'm starting to realize this game lacks winning conditions! In bts after some conquering you could just go space or diplo as a victory shortcut. I'm not even close to having enough mana's for the tower of mastery. Cultural I don't think so since I only have military buildings. Luonnotar? If I understand it correctly I need like 6 great prophets to build the thing? Not going to happen in this life.
Maybe religious if I start spamming octopus dude everywhere since I own the holy city? But I'm guessing Capri can use the inquisition to get rid of them. Can I win if I just spam zealots and let them spread it all at the same turn everywhere?

2. This bring me to another point. How is the AI supposed to win? Nobody is even close to achieving anything, I feel I can just press end turn 600 times and win a time victory.

3. How the hell did Kandros Fir get such a huge, highly upgraded sod with only 5 cities? I had to use the old tricks of sacrificing a city and then retake it with CR units. I think if I didn't have warcry it wouldve been hopeless, still took me 3 turns to kill his SoD.

4. I saw Kandros' stack with only five cities. I'm not feeling it to do the slugfest with Capri/Basium.

5. Playing Rhoanna, I can't build the +2 xp building? (adventurers tavern or something, which is supposed to be unlocked with currency)

6. Conquest civic is rather useless? It seemed nice at first but agrarianism+military state for drafting/buying seems much better?

 

[doktarr]

1. I'm starting to realize this game lacks winning conditions! In bts after some conquering you could just go space or diplo as a victory shortcut. I'm not even close to having enough mana's for the tower of mastery. Cultural I don't think so since I only have military buildings. Luonnotar? If I understand it correctly I need like 6 great prophets to build the thing? Not going to happen in this life.

You only need 5 mana nodes to get a tower victory. The key is the metamagic tier 2 spell, dispel magic. This spell allows you to reset a mana node to raw mana and then rebuild it into a different sort of mana. So you build one of the towers, then recycle the mana nodes you needed for that one into a different type of mana. Even if you have fewer than 10 mana nodes in your empire, you can build the towers two at a time and get through them fairly quickly.

Maybe religious if I start spamming octopus dude everywhere since I own the holy city? But I'm guessing Capri can use the inquisition to get rid of them. Can I win if I just spam zealots and let them spread it all at the same turn everywhere?

You would also need to inquisition away some other religions, probably. But it is a possible path.

This bring me to another point. How is the AI supposed to win? Nobody is even close to achieving anything, I feel I can just press end turn 600 times and win a time victory.

Well, in more naval AI, the AI does target specific victory conditions. It's possible that one of them could pursue a tower or altar victory if you don't stop them.

In vanilla FFH, though, the AI doesn't really do a good job pursuing victories other than conquest/domination.

Playing Rhoanna, I can't build the +2 xp building? (adventurers tavern or something, which is supposed to be unlocked with currency)

That's a Grigori-specific building. I believe it says that in the civilopedia entry.

Conquest civic is rather useless? It seemed nice at first but agrarianism+military state for drafting/buying seems much better?

It's pretty situational, yes. Sidar can use it for the XP bonus, and it can be temporarily handy if you have lots of food, are up against happy/healthy caps in most of your cities, and really need to pump troops. But most of the time there are better options.

 

[Terkhen]

I'm starting to realize this game lacks winning conditions! In bts after some conquering you could just go space or diplo as a victory shortcut. I'm not even close to having enough mana's for the tower of mastery. Cultural I don't think so since I only have military buildings. Luonnotar? If I understand it correctly I need like 6 great prophets to build the thing? Not going to happen in this life.

The altar of the Luonnotar victory is relatively easy to achieve in my opinion. You only need to run a specialist strategy aimed specifically at great prophets. The altar also gives huge benefits to anyone building it (specially the disciple XP bonuses).

 

[Qgqqqqq]

There is no way the alter is as easy as Tom.
You have to research most of the tree to get it! While tom only requires arcane lore.I normally don't win, I stop then the result is inevitable.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

conquest is actually pretty good, the problem is that agrarianism is way better than other civics in that category except guardians of nature.

 

[Terkhen]

There is no way the alter is as easy as Tom.
You have to research most of the tree to get it! While tom only requires arcane lore.I normally don't win, I stop then the result is inevitable.

I said easy, not fast

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Sorry could you define what you meant then?
For me easy=fast.
If you mean it can be hard to secure the nodes, by the point your at sorcery conquering an ai is easy.

 

[Terkhen]

It is easy because you do not need to do much besides rushing for a religion, getting great prophets fast (easy for a philosophical leader), defend yourself (made easier by the highly promoted disciple units that you will be getting) and move to great scientists when you are just researching for the last altar level. By the way, I never said that it was easier than the tower of mastery victory. I just said that getting 6 great prophets is not as complicated as BurN thought.

 

[BurN]

Thanks for the info guys!

@Doktar: I'll take a look at that naval AI. As for the adventurers tavern, sadly I noticed the civilopedia is incomplete or confusing at times.

@Terkhen: I understand it is not that hard to get 6 GP's. However in the current game I already got a bunch of GM's to the point that gpp generation is very slow now.

@Qqqqqq: Yea, I have the tendency to do the same in BTS. It comes with experience I guess. Basically, yes I'm looking for a fast irl time victory. I feel I can't lose and want to get it over with. (Without doing a massive naval invasion on the last competitive AI that is).

I'm in 25 turns of stasis still and will keep on warring a bit. Then I shall try spamming zealots and cultists and see if that works.

Edit: jup

Spoiler :

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Congrats
(Why were you running positive research with so much money?)
@terkhen in reality, no victory in ffh2 is hard once you get into the late game, the ai is just too stupid.
Altar is hard because you can't decide to do it late (unless you want to wait forever) and it requires a massive tech cost.
How hard is it really to secure 5 nodes? In most maps you can get 2-4 peacefully, and how hard is it to kill 1ai in the mid-late game?

 

[Terkhen]

Of course, if I want to pursue an altar victory I decide it from turn 0

I'll say it again, I never said that the altar victory is easier than the tower of mastery victory; just that altar of luonnotar victory is easy. I'm not sure about which one is simpler, I guess it depends on the specific game and on your game style.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Yeah, we clearly play quite differently, I never decide victory t1, I like to just play the game and see what happens

 

[cardith_lorda]

For me personally it's more fun to role-play and use unofficial victory conditions, such as playing as one of the elves and victory is "Re-unite the elves" by conquering the other elf team. Which mod-mods have the "Epic Destiny" victory conditions? Those were always fun (got a new PC a while ago so I have to re-download all the mod-mods.)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Master of Mana has epic destinies i.e. civ-specific victory conditions, very cool.

 

[Terkhen]

I did not know about those. Sounds awesome

 

[Calavente]

yeah.. very cool...
however, for the last few versions of MoM, most epic victory conditions are broken : either too easy or almost impossible (or let's say : to win them you need to "almost" win a conquest victory but refrain from doing it actually).
it's because they were not balanced to all the changes.

maybe someone on the MoM forum might be able to orient you to the last version the epic victories were balanced...

 

[SergiuSS]

Actually for ToM you need max 4 mana nodes since you need only one mage whit metamagic 2 and you can dispell the metamagic node after you have the promotion joust keep one node raw until sorcery then build a metamagic node if you don't play Amurites.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Fir optimal though, 5 so you can be building pre-sorcery

 

[Goodwill]

Conquest is really good in emegencies or if you have low production cities and want them to pump out troops at a decent rate. It's situational but very handy when needed.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

The problem is it costs agrarianism (and simultaneously costs your food surplus) - I only take it if I can get insta-mages
Don't know how its relevant though