FFHSG1 - The Perilous World Of Erebus

[Ozbenno]

Welcome to a Fall From Heaven Succession game!

We're (loosely) playing under the DM etiquette rules

Spoiler Deviant Mind SG Etiquette Rules :

Alpha: The quality of your report outweighs the quality of your play. We're here to have fun, and, of course, winning is fun, but losing in style is preferable to a boring win.
Bravo: Reports should be detailed, with plenty of screen shots and player commentary, explanations, musings, etc; a bare-bones/no commentary, auto-log dump will not suffice. Shots of the F9 screens and overview shots of the empire are nice too, once in a while.
Charlie: Punctuality rocks! 24/48 means post a "got it" within 24 hours of when the last save was posted, and play within 48 hours of that got it. Waiting 47 hours to ask for a skip is lame. Punk out two times in a row, and you'll be dropped from the roster. Skips and swaps are fine, but try to let us know sooner, rather than later.
Delta: Major game decisions (war/peace declarations, religion swaps, city placement, etc) should be arrived at via group consensus.
1. If the team disagrees with you, either argue your case better, or do it their way. Do NOT just blow them off and do it your way because it's your turn.
2. However, if there's no consensus and you're up, do it your way and explain why. Conversely, if someone else is up, don't whine when they do it their way.
3. Similarly, overruling techs or city builds is rude and should be done via consensus, barring an emergency.
4. In extraordinary situations, sometimes an opportunity presents itself that the group didn't foresee. If the consequences of it are great, players should stop, and refer the question to the group.
Echo: Be Excellent to Each Other. Being a better player does not give you the right to belittle anyone else or their play. Other people are going to disagree with you on major decisions; get used to the idea, and play nice. If not, take your ball and go home.
Foxtrot: Thread spam is good. We're here to play in a friendly environment. Trash talking, poking fun, gentle ribbing, virtual noogies, and generally horsing around are all encouraged. However, don’t be jerk.
Golf: Automate sparingly.
1. Workers should almost never be automated, except perhaps late-game or building a trade network. However, if you have to, set your game options to “disallow automated worker forest chopping and keep previous improvements.
2. Use of the Emphasis buttons is fine, but let the group know and explain your reasoning (specialization is a major game decision). If you prevent growth in a city, let the group know and remind them to take it off. Do NOT let the governor select build orders.
3. Sending units on go-to routes that last beyond your set is acceptable only if they’re heading for a rally point or if you otherwise inform your teammates.
Hotel: NEVER fortify Great People. Is it so hard to push the spacebar 15 times??
India: Sign spamming is rude. Signs can be helpful reminders, but too many signs makes them easily ignored. Once a sign is no longer valid, delete it. [The only exception to this are city specialization signs.]

We're playing as Dain the Caswallawn, of the Amurite. Aiming for a Tower of Mastery victory but, let's face it, we'll take anything! Using the latest version of MNAI as well.

The roster of brave souls is looking to expand, so let us know if you want tin.

Roster
ozbenno
King Bulrush
unroyal_swordsman
pholkhero
??
??

 

[Ozbenno]

Let's get this baby up and running.....

As discussed, we settle in place, build a warrior and research agriculture



Warrior is to go north and explore the lair and scout south and east picking up goody huts.

We start this process well.



For the uninitiated, there are a series of "explorable" tiles (lairs, graveyards, forts etc) that are available. The results are very mixed. Some great (free techs, great people), some OK (the above), some bad (disease, insanity), some catastrophic (pops powerful barbarian troops). If you leave them unexplored, they will generate barbarian troops. The lair will continually pop lizard men (strength 4), which could destroy our city before we've even started, so we had to risk exploring it. If it popped a barb troop, game over! We can leave the fort to the south as it will generate goblins (strength 3), which aren't a risk.

We selected "all unique features" in the game set up.



The circled is one of them. Like lairs, they can be great, good, bad or disastrous. Unlike lairs, they are not random, so you know which it is. This one is disastrous. If we approach within 1 tile, gargoyles (strength 8) will appear and game over for us. Hopefully and AI does not trigger it. DO NOT APPROACH!

The two huts are popped, giving us gold and a graveyard is despoiled for great results



Graveyards tend to be less risk than other explorable tiles. Animal Husbandry is now being researched.

The scout pops another hut that grants XP, the capital builds a warrior and starts another and our exploring warrior rides the hot hand and explores another unguarded lair.



Golden Age is useless at this stage of the game but at least it wasn't a strength 10 scorpion. BTW, exploring a lair gives 1XP.

Erebus is an unforgiving world.



Bye Decius, we never knew you (or which civ you were).

I stop at turn 25. Our third warrior has just completed in the capital and it seemed a good place to hand over. I started a worker but feel free to change King Bulrush. Worker will be in 13 and Animal Husbandry in 15 for those yummy cows.

The explored lands



Scout is sweeping north (and collecting gold from huts) and warrior is exploring east.

 

[Ozbenno]

ROSTER
ozbenno - Just kicked this thing off
King Bulrush - UP
unroyal_swordsman - Still with us? On deck if you are
pholkhero - waiting to be thrown in the deep end. On deck if you're not
OPEN - you know you want to

 

[Ozbenno]

OK, points of discussion

Research after AH. I see a few options here. Exploration for roads, Calendar for the cotton and incense, Knowledge of the Ether to start amassing spellcasters.

Do we chase a religion? Access to an early hero (Saverous or the Order dude) is powerful but can be a distraction to the research path. As the Amurite, I think we stick to the path of magic, head towards Sorcery and Fire II mages, diverting to pick up techs as needed.

We will need to look at a location for a second city at some stage as well. East and north look promising.

I think there are a couple turns left on the Golden Age, is it worth switching to Pacifism for free as we can build an Elder Council and get an early Great Scientist and build an Academy! Will cost us a turn in anarchy later!

 

[lfgr]

gargoyles (strength 8) will appear and game over for us.

In MNAI they won't actually enter your territory, so not exactly game over. They obviously still like to eat scouts, though.

 

[Ozbenno]

In MNAI they won't actually enter your territory, so not exactly game over. They obviously still like to eat scouts, though.

Interesting, will still stay away though.

 

[King Bulrush]

OK, points of discussion

Research after AH. I see a few options here. Exploration for roads, Calendar for the cotton and incense, Knowledge of the Ether to start amassing spellcasters.

Do we chase a religion? Access to an early hero (Saverous or the Order dude) is powerful but can be a distraction to the research path. As the Amurite, I think we stick to the path of magic, head towards Sorcery and Fire II mages, diverting to pick up techs as needed.

We will need to look at a location for a second city at some stage as well. East and north look promising.

I think there are a couple turns left on the Golden Age, is it worth switching to Pacifism for free as we can build an Elder Council and get an early Great Scientist and build an Academy! Will cost us a turn in anarchy later!

Got it, but I won't play my turn now as it is very late in my time zone and I have to wake up early tomorrow for work. I will play tomorrow in the evening and hopefully I will meet the 48h deadline.
Until then, some more planning:

Research: Exploration for roads is my first pick too. And I don't think I will get to pick another new tech on my turn, so we still have time to debate what comes after that. My favourite "high risk-high reward" strategy is usually to go for Cartoghraphy and try to rush the Pact of the Nilhorn (3 Hill Giants at this point are usually enough to deal with early AI rushes, but only if we manage to get them). But in our case I don't think we can afford the distraction, since we are Amurites and we allready have so many things that we want to research. Mysticism, so we can continue on the magic path, is probably the safest bet.

However, we are still a long way from being able to build an Elder council. Pacifism has many pros at this point but it is also a bit risky (we still don't know what threats may be out there that may require a sudden military buildup), and if we switch now (to take advantage of the last golden age turns) it won't help us at the beginning because we aren't generating any great people points at the moment. If anyone has some additional arguments in favour of switching to pacifism, let me know.
Speaking of civics: Our leader is not spiritual which means we will have to deal with anarchy every time we make an adjustment. And the same with religion changes. We will probably want to settle on one definitive combination of civics and religion as soon as we can and stick with it for the rest of the game.

As for religion, I'm not sure which one would best synergize with our civ. RoK is always good and is available early, same with OO and it would boost our magical power, especially if we get the mage hero. The downside of OO is that it will make us Evil which could be a problem if the AC climbs too high and there is hell terrain around
I usually like Order but I'm not sure how well it synergizes with the Amurites. One plus would be that it makes us good (to deal with the abovementioned problem). Also, late game religions have the advantage that the AI is slightly less likely to adopt them (and snatch the heroes). In any case, we are still a bit far from being able to research any religion, we still have some time to decide.

Production: Our city seems well garrisonned for the moment. We don't have many buildings that we can build for the moment, and we need to allow for some population growth before we create a second worker. So if nobody has any objections, I would follow up the current worker with a second scout

As for the cities, I will play my turns, do some more exploration and will include a draft of a dotmap in my save.

(By the way: Great job on the first 25 turns). It looks like we are off to a good start.

 

[Ozbenno]

Good points KB!

I forgot about Mysticism for Elder Council, thought it was with out starting tech. Don't switch to Pacifism in that case.

I like OO or Order with Amurites. Both can play into the mage ethos (mad ones or strict ones). Either way, the bulk of our offense will come from mages (Fireball and Maelstrom) so if we don't have one, we can supplement with melee troops to mop up after the magical assault.

Good luck!

 

[King Bulrush]

King Bullrush the 1st. ascended to the Amurite throne in the year 25 of the age of rebirth. His first act was to blame his predecessor for the disastrous state of the Kingdom. Wait! What is that you say? We are in a Golden Age? Oh well! That's a pity! But there is still plenty of time for things to go wrong in a way that can be blamed on the difficult legacy of the previous regime.
Let's go then...

Already on the second turn, the heavens make their favour for the new regime known:

Animal Husbandry is now due in 9 turns (would have been 7 but I did a bit of micromanagement to get more production at the expense of commerce and try to get the worker finished faster.

On the next turn the scout in the north pops another hut and we get a new warrior. Truly, word of my greatness is already inspiring men from far flung corners of the world to flock to our banner!

Turn 29: Golden age ends. AH due in 7 turns, worker in 13.
An exploring warrior pops another hut and we get 46 gold.

Turn 30. Our new warrior (from the hut) gets killed by a Lion! By a ******* Lion! While defending on a hill! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
I decide to send the send the scout after the Lion to try and get revenge (and hopefully some XP)
Turn 32: The Scout also gets attacked and eaten by the same Lion! Again on a hill but this doesn't help. This time however I got a better look at the offending Lion. It was already at 60% strength! How many scouts did this beast eat already!? The wors thing is that we have absolutely no other units in the area so someone else will probably steal our revenge....

Turn 36. Animal husbandry is done. We start researching Exploration.

Turn 38. Fellowship of Leaves is found in a distant land. At this rate, I don't think we can beat the AI to any of the early religions.

Turn 39. Acheron has awoken. He is located somewhere in the northeast, from what I can tell.

Turn 42. Worker is done, and starts building a pasture. Production starts on a new scout.

Turn 45. Finally a military vitctory! The warrior exploring to the east kills an attacking scorpion clan goblin and gains a promotion. I decide to take combat III. Unfortunately the warrior is also poisoned so will have to stay in place for a while.
His Grace King Bullrush the 1st, elated by the news, decrees that the small inlet on the shores of which the battle took place will forever be know as Victory Bay!

Turn 49. The new scout is finished and starts exploring. I decide to start building a granary (I figured out a granary is usefull early in a city's development, and we will want to grow our capital city faster so that we can then produce more workers and settlers.
I decide to stop here and save the game. The next player will be able to take a look around before pressing the "End Turn" button to start the new reign.
Progress is still slow. But we discovered one more tech, we are starting to develop the land around the capital, and we explored a bit more of the map.
Our army is as big as it was at the start of my reign. It could have been larger, but it would not be a Civ game without bad luck at the RNG. All our warriors are defending the capital at the moment, except one who is healing far out to the east, next to victory bay. He is sitting on top of a dungeon but I will let someone else decide if we should risk our most promoted unit so far on exploring a lair.

As for our next city, I'm not sure how soon we can start working on a settler, but we have good land all around us, so lots of options. I would like our next city to be somewhere on the coast. I found two locations with lots of resources nearby (but they aren't very optimized, from other points of view). So please offer your input too.

Anyway, that's all for now.
I see that unroyal_swordsman should be next. Good Luck!

 

[Ozbenno]

ROSTER
ozbenno -
King Bulrush - Just played and coasted on the glorious previous reign
unroyal_swordsman - Still with us? On deck UP if you are
pholkhero - waiting to be thrown in the deep end. UP if you're not
OPEN - you know you want to

 

[Ozbenno]

Great turns KB!

I reckon start on a settler once we're size 3 and both cows are pastured. As to where, the eastern city has heaps of food but poor production, the western is the opposite. Production is key in the early game, so maybe the eastern city.

In MNAI, I think the AI are more game to explore lairs etc, so the religion founding probably could be from popping a missionary.

 

[King Bulrush]

Great turns KB!

As to where, the eastern city has heaps of food but poor production, the western is the opposite. Production is key in the early game, so maybe the eastern city.

As I said, the suggestions may not be fully optimal
The western city could be placed one tile to the southeast and still get access to all the same bonus resorces, and still have plenty of hills and forests for production. Placing it there would give it access to more grassland tiles for food, and also, we don't need to wait for water magic to make the westernmost desert tiles usefull. The downside is that we would have some overlap with the BFC of the capital. And it feels a bit silly not to have optimal city spacing on a huge map with so much space.
One more thought about the western city: if we move fast enough we may even have the option to try and go for the Heron Throne, if you want to risk it.

The eastern city has some production from a cow (that can be pastured) and some forests (however, we don't yet have the tech to build lumbermills)

Also, if production is a priority, we can also abandon the plan to build coastal cities for the moment and look for another spot inland. For example we may settle downriver to the southeast, right on top of where a barbarian lizardman is standing now. That would give us control of a horse and a cow, as well as some forests and hills (but we can't improve those tiles for the moment).

 

[pholkhero]

is anarchy much different than vanilla civ4?

what's an acheron?

i will investigate anything suspicious and leave our cities undefended! let's see how that all fares...

i will play tomorrow if US is oop/gone.

 

[King Bulrush]

is anarchy much different than vanilla civ4?

what's an acheron?

Sorry, I forgot you are completely new. I should have included more infor in my original post.

https://fallfromheaven.fandom.com/wiki/Acheron_the_Red_Dragon

TLDR version: Acheron the red dragon is an immobile dragon unit that randomly spawns in a barbarian city during the early game. Being immobile he will always stay in that city until killed/captured. That city will also start producing disciples of acheron, which are units specialized in fire magic.
He seems to have spawned unusually fast in this game. Maybe it is because of the modmod that we are using.

As for anarchy, I haven't played vanilla civ4 in a long time but my understanding is that it is exactly the same.

 

[pholkhero]

 

[pholkhero]

that western city (red dot) looks good as an production city, unless we can whip a whole lot of what's needed from the orange dot...is there whipping?

yellow and purple could shift depending on what's in the fog. maybe yellow should be on the hill 1S?

i think i like red>purple>orange

 

[Ozbenno]

I think red next as well. Purple is interesting as we can easily irrigate, orange will be good for running specialists but can wait a while.

There is whipping but the tech to enable is a way off.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

How did you get those BFC indicators to show up on the map?

 

[King Bulrush]

How did you get those BFC indicators to show up on the map?

It's a feature of the BUG Mod (BTS unaltered gameplay) which comes packaged with MNAI. You have to enable the option "show dotmap" in the mod menu and then by pressing Alt + X gives you the option to place (or remove) BFC indicators.

 

[lfgr]

He seems to have spawned unusually fast in this game. Maybe it is because of the modmod that we are using.

He is built very quickly after barbarians get their first city. My guess would be that barbs captured Decius's capital and built him there.