Fine-tuning Kandros Fir

[Luinefirithion]

So all in all, my favorite thing to do in Fall From Heaven is to bring the world into an age dominated by my beloved bearded horde. What frustrates me is that sometimes I play really well, and other times I seem to stall out around turn 100. I’ve spent a fair amount of time poking around these forums and found some cool information on the aristograrian strategy, which I can attest is a really nice fit with Kandros. I also found some cool ideas in this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=311712

With all that, the one thing I haven’t seen is a comprehensive walkthrough on how to play the Khazad. It’s great to say that you should aim for Calendar, Code of Laws, founding a religion, and keeping up with your military techs, but in my experience, there’s always an AI who rushes to found Runes of Kilmorph, a few who rush to Bronze Working, and then the rest just kind of suck and fall to my furious little dwarves chopping their knees out from under them. So how do you deal with all this and keep up? I thought I’d outline my basic strategy (with included log of the first ~190 turns) for the ruthless critique of anyone who wants to tear it to pieces and tell the world how I’m doing it wrong It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to me to suggest that if we have a step-by-step strategy to analyze, we could come up with a way cooler one.

Before I even start this, I recognize that every game has its own unique challenges, so no specific research path necessarily works in every game. However, the early stages of a game often have a few key similarities. Generally, your starting capital will have a good mix of grasslands and plains (and maybe a few floodplains). Also, the fat cross will normally include at least 2 food resources, and you can normally improve on this if you move your settler rather than just building your capital where he starts. Also, I typically am at or right near the coast, and on the rare occasions when I’m not, I’m on a river and (very rarely) a lake. For this particular game, I was on a river, but spent the first turn moving and set up on the coast to maximize my exposure to food tiles and river grasslands. I went from having rice next to my capital and cows in the fat cross to having cows next to my capital and rice and 2 clams in my fat cross without losing any hills. I also didn’t run into many tribal villages because I was on the end of a peninsula with AIs everywhere in my way, but ultimately I think that’s probably for the best if we’re talking about critiquing a game because it takes out some of the random factor.

Okay, so here’s my basic strategy for the early game. Even though the dwarves are amazing for production, I like to focus on growth and commerce tiles, which is why I love being on the coast. I generally run at about 80% research, and I’ve found that that is about sufficient to slowly grow my vault and keep it at ‘stocked’ for most of the early game; I will only need occasional short bursts at 0% to keep my people happy. In any case, I’ll try to get fishing, agriculture, education and mining in that order. Then I fast-track to Way of the Earthmother and pray no one beats me to it (probably only about a 50% success rate). Bronze working comes after that, then Trade and Code of Laws (honestly not sure why, I went for Mathematics, I must’ve gotten caught up in the moment). After that, I try to get to Engineering as fast as possible so I can build the GuiId of Hammers (I also aim to get the City of 1000 Slums, admittedly as much to deny it from other players as to have it for myself).

For production, I build warrior after warrior until the city’s population is maxed, then workers and settlers. If I can overwhelm an AI when their city is around the 4-5 population mark, I regard that as about ideal because they normally have workers but not settlers by that point. As I get techs like Writing, I’ll build the buildings associated with them to maximize the effectiveness of my commerce tiles, but generally spend most of the mid-game making up for the buildings I neglected in order to build warriors/axemen to conquer my first neighbor.

After Engineering, I feel like you can take a number of directions based on personal preference. My research tends to slow at this point so I can put more money in that vault, which lets me build larger cities and prepare for my impending invasion of the rest of the world. I think Runes of Kilmorph is ideal for the dwarves with the vault, and I go for Arete to improve my mines and get Bambur, then push to Iron Working because Maros is my favorite thing in the game. From there, I work towards getting my spellcasters with their lovely Crush spell, and if I hit that point, I win.

The problem for me is hitting that point. As I said in the opening paragraph, sometimes I just stall out and end up way behind the other players. This makes me think that I have a good strategy for dominating the endgame, but I’m probably not taking the ideal path at the start. With that, sometimes I get lucky, and sometimes I don’t. What do you guys think?

• Turn 1 – move to best spot
• Turn 2 – found capital
On coast, 1 (river) rice, 1 plains cows, 2 clams in fat cross, 3 river grassland, 2 non river grasslands, 1 plains hill, 1 grasslands hill. Forests on all non-resource tiles
Researching exploration and building scout
• Turn 12 – build warrior and start researching fishing
• Turn 15 – turtles appear on one of my clam resources!
• Turn 23 – dungeon gets me a great commander, join to my warrior
• Turn 30 – research agriculture
• Turn 31 – start workboat
• Turn 36 – war w/ lanun
• Turn 37 – boat finishes, next warrior, research ancient chants
• (forgot turn) – start researching education
• Turn 55 – capture Innsmouth, 2 workers. No more pirates
Building dereptus in capital
Monument in innsmouth
• Turn 57 – massive frostling incursion kills both workers and a warrior
Building worker in capital
• Turn 63 – build second worker
• Turn 69 – start brewing house again
• Turn 73 – start research mining
• Turn 86 – grow vault to stocked
• Turn 87 – start mysticism
• Turn 99 – switch to god king, queue up way of the earthmother to start next turn after anarchy
• Turn 112 – River of Blood is cast, ouch
• Turn 113 – found 3rd city
• Turn 121 – convert to but don’t found Runes of Kilmorph (damn!), start Bronze working
• Turn 126 – capture barbarian city, vault still stocked with 4 cities
• Turn 135 – start calendar, building training yards in capital and Innsmouth
• Turn 144 – start writing, adopt agrarianism
• Turn 146 – war with Clan of Embers
• Turn 156 – start animal husbandry
• Turn 163 – start horseback riding
• Turn 168 – start trade
Trade for construction and archery, give away Way of the Earthmother to everyone who will take it
Only Amelanchier takes on Runes of Kilmorph as state religion
• Turn 172 – start mathematics
• Turn 184 – start code of laws
• Turn 189 – stasis is cast (I HATE stasis)
Don’t remember when it ended, but Code of Laws finished and then switched to Aristocracy. Rush to engineering from there

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Your biggest mistake is a general one, not a Khazad specific one. Your hardon for coasts would only be justified for the Lanun.

If you want to focus on growth and commerce early, you want rivers (especially floodplains) and/or the right kind of resources (anything that can be farmed or plantationed, gold, or wine. Animals are okay too but not as good.), not coast. For everyone but the Lanun, coast blows early, and only picks up in the midgame, and even then if and only if your map has multiple continents - on something like a pangaea, non-Lanun coast should only be settled for seafood resources because aside from those it's trash throughout the whole game.

If you can get a capital that has a big river and/or good land based resources in addition to coast, sure, take it. But never sacrifice good land just so you can settle by the sea, especially not in the early game (unless Lanun, of course). 1 rice, 1 cow, and 4 river tiles with no floodplains is pretty horsehockey land, for instance, and you should definitely ditch seafood to find something better.

It thus follows that you should skip fishing early. Even if you have the kind of capital that has seafood in addition to good land... put it off for a while. If you do this, and follow the early tech path you laid out after it (which is very good), you will get off the ground earlier, win the race to Runes much more frequently, and just do better all around.

If you want to do the aristograrian thing get CoL, then sanitation immediately after, before the HBR/trade line.

Your vault management is good. No complaints.

If you lose the race to runes, consider abandoning it altogether and chasing one of OO, CoE, or Empyrean instead; they all work great with Kandros. OO because of the synergy between the buffed melee line and both aggressive and ingenuity, the fact that you get an archmage (and can thus pursue Tower if you want), and the power of cultists. CoE because of dwarven shadows and a very EARLY archmage. Empyrean because it just rocks for everyone - wrecking ball of a hero and amazing defensive troops and science boosting temples. Never get desperate enough to adopt order or AV though. You want to keep your neutral alignment.

After engineering and IW come in your priority is commune with nature + animal mastery. They're close together and they both unlock incredible UUs. You might even go for this path before engineering if you get beaten to the guild (but this probably won't come up.)

As for your early build order... that depends a lot on difficulty as well as circumstance. I'll go more into that if you say what difficulty you play on.

 

[Luinefirithion]

Interesting about the coasts. I've always liked them because they tend to get the best trade routes, and that's some nice gold. I think my preference towards coasts comes from two places. First, they're easier to build up quickly in normal civ, which I still play pretty frequently. Second, the friend I play with loves big and small or medium and small map types, so I've got to sail around a lot to find land. However, on a more standard map type, I think you're dead on the more I think about getting that 1 extra gold per farm compared to a water tile once I've got Aristocracy (I was actually wondering if you were going to suggest pushing that up further in my research priorities).

Quick question, what's IW? I don't think I've seen that acronym before (or just didn't figure it out and forgot about it).

As for the difficulty, I was hoping to take my game as an example to make a more general strategy thread. Would you mind breaking your recommendations down on multiple difficulties?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

FfH has more powerful farms and earlier forest clearing than normal civ4, which lets you get a lot more out of land. Coast wasn't similarly scaled up. Actually it got nerfed, because the customs house was axed and fishing costs a lot more. So... yeah, it suffers compared to BtS. You still definitely want a couple decent coastal cities on the kind of maps you mentioned, but your capital? Nooooooooo.

IW = iron working.

Build order. Well, the long and the short of it is that your desire for conquering an early, easy target is good on every level, but what exactly you need to pull that off, and when it becomes not worth it, changes.

On... hell. Everything below emperor and maybe emperor itself, if you build warriors until you are pop-capped and then build a worker, you probably have enough warriors to start a successful war and still not get pwned by barbs. In other words, your early buildorder is perfect in this scenario. Go up to, or past, immortal, and suddenly all AI troops start with 2 free promos and the AI has the production advantage from that free worker on Emperor. Here, if you want to conquer, you need to follow that worker up with quite a few more warriors. Beeline education so that second wave of warriors will have apprenticeship EXP, then rush.

On any difficulty, if your closest neighbor is far enough away, you shouldn't bother rushing because maintenance will drag you down you before CS/Aristo and it's harder to reinforce yourself if something unexpected and bad happens. The build order here is something like a few warriors -> worker -> settler -> a few more warriors -> worker -> settler (there's room for flexibility of course but that's the gist.)

tl;dr:

On all levels, look to rush if you have a nearby neighbor, don't bother otherwise.

For high level rushes, a few warriors then a worker then lots lots more warriors.
For mid-low level rushes, warriors till pop cap then a worker then a few more warriors (hopefully for garrison duty) then workers and buildings.
For peaceful expansion, which, unfortunately, is sometimes called for, a few warriors then a worker then a mix of settlers, wokers and a few more warriors.

Oh yeah, one exception. No warrior rushing the Ljosalfar on the highest levels, even if they're right on top of you. They love archery and archers and will have both in no time, and will utterly smash your rush. You need axemen and siege to take them on. If you only have some tiny ghetto to expand into and it takes you forever to get them, hey, sucks to be you, but all the alternative strategies are even worse. Throwing warriors at them seems like a good stress reliever till they all die and you can't sue the elves for peace and they counterattack your crappy little empire and burn it the ground and piss on the ashes.

 

[Luinefirithion]

Cool, that's all really good.

My follow-up question, what in your opinion makes this strategy a special/good fit to Kandros as opposed to just any other leader?

Obviously, there's keeping up the vault, where you sacrifice some research at the start for bigger cities (or for those neighbors who are too far away, razing their cities and looting the gold). Is there anything else you see in all this, or is that really the unique thing Kandros brings to the table?

 

[readercolin]

For myself, I tend to play on bigger maps where rushing isn't really an option. Generally the maps are pangea, global highlands (my current favorite), or tectonics - mediterranean, and of those maps only pangea really supports rushing. Therefore, the best method of expansion is rexing (rapid early expansion) till I get somewhat stable borders with my opponents, or I need to stop due to maintenence. General strategy for this is as follows.

Settle capital near either A. lots of hills, with enough flatland/food to feed it up to pop 20, or B. lots of resources, preferably food or mining, though calendar resources work as a last bet. Generally I ignore hunting resources, and near fresh water is also perferred (either river or lake). Once I settle, I proceed to scout with my warriors and build 2-3 in my capital (number depending upon difficulty level and whether or not raging barbarians is on). First techs are to unlock resources, then once nearby resources are unlocked I go for mysticism to unlock godking.

Rexing is accomplished by building 2-3 warriors (again, depending upon difficulty level and such), 1 settler, 1 worker. First thing each new city builds is a monument, followed by whatever other buildings help either the city or my economy grow (market/elder council, etc.)

Once I have mysticism, then I will usually go for either code of laws/calendar to start running aristocracy (after I have 2-3 new cities up), or go for RoK - even if I'm not the one to found it, it is nice to grab it so that you can grab the mines of gal-dur as a great early axmen buff, and bambur is a good early hero to assist your army in early conquest. This is useful even if you eventually go to grab another religion, and also being able to build temples of kilmorph is nice for the +2gold, which helps your vaults. Running RoK is also nice for the +1gold for having the religion in your city. Lastly, you may want to consider if you get RoK to move your capital to the holy city and continue running godking - the extra gold from the shrine can sometimes be more helpful than switching to aristocracy or city states. This however is very map dependent - I would only consider doing this if I got blocked in, or if I'm pulling most of my food from other sources than farms. This would mean switching to a cottage based economy, but this isn't exactly a problem on some starts.

For fueling the vaults, I generally drop research down to 80 or 90% on turn 1, and turn it down again whenever I start loosing money. For the early game, as long as you are gaining a little bit of money it isn't a problem. Later on, after I have several cities and an economy based off of either cottages or aristofarms, I'll take and drop my science slider to 0 for a few turns to bump my gold up.

So, to sum it up. Found your capital near either lots of hammers, or lots of resources. Unlock your resources with your first techs, and start rexing. After resources, primary techs are either mysticism/RoK, or CoL/Calendar - this depends upon resources and expansion space. Make sure you have a minimum of 2 warriors per city, and don't forget to build workers to unlock all your resources - 1 worker per city is a good minimum, if you have more resources you need to unlock then get more. Also, don't be impatient to build up every new city first thing - keep your workers and unlock everything your older larger cities need first before moving on to the new city.

Lastly, on coasts. Personally, I like coasts, but only to an extent. Generally, you want a minimum of coastal squares inside your workable radius - best is to only have fewer than 3 coastal tiles without resources on them.

This info can be used for most civs, minus the bit about RoK as they aren't as dependent upon money, or the coast thing if you're playing as the lanuan. What I listed should be what you do for a REX start over the first 100-150 turns. Rush starts are better explained by Monkeyfinger. Once you have all this, then you are free to do whatever you want afterwards.

I hope this all helps.

-Colin

 

[Demus]

kandros: financial, vaults, dwarven mines, dwarven UU's.

His traits allow you to very easily upgrade those experienced warriors (from your early conquest) to axemen, and later on champions. Financial in itself is amazing, and works well with aristocracy.

I personally play the dwarves pretty much the same, but there's one point i use a different strategy on:vault management. I don't know which is better, but i personally like to keep my science maxed untill i hit runes (a lot bigger chance of getting the religion that way), and will start filling it up after i've gotten the religion. Runes also allows you to fill your vaults up much easier, which works well for me.
Another point is calender. I only research this tech if i've got some plantation resources nearby, otherwise i wait untill after i've gotten my religion to get this tech, to make the odds of me getting RoK even bigger.

Ofcourse, this is my personal playstyle, it might very well be a sub-optimal one, i haven't tested any others yet.

 

[readercolin]

Cool, that's all really good.

My follow-up question, what in your opinion makes this strategy a special/good fit to Kandros as opposed to just any other leader?

Obviously, there's keeping up the vault, where you sacrifice some research at the start for bigger cities (or for those neighbors who are too far away, razing their cities and looting the gold). Is there anything else you see in all this, or is that really the unique thing Kandros brings to the table?

In all honesty, the only real difference between Kandros and all other leaders is that 1, you are financial, and 2, your mid-lategame power comes from having full vaults. For the early game, Kandros plays like most leaders, minus wanting to focus a little bit more on gold than anything else. Mid game, having full vaults, trebuchets from construction, and a large force of axmen is what is going to carry you through your opponents, and with Kandros you're really going to be wanting to go for a conquest/domination victory. Lategame, champions/arquebuses/dwarven cannons are what you're going to be spamming - with overflowing vaults and dwarven forges, your +80% (+90% with mithril) production should be more than enough to be able to build a champion/arquebus a turn in your major cities, or a warrior a turn in your smaller (the warrior is then upgraded to a champion/arquebus with your cash and ingenuety), and you should be running at lower science to bring in as much gold as possible. Teir 4 units, while nice, shouldn't be necessary as you should have already crushed everyone already, and if you haven't then just upgrade your best units to the teir 4.

If you were playing as Arturus Thorne, I would recommend not doing aristocracy unless your situation really requests it, and other victory conditions are a bit easier to achieve. IMO, Arturus works better with other religions, and works best when going for ToM or altar victories.

So in the end, what really makes the dwarves special is the lack of magic, and the incredible production available from the vaults and their forges.

-Colin

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Cool, that's all really good.

My follow-up question, what in your opinion makes this strategy a special/good fit to Kandros as opposed to just any other leader?

Obviously, there's keeping up the vault, where you sacrifice some research at the start for bigger cities (or for those neighbors who are too far away, razing their cities and looting the gold). Is there anything else you see in all this, or is that really the unique thing Kandros brings to the table?

There's no one uber feature of him that this can all be pinned on. The pieces just fit together so well.

Financial, cheap upgrades, and extra happiness give him a strong economy, but he's not the only guy who can have one. Flauros and Falamar are a lot better at it given equal land, for example. But they're not aggressive and neither are any other financial leaders.

He's not the top warrior rusher in the game (Tasunke's better, Sheelba's on par) but with Aggressive + 2 free happiness at the start + hill movement bonus he's close to it. And he makes a lot more early commerce than the other aggressive guys, which in turn gets him to CS or Aristo quicker, which is a double whammy for turning his conquered land from a drain to something productive more quickly than other conquerors.

Production and happiness bonuses from the vaults make him competitive in the midgame despite no mages, even if you didn't get an early conquest. If you did they can just get overwhelming.

If you screwed up the mid and late phases or just had terrible luck, then as you can attest to, it's almost never too late - dwarven druids and myconids can bail you out. And if you already had a strong position, the druids are an extra emphatic ". .. .. .. . you" to your opponents that make the final stretches go a lot smoother.

Basically he just covers all his bases well. Military strength, magical power, economic might... no other leaders have the combination of those things that Kandros does, even though there are a lot of specialists who excel at one of them more than he does.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

This is a bit of derailment but: quick history lesson. Kandros was created during a time when mages were somewhat more useful, archmages were demigods who unshakeably ruled their era's battlefields, and religious magic was less awesome (but still good). He was decently balanced back then: same great all around early game as now, but his mid-lategame drawback was much more severe and you really needed to leverage his early power to do well. Then, in one single update, archmages were nerfed about as hard as anything in the history of video games, mages were toned down somewhat, and midgame divine magic became competitive and powerful. Suddenly the old achilles heel of the Khazad became a minor inconvenience. Were they given nerfs to compensate? Noooope. Instead, Dwarven Druids got pumped full of steriods and started wielding power close to that of the old archmages.

And *CRACK* went their balance.

 

[Luinefirithion]

Monkeyfinger - I find this really interesting. This may be because of how I've played BTS, but in that you can take pretty much any financial leader (some are better than others for this) and use him/her as a research powerhouse. I've always played Kandros pretty much the same way but with two caveats: the vaults and Arete. Arete keeps the production going with the extra hammers, and the vaults take that and make it work even more for you if you keep them at high levels. Plus, you can have bigger cities, which I've found tends to more than make up for dropping the research bar a little bit (give it a try Demus), and I pretty much always have at least the second-place economy in the game, if not the first.

Readercolin - Do you ever run into any significant unhappiness issues by REXing with Kandros? I've always tended to agree with Shatner (from the thread I linked to before) when he said the Khazad are like the Kuriotates except they aren't sissies who need a third ring to have an amazing handful of cities. In any case, how many cities do you try to build? Do you hit a point where you have to stop the expansion? How well do the extra cities make up for having to slide the research bar down a little farther when it comes to keeping pace technologically?

Does anyone else have any thoughts? It seems like we have two-three different play styles being outlined in here, and I can see a pretty decent guide coming out of this once it's all worked out.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

It sounds based on your first post that there's a third caveat: You war really early with the Khazad.

That they can reliably, successfully do this is one of their big advantages over other financial leaders.

 

[Luinefirithion]

Good point. Though as Readercolin pointed out, this isn't necessarily always a great idea. If it's economically feasible (they're close enough that maintenance costs won't kill me), it's my preference to war early because I can generally end up with a level 3 city (after population loss) and a worker or two. If not, I'll probably try to grow through settlers instead, though it is less fun

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Well true. I guess I should say "you war really early when you can."

 

[Luinefirithion]

How long do you typically try to wait before going to war?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

50ish? Little later? I don't pay attention to the exact turn number.

 

[readercolin]

Usually, I can get godking either before my first settler is done, or shortly after. Once I have that, and I can get either A. RoK, B. festivals (Market), or worst case, build the pagan temple, you can slow down your expansion some by using a slot for either a great merchant or a great prophet. Once you pop one (if you start running early, you should pop one round turn 50ish), settle him or use him to bulb a tech if its one that grants more gold producing buildings. With godking, a merchant, and a great merchant, you bring in 13.5 gold without any other buildings or other sources of gold - with prophets it is 9 gold from a prophet and a great prophet, as well as 4.5 hammers.

As for how many cities I get, I generally have a few waves. I'll build 2-3 new cities, then halt for a few turns while I build needed buildings, then build a few more cities. By the time I have 5 cities my first 2 cities that I founded are each able to support a few new cities themselves. As for unhappiness - 1 unhappy from the vaults in the early game isn't a big deal, as long as you try to get it to +1 or more happiness after about turn 150. Just remember, the more cities at the beginning, the more it hurts at the beginning, but the more it helps later on.

-Colin