Fun early tactic: Spider farming.

[zxcvbnm]

I agree. Treachery, when discovered, should certainly count diplomatically. Whoever you betrayed should hate you. However, their enemies may be positively inclined that you have so neatly stitiched up their opponents, though you'd still be untrustworthy.

Good civs like Elohim should in my opinion value trustworthiness more than temporary rivalries, so they should get more untrustworthy penalty and less fools of enemies bonus.
Balseraphs on the other hand, insane and looking for amusement->huge bonus for giving them laughs at others' gullibility.
And the betrayed's friends should also be a bit more upset.

And of course it should be the traitor who is counted as the declarer of the war

 

[Vortex79]

It'd be interesting to get a method for the AI to plausibly identify the owners of HN units with a little work. That way they know who sent the 101 spiders after them and could react appropriately, talk about requiring a lot of additional ai programming though.

 

[Sureshot]

i think you should just get a "-x you fund piracy/terrorism" where x is higher the more HN units you have. once theyre HN you shouldn't necessarily be responsible for what those units do, since the point is that theyre not known to be associated with you, but people should hate you because you create and fund those type of units.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Hmm, that might work. Also, I'd like HN units to have a chance to have their nationality detected like spies are detected. Then they would lose the HN promotion and get kicked out of that nations boarders, and you would get a diplo penalty. This should be about as common as having your spy caught and identified (not as common as just being caught and losing the spy with no diplo penalties)

 

[TSteamer]

I've successfully implemented said Spider Farming tactic. version .23c (vanilla) Large Map, Ice Age map with Raging Barbs.

My key to success has been building scouts and having them kill weaker animals/barbs until getting subdue animal promoted. It could take a few tries...plus capturing that first spider can be tricky too. After getting one, try pitting them against low level barbs (goblins are best). Next get forest defense and place at the frontier. Viola, a spider factory. It has worked spectacularly...I currently have 24 spiders; 3 with 5 stars and forest defense.

I have not tried to take an enemy city with a HN baby spider I will definately have to try that. What I HAVE done is trounced the area where my civ (Malakim) and Jonas' territory meet along the northern ice cap. My spiders keep his defenders down and the barbarians come along and take the city! Woot! Also done with a Ljosafar city that was placed up there. It seems to be the long way around since no other HN unit can take cities AFAIK, but it works out.

Oh, and whoever made the point earlier about getting your economy trashed was exactly right. Until I got my spiders undercontrol and enough towns/villiages I was at like 50% and the other civs rocketed past me in tech.

 

[Malthor]

In version .23, I captured a city far away from my main area with some Hunters, and then got cut off from my own Civ for over 50 turns.

I managed to get a couple of Giant Spiders there and they over time, turned into 80+ Giant Spiders who would rush out and kill off weaker Barbarians or invaders, whilst my 100+ XP Hunters would take on tougher prey. A Giant Spider with 70-80 XP is quite neat (Combat V, Mobility etc).

I eventually got the city joined up to my main areas and the spiders were used to help defend newly conquered cities, but by then, they were outclassed by everything so not much use except insurance defence (3-4 spiders behind a Pikeman or similar to hold a city that 1-2 turns extra till reinforcements come).

Was certainly a lot of fun though.

 

[xienwolf]

Well, you must have never needed to cash in on the insurance, because spiders only work as ACTIVE defense (or you knew that maybe?). A spider sitting on a town will be perfectly happy to let anyone take the town, and stay sitting right on top of it. Since the unit is invisible to all but recon types, if they don't have a recon unit in the area, they do not have to fight your spider.

 

[zxcvbnm]

I tried spider farming a bit and ended up with:
1 with >100xp, combat 5, mobility 2 and city raider 3, 2 with ~50 xp, combat 4/5 +other promotions
Quite mighty indeed, actually the spiders killed Hyborem

 

[Marksman77]

actually the spiders killed Hyborem

Heh, that one's good
Daemons! Be aware of oversized insects from the mortal plane

 

[zxcvbnm]

Well, their numbers dwindled from 25 to 5 when attacking Dis but they killed him, his longbowmen and sects of flies

 

[Caradoc]

Oh, and whoever made the point earlier about getting your economy trashed was exactly right. Until I got my spiders undercontrol and enough towns/villiages I was at like 50% and the other civs rocketed past me in tech.

The nice thing is you can always cage them up and make your people happy. (Or just keep the cute ones and delete the rest.)

 

[zxcvbnm]

No, don't cage them, you can use them in desperate attacks like the Battle of Dis. With enough numbers they are bound to win but only few will survive to eat your gold afterwards