Game diary: Monarch, summoning the Mercurians (not so) early (FfH2 with Tholal's mod)

[Aline]

Well i did say id do a Bassium game and so i did, i am only playing on Monarch and i got the gate a lot later as planned but i still realy enjoyed the game untill now and so i thought id share it anyways.


This is the Start.

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We get to know some of the wicked people leading the other civilisations, we will eventually lead them back on the right path, but for now they will be a lot of trubble.

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We get the first city up and running.....

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... and are rewarded with an axe that will save us later on.

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Order is founded and we start spreading the word of Junil thoughout our lands.

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But treachery awaits us, their greed will eventually lead to their fall.

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Not long untill more evil invades our lands.

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Valin manages to capture on of their citys and burns another one in his rightious fury, we also make peace with the Hippus and stasis hits us.

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In order to protect the capital we use sanctuary, so Valin can heal up.(was at 1.2 str)

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The false god declares war, since we will most likely fail to fight of his winterpriests we use the seven pines to make peace but he continues to destroy the world, it is time for some one to bring justice to all those sinners.

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Finaly we get some heavenly help, we switch to Bassium and the first order of busines is to punish those Hippus.

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We quickly advance untill we are stoped by the forces of the Sheaim, however we manage to prevail and purge the first evil of this world

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Well thats it for now, tune in again. ^^

And yes i probly could have played my erly game smarter.

 

[Horatius]

Hey, Aline, you did say that you would do a game and here it is.

Fighting pyre zombie during stasis is not fun.
Why didn't you use the seven pines before sanctuary?
also, aren't you using priests and bless?

I must say that the first screenshot is not working for me (edit:forget it; now it is).

Have fun.

 

[Aline]

I did cut out a lot of the details, i did defend with blessed monks and got some axeman aswell.
I used sanctuary to get rid of a Sheaim SoD that was headed for my capital i found it more usefull then the pines as i could keep picking on the Sheaim near my borders and get Valin more xp, he was more than a lifesaver this time.

 

[BvBPL]

What game speed is this? How many civs? Can you include the score chart w/ your screen shots?

 

[Aline]

Hi guys

My computer is a real mess at the moment, i dont know when i will update again.

 

[Aline]

And we are back!


First of all i am playing on a standart sized custom continents map with two landmasses.
Heres the scorebord, there are some dwarfens and the freaks in the south aswell as some amurites, neither of them have made any contact with us so far.

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First of all the Hippus drop out from the war and the ilians declare on Ozzy.

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We trade some techs with dwarf Koun and get rid of the anoying rust.
Also the Amurite are on some island, i have the feeling i wont care about them for a while.
I also love the angelic procession in the Sheaim lands, i get the feeling there will be more of them in the future.

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Anyways we take the first city, Ozzys army is pretty much a joke by now, i found the city to be rather useless so i gift it away.

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Maybe bringing him to the Pryzombys wasent the best idea.

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We capture the veil holy city and burn it to the ground, two citys fall quickly after that.

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Ozzy repents and accepts the errors of her way, we will guide her back to the path of light.
We also get to know a dwarf who loves tells us his life story and Keelyn who invites us for a quick chat.
We also hire an adept to clean up the mess Ozzy made with her entropy mana.

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Time to kill the false god, even though Bassium almost died there.
It is also time to finish of the Hippus.

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We manage to drive the Ilians of the northern continent, the Hippus repent and join us.

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We make contect with the amurites, cant say i care.
Sphener joins us.

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The Elohim get some ships and attack a group of islands, even though they do not stand a chance as the Illians have man o´wars by now, those islands will be the first target for our invasion, we start building ships.
Also i would like to point out, the AI does a realy good job at terraforming. ^^

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Four Ophaims are ready for action, there is nowhere to hide!

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Please tune in next time when we invade the Illians.

 

[Aline]

And on we go.

I love those ophaims, realy.
Keelyn has also declared war on us at some point. (i dident even notice)

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Auric starts some pathetic counter attack, it ended nowhere, at this point he is pretty much exausted.
Ouer invasion force is comeing together at the same time, the first queen of the line is built.

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Another island is captured by the ophaims.

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Invasion!
This is the stack for ouer initial attack, Bassium, Sphener 4 angel of death and some highly promoted angels.

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Ouer landing operation is going smoothly, the Illians come up with far less resistance than expected, their capital falls, providing us with 7 wonders, including the guild of the nine and the lighthouse.

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The next city falls, also Dwarf Koun is no longer a vasall to Auric, we "negotiate" peace.

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Reinforcements arrive, the ophaims join the stack and we now have seraphs.

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We capture the last two citys on the continent, Auric is now stuck with exactly one city on some island and surrenders.

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Tune in next time when we are going to teach some spoiled brat proper manners.

 

[Aline]

And now...... the suprisingly lame finale!

First of all, the current situation and the score, Keelyn will be the next target.

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Keelyn takes some useless city, we can quickly reclaim it and burn it to the grond, after that we retreat to Lakis.

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Keelyn has the titanicly stupid idea of building a city right in the line of fire, our Ophaims are put to use once again.

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Allright this was a pretty cool move of me and probly the only real smart thing i did in the war against Keelyn, so yeah ill pat my own shoulder later.^^
Basicly i used my angels of death to clear out the units in the city, then moved my Ophaims in via tiles that normal units cant use and razed the city.

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Ninja syle!!!


Anyways, from this point on things do not go so well, i basicly keept leveling those angels of death untill one of them had the perfect sight promotion, since Keelyn had Nox Noctis and anyone who dared to step into her lands would instantly be swarmed by invisible summons, i did get a realy decent stack too.

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However, her units where still invisible and my stack got eaten, Bassium died but i revived him later.

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I dont know if this is a bug or if i am simply missing something but at this point i see no way of beating Keelyns invisible army and the game is also taggin on for ever so i decided to use the cheap way out.

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So if anyone knows how to beat Nox Noctis or who the hell Lord Asriel is let me know.
I plan on playing Keelyn next, i would like to make another diary but since i barely got any comments i am not to sure if anyone is interested, if you are, speak up.

 

[Horatius]

Hey, Aline. You can not reveal Nox Noctis' invisible units inside their borders. Just go straight to the holy city and crack it. If you have area damage spells, haste and summons to surround your stack it helps. Keep stepping on forests and hills and have some nice and strong stack defenders with terrain bonuses and drill promotions. Use treetop defense with double fortification promotion. Just go there and take the city.
I'm surprised that you lost so many units to the enemy summons.

 

[UncleJJ]

Thanks for posting Aline, I enjoyed the account of your game. I'd certainly be interested in your walkthrough of the Balseraphs. However, I'd like a bit more information about how your economy is developing, what civics you're running, what your best city looks like and so on. And please keep the display that shows the score of other nations, it is frustrating only seeing your score with nothing to compare that with.

You seemed to keep a lot of weak vassals in this game. Was there a particular reason you did that? If they only have 2 or 3 cities left I find that their cities are usually better under my control or gifted to the partner in the permanent alliance. I suppose they might get you another angel or two but they won't do much else militarilly. Besides that your own troops become angels when they die so you can make more angels that way.

Horatius has answered your question about Nox Noctis invisibility. I must admit I thought that the Empyrean priest's spell Revelation would reveal all invisible units, but perhaps Nox Noctis is a special sort of invisibility.

 

[Aline]

Allright i guess ill do that then.
I did not bother too much with the ecconomy since it realy did not matter later in the game anymore ( built the final altar in like 10 something turns x.x), there wasent any strategy in it, it was just big, the most exiting part would have been the part i played as Elohim, but i skipped over most of it since i whanted this to be a Mercurian game, maybe that wasent the smartest thing to do.
I will try to keep the scorebord in the screens, but i allways turn it of when playing, so i might forget from time to time.
As for the vassals, think of it as a bad habit. ^^

And for my stack being obliterated, i realy have to say, the AI did a realy good job there, as it attacked with lots and lots of catapults, then send in the summons to soften up the stack even more and finaly picked of the weakened stuff with curtisans, the result was rather devastating.

 

[Tasunke]

Hello Aline, I also enjoyed your write up (if belatedly).

Firstly, as far as I can tell from testing, perfect sight either reveals Hidden + Invisible only, or does nothing at all. I believe, honestly, that it does nothing at all.

The best thing Empy Priests can do is permanently remove HN from units (like privateers and Svart worldspellers), and perm-remove Invisibility from Shadows.

I would like to buff both perfect sight and empy priests in my Pheonix mod, perhaps making them stronger against units with either Invisibility Promotion or Marksman promotion. (as it is obvious that the code for Perfect Sight isn't working as intended).

In any case, I must say I'd like to see Empyrean buffed in their weaknesses and (somewhat) nerfed in their strengths. Honestly the only thing I want to do to Chalid any more is add an "Arcane Lore" tech prereq to him. (and not actually make him any weaker, etc)

As for Blind, will buff/nerf it. Buff it in that its easier to succeed, and nerf it in that it has a % wear off instead of a 100% retention rate. (yet longer possible effect on a number of units, of course)

And then boost the tier 2 priests and possibly the economy/ add an empy only wonder or something.

I think I might also remove Sun2 from Rathas and better develop their role against Recon units.

 

[Aline]

I am glad you liked it, giving Empyrian some proper priests should be a good idea, i cant realy agree on the blind change through, it sounds like it is getting even more powerfull like that, depending on the exact chances, but it might be a bit hard to properly balance them.
I would rather see blind disabeling casting for the affected units plus some combat penalty and leave the not moving thing to ice mana.
Anyways, since you are apparently back, let me know when and if you are up for some MP game.

 

[Tasunke]

Right on!

And yes, it would awesome if Blind could be either completely combat disabling or completely magic disabling, but not both.

In a perfect world I'd say blind should disable sight, but still allow some movement and penalty to combat (can't see what you are attacking, -1 attack str), and with a new mind mana spell called mute which disables spell-casting.

And then perhaps adding either a new spell for the Ice sphere, or a stronger version of slow ... that has a % chance to activate "frozen" which temporarily disables the unit (at least as far as movement is concerned).

In the end though, we will see what shall happen

 

[Tasunke]

Interesting "coop" game on Emperor ... one player plays good, another plays evil (establishing a potent enemy with a viable power base), and once the good player summons Mercurians, the bad player joins "as" the Mercurians.

And its a fight for survival from that point on