Gibbon Goetia

[scutarii]

Ok, magic is not my strongest side in FF2 but even I understand how flexible character GG is. Plz, share your experience

Currently playing with Keelyn, so summoning magic is useless, right? ( for GG), so what's the best plan to keep GG busy?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

As you may or may not know, Gibbon's summons are different from normal ones in 2 ways: They can't kill (auto-withdraw if they're about to), but they fully heal after every battle they survive.

Why would summoning magic be useless for a summoner trait leader like Keelyn? Gibbon can get L3 summons way before you normally could, with archmages. It's hard to go wrong with fire/mobility/spell extension for summoner Gibbon. Fire elementals do collateral damage, so it doesn't matter as much that GG's can't kill the unit they engage. You want your fire elementals to cover a lot of ground so they can be softening up stacks before your main army reaches them (hence mobility/SE), and you want them to survive so they can keep doing it, which GG's summons excel at.

It's non-summoner leaders that you want to build him as an evoker for, summons that last 1 turn and can't kill are damn useless. Nature, Mind, Body, and Entropy are all good non-summon spheres, spirit and life aren't too bad either. I'd say take a mobility promotion then max out 3 of those spheres. All 3 levels of 1, then all 3 of another, etc. Don't build them evenly, that's what you do with non-heroic mages.

 

[scutarii]

thnx, I had no Idea how GG summons work; I simply assumed that since Keelyn's mages spam puppets anyway, there is no need for additional summoning.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

One thing to consider is that because all Gibbon requires is Council of Esus state religion + Deception, he can be gotten well before normal mages, let alone archmages. Deception costs 40% as much as sorcery, provides a lot more side benefits, has about the same level of prerequisites, and you don't need to build a mage guild then build an adept then wait for the adept to get 10 XP to build Gibbon.

 

[Grey Fox]

nevermind what I said...

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

IIRC GG's illusions only heal on defense. they completely heal after KILLING a unit, but since when they attack they retreat before killing the unit, that ability only works on defense, when they CAN kill units.

 

[cureforpain]

My best use of him with keelyn is domination puppets
balseraph starts with mind already, so you didn't have to research magic line. so you can have it very early
if a puppet fail, then air elemental is alwais usefull
with nox noctis there's no risk of loosing your mage to assassin
cool again hippus

 

[civ_king]

I wish Illusions had Blitz

 

[heisenberg]

I'm guilty of using him as a very early terraformer without having to venture deep down the sorc line or through the recon for druids
Getting to trade as a prereq for deception is usually a pretty high priority tech anyway for any civ, so you'd be able to get a free archmage early on.
Of course getting an archmage when others are still stuck with mages is a huge boost in offensive arsenal, so any of the tier 3 summons are naturally nice, so are a few other spells like domination/wonder etc.

 

[Jules.lt]

I never played illusionist units, but I can see not killing units on attack as a great thing in some situations: you can finish off the unit with whatever you feel like.
That means xp for weak units and being able to use command/subdue beast/werewolf more easily.

 

[phoulishwan]

Played the Svart in the new scenario's got Gibbon early and stole Gilden Silveric from Amelanchier. I got beat to starting Alazkan though, now that would have been a frightening stack: Gibbon, Gilden & Alazkan along with healing, adept & archer suport...if only the AI hadn't crumbled so fast, I may have been able to nab the FoL horse hero as well!

I'd definately look into the spells your starting mana can do at tier 3, if you're going for Gibbon. Then consider wether or not going tier 3 deep is worth the investment early. Mind definately is worth it, of course it could backfire and you fail your first dominate...then, well not so much worth it, adepts are perfectly capable of doing the inspiration sitting...but those be the risks you take.

 

[cureforpain]

To complete, mind III only really worth if with Balseraph especially keelyn, because you use puppets to cast it. this way your original caster never loose the promotion.

 

[PotatoOverdose]

mind III is also viable for the svarts, give Alazkan's equipment to gibbon, and you never risk the real gibbon again.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

mind III is also viable for the svarts, give Alazkan's equipment to gibbon, and you never risk the real gibbon again.

Expect that Mirrored units are set to have already cast and have duration 1, and so won't be able to cast Domination or anything else. (Although I guess that making sure Gibbon has a spellstaff when he casts mirror could let you get around this. Hmm...I think that is just one more reason why Spellstaffs should be made equipment.)

 

[phoulishwan]

To complete, mind III only really worth if with Balseraph especially keelyn, because you use puppets to cast it. this way your original caster never loose the promotion.

I don't agree, just as pumping out an army 2-3 times the size of the defending force is a calculated risk for attempting to nab a city or 2, so too is taking the risk on getting mind 3 resisted, except it's basically got a 90% success rate...not only can you march up to a city with fewer attackers but you can take their defenders and turn them into either a part of your attacking force or a part of your defensive force after you've taken your objectives. Nevermind the potential free adepts, priests of religions other than your own, etc...getting a Priest of the Leaves with Bloom when you're AV or OO is pretty sweet and well worth taking the risk of a lost tier 3 spell or in order to gain access to a spell line you've chosen not to specialize in.

The key when to using this spell when you're not using a risk free civ like the Balseraph's is judicious use of this spell for capturing units that make the risk very well worth it. Considering I've found that when nabbing adepts, they keep all the current spells they knew and also gain all the ones you'd get for free when creating a new adept, perhaps this a bug however and not a feature? The potential ability to open up spell lines for nodes you choose not to build or research, using Mind 3 is well worth it regardless, imo.

 

[cureforpain]

to phoulishwan
point taken.
I still don't think mind III is a viable tactic to lead a whole war with other than balseraph (90% succes means you will lose it sooner or later) but I grant you that it can give you a great bonus if you target well
By the way, do any of you use his unique spell (sacrifice GG to temporary take control of a rival civ) when and why?

 

[phoulishwan]

to phoulishwan
point taken.
I still don't think mind III is a viable tactic to lead a whole war with other than balseraph (90% succes means you will lose it sooner or later) but I grant you that it can give you a great bonus if you target well
By the way, do any of you use his unique spell (sacrifice GG to temporary take control of a rival civ) when and why?

You're definately correct you can't rely on it through a whole war, but it's a powerful supplement.

I've only used Gibbon's Civ take over ability once, and that was way back in like Fire or Ice. I wasn't too impressed, sacrificing a hero (an archmage type hero even...) for iirc 15 turns of control, and you lost complete comtrol of your own empire to boot, didn't seem worth while. 15 turns wasn't enough time to really do a whole lot of damage to their economy. I should try it out again just to see if there have been any changes to how it works. Truthfully though I'm usually switching a lot between various religions so I can build a small Priest force of different types, I love having a few blooming priests, and I usually get RoK as a rule, first, I build such large armies at the start of the game to fend off barbs and take over nearby civs that I need those Temples on top of my Markets not to stagnate my research. Because of this I rarely bother getting Gibbon, unless I know I'm finally set on switching out religions, for me Esus is all about getting Nightwatch'men' and the insane Cavalry, although my games are usually over before I get that far down the tech tree.

 

[EmptyWolf]

Ok, magic is not my strongest side in FF2 but even I understand how flexible character GG is. Plz, share your experience

Currently playing with Keelyn, so summoning magic is useless, right? ( for GG), so what's the best plan to keep GG busy?

When playing as Svartalfar, my perfect use for Gibbon is to give him combat V, twincast, spell extension II, and shadow III for him to be the perfect svart seige engine. I group him with a handful of assassins and cities are guaranteed to be cleared out. I enjoy that use for Gibbon since it's before you have fireball illusionists thus allowing to be offensive early.

With the raider trait the mistform Gibbon is also quite the 'friend' when he's in neighboring territory. (two mobility II, invisible, hidden nationality disposable summons means raking in hundreds of gold per turn from your 'allies') Not to mention Gibbon paired with Shadows is perfect for crippling an enemy just before your main attack, and the AI can often do nothing but watch their defenses fall apart from your both invisible and hidden nationality mistforms and shadows.

 

[loocas]

In my current game as Keelyn I have GG with Death 3, Twincast, and Spell Extension 2. With puppets that's 12 Wraiths at any given time, which slaughtered Acheron. For some reason the wraiths aren't illusions and they kill everything, which may be because GG is now a lich. He still has illusionist, but isn't passing on illusion.

EDIT: The wraiths aren't illusions because they were summoned by puppets, I'm guessing. I think all puppets should have illusionist, but that's me.

 

[loffenx]

What buggs me the most about Impersonate Leader is the fact that if your original Civilization wipes your controled one from the map you loose the game. I use it from time to time to bring down Civilizations that has become waaay more powerfful than myself, perhaps twice my size or similair, ny emptying their cities and declaring war on everyone.