Help a newbie!

[Sidney Magal]

I usually play BTS on Immortal and recently downloaded FfH 2 to start playing. I started a game on Monarch because I've heard that it has a lot of new content and people can find it a little difficult. That's exactly what I'm feeling right now. I mean, 44 turns to research Hunting? Come on! On Normal speed?

The game I'm playing is a random leader (drew Charadon), Monarch, Normal speed, standard size, Erebus. I've played 126 turns IIRC. Could anyone help me understand it better? For starters, there's a unit called Lucien that I couldn't find any reference in the civilopedia. I'm totally lost.

These are my current cities (well, they would have potential in BTS).

The techs. (WTH?)

And my relations with the only neighbor I've met so far:

There are somethings I don't understand. For example, it says that my leader starts the game in peace with the barbarians. Then my scout got killed by a gorilla. I thought, alright, maybe animals don't count. Some barb warriors were moving around in my land without harming me. Then a hill giant guy comes and kills one of my workers. How did that happen?

I attached the save because I think what I've said may be just blabbering with no real information.

 

[Onionsoilder]

First off, the Barbarian trait(Which Charadon and several other leaders have) does make the barbarians at peace with you. Animals, while Barbarian, have Hidden Nationality, and will attack you anyway. The Hill Giant had Hidden Nationality as well, and thus attacked you. Barbarian Warriors, Lair Monsters, and more dangerous creatures like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, will not attack you while you are at peace with the barbarians. This peace is not permanent; if you lead in score by 50% of more, the barbarians will declare war.

The second effect of Barbarian is the reduced research. As I'm sure you noticed, this can be a real pain. Since I like farming barbarian units for EXP, I rarely play Barbarian leaders because of this.

Hunting is no longer considered an early tech. It is, in fact, quite expensive, unlocking a tier II unit(Hunters). The other tier II units are Axemen(Bronze Working), Archers(Archery) and Adepts(Knowledge of Ether).

Because of the long research times, Commerce is much more important. Calendar now comes much, much earlier, so if you have several plantation resources such as cotton or dye(or even a single Incense, which gives a much larger commerce boost) I would recommend going for that rather quickly. If there is Gold or Silver nearby, which is rarer, Mining should be a priority. If you have no commerce resources, Education should be your top priority, as you need to get cottages out ASAP.

 

[Emptiness]

(Onionsoilder already said some of this, but I've already typed it so I might as well post it.)

Lucian is a Doviello hero. He's listed under "Heroes" in the Civilopedia.

Giants are barbarians, but like animals they have the "Hidden Nationality" promotion (looks like a skull and crossed bones). This allows a unit to attack the units of civs without being at war. You have to keep an eye out for that promotion on units, not only barbarians but also units belonging to other civs as well.

Hunting is a particularly expensive early tech. In this game, because of your starting area, there are some techs you should have researched first: Mining (to be able to cut down trees), Calendar (to be able to build plantations, for the commerce), Ancient Chants (to allow you to build monuments, which expand your cultural borders), and Festivals (to allow you to build markets, to support your economy). Researching Mysticism and Education before Hunting might also have been helpful, so that you can build cottages (for extra commerce) and so that you could adopt the God King and Apprenticeship civics.

From your current position, you need to boost your commerce. You're already down to 60% science, and only generating 9 /turn. Make sure your cities are working tiles that provide commerce, even if that means less production. I suggest that you switch to research Ancient Chants, and then build a monument in Mortensholm. This will expand your borders to include the Fur, on which you can build a camp to get some more commerce. Try not to build any new units, and don't found any new cities until you've managed to research the rest of the techs I listed above. It's very easy to flounder your economy in FfH2, so don't feel bad about being in this situation. It will take a while to get a feel for how the game works.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

It almost looks like you're playing on an arbroreal map or something. Baaaaad idea. Chopping is harder to get in FfH and much less profitable.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

he's definitely playing Erebus. baaaaad idea

go to the modmods section in this forum and get ErebusContinent, it takes a while to initialize but it's entirely worth it

 

[Demus]

he's only got a single silk tile in his BFC's sofar, so calendar isn't required. Education however is, as is one of the maintenance reducing civics (city states or aristocracy) a bit further in the game. I'd switch to education (also passes by ancient charms for culture), then back to mining. With mining, you can chop all those forests for farms, allowing you to build more cottages. Also, when you've teched mining, see if you have copper. If you do, tech bronze working asap. It will upgrade all your melee troops to bronze weapons (not your hunters though), allow you to chop the jungle around those gems resources and allow you to build sons or arsena (who, with bronze weapons, will have 5 strength).

NOTE: bronze is revealed at mining, but you can only collect it's bonus when you've teched bronze working (which is +1 str. for all your melee units). A few other resources function similarly (bronze/iron/horse/incence/reagents).

Smokehouses aren't that valuable, since in your situation they'll only provide 1 health (2 when you hook up cows, which will be a while). On the other hand, you only have 1 warrior per city atm! Even though you're pretty safe from barbarians as charadon, you should still reinforce fjirgard to defend against the Ljos.

 

[Souljar]

Don't forget your world spell (check the civilopedia). Its an important part of the game...

 

[readercolin]

sounds like I need to finish that intro to FFH post... Ahh, well, I'll try to post later today.

Ok, first things first, you need Ancient Chants. This unlocks monuments, which gives +2 culture - enough to get your BFC. Once you have that, your next two priority techs, given your start, would be mining to chop down forests, and education, to build cottages.

The next thing to be aware of is who your civ is - The Dovollio. You have a close neighbor, and you have beastmen. As you are at peace with barbarians, I would recommend doing something about this situation (the key here is that Hidden Nationality troops, the only ones that will attack you, cannot capture your cities). That means that if you gather a large force of beastmen (hey, what else are you producing?) you can go smash your neighbor and give your economy a nice big shot in the arm, and you don't even need to defend your cities from barbs. Make sure that you use lucian to lead the charge, as his higher strength can help you smash their defending stacks pretty easily. If he dies, oh well, its not like he's too important. You get a better hero later on anyways. Oh, and use your world spell right before you attack, then waste all the wolves it gives you as cannon fodder to damage their defenders right before you attack.

Most importantly though, look at the tech tree, look at the civilopedia, and find out more about the civs and units. Decide what you want to research towards - once you have all the techs in the first two columns that are above mysticysm, you can go down pretty much any line that you want, and do note that you can focus down just one line, or expand out to get all types of units.

Hope this helps, and check back later today, I should have a rather large post ready that is an introduction to FFH.

-Colin

 

[Bill Bisco]

Your Priority Techs are always Ancient Chants then Mysticism. WHen you have Mysticism, build an Elder Council in every city, and then assign a sage in every city. Then you can get Mining or whatever.

 

[tharg]

You should not play Charadon as a builder. The -10% research and lack of libraries are going to hurt. You are aggressive, start off with a 4str unit and have an advantage upgrading to new units, use this. Spam units and attack the neighbours, raze their cities and use the plunder to finance your economy, which is best run at a loss. Mostly don’t keep captured cites or you will stagnate. Amelanchier should not be a problem any more. You want to get ahead early with Charadon, as he has little staying power.

It always depends, but mining and bronze working is typically the best research path for Charadon, the two gem mines aren’t going to change my mind.

If it turns out that you do not have a land root to anyone, which can happen then you can consider yourself stuffed. However you are on a fairly easy level so just might be able to survive. Prioritise sailing and bronze working and get in action as quickly as possible. Erebus with no softening is asking for trouble with Charadon.

Oh and you need this http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=265888 Explains about hidden barbarians as well as lots of other stuff.

 

[Senethro]

Sidney Magal: Just so you know, you've been given a lot of bad advice so far in this thread. What you should do is have fun with all the different options and try out lots of different ways of playing. Then if you want to learn the small number of ways of playing that are "best" and can be used to cheese the CPU at high difficulties, come back and post another thread.

As you've found with the game you played, whats really important is getting the gold flowing, as that'll cut down the research times of everything else. If you've got unforested Calendar resources which give high gold then Calendar tech is good. Mining lets you have Gold/Gems resource which can be a huge money maker in the early game and also allows forest chopping, so you can build those farms and get cities growing. Education is the mainstay and long term bet as it allows cottages. Education should really be one of the first 6 techs you research, and often the 3rd. The sooner the cottages are built then the sooner you'll have Towns.

Its more fun to work out the rest yourself. Actually, heres one hint - Civic: Agrarian is the default civic for the early game. Use it.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Agrarian is the default civic all the time. if you're FoL then it's Guardian of Nature, and the others see only VERY limited use, mercantilism is usually worthless and Conquest is good if you're already drowning in food and have no use for more of it, or if you have a very low number of farms ( Lanun for example, which can choose between Foreign Trade - which is good if you're exploting trade routes - and Slavery ) . keep in mind that the default strategy is Aristocracy+Agriarianism+Farm Spam, unless you're Kuriotate or Bannor which call for cottage spam.

 

[Onionsoilder]

Agrarian is the default civic all the time. if you're FoL then it's Guardian of Nature, and the others see only VERY limited use, mercantilism is usually worthless and Conquest is good if you're already drowning in food and have no use for more of it, or if you have a very low number of farms ( Lanun for example, which can choose between Foreign Trade - which is good if you're exploting trade routes - and Slavery ) . keep in mind that the default strategy is Aristocracy+Agriarianism+Farm Spam, unless you're Kuriotate or Bannor which call for cottage spam.

On maps with multiple continents, Foreign Trade can be very useful. On my Grigori game, I was getting 6 trade routes per coastal city, ~5 commerce per trade route. On Pangia-type maps, then Agristocracy is one of the best.

 

[Bill Bisco]

No, my advice was not bad, Mysticism gives you elder councils and sages to upp your research rate so that you have the momentum to get the expensive techs of mining, bronze working, etc. Mysticism also gives you God King which helps your production rate, which is also very important.

There are a few rare situations which it is more economical to go Calendar before mysticism and that's when you have multiple (i.e. two or more) unforested plantationable resources. Else, its faster and better to go Mysticism.

If you want to play Charadon as an extremely early attacker, you should play Marathon on a small Pangea map with many AI civs and kill off enemy scouts with Lucian to gain him xp so that he can start conquering cities.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Education is usually better for jumpstarting research and it makes your troops stronger to boot. When you're forested in like that though...mysticism first might actually be better, yeah.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yeah, your better hope would be to use mysticism and the elder councils+sage slots it gives to grap mining+education for cottaging. then you could cottage your capital, go to code of laws for aristocracy, start the farmspam in your other cities, then bronzeworking, then sanitation, then whatever you like

 

[Senethro]

No, my advice was not bad, Mysticism gives you elder councils and sages to upp your research rate so that you have the momentum to get the expensive techs of mining, bronze working, etc. Mysticism also gives you God King which helps your production rate, which is also very important.

There are a few rare situations which it is more economical to go Calendar before mysticism and that's when you have multiple (i.e. two or more) unforested plantationable resources. Else, its faster and better to go Mysticism.

If you want to play Charadon as an extremely early attacker, you should play Marathon on a small Pangea map with many AI civs and kill off enemy scouts with Lucian to gain him xp so that he can start conquering cities.

Mysticism is expensive in beakers, and in a slow growth/mediocre production environment such as he has, 1 worker slot and a 60 hammer build for 5 commerce is too expensive. You're also forgetting that he is Doviello and starts ~15 turns of tech behind everyone else as well as -10% research. I can't remember the exact tech costs for Mysticism, but isn't it 200ish on Monarch? How long is +5beakers, +1 Gold, +3GPP, +2.5 Hammers, -2 Food/turn going to take to pay for 200 beakers, 60 hammers and the opportunity cost of having each stage of a cottage 25 turns earlier?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Where is he going to put cottages before mining?

Mysticism will almost double his research, which would get him mining + education faster than going straight for those two techs and probably leave him with a GS to use.

 

[Senethro]

Mysticism won't "almost double" his research because of the time delay needed to research it and build Elder Councils. The delay is the problem as he could almost research Education/Crafting/Mining in the time it takes to research Mysticism and build Elder Councils in 2 cities.

The whole situation is weird, thanks to Erebus mapscript. With the benefit of hindsight I think it would have been best for city placement to maximise unforested riverside grasslands and unforested grassland hills. Agrarian farms on the former, cottages on the latter, then research Mining for forest cutting, then CoL.

Note to Sidney: Your city placement would have been fine and quite logical if it wasn't for the mapscript. Usually there aren't quite so many trees to swim through.

 

[Sidney Magal]

Thank you all for the replies, they sure help. I started a new game and posted it in a new thread. I think it may be easier to get the hang of the game by doing it. Could you guys help me there?