Help with Illians?

[Sephi]

Thats late game thinking you're applying there. Early-Mid with small city sizes means that maybe all the tiles your working are river tiles.

There are a lot of mapscripts where this is simply wrong. Either because there aren't many rivers or because there are large areas of plains/tundra/desert so that you really need more food. Illian pagan temple is really one of the best UB in the game

 

[Senethro]

Your first Settler has 4 movement and huge visibility. Theres no excuse for not having 2 good city positions unless you're playing an Arid/Ice Age/High sea level or something.

 

[Earthling]

Some comments of my own, given Senethro's reasonable points:

I'd forgotten about the whole "Stasis" strategy because it doesn't work on the settings I play either (Large/Immortal-Deity). But in general I don't think it's that hard to beat these AI though, and it's a valid point that Illians are weaker at higher difficulties. And regardless of how things are against the AI, these cheese strategies definitely aren't guaranteed to work against human players either, just becomes a waste of your worldspell for little benefit early on. Humans playing many other civs will have the edge on the Illians by far.

About the Temples - I agree that they're definitely good, like the worldspell is, but the main problem is that on their own these don't make up for the Illians' shortcomings (lack of religion, magic, special units, economic traits, diplomatic relations... a lot of drawbacks). The terraforming benefits aren't particularly better than at least a couple of other civs with similar abilities; indeed part of the benefit is it just gives other civs no reason to want to capture your cities (and the AI won't care).

I did have a couple of suggestions though, mainly about the Priests as have been discussed before (and they are one of the first things I think need tweaking). It would be nice if they were rebuildable, if they start over from their basic level they need lots of xp to upgrade again anyway so I don't think that would be overpowered. Spell-wise, I'd think it would be cool to change Ice III to Blizzard (spawns Blizzards) and then give the High Priests an upgrade: They could cast Snowfall (equivalent to Auric) at the cost of sacrificing the caster.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Stasis is great on any level including the highest ones. AI civs get more troops as you climb the levels but so do barbs, and 20 turns of no production against immortal or deity barb swarms is a really hard kick in the nuts, especially to a civ that expanded fast and spread its defenders thin. Do what I suggested and you'll be surprised at your position on the scoreboard around turn 100.

 

[Turinturambar]

I don't think Illians are weaker at higher difficulties. I feel pretty comfortable saying that I could win any reasonable Deity start with the Illians. Stasis is that good. Auric has pretty nice traits with charismatic/defender. And the temples help greatly if you are boxed in near one of the poles.

 

[Earthling]

Well I feel pretty comfortable saying I could win any reasonable Deity start with any civ, and probably in less than a third of the time it would take the Illians, who can only really win conquest/dom. The AI is that weak. In short Illians are still way harder and more tedious to play than a lot of other civs. Defender is perhaps the most worthless trait of all; if Auric doesn't get Letum he's at a severe disadvantage.

Stasis isn't bad but using it right away is a gimmick and doesn't always work - use its right away and then see how your position works out around turn 200...you've wasted your worldspell, still won't have a better economy than if you'd just played someone else, and still will have advanced AIs who all hate you to deal with. You also won't have a religion or hardly any magic besides the priests of winter.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

and probably in less than a third of the time it would take the Illians, who can only really win conquest/dom.

implying that dom takes 3x as long as builder victories

whaaaaaaat

Do you play huhe maps with a ton of space for early expansion, or something? I can't figure out how that comment is true.

 

[Senethro]

Stasis isn't bad but using it right away is a gimmick and doesn't always work - use its right away and then see how your position works out around turn 200...you've wasted your worldspell, still won't have a better economy than if you'd just played someone else, and still will have advanced AIs who all hate you to deal with. You also won't have a religion or hardly any magic besides the priests of winter.

Whats the difference? Unless you've been tech trading you'll still be just as far ahead at turn 220 whether you used Stasis at 0 or 200.

And if a 20 turn headstart isn't enough for you then nothing can be.

 

[Turinturambar]

Actually casting stasis on turn 1 is not that effective on higher difficulties. Since workers can still improve tiles, you are forcing the AI to lose some turns working unimproved tiles.
Stasis should be cast the turn you declare war on another civ, if you expect some difficulties fighting. With a 20 turn production advantage winning the war is usually a cakewalk.

 

[Earthling]

@Monkeyfinger:

Sorry if you missed it in the thread that I play large maps, Immortal/Deity difficulty; to be more clear I'll usually crowd a large map with a couple more civs than recommended (~11, depending on the type of map though). If you're playing small maps with 5 civs then that early rush might work a lot better, it certainly doesn't stop the AI on these settings.

About the victory conditions I meant it in the sense of playtime, though it could be true on other counts like total #turns depending on the map/civ. But if you just started a game and went for the Altar, for instance, or founded Kilmorph and spread it to everyone so the AI would all convert/be peaceful, you could be done in a few hours on the clock, versus a whole lot longer if you're going for domination. And the Illians would also be a very long game because of their lack of magic/religion/special units etc... I'd bet they would certainly take longer to get to dom than another suitable civ like Clan or Hippus for instance.

@Senethro:
The difference in any one particular game (ie loading the same start) with the worldspell might not be that much, though in general I wouldn't use it at the very start anyway, I'd rather do so right around DoW when I have a serious target and need it to take them out. But the point I was contending was against the implication that the Illians, by using their worldspell like this, do better than most other civs. In the same way Monkeyfinger was saying, play till turn 200 with the Khazad; every factor of their tech, economy, religion, military, relations etc... will be as good or better as a game with Illians assuming they actually succeeded in their Stasis-war anyway. I'm not saying it's impossible to win with Illians, just a lot more trouble and tediousness than many of the other civs. And for the purpose of this thread/discussion one of the major fixes I think would be on the flavor side to just make them more fun - they don't have much of a purpose when Drifa and Auric are underwhelming, and can't really win half of the victory conditions at all.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Illians will be behind many other civs you could have picked in terms of raw score at any given early/mid turn, yes, but that's not the whole story. No other civs can set back every other civ in the game a significant amount. It's more than 20 turns of loss in practice if you cast it once actual fighting has started, since your rivals are going to lose many improvements and maybe even some cities (possibly to you!) that they would have been able to protect if they could still make new units.

So their relative position's going to be pretty strong once the game's in full swing. If, compared to a game with another civ, you're behind, while everyone else is even further behind, that's a victory for you. (And that happy cap of 6 + temples to let you make crappy land effective keep the Illians well above the bottom of the heap in terms of raw performance. They're more like average, probably.)

Wouldn't use the Khazad as an example to put the Illians down. There's no shame in being outperformed by the best. I'm not calling the Illians the best - just close to it.