Help with victory condition, and promotion ideas

[hiphopin]

Hey I have been playing FFH2 for a while now. But im having a problem with repitition, I cant seem to do anything else but, regardless of civ, build as many cities as I can expanding until theres no more room, all my cities are usually 5 spaces away from eachother to prevent overlaping, sometimes though I will only use 4 spaces. Please tell me how you posistion your cities, and if expanding a ton is a good strategy. Also I HAVE TO KNOW is just building a few cities like 4-7ish worthwhile at all? Or does it cripple you, I have just been wondering if haveing a smaller empire screws you.

Then I just research whatever techs suit the civ best for warfare and wage war against my most hated neighbor. Take that person down, expand more and go on to the other civs. I just cant seem to do anything else but warmonger with all my civs, as much as I try to do culture or other victories with a builder playstyle I just cant. At minimum I will wipe out the continent im on of all other players and spare the others on the other continent, but I have rarely done less than that. I just cant get rid of a build up then wage war when you have better troops playstyle.

Please give me some strategies they dont have to be linear, in fact please no linear strategies, just broad ones on a general direction on how to achieve victory with each of the conditions. So far I have only won the game 3 ways, score, domination, conquest. Thats it.
Additionaly I generaly dont do any other promotions than combat 1-5 almost always. City raider for half of my attack melee units and combat for the other half. City garrison for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY DEFENDING ARCHERS. Disciple combat 1-5, 2 of my high priests command 1-3 or 4 if im order, and then after I max combat I just usually go for mobility and command if I havent got that yet. Arcane combat 1-5 max a spell spere to 3 and if tier 3 is a summoned unit I get Spell extention 1-2, if not I will try and max another sphere. Recon combat 1-5 generally and for some I will get the subdue animal promotion, usually thats it. Siege I do accuracy for 1 per stack of troops, and the rest barrage 1-3. Mounted and Naval, combat 1-5 (GASP SHOCKER). I think thats most of the categories, as you can see I rely on combat 1-5 for pretty much everything, can you guys give me some ideas on other promotions, and how to use them strategicly. Im just a bland player .

1 More thing, does DRILL 1-4 have ANY advantage over combat 1-5. I have RAAAAAAAARELY EVER gotten the drill promotion over combat, if you think about it, combat 1-5 was buffed compared to vanilla civ, it has double the strength increase, yet drill stayed exactly the same, I just dont see a practical use for it.

So please give me some ideas, killing all my neighbors with blood thirsty combat 1-5 troops and my no production overlaping 5 space, cities of doom that cover the map gets old, especially doing that with elohim O_O.

Thanks

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I can think of only one reason for prefering Drill 1-4: they are prerequisites for Blitz.

I'm not saying that the first strikes are bad, but they don't compare to the combat boni, which are greater in FfH than Vanilla/BtS.

I still think that they need to implement a Morale Mechanic, and that the Drill promotions should influence this.

 

[hiphopin]

What would the morale mechanic do? And I did not know drill was a preq for blitz, thanks for telling me.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It hasn't been decided exactly. It is (was?) in the design doc for Shadow, but that is in a private thread so only team members know what was being discussed. The idea has been thrown around, but nothing is really decided yet (as far as we know).

I was thinking it could be tied to Fear. Units with low morale may refuse to right if their odds aren't good, they might disobey other orders too (like refusing to move into proceed into enemy territory or explore to far from home), possibly cause some unhappiness in cities where they are garrisoned, be easier to capture, and maybe even defect on their own. High morale units could keep going even in the face of dragons, could more effectively put down revolts, cause more military happiness, and be harder to capture. Of course, it could also have some effect on their actual strength in combat.

Morale would be a separate value for each unit. Different unit types could have different values when built, with different civics, buildings, resources (luxuries, mana), happiness in the city building them, etc., effecting their morale when built. Spells like courage, loyalty, and valor would boost morale. Winning against the odds would boost morale. Facing units with fear would greatly hurt morale. Having other units nearby die would hurt morale. Happiness in the city where garrisoned and war weariness would effect morale too.

 

[hiphopin]

Whoah, if something like that gets implemented that's going to take some getting used to . That would be really neat though, it sounds interensting and would make FFH even more unique than it already is.

 

[xienwolf]

It had been stated though that Drill wasn't changed because of how the effects stack up with other promotions and unit strength. It is intended that you would not go for Drill until after you have already gained a few combat promotions.


I don't recall where it was, or if it was for FfH or normal Civ 4, but someone did a huge analysis of the statistics on things and created some cute graphs to demonstrate that you shouldn't take Drill till after Combat III, but then Drill I > Combat IV. Cannot remember how many Drill Ranks were expected to be better than Combat V, and since it might have been Vanilla that means the numbers would be very different here.

 

[Sofista]

Hey I have been playing FFH2 for a while now. But im having a problem with repitition, I cant seem to do anything else but, regardless of civ, build as many cities as I can expanding until theres no more room, all my cities are usually 5 spaces away from eachother to prevent overlaping, sometimes though I will only use 4 spaces. Please tell me how you posistion your cities, and if expanding a ton is a good strategy. Also I HAVE TO KNOW is just building a few cities like 4-7ish worthwhile at all? Or does it cripple you, I have just been wondering if haveing a smaller empire screws you.

Why not try the Kuriotates to get off the habit?

 

[micmc]

how we used to handle moralle in the sandbox war games, it's a straight

-1 attack, -1 defense, refuse to fight, runaway, result progression. Moralle for normal troops would start at 0, vetran at +1, elite +2, any number of factors could lower moralle (as stated so well above). This was all before computers to do the calc.'s (yes virginia there was a time before computers) so it was a pretty lean system.

Today you could make the civ building tie into moralle so culture represents basic Moralle rediness ( 0,+1 +2 etc) and you could end up with "super" normal units (based on combat history) and mojo-powerful units that weren't worth cat-urine so you could get die men fu (sorry for the spelling) and Constanitople places in games where the lower tech unit could still whop the big guy, and the "perfect knight in shining armor" might still run away from Acre and beat up on the christian turks instead)

but boy it'd suck to have to tear into a world builder on his own ground...where every unit is Elite++ and your guys steadily want to find thier mommies.

 

[Roghar]

I never go for drill before combat, but its very useful afterwards, especially to get blitz. Drill IV + blitz on an already powerful unit means multiple kills per turn and virtually no damage to your unit. My current Chalid with 9 sun mana most assuredly enjoys it

 

[hiphopin]

Thanks for all of your replies, im going to get drill now And btw sofista I do love the Kuriotates.

However now that I know the use for drill, can some more people tell me if having fewer cities crushes the player at all? Or is it better to mass expand? I can see though, if you have fewer cities you can defend them better, but if you have more your offence will be greater, I would belive your science would also be greater, and after you build some basic cash flow buildings so would your money.

So please tell me what my empire size should generally be depending on what victory condition im trying to achieve. Like for example I could see having fewer cities would help a culture victory, but can you tell me empire size for other conditions.

Also do people cluster cities close to eachother IE haveing workable tiles overlap, or do you like them to be spaced if possible, I myself have like I said in the first post on almost all my cities no tile overlaping since I space almost all of them out 5 tiles away.

Thanks again for your feedback, im going to try as best as I can to keep my empire small to see if its worthwhile, but I have tried it before, and I just ended up expanding again And 1 more thing does playing on a higher difficulty level make it worse to have a larger empire, maybe its the fact that for the most part I play on warlord and noble because I like to win .

EDIT-And please tell me some civ specific empire sizes, that would help a lot as I have heard from some people that certain cives do better with larger empires, and others with smaller. Thanks

 

[Demus]

i'm no expert, but to awnser some of your questions:

The more cities you have, the higher your city upkeep becomes. Fully built (including fully matured cottages) they can usually support the additional maintenance, but for quite some time your economy will take a beating. The upkeep increases exponentially, and expecially without city states can easily reach over 20 gold per city. And yes, city maintenance increases with difficulty level.

For civ specific empire sizes: the kurio's require a certain (map size specific) amount of core cities, which generally need a very decent placement and little to no overlap to counter the limited amount. The settlements obviously don't matter, they're just culture placers and chokepoint defenders. The bannor on the other hand (expecially with order) can get a nearly unlimited amount of cities, since with their UB's they can hit -100% maintenance (no city upkeep whatsoever).

About other specific sizes, ask some of the other players around here, i wouldn't know tbh

 

[hiphopin]

Thanks Demus that helps quite a bit, I didnt know city upkeep increased with difficulty all this time. Thanks

 

[hbar]

I've found that culture victories require a lot of planning - almost from the start. Balseraphs and Elohim seem to be the best civs, along with OO for religion. The overcouncil can give you early access to Liberty (+100% ), and the fact that Sylvan's Prefect Lyre can now be moved helps a lot.

Tower victories used to require HUGE empires, luck, and usually Rites of Oghama, although now with Metamagic II, it can be done with just 5 mana nodes and lots of micromanagement. Beware the large diplo penalty when building the tower of Necromancy...

Altar victories require some planning (I always forget to forgo the Great Library) but aren't too tough, and it makes for a more unique army, as you're encouraged to lean more on divine units (Priests, Paladins, etc.). The last Altar (like the last Tower) takes FOREVER to build, though, so if you're not careful, you might get a conquest victory out of boredom.

 

[xienwolf]

Altar Victories should be a bit more of a thrill now Code was fixed so that all Evil Civilizations should declare war on you unless they are at war with someone else for so long as you possess the last 2 ranks before the final (Divine & Exalted)

 

[hiphopin]

ooooh, altar sounds fun now . Near guaranteed war at the last 2 altars=awsome