Hi, im new to ffh2 and i need help

[tabc3dd]

So, im rather new to ffh2 and i need helps and tips on how to improve.

First of all, i know i shouldnt automate my builders, but i dont know which improvements to build. In what order of importance do you put food, production and gold ? Is there a way to mod my game to make automated builders build cottage if im losing cash per turn, windmill if not and farm if i cant build a windmill ?

Secondly, i decided to play as the lojsoflar or whatever they are called, the elves. What religion do you think has the best synergy with them ? I was thinking FoL to get ancient forests since the elves dont chop forests down to build improvements. But is anything else better ?

Thirdly, what is ReXing? ive heard about it, but cant find it's meaning.

Fourthly, how should i tech? My current strategy involves getting all the religions to get the special buildings and therefore more manas. Will that still be viable on diety difficulty or will the other players get the religions before me ?

Fithly, do you reccomend me to place my starting city on the coast or inland ?

And if there are any tips and hints you could give me, id appreciate them.

tyvm
tabc3dd

 

[mimic]

Hehe I'm not the best person to give tips out but whatever:

1. Farm all grasslands and put cottages on plains, floodplains are especially good for cottages especially with the financial trait which will give you more gold. You might need construction for farming some grasslands because they might need irrigation, sanitation (tech) will give you more food on farms and so will Agrarianism (civic) alternatively build farms everywhere and go aristocracy but only do this with a financial leader as you will make gold and (less) food from farms. Sorry if that's confusing maybe someone else will do a better job of explaining this one

2.FoL is definitely a must for Ljosalfar, cottage everything with them as the ancient forests will give you production, food and gold (elves can build improvements in forests)

3.No idea

4.Get Godking at the beginning this requires ancient chants and mysticism and it will boost your capital, after that it depends on your civ/leader so for elves I'd recommend archery and fellowship of leaves.

5. For elves build your city in a bunch of forests, when you get FoL they will slowly turn into ancient forests

These are simple and basic ideas I gave you but they work..I think.
Also, Welcome and there is the fall from heaven strategy and tips subforum
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=257
You should probably posted this in there, I don't care but others might, request an admin to move it or something.

 

[tabc3dd]

thanks for the quick reply.

btw, which is the best elf leader ? atm, im going with the second one , but its a slightly random choice

 

[Malkaviel]

FFH2 is more situational than bts. That's one of the reasons I like it alot. It's tough to say "do this, do this next, then do that". Lanun for example, yes start on a coast and don't worry about economy for a long time as long as you have fishing. Ljos if you get to beeline FoL religion, great. That and archery you're pretty solid for awhile. Kurios, you're never going to particularly be a powerhouse economy or unit producer with only 3 cities so plan accordingly.

If you have room to expand and not much threat near, consider festivals and cartography early to maintain your economy. If you have hostile civs nearby consider making a few warriors in 3 cities and beelining something like bronze working to wipe them out early.

Founding more than one religion is actually a poor idea and I do it sometimes just to clown. As far as types of mana go, some civs won't use mana types at all. Khaz for example, plow bronze and RoK religion and beat everyone up with axemen and stonewardens. Some civs would do much better having 4-7 sources of one type of mana because it makes summoned mobs stronger. Sheaim units with channelling 3 and 5 death mana=game over "most" games. (usually 8 total units, 4 eaters, 3 lichs and a hero). BUT you gotta live long enough to get there he he...

You'd only really want several types of mana for a Tower of Mastery victory, and even then, once you get metamagic (save a mana node to convert to meta) you can dispel nodes and make your new 4 for the next tower. (or amurites start with meta so don't need a meta node).

Farming, eh. Starting out if your cities, for happiness sake, can only bear some 5 to 7 population, not much point in farming everything. Pace yourself. If you have a size 8 town with +8 food per turn, but max 9 happiness you've missed a chance somewhere to build something more important. (Unless it's part of your mechanic like sak population to feed calabim's vamps, or slavery) Similarly 6 mines or 6 cottages in a city that needs to grow shoot you in the foot, too.

I've been playing ffh2 about 5 months. I'll start a new single player game about every other day on varying maps, starting as a random leader, with various challenge options selected, usually Monarch difficulty but not below that, and just do the best I can with what I have to work with. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's really challenging, sometimes I get rolled, but I learn something new about every day still.

 

[Demus]

mines or lumbermills on top of hills (lumbermill + forest on hill is same yield as a mine, unless running arete from the RoK religion). Plains should almost always be cottaged imho, while grassland is usually farmed (unless a city site has excessive food available). Your first objective is to get an economy going, eighter by cottaging, or by using farms and specialists untill you tech up to code of laws for aristocracy (gives +commerce to farms, quite powerful in combination with the agriarism civic). I personally don't recommend the latter for the elves though, since this makes you lose some of the hammers from the forest.

Elves should run FoL, no question. Their priests allow you to put down forests in every tile in your empire, allowing you additional food, hammers and health from every possible tile. The forests also synergise with the elves double movement in forests.

REXing means Rapid EXpanding, basically pumping out settlers like no tomorrow, at the cost of limited defence per city. Usually you do this for a short burst to fill up some territory, then go back to troop training to keep your newly gained territory. Very useful strat, but mind your city upkeep costs! (run city states or aristocracy to keep them in check).

Teching REALLY depends on civs, but you'll always need some form of commerce fast. This means one of the following:
1. education. On the path to education, you get farms (food!) and monuments (first source of culture). At the tech itself, you get cottages (commerce!) and a +2 exp civic. The tech is also required for quite a few later economy techs, very important.
2. mysticism + festivals. For your specialist economy. Myst. allows the elder councils for your first sage specialists, while festivals give you the very useful markets for merchants, as well as carnavals for additional happiness. If you do this, make sure you advance to aristocracy quite fast afterwards, because this form of economy won't last that long.
3. LANUN ONLY fishing. With the lanun's inherit +food from water tiles, and their pirate coves, they can suffice on fishing and sailing to get a killer economy going. Careful though, basically no other civ can really keep it's empire afloat on sea food alone.
It's recommended to aim for 1 religion (in some cases, 2), and stick with it. Quite a few civs have beeline paths towards religions (expecially dwarves+RoK and elves+FoL), and at higher difficulty lvls, it's tough to take 1 of those, let alone all. Most civs work well with certain religions, for more info on this check the strategy forums.
Once you got your economy going (and possibly went for an early religion), it's time to replace your old warriors. Most civs should head for bronze working, some can go with archery or hunting instead.

City placement depends on the map type, but even then, it's not THAT important. Just make sure you can get at least 1 decent coastal city, this doesn't have to be your first one. Things to look for for your first city: food, some non-forested area's to build farms/cottages on (doesn't matter that much if you're elves though, but for the other's it important), some form of production. Gold/gems/crops/+bonus unique features (ydrassil, dragon bones, remnants of patria, mirror of heavens) are a great plus as well, and will easily double your starting expansion speed.

 

[mimic]

btw, which is the best elf leader ? atm, im going with the second one , but its a slightly random choice

Well for a new player I'd suggest Amelanchier because his traits make your units stronger, however Arendel is good for early culture (and if you go down religious line) and even though thessa gives +3 health to city's its not really needed since most elven cities can get up to size 20 with ancient forests and cottages anyway (with guardian of nature of course) but if you want powerful arcane units thessa is the one you want, but magic can be daunting for new players.

 

[Bad Player]

Hehe I'm not the best person to give tips out but whatever:

1. Farm all grasslands and put cottages on plains, floodplains are especially good for cottages especially with the financial trait which will give you more gold. You might need construction for farming some grasslands because they might need irrigation, sanitation (tech) will give you more food on farms and so will Agrarianism (civic) alternatively build farms everywhere and go aristocracy but only do this with a financial leader as you will make gold and (less) food from farms. Sorry if that's confusing maybe someone else will do a better job of explaining this one

I've traditionally put cottages on grasslands and farms on plains - is there an advantage to doing it the other way around?

 

[mimic]

Farms on grassland give more food and cottages on plains will give production and gold.

 

[Malkaviel]

I've traditionally put cottages on grasslands and farms on plains - is there an advantage to doing it the other way around?

no, it's 6 of 1, a half dozen of another. a farm is plus however much food based on techs and civics. a cottage is similar statistic.

with agrarianism you lose a plain's production, probably why you might opt to farm grass since it doesn't start with a hammer to lose, but eh... in the end its going to be a very small difference since the food from a farmed plain can feed an engineer.

if you're really into micro-managing you probably wouldn't have a rule of thumb for which plots get farms or cottages. heck, if you have all grass and water you might make a couple workshops

 

[Gravage]

Hey guys,
Instead of making a new thread for my own noobish questions, I thought it'd be best to ask for some (returning) beginners help here too.

It's been about a year since I last played FFH, and needless to say, many things have changed (for the better ). There's one thing that's bugging me though - how do I upgrade my units to iron weapons? I've got the iron in a mine, which is connected to my cities, but my units (atm vampires) won't upgrade their weaponry, even if they're in a city. I've also tried constructing forges in each village, but that doesn't work either.

Cheers in advance,

Gravage


Edit: Nevermind. Just researched Iron Working ._.'

 

[Malkaviel]

the tech 'smelting' reveals iron or the mines of gal'dur wonder or infernal palace supply iron but the tech 'iron working' upgrades your units if iron is available.

 

[JonathanStrange]

Having observed previous FFH2 cottage vs farms debates as well as having read many anti-archery, anti-wall, anti-garrison, anti-Agrairian, cliched "the best defense is a great offense" posts and entire threads, I'm surprised that anyone dares recommend anything regarding farms/cottages, playing the Ljos, civics, city placement, leaders, tech paths, religions without a huge "I'm no expert but I play one on CivFanatics" warning.

 

[Malkaviel]

Having observed previous FFH2 cottage vs farms debates as well as having read many anti-archery, anti-wall, anti-garrison, anti-Agrairian, cliched "the best defense is a great offense" posts and entire threads, I'm surprised that anyone dares recommend anything regarding farms/cottages, playing the Ljos, civics, city placement, leaders, tech paths, religions without a huge "I'm no expert but I play one on CivFanatics" warning.

well, to farm or to cottage is alot of math really. honestly from playing the civ series for years, aside from lesser experience from ffh2 (and this aspect really isn't that different) a "hammer town" may have no cottages, because you never intend to build the town improvements which make use of the trade.

say you have 7 cities. 2 of them have maybe 1 or 0 map resources which necessarily produce trade. forget trade in them, just maximize production and enough food to keep them growing and they crank out military units. saves resources. you're not wasting time in them building libraries and labs, and that time spent is poured into the units that give you an edge. those plots you might cottage or windmill get workshops or mines.

then there's the malady of cottage everything and you do great out-tech'ing everyone but they attack you with 40 str 4 units that kill your 8 shiny str 11 units.

the answer lies somewhere in the middle, and again, is entirely situational.

 

[cyther]

Rexing is rapid expansion. It works a lot better in the mid/late game in FfH because if you get too big too quickly your empire might become overrun by a barb swarm.

 

[CurseUppl]

Didn't want to start a new thread so I'll ask here quickly:

Khazad can't seem to upgrade their adepts to mages? I've got the tech (arcane lore) and they're all level 5 and in a city with a mage guild. Yet no upgrade option. Am I missing something?

Thanks and sorry for the OT'ness. If anything it will help the OP

 

[Emptiness]

Khazad don't get access to Mages or Archmages, as part of their design.

 

[CurseUppl]

Dang. There should be a message in the race window! Anyway thanks

 

[Nefelia]

I'm no expert but I play one on CivFanatics.

The general consensus for the Ljosofar is to "cottage everything". That holds largely true: assuming that your religion will be Followship of the Leaves, every one of your worked tiles will have and extra +1, +1 +0.5, and +1. That said, you should still keep your eyes open for some nice hilly areas for production cities, for which you will build farms, mines, and workshops.

The absolute best leader for the Elves is, in my opinion, Thessa. Magic is the best way to counter the Ljosofar's weaknesses (no seige engines). Also, the cheap settlers (the more important aspect of the Expansionist trait) helps to speed up your early expansion. But as Mimic mentioned, the magic system of FfH is daunting for newer players, so you may want to go for one of the other leaders until you feel up to exploring the Arcane line.

 

[tabc3dd]

i still dont get the use of cottages, dont they only give 1 , upto 5 i think as towns ?
What is the use of money, apart for khazads who use it for their dwarven vault , when you could get more production with a windmill or a farm ?
And i still dont understand why i shouldnt try to get all the religions first. The bonuses from the holy city special building are very usefull, and the cash always welcomed.

 

[Emptiness]

i still dont get the use of cottages, dont they only give 1 , upto 5 i think as towns ? What is the use of money, apart for khazads who use it for their dwarven vault , when you could get more production with a windmill or a farm ?

is commerce, not gold. Depending on how you have your sliders set, it is converted into research, gold and culture. I'm a big fan of production, but commerce is vital.

And i still dont understand why i shouldnt try to get all the religions first. The bonuses from the holy city special building are very usefull, and the cash always welcomed.

Once you are familiar with FfH2 you may start playing on higher difficulty settings, where the AI can actually compete with you well enough to beat you to founding religions. Time spent researching religion techs is time not spend researching combat or economic techs. In order to be able to protect yourself you may not be able to afford to detour for more than one religion.