I finally finished my 2nd high/low challenge as the Clan of Embers. Total game time (for all three civs) was 16:54. I started with the backward tech Clan of Embers at about turn 250. I spent 100 turns or so getting the necessary techs and building the necessary infrastructure to catch up with the AI players (but still lagging behind the Sheehan and Lichrip that I played to the top 2 positions).
About the time that I was catching up on my isolated penisula with a bunch of barbarian cities, Hyborem popped up nearby. He took over most of the barbarians and gave me a goal. I built up some Ogres, mages, and priests to assualt Hyborem. That war took 50 turns or so.
After taking Hyborem, The Balseraphs DOW me. They were on their own island with only 5 cities so I started to build a navy to take them out. About this time, seevral of the AI players started to ask for help fighting the Sheehan, so I obliged. They had most of the largest continent to themselves and had taken over the Dragon Hoard. I blitzed through the near part of the Sheehan empire taking about 8 cities before having my stacks converge on a nice bottleneck (thanks to the Erebus mapscript). Then I turned south to take out the Balseraphs.
Eventually I eliminated both of my enemies with about 50 turns left in the game. I didn't want to click "end turn" several times, but I did want the Time victory to unlock that trophy (this game had gone on long enough and I didn't want to force myself into another long drawn out game just to get the Time VC later).
I decided to redeploy my troops to take out Van Gossim and Basium. I did this mostly because now that I was powerful and had my orcish war machine going, I thought it appropriate to take out the good guys too. Bassium was a major pain to fight. I lost 50 or more experienced units including 3 liches, 3 archmages, 4 high priests, 4 stoneskin ogres, 4 berserkers, and a slew of combat V promoted ogres. His stacks of angels were just devastating...much tougher than Hyborem's demons. eventually I did turn the tide of the war by sheer force of numbers. I eliminated both of them with about 8 turns left in the game.
I unlocked 6 trophies with this game:
Clan of Embers Victory
High/Low Challenge
Barbarian World
Defeat Hyborem
Defeat Basium
Time Victory
All said it was one of my more satisfying games of FfH. I applaud the design team for coming up with the High/Low challenge. I will be playing many more games with this option checked.
