High2Low-Most fun ever !

[Rod]

Hi folks,

I just played a round on Standard Erebus on Emperor Level and with activated High2Low Challenge.

It was the most fun EVER !

I started as Malakim. AI wanted to assign me a bad start position ,so I walked a round a place the Malakim Capital directly on a plains hill next to a river with LOTS of flood plains (and GOLD). The city prospered as quick as I have hardly seen before and I went quickly for God King and Education. Covered the land with cottages, placed my second city just a few tiles north on another plains hills again surrounded by flood plains and started building the next settler.
.. switch in turn 56 ...

I am ORC. Oh ... (please place the cursing word of your choice) ..... no OH GOOD.

as I remembered from my Malakim Lightbringer Scout the Orcs were pretty near to me, just seperated by a small valley infested by BEARS.

So now I counted my forces. 5 Warriors, 3 Goblins and 1 Golblin Wolf Rider. Experience mostly zero (but Combat 1 is Standard for Orcs). This is enough !

I emptied Braduk till the last youngster who can pick up a club. I held a great speech of the riches that await us in the west and on we marched towards my former home country.

We suffered some minor losses in the Bear Valley, but finally we reached the Golden Flood Plains of the Malakim. We took their cities and their women and we got rich I mean really RICH.

Then I noticed another new feature. Thanks to "For the Horde" which got cast before I took over I have a unit on another continent in a Goblin Fortress. I remembered that I read something like : " You can hire Goblins !" and so I CAN !

For 30 Gold my unit can hire a nasty little Goblin with total strength 3 (including +1 Poison). Moreover every newly hired Goblin can hire more Goblins. THIS IS BROKEN !
I emptied all my coffins and finally hired around 16-17 Goblins and appointed the original Goblin Archer as General.

We marched south and soon we spotted two rich cities of the Amurites (by coincidence he was the leader in score at that point). The cities are on hills as well and well defended by Warriors and Hunters, but nothing I mean NOTHING can withstand 16 ! Goblins at this early stage!

.. switch after ONLY 20 rounds (from bottom to top) in turn 76 ..

Now I really expected to see myself somewhere in the Ice appointed as the new incarnation of Auric Mulcarn, but no! The Illians were pretty bad in score , but they still topped the DWARVES.

I found myself in a pretty cold valley (so far I was right in my expections), but not in Garduk but in Khazak !

30.000 petty Dwarves were pretty poor and lived somewhere in a pretty inhospitable region. Sure there were mountains and lots of them , but no food. Well, actually there was food. We had deers nearby and there was a river and some plains, but we knew neither Agriculture nor Hunting. (Khazak was size 2 and stagnating !)

But there was POTENTIAL . We had a small but well trained army (I suspected some heavy Barbarian activity nearby .. and I was pretty right) and there was a wonderful rich and uninhabitated valley just to west. A lush river, floodplains, corn and copper.

So first things first. We needed techs, we needed new cities and most of all we needed more money. Motherlode had NOT been casted yet ! Good boys.

We had one worker, but around 14,15,16 hills in our current cultural borders. So we built 2 more workers and just covered the whole area with mines.

A few turns later we casted Motherlode and our vaults were overflowing. We quickly built new settlers and used our sturdy Dwarves to drive back nasty Frostlings, Goblins and others from the new Dwarvenhome to the west.

Now it is turn 190 and in only 100 years we developed from a undeveloped third world country into a rich nation of peaceful merchants and protectors of the land. There are 4 million Dwarves now living under the hills. Our vaults are abundant and the best thing ... we take NO (I mean zero) taxes and still make profit, but run a 100% science economy.

It is good to be Dwarf

 

[Rod]

So in the conclusion.

High to Low Challenge is an excellent concept.

It allows you to adopt up to three different play styles in one game. It also makes for a challenge as you always get the Civs that were handled poorly by the AI (mostly by bad City Placement)

Hence as you can built up three different civs you most often have at least one very challenging opponent for the end game.

Last but not the least. The three different civs present you three different puzzles. As you already start at a later stage with the second and the third civ you have different resources available. The puzzle is now to make the best out of it.

 

[Schmoe]

Sold! My next game will be a "high-to-low" challenge

 

[Saytr]

The best game setting are High to Low and Final Five. You have to get off the bottom ASAP or your finished.

I just finished a game with the aformentioned settings. Started Malakim, then at turn 61 I switched to the Elohim and was under attacck by huge hordes of orcs. On turn 145 I became the Luchurip and was immediatley wiped out in 5 turns after switching to them. It was so fun.

 

[Kael]

The best game setting are High to Low and Final Five. You have to get off the bottom ASAP or your finished.

I just finished a game with the aformentioned settings. Started Malakim, then at turn 61 I switched to the Elohim and was under attacck by huge hordes of orcs. On turn 145 I became the Luchurip and was immediatley wiped out in 5 turns after switching to them. It was so fun.

I almost put in a special trophy for this but I figured no one would be crazy enough to try it.

 

[Demus]

the concept of this game type is great, but tbh the AI needs some more work before this truly becomes great. Working different civs towards the top is fun, but generally (and this is expecially true for the bottom civs) they're stuck in a forest start of some sort, causing your first 40 turns to be nothing but slowly teching your way out of oblivion.

 

[OzzyKP]

I was about to post a thread like this myself. I think I'm pretty much ONLY going to play the game with this option selected from now on. I love it. One of the things I liked about switching to Hyberium or Basium was starting out at the bottom and working your way up. This makes it much better.

I rarely ever finish games. Generally I build up a bit of a lead and then get bored. Much higher difficulty levels are more challenging, but just unbalanced and not at all fun. Monarch or Emperor only for me (with raging hordes and aggressive AI for more challenge). So this option just gives me far more challenge and holds my attention much longer.

My first attempt I lost (Bannor --> Elhoim --> Lanun), the third civ I switched into was down to one city and at war. I pulled off a scrappy defense, but my fate was inevitable. Now I'm in an excellent game (Lurchip --> Evil Elves --> Larun) where I've clawed back to the top for the third time and... might actually win, but it won't at all be easy. I'm up for the challenge though.

I may do a write up for the two games. I love this game mode. Great idea whoever thought of it.:goodidea:

 

[Blakmane]

Also it's a little annoying when you swap back to your original civ on the 2nd swap -_-.

But otherwise and incredibly fun option =D

 

[Zechnophobe]

Completely agree with the topic of this thread. High to Low is a breath of fresh air. Been playing random games on prince with it, and it's very... interesting.

Only weird thing is how the difficulty progression is waaay off. AI's that are controlling your former empires seem to do amazingly well ;P. One thing I'd suggest is if you only get 'lowed' after being number 1 for like, 3 turns or something. Managed to early conquer an enemy capital thinking it was their only city... they'd built a city the turn before. Guess who I suddenly took over, and who immediately conquered me? hehe. Good fun though.

 

[salaminizer]

hmm sounds cool, I don't play FfH2 since the one with the broken (at least visually) combat odds, and it seems I lost a lot of stuff, the last time I played it was .32 and there was so much new stuff (overcouncil, etc) and to me it was TOO MUCH. but I was surprised with .34, the "coming soon" scenario screen and everything else.

when I saw the description of the challenge I didn't think it would be cool, now reading this topic and adding a bit of RP it sounds awesome

 

[OzzyKP]

My first game I started as Bannor on Monarch, Normal speed, standard sized pangea. Lanun was to my east, Hippus to my south. I forget how many turns it took me, but I think I jumped to my second civ before my first city was built (or maybe just after). So... not much to talk about with Bannor.

Next I switch to Elohim, far to the west. I start in a pretty rough spot. Very little of the land is improved around my cap, and no other cities have been built. There are plenty of seafood resources around my cap, but the AI is beelining some unrelated tech. I switch to fishing and push out a settler. The Illians are to my south and before long do their Mokka summoning ritual. Mokka appears in the ice/tundra just north of me.

Mokka halts my expansion, and I just huddle in my city and wait for him to attack. My memory is a bit foggy, but I believe he came close to my capitol, then didn't attack. I think he just wandered off elsewhere. I'm not sure where he went but I never saw him again.

A bit later the Illians fall to barbarians. Wouldn't that be incredible if Mokka left me alone and instead went after the Illians?

I never got around to taking the Illian capital back from the barbs. Before I was able to assemble some troops together that red dragon (I can't remember the name for anything in this game) showed up in the city.

I am not in much of a rush. I build up slowly over my chunk of land. Fighting off barbarians (and those nasty ice barbs) all the way. I founded Runes of Kilmorph and could have founded a bunch of other religions too, but I was hoping to save some for my third incarnation. I was doing quite well with tech though. I built the Throne of whoever in my cap and a few other wonders too (the Pact of the Nilhorn for one).

I had a good number of cities and a good tech lead (I figured) but was still trailing the Hippus in score. The Balsaraphs are close in score too. Pretty much everyone was beating up on the Bannor at this time. My old civ was now in last place. I figured I would take a piece out of the Hippus so I could flip back into the Bannor. Plus I had established a good relationship between the Elohim and Bannor, so I figured once I flip back to Bannor I'd work on carving up the Hippus with some help from my phase two civ.

I feel like I'm in a time crunch too. It is now like turn 350 or 300 or whenever it was, and I thought that the game checked to see who was first every 50 turns. So I was feeling like it was getting fairly late in the game already and didn't want to have to wait another 50 turns for my next chance to flip. So I'm rushing over to the nearest Hippus city with my stack.

I had a big ol' army built up and started to march. On my way Bannor starts to turn the tide against one of his many foes and gets a few cities from the Lanun. And now, just as I'm about to attack the Bannor move up a spot and the Lanun go to last place. Crap. I didn't want to take them over, they were just reduced to one city. So I delay my attack on the Hippus.

I wait a few turns, figuring the Bannor will hopefully eliminate the Lanun or, if not, then I can pass the 300 turn mark (or wherever I was at) and have another 50 turns. So the cut off came and then I invaded the Hippus. I took their city easily. I may have taken a second one too, I don't remember. I moved up to first. Yay!

My next reaction... ah crap!

I learned that there is no turn cutoff, you can flip at any time. So I flipped right away to the Lanun. They had one city and ONE land unit (a ranger). UGH. Plenty of ships though, not that they did any good.

I figured... what the hell? So I gave it a shot. My production was atrocious so building up troops was very difficult. I did my best though. I built up a few warriors. I switched my research too and was able to nab Octopus Overlords (good thing I didn't found all the religions as Elohim). I thought this would give me a nice edge. Despite being almost dead the Lanun were doing extremely well with tech. They already had iron working. Only problem though is that the one city they had left had almost no buildings, no resources, and not enough production to make any good units. I was just trying to survive. So I made warriors, and a drown. Eventually I got an archer or two.

One of the former Lanun cities just north of me was still connected by road, and kept revolting from my culture. So when it revolted and the Bannor units were injured I'd move my ranger up to take one of them out. Little by little I weakened them and when I had an opportunity I took the city back.

Yay! Victory! My first step to reclaiming my empire!

Meanwhile the once dominant Hippus were very quickly dismantled by the Elohim. The clowns and the crusaders each took a piece too as the largest civ in the game very quickly fell apart. One of the cities the Elohim took from the Hippus was a former Lanun city. Maybe it was the Lanun's former capitol, I don't recall. But they had enough of it, and offered it to me for free. Yes!

So now I've built my tiny civ back to three cities! The trouble now though is that I had slowly built up enough units to give a mediocre defense to one city. Now I had three to defend.

The Bannor, who I guess were busy dismantling the Hippus before, now turned their attention back to me. They marched in two big stacks that easily took my two new cities. Then they closed in on my cap...

I lost.

It was a damn fun game though! For a moment at least I had delusions of leading my hopeless Lanun to an impossible come from behind victory.

 

[lobosan]

I really like the High to Low game mode! I am usually a sore looser and avoid more difficult settings. This way, I play much riskier (emphasize short term gains over long term security) and feel like all civs are potentially mine to mess with.

I would love more than 3 switches though.

 

[Gelvan]

This is really a nice thing

I started as Illians (Chieftain) with flavour mod near tundra and Ice but it took not long until I switched. Of course I used Stasis quite in the beginning, which boosted my research compared to the others. After I left the Illian they did not succeed very well, even though they had much open space on their lonely continent. I suppose they got targeted by the barbarian?

Next were the Balseraph. They had nearly nothing, and a city which was just completely nuts regarding city placement. I was researching Festivals (before Animal Handling or Mining!). I decided to let the research as it was, because of the Freaks that come with Festivals. After that I pushed a cottage strategy, because there was only space for one more city, after that the land ended in Dwarven territory. The moment I placed a cottage everywhere and short before I've built Herons Throne...

I was a Dwarf. Lichurp. They had also two cities, but one of them was near a big hippus empire and culturally nearly conquered. So I gifted it to the Hippus and gave them a Mana (Life) as tribute to further enhance relations. Left with one City and not eager to fight the Hippus with nothing more than Warriors and (until then not built) Wood Golems, I first cast the World Spelle Nause and gave my Hammer to a Warrior who destroyd the goblin camp that was on the only route to the Balseraph. It took me only two warriors, and the second one was quite good afterwards. Then Barnaxus was finished and with a him, the Warrior and a wood golem I attacked the second Balseraph city. And I won

I had some problems with space for cities. there was none. I've built one between the two Ex-Balseraph cities but that was it. I tried building ships but there were a Falamar/Mr. Koun AI who had done that before.

The Hippus were friendly with Alexis, but only Hippus expanded like hell. They destroyed The Bannor (before that, I traded for every available technology from Sabathiel) and Malakim who were FAR away of the main Hippus centre. They must have had a hell of an upkeep..

Alexis then decided to attack me, but somehow I survived that. After that, the Hippus attacked and wiped out Alexis. And now that was the clou, I researched Honor and created The Empyrian - and then the Hippus Allied with me in a permanent alliance. From that point on, I did not much, but give the mighty hippus army new targets.

Mr. Koun will be eleminated shortly by the Khazad, and the Illian seem to recoice.

Very interesting game!

 

[Zechnophobe]

I think it would be somewhat fun if there was a game type that just sorta shifted you to the lowest position every x turns, instead of when you get to the top. This way you are sort of like 'team underdog'. No reason to attack other weak civ's, because you'll just become them (Unless you can out and out conquer one).

 

[Blakmane]

perhaps an option that lets you set the number of swaps would be awesome?

 

[Rod]

The really best thing would be minor victories.

Meaning.

You get a new civ and you get one target based on the current situation.

Let's say you start a new civ and the first target is to build two more cities and research one religion. You get a maximum number of turns for this target.(if you are a builder civ)
Other targets (for aggressive civs) could be to conquer something or to build a minimum of 10 Axemen, whatever.

As soon as you have reached it, you get a minor victory with your current score and then .. SWITCH to the lowest score civ.

New civ and new target.

This can be repeated up to 5 times and then you count all scores together.

 

[Mailbox]

I just played a high to low game as the Illians, switched to the Calabim early on and then went on to crush the world after I allied with the Lanun. I think that the HtL should take into consideration the fact that a player is in a permanent alliance. That way a player can't join a stronger nation and then win in their "shadow".

Awesome option though.

(Honestly, the first time I lost after switching to the Bannor the exact turn my old nation won the game. Pretty hilarious, but I had to reload and waited for a win to show up on my record, the second Domination victory I've ever had.)

 

[OzzyKP]

My next High/Low game I used the same settings, and went with a random civ this time. Since it doesn't really matter what civ I start with. So I got Doviello. That 4 strength guy you start with died pretty quick from an animal attack. But I was able to spread peacefully enough with the barb trait so as to switch civs soon enough. I also built the Throne, which seems to be fairly easy to get so far. The AI never seem to beat me to it.

Anyhow, I switch to the Amurites. They have two crappy cities with almost no production on a small penninsula that is blocked in by the two most powerful civs - Doviello and Khazads. Ugh. The capital for the Amurites has NO specials. Not a single one. I've never seen such a lousy start. There isn't any room to build a third city, so I just build a bunch of warriors & swordsmen.

Eventually Doviello and Khazad''s go to war. Yay! I sit back and wait for a clear winner to emerge. It seems to be mostly a stalemate though... I wait, and end up getting Octopus Overlords, and founding a third city on an island near my cap. Finally I figure I need to make a move or forever lose my chance, so I invade Doviello.

I take one of their cities and hold it for a bit before they take it back. Ugh, my troops I spent forever building are now all gone. Ick. I slowly work on building up my troops again. Thankfully the Doviello never seek to come finish me off. I build up my forces a after a while and then notice the Sheaim (now the top civ) have just gone to war with the Doviello. I hurry to get a piece of the action before it is all over.

I retake the city I took earlier. Then grab the capital (a very nice city) just ONE turn before the Sheaim grab it. The Doviello are now reduced to one city (the Sheaim and Khazad took plenty more in the south and west). I move in to take that one city and... the damn Khazad declare war on me. UGH.

I guess I was an idiot for founding and adopting OO when the whole continent was RoK. *sigh* the Dwarves make quick work out of me.

 

[Schmoe]

I started a High to Low game a little bit ago. Monarch difficulty, tectonics map, Standard size/speed, added a couple of extra civs, let the game choose a random civ for me.

I started out as Perpentach of the Balseraphs. After initial exploration, I discovered I shared a decent-size island with the Sheaim. One quick warrior rush later, and I found myself switching to Mahalla of the Doviello.

I've always enjoy playing as the Doviello, though I haven't done so since 0.23, so I was looking forward to seeing what had been done with them. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's play the early game with Doviello. I planned to rush out some beastmen and bee-lined bronzeworking. My civ was already halfway through Mining, so the second part of my plan looked good. Unfortunately, my capitol, and only city, was about 10 turns into producing a Settler and had another 20 or so turns to go. I made the difficult choice to finish the Settler, and then I set about exploring my territory.

It turns out that the Doviello were situated on the north end of a skinny North/South island, with a larger landmass at the south end. The Khazad had entrenched themselves in the southern part and were (obviously) ahead of me. As soon as I had finished the Settler, I cranked out a few more beastmen, founded a city closer to the Khazad, and marched my Beastmen toward the dwarven lands.

By this time, Khazad had three cities and some decent defenses, but I had the advantage of surprise. I stormed into one city and razed it, pillaging the lands for much-needed gold. I then marched on the capitol with my stack of about 7 war-hardened beastmen. The walls of the Khazad proved too difficult to crack, however, and a badly-wounded Lucien and one lone beastmen were forced to retreat to my southern city, with a stack of Khazad reinforcements in pursuit. I made it back to the hills around my city just in time to meet up with reinforcements of my own and pushed back the Khazad offensive. By this time Bronze Working was just about complete, so I waited until I had finished researching it, used my full coffers to upgrade my army, and pushed back into enemy territory.

The bronze-wielding Sons of Asena proved too much, and at last the Khazad fell before the hordes of Mahalla. I had hoped that this would help push me into the leader position, but alas, I didn't flip. So now I was stuck on my island, with room only for about 5 cities, and a civilization that thrives on war, but struggles with peace. I quickly rushed to settle the rest of the island and bee-lined for Optics, hoping in the race against time that the builder civs out there wouldn't be too far ahead.

I finally pushed out my first galleon and began touring the world. The Luchuirp, the Ljosolfar, the Illians, the Balseraphs, the Grigori, and the Malakim greeted me with caution as the intrepid galleon sailed through their waters. But the formidable Doviello hordes, which thronged at the shores of the island clamoring for blood, led all of these civs on the leader board. Some hidden foe was out there, a potential juggernaut that had to be cut down to size.

Finally, the weary galleon spotted gleaming spires on the horizon. The vast cities of the Kuriotates, full of riches. Golden enclaves dotted the countryside. The Kuriotates sat high and mighty in their immense citadels, beacons of culture and wealth for the world to view with wonder, half a world away from the Doviello shores. Cardith Lorda had a small continent entirely to himself, and he had made good use of it.

Immediately, the Doviello war machine whipped into action. The Sons of Asena crowded aboard galleons for the long sea voyage. It took 8 turns, but the mighty horde burst from the holds of the ship and, hasted by the adepts within their ranks, tore down the walls in one brutal strike.

And then, my friends, Mahalla made what was perhaps the most critical error in the game. When she was given the choice by her commanders whether to garrison the city or raze it to the ground, her bloodthirsty instincts took over. Without thinking, she consigned the city to rubble. With a start, she realized what she had done, as in the brief moment before the ravenous beastmen destroyed the city, she had seen her name at the top of the leaderboard. Too late, the deed was done. Furious at the mistake, she ordered her troops to plunder the fat enclaves and march north through Kuriotate lands to try to take another of the cities. It was not to be, however, and eventually the first Doviello invasion was pushed back into the sea.

I faced a difficult choice now. My score was close enough to the Kuriotates that taking a city or two from somebody would probably be the push needed to get me into the leader position. However, all of the other civs were virtually tied at the bottom of the leader board, so attacking one of them would most likely put me on the wrong end of my own offensive. The Kuriotates had built up impressive defenses in response to my attack, and they were 8 turns away (one way!) anyway. While I built up my forces again, I watched as the Kuriotates put their tech advantage to use - recruiting world heroes, building wonders, and strengthening their defenses.

Finally, I noticed that Perpentach had begun to pull away from the pack at the bottom of the leaderboard. I took a gamble and re-directed my forces to attack the Balseraphs. His Freaks put up a surprisingly good fight, and every time I captured a city, the Kuriotates seemed to jump just enough to stay ahead. The battle dragged on, with cities won and lost in Balseraph lands, until the turn was pushing 400. Finally, I landed an overwhelming force of Battlemasters and Rangers and captured the Balseraph capitol, and it happened - I overtook the Kuriotate score! Eager to move onto the next phase of the game, I pushed the End Turn button, and groaned as a manic jester greeted me. In my zealotry to overtake the Kuriotates, I had pushed Perpentach back to the bottom of the board.

I looked over the shattered remnants of my lands, an empire shattered by my own hand. Three cities, two of which had less than 5 population, 3 Freaks, and a couple of Horsemen. Against me were the Doviello, who I had just built into a military powerhouse with Iron-backed Battlemasters and many skeleton-summoning Adepts. It was turn 440.

That's where I left it. It was a very fun game to that point, but I'm pretty sure that I backed myself into a corner, so I've chalked it up as a defeat.

A couple notes from the game:

1. It's a very interesting dynamic, in that you want to become the leader, but you don't want to do so in a way that's going to put you on the wrong end of an ass-kicking.

2. I love the Doviello. But it sucks when you are the Doviello and you don't share a landmass with anyone.

2a. The ability to upgrade units in the field is great, and really helps keep your units where they belong: on the battlefield.

3. I like Enclaves. I particularly like pillaging Enclaves as a leader with the Raiders trait. -60 gpt from the research/tax slider is nothing when you are making 200+ each turn from pillaging.

4. For some reason I couldn't build priests as the Doviello. I founded OO and got Priesthood hoping for a little extra oomph, but was surprised to find that the cultists were unavailable. Is this info anywhere, or did I just miss something?

5. I made at least two mistakes. If I had stopped building the starting settler when I took over Doviello, I might have been able to take the Khazad capitol early enough to force the switch. And then, of course, the bonehead move when I took the first Kuriotate city doomed me.

6. Monarch is pushing the limits of my ability. On Prince, I usually wipe the floor with everyone to the point where there is simply no challenge. On Monarch, I usually struggle. Even so, I think that I would have had a much better chance if I hadn't made my two mistakes, so I think the High to Low challenge is a balanced, entertaining option.

7. In High to Low, you want to force the civilization switches ASAP. Do everything in your power to switch early. The longer it goes, the more likely it is that your new low civilization will be in an untenable position.

 

[Keeper_GFA]

Good try. You're right, you definitely have to be careful how you get yourself into #1, or it'll be game over when you switch. If you want to feel some extra pressure after you switch, play with the Final Five option at the same time.