How do you play the Svartalfar?

[Ekolite]

Hi. I've recently became in love with this civ, they are seriously awesome. Anyway, what are the general strategies people use when playing this civ? What strategy do you use?

In my latest game, its about turn 230 and I have been the score leader since about 180.

To get to this point I have been using FoL, and mostly an army of nyxkin. I've been playing this civ almost like I would the Hippus. I wanted to switch to Esus later in the game but in the end I decided I didn't want to lose my FoL heroes. However, now that I have vassalised the Calabim and Clan I need to attack the Chislev (FF) who are second and have the Archos (FF) vassalised. Now everyone has beastmasters and fortified longbows my Nyxkin catapult replacement is just being slaughtered completely, even with 35% retreat odds. It doesn't help that the Chislev seem to have 150 defense cities somehow . Obviously my early-midgame strategy wont work in the late game.

Pretty soon I'm going to start a new game as them and try a combination oif this strat and any others I fing out about / work out. What other strategies work well with the svartalfar?

 

[Immaculate]

Sounds like you've made use of their one trait, Raiders, pretty well but may have overlooked their other trait, the 'arcane'. Play to their strengths... get some mages in there for stack damage and clean up with 'sinister' recon units.

 

[Arilian]

Use a Lots of assasins.
with fol they have a base Attack of 8.

Use mages. (fire / air)

 

[Marksman77]

Nyxkins with maxed Flanking followed by assassins work great.
Of course air or fire collateral damage from your mages make opponents' stacks melt even faster.
A great civ to play

 

[Ecofarm]

Education (forest cottages), Mystic, FoL, to start...

Then I have 2 main strats:

1) Chalid (crown of brilliance)

Empy, poisons, husbandry, religious law

2) Archmages (domination and summon mistforms)

Hidden, poisons, husbandry, strength of will

The empy version is in the strategy forum, "Most powerful strat".

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=271674

The SoW version is pretty straight forward. Note, with the Chalid version, you get archmages after (very late game).

Here's a post of mine about them in general:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6870243&postcount=96

And here's a couple more posts about them, concerned primarily with the incredibly awesome Mistforms:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6856357&postcount=16
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6856432&postcount=18


This post has a save that you can look at to see the basic army assembled and cities complete. The save is the turn before the first declaration of war (standard quick immortal playnow win, .31e):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6819049&postcount=8

 

[Vehem]

It doesn't help that the Chislev seem to have 150 defense cities somehow . Obviously my early-midgame strategy wont work in the late game.

A "Council of the Warchief" (one per 3 cities) will add 5% to the defence of all cities. If they Chislev have aggressively settled (which they do) and had a successful war (sounds like they beat up the Archos nicely for once...), that can grow to be quite a large bonus (15 cities would allow for a 25% boost globally to defense for instance).

Counters for that are just the usual for high-defence cities really. Siege (which Svart don't get), magic, beserkers (high strength, collateral damage - rarely wins, but can soften up the defenders behind the walls very effectively) or bombardment from the seas. Assassins are also good for weakening the defenders stack (initially for taking the special units out, then later to make sure any unit you attack is eventually killed rather than allowed to level up).

Sounds like you've made use of their one trait, Raiders, pretty well [...]

Raiders works a little differently in Fall Further (which it sounds like Kol.7 is playing) - it grants a "Raider" promotion rather than Commando. That promotion causes the unit to automatically pillage enemy improvements when the unit moves onto their plot (effect is equivalent to one click of the "Pillage Button", must be at war, doesn't cost a move, if you want to pillage again it will cost moves as normal). The best way to use it however is still exactly the same - plenty of cavalry and just ride across their territory.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I think the fastest, most consistent strat is:

1) Get education. Remember to build at least 2 workers per city, and just start pumping out cottages.

Then, depending on how aggressive you need to be, do these next two in the appropriate order:

2a) Get fellowship of the leaves + hidden paths for commercial explosion. +1 Food and +full happiness, or close to it, will cause your economy to soar.

2b) Get poisons (Hunting then tracking then poisons) and build your Hero, the incomperable Alazkan the assassin. Alazkan is the best civ based hero in the game, and will let you conquer your opponents with little to no resistence.

3) Priesthood will give you Priests of the leaves, which will supply you with tiger fodder, but more importantly bloom the tiles you need to turn into forests. It's a long process to bloom, so get a good half dozen or more priests on this.

Ultimately the key points here are that Alazkan gets you the strongest mid game fighting force, and FoL + Cottages + Ancient Forests gives you the best long game economy (By quite a lot actually). Somewhere in your strat, get Military Strategy so you can give Alazkan blitz, and you'll likely end up with him doing most or all of the war fighting himself (Will with hidden nationality).

 

[Pyr0mancer]

With Alazkan though, avoid Empyrean nations like the plague, or at least retreat at least 3-4 tiles deep back into your own territory at the end of each turn. One Revelation can really ruin your day. If you manage to get him following Esus though, he becomes even more useful.

Don't forget to stick a Tiger Cage in each of your cities. Might as well, what with your infinite free ones. Also, apparently the limit on the number of tigers is based off ALL your priests, not just Priests of Leaves, so you can keep spamming them after you switch.

When I play Svart, I generally go for education for cottage-spamming, then go for FoL and run that until I've got Ancient Forests everywhere that matters, then go Empyrean. Chalid Astrakein > Yvain, Luridus > High Priests of Leaves, Ratha > Fawns, and Druids > Eidola.

Most 'extra' production goes into Adepts, so that by the time I reach SoW (usually fairly late) I've got a massive supply of Domination/Mistform-ready mages.

 

[Ecofarm]

With Alazkan though, avoid Empyrean nations like the plague, or at least retreat at least 3-4 tiles deep back into your own territory at the end of each turn. One Revelation can really ruin your day. If you manage to get him following Esus though, he becomes even more useful.

I don't understand.

 

[Ekolite]

Heh, In my game, during a massive war involving all civs, my vassals, the clan, moved a stack into one of my cities and killed Alkazan . Can you get tigers from priests of leaves in .31? I don't have .32 yet.

Also, is a conversion to neutral via runes/empyrean worth it? I didn't bother in my current game because its dominated by evil civs.

So the arcane spheres I need to get on my adepts are fire for catapults replacing, shadow for mistforms, and air for maelstrom (?). How should these be specialised? I haven't bothered with magic *at all* in my current game. The one thing I'm worried about with using mages in the front line is that all the rest of my army is 3 movement. I suppose I could probably really heavilly specialise some casters giving them just fire 1 + 2 movement 2 and then any combat promos they can get though. Assuming adepts can get move 1 + 2 which Im not sure about.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

I don't understand.

The Empy Priest spell, Revelation, removes HN from everything in its area of effect, which is a 2 or 3 tile radius if I recall correctly. Add that to the fact that the way the AI handles spells is "if it can be cast, it will be" means that most likely, every turn Revelation will get cast. Alazkan without HN is still a powerful unit, but no longer nearly as useful as with it.

Following the Council of Esus should allow him to use Mask though, allowing him to turn on and off HN at will.

Can you get tigers from priests of leaves in .31? I don't have .32 yet.

I don't think so, I think it was added in 0.32.

Also, is a conversion to neutral via runes/empyrean worth it? I didn't bother in my current game because its dominated by evil civs.

Personally I do it for Empyrean, and the Druids from going Neutral are just a side benefit. I rarely if ever use Eidola, though with March and Cannibalize they can wreak some serious havoc.

So the arcane spheres I need to get on my adepts are fire for catapults replacing, shadow for mistforms, and air for maelstrom (?). How should these be specialised? I haven't bothered with magic *at all* in my current game. The one thing I'm worried about with using mages in the front line is that all the rest of my army is 3 movement. I suppose I could probably really heavilly specialise some casters giving them just fire 1 + 2 movement 2 and then any combat promos they can get though. Assuming adepts can get move 1 + 2 which Im not sure about.

Adepts can only get Mobility I, for 2 move. As for spheres, I personally don't much like Fireballs, but they work well enough. Shadow II (Shadowwalk) is fairly useful too, it allows your units to ignore terrain defense (hills/forests/forts(maybe)). Maelstrom (Air II) is absurdly powerful for a level 2 spell, with 2 range, decent direct damage, and a bonus against units with metal weapons. Finally, if you have 2 mana of one type, then all your adepts will start with sphere I, and if you have 3 then when they upgrade to mages they'll get sphere II. If you found Council of Esus their holy shrine gives 1 shadow mana, so with your palace mana that's 2 already.

 

[onedreamer]

I don't play them since they are overpowered

 

[Ekolite]

They aren't over powered, they're versatile. They have a number of mid-game strengths down different tech lines. They are balanced because its near impossible to focus on all of them at once. You have to go down the cavalry, recon and arcane lines, as well as getting priesthood early for blooming. Besides, the raider trait has been toned down a bit in Fall Further. Their world spell is pretty crappy IMO.

If you compare them to a civ like the clan or hippus, all their strengths are pretty much down the same line, for early, mid and end-game, one after the other.

 

[Zechnophobe]

They are definately one of the big '3' for civ's though:

Chirp, Svart, Hippus. Each of these wrecks in their own area (Long, mid, short).

I'd put Grigori up there too, but let's be honest, without a few reloads, they can be far too fragile early on. You can only get away with some stuff that you'd never get away with in Multi.

 

[hbar]

Can you get tigers from priests of leaves in .31? I don't have .32 yet.

No, they were added in 0.32.
Keep in mind too when you get 0.32, illusions (which is what Alkhazan summons) have a damage cap of 90% (I think, haven't tested this out yet).

Adepts can only get Mobility I, for 2 move.

If you give them body 1 (haste), they can have 3. Of course, then everyone else has 4, but that's not a bad thing.

 

[Ecofarm]

They are definately one of the big '3' for civ's though:

Chirp, Svart, Hippus. Each of these wrecks in their own area (Long, mid, short).

I'd put Grigori up there too, but let's be honest, without a few reloads, they can be far too fragile early on. You can only get away with some stuff that you'd never get away with in Multi.

I would add:
Amurite
Sheaim
Ljos
Kuriotate
Lanun
and perhaps malakim

Tier 2:
Balseraph
Kandros
Calabim...

 

[Pyr0mancer]

I would add:
Amurite
Sheaim
Ljos
Kuriotate
Lanun
and perhaps malakim

Tier 2:
Balseraph
Kandros
Calabim...

I don't know if I really agree with some of your rankings... Amurites, Sheaim, Ljos, sure, they're great. Lanun only if the map has water . Calabim really depends on whether they manage to survive until Vampires. They're mediocre at best early on but nearly unstoppable once they get Vampires.

 

[onedreamer]

They aren't over powered, they're versatile. They have a number of mid-game strengths down different tech lines. They are balanced because its near impossible to focus on all of them at once. You have to go down the cavalry, recon and arcane lines, as well as getting priesthood early for blooming. Besides, the raider trait has been toned down a bit in Fall Further. Their world spell is pretty crappy IMO.

If you compare them to a civ like the clan or hippus, all their strengths are pretty much down the same line, for early, mid and end-game, one after the other.

Heh, you only speak from the warmongering point of view. The only civ that can compete with them from the builder side is Ljosalfar.

 

[Sureshot]

builder side theyre inferior to the ljosalfar, their traits dont help them with the builder aspect at all, and they can lose all their forests to hell terrain since theyre evil (the neutral Ljos are somewhat better off since it takes longer for hell to spread into neutral, but arendel is immune to hell terrain as good; and switching religions around is annoying and time/tech consuming)

for cottage spam id rather use kuriotates (adaptive can give financial, so kuriotates enclaves riverside are 2 extra commerce vs 1 extra production of a elven ancient forest cottage) or bannor (for military not builder tho), and any financial leader is getting more commerce out of their cottages (at first: 3 commerce riverside vs an elvens 1 production 1 commerce).

but cottage-economy is second fiddle to a good great people strat anyways heh, and elven farms dont get any real benefit from agriculture civic (no such thing as a no-hammer forest tile, so youre always losing 1 production on forest farms)

and why isnt Sidar on the list of powerhouses? O_o

 

[Ecofarm]

and why isnt Sidar on the list of powerhouses? O_o

By the time you can afford to have a free specialist instead of a blitzing assassin or archmage, the game is over.