How often do you quit in frustration?

[Lade]

Since I'm a newbie, I get to ask questions.

How often do you end up quiting in frustration when playing FFH? I imagine many of the forum-goers are more patient then I, so are more likely to just work through situations. However, in FFH where there are always so many barbarians, I often end up getting angry once my capital gets captured on turn 150.

Of course, I imagine you eventually get better and so don't end up losing you're capital to barbs quite as often.

 

[Morlark]

I've only ever quit in frustration once, out of however many hundreds of games I played. That was when I got a really incredibly unlucky start, where there were at least 4 (probably more) lizardman spawn points all funnelling lizardmen towards my capital. That meant that the barbarians were producing lizardmen faster than I could make warriors, so the game was literally unwinnable for me there.

Other than in situations like that, you just have to remember that you will need to produce quite a bit more defenders that you might in vanilla BTS, and be more proactive in clearing out barbs when they start to stray into your territory. Really, the only thing that should be strong enough to be threatening is lizardmen in the very early game, and so long as there aren't many of them you can always kill them with superior numbers.

 

[hbar]

I used to quit 3 out of every 4 games when I first started, mostly out of frustration. I still do in maybe 1 in 5, mostly because I take too big of risks and it turns sour.

I would recommend keeping at least three warriors in every city, and find a good forested hill to station a war party on (another 3 warriors). Nurture your promoted units, even if it means sending a handful of warriors to their death on the orcish pikes. Warriors are cheap, and promotions are valuable! Once you have a unit with shock and march, the barbs are a lot more manageable (except scorpion clan archers, those buggers are tough!)

 

[Lade]

I used to quit 3 out of every 4 games when I first started, mostly out of frustration. I still do in maybe 1 in 5, mostly because I take too big of risks and it turns sour.

I know exactly what you mean there. Many save explorations for later when they know they can handle bad spawns. I tend to explore the moment I set eyes on them, and its led to many very short games.

 

[Higher Game]

I thought baddy spawns were for training.

 

[ushram]

I know exactly what you mean there. Many save explorations for later when they know they can handle bad spawns. I tend to explore the moment I set eyes on them, and its led to many very short games.

I am the same as you. I just need to pop them as fast as possible, sometimes just to cut down on the spwns out of the ruins or barrows and partly because of my eagerness.

So often I would have bad results only a few squares from my capital. After experiencing frustration and always having the self rule while playing sp games to not reload after something bad happens. ( Normally play on immortal or Diety, thus happens a lot)

I made a rule i will follow in sp games. I will not accept any bad results from a hut/lair/barrow/ruin etc for the first 25 turns. If something bad happens then I will reload a save for that game. If it happens after turn 25, then its my own damn fault for being stupid and i will play on.

I just got very frustrated having a lizard man attack from a ruin close to my city and destroying my capital on turn 10 or so.

Of course in mp games i do not have this luxury, so i must be extremely careful where i plop my capital and where/when i explore something.

 

[Angel-Julia]

This game is quite different from vanilla Civ4. Here it is a wild world that you have to tame, and the first opponent is the barbs. you need to play differently than standard Civ4, instead of starting with worker, settler, worker etc. you need to start with Warrior, Warrior etc. make a bit more def and you'll be right.

put a few warriors in your city to defend instead of just 1. put some warriors on forrested hills etc to absorb the incoming barbarians.

Promotions are twice as powerful as in standard Civ, so veterans quickly become awsome killing machienes. you'll soon get a few warriors up to combat 3 or more, giving +60% strength. combined with forrested hills and you have an unstopable unit that can stop all incoming barbarians.

I actually am grateful for the barbarians as they provide so much experiance. they make the game easier. by the time you are attacking opponents you have C5 warriors. with bronze that gives a STR8 unit.

one other trick you could try is to go for T2 units, dont just defend with warriors, get hunters and achers, they are easy. bronze weapons at mining also make your life much easier.

you'll be fine with the barbs after you get the hang of it.

as for dungeons, they are NOT goody huts. if you go around popping every single ungeon you find then you will be in for a rough ride as you never know what comes out. dont worry, the AI doesnt pop the dungeons, so you can always pop them later when you have a nice stack of veteran units and maybe a hero so you can deal with whatever comes out. If you pop a dungeon before you're ready to handle the results then i say it's your own fault for being wiped out.

yeah, barbs can be a bit hairy the first time you play FFH, though it's not that hard to deal with them.

 

[DaveGold]

The games with the worst barbarians are sometimes also your greatest opportunity. Those barbarians are spawning in the wilderness so there must be lots of wilderness for you to settle.

Remember that warriors fixed into a city are actually quite good defence and will usually beat a lizardman. You need to be careful of the promoted barbarians, so always make sure you've enough units around to finish off a barbarian that survives a battle.

If you're playing on an Erebus map you might want to try a Pangea map instead where the land typically gets settled faster.

 

[readercolin]

I never do anymore. An easy rule that I found to prevent this - always have at least 3 units in every city. Once you have a city that is completely surrounded by other cities/impassible barriers, it may be tempting to reduce the size of your garrisons. Don't. Why? These garrison then become your mobile reaction force, so if one of your border cities starts to experience trouble, you can just call up all your interior units and rush them to your border in times of need.

The other thing that I have found is don't explore ruins before you can handle them (even lizardman huts/barrows can spawn an Ogre - a game ender unless you have at least 4-5 units to kill him with), and no matter how nice it may look like from a distance, don't explore epic lairs till at LEAST turn 100 (normal speed), unless they are very, very far away from your empire.

-Colin

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

OTOH, do open them if they are near to a opponent's border. that way, epic lair --> epic win

 

[mcwill123]

I have been playing on emperor with raging barbarians. At least in my experience, the barbarians have recently started coming maybe 4 in a stack rather than 1 or 2. So be on your guard if you upgrade from a bit older patch.

I recently was playing a game and had 3 warriors in a city on the border. The cities culture was maybe +30% at the mostt. My neighbor the Clan, suddenly declared war and started approaching the city with a stack of about 8 axemen and a couple archers. I had no units close enough that they could get there before the attack. I quit the game in disgust at that point. It seems it often just isn't possible to compete with the AI in unit production. Anyway, later I decided WTH, I'll play it out. It took everything that my enemy had to take that city. My reinforcements arrived the next turn and easily retook the city and were able to hold it. After that the war went well. So I guess the lesson is don't give up too easily.

 

[kumquatelvis]

I quit many games when I know I can't win, but I wouldn't say I'm frustrated. Just aware that I'm in a bad situation, and it would be more fun to get a fresh start.

 

[DaveGold]

At least in my experience, the barbarians have recently started coming maybe 4 in a stack rather than 1 or 2.

Barbarian cities build up to 4 warriors then send those out together. A good change from the recent patches.

 

[JonathanStrange]

I mostly quit in boredom. If I'm knocked out early I don't mind too much. That's Civ. One of the open secrets of Civ is that if you get a poor starting position, you've got you work cut out for you. I like those situations where I'm the comeback kid. Knockin' out barbarians, surviving AI rushes, it's all good...

However, if I'm cruisin' for an easy win or if the opposite occurs where I'm going to have to fight to get a 3rd or 4th place finish (sometimes survival is a win) but there's little chance of being destroyed, then I usually quit.

I love the opening stages of Civ. I love exploring, early wars, desperate defenses, steam-rolling the unlucky civs that start near me, but I've never cared much in any Civ game for late game mass combats.

So I quit not in frustration but in boredom; if there's no new cities to settle or lands to discover, I just don' find Civ's Combat System particularly fun. No 200 pyre zombie armies, no 100 vampire stacks, no 400 champion assaults for this gamer.

 

[nzk13]

6.5 out of 10 times.

 

[Zifnab]

As someone who has been playing FFH almost exclusively since the end of FFH I, I'm usually looking at making the game more difficult for myself and quitting if the game stagnates. I'm a fan of the High to Low game option, even if it does sometimes dump you into a civ that is one turn from dying. But I can see where someone used to regular civ might get pretty frustrated. The learning curve is steep. Not as steep as Dwarf Fortress, but still fairly steep, especially since the documentation is not so up to date in a lot of areas in game.

My wife quits a lot too, but mostly because she likes the early exploration and settling part of the game, but once the world settles down, she gets bored.

Now if you went back a few versions of FFH, I used to quit out of frustration a lot. The Sailor's Dirge still haunts my games.

 

[nzk13]

zifnab, I actually play my ffh games to the end in general, usually getting an altar or domination/conquest.

 

[Breunor]

I think there is a big differnce between 'quitting in frustration' or 'quitting for boredom' as some people pointed out. I often 'declare myself the winner' which is essentially quitting in boredom. It happens when I've already de facto won the game (usually way ahead in hammers, population, gold, techs, etc., have super promoted heroes, etc.) and I control about 25% - 35% of the board. In that case, rather than spend 6 hours to actually get a domination victory, I simply start a new game since I know I've won.

I've also given up games I can't win but it isn't as common. Or when the opponent SoD has taken down one of my cities and I can't stop it, I'll quit instead of seeing the inevitable.

But I doubt I really quit in 'frustration'.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[arcticnightwolf]

How often do you quit in frustration?

Often.

 

[Darkphoenix]

I have just started playing FFH again (old vanilla version on my PC since don't have BTS yet), and I must say I have only quit one time - not out of "frustration" but simply out of acknowledgment I had lost. I tipped my king as it were. I even used retire.


This probably has to do with two things: The only games I have played in the last 2 years have been: EVE Online. Nethack. Magna Mundi.

I have just decided to name all my early scouts/warriors after my nethack characters, being completely overrun by barbarians is merely a successful Major Noble Opposition, and those annoying Lizards are merely Goons.