Industry and Isolation: A Khazad Story

[Valkrionn]

You might want to try FFPlus also, if you want forts... I rolled in the Orbis fort setup, but also have a unique improvement line for the Dwarves. Think combination Fort/Mine/Farm... Limited to one per 2 tiles, but very nice anyway.

 

[Spectral-Fremen]

This is massively awesome. Shatner your a terrific writer, love your style of humour!

 

[Shatner]

The Setup:
The Setup, Redux:

Fall Further (patch N). Khazad civilization. Objective: gather gold until the vaults are overflowing and then never let them dip below that threshold.

I ended up settling on the following settings: Advanced Start, No Tech Brokering, Barbarian World, Living World, Wildlands, Aggressive AI, Epic speed, Perfect World 2 mapscript (Start Anywhere and Allow Panageas), Standard size.

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I found the Cualli cities to be tough eggs to crack. Their Blowpipe units, with a base of 2-4 first strikes, provide some hefty defense. Then on top of that you have Marshes all over their lands which they get a significant bonus for fighting in, and which slows down any opponents trying to push into their land. And for the icing on the cake, the jungles infesting their areas hinder the view, even from hilltop!

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That sounds like a really good game; I may have to try that set up some time. Thanks for the write up, Tholal. A worthy opponent is a thing of beauty in this game; the nice thing about being a deceptively powerful, pocket empire is getting to beat on larger, more worth-while adversaries. And yeah, I have noticed that the Cualli can really bring the numbers. I consider them what the Svaltfar should be: full of assassins, hunters and archers while heavily entrenched in favorable terrain.

If you felt like being cheesy, you could have grabbed the Guild of Nine and mercenary-spammed them; nothing can withstand iron-equipped mercenaries and a bottomless bank account. Beyond that, hawks (or floating eyes, in the case of my recent Amurite game) make a surprisingly large difference for me when dealing with hostiles. Having one of those scout a nearby peak gives me all the Intel I need to know where to attack or run the heck away. As the saying goes, knowing is half the battle.

I can vouch for the FF+ Khazad changes as being really fun. I haven't played with the new Fort Commanders but I have played with the new improvements (and auditors) and they're many flavors of enjoyable.