So, after my experiences with the Sheaim, I decided to try my hand with another civilization. Looking around, the Kuriotates looked very interesting. Their first three cities get an extra ring of workable tiles, and they can found the Cult of the Dragon. Plus, they have the unique limitation that any cities beyond the first three are pretty much worthless. Very interesting indeed.
I kicked off the game (Prince difficulty, fractal map, high seas, 1 extra civ), and it started much like any other. I built a warrior for some defense, a worker to work some tiles, and researched some techs to give my worker things to do. Pretty soon, I ran into my first neighbor - Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers. Hmm, I thought, this could be bad. Isn't he supposed to be war-like and allied with the barbarians? I beefed up my military and moved to found my second city - only to discover that Jonas had been settling very aggressively. He already had three cities, one of which was crowding what I had targeted as the prime spot for my second city. Doh. On top of that, the garrison of the Clan city was larger than my entire military, even though I had been building centaurs pretty steadily. Damn.
I should mention that the Kuriotate unique unit, centaurs, were pretty much worthless for me in this game. I never reached enough military strength early in the game to where I could realistically challenge the Clan of Embers, so I moved my settler to another spot and founded my second city.
By this point, my scouts had located another civilization, the Bannor, led by Sabbathiel. Apparently myself, the Bannor, and the Clan all shared a mid-sized, snake-like continent. However, the Bannor controlled the entire northern half, the Clan controlled the middle quarter, and I controlled the southern half. Without any other real course of action, I focused on teching to Trade and settled my third city to cement my control of the southern reaches of the continent.
As I pursued Trade, other civilizations found me. The Grigori, led by Cassiel. The Sidar, led by Morgoth. And the Lanun, led by Hannah. Cassiel was relatively friendly, Morgoth was cautious, but Hannah was downright nasty. Apparently I had managed to become her worst enemy! Perhaps the fact that I had founded the Runes of Kilmorph, while she followed some slimy octopus creatures. Oh well. The Lanun were isolated from me by a lot of water, and my cities were well defended as a result of military build-up to see if I could crack the Clan cities.
By now, my paltry collection of three cities was beginning to take its toll. Despite running 80-90% tech, I was falling behind the Bannor and the Lanun. In an effort to improve my economy, I constructed the holy site of the Runes of Kilmorph and focused on sending missionaries abroad. Sabbathiel, Jonas, and Cassiel all signed open borders, while the rest would not. I spread the religion to every city in their empires, and my economy soared. I was now able to run 100% tech and still pull in 20-30 gpt. Jonas converted to Runes, but Sabbathiel refused. And for some reason Cassiel wouldn't even give me the option to request conversion! Hmm, what gives? Oh, apparently he's agnostic. I never knew about that. Bugger.
Time passed. After I discovered Trade I went into a flurry of trade and discovery. After a hundred years or so, my cities had a lot of infrastructure and solid defenses, but I was no closer to being able to launch an assault on Jonas. On top of that, by now he had become pleased with me! As a result of all the trading, everyone except for Hannah was either pleased or friendly with the Kuriotates. Oh yeah, and the final civilization - Hyborem of the Infernal. He didn't like me much either. Fortunately, Hyborem was isolated on a large island (think Australia) and didn't seem to have much inclination to explore the seas.
I pulled ahead of Hannah on the power graph and in the tech race, and I felt safe in my position. Jonas wasn't going to declare on me, and I could fight off an amphibious invasion by either Hannah or Hyborem, should they decide to go to war. Unfortunately, Sabbathiel was running unchecked. With lots of land and nobody warring against him, he had pulled clearly into the lead by nearly 1000 points. The turn was roughly 350.
The whole game up to this point, there had been a nagging question in the back of my mind. "How will you win?" I initially thought about Domination, but the strong position of Jonas made that unlikely. On top of that, I was worried about the effects of the Kuriotate limitation on cities. If I captured a city, would it become a settlement? I didn't know, and my position wasn't really strong enough that I could afford to try without any guarantees. Conquest was right out, as I simply didn't have the production capacity to churn out enough troops to take out Sabbathiel. I had thought my "mega-cities" would compensate for that, but I found instead that the cities weren't much better than three normal cities. I was always limited by happiness, and my largest city was around size 16, when Sabbathiel, and even Jonas, had somehow managed to get several cities above size 20! What was I doing wrong?
As the turns progressed and I got later into the game, the question of winning became more urgent. I looked at the Tower of Mastery. Hmm, all those towers are National Wonders, and I only have 6 spots for National Wonders. That pretty much seems impossible.
Suddenly, the peace that had reigned in the world for 350+ years was broken - Sabbathiel declared war on Jonas! I knew at once, of course, that I had to get involved. Sabbathiel would likely overrun Jonas, although the Clan had enough troops to make it a long, costly war. I could either dog-pile the Clan, hoping to snag a couple of cities in the chaos, or jump in bed with Jonas and try to push the war to Sabbathiel, crippling him in the process. Still worried that any captured cities would be nothing more than settlements, I chose to ally with Jonas. I took all of my centaurs (12 or so) and rushed them into Bannor lands, hoping to capture a weak city or generally cause mayhem. Wow. They got decimated. I managed to pillage a few tiles and kill a couple of tigers before I was forced to pull the survivors back in a feeble attempt to save my power rating.
I wanted to send a strong stack on the attack, but I couldn't leave my homeland undefended. The war would be fought on the far side of the Clan lands, so I needed to maintain strong garrisons in case Hannah decided to launch a surprise offensive. When you only have three cities, losing one is a *****. I switched civics away from the powerful Aristocracy/Agriculture combo to Theocracy, Nationhood and Conquest to begin pumping veteran units out. Of course, I didn't realize this meant my Royal Guard would abandon me. Bye-bye Royal Guard. Hello declining power graph. Bugger. Before I had a decent stack to attack, Sabbathiel and Jonas declared peace. Apparently I had successfully defended the Clan from being overrun, but now I was in a war alone against the strongest empire in the world. Luckily, the Clan served as a buffer, and I only had to suffer the predations of some pillaging frigates before I reached a peace agreement with Sabbathiel. I spent several turns shifting back to my peace-time arrangement when the question reared its ugly head again. "How will you win?"
I honestly didn't know. Culture seemed like a difficult proposition, especially without cathedrals, and Broadway, and Hollywood, and Rock'n'Roll, which I rely on in vanilla. I looked at religion. Yikes. I had no idea how I could get a religious victory, especially as all major religions had been founded by now (three by me!) and had spread significantly. If I was going that path, I may as well go conquest. Sabbathiel was still running away on points, so a timed victory (yuck) didn't seem likely either.
I racked my head and examined each option again. Finally, it dawned on me. With a few civics changes and some specialists, cultural might be doable. Even though my leading cultural city only had roughly 7000 culture, and it was late in the game (turn 425 or so), I still had over 200 turns left. If I could pull in 250 culture per turn from my least cultural city, I'd be able to make it. Conveniently, I had chosen Spiritual as my adaptive trait to deal with the civics changes during the war with Sabbathiel, so I focused on teching to Liberalism. When I got there I switched to Liberty, Republic, Caste System, Foreign Trade, and turned off the science.
So, that brings me where I am now, at roughly turn 480. I'm pulling in about 370 culture per turn from my least cultural city and have nearly 20k culture in each of my three cities. My borders are putting serious pressure on Jonas, and I expect two of his cities to flip to me within the next 10 turns or so. I guess now I'll be able to find out whether captured cities act as settlements or not! I'm expecting to win this game, as I don't think anyone else is in a position to win. Sabbathiel or Cassiel may complete the Tower of Mastery, but that is so difficult I think it's highly unlikely. Noone is in position for Domination, Conquest, or Religious victory. My cities have a full complement of War Chariots, Paladins, Shadows, Archmages, and Heavy Crossbows, plus plenty of Macemen, Crossbows, and Conjurers, so I'm not afraid of an attack. I'm happy that I've found a path to victory, but I can't help but feel frustrated with how long it took me to find it. Oh well. I'll finish playing this out (basically "next turn, next turn, next turn, ...) and assuming I win, it will be satisfying.
So, in my experience with the Kuriotates, here are some random thoughts.
1. An expanded city ring doesn't necessarily mean larger cities, but gives you greater choice in working the best tiles. This means a lot of flexibility in shifting a city between growth, production, and commerce.
2. The adaptive trait gives you a lot of flexibility, but you need to be prepared to take advantage of it! I made great use of switching between Industrial, Financial, and Spiritual, but I could have gotten more out of it if I had been prepared early in the game. Combined with point #1 above, the Kuriotates can be very flexible indeed!
3. Happiness and health limits are extremely important if you want to get the most use out of the expanded city ring. I never had enough health and/or happiness to get above size 20 until very late in the game when I was converting excess food into artists. I'm sure if I had tried harder I could have done better (maybe running Religion? increasing culture bar? gambling houses?).
4. It would be very useful to know which units will abandon you before a civics/religion change, and allow the player to cancel the change.
5. The Runes of Kilmorph seem like a powerful religion, and Arete is great, but I don't think it was the best choice for the Kuriotates. Being limited to three cities really limited the effects of the religion.
6. The key to a cultural victory in FfH is civics! Liberty, Republic, Caste System, and Foreign Trade combine for +140% culture and +2 culture per specialist, plus a free specialist in each city. That is some serious cultural mojo.
That's all. I'm looking forward to finishing this game and finding another civilization to play as next. Those Malakim look interesting...
I kicked off the game (Prince difficulty, fractal map, high seas, 1 extra civ), and it started much like any other. I built a warrior for some defense, a worker to work some tiles, and researched some techs to give my worker things to do. Pretty soon, I ran into my first neighbor - Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers. Hmm, I thought, this could be bad. Isn't he supposed to be war-like and allied with the barbarians? I beefed up my military and moved to found my second city - only to discover that Jonas had been settling very aggressively. He already had three cities, one of which was crowding what I had targeted as the prime spot for my second city. Doh. On top of that, the garrison of the Clan city was larger than my entire military, even though I had been building centaurs pretty steadily. Damn.
I should mention that the Kuriotate unique unit, centaurs, were pretty much worthless for me in this game. I never reached enough military strength early in the game to where I could realistically challenge the Clan of Embers, so I moved my settler to another spot and founded my second city.
By this point, my scouts had located another civilization, the Bannor, led by Sabbathiel. Apparently myself, the Bannor, and the Clan all shared a mid-sized, snake-like continent. However, the Bannor controlled the entire northern half, the Clan controlled the middle quarter, and I controlled the southern half. Without any other real course of action, I focused on teching to Trade and settled my third city to cement my control of the southern reaches of the continent.
As I pursued Trade, other civilizations found me. The Grigori, led by Cassiel. The Sidar, led by Morgoth. And the Lanun, led by Hannah. Cassiel was relatively friendly, Morgoth was cautious, but Hannah was downright nasty. Apparently I had managed to become her worst enemy! Perhaps the fact that I had founded the Runes of Kilmorph, while she followed some slimy octopus creatures. Oh well. The Lanun were isolated from me by a lot of water, and my cities were well defended as a result of military build-up to see if I could crack the Clan cities.
By now, my paltry collection of three cities was beginning to take its toll. Despite running 80-90% tech, I was falling behind the Bannor and the Lanun. In an effort to improve my economy, I constructed the holy site of the Runes of Kilmorph and focused on sending missionaries abroad. Sabbathiel, Jonas, and Cassiel all signed open borders, while the rest would not. I spread the religion to every city in their empires, and my economy soared. I was now able to run 100% tech and still pull in 20-30 gpt. Jonas converted to Runes, but Sabbathiel refused. And for some reason Cassiel wouldn't even give me the option to request conversion! Hmm, what gives? Oh, apparently he's agnostic. I never knew about that. Bugger.
Time passed. After I discovered Trade I went into a flurry of trade and discovery. After a hundred years or so, my cities had a lot of infrastructure and solid defenses, but I was no closer to being able to launch an assault on Jonas. On top of that, by now he had become pleased with me! As a result of all the trading, everyone except for Hannah was either pleased or friendly with the Kuriotates. Oh yeah, and the final civilization - Hyborem of the Infernal. He didn't like me much either. Fortunately, Hyborem was isolated on a large island (think Australia) and didn't seem to have much inclination to explore the seas.
I pulled ahead of Hannah on the power graph and in the tech race, and I felt safe in my position. Jonas wasn't going to declare on me, and I could fight off an amphibious invasion by either Hannah or Hyborem, should they decide to go to war. Unfortunately, Sabbathiel was running unchecked. With lots of land and nobody warring against him, he had pulled clearly into the lead by nearly 1000 points. The turn was roughly 350.
The whole game up to this point, there had been a nagging question in the back of my mind. "How will you win?" I initially thought about Domination, but the strong position of Jonas made that unlikely. On top of that, I was worried about the effects of the Kuriotate limitation on cities. If I captured a city, would it become a settlement? I didn't know, and my position wasn't really strong enough that I could afford to try without any guarantees. Conquest was right out, as I simply didn't have the production capacity to churn out enough troops to take out Sabbathiel. I had thought my "mega-cities" would compensate for that, but I found instead that the cities weren't much better than three normal cities. I was always limited by happiness, and my largest city was around size 16, when Sabbathiel, and even Jonas, had somehow managed to get several cities above size 20! What was I doing wrong?
As the turns progressed and I got later into the game, the question of winning became more urgent. I looked at the Tower of Mastery. Hmm, all those towers are National Wonders, and I only have 6 spots for National Wonders. That pretty much seems impossible.
Suddenly, the peace that had reigned in the world for 350+ years was broken - Sabbathiel declared war on Jonas! I knew at once, of course, that I had to get involved. Sabbathiel would likely overrun Jonas, although the Clan had enough troops to make it a long, costly war. I could either dog-pile the Clan, hoping to snag a couple of cities in the chaos, or jump in bed with Jonas and try to push the war to Sabbathiel, crippling him in the process. Still worried that any captured cities would be nothing more than settlements, I chose to ally with Jonas. I took all of my centaurs (12 or so) and rushed them into Bannor lands, hoping to capture a weak city or generally cause mayhem. Wow. They got decimated. I managed to pillage a few tiles and kill a couple of tigers before I was forced to pull the survivors back in a feeble attempt to save my power rating.
I wanted to send a strong stack on the attack, but I couldn't leave my homeland undefended. The war would be fought on the far side of the Clan lands, so I needed to maintain strong garrisons in case Hannah decided to launch a surprise offensive. When you only have three cities, losing one is a *****. I switched civics away from the powerful Aristocracy/Agriculture combo to Theocracy, Nationhood and Conquest to begin pumping veteran units out. Of course, I didn't realize this meant my Royal Guard would abandon me. Bye-bye Royal Guard. Hello declining power graph. Bugger. Before I had a decent stack to attack, Sabbathiel and Jonas declared peace. Apparently I had successfully defended the Clan from being overrun, but now I was in a war alone against the strongest empire in the world. Luckily, the Clan served as a buffer, and I only had to suffer the predations of some pillaging frigates before I reached a peace agreement with Sabbathiel. I spent several turns shifting back to my peace-time arrangement when the question reared its ugly head again. "How will you win?"
I honestly didn't know. Culture seemed like a difficult proposition, especially without cathedrals, and Broadway, and Hollywood, and Rock'n'Roll, which I rely on in vanilla. I looked at religion. Yikes. I had no idea how I could get a religious victory, especially as all major religions had been founded by now (three by me!) and had spread significantly. If I was going that path, I may as well go conquest. Sabbathiel was still running away on points, so a timed victory (yuck) didn't seem likely either.
I racked my head and examined each option again. Finally, it dawned on me. With a few civics changes and some specialists, cultural might be doable. Even though my leading cultural city only had roughly 7000 culture, and it was late in the game (turn 425 or so), I still had over 200 turns left. If I could pull in 250 culture per turn from my least cultural city, I'd be able to make it. Conveniently, I had chosen Spiritual as my adaptive trait to deal with the civics changes during the war with Sabbathiel, so I focused on teching to Liberalism. When I got there I switched to Liberty, Republic, Caste System, Foreign Trade, and turned off the science.
So, that brings me where I am now, at roughly turn 480. I'm pulling in about 370 culture per turn from my least cultural city and have nearly 20k culture in each of my three cities. My borders are putting serious pressure on Jonas, and I expect two of his cities to flip to me within the next 10 turns or so. I guess now I'll be able to find out whether captured cities act as settlements or not! I'm expecting to win this game, as I don't think anyone else is in a position to win. Sabbathiel or Cassiel may complete the Tower of Mastery, but that is so difficult I think it's highly unlikely. Noone is in position for Domination, Conquest, or Religious victory. My cities have a full complement of War Chariots, Paladins, Shadows, Archmages, and Heavy Crossbows, plus plenty of Macemen, Crossbows, and Conjurers, so I'm not afraid of an attack. I'm happy that I've found a path to victory, but I can't help but feel frustrated with how long it took me to find it. Oh well. I'll finish playing this out (basically "next turn, next turn, next turn, ...) and assuming I win, it will be satisfying.
So, in my experience with the Kuriotates, here are some random thoughts.
1. An expanded city ring doesn't necessarily mean larger cities, but gives you greater choice in working the best tiles. This means a lot of flexibility in shifting a city between growth, production, and commerce.
2. The adaptive trait gives you a lot of flexibility, but you need to be prepared to take advantage of it! I made great use of switching between Industrial, Financial, and Spiritual, but I could have gotten more out of it if I had been prepared early in the game. Combined with point #1 above, the Kuriotates can be very flexible indeed!
3. Happiness and health limits are extremely important if you want to get the most use out of the expanded city ring. I never had enough health and/or happiness to get above size 20 until very late in the game when I was converting excess food into artists. I'm sure if I had tried harder I could have done better (maybe running Religion? increasing culture bar? gambling houses?).
4. It would be very useful to know which units will abandon you before a civics/religion change, and allow the player to cancel the change.
5. The Runes of Kilmorph seem like a powerful religion, and Arete is great, but I don't think it was the best choice for the Kuriotates. Being limited to three cities really limited the effects of the religion.
6. The key to a cultural victory in FfH is civics! Liberty, Republic, Caste System, and Foreign Trade combine for +140% culture and +2 culture per specialist, plus a free specialist in each city. That is some serious cultural mojo.
That's all. I'm looking forward to finishing this game and finding another civilization to play as next. Those Malakim look interesting...
