Kuriotates get much mileage from creation sphere?

[sunbeam]

I know they aren't that popular a civ, but I've always enjoyed them for some reason.

One of the things I liked about them was that with sun and water, they were set up for terraforming out of the box.

Now, in this mod, creation mana has been substituted for sun mana.

Just playing around a bit, I can't find too many uses for the creation sphere.

Kuriotate cities have never really had much problem growing in my experience. I guess the level 1 spell adds more health, so that is good. I often go FoL with the kuriotates so that isn't as big a deal to me.

I think the second level spell, fertility, could be useful, but usually you can build a settlement by something if you need that resource, so I'm not sure I would bother with it.

I guess the third level one could be useful if you had just summoned Basium, and needed to grow a settlement quickly. I haven't used it in game, but just the blurb seems like it is less useful than the two spells that precede it in this line. I can't see getting an archmage to take this promotion however.

It just seems to me creation mana benefits other civs a lot more than the kuriotates. I think sun was more useful than creation for the kuriotates.

And you can't build Herne now? In other mods I got a lot more mileage out of him than Eurabates, because by the time I got divine essence Eurabates was kind of something you had to babysit. Usually he didn't get enough promotions to be useful before the game was over.

I guess with strength 50 he is going to work differently, but in this mod I find myself ignoring the magic line after I get priests.

I kind of call it quits at sorcery on the arcane side too, the only reason I go that far is to get dispel magic. I wasn't even bothering with that till I found out dispel magic got rid of haunted lands.

So is creation useful somehow? Because so far I'm not seeing it.

 

[Jheral]

Creation has always been a bit off, in my mind. It has weak effects that are rarely useful (if you discount birth, but I really don't see that as a useful spell, since it's so late). However, terraforming isn't something we as a team like very much.

That said, Kurios can easily be one of the most powerful civs in the hands of a player - they don't need further boosts. And even if they did, RifE is feature locked - we will not be making any further content changes.

So, unless you want to pick it up and make the modifications yourself, it's probably not going to happen.

 

[sunbeam]

I've kind of been gathering that.

Your mod has some features I like (particularly being able to level mountains, even though only 3 civilizations can apparently do it unless they can buy a flying ship or capture a dwarf priest), but there is a lot that's not my cup of tea. Plus you have a couple leaders I really like, and an interesting approach to some of the civs that I really like as well.

I'm not too keen on the health issues and the slow levelling mages though. I haven't really gone through all the ins and outs of all the buildings I can build to help level them, but there are only a few civs that seem to be able to level them in any helpful amount of time.

I've been mainly playing it hoping for a mod that was more stable and didn't slow down so much in the late game that wasn't FFH2. I guess you are no longer looking for feedback, which I can understand since you guys are moving on to other things.

Fair enough. I will say though that the kuriotates are one of the least powerful civs. Their best days are right at the beginning when they can build centaurs and take advantage of that first mega city. Other than that, and the fact you've apparently made Eurabates so strong, there is absolutely nothing (gardens of amatheon for one city maybe?) that sets them ahead of any other civ, and a lot that puts them behind (crappy world spell, limited number of cities, etc). In the end horse archers get outdated, and the other kuriotate units aren't any better than anyone else's, and worse than some civs.

A skilled player can do much better with most of the other civs, and the ai usually does terribly with them in most of the sp games I play.

Heck when I play the doviello I usually out tech them by the mid game due to all the cities I've spammed and the amount of money I can pump into research (well I haven't played doviello in your mod).

You've done some good things with this, but a lot of it isn't fun or balanced so far to me. Some of your civs seem super strong compared to others (Mekhara, D'Tesh), in sp.

You've made an admirable effort, of all the mods past FFH2 I've played yours is the most stable and fastest (no idea about wildmana or that MoM thing), with some interesting ideas.

I think I'll go back to orbis. Honestly I know how it all ends by round 400 usually, so I guess I don't really need to finish the games. Or maybe I'll try this Magister mod.

 

[Viatos]

Magister Mod does some really amazing things with spell spheres, one of which is making Creation awesome, so you might have more luck with that.

The Kuriotates have better economies compared to civs that don't go to war, so they have some advantage for dedicated builders, but you're right - that's a small boost and overall they suck. Centaurs are interesting but not very effective, their unique-racial'd recon is interesting but not even close to effective, and they have no hero until the point in the game when it stops mattering. The solution that Wildmana (I think) uses is to make Herne a centaur hero, so that's something you could mod in yourself if you wanted to without too much trouble. They're also supposed to have unique spellcasters, the Lamia, but that's just an art patch now. They never got a racial, and it'd take a pretty involved one to compensate for everything else. You could try submitting something for the Dynamic Traits thread for a Lamia leader (I guess Cardith himself, maybe play off the shared scaliness angle to get some kind of dragon synergy going).

 

[Valkrionn]

Kuriotates have Creation magic in the lore, so when that sphere was added it was given to them. Essentially the whole reason they got it.

 

[Evalis]

I like that creation magic was added, given the massive health problems they are likely to encounter during the early game this was probably a bigger benefit than sun mana unless you got caught in the tundra. Spirit for Creation would have been a better exchange, but I'm not sure if that fits lore.

However, I am in the same boat in that I don't find them to be all that useful. The only way I could see them taking off is if barbarians were removed. It's damned near impossible to cover all your improvements with guards from pillaging barbarians. Their world spell is still lackluster and the fact that tower guards now cost upkeep their special pioneer unit isn't particularily useful. Their massive sprawl can often be a penalty if you build inland and have a number of ocean tiles within city radius, as you cannot take advantage of the +food, +health or +traderoutes, while still being forced to deal with crappier tile yeilds.

I guess I'm somewhat curious how you came to the conclusion that they are one of the more powerful civs Jheral. What exactly are you supposed to do to stop your lands from being savagely pillaged, and how do you overcome useless coastal tiles (or the loss of health from sea resources)?

 

[Valkrionn]

On the whole "loss of health from sea resources" issue: that's what the wyrmfisher unit is for. Flying fishing boat, can build it in inland cities.

Personally, I tend to overpower people early rather than late with Kurios. I'd tend to agree with Jheral on their strength.

 

[Viatos]

One thing you can say for them is that it's really hard to have a bad game with them. Their city radii and early growth potential give you a leg up even if barbarians are causing problems, and being able to spam centaurs without horses should stop the pillaging. You can't really get screwed over, so that's nice.

Where they're weak is that they are essentially a souped-up version of a vanilla civ - their unique mechanics don't help them in terms of warfare. Heroes like Korinna the Red and vampiric Corgayle will consistently win the game for you regardless of absolutely anything that happens (failing an encounter with a more successful early hero, of course), Calabim vampires catapult from newborn to level 20 in half as many turns, absolutely nothing is worse then having to dig out the Khazad or the Mazatl. They can handle the AI because the AI doesn't understand the unique mechanics it has access to, but in human vs. human matches I find that even much more experienced players can't eke out an advantage over stronger civs.

Which would be fine if they could just dig in and defend, but they can't because of Enclaves and Settlements, their unique mechanics that make them just super-terrible at handling invasive war. You can't afford to let an enemy get at your improvements or your territory-holding fake cities, but neither can you effectively defend those things because you don't have the unit spam to get coverage the way other civs do. Centaurs would be great for this if you had a lot more of them, but you just can't match the production of seven decent cities with three amazing ones.

Valk has it right - take advantage of the early game, get a tech lead, and hope for a superior-unit rush. But you can't do that if you're up against a strong defensive civ like the Sheaim (skeletons OP), and if you can't get that rush off you've got nothing really - whatever unique mechanics they have access to, they're better then yours. Against other players, don't be Kurio.

 

[sunbeam]

This is based solely on FFH2, but my best kuriotate games were with Herne and 4 Lancers, with a stack of Chargers and Horse Archers to accompany them.

My approach was to build guild of the 9 and have Cardith take Charismatic. I also build the nexus. AI civs in FFH2 will build the guild, but almost no one builds the nexus so I don't have any competition.

My best game I got the Nietz event (Think it was FFH2, but he may be in Orbis). Basically 2 hero knights (Herne and Nietz), 3 regular knights (Lancers by name). I could fortify cities with guild of the 9 (usually don't have cash problems with kurios).

You have to have luck on your metal though. I had mithral fairly early I think.

For me with Kuriotates I go down the metal line. Charismatic is the strongest trait you can have if you go this way.

Just looking at traits, I think Auric Ulvin might make the the best cavalry in the game if he gets Letium Frigis. Aggressive, Charismatic, and Defender are the best traits a possible leader can have for cavalry in my opinion. Really Tasunke only has Horselord on him, though raiders is it's own little niche.

Raiders is better than Aggressive I think, but not as good as Charismatic. If I were making a hypothetical perfect leader for cavalry, I'd pick Tasunke and make his Aggressive trait Charismatic instead. Or swap Auric's Aggressive for Raiders, but I'm not sure that fits lorewise.

You may well have some success against some civs with an early rush with centaurs. But the Hippus do it better. I think Doviello do it better too, though not as good as Hippus. I can take most early civs with Doviello popping the world spell, unless it is Sheim or Wood Elves (Gilden).

If the civs are so far apart, or someone techs archery early I find it almost impossible to rush though. Or the sheim have a stack of pyre zombies, that seems to be the first thing they build.

For me playing Kuriotates, a must get is the guild of the 9. But it is incredibly useful for any civ though. It covers up more weaknesses for Kuriotates than any other civ.

If I were making a mod, I'd make Herne a clone of Magnadine. Reflavor the mounted mercenary spell to make it kurio specific. I find it irking that the best mounted unit in the game, even without horselord, isn't the guy that actually is the horse.

You can't always count on getting the guild of the 9. The way the kuriotates are forced to fight (and yes, they are going to have to fight unless they go altar, or maybe tower, even then honestly) you pretty much have to have a way to fortify those now settlements you can't build in.

 

[Evalis]

Raiders no longer provides commando, instead it provides raider (auto-pillaging). In any case I'm working on a mod that addresses many of the above. Now I just have to learn some python and how to make it 'modular' XD