Ljolsalfar on Immortal (A Guide)

[Rod]

I just play a game as Ljolsalfar in Immortal, but this time I decided to take a number of snapshot. I think it might be interesting to share my story, to see what other people think about my ways and solutions.

But lets start. At the beginning there was a Large map created in Creation.py (very nice Fantasy Style Script). I was using FFH 0.30h

8 Civs are opposing me in Quick Speed. There are Raging Barbs, Aggressive AI, Barbarian World, Wildlands, Blessings of Amathaon, Living World, AI No Building Requirement, End of Winter and .. No City Razing ..

No City Razing adds a real challenge on any Warfare. As you can not raze any city you either spoil your economy , or you dont conquer or .. you gift

But If you gift to Evil Civs, then you raise the Armageddon Counter , so suddenly you find yourself starving in the middle of an extensive campaign.
In this scenario it becomes imperative A) to keep Civs in the game - so that you can later gift them newly conquered cities, B) to keep at least a few civs friendly to you (again for gifting) and C) to convert evil opponents to Order or Empyrians (if possible). [this is actually hardly the case with Elves, but when you Bannor or Malakim things are different]

But so much for the technicals. I chose Ljolsalfar, because I like their units, I mean I like the images.
So to play Ljolsalfar on Immortal or Deity we have to know their strengthes and weaknesses by heart and our heart is made of wood.

Elves love Woods (what a suprise).
Therefore we need Woods and much of them. We build everything in them. Elves love any Woods, therefore Jungles dont affect us as much as other Civs. Elves love Leaves, because the Fellowship of Leaves loves Woods (ehhm .. sounds quite logical actually )
Finally Elves love Bloom, because Bloom makes Woods , but this makes us dependent on Incense .. this becomes a problem as we see later.

The weaknesses are not much. Elf Workers are slightly slower then other workers, therefore we need more of them. Elves have no Siege Weapons. (But I dont use them anyway ). Therefore we need Fireballs.

To make it more abstract :

Our economy will rely almost entirely on Forest Cottages. We dont really need trade or specialists. Therefore we actually build almost exclusivel Cottages and only occassional some mines and Plantations or Farms. Ancient Forest will provide +1/+1/+0 (Food/Production/Commerce)on every tile. Therefore any Forest Town in an Ancient Forest will be provide +1/+1/+5 no matter which terrain. Nothing can beat this. The only only drawback is that we wont get +1 Commerce for terrain adjacent to rivers, but who cares.

Our early armies will rely on Warriors, then we switch over to Hunters(+ Hawks), Then we mix Swordman, Hunters and Archers and finally we create Stacks of Doom consisting each of
3 Champions, 1 Flurry, 4 Fireball Mages, 3 Support Mages (Haste, Reg and Valor, Rust if required), 2 Rangers, 2 Hawks (against Assassins), 1 Marksman, 1 Priest of Leaves

But this is still around 250 turns ahead.

 

[Rod]

The Survival

Our first aim is to survive. This phase should take a maximum of 100 turns.
There are a few key targets that we have to accomplish till turn 100, otherwise we are in bad shape.

1) The Holy Trinity

At the end of this phase we have 3 cities, no matter whether conquered or founded, but we have three cities.

2) The Holy City

During this phase we have founded the FoL, because we are Elf (this is specifically important for Elves, other civs do not need their religion that urgent.)
The FoL will convert our forest into ancient trees, but only slowly. Therefore we need to start as soon as possible. Moreover with access to priests we can cast Bloom to generate more forests.

3) The Basic Foundament

During this phase we need to research or trade or receive from a goody hut a number of key Techs.

Mysticism, Education, Agriculture, Hunting, Way of the Forests and Mining.

These are essential, no matter what.

But lets finally start the game.

I have created my own leader: Erendiel.

Erendiel is Raider, Charismatic and Good.

Spoiler :

(actually he is a copy of Arendel, but with one advantage and one disadvantage)

Raider is the best trait for Elves. We always need money and we want to build forest improvements over conquered territory, therefore we raid everything in our way. Not to mention the free Raider-Promotion. Speed is essential. Naturally I kept this trait.

Charismatic is slightly better than Defender in the long run. In the early game Defender is clear better, because the most wars will be on our territory. Apart from this Defender is given to units from start, but Charismatic will only start working after you have already gained significant XP.However in the long run, especially my Mages benefit from Charismatic.

Good is of course worse then Neutral. First .. no Druids. This is BAD, just bad. We can only compensate by slowly upgrading our Priests.. But we actually dont have the time.
Secondly.. most people dislike me, this is even worse. As a neutral leader you hardly suffer any diplomatic penalties, no matter, who is living next to you. But being good and maybe having no good neighbours means : No Open Borders, no trade, no technology-exchange, just crap.
The only 'advantage' is that I can use the Divine Clerical Paladin and Crusaders as Unit - I wont use them. We dont need them

So naturally this leader is not promising the easiest game, but who likes easy games ..

So here we go :

Our Start is ..not promising.

No Gold and No Incense that is tough. But at least a River, Woods, The Holy Tree and Pigs.
(dont forget we have Blessings activated, therefore the other civs will have very good starting position in general)


But the picture gets slightly better. We wont have any problems with Food and the Holy Tree cares for our happiness, but most important ... We have 4 hills in the cross. They might contain Copper, Iron or even Mithril and we might also discover more resources by mining them. As we have no food problems we can mine them all, which is beneficial. In short I like the place, lets settle down.



Our first milestone is to get Mysticism (God King) therefore we go Ancient Chants, Mysticism. In our city we built Warriors and Warriors.

We also need to explore the surroundings.

I have activated Barbarian Lands, unfortunately there is no Barbarian City nearby. It is often easy to just conquer the second city by a stack of Warrriors, but this is out of question now.
In general we live in an Elven Valley. This is a specialty of the Creation.py map.
We are actually well protected. The only entrance to the valley is a narrow escape to the north.



But as we can not conquer, we need to found. Fortunately thanks to our food boni we can kick out settlers easier.

So lets search for good places for the second city and third city. I want them all in the valley for defense reason, therefore the choice is slightly narrowed.

In the South is no place.



But the North looks promising. Finally I identify two places and will settle at first Hyall in the east and then Bruti in the west. As we do not need to build many warriors, we can finish this till round 70 or 75.



In the meanwhile our starting Scouts will explore the land. At beginning I keep them together for good reason.

As we can see here, the first Gorilla beats us to clump right after we have left the valley. Fortunately I had both Scouts in one group. Therefore the second Scout could defeat the weakend Gorilla in the next turn and gain valuable experience points. This experience points often buy two promotions. Woodman I and Combat I. This makes our Scout unit strength 6 in the Woods against animals and Strength 4 against others and this is quite a match for the most Barbarian and Animal units as long as they are unpromoted.



But there are certain exceptions to this rule... namely Giant Spiders ....



But in general it is better to keep the starting units in one group then to split them up.In this case sometimes one of them can survive the entire game though not in our case.

In our case we stop exploring until our next two warriors are ready. This happens around turn 15. This two warriors then continued the exploration and finally succeeded.

In turn 65 they entered a village (the 5th or 6th) and gained an extra technology (I forgot what is was, maybe Crafting). The propability that you receive an additional tech is high if you are fast in exploration. It is also critical to keep our timeline and give us an edge over our competitors.
As we are Elves we have the additional advantage that even our Warriors glide through forests like on roads. In this picture we can also see the advantage of being with a fellow soldier on tour .. they survived this situation (the village was on the hill) and they became the core of my first Army.



These fellows also eventually enter the realm of our closest neighbour. My commanders are initiating the first contact. Eagerly I await their return and their report. Will it be a battle proven and honourful shield maiden of the Bannor or a pacifistic old man of the Elohim, who will exchange lots of techs and resources ??

Spoiler :

NO !! Vampires !! And they hate us, because we are GOOD ..

.. to be continued

 

[Rod]

As expected the Vampires do neither open borders with us nor do they offer anything else. At this stage we also dont want to gift something away for good relations therefore we keep our diplomatic relations on a frozen level for the time being. We have other troubles anyway.

After we have researched Mysticism (around turn 30) we instantly switch to God King. As we have only 1 city at this time this switch is simply reducing all our research and production times by 33% on the spot. In result we are now very quick on Agriculture, then Education. This is of course absolutelely imperative as we have to spam Forest Cottages as quick as possible. After we kicked out 4 warriors (around turn 20) we go ahead with a Settler (for Hyll) (around turn 35) and then we go for 2 workers (finished by around 50). Hyll is going directly for Elder Council (takes 20 turns or so)
Evermore is going for Elder Council and a Settler for Bruti. (finished by around 70). Afterwards we kick out more workers, later Hunters and Hawks as soon as Hunting becomes available (naturally Workers in Hyll, Hunting House, Hunters and Hawks in Evermore).

Until our first workers are ready in the 40s we also have Agriculture and then Education in place so our workers can built something.
Now things start moving. With cottages spreading and and our cities growing we are able to double our GDP in only 30-40 turns.

In the middle of the 70s we settle Bruti. First Benchmark is reached !!!

Soon after (also researching Hunting on the way)we reach our second benchmark : Way of the Forest is discovered first by us !



Then it is an easy step just to Mining and so finally in 95 we can successfully declare the Survival Period to be mastered.

 

[Rod]

pew, that was a fast ride. The first 100 turns are naturally always so action-packed that you hardly get time for any proper planning, but this has to change now.

This is because we enter the second phase that should take again around 100 turns (on quick).

Nation Building

We are leaving our savage past behind us and we start building infrastructure and to spread culture rather than just killing everything in our way.
When wars in the first stage are of extremely destructive nature (not in this case, but in general), the wars that we fight in the second phase are only of defensive nature. If we conquer then we conquer, because of opportunity and as a punitive measure, but we will not plan for a campaign (this we leave to the last phase).

Therefore in the Nation Building Stage we are following again 3 targets and all of them have to be reached up till turn 200 as well.

1) The Awe of the World

We have to construct 2 Wonders and 1 Shrine. We can construct more, but there 2 wonders that are absolutely important :
- Form of Titan
- Guild of Engineers
And as we always need money we must have the Song of Autumn .. rather sooner than later.

2) The Wealth of the Nations

We need certain key resources in order to be competitive. Often we can find them in or nearby our core territory.Often we can also trade for them. But we would even settle far beyond our borders and we would even wage war just to get them.

These resources are (for Elves) :

Iron (before Copper), Incense and Gold.

Iron we need for the military (this is clear), Incense for the Priests, but Gold, do we really need Gold that urgently ?? Yes, we do. As we will have few but big cities we need very effective happiness resources to keep our society happy. As we have to build the Guild of Engineers anyway naturally Forges will be available throughout the nation. That is not the case with Training Yards, Hunting Houses and other sources of happiness; therefore Gold is the single best happiness resource for us Elves.

Apart from this we also need Mana :

We need :

Body Mana
Mind Mana
Spirit Mana
Fire Mana
Law Mana
(Water Mana - if we have a desert problem - in this case it would be on top the list)

3) The Enlightment

Not only will we certainly be Tech Leader by the end of this century, but more important for us is that we have reached a number of key technologies.

Sorcery, Ironworking, Priesthood, Engineering, Currency, Trade and Sanitation.

The first 3 techs we need to assemble our Conquest Stack. Champions, Mages and Priests.

The other ones we need to trade for techs, to trade for technology and to keep our society healthy and productive and our cities big.

As you can see we are stressing a lot on production and commerce. This because in order to overtake the AI we have to catch it by its biggest weakness. Overexpansion that leads to Underdevelopment. Therefore during the Nationbuilding Phase we focus on quality rather than on quantity :

We settle as less cities as possible,always maintaining our research slider way above 70%.
We only settle or conquer :

1)Cities on key resources (Copper, Incense, Iron, Mana, Gold (or Dye if there is really no gold in reach) )
2)Cities on strategic important places (Crossroads, Mountain Passes, Coastal Cities)

The latter ones become important during the Time of Conquest (the last stage) and therefore it makes sense to plan ahead.

We certainly do not conquer land .. that comes later...

to be continued ..

 

[Rod]

for last chapter

 

[Marksman77]

Good read, though the pictures aren't there

I'm curious what's your opinion on creation map script?

I played on creation map only once by now and I find that, while adding a nice touch to the game, it makes the game quite significantly easier.

At least in my game I didn't have to care for defense, as there's only one possible assault path (yeah I know: beastmasters, certain summons and sects of files spawning when AC is high are some examples of nasty surprises that can catch you unguarded in your safe valley).
The same applies to barbarians, as soon as you de-fog your valley.

 

[daladinn]

this makes for an interesting story and a great read ...

however,

please remove the "(a guide)" for you will be sadly misleading people.

1- your map settings are cool. not basic and don't tend to shift the game to far for or against the elves.
2- your leader settings. ya , umm , for a guide i would keep this to default. charismatic in the hands of the elves is an early game victory.
3- as I said a second ago, this makes for a great story and a great read but tactically on any tougher difficulty its suicide. you diversified away from most of the elves strengths right off the bat. also note god king does NOT give a bonus to research.
4- you mention killer stacks in various points , but where are your druids?

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

You will need to upload the images to Photbucket or Imageshack because of the recent hacking and subsequent death of Easy Upload. ( R.I.P)

 

[xienwolf]

You can still use the attach feature in individual posts. Limited to 5 per post, but otherwise almost just as useful (size limits are slightly smaller as well, but typically only mods get that large)

 

[kiaace]

if u have time go for genesis