Malakim advantages

[DirtyFinger]

What's your top priority being Malakim ? Are u going for spam farm + financial or for priesthood + religion ?

I've tried to play a few games with Van Gorsam and I've always been crushed by the AI (I play emperor or immortal, worldspell enable, normal barbs, pangea maps).

Top priority (on deity) is to defend yourself. Put the first city on a hill and build 3-5 warriors. Use your starter units to find stuff and chokepoints.

After that I can claim good results with aristograrian builds. Research agrarianism and aristocracy and start farming gold.

Since I prefer to go for Altar of the Luonnotar, I naturally focus on religious tech afterwards: It comes early and benefits from your strengths, i.e. lots of free XP for disciples.

Going religious is almost always the safer choice, simply because you can reasearch that stuff faster.
The arcane path is - on the long run - the more powerful one and it benefits equally from your racial strengths, thanks to Lightbringers.

Imo, the most overpowered unit of the malakim is the sand lion.
Why?
Well it's a 6 (5+1fire) strength unit with 3 movement points and can be summoned by mages on desert tiles.

It's the strongest summon mages can, er, summon. And mages for Malakim are a dime a dozen. The spell is free, too.

I'd skip on ashen veil, though. Lightbringers can upgrade directly to mages and while ritualists are great, ashen veil civs tend to get corrupted land, thus destroying your desert tiles.

 

[RealHuhn]

I'd skip on ashen veil, though. Lightbringers can upgrade directly to mages and while ritualists are great, ashen veil civs tend to get corrupted land, thus destroying your desert tiles.

Thanks, I didn't know that. However, the lightbringers don't get free XP over time, so you need a few altars. The charismatic trait could be helpful as well.

And ashen veil has a lot of other advantages. Rosier the Fallen is a strong and mobile hero, and you get free ritualists with the malakim world spell.
Corrupted land definately is a disadvantage but you can always delay the infernal pact.
But not too long. The armageddon counter rises quickly, especially when you have the ashen veil shrine, and you need sacrifice the weak to "counter" blight (which is a good time to attack).
And last but not least, the infernal grimoire wonder. Malevolant designs or theology for free? Yes, please!

But don't get me wrong, I'm still quite new to the game and I'm sure other religions have great synergies with the malakim, too.
Ashen veil just seems to be a bit overpowered

 

[Onionsoilder]

Do you need to be running AV to build the Infernal Grimiore, or just have researched Infernal Pact?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

You only need IP.

I wouldn't bother with IP/grimorie as the malakim though. Put AV and a temple in one city and run AV as state for a few turns. Build lightbringers in a production city, send them to the AV city where a few upgrade into ritualists, then abandon AV and forget about it. The mage upgrade still works if you have a different state religion, and you only need 3 or 4 ritualists.

 

[RealHuhn]

You only need IP.

I wouldn't bother with IP/grimorie as the malakim though. Put AV and a temple in one city and run AV as state for a few turns. Build lightbringers in a production city, send them to the AV city where a few upgrade into ritualists, then abandon AV and forget about it. The mage upgrade still works if you have a different state religion, and you only need 3 or 4 ritualists.

Ok sure, you can upgrade your lightbringers into savants (for the free XP from channeling 1) and then into mages without actually running AV.
But if you want to be quick, you have to found AV by yourself and it's possible that you don't have any other religion ...

Besides, which religion would be better at this point in the game? Chalid comes a bit late for an early domination victory (although GPriests for bulbing could be helpful).
The Order maybe? Valin Phanuel is comparable to Rosier; confessors with Bless (+1 holy damage) are as strong as sandlions and your alignment changes back to "good".
Should be helpful! Is it worth the ~1000 beakers ?! I don't know ^^

FOL for priests of leaves?!? Summoned sand lions and tigers ?!

 

[readercolin]

Savants don't start with channeling 1, you need to start them with 10xp to be able to upgrade to mages, they don't get any free xp. The real reason not to run ashen veil is twofold. Firstly, it tends to bring around armageddon (and burning sands RUIN flood plains). Secondly, while running ashen veil (something you never actually have to do), you cannot further construct the altar of the lunnotar. What I recommend actually is to run ashen veil for a short time, then switch to empyrian. Why? Empyrian will switch you to neutral, the best alignment for them. Why is neutral the best? Upgrade some empyrian priests to druids, and in addition to your high priests, you'll have 8 people casting crown of fire (9 counting chalid). Also, construct altar of the lunnotar in your empyrian holy city (empy holy building adds +2 to disciple xp, altar adds another +2 per level). Once you have crown of firing druids, you can switch back to whatever you want, but they are by far the best way to have druids (Order is second best - 9 people able to cast unyeilding order? yes please giant cities ).

Also, for the lightbringer to mage skip, you don't ever actually have to switch to ashen veil. You just need one city that is able to build a savant (aka, you need 1 city with a temple of the veil). Once you have that, you don't need anything else ever again. And since this is only useful once you have sorcery, it isn't exactly a priority.

-Colin

 

[RealHuhn]

Savants don't start with channeling 1, you need to start them with 10xp to be able to upgrade to mages, they don't get any free xp.
-Colin

Sorry to nitpick but savants DO get free XP because of the spiritual trait (they get potency, not channeling, sorry)
That's why AV should be a priority because it takes some time to get them to 10 XP.

Without savants, you have to "waste" your great people for a few altars and after that it's only possible to build 10 XP lightbringers in one city.

With early AV, you can mass produce lightbringers in all of your cities and upgrade them into savants (mages later).
In this scenario, you can use your great people to bulb important techs or to build some academies in your massive floodplain cities.

On top of that, you get a discount on temples and AV temples can further boost your research.
After sorcery, start your conquest with about 15 mages, a few ritualists, a mobile hero (rosier for example) and two adepts (with scorch and haste).
15 sandlions per turn is often enough to take a city ... vassalize as soon as possible and move on to the next target

In my opinion, chalid and especially high priests or druids come too late. The game's decided much earlier (depends on difficulty level)

 

[popejubal]

Sorry to nitpick but savants DO get free XP because of the spiritual trait (they get potency, not channeling, sorry)

It's my understanding that you need both potency and channeling in order to get the free XP. That's why my Paramanders/Crusaders/Disciples/Paladins never level on their own. Only Priests and High Priests get the free XP.

My own favorite trick with Savants is to plop down a couple of levels of the Altar of the Lunnotar. Switch to Ashen Veil after you have a couple of Lunnotar levels and you're pushing out Savants with 10 XP. That's enough to convert to Mage and the free spells you get from multiple mana sources can be enough to get them something worthwhile like Maelstrom, Summon Spectre or Fireball.

"wasting" great Prophets is a problem, but it's not a catastrope because you don't need all that many Altar levels. Desert Shrine + Apprenticeship is 4 XP alone. Add in Form of the Titan (which isn't too terribly hard to build) and you only need 2 Great Priests. If you play Decius or if you pick Organized, then you can build Command Posts in your city and only need one Great Priest.

Heck, if you have Command Posts, Desert Shrines and Form of the Titan, then you can get away with just using Apprenticeship and Conquest for 10 XP Savants. There is a downside there, though - you're not running Agrarianism.

In my opinion, chalid and especially high priests or druids come too late. The game's decided much earlier (depends on difficulty level)

I've seen Chalid turn single player games around all by himself, but I agree that all of them come very late in the game and you can do quite a lot before they ever hit the scene if you have enough Mages. Promoted Savants is a very helpful route - especially if you have a couple of useful nodes for the free spells.

 

[Jet]

It's my understanding that you need both potency and channeling in order to get the free XP. That's why my Paramanders/Crusaders/Disciples/Paladins never level on their own. Only Priests and High Priests get the free XP.

No, the T1 priest units (not Lightbringers) do get free XP from Spiritual.

 

[RealHuhn]

No comment

 

[Tasunke]

o.O .... Chalid is THE game of FFH. There are counters against him sure, but he is mightier than the Nox Noctis, quite mightier

 

[Broken Hawk]

I just finished a game playing the Malakim. I wish I had this thread first. Life would have been much easier.

 

[Landmonitor]

The only time I used them, I went Emperyan and it worked very well. I like self-evident posts.

 

[Aroddo]

i wonder how much of that stuff is still accurate ... did vanilla FFH2 patches change malakim significantly since the op?