Hmm I played quite a bit last night, was extremely difficult on Immortal. Was one of the best games I've ever had so far of FFH tho, very challenging and the events and quality of the map added spice. The Malakim starting spot is poor and in the worst possible area for a raging barbs map: isolated from its neighbors, and surrounded on all sides with open wastes. The mirror was a great help as the barbarians began spawing as I could station a lightbringer on it to help slow the spawns to the east. I built a number of warriors and a second lightbringer and decided to not even try to build a worker as previous experience had told me it would be a wasted effort. Instead I just let the city expand to 5 pop, beelined to bronze working, and began building a settler to establish a second town near the mirror.
About the time the Svarltalar were overwhelmed by barbarians. I built the second town, and began construction of a training yard in my capital. By this time my warriors had destroyed so many orcs they had become hardy veterans. I slowed my tech to save money to upgrade them, and just as my training yard was finished a huge horde appeared from the northwest: The pillagers of the Shadow Elf kingdom I suspect, come to make me their next victims. There must have been 6-8 orcs, about 10 goblins, and a couple sects of flies. My veteran capital guards I upgraded to swordsmen and they, with only a few warriors to support them barely sufficed to hold off the evil horde: but a level 7ish swordsman with the proper upgrades and +60% defense bonus from the capital, and encircling rivers made them almost (except to the sects which were just barely survived) invincible.
Barbs continued to plague me, but slowly I built up a small force of swordsmen able to hold them off... Several emissaries from the elven kingdom dodged their way thru swarms of goblins and arrived to convert me to fellowship of leaves: very helpful even tho the terrain is not at all suited to this religion...I worked to build a third town, which attrated the attention of some more sects of flies (with escorting orc/goblin swarms). This was barely defended. I decided to attack the barbarian city up to the northwest and gathered a number of seasoned veteran swordsmen and managed to take it, only to be attacked by Alexis right after...An event declared something about runners being dispacted from the frontier to bring news of a surprise attack: this heralded a golden age! Much needed... I rushed my swords back from the northwest to defend the realm, managed to finish the Great Library quickly after the golden age and begin ramping up more swords. Locked in a brutal war with invading Moroi and supporting catapults are my veteran swords and supporting adepts: things are far from boring, but I needed to get some sleep, had stayed up much too late already
As far as the world goes, the elves are the most powerful nation, with the Hippus also doing well. Im ranked third among the 6 nations Ive contacted.
And for starting balance, why aren't there horses anywhere close at all to their starting spot? Some guys mounted on Zebras would have been a big help...