My Calabim Guide to FFH2

Thoughts:
(Good?) Priests with access to life mana should provide of latent protection against people trying to Contagion their cities.
Limit the number of times a vampire can eat a pop, by doing one of two things. Make the unhappiness in the city exponential, in both amount of unhappiness, and length of time. You can cull the weak without much adieu, but if you eat 5 or 10 pops at a time you'll see crippling unhappiness for a long time. Or just have it take away a move from the vampire, since it is something he must dedicate some time to, currently he can eat a city of 26 to the floor and go off and attack in that same round. Mechanics-wise it just doesn't quite line up.

Feasting too many times in one city does actually increase the amount of unhappiness and make it last longer. Feast on a recently captured supercity until its population count is only 3 and then when it comes out of revolt, you will definitely see more than a +1 :mad: "We can not forget your cruel oppression."
 
As long as you have enough large cities to eat from (and preferably some that you don't eat as much from) you are usually ok.
 
things i often do when playing the calabim...

1 - get KotE quickly , this allows you to build the 6 adepts that later become archmages (for law 3)
2 - use OO for the wonder until you get archmages , then convert to veil. (6 cities with no unhappies is massive, specially with the half food requirement)
3 - build the unholy trinity ( demon alter , soul forge , mokka's couldron)
4 - council of esus to build losha is prolly one of my favorites. you can decimate an opponent without declaring war.

those really imho are the game breakers

keep in mind that your basically in agriculture and aristocrays forever. ( if you can build the gaurds do it)

take care and good luck.
 
I'm using the wiki version as the base for my comments:

1) If you like Octopus Overlords' wonder, I'd suggest staying Octopus Overlords for long enough to get the wonder, then switching to another religion. Assuming that you like the Vampirism Feast ability, The Ashen Veil should be very tempting.

2) If you're going for Guardian of Nature, I'd suggest keeping a few Forests in each city (note that at least in theory, you can burn down Jungles, which will proceed to re-grow into Forests). Forests aren't too bad once you can build Lumbermill, and are significantly better with Guardian of Nature and Fellowship of Leaves. Alternatively, put nothing on a few tiles, for your Priests of Leaves to later populate with Forests.

3) Happy problems: my usual solution is just to build appropriate buildings (all possible Temples, Gambling House, Carnival, etc.) If I'm really expecting problems, I work on capturing animals very early - you can gain +6 happiness and a resource for 1 more from animals alone. Daladinn has some nice long-term happiness suggestions - I think his happiness strategy is detailed under the Kuriotates.

4) Each Vampire can summon a Skeleton; this should help in situations where Undead units are a bonus. Skeletons are also very expendable.

5) I note that you suggest that the lack of Elder Council is crippling. Here's an alternate suggestion: Build Villages, and keep your Research percentage high. The extra food from Agriculture isn't going to help you much until you have Vampiric units (and a substantial raise to your Happy cap.) anyway, and you can always destroy the Towns later, particularly when you have Aristocracy. Also, most cities won't initially be able to build Farms everywhere, and the loss of production hurts some on Plains tiles.
 
I cant figure out how to get a stable empire so I can spend all my time getting the must needed mil techs and making military units..... I'm so noob,sighs

There's no reason why you can't build both :) You can switch the tiles you're working through the emphasis on your city. Myself, I virtually always build both until I'm ready to specialize (assuming that I do so).
 
I usually try to build the Tower of Complacency with the combination of chopping trees (gonna be farms there after its complete anyways), and sacrificing slaves for production.

Instead of building vampires, you can just upgrade a Bloodpet or Moroi near a city with the Governor's Mansion. Before you upgrade, use mutation on it, and if it is a bad batch, save them for food. If its a good batch, upgrade to vamp.
 
A war now and then gives you nice amount of gold :)

Capturing a city gives some hundred gold coins right of the bat, and/or you can pillage while you are at it.

Also, it might expand your territory, give you more cities, and eventually more income. (If you can handle the increased maintanence, expand with care. Build courthouses when required, Forbidden Palace is pretty cheap, and I like to rush the Winter palace with a Engineer+some chopping)

EDIT: And oh yeah, I usually play Flauros nowadays. You lose the Combat I promotion and cheap training yards, but you gain 1 commerce for every tile that already have 2 (like water tiles and farms under aristocracy), as well as build able Command Posts, cheap courthouses and lighthouses, markets and some other financial building.
 
its not the tiles so much as needing gold to keep my tech at 100% and for also as well making a profit for upgrading units like adapts into mage/conjuror or high exp warriors-morai into vamps (and later..the exremely most high exp vamps into vamp lords or brujah) so that means i got to get the curency techs instead of geting mil techs and than i got to build the currency buildings instead of building the military units. At the same time I also need happiness techs and buildings and health techs and buildings....ARGHHHH.... the next version .022 needs to have an ability where i can research 10 techs in the same time to research 1 tech and able to build 10 buildings in each at at the same time:PPPPPPPPPPP
It's not absolutely necessary to keep research at 100%. If you founded OO, you can get quite a few +100% research cities fairly easily: library (25%) + asylum (15%) + academy (50%) + religious discipline (10%). That should keep your research progression high even below 100%. I would suggest focusing on scientist specialists with a few priests. Use your first priest to build the shrine and make money, use the rest in the Holy City as specialists for +2 hammers, +5 gold. Each great scientist should build an academy. When you need money to upgrade your units, spend a few turns at 100% taxes or keep your research lower than necessary.
 
Only problem is that calabim can't get sage specialists for more beakers and sage gp for academies or techs until you get writing or religions' temples cuz of the NO elder council....

I generally dont like to use gp's as super specialists if i can. I prefer getting techs over using as super specialists..and try to have enough gold without having to (to me) waste gp's as super specialists.
Are you having monetary problems before you get OO and writing? Then your problem is that you're trying to expand too fast.

Super specialists will provide higher returns if used early (2 hammers, 5g per turn vs. ~800 beakers one time) and can be multiplied. It really depends on what you can get for them and what your strategy is. If you're going for vampires first, the religious techs are a waste, but if you want to rush Losha, then you need them. I like to use specialists to keep my research rate maxed so all of my techs come faster instead of getting one tech faster one time, but to each his own. Obviously there are exceptions...
 
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