my first Clan game - some thoughts

[beauregard]

Ok, that was my first attempt as the Clan (since I'm more a builder type, and decided to try something diffrent). The start was slow, due to bad terrain & nasty animals...

When the turn counter hit 250 (marathon speed), I had used "for the Horde" spell. At first I was somehow dissapointed, expecting more free units (compared to the number of barbarians I face playing other civilization), and more dispersed around the map. But then I've noticed that most of barbarian unit stand ont the goblin fort, and also pretty close to newly-discoverd civilizations.

And so it quickly turned into a total slaughter. Because of units bought at the forts, I was easily able to wipe 4 diffrent civs in a diffrent parts of a map, all within 10 turns, and with a very moderate amount of cash invested. It makes me think that the combination of the Clan spell and its ability of buying units in goblin forts is too powerful.

Some odd stuff I've noticed:

- Just before my spell, Elohim killed Orthus (and still was no match for my goblin horde). When I captured their only city, I got a standard farewell window with their leader, but they stayed in a game (doing stuff, like switching civics) until I've found the Orthus axe controlled by them & captured it (yay, a bug!)

- Even more weird stuff happened with my settler - I've cast the spell after building it, but before finding a new city. You know the blue circle suggesting a good place for a city? So they dissappeared just after the spell, and didn't come back. Why is that?

 

[Eshnunna]

IMO this worldspell is vastly situationnal. On one attempt I gota similar setup, wiping out a backwards civ easily.
But another attempt netted very dispersed forces with only 1 gob fort, which was great for exploring/making contact, but no way I could have significantly harmed the civs (turn ~ 120 on normal/emperor).

Usually for the horde crashes my economy down the drain, with negative income at 0% science. But that's a fair tradeoff for the goody huts / contact / early exploration, IMO.

And as for the abovementionned "blue circle issue", never noticed it. Not that I pay attention at the blue suggestions which I always find quite lame, even more than in BtS...

 

[Arctic Circle]

My reflection is that the 'warrens' UB is what is the real tie-breaker, in PC vs PC conflicts the Clan can push out around 2,2 times as many units as the opponant and over a longer time-span you reach something 2,2*E2 units.

Since for every settler your opponent gets, you get two, therefore you expand exponentially faster then any human opponant after -masonry- and dish out twice as many units (some of them also cheaper then their equivalent).

Did I mention that you don't have to worry about Barbarians while expanding like an solar flare?

Its no complaining. Just saying that balance-wise, I do not see the clan spell and the barbarian forts as an issue.

 

[shrike2005]

I find that playing the clan, with jonas as the leader, you can win a religous victory real early due to cloning missionaries

 

[heisenberg]

Another strong usage of the warrens is that together with Runes, you actually produce 2 Soldiers of Kilmorphs for 90 hammers, and each can rush for 45 hammers.
For a generic civ with RoK I usually only use soldiers to rush selected early buildings occasionally for newfounded cities like markets.
However, with the Clan's 1:1 hammer ratio in production:rush for the Soldiers, you can actually rush a lot more, with warren cities rushing production at 100% efficiency for other cities which need it.

 

[beauregard]

IMO this worldspell is vastly situationnal. On one attempt I gota similar setup, wiping out a backwards civ easily.
But another attempt netted very dispersed forces with only 1 gob fort, which was great for exploring/making contact, but no way I could have significantly harmed the civs (turn ~ 120 on normal/emperor).

Well, everything is situational... but which other wordspell can possibly kill 4 civs in 10 turns? And yes, 120 on normal/emperor is enough time for the AI to build its defences (I was playing on Monarch, btw)... So the tricky part is to hit it when the barbarians start to be a strong, but your opponents are still undeveloped.

Usually for the horde crashes my economy down the drain, with negative income at 0% science. But that's a fair tradeoff for the goody huts / contact / early exploration, IMO.

I agree that can be a factor, though in my case I got much more gold from captured cities then I spent on extra troops...

And as for the abovementionned "blue circle issue", never noticed it. Not that I pay attention at the blue suggestions which I always find quite lame, even more than in BtS...

I don't know... I don't trust them all the time, but the clearly 'bad' suggestions are pretty rare (on the other hand, I'm not that good player). But their disappearance is a weird stuff in any case...

RE: Warrens - I even did't get to that point, and I've already won.

 

[Humakty]

@beauregard : I mostly play Clan games, and it seems to me a rare occurence to have more than one or two goblin forts. I play on large maps, and capturing cities half of the map away means my economy will drop dead because of city upkeep.
It is true however that if you use it on the first turns, you'll get one or two scorpion clan archers, that'll be usefull well into the mid game.

 

[the343danny]

The clan just owns at everything if it can get past their poor tech rate and inability to build libraries because of the warrens. The economy isnt too bad with the ability to build workers really fast, plus they can expand really fast with more settlers and their hero. Carnivals is usually a high priority tech because of the markets that will let the empire expand without too much drawback. Disciples are built quick too, so being religious is good. The army is typically huge, and losing some isnt that big of a deal because they can be rebuilt really fast.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Hmm...you found several bugs. *claps hands with a very bored look on his face* You should report them in the bug forum.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

- Just before my spell, Elohim killed Orthus (and still was no match for my goblin horde). When I captured their only city, I got a standard farewell window with their leader, but they stayed in a game (doing stuff, like switching civics) until I've found the Orthus axe controlled by them & captured it (yay, a bug!)

This is well known and Kael has accepted it as inevitable. Alternate approaches have other downsides he considered more serious, for instance, permanently destroying equipment.

- Even more weird stuff happened with my settler - I've cast the spell after building it, but before finding a new city. You know the blue circle suggesting a good place for a city? So they dissappeared just after the spell, and didn't come back. Why is that?

Settling (for some unknown reason) seems to count as a spell. After casting, your settler must wait a turn before it would regain the ability to settle. It would not bother showing the recommendations as the until selected did not have the ability to found a city. Did the recommendations not come back in later turns either? I'm not sure why that would be. Frankly I don't care, as I've always found such recommendations are rarely very good and so turn them off.

 

[Keeper_GFA]

This is well known and Kael has accepted it as inevitable. Alternate approaches have other downsides he considered more serious, for instance, permanently destroying equipment.

Couldn't the equipment promotion be passed to the victor. That way even if the AI didn't bother to give it to a good unit, at least someone would have it.

 

[xienwolf]

Settling (for some unknown reason) seems to count as a spell. After casting, your settler must wait a turn before it would regain the ability to settle. It would not bother showing the recommendations as the until selected did not have the ability to found a city. Did the recommendations not come back in later turns either? I'm not sure why that would be. Frankly I don't care, as I've always found such recommendations are rarely very good and so turn them off.

The "unknown Reason" is the block to keep Illusion Settlers (from the Black Mirror) from founding cities for you. The method used to block this was that summons are created with the hasCasted variable flagged, and then any unit who has cast for the turn is blocked from various "illusion exploit" activities, to include settling and Great Person missions.

 

[Keeper_GFA]

What if you have the Summoner trait? If the illusionary unit persists for more than a single turn then wouldn't the hasCasted variable be reset in the second round?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Summons do not have hasCasted flagged. In my version I have multiple summons that can cast spells as soon as summoned with no problem.

The Mirror spell, however, does set the Illusionary copy of the caster with hasCasted. The summoning trait does not make these illusions created by this spell make longer than 1 turn either.


(Hmm, I guess this means my recently added Metamagic/Dimensional spell "Reinvoke," which extends the duration of summons on the caster's tile, combined with the Black Mirror is a major exploit. I guess I'll probably remove the spell once I move back to modding FF and can again make the Dimensional promotions boost the caster' summons' duration.)

 

[rocklikeafool]

In my version I have multiple summons that can cast spells as soon as summoned with no problem.

The Mirror spell, however, does set the Illusionary copy of the caster with hasCasted. The summoning trait does not make these illusions created by this spell make longer than 1 turn either.


(Hmm, I guess this means my recently added Metamagic/Dimensional spell "Reinvoke," which extends the duration of summons on the caster's tile, combined with the Black Mirror is a major exploit. I guess I'll probably remove the spell once I move back to modding FF and can again make the Dimensional promotions boost the caster' summons' duration.)

Good for you. Isn't there a forum for this? Somethin long the lines of "Magister's Unfinished Modmod"? I like a lot of your ideas, man. But common, stop tellin em to me and gimme a modmod.

 

[hbar]

The "unknown Reason" is the block to keep Illusion Settlers (from the Black Mirror) from founding cities for you. The method used to block this was that summons are created with the hasCasted variable flagged, and then any unit who has cast for the turn is blocked from various "illusion exploit" activities, to include settling and Great Person missions.

Does this mean that settling is impossible while the Amurite's worldspell is active? I've noticed that it disables a lot of non-spell-like abilities (wane, for example, although I'm behind on my patches). Preventing settling would be a pretty big exploit, though.

 

[xienwolf]

No, settling is a MISSION, not a spell. So it is completely safe from the worldspell. And quite a few of the spells are marked as actually being abilities, so do not get blocked either.

 

[beauregard]

This is well known and Kael has accepted it as inevitable. Alternate approaches have other downsides he considered more serious, for instance, permanently destroying equipment.

OK then, nothing really gamebreaking. Only that reading changelog for the last version (or was it the previous one?) I got the impression that this problem has been solved.

Settling (for some unknown reason) seems to count as a spell. After casting, your settler must wait a turn before it would regain the ability to settle. It would not bother showing the recommendations as the until selected did not have the ability to found a city. Did the recommendations not come back in later turns either? I'm not sure why that would be. Frankly I don't care, as I've always found such recommendations are rarely very good and so turn them off.

It didn't come back for that particular settler (a few turns before it finally found a city). After that I stopped bothering with settlers altogether, pushing for military victory.

 

[rocklikeafool]

OK then, nothing really gamebreaking. Only that reading changelog for the last version (or was it the previous one?) I got the impression that this problem has been solved.

Technically, it has. Problem is...the AI is jus plain stupid.

 

[snarko]

Goblin forts + Clan is fun. Tried this on standard/pangea/epic/monarch/12 civs (or 11, not sure). Will have to try it on higher difficulty level or faster speed sometime.

Do not research (0%). Do not build settlers. Do not build workers. If you capture any disband them immediately. Only build warriors.

Find the nearest goblin fort. When you have enough units and gold recruit an army. Go crush someone. Raze their city unless it's really good (financially) - anything which cost gold means fewer units.
Repeat until victory by conquest.


It's a race against time, the longer it takes the more likely the AI is to get large armies of tier 2 units. The slower the game speed the easier it will be to do this.

If it looks like you're going to fail you can turn it into another challenge. You've just cleared a huge swathe of land... but you're far behind in technology. Can you turn all that empty land around you into a big enough advantage to catch up?