Need advice - Ashen Veil problems

[popejubal]

Whipping tends to be suboptimal in FFH.

Who's a what, then?

If you look at hammers per turn for any tile, an irrigated grassland farm under agrarianism still beats out a plains hill mine for a size six city even if you pretend that the plains hill mine doesn't need 2 food (and 1 health) per turn to sustain it.

In what way is whipping suboptimal? I'd only agree with that statement for civs that are currently good.

 

[Kuupie]

According to power graph I was over 3 times as powerful as Hyborem, what is strong enough then?

 

[Emptiness]

Anyway, what I also don't get how hyborem is supposed to be useful ally? The arrogant bstard just fools around and demands stuff all the time.

He's not an ally, he's a potential rival. Yet another "penalty" for taking the "evil" route. Summoning Basium gives you an automatic ally, but if you want Hyborem to help you then you have to work at it. If you play with permanent alliances enabled then you can get Hyborem to ally with you if you are both at war with the same foe for long enough. You'll need to be nice to him, which will probably include giving in to some of his demands.

Speaking of which, I don't think that the AI is limited to making demands only of weaker opponents. In my current game my 11-city Balseraph empire is friendly with the 3-city Amurite empire on the other side of the map, but they still have the nerve to occasionally demand something. I just chuckle to myself and politely refuse.

 

[Jet]

Who's a what, then?

Well, I'm sure you know that what you mentioned isn't the only factor.

* yes, farms are better
* but the growth buildings take much longer to set up and are still a little weaker
* and Apprenticeship is available earlier and XP is more valuable, and other sources of starting XP are situational. Personally I find it difficult to get by with starting units unpromoted. In my games AI units have a lot of promotions, and I don't seem to have enough production to throw unpromoted units at them and keep the lucky units that don't die in the process. Maybe I haven't tried that tactic enough, though.
* and lumbermills are available earlier

Lanun with water tiles and Conquest, sure.

Sacrifice the weak, sure, but the tradeoff with other Labor civics is still not a no-brainer.

Breeding pits... maybe, but you lose some Governor's Mansion hammers.

Expansive leader for cheaper granaries... maybe.

Mid-to-late game Organized leader with Command posts, or a strong HE city with a Command post... maybe.

 

[Bill Bisco]

According to power graph I was over 3 times as powerful as Hyborem, what is strong enough then?

You make a game with whatever settings you think are good. Upload it here, and I'll play it to demonstrate that Blight is not a big deal, Hyborem is not a big deal, and that being evil is far from a disadvantage.

 

[popejubal]

Well, I'm sure you know that what you mentioned isn't the only factor.

* yes, farms are better
* but the growth buildings take much longer to set up and are still a little weaker
* and Apprenticeship is available earlier and XP is more valuable, and other sources of starting XP are situational. Personally I find it difficult to get by with starting units unpromoted. In my games AI units have a lot of promotions, and I don't seem to have enough production to throw unpromoted units at them and keep the lucky units that don't die in the process. Maybe I haven't tried that tactic enough, though.

One thing that I don't see people do very often even in exhibition games is to put one turn of production into each of 5 different units and then whip them to completion all in one turn immediately before switching to a +XP civic like apprenticeship. I generally find that I have enough overflow production from the 4-5 whips to get a "free" unit in one turn after those even without whipping.

Edit: This isn't worthwhile unless
a) you were already going to switch from Slavery to something else anyway or
b) you are Spiritual.

Losing all of your empire's production for a turn or three isn't worth the extra XP... unless you're pulling this trick in every city across your empire.

Expansive leader for cheaper granaries... maybe.

Except for the health bonus, I actually don't like FfH Granaries. I'll whip out a Granary, Smokehouse and Harbor (if possible) on a city that I know will have extraordinary population because of the +health from resources, but the +40% population growth is absolutely not worth the massive number of hammers that go into those buildings.

One other thing that I like to do is to whip units and then let the overflow dump into a wonder. You get a unit then and you don't have to face the penalty for whipping wonders. I even like doing this late game in a city that has the Pillar of Chains.

Personally, I don't like Conquest. Mostly because it isn't Agrarianism. I wouldn't even consider Conquest without Slavery, though. Losing population growth entirely does not even begin to make up for the "extra" production from food.

 

[Bill Bisco]

For me, it takes so long to get Slavery (because other techs tend to be more pressing). Most of my main cities already have the buildings I want, and at least 1 city is concentrating on building military units and apprenticeship is more useful and pressing. Also, most of the cities that I would want whipped have already been whipped.

That combined with the fact that granaries were severely nerfed makes whipping much less appealing for me.

 

[Jet]

put one turn of production into each of 5 different units and then whip them to completion all in one turn immediately before switching to a +XP civic like apprenticeship.

Nice one for Spiritual. I can't think if I've ever tried producing a lot of units very quickly in FFH, except for Malakim Ritualists. Mages need to bake XP, metal bonuses are incremental, and T4s are limited in number. I should think about ways to try, though. (Hmm... whipping cats; whipping Corpses and Ritualists; whipping Stygians and Cultists; Military State rush buying anything with a merchant bomb; drafting Champions?...)

 

[Kuupie]

You make a game with whatever settings you think are
good. Upload it here, and I'll play it to demonstrate that Blight is not a big deal, Hyborem is not a big deal, and that being evil is far from a disadvantage.

As far as I know I wasn't asking for anyone to play with me, I was asking ways to cope with AC/Blight when being true evil. Unless you are up for doing an illustrated guide about that game, I can't see the use of that, besides maybe showing off your amazing ffh-skills?
Anyway, atleast this thread proves that I am not alone in my feeling that being evil, atleast being true chaotic AC-raising Ashen Veilist has its downsides. I simply can't see the downsides of being lets say Kandros Fir and RoK. It's pure synergy all the way. (Yes, weaker defenders etc, but against AI, that kind of "disadvantage" is easily dodged with clever warring and diplo.)

 

[Bill Bisco]

As far as I know I wasn't asking for anyone to play with me, I was asking ways to cope with AC/Blight when being true evil. Unless you are up for doing an illustrated guide about that game, I can't see the use of that, besides maybe showing off your amazing ffh-skills?
Anyway, atleast this thread proves that I am not alone in my feeling that being evil, atleast being true chaotic AC-raising Ashen Veilist has its downsides. I simply can't see the downsides of being lets say Kandros Fir and RoK. It's pure synergy all the way. (Yes, weaker defenders etc, but against AI, that kind of "disadvantage" is easily dodged with clever warring and diplo.)

*sigh*. You cope with AC and blight by being competent. The AI is stupid, it hurts them more than you. The downside of Kandros Fir is that his mechanics encourage you to turtle longer and have fewer cities than is optimal, and that Kandros Fir is not Philosophical which hurts his initial tech velocity. RoK is a nice religion, and for higher difficulties (i.e. Deity) helps offset the bs inflation penalties it gives you. But i certainly wouldn't stay in RoK, I'd build whatever Temples of Kilmorph I thought was necessary and then switch to a better religion. Also, the cottage economy usually takes care of whatever money problems you have and then some.

Thirdly, if you say the phrase "dodged with clever warring and diplo) you're doing it wrong! The AI is stupid!

But yeah, I'll annotate whatever game I play. If you still have the initial save for the game you're playing, it would be fun to play and annotate

 

[heisenberg]

Anyway, atleast this thread proves that I am not alone in my feeling that being evil, atleast being true chaotic AC-raising Ashen Veilist has its downsides. I simply can't see the downsides of being lets say Kandros Fir and RoK. It's pure synergy all the way. (Yes, weaker defenders etc, but against AI, that kind of "disadvantage" is easily dodged with clever warring and diplo.)

you can always dodge your supposed "downsides" with "clever warring and diplo" as well...

Nothing is stopping you from spreading AV over to other civs to corrupt them into liking you.
You can always do "clever warring" with rivals -just- before you summon Hyborem so he starts out at war with them.
You can always be the guy who nudges the AC past the key points at good strategic moments--its so much easier for you to control since you have just so many options available to raise the AC compared to others.
You can, compared to the AI, halt the spread of hell terrain in your territory with sanctify if need be. AI gets the full brunt of hell terrain. I'm sure you've noticed how hell terrain totally destroys elven economies by uprooting all their beautiful forests--and the AI doesn't do anything to stop it...while you can.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I don't see ANY problem with AV and armageddon. it does nasty things to EVERYONE, which for me essentially means it does nothing bad for you.

 

[popejubal]

I don't see ANY problem with AV and armageddon. it does nasty things to EVERYONE, which for me essentially means it does nothing bad for you.

Blight is a problem for me. It's not an impossible problem to overcome, but it's still a problem. I tend to have fairly large cities - larger than my neighbors. That makes blight worse for me than for them. Having blight hit a human player twice as hard as the AI players also hurts. I'm looking forward to playing a game where that doesn't happen, but I tend to turn off the AC counter in many games just because I find blight so annoying.

Not crippling, but extremely annoying.

 

[Kuupie]

Popejubal: The problem is that you don't know how to play effectively yet.

Just quoting better people than I am.

 

[popejubal]

Popejubal: The problem is that you don't know how to play effectively yet.

Just quoting better people than I am.

Meh.

*sigh*. You cope with AC and blight by being competent. The AI is stupid, it hurts them more than you.

- the same is true with every other aspect of the game too. War, tech paths, any decision in the game is "biased" in the player's favor because we're more adaptable than the computer is.

That doesn't mean that the AC isn't annoying though. Sure, it's a bigger problem for the AI than for me as a player - mostly because I can anticipate the Blight while the AI can't. It's still annoying, though.