Newbie Learning - Asking for Tips

[Micky Onimusha]

Well, I think this is probably the civ for me. Quite pleased with them throughout this game. For the first batch I was God King with a single Capitol (and in hindsight, I wish I went for a more Production based Cross than a Commerce based one, but live and learn), 90% Science gradually raised my gold which was handy. I founded RoK early and spread it to Cardith Lorda, who is now in my back pocket diplomatic. Coincidentally, myself and Cassiel shared the same enemy so me and him are also buddy-buddy.

I took my first city off of the Dark Elves, Trebs are quite nice and those cheap upgrades are really helpful. I also took my second and third from them as well. Currently, those are my only four cities. I'm still at God King and making a lot of Gold even at 100% science. It's fairly late on in the game and I can't help but feel that I should've expanded more early on.

As it stands, it's Year 360, I'm in third place in the scores (and the two ahead of me are my allies). I'm 2nd in Techs behind Cassiel. I have four large and rather productive cities and a reasonable sized army. I've got 7040 Gold and earning 84 gold a turn at 100% science. As it stands, my only shot at victory, at least IMO, is to go for the Altar, which I'm currently working on. I'm tempted to raid my Dark Elf neighbours or Peppy the Clown King for some additional cities (and fun) but I'd prefer to be a bit more reserved. My empire is fairly spread and my army is too slow to catch up with pillaging invaders, and I don't want to risk crippling my economy.

Problems I have at the moment are mainly health. All of my cities are unhealthy, altohugh this may be caused by the widespread floodplains. The lost health from Forges and so-forth aren't helpful though when it comes to health.

In hindsight, I also wish my capital was better placed for Production than Commerce. At least early on I did. Would I be right in assuming that would be the preferred route? Early expansion for me required war, so I wish I could've pumped my army out a bit faster, heh.

But yeah, I definitely like these guys. I fancy trying out the Boar riders to; it's a shame I didn't get to give them a go (no nearby pigs). Are they worth the effort? They seem like they could be interesting.

 

[Grey Fox]

Yeah production is definitely a great Idea over commerce with the Khazad. Especially plenty of hills for mines, and with the Arate bonus they can get an awesome bonus.

Couple that with producing Wealth or Research instead of units, you can get a huge increase in science or gold.

Yeah, I'm mostly playing on immortal these days (with raging barbs and aggressive AI) and usually I find that I only get to settle one or 2 cities before the space runs out. And generally someone usually declares war on me before then.

I've never tried the Boar riders, but I can really see their potential, with them being 4 strength. Especially with Kandros Fir, as he is aggressive.

For it to be successful however, I think you need to go for Horseback Riding before you go for RoK, or at least directly after. Depending on difficulty level.

Expanding like normal, as long as you stay at or over 50 gold per city, might be a good idea if you feel like you need more cities earlier. Also, being more aggressive about war from the get go can work.

But so far, having few cities have worked well for me. In my current game I got into war very early (elohim started it, even tho they were my best friends) followed by Kuriotates the next turn, both of the civs I had the best standing with and the only civs I had open borders with. Alexis later joined in, but I managed. And now I got peace with them all, but now Thessa attacked me. By now however I have like 10+ highly experienced soldiers with Iron weapons and a Bambur, all waiting for revenge on my previous enemies. And soon I will have trebuchets, and after that I will go for Assassins. In the meantime, Thessa's hunters will be nice experience for my soldiers.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

Hmm, Boar Riders before RoK? I may have to try that one of these days heh. Well, assuming I can see some nearby pigs. But I'll take that into my next game, Production > Commerce for the Capital.

Would it be more beneficial to have the RoK Holy City in more of a commerce focused place however? Just curious.

 

[Grey Fox]

The more I think about it, the more I have to say no. Consider it, a plains hill = 5 hammers under arete, 6 with Gunpowder tech (or whatever its called, never gotten to it)

With Godking, the 40% from Vault + the 40% from dwarven smithy, that is starting to become way more than the 5, 6 or 7 gold from a town under Wealth or Research, or when turned into a unit. It would be nice with a complete analyze of the value of it under the best circumstances.

I would say Food + Production with their capital. Food for specialists (merchants prefarably) and supporting the farms.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

The more I think about it, the more I have to say no. Consider it, a plains hill = 5 hammers under arete, 6 with Gunpowder tech (or whatever its called, never gotten to it)

With Godking, the 40% from Vault + the 40% from dwarven smithy, that is starting to become way more than the 5, 6 or 7 gold from a town under Wealth or Research, or when turned into a unit. It would be nice with a complete analyze of the value of it under the best circumstances.

I would say Food + Production with their capital. Food for specialists (merchants prefarably) and supporting the farms.

Hmm, so Production Capital it is. But is that a yes to RoK Holy City being moved to a more Commerce heavy zone? =/

 

[katika]

The more I think about it, the more I have to say no. Consider it, a plains hill = 5 hammers under arete, 6 with Gunpowder tech (or whatever its called, never gotten to it)

With Godking, the 40% from Vault + the 40% from dwarven smithy, that is starting to become way more than the 5, 6 or 7 gold from a town under Wealth or Research, or when turned into a unit. It would be nice with a complete analyze of the value of it under the best circumstances.

I would say Food + Production with their capital. Food for specialists (merchants prefarably) and supporting the farms.

I think building wealth, research, or culture uses the base production only, so the bonus production doesn't help.

Ideally you have some gold on a river to keep your early research going, otherwise techs will be coming very slowly.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

Well, I won Altar Victory, even though I was 3rd place in the scores. One thing I noticed towards the end of the game was that my two allies were REALLY stingy about trading their techs.

I think I might play smaller maps next time, standard maps are a bit frustrating. The size makes a conquest victory nearly impossible. By the end of the game there were LOADS of cities all over the place, hence why I turned to the Altar =/

But I think I'll try a different approach next time, maybe a bit more ambitious on my expansion (and military expansion). Being such a tiny nation is kind of frustrating. Cassiel and Cardith must've been 2x bigger than me if not 3x.

Edit: Although I'm not dead-set on using them, Khazad are definitely up on my list. I think I might toy around with a couple of other civs first before coming to a conclusion (Balseraphs and Keelyn, Sheaim and Tebryn, Lurchuirp and the Elves mainly).

A couple of 'curiosity' questions though.

1) How come Diseased Corpses get a significant +2 Strength over comparable religion units (The Drown, Archer of the Leaves, and co.)? [Edit: Found out, the Disease status negatively affects their strength]
2) Are the Elves considered imbalanced/overpowered?

 

[Caradoc]

This seems like a good place to ask this. I am playing the Kuriotates on a Large map, so I expected a four square city radius with the corners left out. What I have is a three square radius with tiers of 7-5-3. My cultural borders go way beyond that. Why don't I get the fourth tier? The city display shows a radius of 3 (49 squares total) plus part of another row at the bottom.

 

[Grey Fox]

Sprawling trait means you get to work the 3rd ring, and that your cultural borders are larger. Large map sizes only means you get more real cities available (before they start becoming settlements).

 

[Micky Onimusha]

Any chance anyone's got some good tips for the Sheaim. I've been trying to get off well with them but to no avail. Early allies are limited since CotS takes a while to reach and I usually find that my early expansion and early army are both fairly 'crappy'. The fact that my army is unable to take neighbouring cities hurts a bit and I've been finding that whilst I can put out maybe 1 or 2 well defended cities, my neighbours will have 4-6.

They strike me as bit of a civ that booms in the late-game, which means I'd need to get off to a good start to take full advantage. At least that's the impression I've gotten. Any tips? :/ Asking for help worked well with the khazad, so maybe it’ll work here, heh.

 

[Grey Fox]

Rush towards Veil, Priesthood and Summoning.

Use sage bulbing if possible, even if you are not philosophical. Try to get Tar Demons for defense. For that you need a temple of Veil and those portals. Mobios Witches require a mage guild and portal to appear.

You will get more free units the higher the AV is.

Just build adepts, portals, and those things that raise the AV. Build the Prophecy and bring up the counter even more.

Use summons for war, either with conjurers, Ritualists or both. I find Spectres to be a good choice, if you can get enough Death mana.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

Rush towards Veil, Priesthood and Summoning.

Use sage bulbing if possible, even if you are not philosophical. Try to get Tar Demons for defense. For that you need a temple of Veil and those portals. Mobios Witches require a mage guild and portal to appear.

You will get more free units the higher the AV is.

Just build adepts, portals, and those things that raise the AV. Build the Prophecy and bring up the counter even more.

Use summons for war, either with conjurers, Ritualists or both. I find Spectres to be a good choice, if you can get enough Death mana.

Hmm, okay, seems simple enough. What about city expansion though, try to rush out early? And yeah, I love the Tar Demons (awesome creature design), it's kind of frustrating to pop them when you have a Mage Guild as well ><.

 

[Grey Fox]

Yeah, expand like you would normally do. No point holding of on expansion unless you feel you got enough cities, or it's getting too expensive.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

I gotta say, even attempting to go "as I normally would", I'm finding it impossible to keep up with the AI expansion. In my game with the Dwarves it wasn't too bad since the Vault helped my capital and I could muster a military force to steal from my neighbours, but raging barbs and weak military seem to be making this round impossible. In my last game I was easily outnumbered and this time around it's the same (and I'm only at half the points that my neighbours are at).

I think I&#8217;ll try and stick them out a bit longer, since I&#8217;d love to go summoning hordes of demons, but I don&#8217;t think I have the capabilities to get to that stage. This game rewards early expansion well in the long term and as of yet, I haven&#8217;t quite got that down (especially on Raging Barbs).

Edit: Wow, glad I stuck it out. 3 conjurers, 3 ritualists and a high priest are wreaking havoc with ease. Taken down two cities (and yoinked the RoK Mines and Holy City, yay for 3 Iron and free Earth Mana). Still wish I'd gotten off to a better start though, but stealing my neighbours cities is starting to make up for it. It's one aspect I missed with the Dwarves though, lacking good magic kinda hurts =/

 

[daladinn]

micky,

now that you have teh high priest , get hyborem into the game ASAP. make sure the high priest has teh patriach promotion so you can control the direction that hyborem is pointed.

also , make your way to your summoners .... then cackle wildly as you realize that 1 summoner is greater then your whole army.

also , make sure you build the festivals (err iirc thats the one with chaos mauraders) its cheap and easy to get to

 

[Micky Onimusha]

micky,

now that you have teh high priest , get hyborem into the game ASAP. make sure the high priest has teh patriach promotion so you can control the direction that hyborem is pointed.

also , make your way to your summoners .... then cackle wildly as you realize that 1 summoner is greater then your whole army.

also , make sure you build the festivals (err iirc thats the one with chaos mauraders) its cheap and easy to get to

Noted. And yeah, I have Summoners already, working on getting to the Eaters. And I forgot about Hyborem, heh, better bring him along soon.

Edit: Hmm, gonna start over with 0.23 installed, since I can't load the old game, heh. But yeah, fresh start over. Starting to like the look of Keelyn after this, since the Summoner trait is gun and Creative seems like it should make early starts a bit easier (at the very least, saves making Obelisks). Think I might try her again. Her character is adorable and I have a soft spot for her since she was the first civ I played in FFH2

Edit: Well, she gave me a really good early start (or maybe I just played my opening better) but I quit bcause I got tired of the map. I dislike water maps and that's what fractal gave me Just gonna try the Elves now and then the Lurchuirp and then try the Khazad again. See which Civ I'll try and specilise towards.

Edit2: Wow, things go SOO smoothly as the elves. Playing as Amelanchier currently and things have just gone sweetly. Homeland saves me an extra Warrior in my city defenses and picking up Hunting on the way to FoL is too sweet. I think these guys may just be "my civ", that's the most comfortable starting experience yet. Early Hunters, picking up XP off of Barbs gave me some sweetly experienced guys. They went and captured some Elephants (4 early and a 5th later), saving me on making more defensive units.

Looking for strategy correction though. I didn't bee-line to FoL, I took several detours before hand:

Chants > Myst, followed by Agri > Edu > Writing (Free Sage), followed by Hunting > Animal Handling and finally went for FoL.

I wanted the free sage early, saved me making an Elder Council and spending a pop point on a Sage Specialist, but is this a wise strategy to go for? It costs three techs (admittedly helpful techs though). I also went for Animal Handling for the capturing promotion. Again, is that a good idea or not?

Over all things are going comfortably. Nicely expanded, plenty of (cottaged) Ancient Forests, an ally who's a devout follower of FoL and my nearest neighbour is boxed in and weak (and I stole a city from her to ).

[Further Edit]

Well, got a relatively nice little empire going and I'm doing well on the score boards. Shooting for the Altar for my victory though. One thing I've noticed is how slow city capture is without siege equipment. I guess everything needs to have a downside, heh.

Edit3: I won comfortably (top of the score charts) but needed to rely on the Altar yet again. One thing I noticed about the Elves is how much harder war is without Siege equipment. I had no Reagents (and the one who had them hated me) so I couldn't get Archmages, and Fire Balls take a while to knock down city defences. Early expansion with them was comfortable though. Elves are nice for their large empires, Khazad not so nice for their smaller empires. Gonna try the Lurchuirp, Balserpahs and Sheaim once again before making a final decision but it looks more in favour of the Khazad for me personally, but that Altar has become a bit of a crutch for me =/

 

[KingOfLands]

Edit3: I won comfortably (top of the score charts) but needed to rely on the Altar yet again. One thing I noticed about the Elves is how much harder war is without Siege equipment.

Oh my yes. I just got through a grueling (but successful) early war with Keelyn in my second Ljosalfar game. I'm trying out the Grey Fox-endorsed Archers w/ Drill promotions military (with Amelanicher), and at about 180 years in on Quick, Gilden is level 18 and borderline-unstoppable. I'm contemplating declaring on Sabathiel just to score myself Orthus' axe and really go nuts. None of my stuff below about level 6 has a remote chance of taking down anything in a non-bombarded town, though, so I'm planning to research Elementalism and attempt to steal some reagents from Cardith before he wrecks me completely.

Curiously, I think your best bet with the elves as far as supplementary heroes for conquest/domination might be to go OO for Hemah - dude is a wrecking machine with Fire 3 or a support caster who can bombard when he's not buffing. Another option, which probably won't hurt since your map ought to be moderately valuable, is to see if you can score Pact of the Nilhorn early; Larry, Moe and Curly make a solid bombardment team, and if you can get them mobility they can generally trash someone's walls the turn you reach them.

As a general suggestion from another guy who's still feeling out the mod, play with Altar turned off and aggressive AI on if you really want to see a game where you won't win that way. I scored my first religious victory the other day while theoretically going for Domination.

As far as the Sheaim go, Chaos Marauders (build carnivals or go Chaos II conjurors) and Chariots tend to be the best substitute for the infantry you lack, in my experience. If you can keep a pyre zombie or two alive long enough to get cannibalize, that doesn't hurt either. The military end of things with them doesn't get really good until ritualists and Mardero, but as anyone who's played them has seen, it gets ugly for everyone else once you get there.

 

[Grey Fox]

Nice that you picked up my ideas from other threads.

Anyways, I really like Amelanchier too. As Micky up there with Keelyn, it was my the first civ I tried with FfH 2, and Elves feel more complete than many civs.

I have waged wars with them plenty, but I need to practice on waging war without siege weaponry. And since I don't like their arcane leader, I need to try and force myself to get Adepts even tho they might take a while to become mages. Also need to get a fire node, even tho Nature nodes are a perfect fit with Yvain and Druids (right?).
Either that, or your excellent suggestion of getting the Pact of Nilhorn. In my next game as Amelanchier I will probably try and rush that wonder.

Getting Gilden early really helps if you plan for an early war as well. But you need to hurry to take advantage of him. If your enemy still has warriors it's kidsplay. Don't forget to build an Ljosalfar Archery Range before you train Gilden. Ignore Combat promotions till you have maxed out the Drill line. As long as the enemy is an easy target, like scouts, warriors and on occasion hunters this will make you win flawlessly almost every time. Which will give you the momentum you need to capture the cities they got quickly.

Build Archers of Leaves for stronger attackers as they become 5/4 with Dexterous, and bring one or two archers for defense and additional attack (4/5). Try to build or bring a new archer for each city you capture. Take the Drill line with your attacker archers till it's complete, then take the combat promotions and/or specialization promotions.

Before they get Horsemen, you need to get Formation on Gilden, and preferably on an archer or two as well. You don't want to lose him to a couple of Horsemen (trust me, it can happen).

Once they get archers, Gilden should still be able to kill one every turn. At least if he has Heroic Str II and Cover. Try not to waste your maxed out Drill archers on suicide attacks. Try for some decent odds at least and keep them till you can upgrade them to Longbowmen.


That is an interesting idea to go for Hemah. It is a strong hero indeed and without siege weaponry it could be a nice option. At this point you hopefully have longbowmen (upgraded from your nice archers) which are 6/6 with dexterous without metals. 7/7 with copper and 8/8 with iron (10/10 with mithril, but that is way late game).


Another idea which I've been trying to rush to but has been unsuccessful so far, is Fyrdwells which require Deer instead of Horses. Use these in combination with your archers, take the Flanking line of promotions and you'll have 75&#37; withdrawal at Flanking II, 85% with Flanking III (this also adds immunity to first strikes, but this unit already has that). You can start by using Horsemen earlier together with the Archers, but then I'm not sure if they upgrade to Fyrdwells but I guess they do, and these do not start with immunity to first strikes so here Flanking III is more worth it. (Tho, Fyrdwells start with 10% more withdrawal rate than Horsemen to begin with)
Use these Flanking horsemen/fyrdwells to weaken the enemy stack before you attack with your archers.

Can also complement your archery/horsemen troops with recon units, especially if you have a priest of leaves for the Poison Blade promotion.
And Assassins are always nice.

Ok, time to end this essay

 

[Micky Onimusha]

Those are actually some interesting strategies. I think I've probably underrated the Drill Line a bit, sounds interesting (especially with Horseys to weaken the defences). The downside though is getting all of that together properly in time to take advantage though I guess, but I suppose they're techs I'd naturally go for anyway.

I never thought of OO and Hemah to be honest, FoL just seems so tailor made for the elves, but I suppose skipping a religion could work. The main downside I see though is one Hero vs Health and Happiness bonuses from FoL is pretty steep? :S

 

[Grey Fox]

You could switch to OO once your happiness can be managed from other means, and once all your necessary forests have become Ancient.

IF OO manages to spread to your lands somehow that is. (or you found it yourself, or capture a city with it)