Noob looking for some military advice

[Breunor]

Thanks for the advice, everyone.

When playing the Ljos, how do you usually handle your mana nodes? What do you prioritize?

I have one mana node in my capital's third ring, solidly mine. There is a second to the south, I should get it as my third city's culture will block the Bannor from the area and it is on a peninsula no one else should be able to reach for a while. I also have found the Standing Stones in that area, so that will provide Earth mana.

I have a lot of desert to my south and southwest - 20+ tiles of desert in an area with some rivers and nice resources (incense, rice, pigs, gold, fish). So I am thinking I will need a source of Water mana to spring all those tiles. Something to provide siege ability also sounds like a very good idea, so maybe Fire for the other node? Or are there better options, or other ways to get the Water and Fire?

Those are good choices; if you are going to attack, having fire can be good to take defenses down. Water not only allows you to spring the desert, it also allows prevention of the 'nuclear wepaon' against the elves - burning the forest down. (Fortunately, the AI doesn't do this very often, but when it happens....)

There are of course other good choices. Body is good, without catapults it makes the whole army faster. Enchantment and death are usual favorites, but I tend to be less favorable to them for the Ljosalfar. Guardian of nature gives a lot of happiness (one of the benefits of enchantment) and the Ljosalfar have a lot of non-mellee units so the first level enchantment ability means less. Death spamming isn't so useful to the Ljosalfar since it is common to tiger spam and often keep living units (especially if you get body). Of course, you already have air and life (and nature) from your palace and you will get earth from the standing stones, another good one.

So I like water and fire in your position, with possibly body instead.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Emptiness]

The OO shrine will provide Water mana. Fire mana can be provided by the Pyre of the Seraphic, which is a unique terrain feature.

Unless you have (or will soon get) access to a third node, you might consider researching Sorcery and converting one of those nodes to Metamagic. This will give you access to Dispel Magic, which will allow you to convert nodes back to raw form (so that you can change them to another type). This is a great way to achieve access to a diverse arsenal of spells even if you don't control very many nodes.

 

[badtim]

this thread inspired me to play a Ljos game just now, and going priesthood before sorcery -- was quite good, blooming the hell out of everything before war was a really nice econ boost. well, sick, actually, since i killed the sheam very very eary (throwing HUGE amounts of units at them) so had a big area to expand into. but the micro -- man, killing me!

i'd have to say that water / fire are the first two i'd go for also, with body right after that. body is just so incredibly useful for every civ, it's the only sphere where both the 1st and 2nd level spells are useful ALL the time, and well, flesh golems

 

[haphazard1]

A third node does not seem likely, at least not without a war. I have explored my local area pretty well, and did not find any other nodes which are not already within another civ's culture. Maybe there is something offshore? I will have to see what my hawks can find, once I finish my first hunting lodge.

No one has founded OO yet. I do need Fishing soon, so I could focus my research that way and try to found the religion. I would need to come up with a prophet to get the shrine, though, and might prefer to use it for FoL if I can't get a bard. This path would also delay my research towards priests and adepts. That may be too low of a likely payoff to justify.

Metamagic is a possibility, but that would leave only one node for use in the near to medium term. I really need at least one more node, but offensive war as the ljos (no siege) is apparently not the easiest thing. And as a FFH2 noob I don't really know for sure what kind of force I would need to actually have a chance at success.

Do the AI civs ever trade mana? I do not have trade connections to anyone yet (or Cartography), so I am not sure if they would even consider such a deal.

 

[MasterCorran]

Do the AI civs ever trade mana? I do not have trade connections to anyone yet (or Cartography), so I am not sure if they would even consider such a deal.

They do. But you often have to give a very generous offer in exchange for their mana, from my experience anyway. Unless of course if you have permenent allies. Then if you ask them or if they have more than one mana (e.g. two fire mana) available then they would happily give it to you.

 

[Emptiness]

AIs that are not your ally will only trade mana if they possess two of that type (for example, the Lanun with the OO shrine would potentially be willing to trade Water mana). It's usually not worthwhile to rely on an AI to have a spare of the mana type that you need, but if it does happen then a trade can be worthwhile.

If you can hold off from going on the offense until after you research Sorcery then you'll be able to do without Fire mana as well. That will mean that you can save one node as raw, convert it to Metamagic, and then once you have a caster with Dispel Magic you can reconvert it to Fire. If you plan to use Fire magic in your offensive campaign you'll need to have Sorcery anyway, because you'll need Mages to be able to cast Fireball. The other node can be converted to Water as soon as possible, so that you will have access to Spring, but after you get Dispel Magic (and have several casters with Spring) you can reformat it to something else if you like.