playing Shaim as a good civilisation

[Vulcans]

Hello everyone,

How ethically correct is it to adopt the order as a Shaim civilisation?

I plan to be a "good" leader of the shaim.... that is secretly destroying the world when nobody is looking.

yes, shaim are meant to be an evil civilization that want to bring about armageddon.... but we can be called "good" be hiding under the fake pretence of the order.

so the plan is to convert to the Order or FoL, then be clasified as "good", and then bring up the AC with raganok, getting an army of units through the planar gates, and having prestine clean lands full of resources while watching the rest of the world turn into hell.

I recently started a immortal level game of shaim(Tebryn Arbandi).
(BTw i'm using FFH2 0.23 as i dont have BTS, and FFH0.23 works with vanilla civ4)

I have only played 100 turns so far, beelining writing for the sage in capital(cottage spam), and trade to catch up on some of the headstart the AI gets on immortal level. i warrior rushed one AI, wiping them off the face of the earth, leaving me with 5 cities, and several combat5 warriors. now i have set up, not too far behind the pack, doing a little consolidation, and pondering my next move.

I went for trade, so i have horses, i'm considering making chariots out of my C4 warriors as i'm already down the horse line, and probably wont have time for the melee line. this will fuel some expansion, while i set up my master plan.

i think i'll next pick up knowledge of the eather for adepts to start their exp(to make use of the arcane and summoner traits of Tebryn Arbandi), then bowers for some solid defence (i guarantee i'll need that), then maybe another essential tec if needed, before bee-lining Orders from Heaven to turn "good", and then onto way of the wicked to get Prophecy of Ragnarok and start cranking up the AC which will destroy the "evil" players lands, while providing some fuel for my planar gates that i will then be building.

I am attracted to sanitation for the happyness from public baths, dyes, silk, gems, and bannana that are currently unaccessable, though it is a significant research side-track from my beeline goal, the same applies to the melee line, i already have horses from getting traiding, and will get achers, so am also considering skipping it for the meantime to ensure i get the key techs in time.

I'm guessing AI relationships will be an issue, though it is hard to work with, as i am currently evil (so all the good civs hate me), and will later be switching to good, making the evil civs hate me. on top of that i DOWd two civilizations for stealing two workers (hey, it was the only way to keep up with the AI starting boost ad this dificulty level). undoutably a lot of diplomacy would be needed especially during the transilion from being an evil civilisation at the start to being a good civilisation later, and then somehow having the relations to get OBs and convert people while trading to keep up with tech.

parganda, standard map. there are 3 evil civs, 1 neautral civ, and was 3... now 2 good civs. currently only one of the evil civs is friendly to me (after the worker stealing).

now how would be the best way to play this game? i'm going to need to play a very focused research to keep on par with the AI. i'm considering if it's worth working on founding a religion(OO), so to change the alignment of the AI, more evil AI will mean more people with hell terrain, giving my precious resources a lot of trading value, though making the rest of the world evil and me as "good" shaim will spark some tensions. or mabe its not worth the effort to convert the good AI to neutral to evil. and i skip OO compleatly and just focus on getting Orders from Heaven and Way of the Wicked ASAP.

this would however take a significant amount of work(and deviation from the plan) to found OO aswell as the order, and i wouldent even be able to start spreading OO in the good civilisations lands till quite late after i turn "good" with the order in order to finally get open boarders with the good civilisations so to enlighten them with the order.

if everything goes to plan, then eventually the rest of the world will be rotting in hell, while the "good" shaim under the guidance of the Order will be raising up the AC, burning the rest of the world while benefitting from the planar gates.

has anyone else played as a "good" shaim that destroys the world? it seems like quite an interesting strategy. any thoughts on this strategy? is there anything that i'm missing/could optimise? i'll keep you informed how the tereforming goes.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

beelining writing for the sage in capital(cottage spam)

Are you playing the non-BtS version? 0.23 or whatever?

 

[Vulcans]

yes, as i stated in the 5th paragraph, i'm playing ffh0.23 as i dont have BTS

 

[JonathanStrange]

It's all too diabolical for me to contemplate, let alone offer suggestions as to how to speed things along!!

And people wonder why I wander the forests at night, bow and blade at the ready: we Ljosalfars have to be ever vigilant.

Cool idea though...

 

[retro V]

I can't remember how it was in 0.23, but I don't think Sheaim get Longbows. So you could forget about teching Bowyers. This needs double-checking but I don't think Sheaim get any Melee, Archery or Recon units past the standard Warrior, Archer and Hunter, oh and Pyre Zombies. Apart from Arcane and Religious units, everything else they get comes through the Planar Gates.

And turning the Good guys Evil through religion will be tricky. For a start OO changes Good to Neutral only. Even then, you have to be OO yourself to persuade others to adopt it - you can only ask others to adopt the religion you yourself are following at that time. That's fine if you can get Open Borders while still being Evil, or you can adopt Order and go Good and hope you can spread OO to enough cities that they will convert of their own volition. Seems like a lot of work.

Only way to gaurantee everyone goes Evil is to spread Ashen Veil. But then you're going to run into rioting problems if you later switch to Order - cities with both the extreme Veil and Order religions present will randomly shutdown for a couple of turns until you Purge the Unfaithful.

 

[Vulcans]

my diabolical plan worked.
I just played it out, keeping the only untainted land in the world, while i gifted some spread out cities to the infernals to get them rolling(and start the hell terrain spread faster from multiple spots across the world).

I had cities from the order from ashen veil, so i could switch religions at will, with a patriach i could start world wars(i turned the patriach into a flesh golem so i didnt lose it when i switched religions), making everyone fight everyone, all the meantime pumping up the AC with the prophacy of raganok. they were too busy fighting each other to pay much attention to me while my gates were on overdrive. at one stage it was 2 good vs 2 evil, all vs hyborem, and then only 2 of them officially at war with me, though they were too busy to even sent their usual whimpy token force of troops. while i was fairly much out of the war, just pulling the strings, with the AC lingering around 70, the barbs were also doing a fair bit of killing.

one of the goodies accepted OO, and the opther one quickly crumbled under the pressure of attacks from the rest of the evil world.

dealt with the amageddon at 90, the unit losses across the world meant that the AC dropped back to 42, so i had to pump it up a bit more again after amageddon. it's strange how amageddon just knocked 50 off the amageddon counter, you would think that the process of amageddon would accelerate instead of cutting the AC counter in half.

i didn't bother converting all the goodies in the end, i just let them take the full heat of hyborem and the evil doers. wiping them off the face of the planet.

in the end i was the only one with untainted land, the 10 turns in AV needed for starting a holy war wasnt enough for the hell terrain to make much progress before it was turned around again when i switched religion back.

the avatar of wrath took out a few civs, then came for me, and i reluctantly ahnialated it with my overpowered magic force and unlimited supply of planar gate cannon fodder. in the end it was just me and hyborem left, and some barbs around the place. i would have preferred to let it keep on roaming dong its stuff, (hmm, maybe i should try this tactic with a barbarian leader)

funny enough, this worked out even easier than playing the usual AV as shaim.

from now on i think i'll play a lot more of the order worshiping, or leave worshiping shaim. the early setup was the hardest bit, but after i set the wheels in motion it prety much took care of itself. and most importantly, it was a really fun game with lots of fireworks!

in hind sight i would chose the spiritual shaim leader next time, as i found myself religion switching a lot to start a series of holy world wars.

 

[avalonnn]

I can tell you why Armageddon knocked the counter down so far -- most of the AC was +1 / unit from building units in the prophecy city. You were building living units. When the Armageddon came, each Marked unit that died meant -1 for the AC.

What about heroes? Did any heroes die? Did you build Meshabber?

 

[Worm4life]

Doesn't peace with barbarians from the barbarian trait wear off at a certain point in the tech tree? If so then it won't protect you from the Avatar.

 

[Emptiness]

Losing peace with the barbarians isn't based on the tech tree. It happens when your score pulls too far ahead of your nearest rival (+50% higher I think, but I'm not sure exactly).

 

[Landmonitor]

This would certainly help avoid those Tar Demons being summoned and wasting your slots... I found them pretty useless unless it appeared I was about to be nearly overrun...

 

[odalrick]

This would certainly help avoid those Tar Demons being summoned and wasting your slots... I found them pretty useless unless it appeared I was about to be nearly overrun...

Tar Demons only waste a summoning event, they don't compete with other gate creatures for creature slots. Each creature has it's own maximum limit.

 

[Monkeyfinger]