Hey everyone,
First off, I'd like to warn everyone before reading this post: it's going to be a large wall of text and parts of it can be interpreted as severe whining. However, this is not what I'm trying to do; I'll be sketching my experiences with the game in order to request detailed help. So here goes:
I'm quite new to FfH2 (only a month or so) and even more so to WildMana (Installed it a few days back). In theory, I love many of the new functions thus all my games so far have had many of the custom options enabled. In practice, I find myself enjoying these games a lot less than I expected: partly because the amount of changes is overwhelming, which is actually a good thing and should decrease with each play, but also because I'm having a hard time finding any explanation on some of the new features. Is there a manual/guide somewhere, as there was with the original FFH2? As example: how does the Emergent trait work? I've had random "offers" (see later) but it would be nice to have a more detailed look into it.
Secondly, I'm having trouble getting into the game because I don't seem to get started very well once I activate some of the new neat functions. A perfect example here is the Mana Guardians: I love the idea, but it makes the game a serious pain in the ass, especially since the effects were unknown to me from the start.
To further explain what I mean, I'll try to describe my introduction to the game. While I was downloading WildMana, I found the FFH2 guide and read up on some things. The "Start with Grigori" hint seemed like a solid one, so that's what I did once WildMana was installed. I activated some a large quantity of options, picked a limited difficulty (Noble; never got to Deity on BtS anyway!) and started. Not much later, I died because a random barbarian walked into my base. My fault, shouldn't have gone exploring with both my scout and warrior. Restart, turned on some barbarian limitation settings and went for it. My scout died about three turns in, but my base was safe. Until a hill giant walked in, crushed my first warrior without losing much health, waited a turn and crushed my second warrior, effectively removing me from the game once more. Okay, two warriors was not enough, so I restart and pump out some warriors early on while using my scout only for scouting really close to my base. I find a rivaling Civ, found their base empty and went in for the kill. Maybe a bad decision, as the size 1 city was razed instantly, but later on I discovered this made me the sole inhabitant of a pretty nice island... OF DOOM.
In the following turns, the only thing I could do was wait until my first adventurer had some decent experience up his sleeves so he could escort my workers around. No, not my settler, my workers. I couldn't build a farm without being ambushed by spiders or griffons. Honestly, I don't mind having to send escorts with my workers; I do mind having to send a 30+ XP adventurer with them and still have to retreat to base every now and then to get my adventurer healed up again, not to mention having to reload once in a while because a giant/raptor/goblin got lucky.
Once I got my second adventurer up to some exp (made him recon; a Hunter by then), the workers made quick work of the tiles around my capital and it was time to prepare for expansion. The location of the razed city on turn 1 was very nice: on top of a hill, several high-value resources in its cross and only a few border-pushes away from several juicy mana sources. Truly a perfect location... FOR DEATH.
The trip there was a disaster; escorted by my axeman and hunter adventurers as well as some lowly warriors and axemen, the settler needed about 50 turns to travel the 10 tile distance to the new base location. The woods I had crossed with a single unit in the first few turns of the game to destroy a base, were now infested with everything you can think of, and possibly more. By saving every turn and reloading on multiple occasions, I finally reached my destination, founded my second city and let out a sigh of relief. The journey had been a struggle, but it had been worth it. I thought.
Three squares south and one square west, there was an Entropy node, happily casting Wither every few turns. Browsing the CivPedia taught me that the only way to heal it was by means of a medic: only 2 expensive techs away, for a total of 80 turns. Lowering the science bar a bit further to finance upgrading my new adventurers (some of them were sitting on 50~60exp but I didn't have the cash to upgrade) allowed me to alternate between adventurers to explore the wilds and take out some lesser guarded goblin forts, limiting the threat somewhat. However, the south area of the island keeps bombarding my second city with skeletons, who tend to turn my cottages into graveyards. Most of my heroes defending/patrolling that area are withered, but at least some of them also have wild regen, so they can still heal decently when inside a city. This area has reached a status-quo and it's being going on like that for quite a while now.
The main problem I'm facing now is that my economy is
(zero neighbors = zero trade); the only way I could sustain 60%+ research slider was by building that early national brewery wonder thing in my capital, which I find a big waste for my pretty strong production city. Aside from that, I've completely ruined my GP producing skills, because I desperately started building random wonders as I ran out of buildings, couldn't build money/research yet and noticed that my regular units were worth nothing. As an example of the latter: it requires two axemen to beat a single skeleton (do they get stronger over time? I could've sworn they were only 4str at first), which spawn with two at once every few turns. Beating their guardian (an 11str Beast of Agares with an absurd amount of promotions) just isn't an option. Even with Bronze swords (I recently researched the Iron tech, but one is behind the Beast of Agares while the other one is in the middle of a horde of angry 7str Djinns), regular units are of zero worth. Luckily, I remembered activating the Ranged Combat module, allowing me to archerize skeletons and axemanning them with reasonable odds when needed.
Eventually, I felt the need to search out some neighbors and get some trade gold. I captured a Griphon and sent him across the waters to find possible trading partners. As soon as I reached an island, I carefully walked my griphon further into the mainland, making sure I landed on Impassible terrain at the end of its turns. Then it got taunted by a gorilla and died.
Since I still desperately needed trading partners, I built a boat. One of those first ones (not the explorers; how useless are they? More expensive to built than the original ones and weaker, at equal movement.), hoping to find some connecting coastlines. The chances were slim, but it was my only option at that point, since I still needed to research medicine to get rid of those nasty withers. Carefully passing by the shoreline, stopping every few turns to heal damage from those
goblin archers, I made my way to the north side of my island. Then, I got intercepted by a Water Walking raptor.
That's the moment I decided I wasn't fit to continue this game and needed help, which leads me here. I've ran in to a large number of problems and I'm having trouble countering them. I've never been a great Civ player and FFH2 was already a lot harder than the original; WildMana brings this to extra dimensions.
So, I guess my question is: how do I master this game? How do I protect myself from the many new threats that WildMana brings? Surely I can deactivate the options, but I WANT to play them; that's the reason I downloaded this mod in the first place!
I'll summarize my main problems first:
a) Even with tamed animals, the wildies as well as barbarians roam abundant, preying on your workers. I found that normal units just don't cut it as escorts and higher level adventurers are a must.
b) With the very slow tile improvement and even slower expansions, my economy is in shambles. I'm running God King yet still running 70% slider most of the time because I need some cash income to finance adventurer upgrades. Items aren't even remotely an option at this point. I have no trading partners because I haven't had the chance to explore proplerly, as every cross-water explorer I've had got intercepted before reaching anyone.
c) Recon is risky business. I'm okay with that; mapping an entire continent with a single unit never made sense to me in BtS. However, with tile defense bonuses being such an immense factor in early combat, the Gorilla's Taunting Presence is a game-breaker to me. What's the point in ending your turn on Forest/Hills when you suddenly see a taunting gorilla right next to the tile you landed on?
d) The range/frequency on those Wither casting entropy nodes is immense, especially considering Wither can only be cured once the second level of disciple units rolls in, which is usually not a priority for most games. Am I missing a healing method?
e) Rampaging animal/barbarian units are destroying everything I've worked for. I've placed sentries on some high defense tiles, but regular units can't beat most units and the barbarian AI is too smart to attack. Defending cottages isn't an option, because even adventurers are at risk on those spots. I've spotted Combat III + Shock I Hill Giants and they are ANGRY.
f) My research tree is all over the place. I wanted to go deep into recon for powerful adventuring & beast capturing joy, then found myself forced to get unit upgrades and then tried to beeline for Medicine. Meanwhile, I still need to get a ocean-worthy boat so I can seek out trading partners and get my economy running again!
In conclusion, I seem to have failed on every single part of the game. What's worse: I don't know how to fix it. Beelining for better units early on would allow me to clear more of the creature spawnsites, but it would take quite a while before I can train a unit that surpasses my high level adventurers and even they can't handle some of the enemies around me. Does anyone have any hints on how to proceed here? This game was on Warlord, so tuning down the difficulty would be simply ridiculous... Any hints are appreciated!
Another note: I was using an Emergent leader. By destroying a civ on one of the first few turns, the game offered me the Agressive trait EVERY turn from then on. How can I stop this if I don't want Agressive?
