Starting Strats

[Calbrenar]

I usually play RTS games where build order is king. I realize its somewhat different in FFH/Civ where you have so many different races with different starting technologies and where city locs can change so much... but here goes.

What build order do you typically like to stick to? How do you normally modify it?

Education fairly early seems enormous as the cottages give your workers something to do for all your cities and have a very real benefit. Normally my happiness is a lock so no point in letting cities grow so cottages seem better then farms.

God King seems another huge thing early on and my caps are typically production whores. Being the first to writing and religion seem to be other obvious milestones for that academy bonus and the happiness.

However I don't think I'm doing it right. I typically either go for animal husbandry first or mysticism (for god king) then animal husbandry. I figure its better to grow cities to happiness max (usually 4, 5 in some cases) before getting workers. This lets me get early warriors to set up perimeters and remove the (we're afraid without an army) on expanded cities, and scouts for early hut gathering.

I typically don't build more then 2 workers until way into the game because my techs proceed slow enough until I get writing and libraries that a 2-3 worker stack builds on everything as fast as they become accessible from new cities.

Problem is it doesn't seem to be working that great. I can typically stay way ahead of the AI but on noble that isn't much of a feat. I tried this strat with Balseraphs and no matter how I change it I can't get to RoK first. i wanted to try out Dala's super druids.

I figure there has to be something obvious i'm doing wrong. Any tips or shared strategies?

 

[Ekolite]

if you cant get to ROK first its probably because the dwarves are in the game. Its rarely worth trying to beat them to it because you never do. Also, if you are gettin ROK quickly, get mysticism before mining. That way you can build eldercouncils ant get sages in yr towns.

 

[Calbrenar]

Is it worth going for the Balseraph/druid deal if you don't have the RoK holy city?

In my Sheim game I actually got beat to AV and I ended up founding it anyway just because it goes so well with Sheim. My game is totally screwed up there. My friend is Amurites on a different cont. He barely beat me to writing screwing up my whole plan. So I skipped on going for it and went for some other stuff which backfired since I didn't have libraries. there's like 8 good AI in the game all on the overcouncil. I have 2 good players sharing religion on my cont. They both hate me. The only thing keeping me alive is that even with my 0% science I managed to get to adepts and necromancy. I just got priesthood but I can't even make the super kickass priests b/c I need another city for reagent and I don't even have summoning. So I basically use my 15-20 adepts to summon skels and i throw them to their deaths to kill the enemy units before the second turn ends and I get charged upkeep for them

 

[Halancar]

If you are trying to race for writing or a religion, don't stop for animal husbandry. Go straight to education for cottage, then directly to either writing or whichever religion you want. Also, be sure to get as many goody huts as you can early on, they make a ton of difference. Even gold allows you to squeeze some extra research percentage.

The AI does not need any tech to build improvments, so at the higher difficulty levels it will get a better start. Elves with found the FoL, dwarves will found the RoK, and barring some insane luck in goody huts you won't be able to prevent it. You might have some luck with OO, but your best bet are the later religions, when you have had time to catch up. Alternatively, rush for a good early mimitary unit, and acquire the holy city you couldn't found

As for building order, I recommend at least 4 warriors (I play raging barbarians), a settler who leaves with two of the warriors, build more warriors a another settler, etc... Once you have a safe perimeter, build a worker or two to improve it where the barbs can't get at it. I don't build buildings in my cities until I have reached that number.

 

[kumquatelvis]

Ignoring farms could be a mistake. Without farms your five happy people are all working tiles that give a tiny amount of food and a tiny amount of something else. With farms, you can take a few people off of food tiles and put them somewhere more useful (mines, specialists, etc...).

As for early techs; I almost always go for whatever techs let me use the resources in the area. If you have dye or wine or something, you want the techs that let you take advantage of those.

 

[kdodge]

There's an excellent article on deity-level playing in the plain BTS strategy forum that discusses build orders and lightbulbing in great detail.

I took that as a starting point, and have created my own build order for FFH:

1) first build = scout. (win the race to goodie huts and explore BEFORE the land is swarming with barbs.. not to mention find your neighbors before they find you!)

2) .. look at your terrain. if you have a fat-cross resource and starting first -choice tech that is exploitable BEFORE chopping, get a worker now. if not .. proceed to the "settler cycle" below then come back for workers after chopping is in queue. (plan ahead, your first chopping worker should pop out about a turn or two before bronze working finishes so he can get in position)
Having an early worked fat-cross food resource can make all the difference in the world. the slow start to build the worker is WORTH it to have the faster building settlers in the long run.

3) if you're not going for an early worker to exploit a targeted resource, I start the 'settler cycle': warriors till you hit happy-cap, then settler-warrior-warrior-repeat.
If you hit chopping time in there, (see #2 above) then change the order to settler-warrior-worker-warrior-repeat.
Once you have chopping & roads, you want at LEAST one worker per city up to 8 or 10. (I try to get 6-7 workers as soon as I can)
You gotta get that economy fired up fast and that means getting those new cities on line and producing asap.

Continue with that order until you have 3-6 cities (depending on map size & placement)

now... 4)
build your army. Keep your power ahead of theirs so they don't dare declare war.
Decide if you're a "rusher" or a "turtle" or a "mage".
rusher = bronze & training grounds and pour out the axeman. swarm em.
turtle = archery & defensive units and work that research till you can come at em with higher tech
mage = get "knowledge of ether" asap, get your 6-8 adepts asap so that they can be earning experience EARLY and you can win the race to archmagi & summoners. It's hard to overstate the need to have early-build adepts same as early-build cities. they take a long time to get up to speed, but when they hit you want 3 of each ready to go!

In the middle of all that you have to specialize your cities, and if you're going to do any research at all, pick your "tech center" and get your libraries built so you can chop-rush the Great library (probably in your capital so you can god-king and pour on the research)



As for early techs, FFH is such a "flat-wide" tech tree it's hard to specify... the resource techs depend on what's in your fat cross, and the later techs depend on your strategy and race.

What folks said above holds pretty true though, general rules:
Only research a couple resource techs to exploit whats already in your fat cross of the first or second city.
Get your economy up and running next.. if cottages, that means education, if Specialist, then happy and food techs.
Either economy is going to want laws and coinage to keep the money coming in and cut on the maintenance.
After that, it depends on where you're going.
If you want to found a religion, or be first to a particular later tech, you better beeline it once your basics are down, again because the tree is so flat 7 wide, its easy to beeline most techs in a hurry.

Seeing my note above, I generally prioritize "knowledge of ether" early because I want my adepts to be ready to promote asap (plus I grab water-mana early to prepare for blight).
But you just can't beat a mid-game stack of 3 summoners & 3 arch-magi unless your opponent beat you to assassins and can pour out TONS of them.



Good luck!

 

[Roghar]

Unless I have resources in my fat cross that scream for quick exploitation, in which case i go for agriculture or fishing (less likely) as required, I virtually always rush to mysticism. God King and an elder council to assign a sage unti you get an Academy are essential.

Depending on your land, agriculture is often a very good way to go next, main exceptions if you are going for either RoK or OO early

Rushing to techs like writing, religions, engineering etc is normally fine against the AI, but in MP I wouldn't do it unless it suits the rest of your strat. If someone beating you to it means you took your last 3 techs out of the order you otherwise would ahve you are in trouble.

The decision on Knowledge of the Ether and adepts is often the hardest, more than any other tech and build option it is a trade-off of current cost for future gain. If yuo can get to the point where you have mages and archmages in decent shape its worth it, if the delay puts you behind and in trouble it isn't. Something to play by ear really.