The point of the Svaltafar World Spell?

[Wyrmhero]

Whenever playing FfH as the Svaltafar, I realise how utterly pointless their World Spell is in multiplayer. It may allow you to do one or two strikes on your opponent, but they know who it is, and will declare war on you for attacking them. Why? Because the Barbarian units are always Orcish. So, I propose that Barbarian units have a chance to be different races, as if they are Barbarians, they will allow anyone to join in on their raid, no matter of race. This way, the World Spell might have a point in using it against another human player.

 

[Kael]

Whenever playing FfH as the Svaltafar, I realise how utterly pointless their World Spell is in multiplayer. It may allow you to do one or two strikes on your opponent, but they know who it is, and will declare war on you for attacking them. Why? Because the Barbarian units are always Orcish. So, I propose that Barbarian units have a chance to be different races, as if they are Barbarians, they will allow anyone to join in on their raid, no matter of race. This way, the World Spell might have a point in using it against another human player.

Most humans arent going to be fooled by that either. The truth is that Hidden Nationality isnt of much direct use against a human. It does allow you to level up on non-human players in the game (without diplo penalties), then break off easily (or even in alliance with your former victim) if war breaks out with another human.

There are other indirect tactics like that to hidden nationality, but as you say, its isnt directly useful against humans.

 

[TheJopa]

Most humans arent going to be fooled by that either. The truth is that Hidden Nationality isnt of much direct use against a human. It does allow you to level up on non-human players in the game (without diplo penalties), then break off easily (or even in alliance with your former victim) if war breaks out with another human.

There are other indirect tactics like that to hidden nationality, but as you say, its isnt directly useful against humans.

Hidden Nationality may no be useful in a two player game but if there are other human players that also use Hidden Nationality you will get away just fine. Also, even if he declares war on you, he will get higher War Weariness and diplo penalty and not you.

 

[xienwolf]

A nice use for HN against players is to use it to block access to certain areas. Normally they can walk right across your units, but with HN people blocking the road they will have to fight you. Thus you can cut off the use of roads to slow them down, or block a chokepoint to deny them room to expand.

Yes, they can just kill the units, but only if they are capable of it, and only if they are willing to risk making YOU declare war on THEM.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I believe that Kael has stated that he plans for HN to change the units graphics just like the racial promotions do, which I think is sorely needed.

I still think that HN units should be allowed to capture units (workers, slaves, werewolves, etc), although capturing cities is obviously too much. This isn't a hard SDK change to make (I did it myself in .30, and I'd never seen C++ code before) and it makes the world spell somewhat useful. I'll almost certainly do it again when I have the time to mod .31 (I'm way to busy this week, and it would probably be better to wait for a more stable base to work off of anyway)



The Svartalfar's is one of several worldspells that my modmod will definitely change. Unless I think of somehting better, I'll probably change the "Mask" spell to require a new promotion (which only Esus recon units of the Esus religion could get in th normal way) and make the worldspell grant this instead of HN (so all the units around at the time would be able to turn HN and back whenever you want.) Likewise, the Sidar spell will probably grant stealth instead of hidden.

(Speaking of hidden, does that actually do anything? "Hidden" units don't seem to be invisible, and certainly can't enter rival's borders as freely as invisible units can.)

 

[Ksi]

Hidden as in Rathus? It's invisibility until attack + a first strike. Also the world spell is very nice if you have defensive pacts in place.

 

[Mortenart]

Have just played an aggressive AI game with the Svartalfar. Within a couple of hundred turns I was at war with all other 15 Civs (through no fault of my own.. ), so the HN World Spell was useless. Would be good to see the Svart with a more effective WS, might have saved me from getting stomped on from a great height.

 

[DemonMaster]

In my latest game I used the spell to start a guerrilla (spelling?) warfare against my neighbour, Khazad, who (amazingly odd) was in the lead. I used my HN horses (nox, nix, nyx something) to destroy his key improvements and to lure him out (horses aren't that strong) and when he was damaged (alot actually) I launched the real attack and this time not by HN. A very efficient tactics (much thanks to the raider trait).

Although I do agree that the hidden thing only works against the AI, since I can see the unit type and name there is nothing that stops me from declare war on the right civ.

It is also an efficient way to stop missionaries. Have one fairly strong HN unit in each city and an acolyte cannot enter the city to spread his religion, he must attack.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I don't know the answer to that question either. Invisibility is handled by the Sidar worldspell, so I would expect the Svaltafar one should at least change all your units to look like mercenaries. At least it could have been someone else's mercenaries.

 

[Candidus]

I completely wiped out every kuriouate city with HN. I led barbarians to their cities, then i killed their defenders, and the barbs took the city. My top competitor for land was taken out without a hit on my civ.

 

[Sarisin]

I completely wiped out every kuriouate city with HN. I led barbarians to their cities, then i killed their defenders, and the barbs took the city. My top competitor for land was taken out without a hit on my civ.

That's an interesting strategy.

I have not had as much success with taking out defenders with HN units (like the Stooges) and having the barbs come along to capture the cities. The problems:

1. The ai can churn out defenders one per turn somehow, so there is always a unit there to defend against the barbs.

2. Unless I have a small stack of HN units (like all 3 Stooges), the ai will really focus their attack on the HN units around.

3. I guess I don't know how to lead the barbarians. I have made a city defenseless and waiting many turns for a barb to show up. If the map is full of AI civs this, of course, may never happen.

4. The barb unit takes the city (they never raze unless in is 1 population), but then it is quickly taken back by the ai as that Goblin is not a strong defender. So, you have to take out the ai civ defender again and so forth.

4. The biggest problem I have had is that the barb units will more often than not attack my HN unit (and die) rather than take a defenseless city. This is particularly true with barb units with more than one movement like Lizardmen, Wolf Riders, and Goblin Chariots.

It is a great strategy if it works though.

The Svartalfar world spell didn't make much sense to me in my one game I played them as I was constantly at war with other civs, so I never used it.

 

[Goodgimp]

Have just played an aggressive AI game with the Svartalfar. Within a couple of hundred turns I was at war with all other 15 Civs (through no fault of my own.. ), so the HN World Spell was useless. Would be good to see the Svart with a more effective WS, might have saved me from getting stomped on from a great height.

If you have all 15 civs at war with you, chances are no world spell would have saved you.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

If you have all 15 civs at war with you, chances are no world spell would have saved you.

Except Sanctuary

 

[thapagan]

144 treants. March of the trees might be a bit overpowered.

 

[reverend oats]

By building those 144 treants, who will only last 5 turns, you just mauled your economy

 

[thapagan]

I knew there was a drawback somehow, but man they look impressive.