Treant Troubles and other newbie questions

[azatol]

In my first game of Vanilla Ffh 2, playing as Cassiel, Flauros and Tebryn have both gone for Fellowship of Leaves, (Tebryn founding). Flauros demanded something, and I had a decent number of units plus a level 11 adventurer-hunter (plus one adv. in the bank for later). Most of my army was composed of Axemen upgraded with bronze weapons, as well as some hunters from any earlier barbarian campaign against Orcs and an Ogre. So, I decided to go to war with Flauros.

I took out there first city without much trouble, and there second was a small barely defended city. I took out there archer with my axemen, and one of my hunters died to their hunter, so I foolish sent in my full strength L11 hunter-hero, and the barely alive enemy hunter magically killed off my hero who had +100% strength, commando, and a load of other promotions.

This seems to be completely ridiculous, but my question is whether this kind of ludicrous against the odds death is more common in Ffh. Also, the odds that show seem to not reflect on the reality as some low odds attacks with my axemen in fact succeeded (0.2% win).

I was furious at the loss of my awesome and nifty Level 11 guy, so I decided to continue razing Flauros' cities. I advanced on the main city after getting some reinforcements, and lo and behold, a Treant appeared. I looked it up, and discovered I pretty much had no chance to kill it. I'd struggled mightily earlier in the game to kill an Ogre which was only 7 power. So my other question is, how often do Treants show up, and is there anything I can do to stop such units before I get powerful magic and all that stuff that seems to be coming very slow?

From reading the manual, it seems that it was recommended to purse a specialized path of research, so I've been researching bowery, with 35 turns left, and its turn 350. I've got a 6 city civ with good relations with everyone but Flauros, but there are two evil civs and no good ones found yet so I'm worried about this armegeddon stuff I've heard about and that was another reason to go to war with them in my mind.

Anyway, thanks for any answers you can give. I was able to get peace with Flauros because of my early victories, but now I'm worried about that treant wrecking my armies in the next war.

 

[Mailbox]

Treants have a chance of appearing whenever you enter an ancient forest, but they only last a turn. If you're invading a FoL civ, try to stay out of the ancient forests.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Treants have a 3% chance of spawning when a unit tried to enter an empty Ancient Forest tile in an FoL civ's borders, under that civs control. If the tile is within the radius of a city with a temple of the Leaves (or doe sit have to also be a worked tile?) then the chance doubles to 6%. They have a duration of 3 turns

Note that this in only on unoccupied forests. You can leave units fortified on a line of tiles to prevent any treants from spawning there when your reinforcements come through the same area. They can also never spawn on tiles occupied by your enemies, so if you only proceed by attacking enemies then you are safe.

Treants are also weak to fire damage, and you can burn down the forests before invading to prevent the terrain from being a forest. Using the Fire I spell to create smoke on a nearby forest, which has a chance of becoming flames, which can spread to the nearby forests and burn them down. If you wait for the fires to go out then burnt forests would be left, which will eventually regrow back to the way things were. However, if you put the flames out using spring (water I), then no forests will remain on the tiles.


Treants can alse be made by the Nature III summoning spell, and are permanent summons (you cannot summon another unless you have more potential casters than the type of unit summoned)

The Ljosalfar world spell also creates a treant on every ancient forest of forest in their boeders, wiht a duration of 5.

When a Treat dies on an unforested tile, it gains a new forest.

 

[azatol]

Thanks for the info. This game has been pretty interesting so far. I wiped out the vampires in a later war, but a barbarian city ended up defended by that dragon unit. So I build new cities to replace the razed ones around the barbs and the dragon was basically penned in. I started researching some magic stuff, though I'm only one tech away from Flurry units (but its 102 turns).

Then I decided since this was my first game, I was try something crazy and I build that Mazurian Gate or whatever its called with help from an engineer, and became them, and attacked the dragon with all but one of my angels and my hero unit. I should have waited a bit I suppose as I was almost able to defeat the dragon but not quite, but it was fun anyway.

However, the game seems to be confused as to what player I am and what cities belong to which civs, my old civ is gifting me stuff like a maniac which is funny since they are non-religious. Is it a good idea to save and quit and then reload after a civ change like that?

I thought the game would be better on epic, but I see now that its already scaled for a slower experience, so on epic, things have gone very slow considering how many turns I've gone through. Most civs have had no problem with me, and even the evil civ that was allied with the vampires only has a minor penalty against me. After this game finishes up, I'm thinking of trying Bannor next.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

When you build the Mercurian Gate and bring the Mercurians into the world, your civ forms a permanent alliance with them, whether you switch or not. The AI is programmed to be very generous with its permanent allies. I don't think it is confused about what cities belong to whom, you just are allowed to see all the thing a permanent ally can. Saving and reloading wouldn't change this. Usually you need all the help you can get when you enter the game late, so I'm not sure why you are complaining.

(Although Cassiel summoning Basium is pretty ironic, as Cassiel hates divine intervention of all kinds. To him there is no difference between Basum and Hyborem)

Your game options (like wait at the end of the turn, leave old improvements, show friendly moves, etc) all revert to default when you switch civs, even though the boxes remain checked as you had them. You could save and reload, but you could also just change any of these options and then change it back to get things back to normal.

 

[azatol]

Well it was probably a bad idea to do that, but it was a test game. Thanks for the info though. So many fancy names of things to remember. Although Cassiel's city names remind me of Final Fantasy 7.

 

[nealhunt]

This seems to be completely ridiculous, but my question is whether this kind of ludicrous against the odds death is more common in Ffh. Also, the odds that show seem to not reflect on the reality as some low odds attacks with my axemen in fact succeeded (0.2% win).

In my experience, it is much more common in FFH than vanilla and the odds calculator should be taken as a rather broad estimate.

 

[eerr]

" To him there is no difference between Basum and Hyborem"
one of them would prefer cassiel dead alot more?, and the other one will attack the one that would prefer cassiel dead?

was this the first time the civ counter-attacked you?

 

[reverend oats]

Basium might not want to kill Cassiel himself, but would shed no tears for him. And if Basium felt Cassiel was being uncooporative or aiding the Infernals, he would smash the other fallen angel in an instant.

 

[Fenboy]

one of them would prefer cassiel dead alot more?, and the other one will attack the one that would prefer cassiel dead?

In every major conflict in the past century those who have chosen to remain neutral have argued that "both sides are as bad as each other", regardless of what their fate would have been if the 'good guys' had lost. Erebus is a very dark world, so Cassiel might actually be right in this regard.