which religion for the Calabim?

[smjjames]

I already looked at that vampires the musical thread, however I don't use priests all that much (I play on chieftain), so I'm not really sure which one benefits the most.

Maybe FoL? I do need the health boost, but I'm not sure which ones would work best. With version .32 coming up in a couple days, the strategy as far as choosing religions will certainly change a little bit.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Most religions fit the Calabim pretty well. Thematically they are best suited for the Council of Esus or the Ashen Veil (Flauros more CoE and Alexis more AV), but the Order fits them well too, as does a darker "Survival of the Fittest" version of FoL. I can't really see them following the Runes of Kilmorph or (especially) the Empyrean though. Before the BtS conversion OO was my favorite religion for them, but the synergies between this civ and religion don't really exist anymore.

The extra health from FoL can help, but not as much as the reduced food requirements from Sacrifice the Weak. This is obviously the best choice with hell terrain and the AC deactivated, but a tougher decision with the default options. Getting rid of all unhappiness in a city from OO's Tower of Complacency or the Order's Unyielding Order spell can also be quite helpful when trying to get your cities populations large enough to feed upon. Adopting RoK or Emp (or the Order and then Esus or OO) to become neutral can be good too, since it can let you get Druids (these used to be unavailable to the Calabim, are aren't anymore) to cast Vitalize everywhere.

 

[smjjames]

yea, vampires are supposed to be weak to sunlight, so the Empyrean/Calabim combo seems a bit wierd to me as well. Although the vampires in FFH don't seem to have any problems with sunlight.

I am playing with default options. Although at this point in the game (still relatively early), only my two biggest cities have a problem with unhappyness.

Maybe I'll go with FoL, a vampiric yvain the woodelf is going to be interesting, lol.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

double post

 

[MagisterCultuum]

FfH vampires do have a problem with sunlight. It doesn't actually kill them, but direct sunlight is painful and makes them weaker. This is explained by a curse that Lugus placed on Alexis (and those whom she showed how to become vampires) because her fist victim was Lanthis, an acolyte of Lugus.

In .31, Vicars had a spell (Whitefire) that did extra damage to vampires. I may bring this back in my modmod (all priests will have more spells)

I tend to change it so that the Calabim leaders are unable to ever adopt the Empyrean. (I tend to make all religion weights larger, but these are the only ones I set to -100.)

 

[loffenx]

Been pondering this issue myself, in my last game I tried Council of Esus as Flauros. A Vampiriced Gibbon Goethia sure cam in handy, but a couple of vampiriced Nightwatchers became invaluable.

 

[Ecofarm]

For me, the most important thing is to find something for my weakling 5str level 10 (city raider 3) vampires to upgrade to. That's Eids or Paladins, AV or Order. With AV, you get bla heroes and beasts, with Order you get sphener (a top hero).

 

[·Imhotep·]

Bla Heroes with AV ? Uhm, Rosier the Fallen ? If you can get Orthus' Axe on this guy he his a killing machine...and gifting Vampirism to him is awesome. Had him at nigh to 400 XP in one of my games @ Monarch...

I personally can see the Calabim only as AV followers - someone who feeds on his own people is hardly a "good" person...

 

[Demus]

Bla Heroes with AV ? Uhm, Rosier the Fallen ? If you can get Orthus' Axe on this guy he his a killing machine...and gifting Vampirism to him is awesome. Had him at nigh to 400 XP in one of my games @ Monarch...

i fail to see how this makes rosier different from valin, which is available at almost exactly the same time, but then for order instead of AV.
Thematically, the lawful militaristic Order could definatly work with Calabim (loads of posts about it).

I still need to try CoE though, vampiric shadows sound almost to good to be true.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Eidolons and Paladins are not religion specific; they depend on alignment. While you would need to adopt the Order to get Paladins, you can get Eidolons under AV, OO, Esus, or FoL.

Order and AV heroes are essentially the same. Mardero's Stigmata and March promotions give him an advantage, as does his intrinsic +40% vs disciples. Rosier also has this +40% vs disciples, but both Order heroes have demon slaying.

Honestly, Mardero was the stronger hero before the sorcery summoning merge. Sphener had divine/summoing while Mardero was Sorcery summoning. Getting rid of Sorcery and summoning cut down on the number of spells Mardero could cast while Sphenor kept divine and thus also gained all Order high priests spells. Mardero should really get Divine too, imho. (In my modmod, Mardero is stronger, although Sphenor does start with a nice piece of equipment.)

The real reason choose Sphenor over Mardero when playing as the Calabim is due to a bug: while you can cast Vampirism only when there is a living level 6 (or 4, if Moroi) unit in the stack, it effects all non-demon, non-undead units of the required level. Thus, angels like Sphenor can be vampires too. This should be changed.


You don't have to be AV to be evil. Four the seven religions let you stay evil and can be used to justify such actions. Also,I always consider the Order to be more Lawful than Good. The Calabim are extremely lawful, so it fits them well. I can't picture them under the Empyrean or Kilmorph, but the lawfulness and fanaticism of the Order could be pretty easily exploited by the Vampiric rulers.

 

[Nor'easter]

I recently played a Calabim game and found AV worked very well. Sacrifice the Weak allows your cities to grow quickly and makes it easy for your vampiric units to feed. And vampiric eidolons are pretty cool.

Vampiric paladins are awesome as well, so Order might work for them, too.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Vampiric Eidola have nothing to do with AV though. The best Eidola are the water walking ones upgraded from drowns or (if prefer the vampiric variety, also with the ability to cast Tsunami) Cultists from OO, and vampiric Druids aren't bad either. True, these require gifting vampirism instead of just upgrading, and they don't have death or body magic, but they are still potent (the body spells wouldn't help a non-living eidolon anyway). Vampiric Druids can also be quite nice.

 

[Nor'easter]

Vampiric Eidola have nothing to do with AV though. I'd personally prefer waterwalking vampiric eidola from OO, and vampiric Druids aren't bad either.

True, the Calabim start as evil, so you don't need to adopt AV to get vampiric eidola, I was just recalling how things played out for me in that game.

Vampiric druids would be pretty formidable, too, you're right.

 

[Arcite36575]

I finally got my first win yesterday on Deity , and I was using my favorite civilization, Calabim. (pangena, aggressive civs, living world, three extra civs)

I usually agree with most of MagisterCultuum ideas and suggestions, but my experience was totally different than his ideas. I was in last place, or near in last place with only two cities for most of the first half of the game. The most powerful civilization, Khazad had founded ROK, and everyone around me was ROK too, so I switched to ROK/overcouncil for the huge diplomatic advantage. With only two cities, I could run the "Godking" civ for 50% production, and focus exclusively on building my economy with barely a police force for a military.

Khazad forced one of the nonROK civs to capitulate, and a couple other civs vassaled to him. After I got Feudalism, I built about 10 vampires, ate them up to around level 5 or so, built about 5 catapults, and invaded my closest neighbor (luchurip), which had "Friendly" status with me. He has essentally no military for defense because we were "friends." , essentally allowing me to steamroll him.

I got lucky and got a great engineer later. I was trying to decide which GW to rush. I wanted to switch to OO and get the Tower of Complacency, but I had a large diplomatic bonus with Khazad (and we shared a sizable land border), and he had a huge military (and more than twice my score), so I rushed the Mecurian gate, because I was afraid if he built it first, I would get streamrolled by two powerful civs in a war (especially since almost everyone now was either good/neutral).

My war machine soon hit a brick wall. My military strength was still almost in last place, focusing on vampires using a shock and awe strategy of KOing another civ in 20 turns before they could properly react. Most of the other civ's cities had natural defenses of 100-150%, and crossbowmen and mithril champions, and I just couldn't kill them with my strength 7 vampires and slow artillery.

After Khazad and I were at war with another rival civ, I took a city with the Empyrean religion. I then made peace with all my rivals, and while Khazad was busy still at war, I switched to "Order" to turn "good" and to build those priests which have +1 bless spell. Then after 5 turns I switched to Empyrean to get the Chalid hero.

I got about 20 or so vampires and vampire paladins (absolute AWESOME!) ready, all with the raiders promotion, three mages with air II, and chalid with the pillar of fire. Then while Khazad had his 50+ SOD on the other side of the world, I declared war on him (as well as the other half of the world which had capitulated/vassaled to him). That chalid hero is just insane. I could literally take even the most heavily fortified city EVERY TURN. Cast air II, then pillar of fire to get all the defenders down to 25% health, then attack the city with the 15 strength vampire paladins to take down the crossbow men/strongest defenders, then mop up the rest with the other vampires. In about 15 turns, I had wipped out his entire country in the east as well as a couple of his client states, and by the time his SOD arrived back to attack my country, he had no country left to support his military, and the other vassals broke free from him .

I then conquered everyone else, or they vassaled themselves to me and I got the domination victory. Yah!!

Sorry for the long story. I'm just pretty psyched! I've tried winning on Deity for a while, but I usually get overwhelmed pretty quick.



Side note: I could never understand why people here are so crazy about Druids (although the Dwarf Druids rock) assuming you are not playing as the elves. I think they are way overrated. By the time you get them, you are in the latter half of the game, it makes no sense to be using a tier 3 unit (and a low strength one at that) to be terraforming the world for a slow, marginal benefit, when you could be getting stronger tier 3 units to turn your neighbors' lands into parking lots.

 

[Arcite36575]

Ohh, sorry I didn't answer the OP's question:

Empyrean is the best IMO (probably for everyone civ ), although I'm hardly a pacifist when I play FFH. Although if you take out Chalid, its a pretty mediocre religion.

Seriously though, if you can build OO's Tower of Complacency, then AV is probably the best for Calbaim for Sacrafice the Weak to build population, ritualists for their 20% fire damage, and the Eidorns.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I didn't say that RoK or Empyrean couldn't work with the Calabim, just that these religions do not fit them at all thematically. Lugus hates vampires and Kilmorph and Aeron (and especially Odio) are bitter enemies.

 

[Ecofarm]

Order and AV heroes are essentially the same. Mardero's Stigmata and March promotions give him an advantage, as does his intrinsic +40% vs disciples. Rosier also has this +40% vs disciples, but both Order heroes have demon slaying.

Sphener heals and gets command IV. Madero eats butt. Perhaps new beast cost will help.

 

[Ecofarm]

Vampiric Eidola have nothing to do with AV though. The best Eidola are the water walking ones upgraded from drowns or (if prefer the vampiric variety, also with the ability to cast Tsunami) Cultists from OO, and vampiric Druids aren't bad either. True, these require gifting vampirism instead of just upgrading, and they don't have death or body magic, but they are still potent (the body spells wouldn't help a non-living eidolon anyway). Vampiric Druids can also be quite nice.

For me, it's all about City Raider 3 and being a 15 strength. When everything you hit in a city, including crossbow, is 99% with the city at 120% culture, life is good.

EDIT: I'm a dork for posting twice.

-----

I could never understand why people here are so crazy about Druids (although the Dwarf Druids rock)

Don't forget Balseraph Druids, my favorite unit. They can stand on a peak, move 2 and steal 4 units from a city, move 2 (4 total, with mobility 2 from harlequin days) back to peak. If he wants to kill his own dudes, fine. But if the stack of stolen units gets bigger than the stack in the city...

Don't forget to put hawks on them, get chaos 3 before you start losing mind3 and (if you don't mind a 3mover in the stack) bring Yvain along. A couple nature nodes should buff them enough to resist anything that can go on impassable terrain (with yvain healing defensive pits). Yeah, it's a 4 man stealin-n-wreckin machine and sometimes the pack of pits gets pretty big. With Baron, Kithra and mages at home, no worries. If you are pro-active with Baron, you can quite quickly replace your mundane garrison units with greater werewolves. It really bites my ass to give a druid nature or leave a potential domination at home, so usually Yvain has terraforming duty.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Sphener heals and gets command IV. Madero eats butt. Perhaps new beast cost will help.

The fact Sphener can instantly end revolts in cities is pretty big for me. It makes him a very effective conqueror. And since for that turn at least, he also prevents unhappiness in the city, you can likely get to 10 culture and keep the city producing normally. Very nice. Goes quite well with the low maintenance costs of an Order Empire.

 

[tiberion02]

I'm currently mid-late game with Flauros lead Calabim. I went early with Aristocracy/Agriculture so that I never needed to worry about cottage build up time. Also gave me a pretty quick tech pace this way, as well as leaving cities that could be regularly fed on for XP. Also gave me the Royal Guard Calvary units, who with only iron weapons have like, 10 defense Strength and 4 movement (mobility 1), and Hope spell for +4culture in newly captured towns. I took 2 of those to conquest with me, to pop cities borders, and play stack defender, and left 2 at home to help with happy caps, and sneak attacks. It was beautiful.

I went with a limited AV strat. Its CRUCIAL to found AV before any other Civs out there. After that, sit on it. Dont spread it intentionally, dont even bother building temples or even building the shrine. The AC counter will stay very low as long as you can sacrifice all the beakers your missing out on. You can still run the very synergistic Sacrifice the weak civic for more bonus food, even if you only have a couple cities with AV.

I followed this up by finding the Overlords founder, taking Losha Valas and 3 or 4 50+xp vampires, and razing every city to the ground. I then went over to poor Hyborem area, and saw a nearly 100 pop city of Dis. This of course made me go 'all in' and throw everything I had at it. Turn or 2 later, Dis was about 5 population, and my vampires were bloated with XP. All this and the AC counter handt even hit 40. Best game I ever played.