Why does everyone hate the Amurites?

[Onionsoilder]

Right now I'm attempting to play an Amurite game, and not succeeding. My past two games were as Lanun and Hippus, and I won a Domination and Conquest respectively. I was aiming for a Tower of Mastery with this one, but I'm having trouble surviving the early game. I've gone through 8 starts with the Amurites as of now. Each game I have lost, because the AI seems to hate my guts. Within the first 100 turns, one of my AI neighbors will always delcare war on me, before I get axemen or archers. Not really a problem, I can usually fend off an AI attack with warriors; after all, they're attacking with warriors.

The problem comes when soon after the first attack, usually 20 or so turns, another AI attacks me, then another.When I'm outnumbered 3 to 1, I can't do anything but turtle in my cities and spam warriors. I can hold them off easily enough, but I can't build any improvements and can't connect any resources or get technologies. After 50 turns of this, they start bringing in the axemen and swordsmen and whatddya know, I'm dead.

As I mentioned before, I've played a lot games with the same scenario. In both my Lanun and Hippus games, I was also attacked before turn 100, but it was only by 1 AI. The remaining AI were content to declare war on each other rather then declare war on me. Yet whenever I play Amurites, the AI would much rather all fight me then fight each other, which doesn't make much sense, considering evil and good AIs are often teaming up against me then evil and good AIs fighting each other.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

The only reason I see is if the AI considers you week enough for an atack.
You probably have a small teritory, a weak army or all of the above.

The AI is not coded to perticulary hate any race.

 

[JonathanStrange]

Well, I don't know about the AIs, but as for we Ljosalfars and the Amurites, there's been bad blood between our people since the Death Mana Wars. Perhaps one day we will be able to share mana nodes freely but that day is not this day.

 

[Diamondeye]

"Why does everyone hate the nerds?"

Spoiler Answer :

Because they're weaklings! Early Survival in FFH is not granted, you have to fight for it.

(It sounds to me like you went from the rather overpowered civs (Lanun with their coast economy, Hippus with their supreme military), to a civ that tops way later in the game - perhaps that has something to do with it? To get to the fun with the Amurites, you need to fend off the barbarians and villains in the early game first!

 

[Spectral-Fremen]

Amurites are awesome, you just have to hold on early game. I find in my games I expand early and get bronze working before i head for the magic techs. Once you have a base under your feet you can switch to super science production easy enough, but if your dead...

 

[HadesScorn]

What Map and speed settings are you playing on? I find the Amurites excel on Custom Continents, largely because it limits the number of potential adversaries in the early game. Additionally, I play all games on Marathon Setting, which tends to let you use your units more. Try to assemble a small strike squad of your early promoted units to take out an enemy city. If your goal is to try and get peace, take the city and then offer it as part of your peace treaty- you'll receive a nice permanent peace bonus for "Liberating one of our cities". This can allow you to stay at peace longer with the enemies. Remember, until you start striking at the AI, it's unlikely to accept long term peace offerings due to power calculations.

I agree with Spectral that a valid technique is to go for an early metalworking tech. An alternative is to tech Archery early on and get some promoted city defenders to leave at home while your warriors take the fight to the enemy.

How many units are you building per city early game?

 

[Onionsoilder]

Alright, well I finally got a foothold this game. I started next to the Lurichip, who sent an undefended settler to build a city right next to my empire, around turn 65. I attacked him, and he responded by defending his city with a scout and casting his worldspell, so not only did I take his city but I got a nice +1 attack for my best warrior. I rushed for archery, then rolled all my warriors at him and took one of his cities, then made peace. Later I attacked him again, and took all but one of his cities. Soon I plan to wipe him out completely.

 

[Deon]

Poor AI Luchuirp. They always fail .

 

[Brokenbone]

Amurites don't hit their stride in the early game, they need to hold on awhile until Sorcery and onwards... this often means having to hold on by your fingernails, and not ignoring the opportunities to "lightbulb" your way to technologies of importance (as opposed to adding great people to your cities or building academies and whatnot). Hope and pray a dungeon exploring scout or two luck into some GPs to do just that.

Definitely can make for an interesting game, having to beeline to your absolute must have technologies, potentially ignoring key ways of improving your civ and having to backtrack later... anyhow, that's a neat thing about FFH, lot of replayability with so many different styles!

 

[Shatner]

One thing to realize is that the Amurites are a very vanilla civ for the first half of the game; to call them weak early on implicates the balance of the early game as a whole, rather than the Amurites specifically. All of their UUs and UBs require mid-to-late game techs (Sorcery, Bowers, Arcane Lore) but, unlike the Sheaim or a few other civs, they have full access to all the base units along the way. You could play an Amurite game where you just build melee units and catapults and you'd be just as effective as the (pre-crusade) Bannor or the Malakim, for example.

If you are being jumped early on then you have jerks for neighbors and that's just how things go sometimes. Try to expand aggressively, churn out warriors and quickly jump to either archers or swordsmen. Once you have a city or two dedicated to enlarging your standing army, the AI should be less willing to pick a fight... or at least less likely to win one.

Now, I have personal experience indicating that the arcane line can carry you from turn 1 to the victory screen all by themselves, but doing so is really hard AND probably only possible with the Amurites... and maaaybe the Sheaim (they start with death mana, after all). But yeah, Tasunke, Jonas and Hannah are all jerks, especially early on. Having one or two of those nearby makes every game more challenging.


Oh and for those that care, the last installment of the Amurite AAR should be posted by Thursday.

 

[Bad Player]

The AI is not coded to perticulary hate any race.

When FFH2 was first coming out each civ had racial enemies listed in the download mod thread. Why did this not get implemented into the game?

 

[The Bramble]

So assuming you survive all the way to Sorcery, how do you best capitalize on it? Have 2 fire mana available right away? Pump out Adepts right from the get-go, and rush to knowledge of the ether right away? What percentage of your army would you say consist of spell-casters, and what mana and magic types do you aim for and train in?

 

[Shatner]

So assuming you survive all the way to Sorcery, how do you best capitalize on it? Have 2 fire mana available right away? Pump out Adepts right from the get-go, and rush to knowledge of the ether right away? What percentage of your army would you say consist of spell-casters, and what mana and magic types do you aim for and train in?

Fireball is a powerful and flexible spell which can, against the AI, allllmost be enough to conquer the world in the mid-game. Fireballs bombard, cause collateral damage, can travel a considerable distance and don't give your foes XP from defeating them, allowing you to kill almost any mid-game stack with enough casters and enough time.

From my experience, when used right, summons allows you to attrition the AI down to nothing. For a leader without the summoner trait, summons only last 1 turn. So, a single wizards summons a single Spectre and it vanishes at the end of the turn; this is the same thing as having one permanent spectre following your wizard around (provided your wizard casts that same spell every turn). Assuming you only have a single death mana, that spectre has strength 4 and move 2, making it the equivalent to a metal-less axmen (valued at 60 hammers which you get for free) with mobility 1. However, that spectre can charge the enemy, die and be re-summoned the next turn with narry a scratch; that spectre is like an immortal metal-less axmen who is reborn near the fighting each turn. And when your enemies are attacking you with axmen, having each of your wizards respond with an inexhaustible supply of strength-equivalent fodder makes you win. Big time.

So, you have fireball to remove your opponent's city advantage. You have fireball to steadily wear down stacks of enemies. And then you have spectres or chaos mauraders or Host of Einhejar or whatever to go in and beat up those stubborn units that refuse to be consumed by fire. The particular flavor of summon doesn't typically matter, I only mention spectres because death mana allows you to animate skeletons; the only tier 1 spell which allows your adepts to play the "I summon, I win" game.

So, The Bramble, the short answer to your question is: Fire 2 + (Tier 2 summon of choice) = Win. All you need are enough wizards capable of summoning enough fireballs/whatever to attrition your opposition into submission. As far as the percentage of casters you should have in your army... It's up to you. You can win the game with nothing but melee units and catapults. I have done this. Many times. You can even win with nothing but caster units. I have done this; it was really only hard until I reached Sorcery. Beyond that, I aim for (in this order) Fire mana, Death Mana, Body mana, Metamagic mana and then Earth mana (because Earth 1, 2 and 3 are all very useful spells). Of course as the Amurites, your palace gives you three of the top four mana-types to begin with, so you're good to go from the get-go.

If you are interested, I discuss this in a little more detail right here.

 

[travathian]

And if the game lasts that long, and you get to Tier 3 spells, Fire Elementals have Fire affinity and do collateral damage. Fireball down the defenses with your mages and then have your Archmages summon the Fire Elementals to do the initial attack. A Combat V Archmage summoning Fire Elementals while having 3+ fire nodes is some scary stuff.

Don't forget Chanters. With just a few levels they become very formidable foes for units in stacks weakened by fireballs and collateral dmg. Have Govannon teach them haste and they can scour the countryside taking out the weakest defender at each city while racking up even more XP.

edit: And don't forget to vassalize opponents, then immediately call them up and demand mana from them. This, plus Cave of Ancestors and proper Civic choices, means your adepts will be ready for the upgrade to Wizards very shortly. And with Govannon teaching them all his 1st level spells, they can spend their upgrades on combat/movement.

 

[onedreamer]

Each game I have lost, because the AI seems to hate my guts. Within the first 100 turns, one of my AI neighbors will always delcare war on me, before I get axemen or archers.

All you have to do is change the last sentence in this period, and you should be safe. The real problem are catapults IMO, you need Assassins to defend from them, or Archers with all first strike promotions (four).

 

[onedreamer]

When FFH2 was first coming out each civ had racial enemies listed in the download mod thread. Why did this not get implemented into the game?

It is in the game actually. For example the 2 elves races hate each other. In my last game Svartalfar declared war on Ljosalfar at turn 32

 

[Lone Wolf]

The Ljos and the Svarts have a large chance of declaring against each other at AC 20, afaik.

 

[travathian]

I play a lot as the Ljos, and the Svart declare war constantly. In a recent Huge/Erebus game I had wiped out my two nearest neighbors and had a damn sizable empire, well defended, and in the tech lead. Not to mention I summoned the Mercurians and gifted him a nice chunk of cities to call his own. So here I am, kicking it with Basium, our combined score is 5 times that of the Svart, and she is on the exact opposite side of a Huge map. War declaration. *sigh* Whatever, I got neighbors to conquer. Long while later, I ask for peace, she agrees and turns over two of her cities to me, despite me having not taken a single city or killed more than a couple ships. Not long later, war declared again, and again, and again. Half the game she was at war with me despite my tech advantage, power advantage and extreme distance. Not to mention she was at war with a neighbor or two at the same time.

Of all the AI's I think she needs to be tweaked the most.

 

[JonathanStrange]

They are our traditional enemies and I, for one, welcome the chance to teach the Svartalfars a lesson they won't soon forget!!

I remember at the last siege of Hyll, the Svartalfars poured through the main gates after their assassins had treacherously slain the guards allowing hundreds of Svart swordswomen and huntresses, along with their allied Amurite magic users and sellswords into the city.

In truth, I forced my way past my own bodyguard to face Hunith, Faeryl Viconia's third cousin (as well as, I think, my fifth or sixth cousin), she who had sworn to level the Holy City of the Fellowship, but who found only dusty death instead.

So, while some may hate the Amurites, we Ljos have our own priorities.

 

[Bad Player]

It is in the game actually. For example the 2 elves races hate each other. In my last game Svartalfar declared war on Ljosalfar at turn 32

It was more than that - it was things like the Bannor hate the Clan and someone else etc. Maybe Kael could think about including a diplo penalty along that line (I assume they thought of that and dismissed it - I'm not sure why though )