Your Top Ten Tips for Your Favorite Civ

[Emptiness]

Your chance to spawn a creature from any given planar gate is based on the AC. Nothing else. This chance is divided evenly between what individual creatures you can spawn.

So if a city's only spawn building is a mage guild then you build a carnival, you just cut that city's chance to spawn a mobius witch in half.

This is true, but there is a cap on how many of each type of unit you can have at one time. For example, if you have two Planar Gates in cities that each have a Mage Guild, then you can have up to 2 Mobius Witches. Once you have two, you don't get any more...whether you have access to other Planar Gate units or not.

If those two cities also had Carnivals in them, then you would be able to get up to 2 Chaos Marauders. This would not affect the maximum number of Mobius Witches you can have. Choosing not to build a useful or necessary building so that you won't be burdened by free troops doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

[Senethro]

This is true, but there is a cap on how many of each type of unit you can have at one time. For example, if you have two Planar Gates in cities that each have a Mage Guild, then you can have up to 2 Mobius Witches. Once you have two, you don't get any more...whether you have access to other Planar Gate units or not.

If those two cities also had Carnivals in them, then you would be able to get up to 2 Chaos Marauders. This would not affect the maximum number of Mobius Witches you can have. Choosing not to build a useful or necessary building so that you won't be burdened by free troops doesn't make a lot of sense.

What if your free troops had a high rate of attrition? Would not building buildings make a particular unit type you want more likely to spawn?

 

[Emptiness]

If I understand correctly, the chance of a spawn is not increased by spawn-producing buildings. So if you have a Planar Gate and a Carnival then you have some chance of spawning a Chaos Marauder. If you also have a Mage Guild then you have half that chance of summoning a Chaos Marauder and the other half-chance of summoning a Mobius Witch.

So, you could decide to maximize the chance of one particular unit spawning by not building any of the other spawn-producing buildings. For example, if you only built Carnivals then every spawn would be a Chaos Marauder. You could use them as disposable troops, and there'd be no chance of a different unit reducing your Chaos Marauder respawn rate by spawning instead.

You would get the same results, however, if you had Carnivals and Mage Guilds and all of your Mobius Witches had spawned - but only the Chaos Marauders were dying. In other words, if you protect the units that you want protected and burn up the units you consider disposable then you'll still be respawning only the disposable units. You will achieve the same disposable unit respawn rate as if you didn't have Mobius Witches, but with the added benefit of actually having Mobius Witches.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

You would get the same results, however, if you had Carnivals and Mage Guilds and all of your Mobius Witches had spawned - but only the Chaos Marauders were dying. In other words, if you protect the units that you want protected and burn up the units you consider disposable then you'll still be respawning only the disposable units. You will achieve the same disposable unit respawn rate as if you didn't have Mobius Witches, but with the added benefit of actually having Mobius Witches.

Once you've capped out your witches, then yes, this is correct.

 

[loocas]

I'm not the most strategic player, but I'll throw in some tips for the Balseraphs:

1. Festivals = Markets, Freaks, Revelry. Keelyn's Creative trait makes for comfortable early expansion, so spread fast and build markets.

2. Build Loki first thing in your second city, unless you need military support.

3. Explore. Find your neighbors so you can put Loki to work. Know which leaders are creative and watch where religions spread. Park him in another capital between flipping new cities and use Entertain. The gold per turn should not be neglected.

4. Dedicate a city to Freaks. Good rolls make strong units, bad rolls make Freak Shows.

5. Knowledge of the Ether. If you're Perpentach, build a couple Mage Guilds asap so you can take advantage of Arcane if you get it. As Keelyn, make 8 adepts and sit on them. After that, put an adept in each city for Inspiration, with intent on getting Maelstrom as mages. Get Death Mana.

6. Revelry. If the Illians are in the game, wait until they cast Stasis and it has ended or Revelry will be wasted. Otherwise, I generally use it to rush to Deception or Sorcery.

7. Council of Esus. Gibbon's puppets don't summon illusions and he comes sooner than Hemah. I use him for quad-casting Wonder, but that has drawbacks that will be discussed later. Courtesians are worth it just to watch them run. Also, they get free xp from your friends. Other religions just don't synergize as well as CoE. Regardless of your religion, get Undercouncil for the slave trade and have happy cities.

8. Mimics. They are my favorite and I always hesitate to upgrade them to top-tier units. Be careful using promotion-effect spells. Using Wonder will often Wither, Disease, Slow, Rust, etc. your enemies, which can then be stolen by Mimics. Dispel Magic can remove enemies' Haste, Dance of Blades, and other buffs that won't be worth anything to your Mimics. If you find someone with Priests, Medic II is one of the best things a Mimic can get, especially if you're CoE. Attacking the Bannor means free Guardsman.

9. Upgrade Keelyn's 8 mages to Death III, providing you with 16 Wraiths per turn (now with no military cost). By this time you will be unstoppable, unless you're up against a civ that is invulnerable to Death damage, which isn't rare. In this case I get Air III on Liches and Archmages because of Air Elementals' movement range and visibility. Tweak your mana nodes accordingly.

10. Victory. Keelyn's Stack of (Literally) Death makes for an effortless Conquest. Domination and ToM victories benefit from her Creative trait, but ToM doesn't happen very quickly. There aren't any advantages compared to other civs for Cultural or Altar victories.

 

[tenwit]

Anyone fancy taking responsibility for a Lanun top10? I'm 50 turns into my first game, two cities on choke points (two cities with access to three seas ) and feeling good about this starting position. Top10 hints now would be very timely.

 

[heisenberg]

Hmmm... I guess I could try to give the Lanun a shot.

Hannah: Financial Raiders
Falamar: Charismatic Expansionist

The key difference is mainly between Financial for Hannah (which brings in the third commerce from coasts) and Expansion for Falamar (which allows early quick rexing along the coast)

1. Pirate coves. They are placed at least 3 tiles apart from each other. So when choosing your city spots, spend some time to try to optimize the coves. Naturally, you'd want to settle next to the coast.

2. Lots of Food, Lots of Commerce, Low Hammers. This is usually the case for most of your coastal cities, since water tiles do not yield hammers except for coves and the city with the Heron Throne.
As such, pick civics which help to utilize all that excess food. Two powerful civics to consider for the Lanun are Conquest and Slavery. Both are pretty early accessible civics from Warfare and Way of the Wicked respectively.
Conquest allows you to turn excess food into hammers when producing military units, and Slavery allows you to whip away the excess citizens to rush buildings.

3. Religion. The Lanun can easily go for any of the religions with their huge commerce output at the start and get its holy. OO seals the Lanun's naval dominance and would be pretty useful in keeping rivals off the coast, and to ensure that no one is able to pillage your pirate ports. Going for a religion early would also help you to increase your happy cap, since your cities should be brimming with food and you cannot yet whip your citizens away.

4. Boarding parties are weak, and are only useful when you want to capture enemy naval units. As such, OO can be a useful religion to follow since they give access to Stygian guards at Fanaticism, which would effectively replace your boarding parties as your mainstay in the mid-lategame.

5. The Undercouncil is much more useful to the Lanun. Having a smuggler's port in your largest cities does bring in a decent bit gold. Also, when desperate for hammers you can always run slave trade just to buy slaves to rush key buildings in new cities--such as lighthouses.

6. Use your Pirate ships to disrupt others' trading routes by blockading during peacetime. You can also prevent others from having any sea-resources, so that they'd trade you some of their other resources for them

Overall, the Lanun is one of the top tier civs with an amazing economy with pirate coves. You should be able to outstrip your rivals tech-wise easily.
Although hammer-starved at the start, once you hit the correct civics, this problem is somewhat resolved, though you probably would still not be able to compete with the production capabilities of the Khazad for example. However, you should be able to quickly get that tech-lead on rivals to field higher tiered units to win.

 

[heisenberg]

With respect to the Balseraphs....

7. Council of Esus. Gibbon's puppets don't summon illusions and he comes sooner than Hemah. I use him for quad-casting Wonder, but that has drawbacks that will be discussed later. Courtesians are worth it just to watch them run. Also, they get free xp from your friends. Other religions just don't synergize as well as CoE. Regardless of your religion, get Undercouncil for the slave trade and have happy cities.

Actually, the reason why I'd go CoE for Keeyln alone is to rush Gibbon out. He's the earliest archmage hero that can be built. Its somewhat exploitative of Keelyn's Summoner trait with the ability of Balseraph's puppets, but you could rush Gibbon to any of the tier 3 summons, and then quickly take combat I-V then twincast.
This allows you to twincast puppets which could twincast tier 3 summons which last for 2 turns. Do the math.

 

[BugReportage]

Just a tiny nugget of advice:
If you go AV, Diseased Corpses + Priests + Cure Disease is _VERY_ devastating. They're pretty much champions that can potentially get Cannibalize. Don't require any training buildings, think of them as the fodder to protect more valuable troops. (Keep some with disease too! It's useful for taking down heavily defended positions. Ring of Fire can normally fill that role, but not always.)
Might be a bug but it's been like this for a long time. ;p

 

[readercolin]

Just a few notes on some of the civs mentioned.

Balsferas:
If you capture (through dominate or command promotions), you can get units of different race. You can then turn these into "Human Pen" and "Dwarf Pen", etc. These of course add happiness and culture. Another thing to note is the balsferas tend to have very strong culture, especially with keyleen. Why? Every city gets free culture from cultural, and even more free culture from freak shows.
Most importantly for them though is puppets, and I would like to reiterate. A unit with twincast under a summoning leader can twincast puppets, who each have twincast, and they stick around for 2 turns. I have been able to (with hemah), get a total of 140 water elementals (spellstaff, tower of elements, summon 2 puppets, use spellstaff, summon 2 more. puppets each summon 2 water elementals, total of 8, which stick around for a turn. Next turn, summon 2 more puppets, 6 puppets summon water elementals, total of 20. Water elementals have strong promotion, attack, die, turn into 40 damaged water elementals. When they attack and die, turns into 80 damaged weak water elementals, who upon dying, die for good). A regular archmage with spellstaff can only get a total of 28 water elementals.
Another trick. Archmage with mind 3, summons puppets. The puppets cast dominate, and even if they loose, the archmage doesn't loose dominate. With a twincasting archmage (hemah, gibbon), you can dominate 4 units per turn (8 using FF's twincast mechanics).

Lanuan:
Lanuan have 2 things going for them - food, and commerce. Personally, I prefer falamar to hannah, but both leaders are quite good. Because they don't have many hammers though, you need to figure out some way to produce more. There are 3 ways to do this. Way 1, run conquest, and all units are produced with food - downside, it doesn't help with buildings. Way 2, run slavery, and whip out units and buildings - downside, sometimes, you just don't have the population. And lastly, way 3 - buy your way out of it. If you run one of the other civics (arete, caste system, guilds, 1other?) you can use gold to buy anything you want. And with all your commerce, this is definately a possibility.

-Colin

 

[amiable]

And lastly, way 3 - buy your way out of it. If you run one of the other civics (arete, caste system, guilds, 1other?) you can use gold to buy anything you want. And with all your commerce, this is definately a possibility.

-Colin

This.
Lanun (specifically Hannnah) is the only race that I consistently beat immortal/deity with (I play standard Erberus maps, Epic timeline with raging barbarians on). Folks who suggest going OO with Lanun are not fully exploiting the 1 incredible strength of the Lanun: their ridiculuous economy. They are incredible expanding early game and the mountains of cash they are rolling in lets them buy their way to late game dominance.

Try this starting strategy: Roll map once or twice usually all you need to ensure you get a decent piece of coastline (desert or tundra coastlines are not ideal as does any start where you are directly next to a neighbor i.e. you find them on turn 1 or 2).

Build order:

warrior
warrior
warrior
warrior
workboat - pirate cove
workboat - pirate cove
workboat - optional, if you have sea resources (you should)
settler
warrior
warrior
settler
warrior
warrior
settler
sea haven
warrior
warrior
settler
etc...

Tech order:
Fishing
Crafting
Mining Ancient Chants (order of these two can vary depending on how quickly you can get your first settler out).
Mysticism
Way of the Earthmother (I usually cannot found the religion at the levels I play on, but that's ok, the cash it generates and arete is the important part).
Sailing
Agri, festivals, exploration, eductation, code of laws
bronze working (by this time barbarians are incredibly numerous and someone will most likely be declaring war on you shortly).
masonry (if marble is available)
construction (catapults for attacking or for taking down large enemy stacks that go after you).
Arete (Arete is awesome because it not only lets you money-rush production, but provides an extra hammer for mine squares, develop a few hills near your coastal cities into mines and that can help overcome some of the production shortfalls lunan experience).

This should be enough for you to have an excellent early economy, expand rapidly and defend your holdings. Just keep teching up the economic and metal working trees until you can roll out your enormous army of whatever (or go down the magic line if you want). Have your second coastal city produce black wind once you get optics and use it to decimate your opponents navy and loot their coastal improvements for even more cash).

In general I go agristocracy whenever able (and I usually get this running quicker than other races that directly beeline for it) because I always end up having a few internal cities that could use direct boost although a cottage economy may be more efficient for land near coastal cities.

 

[Emptiness]

Because they don't have many hammers though, you need to figure out some way to produce more. There are 3 ways to do this.

Way 4, use mines and workshops on all land tiles to get the most out of them you can. Seek out techs/civics that will increase mine and workshop yield. Lower yields from the land tiles is compensated for by the large yield from water tiles. This way can also be combined with way 3, and to a lesser extent way 2.

 

[BugReportage]

Lanun are also one of the only Civs that can summon Infernals/Mercurians VERY early and consistantly. (if so desired)
Takes about 120 turns to summon Infernals, under 100 if you get efficient at it or lucky (on normal speed).
At turn 100 you can roll around 2 civs before they even have anything to stop your champions+longbowmen+hyborem. Stock up on manes and you're well on your way.

I've only ever tried this Infernal Rush tactic on Emperor difficulty, I'm not sure how devastating and effective this would have on Immortal or Diety (probably wouldn't work out so well, this tactic puts ALL your efforts on early AV, meaning POOR MILITARY before you get the Infernals out.)

Of course this tactic is more... Efficiency over Lore kind of thing. (Though it's best done with Hannah and she's pretty Ebel, though end the world kind of ebel? Don't think so.)

Actually... I'd say turn 90. All my games the Illians set me back 20 turns, so normally it would 90 turns on average. Wow. -didn't notice until I gave it some thought-
Now I'm inspired to see how fast it is without Illians on the field. -test game-

 

[heisenberg]

In general I go agristocracy whenever able (and I usually get this running quicker than other races that directly beeline for it) because I always end up having a few internal cities that could use direct boost although a cottage economy may be more efficient for land near coastal cities.

Aristocracy/Agrarianism on Lanun?!? You're kidding right?

Tech order:
Fishing
Crafting
Mining Ancient Chants (order of these two can vary depending on how quickly you can get your first settler out).
Mysticism
Way of the Earthmother (I usually cannot found the religion at the levels I play on, but that's ok, the cash it generates and arete is the important part).
Sailing
Agri, festivals, exploration, eductation, code of laws
bronze working (by this time barbarians are incredibly numerous and someone will most likely be declaring war on you shortly).
masonry (if marble is available)
construction (catapults for attacking or for taking down large enemy stacks that go after you).
Arete (Arete is awesome because it not only lets you money-rush production, but provides an extra hammer for mine squares, develop a few hills near your coastal cities into mines and that can help overcome some of the production shortfalls lunan experience).

A few comments about this tech path....
-As mentioned above... CoL for aristocracy is.... mmmm.....
-Unless you're not fully utilizing your coastal tiles, you WILL blow way past your happy cap with the amount of food you get from them. No slavery or conquest from WotW/Warfare early means a huge waste of those unhappy population and the excess food.
-Arete is nice--but its more for the rushing of buildings using gold than the extra hammer on mines. You shouldn't have too many hill tiles when half of the workable tiles -should- be on water.

Try this starting strategy: Roll map once or twice usually all you need to ensure you get a decent piece of coastline (desert or tundra coastlines are not ideal as does any start where you are directly next to a neighbor i.e. you find them on turn 1 or 2).

Lanun doesn't really care for what kind of land tiles they start on. Its how many water tiles you can get access to. (unless of course its one of the unique features)
I'll settle on tundra/ice/desert anyday, especially if its one of those "hooks" jutting out of the continent giving you plenty of coastline. (just use your water mana to spring later on if desert to remove the -25% def on your city)

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Since pirate ports produce 2 base, a coastal city with some hills, forests (for milling) and heron throne can be a better production city than anything except maybe a sidar capital that sees a lot of early combat and wanes all its high level units into engineers. Funny how it works... that coastal, heavily forested start with a lake instead of a river which most civs hate is godlike for the Lanun.

RoK doesn't have very strong synergy with them. The gold it generates is piddling compared to what the Lanun can normally get and their uber production capital will likely rely on lumbermills, not mines. I'd pick either OO or one of the late, generically powerful religions (Empyrean, AV). As I used to tell old proponents of FoL Lanun - instead of making their economy even more overkill, focus on turning what you've got into something that can actually kill.

 

[amiable]

Aristocracy/Agrarianism on Lanun?!? You're kidding right?

No, why would I be? It lets you ramp up your economy very quickly and leverage the massive gold advantage. Same with ROK. Individually each of these choices isn't vital, but overall it will give you a ton of money to work with and let you fly up the tech tree. A few resources+happiness buidings will let you get large productive cities quite quickly, build a few mines on hills near your capital and micromanage the production screen with specialists and you can easily control population. Rush blasting powder and swamp your opponents with arbequses/cannons. (Or start the rush earlier with cats/axeman(or whatever piratey version they have).

Considering I can pretty handily beat immortal/deity with this strategy, I'm not sure what optimization I am missing. I don't play multiplayer, so the strategies probably vary when playing a human opponent (although I can't imagine a cottage economy being all that great versus a competant human opponent).

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

aristograrian could be nice for Hannah, since she's financial that would mean +1C on most tiles in your empire. of course then you'd have to find a way to turn all that food and commerce to hammers, but that is not hard to do. possibly sub-optimal, but not as bad as it looks I guess.

 

[amiable]

aristograrian could be nice for Hannah, since she's financial that would mean +1C on most tiles in your empire. of course then you'd have to find a way to turn all that food and commerce to hammers, but that is not hard to do. possibly sub-optimal, but not as bad as it looks I guess.

I tend to only play hannah as lanun, so that may be part of it. Also beyond your starting city and the ones you can fit in the coast you are going to mostly likely have to have some inland empire, if only to access food/happy/production resources and manage the enemies cities you take over (my strategy also assumes a few hills you can mine for initial production). I think agristocracy works well to develop those cities.

Now if you were playing an archipelago map you would probably do things differently, but since I play on Erebus maps it works pretty well 9I do regenerate maps but rarely more than once or twice).

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

of course, city states is excellent for them since it allows them to have a line-shaped empire on the coast without absurd maintenance costs. with Hannah though, I could consider going aristograrian. actually for me aristograrian is the default economy, unless I'm either Bannor or Kuriotates ( enclaves for the dragonboy and demagogues from towns in crusade - the latter not very useful imho, but still nice. ) or I have way too much plains around me.

 

[BugReportage]

Lets get back on topic:
Tips for Infernals (Not like you need them but hey!)

1. War and war early. Before you even switch to Infernals, make sure your mother race declares war on its evil neighbours. This will generate manes as they slaughter one another. As the Infernals you will want to kill your mother race anyways because they have your Holy City and that means they have Meshabber of Dis until you take it back. This presents an interesting option, if you were the Malakim before summoning (and were in a desert), their cities will surrounded by a sea of fire (it's very amusing) which makes them ripe for the taking.

2. War war war. Your first targets should be evil civs, you'll want manes to fuel your infrastructure. Good civs are generally useless to war against other than they hate you and you them. (But Infernals should hate everyone until they are good little slaves or serve as manes)
Try to make peace with Good civs and follow tip 4 and 3 on making them useful enemies first.

3. Not Evil? Convert the bastards! This is important to keep fuel on your economic fire. Remember those Good civs that were useless for making manes? Next time you ask for peace demand they switch to Ashen Veil! Next time you declare war (which should be immediately after the treaty ends) they will now generate manes when razing cities! >: )

4. Spread Ashen Veil far and wide. Take that extra effort to spread the Veil, I cannot stress enough that Infernals wholly depend on manes, manes come from evil and neutral civs. If everyone is Good then you will LOSE. The more Ashen Veil you spread the greater the chance other civs will change their religion to veil, especially if they don't have a state religion yet!

5. Raze or not? Generally, this is whether you're going for a specialist economy with Guilds or if you're going to want more cities to build more units. If you are going to be building a specialist economy, you'll normally going to want to keep 3-4 cities around your capital with God King each with high populations. Generally I keep 2 production cities (hammer focus), 2 commerce cities (money focus) and one massive city (research focus) that has over 60 population. Your hammer cities will only need 10-15 pop surrounded by mines and workshops. Your commerce cities should spam cottages and spam merchant specialists. Your research/specialist city will probably be ALL specialists pumping out great people in under 20 turns each! The rest of the cities you have will be very low pop and used to transport your armies to the front lines using gates.

6. Small armies. It's very tempting to have a 50 person stack with all your heroes. That's a nono, not only are they a nice collateral damage target but they will have mobility problems. Normally I make stacks for each of my heroes, supported by longbowmen, diseased corpses (cured of disease and not) and 3-4 Ritualists. Speaking of which, Ritualists = your siege weapons. Diseased Corpses=your fodder (champions that come with AV and have almost the same attack). Stacks of 10 split across 5 armies will give you a highly mobile army, you can crush multiple cities, respond to threats on your own cities try to take Mobility and make sure each unit moves 2 spaces at least to keep your momentum going.

7. Hybo's Whisper! I generally save this until I find out where everyone is. Use this to gain access to a second continient or a civ that is otherwise out of your reach. You could also use this to get access to a city close to the AV holy city, perhaps the city itself (never done that before, not sure if it's possible)

Actually that's about it, you generally don't need advice since the Infernals generally roll most civs at lower difficulties. I normally play on Immortal and my advice for people who are thinking about going to try this on immortal is: Momentum is your strength, especially if you get the Infernals early. DO NOT LET UP. DO NOT STOP. Convert, burn and kill all your foes (in that order!). Nothing is more satisfying than seeing Malakim roasting in a sea of flame or elves surrounded by barren wastelands.

A few things on techs: Priesthood is a pretty important tech because they enable Ritualists, Ring of Fire and Cure Disease are very important in my strategies, I normally bulb it or rush it with the Grimoire. Don't try to save the Grimoire for later, chances are your Mother Civ might steal it from you.
Guilds is a must if you want to run a specialist economy, since you don't need food to sustain your population you can have an infinitely large city so long as everyone is at eachother's throats.
Mining is pretty important in that you'll be spamming Mines on every tile you can and Cottages on all the flat land.
Mathematics is my favourite tech for Infernals, you have huge armies, you need money to support them! Gambling Houses and the Bazaar of Mammon is a welcome addition!