Your Top Ten Tips for Your Favorite Civ

[Emptiness]

Here's three more for the Infernals, to round out the 10:

8. Scorched Earth. Any plains tiles you don't need to work should be Scorched to desert. When it converts to hell terrain flames will appear, denying many units access to the tile. If you are fortunate you can even form a complete barrier, such that your foes can't reach your cities at all. Even if there isn't a solid wall of flame you may be able to use forts or fort cities to plug the holes. If you need to recover tiles then Sanctify + Spring will restore Plains (which converts to Fields of Perdition) you can use. Meanwhile as your army advances, burning cities and Scorching the land, if your foes return to settle in your wake they will find much of the potential of the sites lost to them.

9. The Horsemen Ride For You. Raising the AC is pretty much inevitable for the Infernals. As AC events trigger they are insulated from most of the negative effects thanks to their Demonic nature and the Barbarian trait. Drive the AC as high as you can, to maximize the pain everyone else suffers. Keep any eye on your power level, however, because when you get too powerful the Barbarians will turn on you and all those nice Horsemen doing your dirty work will stop avoiding your cities. It's tempting to leave core cities under-defended, but if you don't anticipate war with the Barbarians in time to bolster your defenses then you can be hit hard by the appearance of a Horseman in a bad spot.

10. Never Upgrade Manes. The option is there to tempt you with instant gratification. Don't do it. Over time that same Mane settled will translate into several, possibly many units (or better units via faster teching, et c.). Patience is a virtue even for Demons.

 

[debridement]

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.)

Lanun->Infernal rush actually works best on Diety, IMO, bc you don't need *any* non-costal improvements. So 2 warrior defenders per city is plenty (more if orthus shows up). I can usually make it by turn 100, assuming no Stasis or River of Blood.

Also, you keep the Seafaring tech after switching, so Hyborem has access to pearls (might be useful for trading, though i've never bothered harvesting them)

 

[Onionsoilder]

8. Scorched Earth. Any plains tiles you don't need to work should be Scorched to desert. When it converts to hell terrain flames will appear, denying many units access to the tile. If you are fortunate you can even form a complete barrier, such that your foes can't reach your cities at all. Even if there isn't a solid wall of flame you may be able to use forts or fort cities to plug the holes. If you need to recover tiles then Sanctify + Spring will restore Plains (which converts to Fields of Perdition) you can use. Meanwhile as your army advances, burning cities and Scorching the land, if your foes return to settle in your wake they will find much of the potential of the sites lost to them.

I've never thought about it before, but this does make sense. Broken Lands are less useful then Fields or Perdition to the Infernal(Fields give an extra hammer), yet if you're not using them a wall of flames can be very useful. Just make sure not to think your cities immune with this wall: juts as your demons can pass through, you enemies may be able to as well, including:

1) Mutated Units. While not as likely as the other ones, mutated units with Fire Resistance can walkright through the flames unscathed. This will likely only be a small portion of your opponent's army, but if your city only has one defender that doesn't matter.

2) Orcs. There is only one Orcish civilization in the game, but fi you ever get on their bad side they will walk right through the flames to reach your cities. Barbarians too, when they finally declare war on you.

3) Other Demons. It is likely that you will have most of the demons in the game, but if someone else obtains some(Meshabber, Maredo, Mokka's Cauldron, Lair Exploration) thye can pass right though.

3) Angels. All of Basium's angels(Including Basium himself), as well as heros such as Sphener or Bridgit, can easilly pass through. While you have a small break here since Basium doesn't get Angelic Mages, if he equips them with Stoneskin they will also be able to make the journey.

10. Never Upgrade Manes. The option is there to tempt you with instant gratification. Don't do it. Over time that same Mane settled will translate into several, possibly many units (or better units via faster teching, et c.). Patience is a virtue even for Demons.

I disagree. Saying to never upgrade manes is like saying to never bulb/GA Great People, since if you settle them they will benefit you more in the long run. Sometimes those extra units can be worth it. Protip: If you're running a civic that allows drafting, a mane can settle and be drafted on the same turn, essentially an upgrade for no gold cost.

 

[Cupric Leane]

Apparently my fireball casting mages can walk through fire also...

Apparently I should have read the previous post a little bit closer, because, apparently, it is their ability to cast stoneskin that makes them fire-immune. Doh!

 

[Ekolite]

This is more of a full-blown strategy then general tips, but as the last Calabim set focused purely on Flauros, even advising against choosing Alexis, I thought I'd show why Alexis is the better leader of the Calabim, or is at least on par with Flauros.


1. Look at your traits, as Alexis you are Aggressive/Philosophical, both of which may seem fairly useless to a traditional Calabim player. After all, what use is a free Combat 1 if your Vampires can feed for vast amounts of xp. What use is Philosophical if the Calabim can't build Elder Councils, and your cities need every pair of hands they can get working the farms to feed their Vampiric Overlords? Well, you shall see.


2. First City. DO NOT FOUND ON START. As Alexis your needs are slightly more specific then most leaders. Do not be afraid to move your settler, scout and warrior out in search of an ideal location. For Alexis this means one farm resource and fresh water (extremely important), or flood plains, and a few hills. The only other resources you should even consider are gold and gems, which are both nice bonuses. The second thing to bear in mind is the location of your nearest neighbour, settle as close as possible. If there is a lot of forest around this is not a problem. You can afford to use one or two turns to build your city.


3. Opening moves. Start research on agriculture, start production on a worker, and use your world spell to bring your population up to 3. This will increase the speed at which a worker (and soon Bloodpets) can be trained, and also more then makes up for moving your settler around at the begining. As soon as the worker and agriculture are complete, farm a couple of tiles including the farm resource. This will allow for nice growth up to size 5, your happy cap.


4. Set production to Bloodpets, build up a nice stack. You will notice they all start with that useless combat 1 promotion.


5. Set research to Crafting -> Mining. Your tech is likely to be fairly slow, but if you settled on flood plains or a river next to a few non-forest tiles you will have the advantage. At this stage every commerce counts.


6. As soon as you have five or six Bloodpets declare war on your neighbour and capture their city. At this stage they should not have more then one. Do not rush the Dovilello as they will have Lucian.


7. Once Mining is complete, you should have copper in one of your cities. At this stage the copper is important for the production bonus only. Now you should cut down trees near rivers for that extra commerce, and mine hills. This stage should greatly increase your production. If you want, now you can settle another town or two, make sure you get a copper resource if you don't already have one. Otherwise keep building bloodpets and attack another neighbour if there's one nearby, your experienced ones from the last war should all take the promotion that gives 40% against melee.


8. Now, for your next tech path, ancient chants -> education -> writing is a likely one. If there is any incense or another plantation resource then grab calendar first or after Chants for the happy and the commerce yield. When you get chants, you can build a monument in your captured town which is a good idea. Once you reach education, build cottages all over. Every commerce counts. You may also want to adopt Apprenticeship and Agrarianism if you have Calendar. Apprenticeship will allow all your freshly built Bloodpets to start with two promotions.


9. Writing. Alexis may not seem like the studious type, but Writing is an absolutely vital tech for her. This is where Philosophical kicks in. Half price libraries. Build them in all cities, in the early game every research point is important to get you ahead of other players. In your capital build the Great Library (there won't be any competition at this stage), and run a sage specialist. If you have Marble nearby, make sure it's connected to a road before hand and grab Masonry. This will increase the speed with which the GL is constructed. You will generate a couple of Sage specialists. Use these for Academies or Golden Ages, or settle them in your Capital. Teching KoE will allow you to get an adept who an haste your stack, which is useful for taking advantage of the fact that burning blood Moroi can attack twice per turn, but it's not really needed.


10. Research Bronze working asap to get Moroi which you should form huge stacks of and over run what ever players are left within your reach. Use burning blood to help your crack troublesome cities, and use your already burning Moroi in suicide battles to damage strong defenders, it's no big deal if some turn barbarian but its best to get some kind of use out of them. You might want to get Code of Laws at this point for the Governor Manors. Adopting Aristocracy will allow you to boost the commerce output of your newly conquered cities greatly, and so increase your research. You should now have either won the game through conquest or be in an extremely good position with tech and military.


General Tips:

Don't worry about religion. Occasionally you might conquer the holy city of FoL or RoK, which you can convert to if you like. However, religion techs are out of your way and Mysticism isn't so attractive with no Elder Council.

Vampires. Who needs 'em? Alexis is an early game leader. A rusher and REXer. In many cases you will win before Feudalism is even in sight, and if you do get to Feudalism you will find Vampires very expensive at this stage of the game, and your cities all too small to feed them efficiently.

Growing your cities. It is still important for your cities to be as large as possible, you will need to maximise production to keep pumping out Moroi. To do so, build Training Yards at Bronze Working, tech Mysticism for Pagan Temples if you have incense, and of course, grab Sanitation asap for the food bonus to farms, and Public Baths.

 

[Turinturambar]

So basically your strategy is: build lots of warriors, hope that your opponent has only one defender, kill him and then tech bronze working/sanitation and continue killing because you have copper?
I'm sure it works in base ffh with the abysmal AI, but any of the other aggressive leaders should be far more suited to this strategy. I mean Tasunke would be obviously far better at this than Alexis.

 

[Selrahc]

So basically your strategy is: build lots of warriors, hope that your opponent has only one defender, kill him and then tech bronze working/sanitation and continue killing because you have copper?

I'm sure it works in base ffh with the abysmal AI, but any of the other aggressive leaders should be far more suited to this strategy. I mean Tasunke would be obviously far better at this than Alexis.

I think Calabim do have a notable early rush advantage in the Moroi. Not for the initial warrior rush, but for the next attack. Combat 2, Mobility 1, Blitz, Copper Axemen can break skulls well enough.

 

[Senethro]

While I'm sure Alexis can warrior rush better than Flauros, I wouldn't be certain she can Axeman rush better. The real strength of the Calabim comes from the still overpowered Governors manor with its huge production boost. Flauros and Decius can build it for 60 hammers instead of 120, and Flauros will start his monster economy with Aristocracy. He'll have Bronze working first and could probably even pick up Writing afterwards in time to finish the Great Library.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

If you're "rushing" with moroi you'll have BW before CoL and maybe even before education. Alexis is damn sure better at a proper rush like that.

 

[JFSebastian]

Here is a nice guide for Alexis by Evernoob -
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=313175

 

[Ekolite]

No, what my strategy is using the Calabim worldspell to reach 5 population extremely quickly, and then vastly outpace all opposition by (yes) building loads of warriors. This is a very early rush, and the AI will not have had time for more then two warriors in most cases. I play on Monarch with the Aggressive AI setting, and I have successfully rushed Tasunke a few games ago, despite the fact that he also has the Aggressive trait, and an aggressive personality.

Alexis can't really Moroi rush much better then Flauros, but her Warrior Rush is far better, and a successful one can put you in a very strong position to continue with Morois. Alexis is a leader who thrives in the very early game with Warriors and Great Sages from Philosophical. Flauros is a very late game leader, who is extremely vulnerable until he can start getting high level Vampires.

 

[Demus]

Flauros is a very late game leader, who is extremely vulnerable until he can start getting high level Vampires.

i disagree here. even without vampires, flauros has a rediculously solid economy with financial + organised + manors (+basilica's from order), second only to an archipelago lanun. You don't need late-game, he should have a very solid techlead from turn 1.
Try flauros as an aristograrian-order calabim, using losha to vampirise all moroi/priests/religious units up to feudalism (this includes a vampire phanuel).

 

[Emptiness]

You disagree, but then talk about how awesome Flauros is after he has things that would require research of Orders from Heaven and Fanaticism - which would take even longer to get than Vampires at Feudalism. You say "even without vampires" and then proceed to recommend vampirising your units. I think you may have missed the point Ekolite is trying to make.

 

[Senethro]

Alexis can't really Moroi rush much better then Flauros, but her Warrior Rush is far better, and a successful one can put you in a very strong position to continue with Morois.

You mean this point, Emptiness?

I've got two issues with it. First, if you're going to blow your worldspell then I wouldn't be surprised if the production advantage is sufficient to let even Flauros warrior rush, as long as the opponent was close and not Aggressive trait.

Second, warrior rushing is only a viable strategy vs CPUs in their current state. If you warrior rush, then you probably can't defend from a warrior rush by a different opponent. So, the more warrior rushers there are the less successful the strategy becomes and only specialist rushers (Charadon, Tasunke) or specialist defenders (Kandros Fir, Elohim) will benefit hugely - but any player who builds a sufficient number of warriors, and places early warning sentries intelligently will do better than a failed rusher. Factor into this that you can see the power graph of opponents you've met and make reasonably educated guesses about whats going on and react accordingly.

So the question is, should Alexis always warrior rush or just when its safe to do so? (No Doviello, no good defenders)

 

[sparker]

I'd love it if someone would contribute a top 10 for Kuriotates, especially if it didn't involve an early Centaur rush of a neighbor. I've tried several games as the Kurios, and they seem to be the only civ I can't wrap my head around.

I understand where the push for an early Centaur rush in a few of the Kuriotate threads around here, but that seems so out of character for them...

 

[Emptiness]

Alexis can't really Moroi rush much better then Flauros, but her Warrior Rush is far better, and a successful one can put you in a very strong position to continue with Morois.

You mean this point, Emptiness?

I've got two issues with it.

Um,

While I'm sure Alexis can warrior rush better than Flauros, I wouldn't be certain she can Axeman rush better.

It sounds to me like you and Ekolite just both said the same think with different words, so I'm surprised that you would take issue with what he said.

Anyway, the point I'm talking about is that Flauros' strengths don't help him in the early stages of the game. Flauros has an easier time teching, but those techs don't arrive until time has passed beyond the stage when attacking with a stack of warriors can be called a rush.

Naturally you can warrior rush with Flauros, and using River of Blood for a population boost will help Flauros do that just as much as it would help Alexis. The thing that makes Alexis more effective at it is her Aggressive trait.

 

[Ekolite]

And also, while Flauros is admittedly a great at teching due to his financial trait this requires several things before it can come into affect. You will either need a coastal start, and the fishing tech which is out of your tech route entirely and expensive in the earliest stage of the game, or you will need cottages from Education that take time to grow, but preferably you will need Code of Laws and Calendar for an Aristo-grarian strategy. These are a lot of techs, and they are all heading in different directions. These distract you from boosting production, making you vulnerable. This is especially evident with teching Fishing, the earliest way to take advantage of your financial trait, as that doesn't even take you towards Feudalism, your aim as Flauros, and does not help at all to increase your production, grow your population (unless you waste even more time getting Sailing), or defend you from other players/raging barbarians.

As Alexis your tech route is clear. You get Agriculture, you get Mining, then you get Writing. In between this you will also pick up crafting (excellent if you can spare a few turns for the Ale Wonder), Ancient Chants which will allow you to better utilise your captured city and Education which will crucially give you Apprenticeship for the second level on all new units and of course cottages which will be a decent help to your research, and their affects will be greatly boosted (relatively speaking, remember this is the early game) by your dirt cheap libraries and Academies from great sages. Code of Laws is an afterthought, which you will only get after all of these techs have already been completed. (Correct me if I'm wrong but I think it requires Writing which is convienient.) All of Alexis's techs take her in one ultinate direction. Nothing else is even needed, except possibly Calendar if you have a few resources nearby.

Flauros will quickly catch up once he has everything he needs for his financial to kick in, but by now Alexis would have already won the game. Her bonus to research is smaller then Flauros's, but she gets hers far earlier. Just in time to push for Bronze Working and Morois.

--

Also, I beg to differ about rushing putting you at risk. My strategy involves specifically moving your starting settler towards your nearest opponent to settle more or less on his doorstep. Your two towns will be close enough to be defended easilly enough by your rush army, and you will still have greater production in your capital then most other players so will be able to supplement them with more Warriors.

 

[Senethro]

And also, while Flauros is admittedly a great at teching due to his financial trait this requires several things before it can come into affect. You will either need a coastal start, and the fishing tech which is out of your tech route entirely and expensive in the earliest stage of the game, or you will need cottages from Education that take time to grow, but preferably you will need Code of Laws and Calendar for an Aristo-grarian strategy. These are a lot of techs, and they are all heading in different directions. These distract you from boosting production, making you vulnerable. This is especially evident with teching Fishing, the earliest way to take advantage of your financial trait, as that doesn't even take you towards Feudalism, your aim as Flauros, and does not help at all to increase your production, grow your population (unless you waste even more time getting Sailing), or defend you from other players/raging barbarians.

This is false. Picking up Calendar and Agrarian boosts growth and production, as long as forested plains or hills tiles are available. One extra food per grassland farm means you can work more low food/high production tiles. Mines are not essential for the early game, especially when the most expensive productions are Workers and Settlers.

Going mines before farms won't give some great production advantage, so I don't think there is any great production boost to be had in the first 50 turns while happycaps remain low. Tech beelining to Code of Laws is not especially vulnerable as you pick up Apprenticeship on the way.

Moving your settler close to someone elses capital is going to waste turns or is asking for their Scout to just walk into your undefended city.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I honestly don't see how one can claim that Alexis is the best Calabim leader. you can say she's the best for your very specific warrior-rush way of playing of course, but then why are you not playing the doviello?

Calabim's true strength comes in the lategame, and Flauros is a lot better than Alexis by then. this is a fact, not an opinion.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Because sometimes you need a stronger early game just to SURVIVE.