Xenin's FFH 3 Report

[xenin]

We start as the Doviello, that most crappy of civilizations. There's not much hope from our unique units unless the world happens to be covered in tundra (it's not) or unless we can tech all the way to knights/berserkers for the not-even-all-that-much-better bison riders/circle of urd (we won't). Even our hero is useless, coming so late I can guarantee we won't get there and being fairly mediocre for being so late in the tree anyway. Our leader is also pathetic - agressive could be useful in an AW game but we know we're up against a team of deity AIs and I know from single player experience the only way to actually keep up militarily is a small force of super-promoted units + collateral that never actually fight at less that 95%+ odds - charismatic would be good, agressive is bleh. [As it turns out Bob has actually declared war on the barbarians for us, so we don't even get the advantage of the peace with the barbs but still keep the science penalty, so we have a leader with 1 crap and 1 negative trait. Yay.] The doviello also have libraries and alchemy guilds as blocked buildings, just in case our tech rate wasn't pathetic enough. What do we actually get for all these penalties? The ability to upgrade troops in the field, upgrade workers to troops, and not having to build mage guilds (hey that's like a free wonder!). I've never faced a team of deity AIs before, but this isn't the setup I would choose...

Fortunately it's not all bad. Opening the save shows we have the posibility to get Baron Duin way before we should be able to and Bob has given us an interesting set of starting techs that we wouldn't normally have access to, as well as some crossbows for early defence. We have fanaticism but can't build the gate, telling us that Basium is in the game - not too surprising given that one of the stars is for killing Basium with Hyborem, but hey. Our tech rate at the start will be crappy as we grow, but we have three options for building tier 3 units early in the game

1) Rage -> Circle of Urd. Bit crappy. I've always felt berserkers are too weak for how late in the tree they are, and rage doesn't even have any other useful benefits.

2) Animal Mastery -> Beastmasters. Pretty hammer expensive with the need for grove, but actually fairly cheap in beaker terms. Beastmasters are reasonable units. I would do this if I felt I could succeed in an unorthodox game, but I'm worried about how tough a team of deity AIs will actually be.

3) What this whole setup is crying out for - Beeline infernal pact, and use the grimoire to take malevolent designs (we've even been given fanaticism!). Only takes a few hundred more beakers than option 2 but gives Eidolons (we already have iron working), Beasts of Agares and Mardero. This is pretty obviously the strongest option and I suspect almost everyone will do this, but right now we need to win. Maybe slip in currency somewhere to help the economy as well. This also gives access to KoTE early, and chaos/body are good adept manas. It also gives ritualists, and collateral is god vs deity AIs - they produce units with 3 free promotions, so it's impossible to get good odds on anything without collateral, and you can't keep up in production while taking any significant casualties.

Civics:



God King might well be better for early game, but we already have a settler for second city and without spiritual straight aristograrianism is too tempting.

I guess the floodplains continue south, and it works out:



The Duin train spots a wraith! Bit of a step up from skeletons.



I'm heading for march on these guys to try and keep moving. March + medic 2 = nomnomnom. I also totally fail to realise we have courage on our troops, so I'm worried about fear screwing me over, and spend the next 50 turns puzzled as to why I'm always resisting the fear. My one and only free tech from all the dungeons + graveyards that Duin explores is the supremely useful.... bowyers. Meh. I guess longbows could be useful for defence.

Exploration continues, and we meet the enemy:



5!? That's rather more than I was expecting... and with the religion setup it looks like Basium is going to get about a billion angels as we wade through the others.

First look at an enemy city:



Looks like Bob gave them some held units to prevent early shenanigans with the crossbows. Also note the AI no minimum levels requirement in action - the computer is churning out runekeepers which normally can only be upgraded from level 6 priests. This will turn out to be one of the most annoying bonuses the computer gets, as killing their best units is rather meaningless if you can't finish them.

Chalid built. That's rather worrying, I haven't built a single military unit yet.



GNP screen shows just how far behind we are:



But fortunately Baron is about to escape for the loss of one GWW to get past the bone golem.



I actually still have 2 GWW since I managed to spawn a spider from a dungeon that gave me a ravenous WW that upgraded all the way on the undead barbarians. Despite killing hundreds of units with baron this is somehow the only GWW i manage to spawn all game - my luck with getting blooded werewolves to upgrade was awful.

I somehow get Form of the Titan despite being miles behind the AI in tech? They have their priorities off for an always war game.



I actually mostly built this for denial purposes: two free experience on my stack of elite units is not much better than the aggressive trait, but an extra promotion on every enemy unit I kill would get old fast.

Hooray, peace in our time!



First serious hostilities:



Sabathiel, despite being quite far away from me, is easily the most aggressive of the computers. Varn Gosam contents himself with throwing immortals at me over and over which is annoying but not overly damaging; Basium and Einion Logos don't show up till I'm actually on their doorstep and the Luchiurp never really achieve much, but Sabathield hurls units at me all game. If all the computers had been that aggressive I'm not sure this would have been possible. This attack is actually a great thing for me though - attacking fortified crossbowmen on a hill-citadel? Ouch. I don't lose a single unit as the computer vainly suicides into my troops, and that's Sphener + Valin + Donal I don't have to worry about any more.

Ashen Veil founded:



Having ritualists will be a big boost, that last attack had me worried in case more were on the way from the other AIs, so I detour to priesthood now instead of the planned pact.

Having hawks allows us to do some proper scouting into enemy territory:



We pop a great commander:



My luck with GPs is really weird this game. I think I get the free one from military strategy, the one we start with at baron, and then they defy the GP-pool odds to produce another 2 from command post/form of the titan pollution. Four GCs in a single game is a record for me I think.

Grimoire done! Time to bring out the big boys.



The Luchiurp apparently feel free promotions for their units is an imbalanced game mechanic so they send Barny out on a suicide mission to even things up:



With Malevolent Designs in, we can go on the offensive. The first enemy city is taken:



The main killers are Mardero/Baron/Rosier, backed up with Eidolons/Beasts with battlemaster as support and ritualists for collateral.

Sadly I played the next hundred turns on my girlfriend's computer, and I don't have the screenshots So a brief description of the action:

With AV spreading, the AC has been merrily raising. Only one horseman spawned near to me, and he got ended rather rapidly by Duin. Basium randomly suicides the chariot that killed war (and has the war item) at me, so I give it to Mardero. The problem is that I don't really pay attention to the whole +1 to the AC when this unit wins in combat part, and the AC rapidly shoots up to 85ish. This causes a brief panic as I've lost a game before where the mass insanity at 90 AC cause my garrison troops to wander off and half my cities to get captured. It's particularly bad vs deity AIs, because while I can farm their armies with my main stack, I still need to collateral them and fully buff with dance of blades/regeneration/blur/enchanted blades etc - fighting them straight up is disastrous with their numbers and free promotions. I hand off war to a random adept, stop spreading AV to any cities, and swap production from battlemasters to diseased corpses, who are undead and therefore immune both to the insanity at AC90 and the apocalypse at AC100. Between the natural spread of AV and the actions of the AI, I can't stop the AC raising altogether, but my plan is to use blitz mardero with war passing it to hasted blitz mobility 2 rosier to push it from AC 90 - AC100 as fast as possible. Sadly Rosier dies to the apocalypse, but at least Duin escapes the insanity and the 50% death chance unscathed. With the AC this high, I've also brought Meshabber of Dis into the action, and he has single-handedly destroyed most of the Malakim empire while the main stack takes on Luchiurp -> Bannor -> Mercurians. I did lose almost all my mage support, my ritualists, and my champions to the AC though. I think of all the units that go crazed, I get a grand total of 2 back safely, and the offensive has to slow while I hunt random packs of crazed AI units that are running all over my territory (raider is such an annoying enemy trait).

The main stack, post-apocalypse clear up:



The effects of suddenly losing rather a lot of your population:



And on the world's armies:



You can see that Basium loses relatively little because most of his power is in Not Alive angels that are immune to the world ending, while I take a huge power hit. Also note how far behind I am in power compared to the combined enemy team, and yet conquering half the map hasn't been all that hard - ritualists are awesome.

Meshabber is overpowered:



He didn't take a single point of damage from the Elohim throwing their main stack at him.

The end is in sight!



Built the order shrine for the irony:



I'm pretty sure I could get a religious order victory by inquisitioning AV from my cities and spreading order, since half the enemy cities have order and I have the holy city. But for this scenario only a conquest victory feels appropriate.

Remember when I said I'd never build the War Machine? Looks like I underestimed how long it would take to mop up hundreds of angels:



Gee, thanks Saint Augustin, I totally couldn't have told that from the world map:



You learn something new every game - if you summon Balors in a city they can take metal weapon promotions:



I just realised I totally forgot to mention Hyborem when I researched Pact earlier. I hadn't anticipated AW would make me declare on him - I was rather looking forward to some of my dead units coming back for my ally, but no. He spawned in the Baron-limbo, so I didn't find him for a while, and by the time I did hell terrain was all over limbo and too annoying to eradicate even after I eliminated Hyborem. I didn't want hell terrain but couldn't leave AV so I had a squad of life I adepts on the case:



You can see I've actually lost a couple of floodplains because I lost all my adepts to the apocalypse and had to make some new ones (which involved converting a node back to life). I have no idea why the wall between me and limbo disappeared - maybe as it became hell terrain? It seemed a gradual process, and I wasn't sure if it was meant to happening. By the end game it was all gone and Basium started to settle the wastelands.

Turn 303, we finally reach the last city:



Duin reached a round 777 experience.

Mardero only made 708:



Meshabber got 500, and was just stupid by the end. 43 defence strength with Drill IV...



Whole game graphs:





That's a lot of angels:



The tendency of Basium to upgrade 16 angels each turn to the special types was rather frustrating, since most of my units couldn't get good odds on the super strength repentent angels.

Casualties:



Poor stupid ravenous werewolves, running deep into enemy territory to suicide. Also note the big gaps between built current and lost for units that died to the AC rise - I lost 55 ritualists to the apocalypse and 20 to enemy action.

70k points is disappointing for a deity win, but it's mostly because I took so long to wind things up. For about the last 50 turns I had all cities building wealth/research because microing new units up to the front got tedious.



War weariness is broken, even in AW:



That's with a dungeon and in nationhood; I wasn't forced to go as far as darell and run despotism, but I had free commerce to run the culture slider.

This was fun and a good challenge despite the obvious failings of the FFH AI - great work on the design Bob. Final stars are

* The White Star of Werewolves
* The Purple Star of Paradise
* The Aqua Star of Armageddon

I expect turn 303 to be fairly slow compared to most, and if I had time I would have tried a shadow game to see how fast it could be won. I suspect there's a pretty fast Tower of Mastery win possible; there are enough nodes available with a landgrab of the south and if my game is an indication you can then just ignore 3 of the computers and tech to victory.

[Ilios]

Nice! I wish I had the stamina to play these things myself.