FFH2 Adventure 2 Stomp stomp stomp.

[Dantski]

Writing this report a couple of weeks after finishing unlike the first adventure so far less detail as I didn’t start playing this with an intention of reporting.

So first thing to note is its on Immortal difficulty, this initially put a lot of people off (including me). I don’t believe I ever won a BTS always war game so to jump up to Immortal for one seemed like a bad idea. Common sense doesn’t often prevail however so I gave this a try anyway.

Second thing to note was that we were playing as the Illians and had an icy start. Great for defence.

Last thing of any importance was the removal of all religions except Ashen Veil. This is going to mean ploughing through hell terrain and what I believed at the beginning to be multiple Infernal Civs. Fortunately the last assumption proved incorrect.

First off I decide not to take the aggressive trait from Letum Frigus, if the game was to play like my previous AW games, I doubted the combat 1 would save me.



Used 2 Javelin Throwers as scouts early on and delayed putting down my second settler for too long (around 15 turns), the southern scout popped a hut to reveal the Calabim to the south. On the same turn as founding my 2nd city Os Gabiella created Rosier, if he came anywhere near me I would’ve been toast.

Lot’s of scouting popped a lot of mildly bad results, on the other hand my explorers kept surviving these encounters and got a heck of a lot of XP.

Meet the other civs on the eastern side of the world plus Hyborem, I’d meet Tebryn quite a lot later.

Get people marvelling at monument event, naturally I dedicate it to Mulcarn.



White Hand ritual completed Turn 98, I wasn’t exactly trying to rush it out. Built a half dozen warriors beforehand and roads to Os Gabiella’s eastern cities so on Turn 103 I popped Stasis and invaded. Took out her 2 cities nearby very easily.

Hawk’s showed a nice view of ghastly poles (Necrotem’s I think they’re called?) guarding the Infernal coast. Guessing they were meant to discourage naval manoeuvres as I believe they hit units with fear if they move to adjacent tiles. Didn’t affect the few ships I sent out though.

Anyhoo since I didn’t lose anything taking 2 cities from Os Gabiella I moved right onto Jonas…



He was eliminated Turn 124, I razed his cities because of the distance, perhaps I shouldn’t have.

Turn 125 grabbed Bone Palace just because I could really.

Since I took so little damage in attacking 2 civs I moved right onto Flauros noticing city ruins on his NW border, whether barbarians razed a city of his or the other way around remained a mystery.

Built Form of the Titan Turn 129

The Calabim proved a tricky conquest with all the deserts stopping my Ice Elementals, I captured Prespur easily but then the Calabim kept parking their stack on flood plains where I couldn’t hit them, eventually by leaving Prespur unguarded I lured them onto a non desert tile and that was it for the Vamps. I kept both of their cities.

The game then went into a quiet period of economic then military build-up. I neglected to settle much of the central east of the map because of laziness + my natural Civ aversion to having enough workers.

Anyhoo not much happened for ages, the most noteworthy thing was popping a mana node after exploring a goblin fort. That would seen be converted to a life node.

On turn 169 I was ready to start conquering again, as expected the AI had started to resettle the old CoEmbers land.



Initial fights went smoothly, the new Sheaim cities went down fast, the only blip was my adventurer I had popped dying to Rosier at 85% odds.

Decided to knock Os Gabiella out first to went straight up the coast and only kept her capital.

Then I thought I’d push into Infernal land…



What’s that, 130 units? My stack consists of about 40 but considerably higher strength, could get interesting. Hyborem joins the stack and marches towards the old’ Sheaim capital.

Of all the Tier 1 spells in the game, slow is one of the best. I kept hitting their Infernal stacks with slow and they became incredibly disjointed, when he finally brought diseased corpses in I was bringing in Life 1 and 2 mages.

The AI didn’t want to attack my army on the hill though and went for the city instead, I only had a few axemen in there but they took out a lot of Infernal attackers, the city itself wasn’t a big deal so I didn’t place any importance it its defence.

I don’t have the screenshot but what followed was a mix of AI weediness and… well just AI weediness. Hyborem left himself open and was killed, I kept sitting on my hill, whittling down Infernals stacks with Elementals + Destroy Undead. Eventually I got tired of this long drawn out picking at the Infernal stack and destroyed 90% of it in 3 turns of all out attacking.

Incidentally AC went down to 0 Turn 190.

Turn 198 saw a chariot appear in my land, no idea why because I didn’t remember building one, weird.

T221 Get Gaelan after a series of events. Far too late for him to be of much use but he’d eventually clean up some annoying settlements that the AI liked to spring up.

T226 Finally explore the graveyard next to my capital and I pop Mithril Working



Pretty useless at this point as the Infernal army has been crushed and I’m just running around taking his cities now.

Turn 232 sees my mini stack in the south kill Tebryn who was still fielding pitiful numbers of hunters.

T235 Get Mary Morbus from an event, totally useless to me because on the same turn I capture Despero, which was the last of the Infernal cities.

T236 confirms my conquest victory



Endgame log shows a 9 hour 53 minute game and a 96264 score.

So I believe I earned

The Red Star for winning
The Black Star for eliminating the Infernals
The Blue Star for not using the free Aggressive trait from Letum Frigus

I was never really tempted to try for the White Star and win as the Mercurians. Having never played them before I felt switching to them would just prolong the game unnecessarily.

Thanks for the game Bob.

[uberfish]

Good game, it looks similar to mine except with less settling... AI behaviour was also generally similar with the giant hellhound/warrior stack followed by diseased corpses and Rosier/Hyborem acting independently of the rest of the army.