[EitB PBEM LVII spoilers] coldrain rekindles the flame

[shallow_thought]

 Vampires are living units if I remember correctly, but better to double check this at some point.

Totally unerstand if real life reduces available time to lurk around here, I appreciate the company regardless.

Pretty sure Vamps are alive - they certainly are in base FfH, and would be horribly nerfed if their own Body magic didn't work on them! Bear in mind that Spectres are nerfed a bit in EitB: but some still claim that they are not nerfed enough, so ...

[Qgqqqqq]

I think you might be missing some Agriculture civs. Hippus is an obvious one that comes to mind.

[coldrain]

Pretty sure Vamps are alive - they certainly are in base FfH, and would be horribly nerfed if their own Body magic didn't work on them! Bear in mind that Spectres are nerfed a bit in EitB: but some still claim that they are not nerfed enough, so ...

Yeah, they are living units, would be awkward if vampires couldn't haste themselves. Thinking about it now, spectres might not be so powerful in this game if there are only two guaranteed mana nodes in starting area. Usually Calabim would want to stack the death affinity of spectres by converting multiple raw mana noes to death type, but I think it is necessary to save one for metamagic or air or fire...

I think you might be missing some Agriculture civs. Hippus is an obvious one that comes to mind.

Somehow missed Hippus as agriculture civ, but I'm leaning towards arcane or vampiric units for this game. I just have to live without calendar for a short while, as mining + mysticism first seems the best approach for this start.

[shallow_thought]

I need to double-check Spectre affinity in EitB v vanilla. I'd also not realised that the Calabim wordspell had been move to Feudalism. Ouch.

My gut still says they are a potentially fun choice, particularly with Flauros, but I can't say I've based that on deep analysis.

[coldrain]

I'm confirming these as my choices for the game: Flauros of Calabim + hunting tech.

I'm curious to see how the EitB changes affect the viability of vampires. I tried to find the most recent game where Calabim was involved, but it seems some time ago. Still, governor's manors and Moroi should be good for the early game. And I get body mana from palace, that could be useful too. An interesting change I noticed is that law adept can remove burning blood effect from Moroi, thereby guaranteeing that they don't turn into barbarians. So in theory I can cast haste on a Moroi stack and use burning blood to have 3 movement, and after attacking an adept can remove the burning blood with loyalty spell.

[shallow_thought]

Did Vamps always require both a Governor's Manor and a Training Yard in FfH? I seem to remember just spamming them from all cities, but it seems you now need both. The former is close to an auto-build anyway, at least.

[Qgqqqqq]

No, the training yard requirement is new.

I could have sworn Calabim started with Agriculture.

[shallow_thought]

No, the training yard requirement is new.

I could have sworn Calabim started with Agriculture.

Thanks

Anyway, I don't think it has quite as much impact as I thought; you don't have to feast Vamps in the city where you build them, after all.

[coldrain]

Thanks for looking into EitB changes to Calabim, shallow_thought. I didn't notice the training yard requirement for vamps. Here's a list to make it easier for myself to remember all of the changes from vanilla FFH2:

• World spell River of Blood moved from useable on T0 to being locked behind feudalism (ouch indeed).
  
• Governor's manors no longer replace court house, but are their own building (no maintenance reduction, no Org production boost). Still unlocked at code of laws.
  
• Vampires require both governor's manor and training yard to produce.
  
• Vampires no longer draftable: Draft moroi instead.
  
• Alexis (Phi/Agg) can build elder councils, Flauros however, is still unable to.
  
• Flauros is Fin/Cre instead of Fin/Org.
  
• Burning blood effect and loyalty spell can't be active at the same time. Using one will disable the other.
  
• Standard axe units have lower production cost, moroi remain unchanged (slightly more expensive).
  

I'll edit in other changes if I forgot to mention anything.

[coldrain]

Yesterday I thought of another approach to this start: Found on banana on first turn. This would give the city center +1 food instead of +1 production from founding on plains hill, but more importantly, I can immediately farm the wet wheat. Additionally, I noticed an embarrassing mistake in my simulations: The deer is 1W of settler, not 1 NW as I put in my sim game. This shouldn’t change any of the timings as worker moves can be essentially the same. Situation of settle-on-banana after first settler is completed:

Founding on banana grants faster growth to size 4 (build second worker) and to size 6. Settler finishes on T26, a turn earlier than PH start. But looking at the map, banana spot would make it a bit more awkward to settle the fish + murex spot (sharing wheat is more difficult). Not sure how important this is without further map knowledge. Additionally, two plains hill spots become open for planting cities (3W2S and 3S1E of banana) if I want to have a very dense dot map. In single player I would want to have massive Calabim cities with less overlap, but in multiplayer sharing tiles and founding on PH for faster return of investment for the settler are generally more important. Seems like capital on banana is a viable choice, but there's something in my brain resisting leaving the plains hill... Any thoughts on where to found the capital?