FFH II PBEM VIII Lurker's Lurking Thread (For Lurkers) [SPOILERS]

[DaveV]

Bah, i'd love to have a ded. lurker to assist me in these occations.

No offense, Mr. Yellow, but I think you could use one. Case in point:

One unit that I’m highly certain I’ll get after Horseback Riding is catapults. There’s not much I can do with horses if the enemy decides to rally up a sizable chunk and march towards me. Cats however should give me the needed deterrent to bring any kind of early/mid game assault to a halt, which Horsemen later mops up.

The other units I’ll certainly look out for are the once that provides performance enhancements.

The first one I’ll defiantly take is the Stonewarden from Runes of Kilmorph.
The ability in focus is of course, Shield of Faith. 10% strength certainly ain’t much, but I’ll take anything that provides a boost to the cavalry. Besides it comes with Medic II and can help getting horses back out to the fight.
Then there’s that it’s the Runes of Kilmorph, which provides additional commerce. I'll take any kind of money that helps support the raiders.

Super fast horsemen plus catapults that can never move more than one tile per turn in enemy territory? Not a good combination.

Since Shield of Faith only works on melee units, it's pretty worthless for his proposed army.

[Square Leg]

Super fast horsemen plus catapults that can never move more than one tile per turn in enemy territory? Not a good combination.

Since Shield of Faith only works on melee units, it's pretty worthless for his proposed army.

It begs the question - what do the hippus use for collateral? Mobility Fire Mages/Ritualists? Hero's such as Chalid? Do they need collateral? Hippus horses can promote up the flanking line and get some crazy withdraw rates.

Or the other option is to just not use any and pillage and pillage and pillage and....

[WarriorKnight]

I'm pretty sure Shield of Faith works on all non-animal land units, not just melee. You sure your not thinking of Enchanted Blade?

Nonetheless, I agree that cats waste the movement potential of horses. I'm not sure about his choice of Runes though, wouldn't Order be better? +1 str from Bless beats +10% on all mounted units before Knights, and Valin ought to be a nice addition to the mounted horde.

EDIT:

It begs the question - what do the hippus use for collateral?

Pah, who needs collateral when you can fork several cities at once? Sure, you'll need a way to kill units camping in cities at some point but you don't need collateral to gain the upper hand.

[DaveV]

I'm pretty sure Shield of Faith works on all non-animal land units, not just melee. You sure your not thinking of Enchanted Blade?

I guess I must have been. I'll just slink away into hiding now...

[Azoth]

It probably would have been good if a couple of those dye were under jungles. But giving up food is going to slow his development down a lot until at least mining (especially if he wants to grow towns instead of working a lot of farms), so I don't think that it's really too unbalancing.

I thought I should respond to this since I was one of the lurkers in the map thread pushing for less jungle around those dyes. (Though, to be clear, the dyes were always without jungles.) I certainly don't think that site is overpowered, or even necessarily the best capital. It's hard to describe just how slow the early game is without any food sources. (Go ahead and try it!) That first settler will take forever to build. And Agrarianism can't help all that much, because the only non-forested grassland tiles (Edit: but one, missed the grassland by the lake)... are the Dyes themselves. So there's a choice between +2 food and +5 commerce. My main worry with those Dyes was that they'd be too tempting to pass up and leave one player with a food-poor capital. Well, it'll probably work out OK for a culture game.

Or I could be completely wrong and Mist will out-tech and -expand everyone else. I guess we'll find out.

[Square Leg]

Personally, if I were Mist, I would have founded 1N of where he has.

[Ilios]

Personally, if I were Mist, I would have founded 1N of where he has.

Yup, told him in a chat already.

[uberfish]

Personally, if I were Mist, I would have founded 1N of where he has.

1NW - wheat + incense + 2 dyes! Don't try to tell me that wouldn't be absurdly overpowered

[Mardoc]

1NW - wheat + incense + 2 dyes! Don't try to tell me that wouldn't be absurdly overpowered

I am very lucky he didn't see that, or didn't agree. I probably should have made his cows into sheep or pigs to keep him from straying.

Aside from that, everyone maybe Decius stayed put mostly, although I'm still surprised at the people who moved onto the plains hill. I think this goes to show that no matter how careful you are to guide people, they'll find something that you never expected.

On a different note:

(also i just realized that all 3 islands have a mana node on them, i'm thinking that it's worth it to get caravels after Sorcery to settle Ygg and Dragon Bones (since my civ is between those 2), and grab the 2 mana nodes (and the wonderful cities as well, of course).

It appears Amelia didn't notice Margalard/Gurid. I look forward to seeing her reaction to finding out they're there

[Gaspar]

I've only been situationally poking in (I like to start lurking about 30-40T in once stuff is actually happening) but yeah, Amelia and Mr. Yellow really need dedlurkers. Well, Amelia needs a horse tranquilizer, since as best I can tell she never listens to her dedlurker when she has one. Mr. Yellow, though, really doesn't seem like he learned anything from PBEM3. I read his open, it was just painfully all over the place, even more so than I am in PBEM7.

FFH really piles up the distractions. If you're naturally inclined to be distracted anyway, you're never going to do well in a MP game with it.