First, I'll start by ruling out certain civs I won't be picking. Here's what's left:
Horizontal:
Calabim
Clan
Midrange:
Balseraphs
Grigori
Hippus
Malakim
Vertical:
Kurioates
Ljosalfar
Svartalfar
Sidar
Before I narrow it down further, it helps to have a goal.
Conquest: Military beatdown followed by opponents conceding
Domination: Massive horizontal expansion plus conquest, most likely leading to opponents conceding
Culture: Gameplay focused on getting certain wonders and a few well developed cities. Most likely requiring a "last stand" defensive war at the end.
Religious: Difficult to pull off, requires the element of surprise, purge the unfaithful, and a large population.
Tower: Significant tech requirements followed by a hammer-expensive project. Can be accomplished within an otherwise flexible strategy.
Altar: Major great person requirements followed by a hammer-expensive project. Requires one less expensive tech than the tower does, but is slightly less flexible.
Of these, I'll start by ignoring Religious and Domination. I looked over Mist's post about FFH culture, and my calculations don't match his. After considering the secondary strategies involved, it will probably be too costly and inflexible, so I'll drop that one too.
Military conquest will depend on the map and relative strengths of myself versus the other players, but I'll need a civ that can defend itself regardless of the other factors. Conquest will always be an option for victory that is subject to outside forces. That leaves tower vs altar available for the "peaceful" victory targets.
More on that later, but for now I'm thinking an altar target will be the way to go.
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FFH-20: Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers
EITB Pitboss 1: Clan/Elohim/Calabim with Mardoc and Thoth
Narrowing down the list, I'm thinking I'll aim for one of these civs:
Balseraphs: Perpentach. Arcane + adaptiveness + shenanigans
Calabim: Decius. Strong military and hammers, race for the grimoire and divine essence, possibly go for altar without PHI
Kurioates: Cardith. Adaptive strategy to race for altar or culture or something else.
Ljosalfar: All three leaders have different advantages. Large cities and lots of hammers should make it easier to win via altar.
At the moment, I would prefer the Kurioates first, and I'm not sure about the other three.
(Note that these picks are not final.)
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FFH-20: Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers
EITB Pitboss 1: Clan/Elohim/Calabim with Mardoc and Thoth
Actually, after some testing, I think I'm going with Decius first and probably Amelanchier second. Perpentach might be my third pick... I think I still have time to reconsider these.
The plan will be to get manors up and expand rapidly, followed by vampires and AV. Grimoire will be a priority for Malevolent Designs, followed by Divine Essence through a ToD. Islands, if they exist, will benefit a lot from the Organized trait, and manors will provide hammers for coastal cities.
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FFH-20: Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers
EITB Pitboss 1: Clan/Elohim/Calabim with Mardoc and Thoth
(January 15th, 2013, 20:10)Tasunke Wrote: actually, its pretty nice that you did the Vault of Mammon lore with the nice picture
I'd keep it
As would I.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Your start, with the traditional caveat that I reserve the right to change pretty much anything except what civ and leader you are:
No corn or gold, sorry; although, there are multiple rivers like you requested.
Edit: Also, I forgot to mouse over the settler. It has the starting settler promotion.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
So, here we go. It turns out that I started with a bloodpet, supplies, and two scouts including the boosted one.
The obvious first thing to do was move to the ancient tower, taking advantage of the settler's vision bonus.
I actually debated this turn for a long time. There were a few important decisions to be made, that would have implications for the rest of the game. The first was where to settle. I couldn't settle on top of the tower, so I wouldn't be able to settle on a plains hill unless I was willing to delay the city. It was pretty clear that my only decent place that I could settle on the first turn was my original starting square.
It not an ideal location, unfortunately, being short of commerce with forests blocking the river commerce. The banana is on a marsh and dry rice is the weakest possible grain resource. The only commerce available is the silk, and that will require both calendar and mining(to chop the forest). It has a lot of resources, but exploiting them all will require 5 different technologies and I don't have a lot of commerce to do it with. (Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Calendar, Fishing, Mining)
I considered moving to the rice/wheat/river site, which was (potentially) the best site I could see, but unfortunately it would have prevented me from settling until the turn after next. I considered it, but eventually decided not to.
With the islands I could already see, I ended up settling on the start location. I think I'll be able to eventually build a strong trade route economy, so a coastal capital will hopefully be helpful in the long run.
For now, I'll keep the supplies on the tower for better vision, and the bloodpet in the city because he's not needed as a scout. I'm going to wait on the worldspell, as the new citizens would not be able to work anything decent anyway.
Active in:
FFH-20: Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers
EITB Pitboss 1: Clan/Elohim/Calabim with Mardoc and Thoth
Very clever with the settler on the ancient tower and then keeping the supplies there. Do you already know what you want to do with the supplies?
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
(February 4th, 2013, 10:59)Merovech Wrote: Very clever with the settler on the ancient tower and then keeping the supplies there. Do you already know what you want to do with the supplies?
Thanks.
I'm not 100% sure what I'll use them for yet. Right now, I expect it will either be a library or training yard or temple. I'm currently planning to build some altar layers for better cultists, so an early temple of the overlords might be good. I should probably make sure cultists and tsunami are still viable; I remember that there was talk of nerfing them in EitB.
Despite my lack of posts, I actually have things planned pretty far out for the mid and late game. The early game is dictated more by adapting to circumstances.
So far:
The initial lack of commerce increases the importance of lairs. I should seek them out and be aggressive about opening them.
The lion den to the west isn't that far from my capital. My super scout will go south then westward and try to use lions for exp. He'll stay relatively close to home, and help protect settlers from griffons and spiders.
So far, happiness resources appear to be scarce. This has a number of implications, but we'll see if this is accurate.
This map seems to have a lot of islands. Getting sailing and IC trade routes will be a priority. I may need to reconsider using the typical Calabim aristograrian economy.
I didn't get the Decius alignment event, and was forced to start as neutral. Using my ToD for Commune with Nature may be a priority before I attempt the Grimoire.
The map is also quite large, over 2000 land tiles. I'll make an effort to use barbarians to level up Moroi to level four for chariot upgrades.
I've hinted at some of my long-term strategies, but I'll try to give more detail on them soon. Bobchillingworh deserves some credit for helping me develop them.
Active in:
FFH-20: Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers
EITB Pitboss 1: Clan/Elohim/Calabim with Mardoc and Thoth
![[Image: Calabim%20Start.png]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/110995178/Calabim%20Start.png)
