The Broken Drum - Lurker's Thread

[Square Leg]

Why do people keep saying that Ichabod only settled 1 city... are they missing the tech points since CoE don't have a starting tech?

[Mist]

Yes. The difference is 11 points and that's exactly what techs are worth in FFH. If they bothered to check the points breakdown with the mouse-over, the whole problem would never occur.

[Square Leg]

I'm interested to see if anyone takes an early barb city. It is possible to get another city before T10 seeing as everyone started with 4 warriors and the two nearest cities have only 1 warrior in defence.

That said, maintenance on 3 cities without any improvements is going to make researching even the most basic techs quite painful...

[Mist]

The way Ichabod just reacted makes me go

Seriously. The map is skewed to make the playing field more level, but CoE are still one of the stronger picks in that game. Yes, Rantine is not the 'I win' button he thought he'd get combined with For the Horde. But with Heroic Strength promotions he can still convert everything apart from the Elephant and the Dragon. It'll just take longer, and it's his call if he wants to wait or not.

But to say it 'ruins the game'? Please.

[Serdoa]

Well, he didn't expect that and is in a bad mood about it I would guess. It probably doesn't ruin his game but it sure makes it harder then he thought. And think about it, Dantski already took a city whereas Ichabod will still need many turns till he has Rantine. So he will probably be behind in cities (could be expected) and has now to realize that for some of them he will have to declare on the barbs. And he might have also already realized that his world spell won't be that helpful - if at all - because there are so many pre-placed barbs which will not get converted.

I can understand why it was done this way but I can also understand him. He probably feels betrayed because 70% of his civ-uniqueness is made obsolete by the map. At least if I haven't overlooked anything for CoE.

[Irgy]

People argued the clan were balanced without all these changes, and for all that I disagreed they must have meant it because he got the clan basically last pick.

The unusual changes to the map make things strictly and significantly worse for him. So I can't see what's so surprising about him being upset about it. Not to get too "told you so" but it is exactly what I warned about earlier.

[Mist]

He CAN take all cities peacefully if he's willing to wait for it. Even the elephant. I was fairly sure of that yesterday and confirmed it with a WB test today. And For the Horde is not really nerfed, each city has one unit of held garrison instead of two compulsory archers, true, but on this number of cities ( and generic barb world does not place more ) the difference doesn't really matter if you don't plan a turn 1 rush.

He is actually better off, because Azer and Phant will stop people for a while and give him time to put out Rantine into play. How long do you think would generic barb garrisons hold pyre zombies?

[Irgy]

Well, that was the argument made in the first place for not banning the clan outright. I didn't entirely agree with it at the time, and all we really know now is that this game on the given map will not resolve the issue.

The point was always that Rantine could take cities faster, because he simply has to walk into them, and cheaper, because you never lose a unit capturing a city (which also translates back to faster). Pyre zombies are only better than axemen specifically in the case where you lose a unit, their advantage on the other hand is that they can take down bigger units. So surely they're the perfect unit to make my point, not yours.

Sure, Rantine can take the cities eventually in theory, but certainly not faster any more, with the warrior-defended city having fallen already for some players, and the better defended cities requiring high level promotions and/or difficult to acquire items.

Anyway, I think it's an excellent and intriguing map, and I can't complain about the clan being nerfed when I said myself I thought they were overpowered for these settings. But I also think Ichabod has still basically been screwed over and is justified in being annoyed about it. I'm sure he'll deal with it though.

[Square Leg]

I don't understand really - what does he want to do to? Burst down all the cities one after another? He can't afford to take to cities that quickly! Like Mist said - he can take all of them with a variety of promotions on Rantine and probably still more quickly than the others. At the end of the day - he is going to waste zero hammers on units lost conquering the cities.

Rantine with bronze and 2 heroic strength's is str7.

As for the the elephant city, I didn't think he was a "peace" with the animals and so he can just attack the elephant and then convert the city can't he?

[Irgy]

Animals count as hidden nationality units. I think that means he can do exactly what you say - attack the elephant with something, then convert with Rantine once the elephant's gone.