[Spoilers] What's Sheaim to do? Irgy controlling Tebryn

[Irgy]

So, after all that build up, what was in the barrow you ask? Well who knows.


My western warrior is still going at least, but I don't actually hold much hope for him.

Demographics-wise I'm now last in GNP, which is a bit depressing, but I'll at least get up to average in 3 turns when the Elder Council finishes. And once the great sage for the academy and bronze working for the gems are in I think I'll be looking quite good. So I'm not really worried. I'm well ahead in production too, which doesn't really mean much but it's good to know.

[Irgy]

An event!


Um... yeah. Great. I'll keep that in mind guys. Does anyone know if these events actually do anything? I gather this one would affect the AI if anything, maybe an extra diplo modifier. Waste of an event chance all in all, but nothing bad at least.

In other news, the warrior is under threat:


If it attacks now, I'll get 25% from the hill and 25% from the river (or is that 20% now?), for a net result of 4 vs 4.5. Odds should be about ~70% in my favour then, so this could turn out well. If I win I'll certainly get a promotion, which will in turn give me a warrior who might even survive this wilderness. Maybe.

[Amelia]

That event gives a -1 Modifier to all AIs. Completely useless in a PBEM.

[Lord Parkin]

Hey, welcome, thanks for coming over!

No worries.

The majority of people think Tebryn is better, but I'm actually kind of regretting not choosing Gabella. As you've observed yourself (and convinced me of already), industrious is under-rated. The thing that was putting me off was actually that wonders aren't as good in FFH as they are in the base BTS. Why do I say that?

* There's less of them. Not a lot less, but less. There's less again when you account for ones with religious pre-requisites, which ties in to the next point.
* They're spread all over the tech tree. In BTS you research everything eventually, it's just a matter of what you prioritise. In FFH there's a lot of the tech tree you don't see. So generally at an equivalent stage of the game you'll have less options when it comes to wonders.
* Another side of that is there's less competition for the ones you want. It's possible no-one else will be trying to get your religious wonders, and generally less other people will be in the same part of the tech tree as you are.

All fair points. I guess you can get by without being Industrious a lot better than in BTS. Still, it does save a lot of critical hammers in building wonders even if you don't have the competition.

* They seem generally, on average, less good. That's certainly not true about at all about some of them, but on average there's less great ones. A lot of old good ones are still there and just as good, but a fair few are gone. None of the new ones seem better than BTS ones, and plenty are quite situational. A lot of the best sort-of-new ones are those which were previously national wonders.

This is the only point where I don't quite agree. Sure there are a few duds, but for the most part all of the wonders are fairly useful to have.

EDIT - I will add though that the wonders in FFH do seem quite well designed. When I say not as good, I mean not as powerful, but they're still very interesting.

I agree that they're certainly quite varied and interesting in most cases.

However, the one fatal flaw in my argument is that I really do seriously plan to try for a tower victory, and that mostly involves building a whole lot of expensive, no-bonus-resource national wonders. If I'd really thought about that it probably would have tipped the balance.

Yeah, building the Towers certainly takes a bit longer without an Industrious civ. Still, you can compensate if you can manage to get to the relevant techs earlier, which effectively gives you extra turns in which to build.

Luckily the good thing about Fall From Heaven is that in general the traits are a bit stronger than in BTS, so Industrious loses its relative edge a bit anyway. Even Financial isn't so great relative to the other traits in FFH2 - so much so that, for instance, I personally prefer Falamar to Hannah for the Lanun. Expansive is truly a killer trait in FFH2 (double speed Settlers!), especially for the Lanun (double speed Sea Havens); and even though Charismatic looks the same on the surface, it's hugely better in FFH2 simply because the promotions are so much more powerful (and you get more XP).

As it stands though, arcane is good, and kind of goes well with summoner. So he's still not a bad choice. But it would have been interesting to show off something a little different in Gabella.

Oh an yes, pyre zombies rock, and I really look forward to using them.

Indeed. Arcane certainly isn't bad, although I never thought of it as going that well with Pyre Zombies (which are kind of along a separate strategy line tech-wise, and seem to compete with the whole magic thing). However, I'm certainly no expert with the Sheaim (haven't really played them much), so I could well be wrong there. Either way, it'll be interesting experimenting with the magic + Pyre Zombie mix and seeing what you can do with it.

[Lord Parkin]

So, after all that build up, what was in the barrow you ask? Well who knows.

Shame... ah well, that'S FFH2 barbs for you. Downright vicious, especially compared to the AI. (I always found it weird that the barbs in FFH2 always present far, far more of a threat than the AI ever do.)

My western warrior is still going at least, but I don't actually hold much hope for him.

Hmm... maybe best to just cut your losses and go pop the first lair you find with him then.

Demographics-wise I'm now last in GNP, which is a bit depressing, but I'll at least get up to average in 3 turns when the Elder Council finishes. And once the great sage for the academy and bronze working for the gems are in I think I'll be looking quite good. So I'm not really worried. I'm well ahead in production too, which doesn't really mean much but it's good to know.

I wouldn't worry about GNP this early in the game. Too much depends on what tech you're researching and other varying factors. I think the plan for an early Academy along with the Gems will put you in a very good place GNP-wise before too long.

In other news, the warrior is under threat:


If it attacks now, I'll get 25% from the hill and 25% from the river (or is that 20% now?), for a net result of 4 vs 4.5. Odds should be about ~70% in my favour then, so this could turn out well. If I win I'll certainly get a promotion, which will in turn give me a warrior who might even survive this wilderness. Maybe.

Ouch... 70% isn't particularly good. Let's just hope he survives this battle. Losing yet another unit would not be good.

That event gives a -1 Modifier to all AIs. Completely useless in a PBEM.

Thanks for the information - I didn't know that. Out of curiousity, is there a list somewhere with this info, or did you pick it out of the XML or something? I'd be interested to have a link to a list of FFH2 events if one exists.

[Irgy]

That event gives a -1 Modifier to all AIs. Completely useless in a PBEM.

Great, thanks. That's basically what I would have guessed anywhere. I'll second Lord Parkin's question as to where on earth one finds these things out though. Looking it up in the mod files themselves is probably the best option anyway, at least you know the information is up to date.

Hmm... maybe best to just cut your losses and go pop the first lair you find with him then.

Yeah, if I make it to one anyway

Yeah, building the Towers certainly takes a bit longer without an Industrious civ. Still, you can compensate if you can manage to get to the relevant techs earlier, which effectively gives you extra turns in which to build.

It's organising the mana which takes the most time I find. You need sorcery before you can get started at switching the nodes around. Then for every mana node you have less than 4 you need to organise another mana source from somewhere for each tower. The techs I'll get as I get up to each tower, and Strength of Will I plan on snatching relatively early using the Infernal Grimoire.

This is the only point where I don't quite agree. Sure there are a few duds, but for the most part all of the wonders are fairly useful to have.

Well, you've just talked me into making a direct comparison when I get the chance.

Indeed. Arcane certainly isn't bad, although I never thought of it as going that well with Pyre Zombies (which are kind of along a separate strategy line tech-wise, and seem to compete with the whole magic thing). However, I'm certainly no expert with the Sheaim (haven't really played them much), so I could well be wrong there. Either way, it'll be interesting experimenting with the magic + Pyre Zombie mix and seeing what you can do with it.

Well, I'm not really an expert with the Sheaim either, although I hope to learn to be one by the time this is over. The zombies and the magic really are kind of separate. As are the planar gate units for that matter. I plan on using all of these things though still. And at least one other sort of living unit too, though I haven't decided which.

Because they are slow moving and can't be sped up with haste, the zombies don't have the sort of mobility I would like to have. As such, they're going to have to either provide an unstoppable force, or be relegated to defense where they can use roads to gain some relative mobility. Their vulnerability to the life 2 spell destroy undead is part of that too. Although I assume even with that spell they at least explode and kill the mages involved...

[Irgy]

He survived! Yay!


On 0.4 health, 1.7 after I took Guerrila. I figured it's twice as good as combat 1 for keeping him alive in the hills, and there's a lot of hills around. If he's attacked on open land he's doomed anyway. Plus it's not wasted if he somehow survives to be a garrison, I'm bound to settle a hill sooner or later and I can camp his as garrison there.

Not much extra news, just some micro to get the Elder Council out a turn earlier:

I swap 2 commerce for 1 but get at least 2 back with the earlier council. And otherwise I swap a food for a hammer, which is what I'd prefer at the moment. It's a real shame there's no more 2 hammer tiles in my BFC, something I didn't really think about when I picked the location (although nowhere else nearby was better).

[Irgy]

Well, I discovered some interesting things of relevance today, thanks to finding the FFH source code.

Firstly the bad news that the free experience from the channelling promotions doesn't scale with game speed like it possibly ought to, so the whole magic strategy is weaker than on normal speed (which I'm used to) than on quick. Heroes are similarly weaker I suppose though, which is good for me since the Sheaim don't get any - even our official hero Abashi doesn't actually have the "hero" promotion.

The good news though is Potent (and by extension Arcane) is better than I thought. To explain this I'll explain how the free magic xp works.

Each unit has a "SpellCasterXP" value. By default of course it's zero. Chanelling 1, 2 and 3 add 20, 30 and 40 to this value respectively (for a total of 90 for an Archmage for instance). Potent adds another 20.

At the start of each turn, a unit has a chance of gaining 1xp. That chance is equal to ("SpellCasterXP" - experience), as a percentage. So Hemah for example has a 90% chance of gaining 1 xp the turn after he's created (as well as another 1 xp from the hero promotion), while an ordinary adept has a 20% chance. Once they get experience though it slows down, reaching a cap of 20xp for an adept or 110xp for a potent archmage.

So, the potent promotion gives more than double the rate for the important first 10 xp to get to a mage - in fact for the last gain from 9 to 10xp it's 2.8x more likely to happen each turn. After that the relative benefits slow down a bit, but it's still nice to have an xp cap that's 20xp higher. On the whole it's worth roughly an extra level for the most part.

In the end, potent will make my mages level about as fast as they would have on normal speed. So I'm roughly back where I started I guess

[Irgy]

A few turns have passed, but not much to post about, so sorry if it's been a bit quiet. Here's a summary:

Working a sage, great sage for the Academy is due on T38. I'm then working as many hammers as I can, to the point of starving the city, to get the worker out as quickly as possible. As it was originally I could swap from the forest hill back to the wines for a turn to get both the worker and the tech finished in 6 turns.


Goblins are chasing my warrior, stopping him from healing. These goblins are from the same fort as the ones that chased my scout earlier. I'm running him for the moment, but will make a stand on a forest hill. Was going to make a stand on a jungle hill, but goblins have a 10% jungle attack bonus and I need all the help I can get. He as moved twice now, hasn't revealed anything particularly interesting.


This turn, I got a positive event - some free research. Not terribly exciting but certainly can't complain. This messes a bit with my micro - the tech will definately be finished before the worker now. That's kind of good though, as once he's finished the wines he has nothing to do until Mining finishes.


Playing a blitz session tonight (well, tonight in my timzone anyway). Hopefully that wil bring some more progress.

[Irgy]

An ethical question for the lurkers:
Is it bad form to load old saves from previous turns to look at the demographics screen?

I shouldn't need to anyway, I've been making a point of screenshotting the scores each turn, and the demographics roughly every second or third turn. Just something I wondered about.