Make love, not war: HidingKneel chills out with the Elohim (Spoilers!)

[HidingKneel]

Groovy.

[HidingKneel]

Welcome, lurkers. Gather around the drum circle, and make yourselves comfortable.

I, Thessalonica of the Elohim, will be your guide on this spiritual journey.



This thread will detail our quest to achieve the cosmic oneness:



The road to enlightenment is a long one:



It will require us to be open-minded about various tools and practices that can help expand our conciousness:



So, let's get started, shall we?



This looks like as good a spot as any to build our commune.



First order of business is to become self-sufficient! We'll research organic farming practices, and gather up some volunteers to start a garden.



So far, so good!

[Qgqqqqq]

So a vague plan to tech to IP/ToD, use StW (and theocracy?) for prophets, and then sling malevolent designs and omnescience?
Edit: actually first bulb pretty well has to be theocracy for the priest slots.
Why'd you choose the elohim?

[HidingKneel]

So a vague plan to tech to IP/ToD, use StW (and theocracy?) for prophets, and then sling malevolent designs and omnescience?
Edit: actually first bulb pretty well has to be theocracy for the priest slots.
Why'd you choose the elohim?

First part is right. Infernal Pact for the Grimoire, Divination for the Tower of Divination. That'll buy me two expensive techs: Divine Essence, and one of its prereqs. Probably Commune with Nature rather than Malevolent Designs: I'm not planning on staying in AV forever (can't build Altar layers while evil). Not sure how necessary theocracy will be. Spiritual means I can research lots of religions and build lots of temples, and easily swap in and out of civics that boost GP production (Pacifism, possibly Arete?) And the Altar itself unlocks priest slots. No idea how viable this will actually be... I don't have the patience to play SP games out far enough.

As for the Elohim... well, they're a civ I haven't played around with a lot. Let's see what we're dealing with here...

Starting tech: Ancient Chants. A bad tech to start with, unless you're in an unusual starting position where you want to beeline God-King before setting up farms.

Starting civic: We're one of the handful of civs that start in Pacifism, which is just awful. Fortunately, Thessalonica is Spiritual:



Unique units: The Devout is an Assassin replacement that can cast spells in the Life sphere. Potentially useful for fighting pyre zombies or hordes of skeletons, but I don't expect either in this game. Also, as I learned in XXI, you can get Mobility II on Priest units if you promote them from Devouts. Sounds pretty expensive, though. Monks, available at Priesthood, are strength 6, 2 move disciple units. Potentially quite nice with free experience from some Altar layers, but also fairly expensive at 80 hammers. If we do manage to get Divine Essence, Monks can be promoted to Immortals.

Elohim Palace: Gives +20 War Weariness (ugh), Spirit, Water, and Nature mana. Water mana will be useful if we want to expand into a desert. Nature is situational at best. Spirit has the best chance to be useful. It doesn't do anything for us in the early game. It gives a small passive bonus to GP production (5%), which won't matter at all until we get a GP farm going.
Spirit I gives units Courage, which is a small bonus (not such a big deal now that Vampires summons no longer inspire fear). Spirit II is quite good, adding happiness and culture to any city it's cast in. And Spirit III could be quite useful, granting a huge bonus to GP production.

Unique buildings: Chancel of Guardians, available at Priesthood, is an 80 hammer building which adds 25% defense and a small chance of granting units the "Defensive" promotion. Unlikely that we'll build that anywhere. Much better is the Reliquary, a Monument replacement that gives +2 culture, +1 unhealth, +1 Great Prophet points, and a free Spirit Guide promotion to all units built in the city. Definitely going to want one of these in any city that's going to be pumping military. Monuments are usually an inefficient way of getting culture in FFH, but this building might make it worthwhile. Especially since we need to make generating Great Prophets a priority.

Hero: Corlindale, available at Fanaticism. One of the best heros, because he starts with Channelling III. That means I can make him a twincasting archmage if I want. Or I can teach him Spirit III (he starts with Spirit I) and use him to boost my GP production by 50% without having to crawl all the way to Strength of Will. The tricky thing about Corlindale is that he starts with 0 strength. Which I believe means that he can be taken out by any enemy assassin that gets in range.

World Spell: Sanctuary. This will keep enemies out of my territory for 14 turns. General consensus is that this is an awesome worldspell, but I'm not sure I agree. Certainly useful, but not as effective a deterrent as something like March of the Trees.
With March, nobody attacks you because they know that doing so means they lose their army. With Sanctuary, all they lose is initiative. Which might make it quite effective at warding off an Illian PoW rush (since the Priests of Winter are slow, and the Illians really need to hit someone with them while they're still relevant). Less likely to be useful against the Hippus, who can afford to threaten us and then just gallop off to harass someone else.

Civ Trait: Tolerant will unlock the unique buildings/unique units of any other civ, provided that I can capture one of their cities. This ability has the potential to be very strong or completely useless, depending on what (if anything) I manage to grab. Note that "unique units" does not include heros (and I can't build the Illian rituals), but surprisingly "unique buildings" does include Palaces. So I might have the option to replace the mediocre Elohim Palace by something awesome. More on this next time.

Leader: Thessalonica is Spiritual/Industrious. Spiritual is my favorite trait. Should synergize well with the Altar strategy (note to self: this only works if you actually build Altar layers ): both increase the power of Disciple units, and half-price temples -> more priest specialists -> more great prophets. Industrious gives a bonus to worker production (which is quite nice, because everyone needs lots of workers), doubles production speed of Forges (which will be worth building eventually), and helps us chase wonders. Most important of those, for us, will be the Infernal Grimoire: without it, the plan falls apart.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves... this game is just getting started. First order of business is to figure out what to do about the Calabim worldspell...



Hmm. Well, nice to get that out of the way.

[Qgqqqqq]

So originality, heroes, worldspell and traits?
(I did like the post, just trying to figure out what put Elohim in front for you )

[GreyWolf]

I believe that Corindale, as well as other 0 str units, like Workers, are not targeted by assassins. Can anyone check it? I would, but I don't have access to civ4 now.

[HidingKneel]

So originality, heroes, worldspell and traits?
(I did like the post, just trying to figure out what put Elohim in front for you )

Well, they weren't in front... Alexis was my first pick. I've been wanting to try Thessalonica for a while now, though. And I wanted a spiritual leader for an Altar run, and there weren't many (any?) other Spiritual leader in the pile we were picking from.

I believe that Corindale, as well as other 0 str units, like Workers, are not targeted by assassins. Can anyone check it? I would, but I don't have access to civ4 now.

Tested it, and you're right. Very good to know.

Also tested that Altar pieces don't disappear or anything if I convert to AV... they're still there, so I can continue building the Altar after converting back.

[GreyWolf]

Keep in mind, however, that if he happens to gain strength points though effects like Stoneskin, Strong etc. he becomes vulnerable.

[Tasunke]

I believe that the only two temple types with increased production from Spiritual are

1) Pagan Temple

and

2) Temple of the Hand (Illian only-> which is funny since Auric isn't spiritual xD [Cha/Def in FFH, Cha/Arc in EitB])


Perhaps if Thessolonica captured an Illian city then the latter could become relevant, but virtually what this means is that only the Pagan Temple is affected by Spiritual.

-> Honestly I think that the larger temples are too useful to be affected by the trait, so I believe it is working as intended ... I had considered changing Spiritual to include all temples but then decided that it would be too powerful, at least with the current incarnations of the temples.

[HidingKneel]

I believe that the only two temple types with increased production from Spiritual are

1) Pagan Temple

and

2) Temple of the Hand (Illian only-> which is funny since Auric isn't spiritual xD [Cha/Def in FFH, Cha/Arc in EitB])


Perhaps if Thessolonica captured an Illian city then the latter could become relevant, but virtually what this means is that only the Pagan Temple is affected by Spiritual.

-> Honestly I think that the larger temples are too useful to be affected by the trait, so I believe it is working as intended ... I had considered changing Spiritual to include all temples but then decided that it would be too powerful, at least with the current incarnations of the temples.

Huh? No, it affects all temples, and always has.