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

[Tasunke]

You are correct ... I am intrigued. I'd think if it was in the XML for each building it'd automatically be in the pedia, so maybe its some python at work here? Python is almost never accounted for in the Civpedia.

[HidingKneel]

Tolerance

Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service us.

So, what exactly am I up against here?

Auric Ulvin of the Illians. Unique buildings: Tasunke's already mentioned Temples of the Hand. While I'm all in favor of opening up some priest specialist slots, Temples of the Hand transform the terrain around a city into ice, which only the Illians can make use of. I'll pass. Other than that... they get Javelin Throwers as an Archer replacement (4/4 rather than 3/5). Units built in Illian cities start with Winterborn, which gives +10% bonus to fight on Ice or Tundra (yawn). Not much incentive to grab an Illian city... unless I want to build the Illian palace. Illians get fantastic mana (Ice, Enchantment, and Law). I could use Ice and Enchantment to give Corlindale Snowfall and Spellstaff. Just check out Pocketbeetle's FFH I thread to see how powerful that combo can be.

Dain the Caswallan of the Amurites. Unique buildings: Cave of the Ancestors (Pagan temple replacement that gives free xp to Arcane units). Not so useful unless I'm planning to amass a lot of mana and build arcane units, which I'm not. Unique units: Amurite mages are Wizards, which begin with Spellstaves. Amurite assassins are Chanters, who get escape and hide abilities. Amurites also get Firebows, which are pretty awesome. But all those units require large tech investments (Sorcery, Poisons, Bowyers) in directions I'm not planning to go. Once again, the only thing really appealing is the palace: Amurites get Metamagic, Body, and Fire mana. Possibly worth trading for (for Haste and Floating Eyes), provided that it doesn't interfere with my Tower of Divination plans.

Rhoanna of the Hippus No unique units, no unique buildings. Palace is even worse than ours. But capturing a Hippus city would be awesome. Why? Because any mounted unit we build there would get the horselord trait. Put a stables and/or siege workshop there, and it's almost as good as being the Hippus ourselves.

Flauros of the Calabim Vampires are among the best troops in the game. But they require a huge tech investment (Feudalism) in a direction we're not heading. Also, only Calabim vampires can feast. But Calabim cities would be great for other reasons. Governor's mansions are awesome, and breeding pits are a nice bonus. And Moroi could be handy.

And let's not forget the other guys:

Hyborem of the Infernals If everything goes according to plan, we'll be bringing Hyborem into the world. Hopefully he starts near us, and we can conquer him and take his stuff. The Infernal Palace is the best in the game. It gives Iron, Fire and Entropy Mana, eliminates war weariness in all cities, adds 50% production, and gives +1 gold, +1 science, +1 culture for every city running the state religion. Which for Hyborem is always AV... but I guess for us, that could be anything?

Basium of the Mercurians Unlikely that anyone will summon the Mercurians, given that someone would have to be under AI control. But it's possible... might even be us, since we've got more reason to head to Fanaticism than anyone. But if we did summon Basium, we could just ask him for a Mercurian city. Not that it would do us much good.... unable to build warriors and scouts. Mercurian palace is pretty good, with +40% military production and free Iron (along with Life and Earth mana). Almost surely not worth it.

So, how does this play out? The map is medium-sized (1248 land tiles). So I'm expecting rushes from the Illians (with their Priests of Winter) and the Hippus (especially with Yell0w at the helm). Fortunately, we're not the most attractive rush target: the Calabim start the game with a target on their back, captioned "kill me before I research Feudalism". And the Amurites also have the potential to become quite deadly later on. Though the Amurites ought to be pretty effective at fighting off the Illians: their worldspell could shut down Priests of Winter and Illian mages alike. Hopefully our worldspell will let us stay out of the fighting.

Power wise, I'd rate the civs as

Amurites < Elohim, Illians < Calabim, Hippus.

So, the plan is to get everyone to ignore us until the end of the game. If someone gets wise to us (maybe noticing that we just generated a bunch of great prophets in a row), we fire the worldspell and then complete a 1340 hammer ritual in 14 turns. Some details remain to be worked out .

[HidingKneel]

Alright... time to figure out how to actually win this thing.

Seems to me there are three bottlenecks:

1) Tech. We need Divine Essence (9179 beakers) and one of its prereqs (about 7000 beakers each). To get those done in a reasonable timeframe, we'll need to build tech-granting wonders.

2) Six great prophets. That's around 1900 GPP. Doable, but only if we get organized early.

3) The hammer cost of the final Altar layer: 1340 hammers.

1) and 2) run concurrently, so should aim to time them to come out simultaneously, and to start 3) after that.

So, in more detail, how are we going to manage this?

1) As already mentioned, we'll aim to build the two free-tech wonders: Infernal Grimoire and Tower of Divination. Those are expensive: 335 and 536 hammers, respectively. But nowhere near as expensive as the techs they'll buy us, and we also get them for 2/3 price thanks to our Ind trait. Of course, we'll first need the techs to qualify. Divination is 613 beakers (not so bad), while Corruption of Spirit and Infernal Pact are 1437 beakers each. Plus, I'll need to meet the prerequisites for whatever prerequisite I use for Divine Essence. As Q pointed out, Infernal Pact means I'll automatically meet the requirements for Malevolent Designs. But if I've got the time, I'd rather go to Commune with Nature via Fanaticism (another costly tech at 1724 beakers). That'll unlock Corlindale, and I'd rather have the ability to build druids than Beasts of Agares.

Grimoire should come first, since I might have competition for it. Decision of what to grab with the Grimoire will depend on how far along I am in generating prophets.

2) Six great prophets. Let's see what I can do about that:

Wonders:

Bone Palace gives 2 great engineer points and a free golden age. Golden age can double great person production. This could knock 9 turns off our our timetable, if we build it once our great person factory is up and running. Medium priority.

Dies Diei gives 2 great prophet points and lets me hire a priest. But the only way to build it is to sacrifice a great prophet... pretty much no way that will be worth it, unless I end up short of mana for the Tower of Divination.

Mercurian Gate gives 2 great prophet points. But those would go to Basium, not to me.

National Epic gives 1 great commander point and doubles the GP production in city. We'll want this early.

Prophecy of Ragnarok: adds 2 great prophet points, unlocks a priest specialist. Available at Philosophy, which is certainly on our tech path. Base cost of 335 hammers. Worth considering only if we've got hammers to burn.

Shrine of Sirona gives 2 great prophet points. Requires Righteousness. No way.

Shrine of the Champion gives 3 great prophet points. Requires us to build and then kill Corlindale. No way we're doing this on purpose; he's more useful for GP production alive (see below).

The Necronomicon: +2 great prophet points, unlocks two priest slots. Requires a prophet to build. Not worth it.

Buildings:

Asylum: Gives 1 great prophet point. Requires a substantial tech investment. Not worth it.

Pagan temple: Allows one priest specialist, gives bonus happiness with incense/religion. We get it for half price due to Spiritual. We'll want one of these in each of the cities we designate to produce great people.

Reliquary: adds one great prophet point, plus culture and free spirit guide promotion. Available right from the start. We'll want one in each of our great person cities.

Other temples: 80 hammers each, we get them for half price. Most unlock one priest specialist, Order and Empyrean give two. We'll want to build these in our great person cities, one for every religion we research. So temples of the Veil, at the very least. A good incentive to research other religions... if we've got the time.

Spells: Spirit III boosts great person production in a city by 50%. Corlindale just needs two promotions to learn this spell. Potentially extremely useful, if we can afford the beakers for Fanaticism.

Civics:

Republic gives +25% great person production. Very expensive to unlock, along a tech road we're not travelling.

Arete gives +20% great person production. We can only run Arete while our State Religion is Runes. Could be worth it... grab Kilmorph as our religion before Veil, run Arete until we're ready to research Infernal Pact. Arete could replace Fanaticism as a prereq for Commune with Nature.

Pacifism gives +50% great person production. We'll want to be in Pacifism once we've got our great person factories underway.

Theocracy enables unlimited priest specialists. Requires Religious Law, which is hugely expensive at 2299 beakers. Still, it'd make generating the prophets a lot easier, so worth considering if we end up with plenty of beakers.

Sacrifice the Weak: gives -20% great person production, but lets us easily run lots and lots of great people. Would synergize beautifully with Theocracy. Without Theocracy, we're unlikely to have enough priest slots for it to be useful. Also, in the same civic category as Pacifism: going from +50% to -20% would be hugely painful.

Events: There are events that give great prophets in exchange for ~50 gold. Getting one of these would be very helpful... five prophets would be much easier to generate than six. To maximize our chances, we'll want to get an event fund early and never let it drop too low, and make sure our alignment is either Good or Evil at all times.

I think we'll want three cities devoted to great prophet production. One of them can have the national epic, and produce prophets #2, #3, and #6. The other two can produce prophets #4 and #5. Prophet #1 will come cheap and can be generated anywhere.

3) How to speed up a 1340 hammer ritual?

First, we'll want to plan ahead: figure out what city the Altar will go in early, and make sure it has plenty of hammers. That'll serve a dual purpose: before unlocking the final layer, it should be our Heroic Epic city, pushing out wave after wave of disciple units with free xp. Also should probably be one of our great prophet cities, since the Altar itself unlocks priest specialist slots.

Civics: God King gives +50% hammer boost in the capital. Before Divine Essence comes in, we'll want to move the capital to our Altar city.

Buildings: A forge will give us another +25% hammer bonus, and Smelting will also improve the value of workshops, which might be worthwhile at that point. I can research Smelting once Divination is in, and then cash-rush a forge right when it's needed.

Wonders: The Celestial Compass boosts production of rituals by 50%. It's a 335 hammer wonder that I'll get for 2/3 price, and can build in another city. It requires a lot of tech, though: 1437 beakers for Astronomy, which itself requires 689 for Optics and 909 for Mathematics. This might be the best use for our beakers in the endgame, even if it only saves us a turn or two.

All things to be aware of. Early game, though, is by the standard playbook. I want to grab as much good land as I can and get an economy going. Things to pay attention to early: securing a good Altar city, getting up Reliquaries and Pagan Temples when I can spare the hammers, and making sure to grab at least three free mana nodes.

[HidingKneel]

Alright. Another turn played.

Scout located something interesting:



Looks like Q did a bit of editing on this map. That village could be a good source of early commerce. Or maybe I should just bring a warrior over and pillage it? That'd net me around 90gp on average... could be worth it, if it isn't convenient to grab it with an early city.

Other than that, not much to report. Still teching Agriculture, still building our first worker. Early game FFH is boring.

So let's talk about the late game instead. Specifically, the problem of building a 1340 hammer ritual.
I forgot one thing that could be useful in my earlier analysis: swapping to Arete could give a modest hammer boost.
So let's assume that I'm running God King, Arete, and Agrarianism in the endgame. Here's a potential site for the Altar city, just a little bit east of the capital:



Using just the tiles I can see, it looks like I can get 45 food, which will support a size 22 city.
That's enough to work the indicated tiles, hire 5 priest specialists (two from altar layers, one from pagan temple, one from Temple of Kilmorph, one from Temple of Veil), and one engineer specialist.

Altogether that will bring us 1 (from city site) + 1 (from palace) + 17 (from specialists) + 41 (from tiles) = 60 hammers.
Add +50% (from God King) and +25% (from Forge) and it's effectively 105 hammers per turn. That'll let me build the Altar in 12 turns, assuming that I overflow from a previous build (say, by cash-rushing a forge the turn before).

Maybe I can do slightly better if the tiles outside my vision are useful (say, if there's another hill). Or if I locate an even better spot for the city.

This also means I need a happy cap of at least 22. But that seems easy enough, especially if I run Religion. Assuming I've got Incense and Gems, I'll have at least 4 (base) + 1 (palace) + 2 (State religion) + 3 (Altar) + 3 (Temples) + 2 (Incense bonus in temples) + 1 (gems bonus in temples) + 1 (gems) = 17 happy faces, even before I start figuring in other luxuries or buildings I could add to the city (like Public Baths?)

Conclusion: 1340 hammers is quite achievable in a reasonably short time-frame. Probably even before I could get the Celestial Compass built.

[Merovech]

Why would you mine the pigs in the long run?

[HidingKneel]

Why would you mine the pigs in the long run?

Choice between 3 food and 3 hammers... 3 food would be better if it could support enough population to give more than 3 hammers. But unless I've got another priest slot or another mine to work, the hammers are better (once I'm fully grown, of course. The pigs would be pastured until very late).

Another question is: how exactly do I plan to get 4 food and 1 hammer out of those plains tiles? Forgot to subtract the hammer from Agrarianism... so my hypothetical output should be revised down to 56 base hammers. That'll take 13 turns instead of 12.

Oh, and that pigs tile would actually give one more food than I indicated...

[Qgqqqqq]

Don't forget health. For generating GP, have you considered a two part StW growth spurt and mass-priest starvation factory? Or is Theo too costly?

[Qgqqqqq]

Looks like Q did a bit of editing on this map. That village could be a good source of early commerce. Or maybe I should just bring a warrior over and pillage it? That'd net me around 90gp on average... could be worth it, if it isn't convenient to grab it with an early city.

Oh and this is a feature of the script. I didn't add any improvements.

[HidingKneel]

Don't forget health. For generating GP, have you considered a two part StW growth spurt and mass-priest starvation factory? Or is Theo too costly?

2300 beakers on top of Infernal Pact? Too costly. The hope would be to finished with the Prophet generation at that point. I think it should be doable, provided that I get my Temples built in a timely fashion and run Pacifism throughout the game (note that time spent in StW generates GPP at about half the rate of time spent in Pacifism).

So, if I was to try this in a 1-player game, I might be looking at a tech path of approximately something like this:

Agriculture -> Calendar -> Mysticism -> Exploration -> Crafting -> Mining
Education -> Code of Laws -> Way of the Earthmother -> Philosophy -> Writing
Masonry -> Construction -> Warfare -> Sanitation -> Knowledge of the Ether
Corruption of Spirit -> Divination -> Infernal Pact -> Bronze Working -> Smelting -> Arete

Adding other basic techs (AH, Fishing, Sailing, Hunting) if they seem useful.

That's assuming I never need any military. In a more realistic situation, I probably want Bronze Working much earlier, maybe HBR (for chariots). Add Military Strategy if I think I can snag the GC (which I'd use for a Golden Age). Later on, Priesthood would be good (monks built from Altar City), and Fanaticism would unlock Corlindale. But if I was just trying to win the game as fast as possible, I think the above would be a decent roadmap. Possibly with some juggling around: Military Strategy and Infernal Pact are techs that I'm racing other civs for.

Wonder-wise, the Grimoire is essential, and the Bone Palace would be quite useful (I'd want to get three Temples of Kilmorph up first, to maximize GPP production during the Golden Age). And several national wonders (National Epic and Tower of Divination are essential; Heroic Epic and Deruptus too useful to ignore).

[HidingKneel]

Revisions based on reality:

Will need Bronze Working much earlier to clear the jungle south of the proposed altar city site.
Code of Laws doesn't seem like it will do me much good early on; there's just not enough farmable land. Sounds like a good plan eventually, but Construction should come first. Will need to figure out some way of getting commerce in the meanwhile... maybe cottages? And both Fishing and AH should come early: I've already got Fishing and AH resources in the BFC of my capital.

Another turn played. Not much to report. Found another curious thing out there:



This one's just a cottage, but it's built on a forest. Should keep that tile and nourish it.