Caution: Brainstorming in progress (Spoilers!)

[HidingKneel]

So, this is the point normally where I'd give a civ overview, run through the uniques, try to judge which will be useful. But, well, we've both been around the block before, and I don't want to spend a lot of time repeating stuff we both know. Do you want that, or should I just skip it for now?

Despite playing an embarrassingly large number of FFH games, I still get things wrong quite often. So let me start us off:

We're playing as Perpentach of the Balseraphs.

Starting tech: Agriculture. Awesome.

Palace mana: Chaos, Air, Mind. Pretty decent. Mind mana rewards building lots of adepts, something we'll probably want to do anyway. Chaos and Air are pretty weak at the Channelling I level (though Chaos gives a small % chance that our units can be born mutated), but are useful once we get Mages, which we'll want to.

Worldspell: Revelry. Available at Festivals, gives us a double-length Golden Age. A solid contender for the best worldspell of all, IMO (Stasis and Warcry are pretty good, too).

Hero: Loki. Available from the start of the game. Can't fight, can't gain xp. We can use him as a nearly invincible scout, or keep him home casting Inspiration in our cities.

Unique units: So many.

a) Freaks. Available at Festivals. IIRC, they count as Tier I units that can be upgraded to anything, and they don't require any special buildings. So if want a huge army of adepts/hunters/horsemen/whatever, we just need a single mage guild/hunting lodge/stable/whatever, build freaks everywhere else, and upgrade (cheaply). Freaks are 40h quickspeed, so this is a bad deal if we want Swordsman, and not so bad otherwise. Freaks also start Mutated, and can be turned into Freak shows (culture/happiness/great bard points).

b) Mimic: Champion replacement. They get -1 strength but can steal promotions when they win combats. These are awesome in SP games because the AI will throw huge stacks of well-promoted units at you, and you can end up with some awesome mimics. Doubt they'll be so useful in a MP game.

c) Taskmaster/Courtesan: assassin/shadow replacement with a chance to turn defeated enemies into slaves. Meh.

d) Harlequin: Rangers with -1 strength that can cast Taunt. Situational, but Plako used them to wreck DaveV/Ilios in FFH XXI.
The wiki says they also get Mind/Chaos magic with Channelling II... is this right, or out of date? Been too long since I've played the Balseraphs.

e) Puppeteer: mage replacement. All Balseraph arcane units have the ability to summon puppets, who can then move and then cast the same spells that the original unit could cast (with slightly weaker effect). This gives the Balseraphs an incredible amount of reach. Not much use until Sorcery (because Adepts can't do much with the extra reach), terrifying afterwards.

Unique buildings:

a) Hall of Mirrors. Expensive building that gives +1 happy and creates an illusionary copy of an enemy besieging the city. Not so useful.

b) Freak shows: built by freaks. Much better than monuments, and can be built (in the form of freaks) wherever we have hammers to spare.

c) Human/dwarf/elf/orc cages: we can turn slaves into these for extra culture and happiness, just like other civs with captured animals. Probably the best use for slaves if we get them, but not something that will be a prioritiy.

d) Arena: Training Yard replacement that lets us risk losing units for bonus happiness and xp (if the unit survives). Meh.

Finally, Perpentach himself:

Starts as Charismatic/Creative/Arcane. Creative is great in the early game, and Charismatic is pretty decent too. Arcane, not so much, unless we can hang onto it all the way to KotE. Perpentach is Insane, which means that every turn he has a small chance to get a new set of traits. This is potentially awesome, depending on what traits you get. Playing Perpentach will require us to stay flexible, to be able to take advantage of whatever the RNG throws us.

Overall: quite a strong combination, potential late-game powerhouse if we go down the arcane line (see: FFH XXI). Good starting tech, great worldspell. Between starting as Cre and the ability to build freakshows, culture should never be a problem for us.

Early game questions to think about: when to build Loki? When to fire the worldspell? For the latter, probably late. I could see a case being made for using it earlyish to try to win races, but with the Kuriotates in the game I doubt that's going to happen.

[Mardoc]

Despite playing an embarrassingly large number of FFH games, I still get things wrong quite often. So let me start us off:

That works. I'll chime in where I disagree or have more to add.. No comment = HK, you're brilliant .

Hero: Loki. Available from the start of the game. Can't fight, can't gain xp. We can use him as a nearly invincible scout, or keep him home casting Inspiration in our cities.

Loki is a very inefficient way to get beakers. He costs something like three Elder Councils or two adepts. I'd be shocked if we have that many extra hammers, that we want both EC and Loki. On top, Bob was implying not many barbs (at least on our side of the portal), so invincible scout may not be super valuable either (unless we want early info on what it'll take to get the prizes in the Black Fort). Honestly - I would push Loki very late this game, assuming circumstances are as currently expected.

The possible exception is very early game, if we have tons of extra hammers and nothing useful to spend them on. But I would hope to avoid that situation in the first place .

a) Freaks. Available at Festivals. IIRC, they count as Tier I units that can be upgraded to anything, and they don't require any special buildings. So if want a huge army of adepts/hunters/horsemen/whatever, we just need a single mage guild/hunting lodge/stable/whatever, build freaks everywhere else, and upgrade (cheaply). Freaks are 40h quickspeed, so this is a bad deal if we want Swordsman, and not so bad otherwise. Freaks also start Mutated, and can be turned into Freak shows (culture/happiness/great bard points).

Almost. They can't upgrade to Adept, and I'm pretty sure not to divine units either. Sword, Hunter, Archer (and later units from those). Still awesome - and even for Swordsmen, saving on Training Yards can make the wasted hammers worthwhile, even if you discount the value of Mutation promos. In my opinion, best use for Freaks is early-mid game garrison/happiness. Build them, skim the good promos for real units and the others for Shows.

d) Harlequin: Rangers with -1 strength that can cast Taunt. Situational, but Plako used them to wreck DaveV/Ilios in FFH XXI.
The wiki says they also get Mind/Chaos magic with Channelling II... is this right, or out of date? Been too long since I've played the Balseraphs.

Pretty sure it's out of date, and Taunt is the only thing they've got. Realistically, it depends on the opponents, if they go for fortifications or fight in the field. Also if we can get something awesome like an Illusionary Str 24 Earth Golem with Empower V (or whatever it was Plako wrecked us with that game). Obviously researching to Ranger tech is low priority.

e) Puppeteer: mage replacement. All Balseraph arcane units have the ability to summon puppets, who can then move and then cast the same spells that the original unit could cast (with slightly weaker effect). This gives the Balseraphs an incredible amount of reach. Not much use until Sorcery (because Adepts can't do much with the extra reach), terrifying afterwards.

Yep, awesome. A few things Adepts *can* do with them: Inspire two cities at once, weaken barbs for the adept to finish off for XP farming, save time on buffing everyone.

c) Human/dwarf/elf/orc cages: we can turn slaves into these for extra culture and happiness, just like other civs with captured animals. Probably the best use for slaves if we get them, but not something that will be a prioritiy.

Agreed, with a caveat. I found in XXXI that Slavery is actually a pretty good civic, despite conventional wisdom. It's easier to get to now, and as you know, if FFH provides anything in excess, it's food. I would recommend going for Slavery (probably combined with aristograrianism again), which will give us a trickle of orc slaves at least. The main limit on Slavery is happiness, since you tend to keep whip anger around - and hey, it solves that problem for us as Balseraphs.

Slavery is extra-value for us as Perpentach if we get one of the trait-swapping games, rather than the low-swap #. Makes it a lot easier to slap up a half-price building.

Playing Perpentach will require us to stay flexible, to be able to take advantage of whatever the RNG throws us.

In particular, we want Festivals and Mysticism and Code of Laws and Writing opened earlier than usual (and maybe other buildings); there are many buildings that are 'meh' at full cost and very nice at half cost.

Early game questions to think about: when to build Loki? When to fire the worldspell? For the latter, probably late. I could see a case being made for using it earlyish to try to win races, but with the Kuriotates in the game I doubt that's going to happen.

I'm not sure we even should build Loki. Worldspell - I like timing GA for the second civic swap, into midgame civics. Although we might not go that route this game, if we go for Slavery/Aristofarms, those can be pretty early and maybe even skip God King.

But somewhere around when we have 5-10 cities. And ideally one of them set up as a GPP farm, so we can convert world spell into permanent GA.

[Mardoc]

Gut says found in place.

Also says it's Mardoc's bedtime . So I'll see in the morning what you actually did.

[HidingKneel]

Turn 0 is here!

Decisions, decisions...

Here's what we can see:



Note: our settler started with "half" of the usual bonus (+1 movement and +1 visibility).

Corn and incense are clearly vital early tiles, especially since we start with Agriculture. I see three viable options:

1) Settle in place. This gets us a plains hill plant and sheep in our BFC.

2) Settle one tile west. Sheep and gold in the BFC.

3) Settle one tile east. Gets the oasis in our BFC (best tile for the very early game). Capital on river so we can build Deruptus there. More hills for mining later.

I suspect 2) is not the way to go. Not sure between 1) and 3). Going to sandbox it.

Thoughts?

[HidingKneel]

Ah, cross post.

Well, here's how the sandbox played out. This assumes no events, no trait swaps (losing Charismatic could have a big effect), no barbarians arrive, etcetera. Also assumes research path Calendar -> Exploration -> Chants -> Education (beelining Code of Laws).

Option 1: Settle in place
Turn 8: First worker completes.
Turn 12: Grow to size 2, complete first warrior.
Turn 15: Grow to size 3, Calendar completes.
Turn 16: Agrarian revolt.
Turn 18: Grow to size 4. Finish second warrior.
Turn 20: Grow to size 5.
Turn 22: Grow to size 6. Complete third warrior. Exploration completes.
Turn 26: Complete second worker.
Turn 27: Research Ancient Chants
Turn 30: Workers finish improving capital, can begin roading to second city site.
Turn 34: Settler completes.
Turn 39: Education completes.

Option 2: Settle east
Turn 9: First worker completes.
Turn 13: Research Calendar
Turn 14: Agrarian revolt.
Turn 15: Grow to size 2.
Turn 17: Grow to size 3.
Turn 18: First warrior completes
Turn 19: Grow to size 4.
Turn 20: Exploration completes
Turn 22: Grow to size 5. Second warrior completes.
Turn 24: Grow to size 6. Ancient Chants completes.
Turn 28: Second worker completes.
Turn 30: Workers finish improving capital, can begin roading to next city site.
Turn 37: Settler completes. Education researched.

So:

Settling in place gets our second city down three turns earlier, but puts us two turns behind in tech. Long-term, it lets the capital work sheep and one more farm (good with Aristocracy), but two fewer mines and no Deruptus. The oasis tile is good early but lousy later, which makes settling in place a bit better long-term.

I'm thinking your intuition was right.

[HidingKneel]

Turn 0 played!

Sent the starting scout to the SE, since that direction seems most likely to have good land to expand into. Found a possible city site already:



Settled the capital in place:



Build set to Worker, tech set to Calendar.

Decided to depart from my lazy sandbox plan and spend a turn working incense rather than corn. This will ensure that we get the Balseraph economic dominance started on the right foot:



Note: we are last in turn order. Sian and Suttree settled on T0, Serdoa did not. Not too surprising, since he has good reason to be careful about city placement.

[Mardoc]

Looks good. My first reaction was to question a CoL beeline, but on reflection it does look like a good choice here. The only tiles that are vital to improve are unlocked with Agri/Calendar, and we have a lot of fresh water around. Including the river your scout just found.

I'm slightly less happy about working the incense unimproved, but I haven't run any numbers. As long as it doesn't slow the worker, it's probably a good idea.

[HidingKneel]

Looks good. My first reaction was to question a CoL beeline, but on reflection it does look like a good choice here. The only tiles that are vital to improve are unlocked with Agri/Calendar, and we have a lot of fresh water around. Including the river your scout just found.

I just chose that tech path so we'd have some concrete figures to compare the two openings. Whether or not the beeline is a good idea: not sure yet, I'm guessing no (given that we'll be getting Education at around the same time as our second city).
Will have to play around in the sandbox once we've seen more of the land. All I can say for sure is that Calendar first is the way to go.

I'm slightly less happy about working the incense unimproved, but I haven't run any numbers. As long as it doesn't slow the worker, it's probably a good idea.

We get 6 hpt working the Corn, and 5 hpt working the Incense. So we could do:

9 Turns of Corn: gets us a worker and 4 overflow hammers.
5 turns of corn, 4 turns of Incense: gets us a worker and 12 extra beakers.
10 turns of Incense: gets us a worker; trades a turn of development for 40 beakers.

Ooh... turn is in. I should play it.

[HidingKneel]

Turn 1:

Our scout confirms that the spot I indicated earlier is, indeed, a pretty awesome city site:



Better than the capital, even. Those Wines make me think we're going to want Calendar -> Exploration -> Crafting.
Maybe Mining afterward, to take advantage of that gold to our west.

Our Warrior did a bit of scouting to the north:



We're awash in luxuries.

So, we haven't done an "opponent analysis" post yet, but my initial assumption was that Serdoa was favored to win this one, since he's the strongest player and he chose the strongest civ (among those in play). But if he doesn't settle any cities, I think we can beat him.

[HidingKneel]

Note also: we've got two Mana nodes already. And we're the Balseraphs .