OPPONENT ANALYSIS
Finally, wrote down my thoughts on the players and their civ choices. Here’s the list of picks again as a reminder:
- Aurorarcher picked
Volanna (Aggressive/Creative) of the Svartalfar over Shekinah of the Sidar and Jonas of the Clan
- BING_XI_LAO picked
Ethne the White (Creative/Organized) of the Elohim over Cardith of the Kuriorates and Amelanchier of the Ljosalfar
- coldrain picked
Flauros (Creative/Financial) of the Calabim over Arturus of the Khazad and Tebryn of the Sheaim
- Ginger* picked
Furia the Mad (Charismatic/Barbarian/Raiders) of the Balseraphs over Auric of the Ilians and Cassiel of the Grigori
- mackoti picked
Varn Gosam (Spiritual/Creative/Adaptive) of the Malakim over Beeri of the Luchuirp and Charadon of the Doviello
- xist10 picked
Dain the Caswallawn (Philosophical/Arcane) of the Amurites over Tasunke of the Hippus and Falamar of the Lanun.
I’ll go through every player in the listed order and give my thoughts on the leader/civ/tech choice and possible position in game conclusion. Not to be taken too seriously
Aurorarcher: Volanna (Aggressive/Creative) of the Svartalfar
Svaltalfar is one of the two Elven civs in Erebus, who have movement and combat bonus in forests. Their workers move at double speed in forests too, but have -10% work rate which rounds up to make them a bit slower compared to normal workers. Additionally elvish workers can build any improvements on forest tiles, not just lumber mills. This synergizes extremely well with Fellowship of Leaves religion, which allows normal forests to grow ancient (1+ food in addition to normal forest benefits). I would have expected Aurorarcher to found the Fellowship, but Mackoti was able to snipe it first.
Svaltalfar has the sinister-trait that gives all recon units +1 attack strength. This bonus is very powerful, as now a simple scout can attack as efficiently as a warrior, but has bonus against animals and 2 movement. Same goes for hunters: they are now as good as an axeman/swordsman on the attack, but with 2 movement. Combine this with elven double movement in forests, and the Svaltalfar become the fiercest fighters in forest terrain. Volanna (AGG/CRE) adds a free combat promotion to all land units, further boosting combat abilities of the recon line. With apprenticeship civic (+2 xp on units), Aurorarcher can promote scouts/hunters to shock or subdue animal immediately. Very scary indeed.
Svaltalfar unique units are illusionist and Nyxkin. Illusionist is a regular mage except it turns all summoned units to illusions: these summons can’t kill enemies, but redline them instead on a victory. The benefit of illusions is that if they win a combat, they heal automatically to 100% health. This allows for great stack defenders, but is less useful on the offense. Nyxkins are horse archer replacement that start with elven promotion and don’t need horses to build (and the elves riding a leopard looks funny too). The “true unique unit” is assassins: They benefit from the +1 recon unit attack strength too. Wielding a mage army against Svaltalfar is extremely risky for this reason. Their hero unit, Alazkan the Assassin, is a stronger assassin and has a special equipment that creates a temporary illusion copy of the unit that uses it. Elves are blocked from building chariots or catapults, so they have to rely on recon or horse archers for mobility and mages/priests for collateral damage.
Overall, Aurorarcher’s choice of leader and civ is probably the scariest military threat in the early game. Sinister scouts or hunters will run circles around you and outmanoeuvre through forests, and with a bit of experience, can pick shock promotions to counter the most used early game military units (warriors + axemen). I’d assume he picked calendar for free starting tech, for accelerated growth (agrarianism is counterproductive to elves, unless you place farms on grassland tiles without forests). It would make sense for to go for Fellowship of Leaves religion to grow ancient forests, and also get Priests of Leaves to plant new forests too (as I did in previous PBEM with the Ljosalfar). So what I expect form Auroirarcher is an army of assassins and hunters, supported by fawns and Priest of Leaves. If the game lasts longer, then maybe also illusionists will come into play. As a player, Aurorarcher is one of the veterans of the mod and has shown great ability to build a strong economy and then pivot into military domination. I’d rate him the likely winner of this game.
BING_XI_LAO: Ethne the White (Creative/Organized) of the Elohim
Elohim has been buffed quite a bit in EitB: They receive free march promotion on land units and life II spell does more damage to undead units, which the Elohim has easier access to. The main benefit of the civ is tolerant trait, which allows producing unique units and buildings of the original owner when conquering cities. If Bing, for example, captured a city form me, he could build governor’s manors and vampires himself (although his vampires couldn’t use all of the Calabim abilities). If you build palace to a captured city, it turns to the type of the original civilization. This is useful in swapping around mana types, as each palace gives a different combination (Amurite palace for example has great mana types). Another bonus is the Elohim world spell: it blocks all hostile units from entering borders for a limited time (maybe 15 turns on standard speed? Need to double check).
Unique building (reliquary) replaces monument and grants +1 great prophet points per turn for free, a slot for priest specialist and free spirit guide promotion to land units built in the city. Spirit guided units transfer their accumulated experience to a random unit upon death, which is very useful for keeping highly promoted units in play. Another UB, chancel of guardians is relatively expensive and less useful (chance to give defensive promotion to land units). Elohim unique unit is a monk, which is similar to horse archer in strength, but is unlocked by priesthood and is counted as a disciple unit. It is useful as stack defender supporting a religious strategy, where you go for an early religion with powerful priests. Second UU, the Devout, replaces assassin and doesn’t behave like one (no marksman promotion). Instead, it can enter any borders and sanctify (reduce armageddon counter) or use destroy undead spell. Very powerful against civs or religions that rely on undead units. Finally, hero Corlindale is an earlier (but weaker) archmage, granting access to level III spells at fanaticism tech, instead of Strength of will.
Creative and organized as traits are decent, especially if the map is large. Maybe the best part of ORG is the ability to build command posts at military strategy, instead of using great commanders to do it. Bing as a player seems to be someone who doesn’t construct elaborate long term plans centered around great people bulbs or FFH2 synergies. In my opinion, Elohim in particular needs a religious strategy to truly shine, and has a potential to do it efficiently with the added priest points and specialist slot from reliquary. The world spell should be useful in any case. If this game goes similarly as previous, I think Bing will stay in his part of the world and build an army of spirit guided archers/axemen until someone invades him and forces the world spell out. I actually hope that he has realized how good early religion and priesthood can be and uses prophets for bulbs/shrines. For a starting tech the only choice is mysticism for God-king. Maybe this time he remembered to switch to it immediately. Expected position in the game: survive for a longer time, but ultimately not in contention for victory. 5th or 6th, depending on neighbour luck.
coldrain: Flauros (Creative/Financial) of the Calabim
I already discussed the strengths of Calabim in the beginning of the thread. And thanks for Shallow_thought for pointing out some of the many adjustments done in EitB. But to recap shortly: Calabim is considered one of the most powerful civs in vanilla FFH2. This is due to Governor’s manors, which add
+1 production for each unhappy face in city (note: not only excess unhappiness) and vampires who can eat population to gain loads of experience without having to fight. Vampires also have access to body and death spells, without need for arcane techs. Secondary unique unit Moroi is also very good: replaces axeman and can use burning blood ability to gain +1 movement and +20% combat strength, albeit with a risk of turning into barbarian. This can be nullified with law adept. World spell has been locked behind feudalism, which removes population from all opponent cities and adds +2 pop to all Calabim ones. Feudalism also unlocks vampires, so this is the ultimate target to get. But it is relatively expensive and requires a bunch of other techs first. However, when I finally get there, my military strength will explode very quickly. The only other things I could need for world domination through vampires are collateral damage units (mages, some priests or catapults) and supporting spell casting (adepts for haste, loyalty, etc.). Maybe iron weapons too, but it should not be too critical to get. Regarding the current status of the game: I’m about to finish code of laws and start building governor’s manors. After this I’m expecting to be clearly #1 in production and turn this into faster expansion via settlers or a significant military force with Morois at bronze working. And how am I compared to the rest of the competition as a player? Based on how previous PBEM went, I would rate myself in the top 3 players to win. Or at least top 4, if Mackoti is not rusty after the break in EitB. It seems I’m quite strong in building an early game economy, but need more experience to turn that into a winning position. Maybe I’m still too used to single player, where on higher difficulties the games tend to be long and you almost always build in the early game and start fighting later (exceptions exist of course).
Ginger*: Furia the Mad (Charismatic/Barbarian/Raiders) of the Balseraphs
Belseraphs are also one of the strongest, or at least versatile, civs in FFH2/EitB. They have a bunch of unique units and abilities, although spread around the tech tree. Furia is not their strongest leader in my opinion, but since we had random block for selection process, I think Ginger/Miguelito wanted the civ anyway. Early game, Belseraphs usually want festivals as fast as possible: It unlocks world spell of Reverly, which starts a free golden age. Good to combine with an early/mid game civic swap or push for wonder, like Bone palace. Secondly, festivals allows training Freaks, who are strength 3 melee units that can use bronze weapons (so stronger than warriors, but more expensive to build). More importantly Freaks start mutated and can build freak shows in cities. Mutation provides a random assortment of promotions, most of which are beneficial in some way. Best ones include +1 strength or attack, blitz, mobility, magic resistance and amphibious. Negatively promoted freaks can be sacrificed to build freak shows in newer cities (+1 happiness, culture and bard points, can add slaves of different races as additional cages for additional happiness). And if Freaks were not good enough already, it only costs 5 gold to upgrade it to a swordsman too. Other unique units are Taskmaster (assassin with chance to create slaves form combat), Courtesan (same as Taskmaster, but replaces late game unit), Harlequin (weaker ranger, who can taunt enemies to attack the tile it is on) and Mimic (weaker champion, who copies promotions from defeated enemies). One could say that Belseraphs is a real circus of tricks and marvels to behold.
Another trick in the travelling circus is puppets. All Belseraph arcane units can summon a puppet, which copies all of the caster’s promotions. In practice this means that all arcane units have a higher range to spells as they can summon puppet first, and it can move further and cast one of the spells of the host. This would be even more powerful with summoner leader, but Furia thankfully is not. Downside of puppetry is that they have penalty to spells that can be resisted (rust, charm etc.).
I already mentioned the national hero, Loki. He is strength 2 movement 2 arcane unit that is practically immortal: Loki will always retreat successfully from combat, as long as it is not surrounded or blocked to a corner. I checked in single player to see if EitB had changed anything. I was worried as Loki starts with channeling II, which could in theory give him access to mutate or charm spell. Charm would be very annoying to deal with early game, as it can apply charmed promotion to hostile units. Thankfully, in my test, Loki can’t gain experience at all. Not from combat or civics either. So the best he can do is cast inspiration, chaos blade and summon puppet. He can also enter closed borders and disrupt and spy neutral or friendly cities. Disrupt can even convert low cultured cities form the original owner. Huh, now that I think of it, I need to check if this applies to barbarian cities too since Furia starts at peace with them.
I would expect Ginger/Miguelito to take full advantage of Freaks in this game: Upgrade beneficially mutated ones to swords and throw the rest to freak shows. CHA makes it slightly easier to upgrade adepts to mages, I should watch out for that. Belseraph palace gives air mana for maelstrom collateral spell, but requires mages so not a threat in the early game. Raiders trait grants free commando promotion, so better not let them enter my road network during war. I’m curious to see how Ginguelito will treat barbarians as they start at peace. Maybe expand faster and build less garrison units? This team won the previous game with early mage strategy and I wasn’t their first lunch only due to my world spell providing enough time to build a proper Fellowship of leaves priest army. I think they will do well in this game with the strong civ and abilities, but BAR trait will slow down research a bit. I think animal husbandry was the chosen free tech, which could be a mistake if the starting area was good for agrarianism instead. Expected outcome in game: Top three definitely. A lot depends on if I can reach Vampires before they or someone invades me. I’m somewhat worried that the high potential of my civ paints a target on my back.
Mackoti: Varn Gosam (Spiritual/Creative/Adaptive) of the Malakim
Malakim has great synergy with religions that have priests with combat abilities. Spiritual trait allows free swapping of religions and civics, and gives free mobility + potency promotion to disciple units (including priests). The true power is tied to the world spell: It gives a free priest of your state religion to each city and grants them experience based on how many converted cities you have. Some priests are very good for combat, and there’s really no reason to have as many of them as possible. The best ones are (and associated religion):
- Ritualist with ring of fire collateral spell (Ashen Veil)
- Cultist with tsunami (Octopus Overlords)
- Priest of Leaves with summon tiger and bloom (Fellowship of Leaves)
- Confessor with bless (Order)
Rest of the religions don’t benefit from mass produced priests that much. I would have bet for mackoti to go for Runes of Kilmorph as first religion for the economic bonuses, and switch to Ashen Veil or Octopus later. Turns out, he went straight to Fellowship of Leaves, and maybe plans to stay in it for a long time? Reading the older games, he seems to appreciate the Leaves hero Kithra Kyriel. And gaining a bunch of PoLs with the world spell can be quite good. I have hunters already, so I’m not worried about this at all. The downside of being non-elvish with Fellowship is that you can only build lumbermills on ancient forests. Still great tiles to work, but you can’t bloom forests everywhere.
Unique units are Lightbringer and camel archer. The former is an early game disciple unit with free sentry promotion and can be upgraded along the religious line. Camel archer is just a horse archer without needing strategic resources. All Malakim units move faster in desert and gain + 1 commerce on desert terrain as a bonus. Floodplain areas are quite rich for this reason. National hero I forgot as it is never built (too late game and inconsequential). Unique building is the desert shrine, which is slightly improved pagan temple (+2 xp on disciple units). Leader traits are good, and CRE can be swapped away with adaptive to something else every 75 turns or so.
Mackoti seems like a veteran of FFH2/EitB so I expect him to do well, even after a break. Looks like he is looking for using the world spell on Fellowship of Leaves, and maybe go for hidden paths for Kithra. Not sure what he plans to do with adaptive, maybe pick raiders for even more free promotions on the priests? I’d assume he will go for early priesthood or even bulb it with a great prophet. Free tech must have been mysticism (only choice) for God-king. He could also go for early Bone palace (free golden age) as it is unlocked on the path to priesthood. Expected outcome in the game: Top 3. Great chance for a win too, if closest neighbour(s) is not aware of the world spell. Aurorarcher of Svaltalfar is also a natural counter to a Fellowship Malakim, interesting situation if they are neighbours.
Xist10: Dain the Caswallawn (Philosophical/Arcane) of the Amurites
I wrote an analysis on the other Amurite leader in PBEM LVI, but I’ll write some of the overlapping information here anyway. Amurites is the best civ for arcane endeavours, but the challenge is to get to mages early enough. Wizards are their mage replacement and start with spell staff promotion, which can be broken to allow second round of spell casting. Amurite palace provides very strong mana types (fire, body, metamagic), so wizards can pick up some valuable spells regardless if mana nodes are available on the map. And if there are limited amount of nodes, metamagic can be used to swap their type anyway. Normally wizards would be unlocked quite late, but EitB changes some of the great sage bulb paths, so sorcery can be double-bulbed directly after only one arcane mana tech (necromancy, divination, alteration or elementalism). This is how team Miguelito/Ginger was able to reach sorcery so fast in PBEM LVI. Technology is not the only obstacle to getting wizards, they need to be upgraded from experienced adepts. Amurites have tools for this too: UB grants extra xp on adepts based on the amount of different mana types connected, and world spell gives xp based on the amount of improved mana nodes in the world. World spell also blocks others from using any spells for 14 turns on quick speed, so best use might be to take down the most threatening arcane competitor with its help. If I reach Vampires in this game and have time to feast with them, I’m slightly less vulnerable to the Amurite world spell: Vampires are great fighters on their own, even if their body and death spells are temporarily blocked. If xist10 doesn’t go for wizards (unlikely), he can get Firebows, which are longbow replacements with the ability to cast fireballs. They need enough xp for promotions though, and aren’t arcane units to get the bonus from UB.
National hero is Govannon, who is unlocked at Arcane lore, just after sorcery. He can teach level 1 spells to any combat unit, theoretically changing any ordinary melee/ranged/recon/mounted/disciple unit into sort of an adept. Priests can eventually learn level 2 spells of the taught mana sphere, but priesthood is unlikely research target before wizards. Leader traits are perfect for quick wizard strategy: Arcane makes it faster to level up adepts and philosophical enables faster great sages to bulb your way to sorcery. These traits however give very little in the early game (except cheaper elder councils), so it takes a bit of time to get the economy going. One additional benefit of early adepts is the use of floating eyes (metamagic lvl 1 spell): This is similar to a BtS airship recon flight, very handy in exploration and keeping an eye on neighbour’s army movements.
Xist10 is a new player in FFH2/EitB but has DaveV as a veteran lurker to assist. I think they will go for a similar wizard strategy as Miguelito went for in previous game. Philosophical could get there even faster, very scary if xist10 pulls it off successfully. I need to explore with the hunters to see if the Amurites are anywhere close. If they are, maybe I need chariots or even assassins before researching feudalism for Vampires. As with other civs with ancient chants as nominal starting tech, they must have chosen mysticism as the free tech. In total, three great sages have born so far in this game, at least one of them must be from xist10. Expected outcome in the game: Top 4, but better if early enough wizards manage to eliminate a neighbour.
Fake edit: Well that was 4+ hours well spent writing while listening to music
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