FFH II Adventure I: The Grim (and incomplete) Tale of Cacame

[Bobchillingworth]

A foreword / forewarning: I'm basically copying & pasting this report from my notes I typed up a couple weeks ago, and working from memory for everything else. My post-facto (I think that's Latin) comments are in [brackets].

Also, I apologize for the horrifically low-quality screenshots. I had quickly pasted them into my Word document report while playing the game, but they evidently barely survived the process of resizing, being transplanted to Paint, and then uploaded online. Hopefully you can still tell whatever is going on.

With that said, the report:

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Alright! It’s time to enjoy RB’s first FFH II Adventure!


Alas I must have picked up the wrong save somehow, because I found myself playing not as the lovely and charming Faeryl, but instead as CACAME AWEDMEDE, The Elven King of Dwarves! Sworn to avenge his murdered spouse, Cacame lives now for a single, burning desire- to rid the world of all things Elven!



So yeah I decided that I would add my own variant to the game- I intended to found Kilmorph, destroy any civilization following the Leaves, Good or otherwise, and never build any magic-users (mostly because the scoring system seemed like too much work to keep up with). I was going to try not building any elven units outside of settlers and workers, but that would have left me only with Paramanders, Priests, Soliders of Kilmorph, and the RoK heroes. Which would certainly be doable if the barbs didn’t wipe me out, but very slow without any collateral support.





lol opps sorry Beeri!

[Alas to the best of my recollection nothing ever came of this besides that the assassin murdered my scout]





First of the barb hordes. I was sure that Lizardmen wouldn’t attack workers (they usually just ignore them), but then I later lost two exposed workers to one, so I’m not sure what crazy barb logic they follow. Perhaps once they see a target, they lock onto it and ignore everything else.


Orthus spawned on turn 76 in the middle of nowhere; wouldn’t have been an issue even if he was right next to me, I had about 8 warriors, two cities, and could make a new warrior every turn or so in the capital.


[The barbarians plagued me for the entire game, and were far more of a threat than any of the AI ever posed. Towards the end of the game they were founding cities all over the entire map and constantly spamming me with axemen, chariots, and other crap.]





Awesome! Choosing the later option is basically a free spider / exp. You can even still keep working the mine!


[Seriously, why would anyone ever pay money in this event? Or lose a mine.]





Rawk. Or should I say… RoK? Heh heh alright shut up.


[Was there ever any doubt? The only religions that were ever founded were Kilmorph, and the Leaves & Overlords like 100 turns later. The AI was absolutely appalling throughout. It really needs those obscene Immortal or Deity bonuses to have even a prayer against someone who knows that they're doing.





The itsy-bitsy spider crawled up to Beeri’s way / Ate up all the golems, and generally ruined his day / Beeri cried for help but there was no one there / because he sucks so bad that the Gods didn’t even care.

[The stupid spider then died the next turn attacking a mud golem at 99.9% odds. I did manage to capture another the next turn though, who I this time sent to attack Arendal or whatever her name is. She refused to attack it even with her stacks of hunters, and kept marching strength 3 warriors right next to it, despite having recon units who could spot invisible. That spider lasted me until the end, getting to combat V + Mobility, and eating well over a dozen Ljsofar workers.]





Haha, this was great. I got an event that spawned a grave for me- I explored it, and then immediately got the same event again, on the same tile! EXPLORE IT AGAIN, CACAME HOLDS NOTHING SACRED





Yay free great bard. I stopped founding cities after my third for a long time, but I really didn’t need any others. My capital gets absolutely obscene production thanks to Arete, God King, and forest mines, so I set it to build the Mines of Gar-Dul, and then cranked out a ton of swords to back up Bambur. The barbs and AI civs would found all the cities I’d need.


Turn 170, Bambur has apparently been caught torturing enemy prisoners. I take this as a positive sign.


[Dammit, my minimap got cut off there. Ah well, you've seen the other two cities anyway. I'm sure that I could have easily played this game as an OCC, btw. For the vast majority of the game my capital ended up building everything of importance; the other cities mostly wasted time trying to build markets, temples, elder councils, etc. to justify their own maintenance fees. Also yes, I know that Bambur is a spell-caster, which I promised to not build. He's a Dwarf so he gets a pass.]





Okay, time to end this farce. This isn’t the largest army ever, and it’s certainly not going to win any race for first elimination, but that was never the point. The point is REVENGE! Cacame declares WAR. Death to the Elves! Long live the Dwarfs!

180, Hyrule or whatever falls. I keep it (in retrospect I might as well have razed it. Oh well)

187, Evermore falls, kept. I was held up for a while because Arendal had almost no roads, due to my one of my spiders eating over a dozen of her workers over the course of the last 50 turns or so.

191, Brutti is captured.

194, Dendron burned to the ground

On turn 202, a barbarian lizardman emerges from Clan territory to threaten the former rouge state of Straatus, now a proud beacon of Svartalfar freedom in a barely civilized world! Faced with incontrovertible evidence that the Clan has been harboring terrorist training camps, Cacame has no alternative but the declare WAR!


[This game was won long ago. Once I had iron weapons, swords, and Bambur the massacre that followed was merely a formality.]

Turn 204:







Again, obviously not setting any land-speed records for eliminating the first “Good” civ. If I had wanted to do that I could have just built like 15 scouts and rushed her capital. But where would the fun in that have been?





In 213, Cacame sends a delegation to offer his congratulations to fellow Dwarf King Beeri Brawl for managing to stay alive after almost 100 turns of crushing failure in his war with Alexis. Unfortunately, he forgot to open borders first and inadvertently declared WAR.





The King of Dwarves is dead, long live the King of Dwarfs!


[Beeri Brawl died as he lived: a halfwit who managed to never construct his hero nor use his worldspell.]





Ah crap, that’s what I get for burning too many cities. I’ve been completely mismanaging every city too, so they’re all going to starve down to about size 1. Such is life. Or in this case, death.


[Actually I only lost a couple pop in most towns, even without "Gaurdian of Nature" my cities had a lot of health from the forests, and so much production from RoK forest mines that building some emergency health buildings was trivial.]





217, Jonas goes to the great Warren in the sky. Haha, I’m just kidding, he actually went to Hell.


In 223, Cacame is bored, and so WAR is declared on the Calabim!



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And I'm sorry to say that this is where my notes, and report, end. I razed about half the Calabim cities without losing any units within the first few turns of the war, but I lost the will to go on before I could wrap up my conquest victory. The turns were really starting to tax my laptop and dealing with the 5,000 new barbarians popping up wherever I razed a city was really trying on my patience. It didn't help that my FFH time was increasingly occupied with PBEM I. For what it's worth, the game was clearly won, and I would have resigned in victory many turns ago if it had been a regular SP game. Alexis had no military left and was fading fast, while Ethne (Ethanol? Methane?) of the Blue Sissies had only warriors, maybe two farm tiles, and no roads. I think she was fighting a losing war with a single barbarian city.


Again, apologies for not playing this one to the end. I've had interest in sponsoring some of these Adventures myself, and I know that it doesn't reflect well if I can't even play the first through to completion. As for some final thoughts about the game, I probably well could have played using only Soliders of Kilmorph and Bambur, if I got a couple warriors out first to deter lizardmen and other riff-raff. I was kind of hoping for the Sidar and Varn for maximum Elven Carnage as well =) Ah well, I had fun regardless! Many thanks to the sponsor for taking the initiative on this!

[DaveV]

Again, obviously not setting any land-speed records for eliminating the first “Good” civ. If I had wanted to do that I could have just built like 15 [strike]scouts[/strike] warriors and rushed her capital. But where would the fun in that have been?

Erm, just following orders, sir!

[Bobchillingworth]

Haha, did you actually do that? I haven't looked at any of the other reports yet. Not a dig at you, I promise!

[haphazard1]

A fun variant, thanks for the report.

My Beeri did quite a bit better than yours -- he built Barnaxus and used his world spell at about 6 cities. But like yours he was dragged down by a long war with the Calabim, and eventually vampires ate the eastern half of his empire. I grabbed the western half -- only to stop the vampire menace, of course.

[Selrahc]

Good variant idea. Seems like you were kind of on autopilot for the game though, without anyone to really challenge you.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah. The strongest military I faced was Alexia's, and all she had were a pile of moroi. Which she enjoyed moving out of cities just before I attacked. My military never exceeded a main stack of about 8 swords + Bambur and later a stonewarden or two, joined at the end by a small group of assassins and the national hero unit. Honestly I probably could have blitzed through the entire map with just Rosier. Were the AI edited to not start with any workers? That might explain their utter inability to develop past tier II units (and only a handful of moroi and hunters at that).

[DaveV]

Were the AI edited to not start with any workers? That might explain their utter inability to develop past tier II units (and only a handful of moroi and hunters at that).

No need for editing - the only bonus unit given to the AIs at Monarch difficulty is one extra warrior. They don't start with a worker until Immortal. And yes, they really do need big production and upkeep bonuses to be competitive with an experienced player.

[Ilios]

Nice variant Bob, no little forests for your Dwelves!

[Square Leg]

Nice report Bob and I'm glad to see that you spiced things up with a variant of your own! A note on that Asassin event - although he is quite high attack strength he gets -50% city attack which either leaves him crippled and easy to pick off after he attacks a city - which is what he is programmed to do...