FFH Adventure 7: Beeri brawls. And brawls. And brawls some more.

[DaveV]

It will take me a while to sort through all my screenshots, so I'll start with the end:



This game was an exhausting grind pretty much from start to finish. Here's why:
- Auric Ulvin. My hatred for him has grown even more after this game. It turns out that the pathfinding algorithm will move your units right through the blizzards that he leaves like dog turds all over the map. So I couldn't use automove for fear of my units arriving damaged at their destination. When I finally conquered his land it was, of course, an unusable expanse of glacier.
- Hyborem. He spawned right next to my borders, and there were enough evil civs in the game losing units that he had an enormous army.
- The FFH magic system. If you only have a few units that can cast Haste or Regeneration, you have to pile up all your units to receive the boost, then move to the attack. It requires a lot of concentration and double checking for stray units. I typically played one war turn per session to avoid burnout, and I still burned out.

[DaveV]

Chapter 1: peaceful expansion.

The first few turns were a race to pop huts. The AIs had a big advantage because of their bonus starting units, but I managed to snag a few:



I made sure to move onto Letum Frigus so the Illians or Amurites couldn't grab bonuses from it:


The mutation event gave my scout an extra move, helpful for exploration:


I also popped some lairs, here for a bag of cash:


And then had to spend some of it to keep my capital from getting -1 health:


I followed my usual strategy of market->forced merchant to keep my early economy going, and ended up with a great merchant. I used him to bulb horseback riding. Boar riders are terrible, but chariots are the best combat unit I'll have until the very late game.


The AIs tend not to pop lairs and graveyards in their borders, so I did it for them. If bad guys pop, the AIs have to deal with them.


Most powerful civs. Unsurprisingly, I'm not on the list.


I finally had a spare unit to pop the graveyard from turn 84. These are dangerous to leave around, since a barb unit can summon skeletons from them.


I thought it was worth paying some money to drive the AC down:


Step 1 of the true Troll King's agenda. Note: the units are summoned during Auric's turn, then get to move before any player whose turn comes before Auric's. Since the player is always first in turn order, he will always be double moved by these clowns. This usually results in the wolf riders eating a couple of my workers, which I was fortunate enough to avoid in this game. Morr'tebio is definitely threatened, though. Spoiler: it survived.


Midgame civics, which make my ongoing culture problems even worse:


With eight cities, it's time to pop my world spell:


It took me four turns to ferry them all to the capital:


Events give me a free great prophet to go with my low-odds engineer. Thank you very much, RNG!


I used the engineer for a bunch of beakers toward Smelting:


And settled the prophet:


More free money:

[DaveV]

Chapter 2: barb cities and floating eyes

I always thought these crime rate events were completely meaningless, but apparently there are some other events that can only happen for cities with a high crime rate.


Step 2 of the Troll King's agenda. I didn't screenshot the turn where he cast Stasis, but this is me not researching or building anything


Sabathiel sent an impressive stack to take Zbolub, but didn't account for Snowfall.


Falamar killed one of the goblin archers with a Lunatic, so I killed the other one and cleared the fort.


Not all my random events were good:


Step 3 of the Troll King's master plan to annoy me:


After some shuffling of tiles, none of my cities were starving:


Another great engineer, on top of the ones the capital was cranking out:


I poached Zbolub from under the nose of both Sabathiel and Falamar:


And followed up with Nininsnal:


Popped a lair in Sabathiel's land:


I Sanctified a city ruins for -1 AC, since it's getting perilously close to Blight (note that a second, yellow, Hyborem has spawned). I made a huge mistake up here when Falamar cleared the barb city, then lost it to a counterattack and I wasn't in position to snipe it from him.


After finishing Sorcery, I sent out some Floating Eyes to check out the competition:






Another Mutation event gave me a super warrior:


Lizardmen event (I went with the lizards):


More free money:

[DaveV]

Interlude: turn 200 progress report and more map exploration












Healing salve. Woot.


And Valledia casts her Troll Queen spell. At least I'm not in the middle of a war.


More free money.


-1 health. Thank you sir, may I have another.


My metamagic adept can't send his eyeball buddy out for exploration, but can still pop lairs. At least I know where the Pool of Tears is (in the middle of Varn's territory).


A second round of exploration gives me Supplies. Meh.

[DaveV]

Chapter 3: dawn of war

Os-Gabella finally decided to break out of one city challenge mode by taking one of Sabathiel's. You can see my army at the bottom of the screen. I was setting up to attack the Sheaim anyway, and this seemed like too good a chance to miss. Thanks to culture, my catapults could reach the city. You know the drill: the combat log is read bottom to top, right to left. I attacked with a lot of adepts because they were taking forever to gain XP passively. It was worth losing a few if it meant acquiring some mages.




Here are some of the survivors:


And then Blight hit.


A routine city garrison for Varn:


I timed my move against Galveholm to coincide with the end of Arcane Lacuna. Note the settlers: I'm going to cram in four cities where Os-Gabella had one.


Saved by body mana:


Water walking hostiles popped from a shipwreck:


The aftermath of the attack, and the end of Os-Gabella:


The web of wars:


Friends and enemies:


Foreign trade and civics:



With a buccaneer promotion, the drown is easy meat:


Meanwhile, Sabathiel is dying to Falamar and Hyborem:



I discovered I could attack Hyborem with magic without the standard war declaration. So I pitched in to help my buddy Sabathiel:


I thought AC reduction was worth more than a turn or two of research:


Despite my assistance, Sabathiel was too stupid to live.

[DaveV]

Chapter 4: Sorry, Falamar.

Free money: the continuing story.


I finally build an oceangoing vessel to invade the treasure islands. Lair popping was ... unsatisfying.






I actually made the top 8 in cash on hand:


I was happy to give Hyborem a spare silk if it meant he couldn't attack me for 9 turns, in addition to giving me a relations boost.


I popped the chest with a fireball, since he could move onto the burning lands.


Another great engineer appeared, this one went to a golden age.


Free beakers!


The last of the annoying world spells: I lost a mage and a warrior, and a bunch of improvements of course. Could have been worse.


Varn's war against Falamar didn't begin well:


I popped a great merchant out of the Pyre, after springing it so I could move there and build a node.


Despite the bad start, Varn was just crushing Falamar. I decided to jump in before Varn cleared the table; I was still regretting letting the Letum Frigus city slip through my fingers when the barbarians owned it.


I grabbed three of Falamar's cities: two formerly barbarian ones, and one that he took from Sabathiel.


Demographics were looking slightly better:

[DaveV]

Chapter 5: the great war

I was hatching plans of taking Falamar's island capital (and its five wonders) from him with fireballs, when Hyborem lost patience with me. Here's his initial stack of >150 units. Fortunately for me, the Civ 4 AI has one of the same glaring flaws as the MOO AI: assembling a stack of units with various movement speeds, then chugging along at the speed of the slowest unit in the stack.


He moved his stack into my territory and conquered Su'minar, meaning I wouldn't have to worry about war weariness on my counterattack. I spared you a couple pages of Maelstrom damage, but it still goes on and on.


His next attack was against Sil'ron. He had a lot of CG3 horsemen in his stack: an odd choice, but surprisingly effective.


I popped a shipwreck for laughs:


Once he moved his stack out of the city, my odds improved.


That took care of the bulk of his army. Meanwhile, I was setting up to rush the Tower of Divination with a great engineer so I could have some Snowfall archmages.


This is what he had left in Sil'ron:


Usually I can figure out the events by looking at the XML, but I still don't know what this one is supposed to do:


After two more turns, I had Hyborem reduced to a single city:


I popped another treasure chest from a shipwreck. I never did make it over here to open it.


Free money. More sequels than the Fast and Furious. You can also see my Snowfall archmages doing their thing.


My list of cities was starting to look fairly impressive at this point. You can see the minimap in the background, completely lacking in yellow Hyborem.

[DaveV]

Chapter 6: the mop-up

The other AIs had respectable armies, but nothing that could stand up to Snowfall, lots of fireballs, and some very highly promoted chariots.

I was still popping shipwrecks and lairs, but not gaining much:




I didn't take this offer; I thought my cash could be better spent on upgrading adepts to mages.


I came back to take Falamar's last city, and remove the "pining for the fjords" unhappiness in all of his former cities.


I got the orb event, too late to matter.


Blasting Powder was a poor choice, since I never built a single Arquebus or cannon. But, too late to matter. You can also just make out a Kraken in the fort south of Dunwich, and a stack of high-level water walkers coming to reinforce the city. I had to attack off the boats with my archmages, and had only one unit to spare when I took the city. It's crazy that Varn was able to overrun Falamar so easily when Falamar had so many T4 units.


A shipwreck gives me an unworkable crab.


Six turns after Hyborem, two turns after Falamar, Tasunke is dead.


Volanna falls two turns later.


It took four turns after that to deal with Kandros. He had a lot of culture and his always-fun +40% city defenses.


The conquered lands were so thinned out that a barb warrior spawned:


Auric was next on the list, for his long-delayed payback. He had this stack of assassins, who could have made me cry if they'd sniped some of my elite magic users. But they just stood around and let me kill them.


Auric died in 292. You can see where a barb city spawned. I was hoping to let it grow and capture it, but Valledia erased it with a horse archer.


Cross off Valledia in 294.


One turn later, it's down to the final four. I had no intention of attacking Varn or the island angel/demon duo, so I waited for the cities to come out of revolt and built culture.


Here's the final diplo glance. I was amused by the depth of Basium's hatred toward Hyborem.


Already showed this one, but here it is in context:


You can all call me Cthulhu now.


Final graphs. Yellow Hyborem and Falamar killed off Sabathiel; I was responsible for all the other kills.






Units lost, and first page of buildings built:


Units killed (it felt like more), and second page of buildings built.

[DaveV]

Afterword: random thoughts

I didn't really sit at the keyboard for 674 hours; the game ran continuously and I played intermittent sessions for an hour or two at a time.

I found the No Religion part of the challenge to be more of a problem than the No Golems restriction. I was culturally pressured by my neighbors all game; the AIs are always very good at spamming culture. And I really missed the disciples to kick cities out of disorder (Dunwich had a whopping 16 turns of unrest after I captured it).

The map was interesting and fun to explore. The combat was tedious and draining; I should have gone for a Tower victory like the smart people, but I only had two nodes and two mana-yielding unique features, and didn't realize until late in the game that I could Dispel the unique features and turn them into blank nodes.

[Miguelito]

Where does all the snow come from? Is that an Illian ritual? Does it never go away?