[EitB PBEM LVI] coldrain emerges from the shadows

[coldrain]

Ready to jump in my first PBEM... Reporting to follow(?)

[coldrain]

Also, no players allowed!

(This statement is required by the legal department of RB forum?)

[xist10]

and good luck.
I don't think so. Then if no player is allowed, , you aren't allowed to read this thread too.

[coldrain]

and good luck.
I don't think so. Then if no player is allowed, , you aren't allowed to read this thread too.

Thanks! Really exited to participate in a PBEM game. Thus far I have played quite a bit of DirectIP games of unmodded BtS with friends, but these have always included AI and large maps, i.e. longer games (but played at a faster pace) and more single-player applicable strategies.

I've played a lot of single player games with FFH2 plus various "offspring" modpacks, such as Fall Further (v0.51) and MNAI, but not much Erebus in the balance mod. I explored a bit to find out all the balancing changes from vanilla FFH2 and there seems to be quite a lot of them. These changes are not massive individually, but do seem to balance out some of the more overpowered unit/civ combinations and strategies. In vanilla, for example, agrarianism (+1 food per farm) combined with aristocracy (-1 food, +2 commerce per farm) and financial (+1 commerce on plots with 2) was hilariously powerful. In EitB, financial trait has +25 % gold income, but no commerce bonus.

Also in vanilla FFH2, summoner trait + Belsepraphs enabled sequenced summoning of puppets, who would summon more skeletons/ghosts, effectively allowing one mage to maintain two puppets and two ghosts every turn. A regular mage can handle only one ghost per turn... I think one of the early FFH2 PBEM games on this forum demonstrates this strategy. I wonder if EitB prevents this somehow? Anyway, you get the idea why a multiplayer balance mod makes sense. I hope the changes don't catch me offguard, maybe I should do a practice game in single player...

Returning to the initial topic of this post: Although I don't have experience with PBEM multiplayer (no AI opponents at all!), I would expect to not be completely out of my depth due to being a long time civ 4 BtS and FFh2 player. Let's see how fast this illusion will be dispelled (by more competent human opponents)!

[RefSteel]

Welcome to the site, Coldrain! (I write belatedly...) I hope you enjoy the game!

Here's your starting screenshot:

And your first set of civ+leader choices:
Thessa (Expansive/Arcane) of the Ljosalfar (Cartography OR Fishing OR Hunting)
Cassiel (Philosophical/Industrious/Adaptive) of the Grigori (Mining OR Masonry)
Mahala (Expansive/Raiders/Ingenuity) of the Dovielo (No additional tech)

Please post here in your thread which of these three combinations you want OR post here that you'd like to throw them all back and get a new set of three. Once you've made a selection, please also post here which of that combo's possible free techs you want to start with if there's a choice to be made. The civ + leader choices will all be posted in the tech thread once everybody has selected one (so maybe not until after "round 3") but the tech choice won't be made public.

[coldrain]

Thanks RefSteel! Looking forward to explore the map you made.

Quick thoughts on the starting screenshot:
1) Plains hill under the settler to discourage wandering around. I like it!
2) Overall, the start looks very good to me: Decent amount of riverside grassland, plentiful hills for production and great resources for early game (if I pick a specific civ/tech combination, more on this later). Visible resources push my research priorities to different directions, but the additional starting techs alleviate this to some degree.
3) Lots of forests that don't block all of the early grassland tiles (a start completely surrounded by forest would be bad for all civs except the elves).
4) It seems I'm in the northern part of the map, based on the snow covered tree positioning.
5) Is there any reason to not pick Thessa of Ljosafar as leader/civ and hunting as starting tech? If I don't take a civ with exploration as starting tech, I have to wait for a long time to research hunting as it is one of the more expensive techs in the early game. I will think about this a bit more before making any decisions.

I'll post a leader/civ comparison soonish.

[coldrain]

Firstly, as a long time lurker, I have enjoyed reading through turn reports and game analysis of both BtS and FFH2 games. There have been very interesting games in this forum, and now I have the chance to write up myself. Since FFH2 + EitB seem to be less popular than BtS, I thought it would be good if I explained a bit more about my thought process. Bear in mind that I haven't played much EitB mod, so I might get some small details wrong.
 
Alright, I’m going to discuss about the three leaders/civs I have as the first roll. Due to game settings I will always start with agriculture, ancient chants, crafting and exploration regardless of the civ I pick. I can then choose one additional tech based on my pick.

LEADER ANALYSIS PART 1

Thessa (Expansive/Arcane) of the Ljosalfar (Cartography OR Fishing OR Hunting)
Ljosafar is one of the two elven civilizations (Svaltafar being the second), who excel in forested terrain. Elves move through forest uninhibited and elven workers can build improvements directly on top of forests without removing them. Later in the game, regular forests can grow into ancient forests (+1 food in addition to the +1 production). Elves are slower to build improvements to balance this out. Fellowship of Leaves is usually the preferred choice of religion. Elves are blocked from building siege weapons or chariots. This isn’t detrimental as mages can replace the role of siege weapons, if the game goes that far.
 
Ljosafar has the Dexterous trait, which adds +1 attack to archery units. So a regular archer becomes str 4/5 instead of str 3/5. Archery tech unlocks the national hero Gilden Silveric, who is 6 str archer with hero promotion. Useful in the early game, but teching archery early is painful, I'd rather get hunting or horseback riding. Unique units are Fyrdwell (horse archer replacement) and Flurry (crossbowman replacement).
 
Palace gives air, nature and life mana. Air mana is useful when mages are unlocked to get maelstrom spell (range 2 spell that damages all units except those in the casters tile). Other two manas are less useful and more situational.
 
World spell converts (ancient?) forests in Ljosafar territory to 10 str treants that last 5 turns. Useful as a panic defence solution. Q used this ability offencively in the last game, but starting locations of players were quite close.

Finally, leader traits of Thessa are
- Expansive: +3 health per city. Double prduction speed of settler, granary and harbour.
- Arcane: Double production speed of mage guild. Free promotion (mobility I and potency) on arcane units.

Overall, Thessa looks like the best choice for this start at a first glance for a couple of reasons: I can choose hunting as the additional starting tech so I can improve fur + deer immediately after the corn. Expansive is a very useful trait because FFH2 setlers are very expensive. Arcane is useful if the game is not decided before mages are unlocked.

Part II of analysis to follow.

[xist10]

- I can't provide more, I played 1 game of FFH ?

[coldrain]

LEADER ANALYSIS PART II

Cassiel (Philosophical/Industrious/Adaptive) of the Grigori (Mining OR Masonry)
Grigori is an agnostic civilization, unable to adopt a state religion or build temples. Religions have quite powerful units and bonuses, so missing out on them definitely hurts. To compensate, Grigori gain adventures, who act like heroes that can be upgraded to most unit types. Grigori palace and later taverns and adventurer guilds boost how fast they are gained. Hero-units (including Grigori adventurers) gain experience passively and can lead to some extremely powerful combat or arcane units.

Unique units are Dragonslayer (champion replacement), Luonnotar (druid) and Grigori medic. The two latter units are unlocked quite late in the tech tree, I don’t know if they are worth detouring to instead of going for mages. World spell resets great person counter, which synergises well with great people and adventurer generation.
Palace gives water, spirit and enchantment mana. Water mana is useful in turning desert tiles into plains. Enchantment mana gives +1 happiness to all cities and enables adepts to give melee units +20% combat strength. Spirit mana is underwhelming and rarely useful.

Leader traits of Cassiel are
-          Philosophical: +100% great person generation (including adventurers), double production speed of elder council and library
-          Industrious (adaptive): +50% wonder production, +25% worker production, double production of forge
-          Adaptive: periodically can choose to replace the indicated trait. Dependent on game speed.

I have played some single player games with the Grigori and the ability to have multiple heroes is quite strong against the AI, but I suspect human opponents are much more tactical in dealing with them. Philosophical + adventurer generation + world spell has great synergy, but the price is to not have access to any religious bonuses or units. Industrious trait in EitB is slightly better due to faster worker production, but it is still quite weak trait in the early game. With adaptive, a better trait can be chosen later. Unique units are not too special or are available very late, so the biggest selling point of Grigori comes down to adventurers and leader traits plus the choice of mining or masonry as starting tech. For this particular game setting and start location, mining would not be the worst choice.

Mahala (Expansive/Raiders/Ingenuity) of the Dovielo (No additional tech)
Doviello is the early rush civ of FFH2. Most of its bonuses are geared towards an early military build-up and invasion. Early game melee and arcane units don’t require their respective buildings to train. This is a significant advantage, as for example other civs need to build a training yard to train axemen or champions or mage guild for adepts, Dovielle can produce these units outright. Additionally, early game melee units gain city-attack bonus (20% or 10%). If EitB has not made any changes, Doviello units can be upgraded outside your own territory, giving additional flexibility in boosting an invasion force close to enemy borders. As a drawback, Doviello can’t build libraries or alchemy labs or train late game siege or gunpowder units. World spell creates wolves for each military unit, which encourages using it in combination of an early invasion to have some free units to soften up defenders.

Palace gives earth, body and chaos mana. Chaos mana can mutate units (for better or worse) and gives an okay adept level spell (+1 first strike) to help with early military. Body mana is one of the most valuable ones, as it gives adepts the haste spell: +1 movement on all units on the tile of the caster. In multiplayer, added movement speed gives a huge advantage in warfare as faster units can engage and escape or change positioning to threaten multiple cities. If palace mana is deciding my leader choice, I would probably choose Doviello for the body mana (enchantment mana of Grigori is a close second). Mana can be aquired from the map as a startegic resource, so no need to rely completely on palace mana.

Leader traits of Mahala are
- Expansive: +3 health per city. Double prduction speed of settler, granary and harbour.
- Raiders: Free promotion (commando) on land units, +100% gold from pillaging
- Ingenuity: +50 to starting gold, -50% upgrade costs.

As mentioned in the previous post, I value expansive trait very highly. Raiders trait, more easily accessed melee and adept units + body mana and world spell combine Doviello lead by Mahala into a fearsome early game military threat. However, I think it would be very difficult to pull off a successful early game invasion in my first PBEM game. Also, I have no idea if the terrain is favourable for early warfare and how far the closest players are. Expansive trait can be leveraged into a quick city-spam (more cities = more everything), but I could pick Thessa instead for the same goal. As the final nail in the coffin, Doviello don’t get the extra starting tech, which slows down the early game compared to others. So most likely, I won’t be picking this civ for now.

CONCLUSION

If I pick one from the first three civs, I prefer Thessa over Cassiel or Mahala. Thessa has potentially the best starting tech (hunting) and good trait (expansive) for this start. Expansive will benefit a lot from the plains hill deer and all of the forested hills (soon to be mined forested hills). Ljosafar has mediocre unique units and the whole civ is railroaded into Fellowship of the leaves religion, which leads to a predictable strategy that others could counter. World spell can discourage others from early aggression, so I could make it to mages and use the arcane trait. Plus mages are fun to play in single player, probably even more so in multiplayer.

Cassiel is a secondary choice, with good traits (philosophical, adaptive) and great synergy with adventurers and great people generation. Forfeiting religion is a huge downside, and not having expansive slows down the early game significantly. Mining is an ok tech to start with, but hunting is much better. Plus I don’t have any good ideas how to properly use the adventurers in a multiplayer game.

I could reject all of these options and wait for a reroll to choose from a new set of three. But throwing away hunting start with expansive trait as Thessa is risky: Could there be anything better remaining for the reroll? I made a quick test with world builder and it seems only calendar (agrarianism civic) tech can compete with hunting in economy during the early game. So I would need to hope for another civ with exploration (to get hunting as free tech) or agriculture (to take calendar). I need to think about this more…

As a final thought, I could have analysed this start and available civilizations completely wrong, so better to just roll with what seems fun to play with (I want to survive until mages!).
PS: That was a lot of writing, let me know if it would be better to write in a different paragraph formatting or divide these walls of text into multiple posts.

[RefSteel]

PS: That was a lot of writing, let me know if it would be better to write in a different paragraph formatting or divide these walls of text into multiple posts.

I've enjoyed reading your thoughts in the format you used, so I'd say go with whatever is easiest or most comfortable for you. There are a few compelling reasons to divide them into multiple posts though: Your thread will have more posts that way, and therefore be a contender in the all-important post-count war! (For some reason, not all posters consider this important, never mind all-important, but that way of thinking goes against the spirit of regoarrar and is doomed - doomed, I tell you - to threads with lower post counts.) Also, if you compose your posts online or if your computer or word processor is unstable, shorter posts mean less is lost if the forum or internet connection or a crash eats a post you were writing.

Regardless of all of that, I hope you enjoy the game - I look forward to seeing how you play it!